• iPhone 101: Speedier iPhone backups, three ways

    Filed under: iTunes, iPhone, iPhone 101Since the introduction of the App Store, the iPhone and iPod touch backup procedure has become quite time-consuming. The Panama Canal was constructed in less time. Fortunately, the impatient can speed up (or kill) the process in one of three ways.The first is the simplest. When the backup begins, simply click the small "x" that appears in iTunes' main window. This will halt the backup but continue the sync, so those new podcasts you've downloaded will get transferred.The second procedure is a bit more involved. Open a Terminal window and type the following: defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool trueThat will kill the backup procedure until you enable it again by typingdefaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool falseJust be aware that this method also kills SMS message backups.Those of you uncomfortable with Terminal can use this tiny application which essentially runs the commands above at the click of a button.Finally, you can follow the steps outlined at iPhoneFreak that involve disabling the option to send diagnostic information to Apple at sync.So there you have it -- three ways to make your backup procedure more pleasant. If you need to recover files from a backup, you can use the mdhelper application, written by our own Erica Sadun.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • App Store approvals and the tablet: why it matters

    Filed under: iPod Family, Odds and ends, Other Events, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK When iTunes Connect returned after its Christmas break, developers noticed that things had changed quite a bit on the App Store approval front. Applications that had formerly taken ten to fourteen days to work through review were now getting processed in a couple of days or less. The upshot? Happier developers, better bug releases for users, and a healthier App Store ecosystem. There's another consequence of the new, speedier approvals: the tablet. With the device due to ship March/April (late Q1, early Q2), and no announced 4.0 SDK, developers were left wondering how they'd have the time to bring their software up to date. Under the old review process even a single procedural rejection, which are quite common for small GUI details, would have exhausted nearly all of February in non-productive "wait mode". With the enhanced review system in place, it's likely that developers will be able to spend those extra weeks refactoring their software, allowing it to ship in a timely fashion once the actual device appears on-scene. Apple is expected to push their SDK to developers within two weeks of their late January product announcement, probably by 15 February. Assuming a 2 April product launch, that leaves nearly six weeks to update and test software. Not that developers are waiting. Many devs are already working on resolution independent versions of their applications. They are tasking their designers to re-imagine screens, to test hand-held cardboard prototypes, and otherwise start the process of scaling their products to new dimensions. It should be noted that some of the App Store heavyweights have suddenly become quite tight-lipped in recent days, refusing to talk in any specifics about how their upgrade process is proceeding. The rest of us will have to get by on guess work, at least until the product announcement at the end of this month. Without specific leaks regarding hardware changes (for example, will there really be a front facing video camera? and if so, will expanded Image Picker/Media Player classes support access?), it's hard to pin down exactly what new features can be leveraged in third party software. But it's a fairly safe bet that nearly all features available on the current iPod touch line will be in play on the new tablet. And that alone is enough to hedge some safe business bets about pushing forward with large screen development. It's still too early for most of us to start playing -- those tight-lipped folk have a bit of the wild "Apple will kill me if I speak" look around their eyes -- but it's not too early to begin planning and working. Even without specifics, there are ways to move forward on the development front. Carpe diem. There's not much time left before the yet-unannounced tablet ships.TUAWApp Store approvals and the tablet: why it matters originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - App Store - Apple - IpodTouch - TUAW

  • Navigon launches regional nav apps at lower prices

    Filed under: iPhoneIf you've been lusting after the Navigon apps for your iPhone, the company has just released lower-priced regional versions that divide the country into three sections and let you add other parts of the U.S. with an in-app purchase. You can now buy Western states, Central U.S. or Eastern states as standalone regions. The single region version is US$24.99 until April 12, when the price goes up to $29.99. If you buy one region, you can add another region for $12.99 each. These new versions contain all the features of the Navigon U.S. and Canada version. All versions will soon get a free update to the new MyRoutes feature. Navigon MyRoutes learns from the user's driving style to provide customized and better route recommendations. The feature also offers up to two alternative routes clearly displayed on a map including ETA, distance and driving time. This lets users choose the route that best serves their individual situation. Traffic Live, which is another add-on, provides crowd-sourced real-time traffic information to calculate better routes that avoid congestion and get drivers to their destination faster. The feature is available as an in-app one-time purchase at a promotional price of $19.99 until April 12th. As I pointed out in my review of CoPilot Live yesterday, these add-ons are getting a bit confusing, and it would be nice if all the nav developers simply offered a complete version to keep things simple. Others will argue that by offering bits and pieces you can customize your app and get only what you want. It does keep the price down. Navigon has certainly done that with the Navigon MyRegion edition. If you stay in pretty much one part of the country you get a very advanced application at a very competitive price. You can find a complete Navigon feature list here. The apps run on iPhone version 3.0 or greater. They can be used on first generation iPhones or the iPod touch with additional hardware accessories, and run on their own with the iPhone 3G or 3GS.TUAWNavigon launches regional nav apps at lower prices originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Navigon - Unofficial Apple Weblog - Apple - IPod Touch

  • 5 apps for tracking a package

    Filed under: App StoreA few of you recently ordered an iPad. Now, the obsessive calendar-watching begins. How can April 3rd seem so far away? Satisfy your need for up-to-the-second notification of your iPad's whereabouts with one of these package tracking apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. Delivery Status Touch (US$2.99) is my personal choice. It supports more than 25 delivery services, like FedEx, UPS, DHL, and the good old USPS. Additionally, there's built-in tracking for packages coming from Amazon, Adobe and, of course, Apple. You can track several packages at once, and the main screen lists each at launch, sorted by color-coded listings. Shipments are accompanied by a big countdown to the delivery date. Once your goodie gets close, you can bring up a map and watch it approach. Finally, push notifications will satisfy even the least patient among us. USPS Mobile (Free) lets you track a package sent through the USA's postal system. To get started, replace a shipment's tracking number with a nickname (might we suggest "precious?") and watch as the progress bar slides along, representing its progress. USPS Mobile also lets you find a nearby post office or collection box, look up ZIP codes, and more. However, for the purposes of this post, we're only interested in package tracking. UPS Mobile (Free) is for those who prefer to let Brown deliver their iPads. This full-featured app lets you replace a tracking number with a nickname and watch a progress bar move with your package's progress, much like the USPS app does. In addition, you can find UPS locations, create shipping labels, and save your shipping preferences. There's no push notification with this one, so the overly-eager will just have to sit tight. Track My Shipments+ (Free) does feature push notifications, unlike UPS Mobile. In fact, whenever your package's status changes, you'll get a message. An in-app map shows not only where your package is, but also the direction that it's traveling in. The neat thing about Track My Shipments+ is that it is part of an online service that tracks shipments for you. Just forward a confirmation email from any of six major carriers to a special email address, login with the app, and your shipment is in place. There's no need to type a lengthy shipping number into the iPhone. Track My Shipments+ also offers in-app purchases, like the aforementioned push notifications, unlimited simultaneous package tracking, and associate email, which allows you to send messages from multiple accounts. TrackThis Package Tracking ($0.99) is a great-looking app that supports 13 carriers, including UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, TNT, Canadian Post UK City Link, and more. TrackThis also features push notifications, but the nice thing is that you can determine what events deserve notification, like "on truck for delivery" or "delivered." That way, you won't be disturbed by every link in the chain. There are five apps to feed your obsession for the next 2-3 weeks. Enjoy your perseveration!TUAW5 apps for tracking a package originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - AppStore - Apple - IPad - IPod Touch

  • The Next Apple TV? Drawing Inspiration From the iPad

    Steve Jobs calls the iPad Apple’s “most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device” and I’m certainly not one to disagree. The iPad boasts significant advances over the iPhone in terms of hardware and software which makes me wonder, how much of that advanced technology could make it’s way into a future Apple TV? Hardware While the current Apple TV boasts an Intel Pentium M 1.0GHz processor, Apple’s advances in its own chip design could pave the way for a custom processor fine tuned for the device. Apple’s reason for custom chips in the mobile arena is to provide them with what they need while giving them more control over other aspects, such as battery life. While this isn’t a concern with the Apple TV, certainly a more powerful chip while still being power efficient is desirable. A custom chip would give Apple more flexibility over performance as well. Consider the video formats the iPad can play. Many were shocked to see support for full 720p at 30 frames per second and support for .avi files up to 35Mbps. In terms of processing power, that’s more advanced than the Apple TV, and its a mobile device! The iPad also brings support for an external keyboard through Bluetooth. That’s right. You can use your plain off the shelf Apple Wireless Keyboard with your iPad. Why not bring this same bluetooth functionality to the Apple TV? This could allow support for a wireless keyboard or any host of other Bluetooth-enabled devices. (What other devices might one use? Read on, my friend.) Software While the current Apple TV software runs on a modified version of the Mac operating system, there’s really no benefit provided from this approach versus an iPhone-like OS. Consider the similarities already between the two: only one “application” can run at a time and the official method of pushing content to both devices is either through the Internet or iTunes. Another arena that Apple could pursue is to finally offer an App Store for the device. Now that the waters have been tested with the iPhone and iPod touch, an Apple TV App Store makes sense. Considering that the device has been hacked numerous times and there are many unsupported applications that can be run on the device, an official App Store would give the device more expandability and return a portion of the profit back to Apple. Since the App Store model allows the developer to reap profits from the app too, perhaps this will finally pave the way to bring Hulu into the living room via the Apple TV. If Hulu and Netflix both offered apps for the Apple TV, imagine how many of these devices Apple could move off the shelves? Game developers could build their own applications and provide interaction using an iPhone or iPad as a controller (gaining accelerometer functionality) or through their own Bluetooth-enabled peripherals. The Apple TV is a product that has seen few updates and is referred to by Apple as a “hobby.” But what are hobbies really? It’s something done for pleasure and for leisure. Something that you work on slowly over time, but stay the course. Apple has reaffirmed their commitment to investing in the device but much like the iPhone and the iPad, it isn’t going to be a runaway success if its not the right product at the right time. The iPad will be wildly popular because of the success of the iPhone, which owes its own success to the accomplishments of the iPod. Apple has carefully built an entire ecosystem around iTunes and its devices. With the Apple TV, the best is yet to come. Related Research from GigaOM Pro: Web Tablet Survey: Apple's iPad Hits the Right Notes How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad With the iPad, Apple Take Google to the Mat

  • GDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah

    Filed under: Gaming, Software, Internet, Developer, iPhone Booyah is an App Store company with quite a few lessons in its past already. The founders are former developers at Blizzard (they worked on both Diablo and World of Warcraft before setting off on their own), and after their first app, Booyah Society, didn't exactly strike gold on the App Store, they went back to the drawing board on their idea of "real life achievements," and have done much better with their latest app, MyTown -- it's one of the top grossing apps around, with more users and higher engagement than the popular Foursquare. We got to sit down with CEO Keith Lee for an interview at GDC, and he told us about what they learned from Booyah Society, why Booyah is convinced that real-life social gaming is where it's at, and what they think of the iPad (and what Blizzard thinks of the iPhone). Read on for more. So you guys left Blizzard and formed your own company. How long ago was that? And let us know why as well. So after announcing Diablo III in Paris, my two co-founders, Brian [Morrisroe] and Sam [Christiansen], we left Blizzard because we were just inspired by the idea of doing something that was based on the real world. And we thought that the advent of smartphones and cameras, as well as GPS would give us an interesting opportunity to expose a lot of the game mechanics that we learned working at Blizzard doing everything from World of Warcraft to Diablo, but to apply it to a big audience. So that's what excited us, not just drive people to play hundreds of hours to get an epic sword on a PC, but to drive them to actually spend hundreds of hours to level up in the real world, and that can be as simple as leveling up by going to a fitness place, or by leveling up in music by doing stuff at a concert with your friends. So that's what really excited us. The mission for our company is to create new experiences for the masses by intersecting the real world and the virtual world. We launched a year and a half ago, and we're based in San Francisco, and we've launched our most recent app, called MyTown. MyTown now is the most popular location-based mobile game. It is. I'm an MMO player for a long time, and when iPhone first came out, one of the things I thought of was, this is a device that knows where it is, can see where it is, has all of this information on it...a location-based MMO is kind of like the big thing to do. Was there anything else going on or did you have anything you took influence from at the time? Our original idea was to make a social game called Booyah Society based around your Facebook and Twitter games, and then to fill the pause with communication. We realized though that we just tried to do too much at one time, especially for something that's more concise like the iPhone. Understanding that form factor, we took a step back, and we actually learned to simplify our app. So Booyah Society was last year, and we decided let's just focus on GPS. Let's build a game just around that -- what could be the most compelling idea around it? And then we came out with the idea of MyTown, which is essentially, a game based around real world property ownership. I played Booyah Society, and I wrote about it, and the problem with it was that while it was cool to give yourself achievements or rewards for doing certain things, there was no check on it. No validation, right. That's one of the biggest challenges when you start to intersect the real world and the virtual worlds. Now you have to spend 90% of your time thinking about proper validation. Because if someone really loves your games, he's going to get hacked and cheated. When you can validate activities through your backend servers like in a "pure MMO," it's a lot easier than, "Did you really go to the sports place or work out today?" Yeah in Booyah when I played it, you could basically type in, "I flew on a unicorn today," and there was nothing there to check it. Absolutely. So we took that step back and said well what can we do to actually incent [sic] people to be excited about an activity? And we said hey, property ownership is perfect, people don't want to lie about it, because they actually do care about the places they frequent. If I really like my local yogurt store, I want to buy it. That's a form of self-expression, they have an emotional tie to that location. And so once we realized that ownership was this incentiveidea, we wrapped the whole game around that, and generally the validation problem was solved. And the great thing too is that if you're checking in to the different locations in our game -- like right now, I can't check in to a place in Palo Alto or New York, I can only check in here. So the accuracy can be higher than in the past when you said that you can fly a unicorn or something like that. Right. Now whenever we talk about checking in, people think Foursquare. And this is a fact that I don't think a lot of people realize: MyTown is bigger than Foursquare in terms of your users, right? Right now, MyTown has hit 1.3 to 1.4 million registered users, so yes, they're at about 350,000, so we're about five times larger. But I think the biggest difference for us is that we have created a game that users engage throughout the day. The typical users for Foursquare and those social utility apps are about five to six minutes a day. We are now clocking in eighty minutes a day of usage for the average user, we have more users as well, and the cool thing is that we've created a complete virtual economy based on checking in, so I check into Moscone, I'm going to get more like virtual items that are different from going to an H&M. So for example, right now we're doing deals with H&M retail stores to award virtual items and goods based on proximity to their location. And it's really cool because, just this week, there are 40 million items being purchased and consumed. Every week now. And that's something that Foursquare has zero of. For all of Foursquare's press and all of the people using it, it's not a game, it's a network. And what you guys have done is turn checking in to a game -- you can build your own stores, and charge rent, and earn points, and so on. Do you think that's why you have more users, or does it limit the potential audience by ruling out people who "don't play games"? I think we started off at the same place as Foursquare, as a social utility. But then realizing eventually that we're a game, we'll be starting to diverge dramatically. I think the big idea here is that we're going to sit on top of the location graph, and we're going to be using all of this new data, check-in data, from Facebook, Google, anyone else out there. We're going to be able to leverage the location graph with all of this new metadata. Just like what the social graph looked like four or five years ago when Zynga and all of these other social games sat on top of it. So the big difference here is that we'll be the frontrunner to creation location-based social games that no one's ever done before. Foursquare and all of these other guys are actually creating the content that we'd love to use. We're currently going to use Foursquare's API and Gowalla's API. They're there to win the social-based platform play, which Facebook will completely wipe them out in about 6-8 months. Yeah, outside of the realm of the iPhone, that's interesting right there. The thing is, what differentiates them when Facebook decides to add a check-in feature that's part of their status update across all their applications on every single platform? The biggest difference is that they have 450 million users, and with such a large user base, they could work any deals with any marketers that decide to do that. I know that's the direction that Foursquare and Gowalla want to go -- they want to be an advertising platform based on location. You've got a head start on that. You've got a deal with H&M already -- That's right. And I know back when you were working on Booyah Society, that's what you were talking about. It's funny because we created the game wrapped around this real-world Monopoly idea, we started to garner 100,000 users a week, and now we can actually do some of the things we wanted to do with Booyah Society, the original vision. As we continue to partner with every venue in every location it becomes increasing more compelling for them to check-in and level up for working out, and we can have achievements based around that. And that's one of the things that differentiates us from these other products. And I think we're still like at the top 40 on the App Store after two and a half months. Pretty crazy. In terms of virtual items, I know when you check into the game, you can get virtual items that will power up the game. I haven't seen in the app myself, but are there in-app purchases in there, and how's that working? Yeah we're actually doing in-app purchases, where you can buy virtual goods to help you get more slots, add power, level you up more quickly. We're actually one of the Top Grossing apps in the App Store as well. We make money through in-app purchases, our second revenue stream is location-based ads, and then third of all, brand partnerships with all these different clients. So the great thing is that there's so many opportunities once you create a great game that people are spending an hour in, the value behind virtual goods that people want to spend and buy now, is worth a lot more the more time every day that people spend time in the app. They care about it, and actually, what's interesting too is that we're noticing that people do really spend a lot more on virtual goods and items because they're related to real locations. If it was just a random supermarket, that doesn't matter to me, but if it's the one I go to every day, my favorite Whole Foods market, I actually want to level up and upgrade it, because you can never own that in the real world, so it's kind of a cool fantasy of being this virtual property tycoon. We're realizing that you can have a product marketed with a real world idea. It's almost like a social connection with a building, which is a weird thing to say, but... Yeah. We're going to be launching an update next week that's going to be focusing on social, so we're going to have all the features that Foursquare and Gowalla have -- you'll be able to view other people's profiles, see the towns that they've made, the things that they've done. And I think it'll be very interesting for me to look at my friends and see what places they own. Because we actually limit the number of stores that you can actually keep. You can only have a maximum of 25. So you'll have to see if people are getting it because they want money or because they love their favorite Apple Store next door to them. It tells about their personality, and we'll have notifications where we can see what people are buying and selling. It's more interesting than just checking in, because I don't care if you went to Starbucks this morning, I only care if you check into a party or a club that I care about. How interesting would it be if you ended up in Napa and you bought like a hot new winery? I'd probably start a dialog or conversation if I saw that from a person on Facebook. Because it doesn't happen that often, when you buy and sell a property, but it tells you a lot about that person. I did want to talk about the future -- you said there's a social patch coming? Yeah, we're releasing another update next week focused on social. So friends lists, messaging, in-app messaging, gifting will be available there. And we'll start to add some very interesting viral growth mechanics or loops that haven't worked out yet on iPhone but have been done on other platforms. And this is the best way to defeat the issues that people are having on the App Store in terms of promotion -- it costs a lot of money to advertise to be on the top 100 charts. I think that people haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how to create all of these interesting viral channels. Imagine I gifted you with a new slot for your property, or gave you a little Godzilla art pack, or I visited your place and I pranked you, kind of destroying your town for an hour. These are the sort of things that I think can create really cool social loops, loops that haven't been done before, and the great thing is that people can send it around to their friends, and you don't have to advertise at all. Your cost of acquisition is a lot lower. Is the company working on anything else or is MyTown your focus right now? Right now, MyTown is definitely our number one focus, but as I mentioned before, we've started to understand now that we're there to create real experiences on top of this location graph, and now that we've spent a lot of time developing our location database, and as our guys are now veterans all at making iPhone apps, the time that it would take and the resources would be a fourth of the time we spent on MyTown, which already only took us two months to do. So we're very, very exciting about coming up with new ways to leverage what we've already built, and maybe a different theme or target market or something. So yes, we are working on a few other really exciting games, and that's an area we're very excited about as we grow. Cool. Because you came from Blizzard, I want to ask: They've been poking around the iPhone, but what do you think of their strategy for it? The relationship that we have with Blizzard is loose in a sense that they knew that we were going to be working on products that were going to be highly differentiated from a big MMO. Rob Pardo is one of our advisors, so he also has to really think about the implications of what we're doing in the real world. He's a great person, he has such a strong user experience design sense that we get a lot of really great feedback. I can't speak for the strategy of what Blizzard is doing in the next few years, but I think their products like WoW are so highly engaging right now that it makes sense to find ways to get their users or new users exposed to World of Warcraft. And it makes sense to me that building products on the iPhone or other platforms is a really great way to introduce it to more users or casual users. I know we've all heard of it, but there's still people out there in the iPhone/iPod touch base that might want to have a taste of something new branded with World of Warcraft. I can totally imagine them making a game based on the Murloc or something else. I think that could be really interesting to introduce it to a new audience. And one last thing, with April 3rd coming up very quickly, MyTown doesn't really seem like an app that would work well on the iPad, but are you all interested in iPad? We're extremely excited and we have been looking at the APIs a lot and kind of just trying to get as much information as we can to make a better deicision. Our strategy right now is to create some of the best experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch. That said, our product would probably work a bit better if there was a more refined GPS system on the iPad. Is it a challenge then, or are you fine with just being on the iPhone? We are currently investigating being on the iPad. We're all very bullish on that. That said, I think that if we were going to do something specific to the iPad, we would want to create an experience that's real world and that leverages something that's unique on the iPad itself. Great. Thanks!TUAWGDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - App Store - Booyah - MyTown - Foursquare

  • Ask TUAW: Clocks, screen guards, MacBook hard drive replacement, NFS automount, and more

    Filed under: Features, Troubleshooting, Ask TUAWWelcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about replacing a MacBook hard drive, refreshing a NFS mount, getting a simple clock on screen, improving iCal's note handling, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have. Felix asks I'm a iMac user in search for a USB hub and a FireWire hub with a Mac-like design. Sure there are several of them (especially USB hubs) that have a Macish look but then theres the thing about performance. Some years ago I bought a USB2.0 hub just to find that some of the ports feel much slower than others and that sometimes my iPod (now my iPhone) just don't get recharged at all when connected to the hub. So my question is, what do you think are the most Mac-like looking and well performing USB and FireWire hubs available? Here are a couple of combo hubs you might be interested in from Belkin and IOGEAR. The Belkin hub does not feature its own power supply (apparently it draws more current from the FireWire port), whereas the IOGEAR does have an independent power supply, so if you're concerned about power you might want to go in that direction. In general if you want particularly "Macish" hubs, I'd recommend searching for ones made for the Mac mini (there are quite a few out there). Derek asks I recently replaced the LCD in my aged Powerbook 15" 1.33 (A1095). When it arrived on my doorstep there was a plastic film applied on the face to protect it during shipping. I've always had a problem with the LCD on this Powerbook (and my old G3 Wallstreet, for that matter) touching the keyboard when the lid is shut, thusly leaving permanent marks on the face of the display. So, I left the film on the replacement LCD, and it has worked very well to protect the new screen. However, it's starting to peel and bubble on one edge and I'd like to replace it. Does anyone make screen protectors such as the variety of stick-on protectors for iPod Touch/iPhones in sizes for laptop screens? I have considered hitting the local megamart and just getting several to piece together, but I think the seams would be more annoying than the bubbling. There are several different film screen protectors available, such as this Crystal Screen Guard at Amazon. The biggest problem is finding one that will exactly fit your PowerBook, since most everything sold today is made for the MacBook Pro line. I think that the PowerBook actually had a 15.2" screen, rather than the 15.4" screen on the MacBook Pro. So I'm guessing you'd have to trim down a MacBook Pro Screen Guard to fit your PowerBook. SMartenup asks I would like to find a way to save all of my open programs / documents, and then restore to that same set of programs & documents. Is there any way to do this? OS X does have a feature called Safe Sleep, which is much like the hibernation features on other operating systems. When invoked it saves the state of your Mac to the hard drive and then actually shuts the computer off. When you restart the machine, it will be restored to the state that was saved. There's a handy Preference Pane app called SmartSleep that will allow you to invoke Safe Sleep automatically. I get the sense, however, that what you want is something analogous to session saving a web browser's tabs, but for all your open documents. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything that does quite what you want. ooglek asks I have a 250GB SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS. I've had it for about 3 years, and it works well enough. Now on Snow Leopard both my 2008 Mac Pro and my 2006 Macbook Pro can access the NAS via NFS Automount setup in the Disk Utility (new for Snow Leopard). My problem is that when I take my laptop out of my home office, when I come back, I have no way to "refresh" or reconnect to the NFS mount. I'm not sure if it is hung (used to have to kill nfsd in Leopard), awaiting some user action or just not set up right. I don't have much experience with NFS mounts, but if I'm understanding the problem correctly you need to flush the cache with the sudo automount -vc command. That should cause it to essentially "refresh." Check out this thread over at Apple Discussions. vulgo asks I am a long time Mac user and as far as I can think back I was using Microsofts Entourage as a calendar and before that Outlook for Mac. Since I got my iPhone 2 years ago I always wanted to migrate to iCal to use that as my main calendar application because of synching reasons. Unfortunately iCal is in my opinion a bad solution. It sure does allow notes in the notes field but there is no way to work properly with lots of text in the notes field like you can easily do in Entourage. You cannot just drag the corner of the window and make it bigger to get a good overview about what you write or copy/paste there. The column is and stays just too small. Do you have any idea for a good solution to make iCal fulfill the task of a proper note field without moving to another software? I know you asked for a solution that involves iCal, but I don't really think there is one. I completely agree with you that the iCal notes interface is terrible, but I'm not aware of any way to make it work better. However, if you are willing to drop a little coin, you should check out BusyCal ($49), which offers iCal / MobileMe / iPhone compatibility and superior better features, including a much more robust notes field (especially in List View). David asks I desperately need a bigger drive for my MacBook. Everyone says it's pretty easy to replace, I just need to buy a 2.5" SATA drive. But I'm so afraid of buying the wrong drive that I can't make a purchase. Here's why: Some folks have strongly recommend not using a drive that is larger than 250GB, and/or faster then SATA 150, 5400RPM. And most of the drives available out there are at least 320GB and often SATA 300 and 7200RPM. Am I being too conservative in my desire to stick to the recommended guidelines? Should I just stop worrying and buy a bigger/faster drive? If I understand the articles, I could/should be safe with a bigger drive as long as I don't use more than 250GB of the drive? I'm nervous enough about replacing my drive so any advice you have would be much appreciated. Frankly, I don't really understand why anybody would tell you that you have to be limited to 250GB. I am aware of no reason whatsoever that you would need to limit yourself to a drive that small. You should be able to install any 2.5" SATA drive you like, including SATA 2 (SATA 300) / 7200 RPM drives. One thing to consider is that faster 7200 RPM drives will be more power hungry, thus reducing your battery life and increasing heat (your MacBook likely shipped with a 4200 RPM drive, so a 5400 RPM drive might be a good compromise). If you're particularly paranoid you could get a Mac-specific upgrade kit, like those from MCE Tech or OWC, but you don't really need to do that. One nice thing about some of these kits is that they include an external enclosure allowing you to continue to use the old drive as an external hard drive. No matter which drive you end up with, it's a good idea to get an external enclosure, or at least a USB to SATA adapter (like this one). That way, as soon as you get it you can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! ($27.95) to clone your existing drive to the new drive. Then install the new drive into the computer and you should be able to start right back up where you left off without reinstalling anything. Good luck! Brent asks I am running dual monitors with my macbook and I don't need a menu bar on both, but I would like a clock running on the second screen. What is the best thing I could use? There are a gajillion little clock apps available for OS X. Check out this search at MacUpdate for a sense of what's out there. You'll probably have to churn through a few of them until you find one that fits your style. If you want a place to start, check out SimpleFloatingClock. David asks For the upcoming iPad my wife and I are planning on sharing one. Our question is about the email. Is there a way to switch users so to our email is not available to the other. I don't see any way of doing that on the iphone, but we don't share them. Obviously we don't know for sure yet, but everything so far indicates that the iPad will function more or less like the iPhone. That being the case, just as the iPhone doesn't support multiple users, I consider it extremely unlikely that the iPad will either.TUAWAsk TUAW: Clocks, screen guards, MacBook hard drive replacement, NFS automount, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - Mac OS X - Mac mini - MacbookPro - IPhone

  • iPad 101: iPad AppleCare pros & cons

    Filed under: Apple, iPadConsidering AppleCare for your iPad? I know that I am. For $99, AppleCare extends your iPad warranty coverage to two years from the date of purchase. Although AppleCare tends to be expensive, for certain purchases it can really save you, especially for devices which run a higher risk of component failure over a lifetime of hard use -- such as laptops and other mobile tech. Many Apple aficionados tend to avoid buying AppleCare for robust devices like the Mac mini series. Those units tend either to die right away or last forever. They are highly self-serviceable for anyone who has a reasonable degree of comfort with a screwdriver. The iPad and the iPhone, on the other hand, can feel like accidents waiting to happen. Without a simple avenue for owner-repair, they are more of a black box purchase. And their components can and do die much more unexpectedly. In my history of purchasing iPhones and iPod touches, I have personally encountered video driver death and massive touchscreen failure. To be fair, both of these incidents happened within a month or so of purchase, so keep that in mind as well. For many devices, component failures tend to show themselves fairly soon. With a standard iPad purchase, you are covered for 90 days of phone support and a 1 year hardware warranty without any need for a further AppleCare payment, according to the Apple representative I talked to this morning. What's more, if you want to wait, you can. Purchasing AppleCare extends standard iPad coverage to 2 years each of phone support and hardware warranty. You can buy AppleCare up until the last day of your 1 year complimentary coverage, so there's not really a rush unless you need phone support during that time. I know I'm completely out in speculation territory, but I kind of think that the component failure rate for these devices tends to be a bit higher than for desktop systems. I base this on several years of hanging around with other iPhone and iPod touch users and listening to their stories rather than on any consistent study. So I tend to err on the "I know I'm kind of getting ripped off buying this extended warranty from AppleCare but that's okay for my piece of mind" side. AppleCare may be a big additional price to grapple with when you're already coughing up $499 or more for the device, but consider that this object is going to bounce around with you most of the places you go, and take abuse accordingly. TUAW colleague Mike Rose suggests AppleCare on any mobile device where paying the repair or replacement cost out of your own pocket would be more painful than you'd like. Apple tends to be one of the least obnoxious companies around when it comes to actually following-through on their extended warranties. Anyone who has visited a genius bar with a sick Apple product will recognize that having a diagnostic and repair service in-store helps create an atmosphere of getting devices fixed without an argument. And that's a very nice thing, indeed. Admittedly, Apple has been a little rotten about it's various moisture sensors (especially the ones near the microphone for the iPhone -- where you naturally blow hot moist air while talking) but you can always insist that repair persons open devices to check the interior moisture sensors as well. Another thing about AppleCare is that it does make your early-adopter iPad a lot more re-sellable via eBay. As TUAW commenters have pointed out, being able to state that your device has an extended warranty in place can help it stand out among other auctions and offer extra end-purchaser confidence. So, bottom line? You will have a year or so to decide about AppleCare after purchasing your new iPad, but sometimes it's simply nice to know that a problem will be taken care of.TUAWiPad 101: iPad AppleCare pros & cons originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Apple - Unofficial Apple Weblog - IPod Touch - IPod Classic

  • Quizarium the multiplayer trivia app is nearly ready for prime-time

    Filed under: Gaming, Software, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review Quizarium [free], a multiplayer iPhone/iPod touch trivia game, arrived in the App Store today. I got a chance to look at a pre-release copy and I found some problems with the interface and flow of the game. Some problems will be solved either upon release, since an update is being approved right now, or within a few days after release. According to Anthony Almanza, one of the developers at Lithuanian software development firm On5, Apple has gotten much quicker with approving updates. I spoke with Anthony at length about the app and offered a number of suggestions that will be implemented quite soon. Quizarium uses the Plus+ social play network which allows many players to compete against each other by answering trivia questions in a number of set category rooms, or in new rooms that can be created by users. A server problem was found yesterday (and a revision quickly submitted), so room creation may or may not be activated upon release. I really didn't get a great feel for how a multiplayer game would look since, at most, I played against two people from On5, but I can imagine that the action will be pretty intense. To play, you flick the screen up to view the entire list of category rooms, and when you tap on a room, the game starts. You are shown with a trivia question for 60 seconds, or until someone gives a correct answer. You can see the minute tick down by watching a progress bar at the top of the screen. Hints are given as time passes, showing you how many letters are in the answer and, as time is running out, you'll see the first few letters of the answer appearing. If you are the first with the correct answer, you gain points and receive awards courtesy of the Plus+ network. Tapping the Plus+ button on the main screen shows you your awards and takes you to the leaderboard where you'll see just how well you've done. Weekly leaderboards will be updated every Monday night. There is also an overall Plus+ network leaderboard. Quizarium [free], a multiplayer iPhone/iPod touch trivia game, arrived in the App Store today. I got a chance to look at a pre-release copy and I found some problems with the interface and flow of the game. Some problems will be solved either upon release, since an update is being approved right now, or within a few days after release. According to Anthony Almanza, one of the developers at Lithuanian software development firm On5, Apple has gotten much quicker with approving updates. I spoke with Anthony at length about the app and offered a number of suggestions that will be implemented quite soon. Quizarium uses the Plus+ social play network which allows many players to compete against each other by answering trivia questions in a number of set category rooms, or in new rooms that can be created by users. A server problem was found yesterday (and a revision quickly submitted), so room creation may or may not be activated upon release. I really didn't get a great feel for how a multiplayer game would look since, at most, I played against two people from On5, but I can imagine that the action will be pretty intense. To play, you flick the screen up to view the entire list of category rooms, and when you tap on a room, the game starts. You are shown with a trivia question for 60 seconds, or until someone gives a correct answer. You can see the minute tick down by watching a progress bar at the top of the screen. Hints are given as time passes, showing you how many letters are in the answer and, as time is running out, you'll see the first few letters of the answer appearing. If you are the first with the correct answer, you gain points and receive awards courtesy of the Plus+ network. Tapping the Plus+ button on the main screen shows you your awards and takes you to the leaderboard where you'll see just how well you've done. Weekly leaderboards will be updated every Monday night. There is also an overall Plus+ network leaderboard.TUAWQuizarium the multiplayer trivia app is nearly ready for prime-time originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments App Store - iPhone - Apple - IPod Touch - Trivia

  • Enhance readability of sites with very small text on the iPhone

    Sometimes I visit a website on my iPod Touch that is almost unreadable due to the expected size of a screen on a desktop computer. Even when zoomed in, some sites have the text continue off screen, meaning I'd have to scroll left and right to read a whole line of text. I have MobileMe and sync my bookmarks between computers and my iPod Touch. And one day I happened across just such a too-small site. Frustrated, I decided to just try my Readability bookmarklet, and was happy to see it worked! You'll need either an iPhone or iPod Touch and a computer that you sync your device to via USB or MobileMe. From a computer, navigate to Readability and set your desired options. I like Inverse, Extra Large text, and Extra Narrow margins, but pick what you like. Drag your bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, as the site instructs. (You can move it to your Bookmarks menu, anywhere, or into the sidebar of Safari's Bookmark ...

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