May 19, 2008 May 21, 2008 Tuesday May 20, 2008
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iPhone Security: Refurb iPhones Still Have Old Data on Them?
I was a bit worried when I found out about this story, but I should have seen it coming. Engadget reports that people who are purchasing refurbished iPhones (from Apple, no less) are able to recover old data off of the devices using some freely available tools. I've had to take my iPhone in to the Apple Store for issues twice, and both times, they simply replaced it with a new one. But you'd expect that they would have erased the data on the device first, right? Well, you need to format, write over the entire drive, and erase again if you want to make sure that your data can't be recovered from a storage device. (To be absolutely sure, it's a good idea to shred the drive, but that's apparently not an option here.) Apple's technicians are apparently only doing a basic software format and reinstall, and dropping in a new SIM. That's adequate in most cases, given that most of us don't work for the NSA, and most people buying the devices aren't too curious about said data. It sounds like it's pretty difficult to really do anything about this, unless you can make good friends with the guys at the Genius Bar, and have them do a secure wipe for you. Something tells me that isn't part of their usual routine.
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More 3G iPhone Rumors: Gizmodo “Confirms� It
Gizmodo is “confirming” that Apple will release a 3G iPhone next month at WWDC. This is a fairly widely circulated rumor - Gizmodo isn't saying anything new, but is just betting all of their chips that it's true. Leo Laporte has mentioned a couple of times (on his TWiT podcasts) that he believes the iPhone 3G will be available on other carriers besides AT&T in the United States. The iPhone is a strong product and has definitely gained a strong foothold in the market and given RIM a run for its money, but has been limited in sales by the fact that it's currently tied to what most people believe is one of the least-reliable cell networks in the nation. Having a new iPhone that operates on Verizon or Sprint would make it an interesting product and definitely increase adoption. I, for one, would prefer this, as large parts of my lovely home state of Illinois outside of Chicago are not well-covered by AT&T.
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Roku Netflix Player
$100 Apple TV competitor from Netflix: Setup is simple, and—if you’ve got a solid broadband connection—picture quality is acceptable and streaming performance was almost entirely lag-free. Those looking for the HD video quality and polished interface of Apple TV and Vudu will be disappointed. The Netflix Player is strictly barebones—you’re not intended to do anything more than just dive in and watch the movies and TV shows you’ve already queued up via your online Netflix account. ★
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Fast Icon releases Web 2 Icons--perfect for Fluid users
Fast Icon has released Web 2 Icons, a collection of 23 freeware icons designed in iPhone-like style, includes icons for Blinklist, BlogMarks, Delicious, Digg, Diigo, FaceBook, FeedBurner, Flickr, Furl, Google, Magnolia, Misterwong, Myspace, Newsvine, Netvibes, Reddit, Simpy, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Twitter and YouTube. Web 2 Icons are available for download as standard Mac or Windows icons as... [read more at MacMerc.com]
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iTunes: Free Tuesday
Filed under: iTS, Features, Deals Once again, TUAW is pleased to present you with a selection of free songs and videos from around the world. Many of these iTMS items won't be free for long, so grab your copies before the week is up. And don't forget: If you want to buy these on your iPhone or iPod touch, make sure to sign into your account in iTunes before you sync. Details and country-by-country listings follow after the jump.Continue reading iTunes: Free TuesdayRead | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Vancouver (BC) Apple Store opening May 24
Filed under: Retail There's good news for our friends in British Columbia: Vancouver's Pacific Centre Mall is getting a brand-new Apple Store on the upper level. The store will hold a grand opening celebration this Saturday, May 24, starting at 10 a.m. The first thousand customers will get a free Apple t-shirt. Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Apple posts long version of "Sad Song" ad
Filed under: Apple Because Apple thought that you just couldn't get enough of that "Vista blues" song that was in the latest Get a Mac ad, they posted an extended version of it that runs 1 minute, 34 seconds. PC just keeps singing, despite Mac's look of amazement that PC could sing that long. At the end, PC finishes the song by singing "... there's nothing left to do, except control. alt. delete." You can watch this and other Get a Mac ads by visiting the Apple Get a Mac site. Thanks to Steve and Ton for the tip!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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What Apple’s Rumored Tablet Should Look Like
These photos are taken from the TED blog. Yves Behar, the designer for the XO Laptop discusses what V 2.0 will look like. The new XO laptop, set to arrive in 2010, looks like two giant iPhones glued side-by-side. An all-touchscreen interface, with accelerometers to orient the screen to the correct perspective, and Pong make this look like a must-have, not to mention a way better design than the current XO laptop. I suggest Apple rip this design out from under them and throw some sweet OS X goodness on there. Behar says this second version of the XOXO “is a book, a tablet, a board…and yes, a laptop too if that is what you need. The design is still green and white, but thin, simple, and un-interrupted by keyboards, buttons, speaker holes, input devices and visible connectors. And it is soft to the touch, like a piece of luggage, everyday luggage you can take anywhere.” [Via TEDBlog]
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T-Mobile to retain iPhone exclusivity in Germany
Filed under: iPhone At the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Paris today, T-Mobile CEO Hamid Akhavan said he expected to continue being the exclusive iPhone provider in Germany, citing the company's strong relationship with Apple. He also noted that "if and when" there is a 3G iPhone, T-Mobile anticipates selling it exclusively in Germany as well. Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile's parent company) will sell the iPhone in Austria, but Orange will carry the iPhone in Germany's southern neighbor as well. [Via Reuters] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Book Review: Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, Third Edition
Addison Wesley Professional started shipping the Third Edition of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass this month. Hillegass' book is considered my most to be the de-facto intro-to-OS X programming text. I own (and have now recycled) the first edition of the book and have gone through the majority of the Third Edition (at least reading-wise). Here's my take on this latest incarnation. The Text At A Glance Aaron has a great, teaching-writing style. You definitely get the feel of being in the classroom, learning right from the professor. The preface makes at least two, fairly substantial claims. First, that the nook covers the Objective-C language, Cocoa design patterns and how to use Xcode, Interface Builder and Instruments. And, second, that you will learn 80% of what you need to know to get started programming for the Mac. I have to agree with both claims as you will definitely learn a great deal of the fundamentals of the language and tools and that the book can be used as a reference post-read. This third edition has been updated to cover Leopard-only technologies (such as garbage collection and Objective-C 2.0) and does a decent job showing where to utilize the new language features and delves into the depths of intricacies of the new memory management facilities in Leopard (and how to code for both Tiger & Leopard). Covering tools like gdb and Instruments is an amazing thing to do, since many programmers are still rely solely on printf or (in the case of Mac programming) NSLog. The sample applications range from trivial to pretty neat & indicative of real-world Mac programming, error-logic and all. I especially like the challenges in the exercises, many of which have you modify example code, sometimes accompanied by the mantra: “This is hard, and you are not stupid.” If you are interested at all in programming for OS X or have programmed for the Mac and want to pick up some hints on how code specifically for features in Leopard, Aaron's books is a must-buy. I'd definitely recommend keeping all of Apple's updated Objective-C 2.0 information handy as it will fill in the 20% Aaron doesn't cover and go a bit deeper as well. The Gory Details Here is a breakdown of the chapters and what each covers: Chapter 1. Cocoa: What Is It? Chapter 2. Let's Get Started Chapter 3. Objective-C Chapter 4. Memory Management Chapter 5. Target/Action Chapter 6. Helper Objects Chapter 7. Key-Value Coding; Key-Value Observing Chapter 8. NSArrayController Chapter 9. NSUndoManager Chapter 10. Archiving Chapter 11. Basic Core Data Chapter 12. Nib Files and NSWindowController Chapter 13. User Defaults Chapter 14. Using Notifications Chapter 15. Using Alert Panels Chapter 16. Localization Chapter 17. Custom Views Chapter 18. Images and Mouse Events Chapter 19. Keyboard Events Chapter 20. Drawing Text with Attributes Chapter 21. Pasteboards and Nil-Targeted Actions Chapter 22. Categories Chapter 23. Drag-and-Drop Chapter 24. NSTimer Chapter 25. Sheets Chapter 26. Creating NSFormatters Chapter 27. Printing Chapter 28. Web Service Chapter 29. View Swapping Chapter 30. Core Data Relationships Chapter 31. Garbage Collection Chapter 32. Core Animation Chapter 33. A Simple Cocoa/OpenGL Application Chapter 34. NSTask Chapter 35. The End (Choosing to cover topics such as threading is a huge plus and not the normal faire for this type of text) Full book reference information: Title: Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, Third Edition Publisher: Addison Wesley Professional Publish Date: May 05, 2008 Print ISBN-10: 0-321-50361-9 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-321-50361-9 eText ISBN-10: 0-321-56273-9 eText ISBN-13: 978-0-321-56273-9 Pages: 464 You can find it at Amazon (they even have a Kindle-ready version), Safari Books Online and (most likely) at your favorite local bookstore. List price is $49.99 USD but you can find it in the low $30's if you poke around. If you snagged a copy of the tome, drop a note in the comments with your take on the text.
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Mac sales spike in April
Filed under: Apple Financial, AppleIt may be the cruelest month, but for Mac buyers apparently April was hotter than the middle of summer, AppleInsider reports. An analyst note from Lehman Brothers quotes NPD data with a 50% year-over-year boost in Mac sales last month, combined with a 15% bump in iPod unit sales for the same period versus the year-ago data.Granted, in April of last year we didn't yet have Leopard to entice buyers, and the product line was beginning to seem a trifle long in the tooth, but what's impressive to me about this sales surge is that it smiles in the face of economic uncertainty, increased cost of living and general fiscal heebie-jeebies. Do Macs make people feel more secure and happier, or do they just seem like a more stable and dependable choice versus buying a new PC and having to roll forward to Vista?Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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★ Title Case
Here’s one of the little tools I’ve written to help publish DF which I’ve never gotten around to sharing: a pretty clever script for converting text to title case. I use it to standardize the capitalization of Linked List headlines, for example. Here’s the source code. It’s a Perl script, so save it as a text file and you can use it anywhere where Perl works. I use it as a system-wide service (with the shortcut Command-Shift-T) via Jesper’s excellent (and free) ThisService utility. It’s pretty easy to write a non-clever title-casing function. The simplest way is to just capitalize the first letter of every word. That’s not right, though, because it’ll leave you with capitalized small words like if, in, of, on, etc. What you want is something that not only knows not to capitalize such words, but will un-capitalize them if they’re erroneously capitalized in the input. So, some of the cleverness in this script: It knows about small words that should not be capitalized. Not all style guides use the same list of words — for example, many lowercase with, but I do not. The list of words is easily modified to suit your own taste/rules: my @small_words = qw(a an and as at but by en for if in of on or the to v[.]? via vs[.]?); (The only trickery here is that “v” and “vs” include optional dots, expressed in regex syntax.) The script assumes that words with capitalized letters other than the first character are already correctly capitalized. This means it will leave a word like “iTunes” alone, rather than mangling it into “ITunes” or, worse, “Itunes”. It also skips over any words with line dots; “example.com” and “del.icio.us” will remain lowercase. It has hard-coded hacks specifically to deal with odd cases I’ve run into, like “AT&T” and “Q&A”, both of which contain small words (at and a) which normally should be lowercase. The first and last word of the title are always capitalized, so input such as “Nothing to be afraid of” will be turned into “Nothing to Be Afraid Of”. A small word after a colon will be capitalized. Here’s a small list of edge cases that the script handles. The source code itself is, uh, rather convoluted, to say the least. It’s one of those pieces of code that started small and simple, and grew ugly over time as edge cases were worked around one at a time. I’ve been using this script for years, but have put off publishing it on the grounds that it looks like the sort of punctuation-riddled code that gives Perl phobics the heebie-jeebies. But it works, so screw it, here it is.
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Explore Carrie Bradshaw's MacBook Pro
Filed under: Multimedia, Cult of Mac, Macbook ProLike many women (and men), I'm pretty excited about the upcoming Sex and the City movie. While the show was awesome for a myriad of reasons (the humor, the fashion, the catch-phrases), what often gets overlooked is that Carrie Bradshaw was a Mac girl. From 1998 through 2004, Carrie almost always started and ended each show typing on her Mac. It makes sense; can you really imagine someone that fashion and style conscious using anything else?In season one, she used the original Powerbook G3, if I'm not mistaken (it was either Kanga or the 3400c), but she moved up to a WallStreet and then a Pismo until the series concluded its run. The official website for the movie has added a new feature, "Carrie Bradshaw's MacBook Pro" that allows fans to "explore" the virtual desktop of our favorite fashionista, answer trivia questions in "chat" windows with other SATC characters, based on clues found on the desktop, to unlock bonus content/videos and for a chance to win a Sex and the City movie poster.I'll admit, the whole thing is a total novelty, but it's still kind of cool. I especially like that the default browser on the "desktop" is Camino. It's always fun to see Apple products integrated into other promotional campaigns.(New Line Cinema, like TUAW, is ultimately part of the same media conglomerate, Time Warner).Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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iTunes’ Attackers
Netflix and Napster are both launching assaults on Apple, today. CNET is reporting the release of Netflix's Apple TV rival, simply called Player by Roku, and Napster is getting into the digital music distribution with apparently an identical model to iTunes ($0.99 a song, $9.95 an album). I am all for competition, but I don't think these two alternatives provide much to combat Apple's dominance. Let's take a short look at each. (more…)
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AT&T making out like bandit on iPhone
Filed under: iPhoneApparently AT&T is making out pretty well on this whole iPhone thing. According to a Rubicon Consulting study (NYT link, registration required) of 460 iPhone users about half (47%) switched to AT&T to get the iPhone and agreed to pay an average of $19 more per month to use the iPhone over their previous cell. Those numbers are just about right in my case from when I traded in my Treo on Sprint. What about you guys? How many of you switched to get an iPhone and how much more are you paying per month than you were before?[via iPhone Central]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Tip: Go invisible in iChat
You know those times when you go online to chat with Lois, and Jimmy says hey Clark, howsitgoin? You're not in the mood, but Jimmy's sensitive, so you politely chat for a moment, though you'd really rather chat with Lois. Next time, go invisible. Before you sign on, set your status in iChat to invisible. Now you can see your friends, but they can't see you.
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SiteSucker Updated
This is a minor update to SiteSucker, but it is a program that I depend on, so I am posting it. For the uninitiated, SiteSucker is a program that sucks everything (pages, images, etc.) out of a website and downloads it to your hard drive. I use it because I update my school web page at the beginning of each year, but I don't want to lose all the information from before. I don't usually go back and look at it much, but mainly save it as a backup of what happened the previous year, in case I lose some other record. The updates are: Allowed users to view the download settings while downloading. Replaced wildcard support in paths settings with regular expressions. Removed “Get Files via Image Links” from the Download Option and added “Only Follow Image Links” option under the Advanced tab in the download settings. Added an option to save log files in ~/Library/Logs/SiteSucker. Added a Logs tab in the Download Settings window and reorganized the settings. Added scanning of the style attribute in all tags for URLs. Replaced URL parameters with a value in local file names. Deleted empty folders in the download folder when all downloads are paused. Modified the document format to improve performance when analyzing files. Fixed an issue where some files failed to download when a download was resumed. Fixed some issues with the Open File command.
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GhostReader 1.5: text to audiobook
Filed under: SoftwareGhostReader is a text to speech application that allows you to have your computer read aloud PDF, Word, and text files and save the output in a variety of formats for importing into iTunes. While Mac OS X does have built-in text to speech capabilities in the Universal Access Preference Pane (VoiceOver), GhostReader adds more voices (including various voices tailored to multiple European languages), allows you to modify how words are pronounced, and automates the conversion to audiobooks.GhostReader 1.5 is $39.95 for one language; additional languages are extra; a demo is available.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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iPhone 2.0 FUD-o-Rama
The Macalope reads the jackasses so you don’t have to. ★
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iPhone Tip: Use the Spacebar double-tap
The iPhone's keyboard changes layouts to match the task. When you're typing a URL into Safari, for instance, the keyboard lacks a space key because spaces aren't allowed in URLs. This is usually quite helpful, but it's not perfect. The default keyboard layout you see in Notes and Contacts lacks a period, which makes it harder to type complete sentences. Fortunately, Apple designers added a shortcut to work around this limitation: double-tap the space bar to insert a period followed by a space. You can disable this in Settings > General > Keyboard, but it's quite handy.
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Rumor: iPhone 3G Launch on June 9th
Filed under: Rumors, WWDC, Steve Jobs, iPhone Gizmodo is reporting that "sources close to the 3G launch" have provided confirmation that the iPhone 3G will be announced at the WWDC 2008 Keynote on June 9th. While this does sound a lot like a rumor, other factors such as nonexistent stocks of first-generation iPhones, the flurry of non-US iPhone launch announcements last week, and the all-but-confirmed Steve Jobs keynote all point to something big.Gizmodo also speculates that European launch dates are scheduled to follow close on the heels of the US announcement, with iPhone 3G availability in Spain at the grand opening of the Telefonica megastore in Madrid on June 18th.June 9th sounds good to me, since I can buy my wife an iPhone 3G for our 29th anniversary on that day! What's your take on the iPhone 3G rumor du jour? Give it a reality check by taking our poll:View PollTip 'o the TUAW Stetson to Sharvil for pointing this out!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Telefonica Movistar bringing the iPhone to Spain?
Filed under: Rumors, iPhoneApparently the Enterprise Data Services Manager for Telefónica España, Francisco José Santos Esteras, spoke recently at PROCOM Aragón 2008 (a communications conference) in Spain and said that Telefonica Movistar (the mobile subsidiary) has a time-limited exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone. It's unclear how long the exclusivity lasts, but it is apparently limited to months (as opposed to years with AT&T here in the States). This move in Spain is consistent with rumors we posted on a while back, though it seems that Orange will also be offering the iPhone in Spain within a few months. It also seems likely the launch will coincide with the presumed release of the 3G iPhone next month.[via Infinite Loop]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Refurb iPhones still contain previous users' data
Filed under: Security, iPhoneHere's a slightly disturbing story from iPhone Atlas. Apparently user data is recoverable from iPhones that are being sold as refurbished. A detective from the Oregon State police recovered email, photos, and other user data from an "out-of-the-box refurbished iPhone." Indeed the image to the right is a partial screen capture from the refurbished iPhone.According to the iPhone developer Jonathan Zdziarski "all of the personal information that was sitting on [his iPhone] prior to the erase or restore is still left sitting in the unallocated blocks of the iPhone's NAND memory." In other words doing a Restore operation through iTunes will not actually fully delete all the data on the iPhone. What's needed is a low-level format of the NAND, but there doesn't seem to be a readily available means for doing this.With the 3G iPhone presumably about to drop it seems safe to assume a lot of second-hand iPhones are about to become available on eBay, etc. It would be nice if there were some fully reliable way to ensure that all personal data is expunged from the device. The original information is on Zdziarski's blog.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Kingdom Lores, 3D fantasy on the iPhone
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, Apple, Developer, iPhoneThis one's been poking around since last week, but we haven't touched on it yet here on TUAW: Kingdom Lores is what looks to be a fully 3D, fantasy adventure game for the iPhone, and it looks hot. The game is being developed by Marco Giorgini, and uses a custom OpenGL rendering engine to let players do all the normal dungeon crawler stuff: kill monsters, run around, collect the loots, and generally be the fantasy hero. The game is available for download right now, though you do have to jailbreak the iPhone/iPod touch, and right now you've got to manually install the thing.If you're not courageous enough to try and install it yourself (raises hand), there are a few videos available to show off how it plays, and while it is very clearly an early alpha, it does look like fun. Unfortunately, the chances that we'll see it in the App Store are about nil -- Giorgini doesn't even have a Mac, and he's doing it all using the Win toolchain.Surely someone can get this guy a MacBook and a developer kit, right? Or at least get a port rolling? A year from now, we'll probably all be playing iPhone Spore and laughing at how primitive this looks, but right now, when it comes to running 3D on the iPhone, this is a dungeon we'd love to crawl.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Apple Games profiles Sid Meier
Filed under: Gaming, Odds and ends, Apple Apple Games has posted an article about one of my favorite game developers, the great Sid Meier, designer of Pirates! and probably the best game ever made, Civilization (although in my humble opinion, Alpha Centauri is the best Civ, but I digress). There are quite a few good anecdotes in there, about how Meier got his start in videogames (like all great men, he got caught bragging that he could do something better), and the fact that apparently Civ got canned before it was finished -- good thing they decided to give it a second go.Unfortunately, there's no real indication why Meier is being profiled -- the Mac version of Civ IV was released a few years ago, and the new Civilization Revolution is supposedly console-specific (which doesn't mean I won't be playing it on my 360). Maybe Apple just loves Sid as much as we do (Happy We Love the Emperor Day)? Or maybe we'll see -- I hesitate to even dream it, for fear that it might be true -- an iPhone version of Civ in the App Store come June?[via IMG]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Mac OS Ken: 05.20.2008
NYT: Apple in Talks with Labels for New iPhone Music Features / Apple Commands 66% of Premium Computer Buying in 1Q / Munster: iPod Sales Are Up (But Average Selling Price is Down) / Report: Apple to Support Current PA Semi Chips for Select Customers / Contract iPod Maker Hon Hai to Enter Contract Laptop Market / Napster Sells DRM-Free MP3s