AroundMe updates, improves

Filed under: Software, Internet ToolsAroundMe [App Store link] has always been a must have app for my iPhone. Now it has been updated to make it even better. Since it's free, having it on your phone is a no-brainer.In this latest edition you can chose a category of places, e.g., restaurants, hospitals, supermarkets and so on. You then get the usual list of destinations closest to you, along with a web site if one exists, and a phone number.If you click on the map button, you'll get a split...

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50 Killer Mac Apps For Under $50

� �Who doesn't need more for less? We present 50 Mac|Life-approved applications--many free, all under $50--that'll guarantee you get the most from your Mac without traumatizing your wallet.�The Internet is full of noise--countless different applications for every occasion, with reviews everywhere that love and hate them at the same time. While that’s hardly news, it’s still a hassle that isn’t going away. Say you picked up a spiffy new MacBook Pro, and it’s time to kit it out with the leanest, meanest software. After all, Macs have that rich history of garage-roots development, of a few folks in a basement brewing up quality software that smokes the big-name stuff. So you’ve got a feeling there’s great, affordable software just waiting for you to find it--and you’re right. But how do you sift through the zillion calendar apps and jillion media players to find the gems worthy of your hard drive space? And more importantly, your time and money?We’re here to help with a compendium of essential software. It didn’t come easily--we debated, argued, haggled, and even pleaded to secure a prized position on this list for our favorite, most useful applications. But by limiting the software we’re highlighting to 50, we’ve guaranteed you the best of the best--no Internet spew here. And by capping the cost of the software we’ve selected at $50, we’ve made sure you can reasonably buy what you need. You may love your Mac already, but you’re not gonna believe how much it can do once you load up even a few of these choice applications.� �Entertainment�Sure, iPods and iTunes make music and movies easier to enjoy, but they're not without headaches of their own. That's where these awesome apps come in. They take the pain out of kicking back with your favorite flicks and tunes.�Simplify Media�Share & stream your iTunes library over the Internet.The iPod has made several portable music formats obsolete, and we sure don’t miss schlepping around fragile cassette tapes or heavy wallets full of CDs. But even the mighty iPod has its limits--namely capacity. That’s where Simplify Media (free, Simplify Media, simplifymedia.com) comes in handy. It guarantees that the size of your music library doesn’t matter by letting you stream music between computers via the Internet. Yup, this app will play your entire library on any computer (as long as the one that has your library is powered up and online).Stream your tunes from home or the next cube.Once installed, a simple login fires up your music. Simplify Media works with iTunes just like the built-in LAN sharing does, and the remote libraries appear under Shared, alongside any local shared libraries. Even better, you can add up to 30 friends’ shared libraries, and an iPhone app ($5.99) lets you pipe your music to your iPhone or iPod touch.��SuperSync�SuperSync keeps multiple iTunes collections in sync.�Speaking of iTunes libraries--streaming is great, but what if you want to sync libraries across multiple Macs? SuperSync ($22, SuperSync, supersync.com) makes it so. Sure, Apple introduced limited music-transfer capabilities with Home Sharing in iTunes 9, but that feature requires computers to be on the same local network. SuperSync one-ups iTunes by syncing iTunes libraries over the Internet. It’s perfect for anyone who uses multiple Macs, and SuperSync also has a bunch of other tricked-out features. In deference to the record companies, Apple makes transferring music from an iPod to a computer unnecessarily difficult. SuperSync handles the task with ease, making it a bacon-saver when the hard drive in your Mac kicks the bucket. SuperSync will even allow you to sync libraries cross-platform.SuperSync's color-coded interface helps you synchronize your iTunes tracks across multiple Macs.��VLC Media Player�Never worry about video file types again. If most of your Mac video-watching happens in the form of DVDs or QuickTime movies, you probably don’t think too much about player software. But move beyond the most basic video types, and you’re asking for trouble. With the myriad formats, containers, and encoding parameters available, the simple act of playing back a cat video can become incredibly frustrating. VLC Media Player (free, VideoLAN, www.videolan.org) is like a Swiss Army knife for digital media. It’s open source and cross-platform, and the app will play back practically any audio or video file you throw at it. VLC also handles file conversions with ease, so you can use it to convert audio and video for use online or on portable devices.It plays, it converts, it makes toast (okay, maybe not that last one.)��RipIt�Backup & convert DVDs with RipIt.There are plenty of legit reasons to rip a DVD. Backup copies of kids’ movies for the minivan, watching Glee on your iPod touch while you’re on the bus, or even just saving battery power on your laptop (playing back a file from a hard drive is much more efficient than spinning a DVD).RipIt's simple interface makes ripping DVDs seamless and easy.Once the domain of übernerds, DVD ripping is a one-click affair thanks to RipIt ($19.95, The Little App Factory, ripitapp.com). And since it makes full rips, all of the menus, bonus features, and subtitles remain intact. You can play back the resulting files with DVD Player on your Mac or use a freeware tool like Handbrake to convert your rips into iPod-friendly formats. ��Delicious Library�We love the iTunes Store, but we still end up accumulating books, DVDs, console games, and, yes, even CDs. Delicious Library ($40, Delicious Monster Software, www.delicious-monster.com) helps catalog your collections by--get this--taking snaps of UPCs via your webcam and then automatically organizing your meatspace content onto virtual shelves for easy sorting and browsing. You can track loans to friends, post items for sale on Amazon, and publish Web catalogs formatted for your iPhone. That way, you can avoid buying another copy of John Hodgman’s More Information Than You Require. ��Connect360�We’re Apple-faithful, but that doesn’t stop us from engaging in a little Modern Warfare 2 on our Xbox 360. And since the 360 is much more than a simple gaming machine, we also use it to stream iTunes tracks to our entertainment center and view pictures from our iPhoto library on our HDTV--with the help of Connect360 ($20, Nullriver Inc, www.nullriver.com), that is. It works over wired or wireless networks, and it even streams H.264 video straight from our MacBook. Sweet! ��Peel�Pack rats, beware: Peel ($14.95, Hjalti Jakobsson, www.getpeel.com) can get really overwhelming, really fast. But if you’re an avid follower of music blogs, Peel can automagically grab new tracks as they’re posted. So forget all that pesky right-clicking and manually adding to iTunes. Just feed Peel a list of your favorite music blogs, and then kick back as tons of new, free tunes get downloaded straight to your Mac. You may never have to buy (or pirate) music again. ��CoverScout�Cover Flow is one of those features that looks great in a demo but doesn’t quite translate at home. iTunes can attempt to find the album art that makes Cover Flow actually useful, but it’s limited in scope and can’t make fuzzy matches. CoverScout ($39.95, equinox USA, www.equinux.com) scours the Internet to find your missing album art and presents you with multiple options to let you choose the best images. Don’t Cover Flow without it. ��TuneUp�For all of those untitled and mistitled tracks in your music library, there’s TuneUp ($19.95/one year, $29.95/lifetime; TuneUp Media; www.tuneupmedia.com). Like CoverScout, TuneUp can find and download missing album art, but its best trick is cleaning up your ID3 tags--the artist, title, and album info displayed in iTunes. A quick search is all it takes to clear up all those Track 1s and Unknown Artists in your library. It sure beats cleaning up metadata by hand.�Next Page: Productivity Apps >> �Productivity�Takin' care of business, every day. Takin' care of business, every way. Workin' on a Mac, it's all right. This productivity software is workin' overtime.�WriteRoom�Blocks distractions so you can write in peace.Proving the tired adage that “less is more,” WriteRoom ($24.95, Hog Bay Software, www.hogbaysoftware.com) is a light text editor with a full-screen mode. Start a new document, and everything else fades away--your Dock, your menubar, and other windows on your Desktop. You’re left with a black screen and friendly green text for a clutter- and distraction-free experience. The Escape key toggles between full-screen mode and windowed mode, which resembles TextEdit with a live word count.WriteRoom can save your work as plain text, rich text, or Microsoft Word’s .doc format. The preferences offer tons of customization: auto-save, character counts, the appearance of text in full-screen mode, and more. But WriteRoom’s real magic is how it gets out of your way and lets you focus on what you’re doing.��BusyCal�One calendar application to rule them all.BusyCal ($40, BusyMac, www.busymac.com) is iCal on steroids. It dances circles around iCal, chanting, “Everything you can do, I can do better.” And it’s right. Sharing is a snap: You can set up two-way syncing with your Google Calendar or with other BusyCal calendars on your local network or the wide-open Internet. But even aside from sharing, BusyCal offers tons of calendaring bells and whistles: customizable views, sticky notes, weather forecasts, moon phases, graphical icons, a to-do list, notes, tags, and much more. And since it uses the Sync Services built into Mac OS X, your BusyCal calendars can sync with MobileMe and your iPhone. You can even switch back to iCal anytime without losing any of the events or to-dos you entered in BusyCal.So what if iCal is free? BusyCal is better.��Things�Flexible to-do list syncs with iCal and the iPhone. For busy people like us, a good to-do list is beyond essential. But some that we’ve tried are so complicated that just managing your tasks becomes a chore in itself. So the light, easy-to-understand Things ($49.95, Cultured Code, www.culturedcode.com) is a breath of fresh air. You can go the full Getting Things Done route, adding contexts, priority levels, a tickler file, and so on. Or you can keep it simple, with one-off and repeating tasks and multistep projects. iCal syncing can get your deadlines on your calendar, and Things on the Mac can sync wirelessly with Things on the iPhone ($9.99 in the App Store). We’ve tried multiple task-managment systems, from Web-based ToodleDo to iPhone apps like ToDo to Mail’s built-in To-Do list to good old paper and pencil. Things is the cream of the crop for its good looks, quick entry, and easy syncing.Things uses tags to organize your projects in a million ways--or you can ignore the tags altogether and just work.��Express Scribe�Transcriptions made easy... well, easier.Transcribing an interview, lecture, or other recording is hard enough, just with the listening and typing. Toss in the extra arm movement as you frantically click from your text editor to your audio-playback application every time you want to pause the recording or rewind a few seconds, and your transcribing job just got tougher and more frustrating. Express Scribe (free, NCH Software, www.nch.com.au/scribe) lets you set system-wide hotkeys for audio playback so you can stay in your text editor, fully control the audio, and never need to reach for your mouse.Express Scribe can also slow down your audio without changing the pitch, supports video, works with lots of file types, loads recordings from analog or digital audio recorders, and more. Plus, it’s completely free. Wahoo!��NoteBook�The Mac is silly with note-taking applications (Evernote, Yojimbo, ShoveBox, MacJournal…shall we go on?), but Circus Ponies’ NoteBook ($49.95, Circus Ponies, www.circusponies.com) is a standout. If you subscribe to “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” NoteBook can be the place for notes, Web clippings, bookmarks, documents, voice memos, photos, and more. It struts its flexibility with ready-made templates for planning a trip, writing a research paper, collecting recipes, keeping a journal, and so on, while its fun spiral-notebook interface is a nice touch. ��TextExpander�A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters could produce Hamlet a lot faster if they knew how to use TextExpander ($29.95, SmileOnMyMac, www.smileonmymac.com). This wonder app installs as a System Preferences pane and lets you define shortcuts for your most commonly used words and phrases. Abbreviate long URLs, your email signoff, even your own photo or scanned signature file. Then as you type those shortcuts, they’re automagically expanded to what you really wanted to say. Brilliant. ��iFinance 3�Sure, Quicken is popular and Mint.com is free, but iFinance 3 ($29, Synium Software GmbH, www.synium.de) was built from the ground up just for Macs, and it shows. The intuitive interface makes it a cinch--dare we say a pleasure?--to track your accounts, keep an eye on your cash flow, set up a budget, and graph your expenses. It can also import from CSV and QIF files for easier data entry. Plus, a companion iPhone app lets you enter transactions on the go.��FlexTime�This charming timer app ($18.95, Red Sweater Software, www.red-sweater.com) lets you set up multistep routines that run once or repeat ad nauseam. Each step can be marked by a sound, spoken text, or even running a script. Once your routine is perfect, you can export the audio to iTunes--great for following a recipe’s carefully timed steps or taking your favorite yoga routines on the road. ��DEVONthink Personal�Another great catch-all for storing, sorting, organizing, and searching information, DEVONthink ($49.95, DEVONtechnologies, www.devon-technologies.com) can take almost anything you can throw at it. Documents, PDFs, photos, multimedia files, bookmarks, webpages, iChat logs--all of those can be imported, sorted, and read right in DEVONthink. Searching is easy, and you can cobble together a brand-new document from items in your DEVONthink database and export it to your favorite text editor for printing or as HTML for posting. �Next Page: Internet Apps >> �Internet�It's a wild place, that Interweb, so there's nothing like a few primo apps to tame everything from blogging to FTPs to Twitter and Flash banners.�Transmit�Traveling the two-lane FTP highway.FTP has been around forever. Social networking and cloud computing may come and go, but FTP is in it for the long hall. Fortunately, there are a wealth of great FTP clients for the Mac, and the best of those is Transmit ($29.95, Panic, www.panic.com/transmit). The client utilizes a split directory window that shows the path on your computer and the path on the FTP site. With in-app search and the ability to sync folders on your Mac and on the FTP site, Transmit helps alleviate the search and drag-and-drop blues of other clients. The sync feature is especially helpful for Web developers and designers. You can even create desktop droplets for quick uploads to heavily used sites.Two-window FTP FTW.��Mac-Journal�Web-based apps suck.Blogging about your life is a faux pas. Blogging about anything else that people actually care about is the proper way of utilizing of the blogging systems available out there. The ongoing problem is that most blogging platforms are bit of a pain to use because they’re Web-based. Plus, if you’re somewhere without Internet access, you can’t start laying out your blog posts for your site. MacJournal ($39.95, Mariner Software, www.marinersoftware.com) solves that problem with an easy-to-use multiplatform blogging client. Lay out your articles offline with images, video, and audio, then save them for later posting. The app includes the ability to both write in full-screen mode so you won’t be interrupted by your Twitter friends, and to record an audio podcast in the client.Create blog posts quickly and without browser issues.��Tweetie�Multi-account Twitter action.After wowing the world with its iPhone Twitter app, atebits decided to release a desktop version of Tweetie ($19.95, atebits, www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/). The app can handle multiple Twitter accounts, compose tweets in a separate window, allow you to change the account you’re sending a tweet from on the fly, and let you drag and drop pics and videos right into the Compose window. Don’t have the perfect media on your Mac for a tweet? Record a video or shoot a pic from your iSight camera directly in Tweetie. And since Twitter conversations can be difficult to follow, Tweetie displays the conversation you’re having in a timeline if you just double-click one of the pertinent tweets. The Tweetie bookmarklet in Safari also allows you to share links quickly from your browser.Have an actual conversation on Twitter with Tweetie.��Dropbox�Stop, drop, and roll on home.Transferring large files can be a huge pain. Where the hell did you leave that thumb drive? External hard drives leave an unsightly bulge in your pocket, and all those cables are always getting tangled in your shoes. That’s a safety hazard, son. Dropbox (2GB storage for free, 50GB for $9.99/month; Dropbox; www.dropbox.com) is a cloud-based storage drive that you can access from any computer or iPhone. Just pop files into the Dropbox folder on your Mac, and it automatically syncs up with the online disk (which you can view on Dropbox’s website) and with any other machines you have the application installed on. You can even share folders and files with other Dropbox users. If the free 2GB box doesn’t cut it, you can upgrade to 50GB for $10 a month.Access your files from anywhere in the universe (with an Internet connection).��LogMeIn�If you need to remotely access a Mac or (gasp) a PC with Windows on it, LogMeIn (free, LogMeIn, logmein.com) allows you to peer into your remote computer from anywhere. You can launch apps, move files, and adjust your preferences via a Web-based interface, as if you were sitting at that computer. For $29.99, you can get your iPhone in on the action too. ��TweetDeck�If you’re a Twitter power user, TweetDeck (free, TweetDeck, www.tweetdeck.com) should be in your arsenal of Twitter apps. The interface is a series of columns that displays info like your friends’ feeds, saved searches, mentions, direct mentions, and Facebook updates. You can also keep up with trending topics with just a quick glance. If there’s something you need to track on Twitter, TweetDeck can make a column for it. ��Vuze�Allegedly, BitTorrent steals medication from senior citizens, but isn’t it time to forget about all the evil things it supposedly does? Instead, focus on the greatness of Vuze (free, Vuze, www.vuze.com) and its ability to download legally available video files. After you’ve done the downloading, Vuze can convert your files for use on the iPhone, Apple TV, iPod, Xbox 360, TiVo, and PlayStation 3. It’ll even stream videos to your set-top boxes. Nice! ��BannerZest�Creating Flash banners is difficult, especially when you don’t know or own Flash. BannerZest ($49, Aquafadas, www.aquafadas.com) takes the pain out the process and gives you a simple way to create quick, beautiful Flash banners. From a standard gallery to an interactive experience, BannerZest comes with a collection of themes for different uses, and it uploads your banners to your FTP or MobileMe disk. ��FileChute�Sending large files over email can result in the dreaded bounced email. FileChute ($17.95, Yellow Mug Software, www.yellowmug.com) works with your MobileMe-, FTP-, or WebDAV-accessible Web server. Drop your file into the app, and it uploads it to your online server of choice and then creates a URL to add to your email. If you drop more than one file, you get an archive uploaded to your server. Adios, bounced emails! �Next Page: Content Creation Apps >>�Content Creation�Sure, Adobe's stuff is the gold standard, but you don't want to have to count on a good night at the poker table to pay for it, right? Cue these killer applications, which let you effectively draw, edit photos, render, animate, and even scratch for a very fair price.�djay 3�Budgeted beats to grow on.You want to spin phat beats, but your slim bank keeps you from purchasing the high-end DJ equipment and software. That’s okay, young DJ-in-training, djay 3 ($49.95, algoriddim, www.djay-software.com) gives you everything you need to rock the house without losing your shirt. This surprisingly robust audio-mixing software integrates with your iTunes library and puts all the usual mixing and scratching right on your desktop. The application supports multitouch trackpad scratching and fading between tracks, so it’s especially perfect for the last few generations of MacBooks. And as you grow as a DJ, the application will grow with you thanks to its support for MIDI controllers. That means when you get the cash for those fancy digital mixers and turntables, djay will be right there with you.With your iTunes catalog at your fingertips, you'll find some pretty interesting mashups.��Audacity�Free audio editor extraordinaire.Audio editing seems simple at first. Then suddenly, you’re knee-deep in samples, frequencies, and bitrates. Sound editing really is part science, part black magic, so we’re thankful that Audacity (free, SourceForge, audacity.sourceforge.net) removes one of the biggest obstacles: choosing a quality application and figuring out how you’re going to pay for it. Audacity is both terrific and free, which is kinda hard to beat. An audio-recording and -editing application, it captures up to 16 channels at once from multiple sources, features noise removal, includes a metadata editor, and supplies unlimited undos. It can handle most of the audio files out there, and it’ll work with multiple files types in the same project. Audacity is also is cross-platform, so if you’re a recent Mac arrival, you may already know about its awesome power.So many features, you'll second-guess the price: free.��SketchUp�3D for you and me.Maya, 3D Studio Max, and SketchUp--all of these will let you create magical 3D worlds. Only one will do it for free, and you probably nailed it in one--it’s Google’s SketchUp software (free, Google, sketchup.google.com) that brings the world of 3D to the average Joe. You can create your own items or utilize Google’s 3D warehouse to find models created by other SketchUp users. With all those models at your fingertips, you can create floor plans for your home, build a level for your favorite FPS, or export the files to animation software or Photoshop. The application includes tutorials that’ll get you up and rendering in no time at all… so now nothing stands between you and virtual-world domination!Build a virtual man-cave for you and your stuff.��Ringer�Wham-bam ringtone, ma'am.We get tons of people asking us, “How do I make a ringtone for my iPhone?” Until recently, we told them to launch GarageBand, cut a ringtone, and export it to iTunes. Now we recommend Ringer ($15, Pixel Research Labs, pixelresearchlabs.com/ringer) as the quickest and easiest way to create ringtones from your favorite songs and audio files. Ringer has access to your entire iTunes library and works with MP3, AAC, MOV, MP4, M4V, and QuickTime files. Yeah, you can make a ringtone from a video file. A super-simple editor with waveform information makes it a snap to select the perfect section of audio, and you can fade in and out of the file and preview the ringtone before cropping it and sending it to iTunes for a sync with your iPhone. ��Acorn�Using an image editor doesn’t have to cost you hundreds of dollars. In fact, with Acorn ($49.95, Flying Meat, www.flyingmeat.com/acorn), you’ll get features like layers, AppleScript support, 64-bit support, drawing, and filters in a package that’s easy on the wallet. This easy-to-use software strips away most of the features most people don’t use and gives you a clean image-editing tool. ��Inkscape�While raster-based image editors like Photoshop are great at pushing pixels around, the vector-based drawing programs are where all the real action happens. The open-source application Inkscape (free, Inkscape, www.inkscape.org) is similar to powerhouses like Illustrator and CorelDraw, but with one important difference--it’s free. The app utilizes the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and includes a nice 3D drawing tool that allows you to set your vanishing points. ��Screenflick�With Snow Leopard, Apple introduced screen-capture into QuickTime, and it’s a nice feature if you’re looking to make a quick full-screen screencast. But if you want something that has features like fixed location output at up to 60 fps, Screenflick ($25, Araelium Group, www.araelium.com/screenflick) is an application you can get behind. It’ll highlight mouse clicks and keyboard events, adding a nifty visual cue into your screencasts that highlights what you’re doing. ��Bracketeer�While your eye can take in an amazing range of light to dark, your camera cannot. In order to help create images that include a tonal range that the average camera can’t capture, HDR applications and plug-ins have appeared on the market. These applications take a series of images that have been bracketed from dark to light and combine them to include the darkest darks to the lightest lights in one HDR image. Bracketeer ($29.95, Pangea Software, pangeasoft.net/pano/bracketeer) is a standalone application that does just that. Adjust the saturation, the contrast, and exposure from within the application. The application will even auto-align your images in case you got the hiccups while taking your pics. ��iStopMotion 2 Home�Most animators’ first animation was probably a stop-motion piece with Star Wars action figures. And whether those childhood lightsaber battles have you hoping to become the next Brad Bird, or you just love the look of stop-motion, iStopMotion ($49, Boinx Software, www.boinx.com/istopmotion/overview) is a quick, easy way to create simple stop-motion animations. Use your iSight or connect a camera to your Mac and start making your own Wallace and Gromit short. You’ll feel the Force, Lu… sorry. �Next Page: Utility Apps >>�Utilities�Slick utilities can add crucial functionality to your Mac, so we've selected the best options for everything from secure password managers and system-troubleshooting tools to an app that will let you play Windows games on your Mac... without Windows!�AppZapper�Completely trash applications.Unlike using Windoze, installing and uninstalling apps on a Mac is painless. Drag an application’s icon into your Applications folder, and you’re pretty much good to go. Deleting them is just as simple--just grab them and toss them into the Trash. But if you’ve ever dug around Library or System folders on your Mac, you’ll see that even after you Trash an app, many of them leave crumbs in different parts of your machine. For cleaning up those last little bits, AppZapper ($12.95, Austin Sarner and Brian Ball, www.appzapper.com) is a must-have utility that’s also great for troubleshooting problems. Wiping out all of an application’s preferences and other random files can often turn a troublesome app into a perfectly behaved one after a clean reinstall. Completely remove unwanted applications with a simple drag and drop.��Hazel�Clean and organize your Mac--automatically.Hazel ($21.95, NoodleSoft, www.noodlesoft.com) is kind of like Rosie the Robot for your Mac. Or it’s like OS X’s Folder Actions… if they were super-awesome, easy to use, and perfect for helping you keep your Mac’s folders and files organized. Hazel installs as a pane in System Preferences, monitoring locations that you choose, and performs actions on files based on your criteria. By creating simple rules, you can delegate repetitive and annoying file-management tasks to Hazel--for example, automatically add downloaded MP3s to iTunes or move DMGs to an archive on an external drive. Hazel can delve deep into metadata for complex actions like copying images into subfolders by ISO settings or reorganizing music files according to bitrate. You can even set up simple rules for auto-deleting items that have been in the Trash longer than a certain amount of time.��1Password�Keep all your confidential info on lockdown.You’ve heard it before--secure, unique passwords are the way to go. Yet there you are, still using the same password for everything from your maclife.com login to your Gmail and your bank account. Do we even have to tell you again why that’s a colossally bad idea? 1Password ($39.95, Agile Web Solutions, agilewebsolutions.com) can help clean up your online act, creating and managing complex passwords for every online account and then logging you in with a keyboard shortcut. The app can also be used to securely store personal information like credit card numbers and addresses for use in Web forms. And since all of your passwords are unique, you won’t have to worry about your banking info being compromised because of a data breach at that sketchy Russian website you used to download MP3s for a penny.1Password securely stores Web passwords, logins, software licenses, and other important information.��iPhone Explorer�Store & browse files on your iPhone.Breaking tradition with the iPods of yore, Apple doesn’t provide the ability to use your iPhone as a USB drive. iPhone Explorer (free, myPod Apps, www.mypodapps.com) is a simple app that will let you drag and drop files onto your phone for easy portability. The app itself is lightweight, and all it takes is a USB cable to view your iPhone’s folder structure. In addition to storing files, iPhone Explorer can be used to restore iTunes tracks from your iPod to a Mac or to rescue photographs from the depths of your iPhone’s memory. No jailbreaking is required, but more adventurous users with jailbroken phones can also recover contacts, messages, email, and other data. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s simple to use for the careful novice.��AppleJack�AppleJack (free, The Apotek, applejack.sourceforge.net) is one of those things you’ll install once and never think about again—if everything goes right. But if, god forbid, your Mac starts acting weird one day--or stops acting, period--it’ll be AppleJack to the rescue. It’s a command-line utility for diagnosing and repairing problems with your computer. Use the menu-driven system to repair permissions, validate preferences files, and remove screwy cache files.��SuperDuper�With Time Machine built into OS X, there’s really no good reason not to have an automatic backup. But Time Machine has its limits--a big one being the lack of bootable backups. SuperDuper ($27.95, Shirt Pocket, www.shirt-pocket.com) easily handles creating and updating bootable clones of your Mac’s hard drive so you’ll be ready to go when disaster strikes. Just plug in your clone, restart, and you’re up and running again. ��CrossOver Games�PC fanboys like to slag the Mac for having fewer games, but with CrossOver Games ($39.95, CodeWeavers, www.codeweavers.com), Mac users--and Linux fans too--can easily play games coded for Windows machines. The list of officially supported games is hundreds deep, and since CrossOver is based on Wine, you don’t even need a copy of Windows just to play Team Fortress 2. ��Clean My Mac�Hard drives are never big enough. Whether you have a MacBook Air or a Mac Pro, there always comes a point when there’s just not enough space on your internal disks. Clean My Mac ($29.95, MacPaw, macpaw.com) can help with that problem, scouring your Mac’s drive and tossing out all sorts of gunk you don’t need. Use it to toss unneeded language files, scrub extraneous code from universal binaries, and thoroughly clean up after deleted applications. ��rooSwitch�OS X’s Fast User Switching is handy for juggling multiple user accounts and their corresponding settings, but rooSwitch ($19, Rocket, rooswitch.com) allows you to maintain different settings on a per-application basis. Use it to manage Home and Work browser profiles, for example, or to have different profiles in your word processor for writing or editing documents. rooSwitch works with nearly any application, and it supports Automator and AppleScript for the ultimate in customizability. �Next Page: Wild Card Apps & Staff Picks >> �Wild Cards�Not all Mac apps fall into your neat little categories. These five break the mold and completely deserve a place on your hard drive.�Bricksmith�Virtual bricks you can't lose or step on? Sold!Legos are the official plastic brick of Mac|Life--we’ve had many discussions about the empires we built in our childhood bedrooms and how much we miss “playing Legos” as the soulless adults we are today. Bricksmith (free, donations accepted; Allen Smith; bricksmith.sourceforge.net) lets you recapture the magic in a highly geeky way. It’s a 3D Lego-model creator, offering drag-and-drop construction using thousands of parts in every color of Lego’s rainbow. Tutorials and the one finished model that’s included show you the ropes, and once you’re done with your virtual creation, you can export step-by-step instructions to build it for real. There’s even a mini figure generator where you can design and outfit a matching Lego man and insert him into your model. This software couldn’t be cooler.We can't believe an application this sweet is donationware.��CameraBag Desktop�Give your photos a new identity or some old-timey charm.We named the iPhone version of CameraBag one of our “101 Essential Apps for 2008,” and now the same fun can be had on your Mac, thanks to CameraBag Desktop ($19, Nevercenter, www.nevercenter.com). You drag in a digital image, and the app re-creates the look of a real film photograph--choose from Helga, Lolo, Mono, 1962, 1974, Instant, Magazine, Cinema, or Colorcross.For more variations, click the Reprocess button, and all the options will change their look and coloring just slightly. Or check the Multi-filter box and experiment with adding multiple filters to a single photo. Of course, you can export your altered images back to your hard drive without affecting the original file. The novelty of taking an everyday digital snapshot and making it look like a Polaroid image or washed-out 1974 photograph never gets old.Your digital photos, plus extra personality.��SousChef�Recipe database + shopping list + cooking assistant = one kitchen lifesaver.SousChef ($30, Acacia Tree Software, acaciatreesoftware.com) edges out MacGourmet ($49.95, www.marinersoftware.com) in the cooking-assistant category for its cloud database of recipes. Every time a SousChef user enters a recipe (133,000-plus at press time), it’s synced to the cloud, and you can search those and import them into your own library. You can also opt out of sharing your own recipes so Aunt Erma’s secret matzo ball soup stays in the family.Once a recipe’s in your library, you can edit, print, email, or blog it--or even add its ingredients to your grocery list. Click the Cook button for a full-screen view of the instructions that you can read from across the room, keeping your Mac out of the splatter zone. The Mac’s built-in speech recognition lets you advance the recipe’s steps with your own voice, or you can use the Apple Remote or a Keyspan Front Row Remote.��Temporis�Attractive, drag-and-drop timelines make it easy to "show, don't tell."Everyone loves a good infographic, or at least geeky types like us do. (And the geeks shall inherit the earth, don’cha know?) Temporis ($24.99, Bartas Technologies, www.bartastechnologies.com) makes it easy to create neat-looking timelines on your Mac, which you can then print or export as PDF or TIFF files that are ready for importing into your presentation software, word processor, or page-layout app.Adding new events is just a Command-click away, and it’s a snap to drag the start and end dates around on the timeline. The Arrange button will automatically stagger your timeline’s events into the most logical and easy-to-read order, and the Inspector lets you tweak fonts, colors, titles, labels, and your timeline’s span and intervals. You can even export the event data separately as an XML or CSV file.��Manga Studio Debut 4�Create your own comics and manga, and even manga-fy your photos.Manga Studio Debut 4 ($49.99, Smith Micro, my.smithmicro.com) is a must-have for fans of Japanese manga or anyone who wants to make their own comic books. Its ingenious Beginner’s Assistant groups together the tools by processes so you can intuitively wind your way through a typical manga workflow: sketch, panel, draw, tone, and add character dialogue.You can scan or draw your own art (graphics tablets supported, natch), play with the included samples, purchase manga content from www.contentparadise.com, or even import your own digital photos and watch Manga Studio make them all comicky-looking. Draw speed lines, add dialogue bubbles, move your pages around, and then print or export your finished comic book. Manga Studio Debut 4 is the younger brother to professional-level Manga Studio EX 4 ($299.99), but Debut has plenty of advanced features too, including layers, templates, customizable patterns, and more.�Mac|Life Staff Picks��Bass Tuner�I’m a beginning bass player--like, very beginning. So it’s a huge help that I don’t have to worry about staying in key. This terrific, simple, and streamlined little app ($9, www.rustykat.com) lets me quickly get in tune in front of my MacBook using the built-in mic. With that necessity sorted, I can fire up some tracks and tablature and focus on struggling to play along.��Multiwinia�Multiwinia ($19, www.ambrosiasw.com) offers crazy replayability. You devise a strategy for your stick-figure army, then watch them take on up to four other teams in six game types on 40 vector-graphic maps. Online multiplayer against Mac and Windows players works flawlessly and keeps me coming back for more. No Napoleon complex necessary. ��MetaX�If you need to tag a large amount of MP4 files, you could use iTunes’ painfully slow process. Instead I found MetaX (free, www.kerstetter.net) for all my tagging needs. The app will search the IMDB catalog and plug the information into the appropriate fields, then share that info via tagChimp. You can even scan DVD barcodes via iSight! ��Bean�For a word dork like me, word processors are a big deal. Bean (free, www.bean-osx.com) is a lightweight, open-source word processor. It’s missing many of the blinky lights and thingamajigs of the big boys, and that’s exactly the point. Fewer distractions equals better writing, faster. And for anyone who needs to hit a certain length, the live word count rocks. ��Fluid�I often find that Firefox has the tendency to crash when I have too many Web applications running. But Fluid (free, fluidapp.com) lets me create a site-specific browser out of my most essential websites, like Google Docs and Flickr. Simply plug in the URL, and voilà! You have a separate application running that won’t go down if something else does. ��Next Page: More Gaming Bang for 50 Bucks >> �More Bang for 50 Bucks�Some of the Mac's best games are also its cheapest? Sweet!Fifty bones won’t buy you even one new Xbox 360 or PS3 game, but on the Mac, you can snap up a stack of premier games for less than that. Or at least, that was our theory when we gave Florence, our new associate online editor, 50 whole American dollars and asked her to max out her Mac with the best gaming that short stack of money could buy. Man, did she score--check out the results of her diligent “research.”�Plants Vs. Zombies�$16, amazon.comLine up perilous peashooters and sun-soaking sunflowers against an abominable horde of zombies in Plants vs. Zombies.This animated tower-defense favorite pits you against a horde of zombies with one thing on their (decaying) minds--invading your home for brains! Pit your arsenal of zombie-fighting plants, each with their own spectacular organic weaponry, against 26 zombies and 50 levels of adventure. Fair warning: Once you start playing this excellent game, it’s incredibly hard to stop. �World of Goo�$10, amazon.comStack up adorable globs of goo to build structures and watch them band together as you help transport them across various levels.World of Goo is another addictive and totally adorable puzzle game. Created around the idea that circular goo balls make adequate building materials (naturally), the game has you solving puzzles by dragging and dropping goo to create all kinds of crazy structures that enable you to transport your goo across the level. The oh-so-cute googly-eyed blobs pack the game with charm, and you can also connect online and play against other Goo architects around the world.�Braid�$15, playgreenhouse.comBraid's aesthetically appealing backdrop and profound storyline will keep you engrossed until the very end.Some games defy description, and Braid might be easy to pass over because it appears to be just a mix of platforming and time control set against a gorgeous backdrop. But it subverts and transcends those two well-worn clichés with brilliant design and an absorbing story that packs a twist that you’ll never see coming. Watch the YouTube videos if you need help solving its puzzles, but just make sure you see this masterpiece through to the end.�Balcassa�$8, openplanetsoftware.comBalcassa has a mountain of exciting brainteasers for the puzzle fiend.Balcassa feeds off those nightmares you still have about attempting to master that archaic, rainbow-colored Rubik’s cube. And while most of you probably never cracked the damn thing (we didn’t!), Balcassa gives you a second chance. The objective of the game is to slide the cubes into a specific sequence, pattern, or orientation. It may sound like a simple task, but much like fiddling with a Rubik’s cube, figuring it all out is the real reward.�Freeware Fun�If you’re interested in first-person shooters and MMORPGs, Quake Live and Second Life can give you hours of entertainment at our favorite price: $0.00. Both games perform smoothly on Mac OS 10.4 or later. Quake Live doesn’t require beefy hardware because it runs through your Web browser. But that doesn’t stop it from delivering all the fast-paced action of the classic first-person shooter. Second Life, while not as packed with storyline as World of Warcraft, offers a similar massively multiplayer world where you can meet people, customize your character’s look, and participate in a virtual world that’s just like our own. You don’t even have to watch the clock to make sure you’re on time for a player-versus-player raid!You don't need fancy computer hardware to frag your way through this beloved shooter.�Vital Statistics on Our 50 Killer Apps�Total cost if you bought all 50 apps: $1219.83Number of apps that are free: 13Apps that have an iPhone counterpart: 15Whaddaya waiting for? (apps that have a free demo): 39Number of countries these apps were born in: 7Apps named "iSomething": shockingly... just 3!Apps that require Snow Leopard: 1Apps that require Leopard: 14Apps that promise "iLife integration!": 9�
Apple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW

Filed under: Other Events11:12 SYNCS exactly like iPhone or iPod touch.Sync everything: media, calendars, apps, etc. Connect via usb sync 11:11 Great pricing! Want! Eng: 11:11AM And the iWork demo is done. "So what are we going to charge for applications like this? We're gong to charge just $9.99 each." He means $10 for Pages, $10 for Keynote... etc. 11:11: GIZ Jason Chen: What is Apple going to charge for each of the iWork apps? $9.99 each, so $30 if you want all. 11:10: Eng: 11:10AM It looks as though these new dropdowns menus are a major part of the iPad OS. Will be interesting to see how this translates to the iPhone and iPod touch. Is there going to be room? Or will they be left out entirely? 11:10 All this entry does make us ask the question, are you expected to type only on this device, or is there some sort of external keyboard option from Apple? Because if I could take iWork with me on the road, I might not want to type that entire Pages document by touchscreen. (via Macworld) 11:10: GIZ Jason Chen: So far we've covered ebooks and newspapers (TV and movies were already there from the iPhone), but we haven't covered magazines yet. I wonder what that's going to be like. gdgt: Showing the spreadsheet-centric soft keyboard. Auto-fields and sums showing as inferred. Pretty neat for a spreadsheet. Then again, it's still a spreadsheet. 11:10 Manipulating charts is a dream. 11:09: "I could see this being used as a cash register like the new card swipe systems at the Apple Store now. Be really easy to manage inventory too." -- Megan 11:08: Data entry keyboard. This is one of the amazing thing about touch entry keyboards. Showing that there are custom keyboards, all meant to help context entry. Over 250 options built in. Help built in. Mike Jones: "Nice new 10 key keyboard." 11:07: Now numbers demo. Let's do some typical spreadsheet tasks. Showing how you can manipulate tables. But what about data entry? 11:07: Mike Jones: "there's an awful lot of space around the screen that is making me wonder if they've added touch sensitivity to the edges" Sang: "one thing i notice about this, as opposed to the courier, is the lack of "floating" palettes. iPad's paletttes are more on-demand" 11:07: Demoing the page navigator. And showing the automated text wrap features. Yes. THIS: 11:06AM New tool: Page Navigator. It's a bit like the magnification loop and lets you jump through pages. Automatic image outlines -- just drag your image and text reformats. 11:06: Sande: "Spaces is *made" for the iPad". Mel: "I think this may kill netbooks if the price is right." Mike Jones: "I'm thinking if they do multitasking they will do it immediately after iWork" 11:05: Big applause after iWork presentation. Big. GIZ Jason Chen: I suppose the iPad would be a pretty good presentation device, letting you see the screens on your device and controlling it while it's being projected onto a wall through the 30-pin dock connector. (Video out is still unconfirmed, this is just my guess.) 11:04 "What about multitasking?" -- Megan 11:04: Eng: 11:03AM We'll say this -- iWork looks really robust. Far more than an iPhone app. Lots of options, lots of ways to work with your data. 11:03: "Look! I just done a mask, an advanced technique and it's easy". Now demoing how to do animations. Easy built-in animations, scaling, translation, etc. These are transitions between slides right now. Very easy, "with just my finger!!" 11:02: Showing access to photo albums, etc. How easy it is to drag things around whereever you want. Demoing resizing handles. Want to match sizes? tap the other one while resizing. Nice! 11:01: How do you do this without keyboard or mouse? Demonstrating gestures. Sang:"how awesome would it be if steve's been doing the presentation the whole time using iPad's keynote" 11:00 Amazing software. Want to be the first to show you. Let's show keynote. It runs in landscape orientation, because that's the standard for slides.And you first see your slide library. Gorgeous templates. What you'd expect. 11:00 Completely new version of Keynote: Specifically for the iPad. Create presentations with your fingers. Most beautiful word processor you'll ever see. New version of numbers. 10:58 re: iWork: "What they came up with is really magnificent". About to do iWork demo. 10:58 And now for something exciting. Looking at creating a version of iWork for iPhone a year ago. iPhone? Really? But iPad! Win. 10:57: "i was expecting more "eye-friendly" text, i.e. e-ink. i can't picture myself staring at this screen reading a novel" -- Sang 10:56 Steve showing off the store. Book at $14.99. "And that is iBooks" gdgt: Tap right or left to change the page - or drag the page manually. Very nice! GIZ Jason Chen: You can skip directly to chapters from the table of contents, and there are photos, as you'd expect. gdgt: "We think the iPad is going to make a terrific e-book reader not just for popular books, but for textbooks as well." 10:56 Eng: 10:56AM The store is very similar to iTunes. Same modal pop-overs. Pricing doesn't look too bad. The book page display is nice. You can turn pages slowly -- really slick looking page animation. 10:56: amazon: 0.75 +1.27&lrm; (1.06%&lrm;) 10:56: "Still no mention of 3G connectivity. Is it WiFi only?" -- Mel Martinaz "Only WiFi so far" -- Mike Schramm 10:55 Five big partners...Penguin, McMillon, Simon &Schuster, and more. Mike R: Wil Shipley's head just exploded 10:54: *blink* This afternoon? Really? 10:53: NEW iBOOK STORE: Fully integrated with iBooks app. Read your eBooks right on your iPad, NY Times bestseller lists, 5 of the largest pubs in the world, all their books on the store. Open the floodgates with the rest of the pubs starting this afternoon. 10:52 Want to show you another one of *our* apps. Amazon pioneered with Kindle. We're standing on their shoulders and going further. This is reading a book on kindle. iBooks announced. 10:52: Apple iPad page still not up. 10:50 More details about Major League Baseball. By the by, the Apple Store? Still up. Nothing shipping today. gdgt Game video with overlays, this is pretty dope. If you're a baseball fan, seems like this is probably going to be your new preferred viewing experience. Scott's back. 10:49 Next App: Major League Baseball. Looking at live game experience. "unless somethign dramatic happens in the next 10 minutes it's just a flat iPod touch." -- Dave Caolo; Isn't this 90 minutes? -- Erica 10:48 It's so PRETTY! Want one, want, want, want. Engadget: "10:48AM Need for Speed Shift on screen. Looks pretty good. "Building for the iPad is a little different -- it's kind of like holding an HD display up to your face. It's really cool.", gdgt: Touch and accelerator-enabled (of course). Tap the mirror to look behind. "A game like NFS really pushes the limits, so we wanted to show you just how fast this can really go." 10:47 Demo of game. Showing really cool racing game, first person viewpoint. 10:47: EAGuy: "really excited about iPad. Showing demo. Gorgeous 3d, showing racing game. 10:46 Electronic Arts up next. Number One mobile publisher of games. 10:46: Eng: 10:46AM This is very slick -- probably the most impressive demo yet. A very sophisticated use of the screen real estate. Brushes for the iPad looks like you can go pretty deep. Available at product launch. 10:44: Showing undo/redo. Wide range of brushes, etc. Digital finger painting. Megan: "Could you imagine Photoshop on this? It'll kill the Cintiq tablet: apple-creation-0275-rm-eng.jpg" 10:44: gdgt: Next up: an app called Brushes, an art browser. Can zoom in up to 32 times. Engadget: "10:45AM "Today I'd like to show you how brushes looks on the iPad." This is nice. Context menus for brush and color options. We're loving these new pop-over menus. No more diving!" 10:44: Taking full advantage of iPad firmware 3.2 (It's 3.2, not 4.0) 10:44: gdgt: Reading [the NYT app] syncs to the iPhone app. Inline video clips. 10:43 Megan: "Needs to be designed better. HIRE ME!!" Sang: "imagine using Keynote on the iPad. it'd be money" Megan: "This is the future of newspaper design" gdgt "We're incredibly psyched to pioneer the next generation of digital journalism." Ha, Martin Nisenholtz said "psyched." 10:42 Steve showed you the NY Times website. It's beautiful. So why do a new app for iPad? Our iPhone app downloaded 3Million times. Want to create something special for iPad 10:42 "gdgt: Martin: "Steve showed you the NYT site on the iPad, it's unbelievably beautiful. Why did we come out three weeks ago to develop an app for the iPad?" Wait, three weeks? Scott said peeps had 2 weeks. Anyway! "We think that we've captured the essence of reading a newspaper... all in a native app."" 10:41 Martin Nisenholtz of NYT. Martin is EVP of digital for the times 10:40 Next up New York Times. 10:38 Really excited about poss. for devs on iPad. "The iPad version of Nova ships later this year..." Interesting. Scott is back. "Next up, the New York Times."" 10:38 Demos. "gdgt Showing a title called Nova. This looks pretty decent, but still a tiny bit choppy. But hey, this was done in two weeks, so I'm gonna cut these guys some slack." 10:38 Devs invited 2 weeks ago. Will show you what they came up with. Mark Hickey of Gameloft is up. 10:38 "By the way, if they're available today, I'll be running to the Apple Store imediatly - 4 miles away." --- Steve Sande 10:37: Rewrote all our apps for this display. New SDK supports devs for new size. Can automatically scale app to full screen, can save profiles, and have it work in both systems. 10:36: Eep. 10:36 NEW SDK OUT TODAY!!!!! Sorry, but I think I just have to *eep* 10:36 Eng: "So all of the iPhone apps will run on this. In fact when you buy it, download all the apps you have right onto the iPad. Now if the developer spends some time modifying their app, they can take full advantage of this display." 10:35 Interface Builder is going to have to be smart about using dual resolution apps. 10:35 Pixel doubling. Eng: 10:34AM Games look amazing. He's playing an OpenGLS title right now and it looks super smooth. 10:34 Showing game video, "Video works great on the iPad", And 10:33AM Gaming obviously will handle this better, but a text heavy app looks lonely or weirdly huge. 10:33: "It just works." Demoing facebook now. It just scales up. Facebook uses text, video, etc. What app really drives graphics hw? Games do! 10:33 Eng: 10:33AM "Let's start with Facebook. It just works." He's showing off the non-pixel doubled version, a small app in the middle of the screen. It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen. The scaled up app looks silly as well, especially in Facebook. 10:32: Forstall: App Store huge success, 18 monts old, billions of apps, 140k apps. We built the iPad to run virtually all these apps out of the box. Pixel for pixel accuracy and also, automatically full screen via pixel doubling. YAY! I think my inner Apple fangrrl just sqeed herself out. 10:32: All new built in applications. And Scott Forstall, sr vp of iphone softwar to talk aboutApp Store. 10:30: Scott Forstall on stage. 10:30 16-64 GB of flash storage. A MONTH, a freaking MONTH of standby. I am awed. Arsenic free, green and lovely. 10:30: Eng: "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10:30 Eng: 10:30AM "What is the battery life like? We've been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life. I can take a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo and watch video the whole time. And it has over a month of standby time." 10:30 This chip will *scream*. Latest in wireless networking. "All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it's got battery." 10 FREAKING HOURS OF BATTERY. 10:29: "as mentioned in every bit of upcoming advertising." -- Dave Winograd. 10:28: Getting back to the hardware a little bit. It's realllly thin. 1/2 inch thin. Just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7 IPS display. Super high quality display. Best multitouch sensors in the world, married to our great display. 10:26: Now showing videos, movies. That is video on the iPad. That's a little overview of what the iPad can do. 10:26: "This interface is interesting, because unlike the iPhone, it's got panes and floating windows and lots of stuff that you can do when you've got a bunch of screen space.(via Macworld)" 10:25: Let's go to youtube. Let me show you a high def video on youtube. Again, let's go to landscape mode. And that's Youtube. Again, related clips, etc. Portrait, landscape. (Steve really really likes the portrait/landscape thing today) Movies, TV Shows, Music videos, etc. 10:24 Go to our current location in the maps app (Maps demo) in San Francisco. Should findall the sushi places nearby. mmmm sushi... And here's a sushi bar. Great demo. Mild, not wild, applause. That's maps. Let me show you video. 10:24 Events, Faces, and places. Shows a big map with pins in it. Tap and hold on the pin and see all the photos there. Tap on it to open the photos. There are built-in slideshows, so yo can bring up slideshow options and pick your transition. Just starts playing music and then flips through the images.(via Macworld) 10:23 Demoing iTunes now. Looking at calendar, again? Steve Sande: "I bet 24,343 Macbooks just went up for sale on eBay" Contact, calendar, address book, Also got a great maps app. Again, the eiffel tower,tap the corner, and pinch as big as we like. 10:22 TUAW staffers wondering about possible fingerprint tech for unlocking? Dave Caolo: "gotta agree: I think there's a 'wow factor' surprise lurking" jEng: 10:22AM Steve is playing more Dylan! iTunes: 10:22: Steve finishes slideshow demo to LOUD applause. Looknow at music collection, iPod, scroll through albums, tap to play. Eng: 10:21AM This is the ultimate tease. We've got a sneaking suspicion there's a lot more to come. 10:21: NYT wonders if this is the end of the laptop. Mike Rose: "WE HAZ BROKE THE INTERNETS" 10:20 Show you a map of all the places you've taken photographs. e.g. Photos I took in Paris. Built in slide shows as well as single image display. Picka transition, pick music. (This is on the iPhone too, right now. So not a new feature.) 10:20 Really good closeup of the keyboard: 10:19 Next, the keyboard. Can look at everything in portrait and landscape. Can look at any photo. Steve is *totally* getting into the portrait/landscape thing. Metadata from maps tied into photos. Can get events, places, at the same time. All tied into maps. 10:18: Engadget: Wow, nice email display -- message list in a column on the left, full message on the right. 10:17: Steve is showing off the improved e-mail browser. Can look at the metro in paris...As an example of PDF display. All the attachment support now being demo'ed Sounds like the E-mail support is going to be absolutely rocking. 10:16 Grab the tablet in the kitchen... A whole website in the palm of your hands. Read national geographic, for example. Very, very simple. Time magazine being demos, sports, right in the palm of your hands. So that is browsing the web. Now E-Mail. 10:12 Great slide show stuff built in. Built in a calendar, see a months' activities, a days', built in, a great address book, contacts, GOOGLE MAPS, satellite view, etc. iPad is an aweesome way to enjoy your music colleciton, and of course, ...iTunes, purchase movies, apps, music, etc. HIGH DEF YOUTUBE 10:12 Whole web page. It's phenomenal. It's incredible. Focus inon a message, see your inbox, turn it sideways (landscape and portrait support), keyboard pops up. It's almost lifesize, it's a dream. Your photos, your albums, your events, etc. 10:10 Very, very thin. Can change the background, Winterboard it out the wazoo (Winterboard is the jailbreak theming app) "Best browsing experience you'll ever have with a whole web page right in front of you. Way better than a laptop, way better than an iPhone" 10:10 It's the iPad. Mike R: "My iPad, let me show it to you. PREEECCCIIOOUS." Let me show it to you. Wild wild applause. 10:10: Some people have thought about netbooks: sThe problem is netbooks aren't better at ANYTHING." Applause. "They're just cheap laptops." We think we got something better. AND WE'D LIKE TO SHOW IT TO YOU TODAY. 10:09: Something better for browsing the web than a laptop? Watching videos? Something better? Media collection, playing games? If there's going to be a 3rd category of device, has to be better at these tasks. 10:08 Is there room for a third category of device? It's the tablet, of course... Steve is making a case for the mobile niche of Apple. gdgt: "In order to create a new category of devices, those devices will have to be far better at doing some key tasks - important things - better than the laptop and smartphone. What kind of tasks? Things like browsing the web..." 10:06 In 1991,In Apple shipped first modern laptop computer. Apple invented it. With an LCD screen. In 2007, Apple reinvented the phone. 2 years later, the iPhone 3GS. Apple is laptops, Apple is smart phones. 10:05 Steve: "Apple is a mobile devices company" How does Apple stack up against other companies that sell mobile devices. By revenue, is largest Mobile Device company in the world. More than Sony, etc. 15.6B in revenue. Bigger than Nokia. "apple is larger than sony mobile products division" -- via twit gdgt: "Lastly, we started apple in 1976 - 34 years later, we just ended our holiday quarter with 15.6 billion in revenue." Big applause. "That means Apple is over a 50 billion dollar company - I like to forget that, because that's not how we think of Apple, but it's pretty amazing." 10:05: GIZ Jason Chen: Next update: App Store. There are over 140,000 applications in the App Store. "A few weeks ago we announced a user downloaded the 3 billionth app from the App Store." 10:04 gdgt: "Last holiday quarter we had over 250 million visitors to our stores." Talking about the new New York stores. "It's so wonderful to be putting these stores right in the neighborhoods of our customers. It feels good. Next update: app store." WE ARE SWITCHING TO TRADITIONAL LIVE BLOG. Cover It Live is not responding. Happy Tablet Day! Here at TUAW, we are so excited to be able to share the moment with all of you stopping by. Today, we'll be metaliveblogging all the major outlets including Engagdet, Ars, and so forth. And adding to the metaliveblogging goodness, we'll be layering TUAW's own special touch of analysis and opinion on top of the summaries we'll be scraping from other sites. So thank you for joining us. Today we'll be covering feeds from: Today we'll be covering feeds from: Engadget Macworld Ars Technica MacNN Gizmodo and more..."Our Latest Creation" The Apple Media Event TUAW MetaliveblogTUAWApple Event Metaliveblog: Celebrate the tablet with TUAW originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Apple - Engadget - Macworld - TUAW - Ars Technica
Hitting the road with iPhone GPS apps: A holiday buyers guide

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Features, iPhone, Holidays, iPod touch, App ReviewWe're about to hit the big holiday travel peak, and it's a great time to survey what we've seen this year for iPhone GPS apps. GPS navigation by satellite has been around a long time, but it's never been this inexpensive or desirable. There's an explosion of choices, with competitive features and falling prices. For many of our readers, facing long trips to see family and friends, getting the right GPS app is a priority. A few words about this guide: I haven't seen or tested everything on the market, and the choices are constantly changing and updating. I've done my best to keep up and get some time on the road with each of the apps listed here. If I haven't talked about your favorite app, it's not because I don't like it, but because I can't vouch for it. Like all of you, I have some criteria by which I judge a GPS app. My list contains the things I think are really, really, important. Your list could be different. Such is life. Read on for my (long) list of must-haves, and for the rundown of the GPS apps themselves. Here's my criteria: Good graphics and a clear GUI. I want to be able to figure out how things work without a lot of effort. I don't expect to spend a lot of time looking at the screen, but when I do I don't want it to be littered with useless information. Good sound. I don't want to have to struggle to hear what is being said, and I don't want to guess what directions I just got. GPS accuracy. Of course. I want the GPS to know where I am. On a highway, I don't want to be depicted on a side road. Most of the GPS accuracy comes down to the electronics on the iPhone, but smart software can enhance the accuracy of my position. Updated Maps. In my testing, I found several units that didn't have streets I was driving on, or could not find addresses in neighborhoods that were a decade old. There isn't any good way to find out how new the map data is, but there are plenty of reviews on the iTunes store that will help you gauge this. Steer clear of any app that has a lot of people complaining about out-of-date data. Updated Points of Interest. Same as above. How current are the locations and phone numbers of restaurants, hospitals, shops? Is the POI list static or is there a web component that keeps it up to date? I prefer a frequently updated POI list. If it's on the phone only, and something you downloaded as part of the app, it is both smaller and less up-to-date than the online options. Where are the maps? Maps may be stored on your phone, or delivered on-demand via the 3G network. I prefer them to be on the phone, because cellular reception may not be perfect. In the U.S., that means AT&T. For the rest of the world there are providers with great coverage, and some with poor coverage. If you opt for a GPS app that depends on the network for maps, you'd better have good cellular service or you'll be looking at a blank map. Text-to-speech. I really don't want to spend time looking at the display. I want the GPS to tell me to turn left on Elm Street, not 'turn left ahead'. That could be very confusing. Traffic information. It's no good following a route that is backed up three hours because of an accident. I want my GPS to alert me, and re-route me if at all possible. Choices about route calculation. I want options for fastest, shortest, and less congested routes. I want to be able to avoid toll roads, freeways or ferries. I want to be driving with this app, not having the app drive me. Useful on-screen information. I want to know how long till I get there, based on my speed, not a guess. I want to know what time I will arrive, and I'd like to know the distance to my destination and to my next turn. Address Book integration. I really don't want to type in destinations if they are already sitting on my phone. iPod integration. Not a big deal for me, but it is for many. Can you access your iTunes library without leaving the app? More than just a driving mode. The iPhone is small and portable. Pedestrian directions are really nice to have. Less important but nice: auto night display, meaning the display dims or changes colors so it is easier to see at night and less distracting. Speed limit information; can the app warn you if your are speeding? To know that, its database has to know the posted speed for major roads. I also like landscape mode, which is, I think, a nicer way to view the maps. OK. Now let's look at the contenders... all prices quoted are those from the US App Store. One of the first out of the gate was the AT&T Navigator app [iTunes link]. It's a monthly subscription at $9.99, with discounts for multi-month agreements. The maps are clear, the POI database is up to date. This app is cloud based, and that means if you lose AT&T signal, you're hosed. The app has recently had an update with improved iTunes integration. The app does text to speech, has an attractive GUI, and has a nice feature to help you find cheap gas. It includes real-time traffic, and warns you of congestion ahead. The downsides are the already mentioned dependence on a cellular signal. It also is way too chatty for my taste, and over warns you of upcoming turns. I did not find the voice pleasant, as it seemed distorted on the iPhone speaker. I'd blame that on the iPhone, except several other products don't have the problem. As this is subscription based, it just keeps costing. At $70 a year, you could buy the Navigon, Magellan or TomTom app and be ahead of the game. Purchasers who rated this app at the iTunes store generally are not happy. Ndrive United States. This is a low cost $32.99 app [iTunes link] with built in maps, and a pretty fair POI database. The developers promised text to speech, but as of this writing, it's a no-show. In my review i said that voice instructions came a bit late. I liked the 3D rendering of downtown buildings. As prices of the more popular GPS apps drop, Ndrive is not as compelling as it was, but I think it is worth a look. Another low cost option is CoPilot Live North America. At $20 (on sale now) [iTunes Link] It includes text to speech, and works well. In my review I noted that the maps were not particularly attractive, and were often out of date. You can add live traffic for another $20, which starts getting app up there in price. I'd consider this an entry level purchase for someone who isn't sure they want to spend a lot of GPS navigation. At $20 without traffic, it's a pretty low risk proposition. TomTom. This app is offered int he U.S. and several other countries. It was an eagerly awaited app because of the reputation of the company. For U.S. drivers there is a US/Canada version at $69.99 [iTunes link] and a $49.99 version [iTunes link] that deletes Canada. It's on sale at this price until December 28. Out of the gate, this app was missing some desired features, like text to speech, but a recent update added that function. The graphics are clear and easy to understand. The GUI is responsive. All the data is on-board. There have been complaints the maps are not as up to date as some of its competitors. All in all, the TomTom app is full featured, and very competitive, especially at the $50.00 sale price. Magellan Roadmate. Full featured, very nice GUI and easy to read screens. Has text to speech, 3D landmarks, Lane assist, pedestrian mode, and a one touch menu for getting to favorites. In my review I found the app easy to use and responsive. At U.S. $79.99 (on sale) [iTunes link] it's a bit pricey and I expect they will have to get a bit more aggressive because of the competition. I like everything about this app except the price and lack of real time traffic. G-Map U.S. and Canada. At a sale price of U.S. $49.99 [iTunes link] it is in the middle of the pack in terms of cost, but in my experience it was buggy and a bit slow to react to turns. In my review I noted that the app had in fact been pulled from the app store for bugs. Several users, including me, have had trouble installing it. The developers have been quick to try and fix the issues that pop up, and they have added text to speech. If you don't need Canadian maps, the TomTom sale price is a better deal. iGo Navigation. At U.S. $64.99 on sale, this is a bit high for an app with no text to speech. It does have lane assist, 3D landmarks, and details at intersections. In my review I noted that app froze up, which is a no-no. Without text to speech, it's a high price and not very competitive with the big names. Navigon Mobile Navigator North America. In my view, this is the current top drawer app that I have used and extensively tested. It's on sale to January 11 for $59.99 [iTunes link], and it includes Canada, text to speech, and now Google live search to compliment the built in POI data base. That's the best of both worlds in my view, with the maps on board, and the ability to find, call, and easily navigate to a destination. If you are out of cell tower range, the built in POI data is reasonably complete. You can get up to date traffic data for larger cities for an additional one time purchase of $19.99. I think the on screen graphics are best in class, and Navigon was the first to add text to speech. They have been very prompt at getting frequent updates out and have added valuable features. If you look at the iTunes ratings, it seems to have satisfied the most people. If I had to choose one GPS app for the iPhone, it would be the Navigon, no question. They company released the Google integration yesterday, and it had some server issues, but they got right on it and fixed it very quickly. Against my list of desired features, the Navigon hits them all. Google may or may not offer a free nav app at some point, but if you're planning a long holiday trip, you probably can't wait. The Navigon is not the most expensive, and not the cheapest of the apps that are out there. But I do think it is the best, with the Magellan and TomTom in a close second place. So there you have it. I know there are some other apps I haven't tried so they are absent here. Many of these apps run fine on an iPod touch. Check the iTunes links I've provided to get specifics on each model. I've tried to cover a variety of options and prices, and hopefully you'll find something that fits your needs and your budget. Happy Holidays and safe driving. TUAWHitting the road with iPhone GPS apps: A holiday buyers guide originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments iPhone - GPS - App Store - IPod Touch - TomTom
Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone?

Daniel Eran Dilger Today's broad array of smartphone operating system contenders are offering lots of potential answers to a problem that only requires one. It appears the market has two options ahead: either pool generic hardware makers behind a single operating system and deliver a smartphone marketplace that resembles the Windows PC market, or watch them fall to a dominant leader and have a smartphone market that resembles Apple's iPod ecosystem. This decision isn't going to be made by a class of intellectual elite, or by government mandate. it's going to be made by the market itself. Here are the factors that will influence the outcome, either marginalizing Apple's iPhone into a niche as the company has twice experienced previously at the hands of DOS in 1981 and Windows in 1991, or positioning it as the dominant leader as Apple has achieved for itself with the iPod since 2001. The third segment in this series looks at Google's Android and the Open Handset Alliance as a possible “DOS-attack” against Apple's iPhone. Subsequent segments will look at Nokia's newly opened Symbian and other mobile contenders challenging the iPhone. Will the iPhone Meet its Match from a Modern Day DOS? Will Windows Mobile Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Will Google's Android Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Will Symbian Play DOS to Apple's iPhone? Google Acquires Android. In 2005, Google purchased a startup named Android, which had been in business for nearly two years. The secretive startup was known only to be working on software for mobile phones. It was being run by a who's who of mobile industry veterans, including Andy Rubin, the founder of Danger. Rubin had earlier worked at WebTV along with Chris White and Andy McFadden, both of whom had also joined Android. Richard Miner of Orange and Nick Sears of Tmobile also brought their mobile provider experience to Android. At the time of the acquisition, Google didn't announce any plans for Android and instead only told BusinessWeek, “We acquired Android because of the talented engineers and great technology. We're thrilled to have them here.” It appeared that Google was only going to be expanding its search services for mobile phone users, along the lines of the Google SMS answer system it had recently released. Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal - BusinessWeek Windows XP Media Center Edition vs Apple TV: The Fall of WebTV The GPhone Myth. As reports began to leak out about talks between Google and hardware makers throughout 2007, rumors began to fly about “the GPhone,” a competitive offering that was supposed to take on the iPhone. Some phone enthusiasts hoped Google would jump in to rescue the struggling OpenMoko project and turn it into a viable project that could attack Apple's new smartphone. In October 2007, I printed the Great Google GPhone Myth, taking apart the idea that Google would be directly competing against the iPhone, and describing that Google was really working on a free alternative to Windows Mobile as a conduit for getting its search and related services on a broader variety of mobiles. Google's services were already on the iPhone. In November, Google played its hand: it had organized a consortium of companies called the Open Handset Alliance to develop open standards for mobiles. The first product from the group would be Android, a mobile operating system built on the Linux kernel. Google wasn't getting into the phone handset business at all; it was only making sure that its mobile search products would not risk being marginalized by the threat of Windows Mobile on phones in the same way Microsoft had been working to leverage its PC monopoly to push Google search off the Windows desktop. The Great Google gPhone Myth Introducing Android: Leader of Linux. Two weeks later, Google released an early version of the Android software. On top of a Linux kernel, Android uses a specialized version of a Java Virtual Machine that takes Java language code and turns it into what Google calls “Dalvik bytecode” rather than Java bytecode as a standard JVM would. This allows Google to leverage existing and familiar Java language tools without paying Sun for a Java license. Like Mac OS X and its fraternal iPhone OS, Android includes a variety of open source libraries, including SQLite and WebKit. On top of that, Google developed a series of frameworks that handle the tasks Cocoa Touch does on the iPhone. Android also bundles a set of applications. While Apple adapted its existing Mac OS X to work in a mobile environment to create the iPhone OS, Android is more like a customized Java environment running on a specialized mobile Linux variant: elements of maturity in an otherwise experimental new platform. What is Android? -Google Android was by no means the first mobile OS using Linux. Both Palm and its amputated ACCESS software arm have Linux-based mobile platforms. Nokia has Maemo, which it uses in its Internet Tablets, and also recently acquired Trolltech and its Qtopia mobile Linux platform. Motorola has teamed up with MontaVista Software to use its Mobilinux. Intel created the Moblin project for mobile Linux, aimed at Internet devices. Google's OHA also isn't the first consortium to attempt to standardize a mobile Linux platform. The OSDL started the Mobile Linux Initiative to define requirements for hardware; the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) then worked to define various phone profiles aimed at the Japanese market; the Linux Phone Standard (LiPS) Forum tried to do the same thing in Europe. In 2007, LiPS was folded into the new LiMo Foundation, along with the OSDL. All of these committees have had some overlap and some complementary features. Several of Google's OHA partners are also LiMo members, including NTT DoCoMo, Wind River, and Motorola. So why didn't Google just join LiMo? “LiMo, very candidly, wasn't moving fast enough,” OHA board member John Bruggeman told CNET. Google hopes to herd the Linux cats into a progressive, structured platform that can battle against Symbian and Windows Mobile to succeed as the new DOS of smartphones. Will Google fracture or unify mobile Linux? The Presumption of the Necessity of DOS. The previous segment examining Windows Mobile pointed out how the PC industry as a whole assumed that Microsoft's desktop Windows monopoly would easily take over dominance in the MP3 player market, pushing Apple into a niche position. This was expected because DOS had pushed Apple's early computers into a reduced role starting in 1981, and Microsoft had repeated this again in 1991 when the DOS world migrated to Windows, effectively pruning Apple's Macintosh into a Bonsai platform. The inability of one company to dominate any product category has been frequently repeated by PC industry pundits as a given, despite the fact that history is full of examples of this happening. Sony dominated personal music players for two decades under the Walkman brand even while equally large competitors tried to push it from this position; Nintendo has similarly owned handheld gaming despite ill-fated efforts to grab a piece of its pie by products running a generic platform such as Microsoft's WinCE (Gizmondo), Linux (GP32), and Symbian (N-Gage). In fact, outside of the Windows/DOS PC, there are actually few examples of a generic platform taking over an industry. Nearly every other consumer-facing product uses proprietary platforms: car makers, stereo equipment, appliances and so on typically all use designs custom to their maker. The paradox of the Windows PC market has been that Microsoft's broadly licensed software supposedly saves hardware makers from investing in software development while ensuring compatibility, when in reality it adds significant costs to PC makers while limiting their ability to differentiate themselves. That explains why PC makers have been perpetually merging together and going out of business while Microosft has rolled in money over the last two decades. Parallel efforts to copy Microsoft in broadly licensing an operating system have regularly failed: IBM's OS/2, Apple's Mac OS, Palm's PDA OS, even Microsoft's own efforts to duplicate Windows dominance in other markets, from copy machines to PDAs to smartphones to SPOT watches to music players. The closest copy may be Symbian, but its customers are partners, not simply consumers of a generic third party's operating system as Windows licensees are. That indicates it is not necessary to duplicate the dominance exercised by Microsoft over the PC industry in the smartphone market. Google's Android and Symbian exist more as technology sharing pacts among manufacturers, but both aspire to take Microsoft's DOS role among smartphones. However, the idea that Apple's iPhone must be dethroned by a modern-day DOS, whether Windows Mobile, Android, or Symbian, is not just debatable, but does not sync with the reality of more recent events. Apple's recent history of the iPod further refutes the idea that a software analog to Microsoft is needed. The iPod Emergence: Apple & Pixo vs IBM & Microsoft. Apple's iPod in 2001 made no effort to clone the DOS business model; it actually did the opposite. When Apple entered the market, there were a number of existing MP3 devices using custom software, hardware designs, and DRM codecs. The iPod used off the shelf components to deliver a custom MP3 player using third party software, but Apple also added its own technologies: easy to use sync with iTunes, a fast Firewire interface that made uploading music far faster than the prevailing USB 1.0, and an attractive industrial design. With the iPod, Apple played the role of IBM in 1981, using Pixo's embedded operating system to enter the market quickly, just as IBM had used DOS. The difference was that Apple didn't direct any market attention toward Pixo and added a lot of value on top of that core embedded OS. A modern day Compaq couldn't simply clone the hardware and license Pixo to run on it in order to compete against the iPod, because the iPod was much more than just generic hardware running Pixo software. As the iPod developed, Pixo's role diminished and was eventually displaced. Just like IBM, Apple jumped into a new market just as demand was beginning to explode. Apple made MP3 players far more attractive to a general audience by delivering greater playback capacity than most entry level devices offered, along with an ease of use that encouraged buyers to jump in at the higher end of the market. That left Apple with not only the lion's share of the market, but also by far the most profitable segments of the market. Two decades prior, IBM badly fumbled its play with the early PC and ended up irrelevant in the PC world by the late 80s, sideswiped by Microsoft's DOS and the cloners who were licensing it in parallel, notably Compaq and later HP and Dell. Steve Jobs had witnessed that happen, and was determined to not let it happen again to Apple. Rather than being manipulated by a software middleware vendor as IBM had, Apple worked to incrementally develop the iPod market itself. After consuming the hard drive-based player market, Apple took on the Flash RAM-based market with a tiny hard drive system used in the iPod Mini, and followed up with Flash-based devices of its own in the Nano and Shuffle. This allowed Apple to progressively serve an increasingly wider market, incrementally growing upon an established foundation. With the iPod, Apple became, in effect, an IBM with its own internal Microsoft. Microsoft's Failure Despite Features. In contrast, Microsoft entered the music player market by promoting music player hardware reference designs around WinCE. However, it was unable to ship a finished design until the iPod had become firmly established around 2005. Later branded as PlaysForSure, the devices were sold by various hardware makers and all purported to support the same DRM and the same music subscription services while also offering a broader array of hardware that presented video before the iPod did, supported wireless before the iPod, and so on. Despite these unique features, all of those PFS designs still failed. Microsoft blamed the failure of PFS upon its music store and hardware partners and decided to take Apple on itself in 2006. It relaunched a Toshiba PFS player as its own device under the Zune brand, adding WiFi music sharing features and a larger display than the current Pods had. It failed dramatically as well. Did Microsoft's attempts to float a new DOS among music players fail because of Apple's success, or due to Microsoft's own problems? The failure of the Zune, which followed the iPod model rather than the DOS model, seems to suggest that Microsoft itself was to blame. Consider too that Microsoft's Windows Mobile phones, which use the same underlying operating system as its failed PlaysForSure music players and the Zune, had similarly flopped even before Apple could release a charismatic phone equivalent to the iPod. Of course, when the iPhone was released, it hit Windows Mobile hardest. The iPhone made Windows Mobile Smartphones look ridiculous and underpowered, and made Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones look clumsy and awkward, despite the fact that they both supported a variety of features the iPhone didn't, including the ability to edit documents, capture video, send MMS, and so on. Simply adding on features did not enable Microsoft to compete against Apple. The only conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that competing against Apple requires more than just having a feature arsenal. Microsoft's failures in themselves do not necessarily mean that Google's Android will fail in its attempts to float its own smartphone platform. Why Microsoft’s Zune is Still Failing Microsoft’s Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone Will Google Succeed where Microsoft Failed? Microsoft's demonstrated inability to successfully enter consumer markets for MP3 players and smartphones has given observers little faith that the company will somehow turn things around in late 2009 when its next generation of devices are expected to be released. However, prior to that the first fruits of Google's efforts to build its own smartphone operating environment will arrive. Will Google's Android take over Microsoft's crown as the “DOS vendor” among smartphones? Supporters of Google's Android project point to some parallels between Android for smartphones and Windows on the PC: Android will allow hardware makers to differentiate in ways that can offer features Apple can't (or doesn't want to); it should allow software developers to offer features Apple does not allow on the iPhone; it embraces open, hobbyist experimentation in ways that Apple currently isn't; and it opens the potential for content providers that Apple is not interested in allowing. Openness is Android's key competitive feature. Will all this openness allow Google to unseat the iPhone to become the primary platform developers want to participate in, and subsequently soak up the market for third party hardware makers that Windows Mobile serves? While Google currently has no market share due to the fact that no Android phones have yet shipped, it does have broad vocal support from a variety of the same kinds of hardware manufacturers that supported DOS and Windows and helped to make those platforms successful in the desktop PC market. HTC and Android. The first Android phone is expected to be the HTC Dream; Taiwan's HTC (High Tech Computer) also manufactures Palm's Treo Pro phone as well as many of the most visible Windows Mobile devices. In addition to models produced under its own name, HTC also sells Windows Mobile devices under the Dopod brand, as well as no-name phones branded by providers, such as AT&T, Orange, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and others. HTC will also be building the XPERIA X1 Windows Mobile phone for Sony Ericsson. HTC was quick to throw its support behind Android despite its long term alliance with Windows Mobile. Why would it so enthusiastically support an unproven platform from a company that has no experience in consumer hardware platforms? One can only assume that HTC is not happy with the current state of Windows Mobile, and desperately wants another “DOS” to succeed where Microsoft's has so spectacularly failed. As an Original Design Manufacturer for Palm, HTC watched as Palm adopted Windows Mobile in place of the Palm OS and subsequently fell even deeper into crisis. Palm's only successful phone since has been its Palm OS-based Centro. HTC undoubtedly sees Android as its ticket to becoming the next Dell, but without a similar dependance upon Microsoft. Android for mobile phones is essentially playing the role of Linux for PCs, except that it has the backing of a major company behind it. Can Android Take on the iPhone with Openness as its Feature? As great as this sounds, it's important to consider that Linux on the desktop has made no significant progress in eating into Windows dominance after a decade of trying. Being open, free, flexible, and decentralized hasn't been enough of an advantage to get consumers to migrate from Windows to Linux in any fraction of significance. Similarly, in the music business, Linux-based MP3 players have had no impact on the iPod, despite offering more features, flexibility, support for additional codecs, and so on. In the mobile phone area, Linux enjoys a sizable portion of the smartphone market, but this is almost entirely due to phones sold by Motorola in China, where the advantages of Linux' openness are void. Motorola's Linux phones offer nothing to users in terms of openness or flexibility, and are really no different in terms of features than other appliance 'feature phones' based upon closed operating systems. And again, a key problem with assaulting Apple in a feature war is that neither the iPod nor the iPhone became popular by being “highly featured.” They both delivered perhaps 80% of the functionality found in all other devices in the market. Rather than trying to match every feature and cater to every niche as Microsoft had with Windows Mobile, Apple's devices did a few things very well at launch, and incrementally developed into full featured devices that still lack some of the more unique features of their competitors. Further, in terms of openness, the demographic that embraces Linux' characteristic freedoms is not the same as the demographic that buys smartphones in quantity and then pays for data service. This is a critical fact to consider because a big part of the iPhone's success stems from the fact that it is being pushed by mobile providers who want to capture the cream of the market willing to pay a premium for data services. The Frankenphone. Combining the fractured aesthetic of HTC's Windows Mobile phone hardware with Android's software, based upon Linux' perpetually unfinished DIY openness and Google's Java-like development platform, will not result in a product similar to the iPhone. Instead, it will look a lot like phones that have already failed in the market. Apple's advantage comes from slick hardware designs with a close attention to detail, combined with software that purposely does less so that it can do what it does better. Even Apple's own conservative attempts to broaden its software capabilities with iPhone 2.0 have resulted in instability problems that can be blamed upon both Apple's early releases of its phone operating system and software from inexperienced third party developers new to the platform. Would the current frustrations with iPhone 2.0 be somehow mitigated by additional openness that also embraced all kinds of variables from different hardware makers with less quality control than Apple, a loose committee of additional cooks working to serve up operating system features targeted at every possible conceived need, and a wider third party software group with fewer constraints on illegal behaviors? The Failure of Open. While it is politically unpopular to criticize the well meaning efforts of open source contributors, the failure of Linux on the desktop, the failure of the vaporware Indrema game console, and the failure of the OpenMoko project to deliver a workable phone within a year of its deadline all underline the serious problems open development faces in the world of consumer oriented devices. Open has simply failed to deliver on its promises in the world of consumer hardware. OpenMoko was supposed to release its first mobile phone to consumers for $250 several months in advance of the iPhone. When the iPhone shipped, the group then announced new plans to get its phone out by the end of 2007. Instead, this spring the group announced new plans to move to an entirely different development platform, and ship its phone mid year for $400 with limited functionality and incomplete software outside of basic GSM phone features. Linux's notable successes, from Motorola's Linux phones to the Tivo DVR to Linksys Routers, have often come without any associated openness or freedom, and were instead delivered simply to provide their manufacturer with a free kernel to build upon. This indicates that while Linux may find its way into an increasing number of smartphones, it will likely not be accompanied by the glorious freedom of an open development environment Google has said it would offer with Android. Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone Can Google Succeed Where Open Has Previously Failed? Despite “openness” being Android's strongest competitive feature compared to Apple's iPhone, Google recently revealed that its wide-open development model is intentionally gravitating towards a closed association of top tier partners due to practical considerations. In July, Google accidentally sent out a notice that revealed that it had been seeding private SDK updates to only a subset of its contributors, angering those who believed that Android would be as open as Linux on the desktop or the OpenMoko project. Further, Google has restricted initial development to higher level APIs just as Apple did, further indicating that Google itself realizes that being wildly open to impress a minority of hobbyists will not result in the commercial success of its new platform. That serves to neuter Android's primary advantage over the iPhone. Without delivering on the premise of being wide open, Android is really just a less mature set of Java libraries used to create a specialized binary that runs on a Linux foundation. Unlike Apple's iPhone, Android phones won't have a slick user interface developed by professional artists, nor the iPhone's legacy of mature software development frameworks crafted over the last thirty years, nor the iPhone's tightly integrated hardware with award winning industrial design, nor its marketing power tied into the iPod and Apple's retail stores. Android won't be an open iPhone, it will only be a Windows Mobile phone with a better kernel that runs specialized Java software instead of Win32 or .NET code. Don't expect consumers to be impressed by that. The Biggest Missing Feature. There is one remaining factor that strangles to death any last remaining hope that Android might assassinate the iPhone and assume the crown of the “DOS of smartphones.” That is: Android delivers zero price advantage to consumers. In 1981 and 1991, consumers who wanted Apple computers faced the sticker shock of a somewhat arrogant price tag. Apple sold its computers, as it still does, at the higher end of the market, but there was simply far more range in prices available. In 1981, that meant the Apple II was $2600 and the new Apple III was $3500, even before you added a monitor. On the low end, Commodore sold its far less powerful, but “still a computer” Vic-20 for $300, while IBM entered the market with the IBM PC at $3000. Over the next few years, Apple focused on delivering additional sophistication at the same price, releasing the $10,000 Lisa and then the $2,500 Macintosh. IBM continued selling PCs in the same $3,000 to $10,000 range, but other DOS PC vendors began selling machines at prices that ranged as low as $1500. That left Apple with a roughly $1000 price premium over low end PCs. The products weren't really comparable, but consumers only saw the huge price difference. In 1991, Apple was still selling moderate to high-end Macintoshes for $3,800 to $10,000; the crippled Mac LC was $2500, and obsolete-at-birth Mac Classic ranged from $999 to $1500. Windows allowed PC makers to ship a functional $1500 PC and claim a rough approximation to Apple's $2500 entry level system, maintaining that apparent $1000 price premium. Today, pundits are lucky to find a Dell or HP system that is even a couple hundred dollars less than a comparable Mac. However, in the smartphone business, the iPhone 3G is now the same price, if not less, than generic competing phones on the market. Even more significant is the fact that the price of the phone hardware is nearly nothing compared to the cost of the service plan. This fact simply eases any price premium that could cause buyers to flock to a smartphone running a generic operating system over buying the iPhone 3G, regardless of whether it runs Windows Mobile or Android. 1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds Android Partners Have Already Failed. That same pricing principle similarly prevented buyers from considering many of the alternatives to the iPod. While Apple's original iPod models were more expensive than many of the first MP3 players on the market, they were price competitive with models offering similar features. By 2004, it was Apple who was undercutting MP3 competitors on price. Microsoft offered zero price advantage when it began selling the Zune, a major factor in its failure, but Microsoft simply couldn't out-price the iPod; it was already losing money offering the Zune at the same price as the iPod. Apple now has tremendous market power in buying RAM and other components that will prevent any competitors from being able to offer a huge discount over the iPhone's $199 price tag. Even if competitors were to give their phones away, they would only offer a $200 discount to users who would then still need to pay the same mobile fees to use the phone. Android's other partners, including Samsung and LG, have already failed to capture any significant market share in the music player market. Are they going to maintain their position as smartphone makers now that they face similar competition from Apple, its iPod ecosystem, its iTunes Music and Apps Store, Apple's retail store experience, and other factors that are pushing the iPhone? If they can, it is not obvious how partnering with Android will help. Other Problems for Android. Android was announced in early November 2007 and was followed with an early preview SDK within a couple weeks, a month ahead of Apple's initial announcement of the iPhone 2.0 SDK. However, between March and July 2008, Apple delivered nine progressive releases of its SDK, opened its App Store, and sold 60 million apps, raising $30 million to support iPhone software development in just the first month. It has since released three more SDK updates to developers related to iPhone 2.1, which is expected next month. Android just published its first open SDK beta update earlier this week, warning developers that “applications developed with it may not quite be compatible with devices running the final Android 1.0.” Additionally, Android still has no phones available. By the time the HTC Dream is expected to launch, Apple will have an installed base of around ten million iPhone (and iPod touch) users supporting software development through iTunes. The business model for selling Android apps is no better than that for selling jailbreak iPhone apps: there is no iTunes Apps Store to promote them, so users will have to track them down on their own. Android developers also have no real freedom that jailbreak iPhone developers lack. The only difference is that there are ten million iPhones to sell jailbreak apps to, and currently zero Android phones. If selling a jailbreak iPhone app sounds like more trouble than its worth, imagine trying to sell Android apps to a non-existant audience. Now add the official iPhone App Store into the mix, where publicity, promotion and profits are booming. What platform is going to have the most applications? How many users will flock to a smartphone platform with no apps? The wisdom of releasing a desirable phone and achieving a significant installed base before releasing an SDK makes a lot more sense in retrospect. Additionally, while Apple has a decade of experience in shipping regular updates to Mac OS X and its Xcode developer tools, Google has only shipped a random assortment of web-oriented SDKs (a number of which have been abandoned) as a tangent to its core business of selling advertisements. When the Android SDK 1.0 is finished later this year, developers will not only lack an installed base to sell their apps to, but will also have no high profile market for selling their apps in, and subsequently no financial incentive to develop applications that add value to the Android platform, just like Linux on the PC desktop. Around the same time, possibly within the next month, Apple will be shipping its second major OS release: iPhone 2.1. Apple will also be upgrading its entire user base to the new software so that developers will have a cohesive platform to target. This mirrors the efforts Apple has taken to upgrade its Mac OS X users to the same reference release. Mobile developers will be seeing money pouring in via iTunes while crickets chirp in the Android section of various mobile online stores. Apple’s iPhone Vs. Other Mobile Hardware Makers: 5 Revenue Engines Same Same, But Different: DOS Model Problems. Android developers will also have a series of other problems to manage. Like Windows Mobile, Android is intended to support everything, from BlackBerry-style keypad phones with a small touchscreen to the simple Windows Mobile Smartphone form factor lacking a touch screen to iPhone-like full size touch screens. Also like Windows Mobile, Android phone makers will have the option to leave off Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS location services, graphics hardware acceleration, and so on. Each Android phone will also have unique camera hardware, support for different video and audio codecs, and varied support for other differentiating proprietary services demanded by mobile operators. This will force developers to to make complex decisions regarding the lowest common denominator they choose to support. So while the iPhone will have a cohesive feature set, a managed software environment, and a functional market, Android will be a loose federation of hardware makers selling the same random features found on Windows Mobile today, with a chaotic development environment that lacks any central market for users or developers. And it will be run as an experiment by a company with no experience in consumer hardware or platform development. The Missing Tap. One specific example of the “DOS model problem” is that Android currently does not support multitouch. It's not touched on in the API, and Google quietly tap dances around its omission. Why no multitouch? Because multitouch screens are expensive, and most OHA hardware members are more interested in making a profit in a competitive phone market rather than impressing consumers as Apple did with the iPhone. Most existing smartphones, even those trying to directly rival the iPhone, use a stylus driven, pressure sensitive tap screen or a simpler, cheaper touch technology that lacks support for sensing multitouch. The iPhone's screen can actually sense up to five fingers at once, but the primary feature multitouch offers on the iPhone is the two fingered tapping and the pinching effects everyone associates with it. Android could certainly support multitouch if there were a demand for it, but that's the point: Google knows that its hardware partners are cheap and unlikely to put out hardware that actually competes with the iPhone. Instead of using expensive technologies that deliver clever yet largely invisible functionality, OHA members, just like PC makers, are far more likely to add flashy, impractical gadgety fluff that's cheap to tack on, such as slide out keyboards, neon tubes, and scratch and sniff stickers. That's how you impress gullible nerds on the cheap. Google itself is blowing smoke and erecting mirrors to distract from the reality that it being a “DOS vendor” means supporting bargain basement hardware from penny pinching duplicators. Android has been demonstrating some “wow” features such as a Street Maps app that pans around based on an internal compass in the demonstration phone. The problem is that that kind of thing only makes for a fun demo. Nobody needs to twirl around their phone in the air to see a view of the other side of the street, but everyone who has used an iPhone will wonder why they can't pinch to zoom out. Even worse, most Android phones aren't going to have a compass built into them, so Google is demonstrating features most Android users won't be able to use. That Sounds Like Microsoft… Google's design decisions are beginning to look a lot like Windows Vista; rather than actually working to make laptops boot faster, Microsoft came up with the idea of adding a small screen to the back of Vista laptops so users could check their email without having to wake the system up. But this was a stupid idea for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that most users just want a laptop that boots up quickly. Few laptops got the mini screen, but every user who tries Vista on their laptop will wonder why it doesn't boot up as fast as Mac OS X Leopard. In the same way, Google is advertising features for Android that most users won't ever see in their actual phones while ignoring things people will expect based on their exposure to the iPhone. Android is simply selecting the wrong features. Android will offer the advantages of supporting MMS, recording video, and the list of other features Windows Mobile already supplies. Those features didn't stop Apple from firing past Microsoft in the smartphone arena however, just as the Zune's highly touted WiFi and screen didn't phase iPod buyers. Incidentally, just months after the Zune, Apple had not only demonstrated a larger display but a higher definition multitouch screen, and not only WiFi, but functional WiFi that could be used to browse the web or check email. This suggests that Apple, with its faster release schedule, won't stay behind any of the leading features potentially offered by Android for very long. Android partners, however, will find it as difficult to catch up with Apple's unique features, just as Microsoft has been stymied to keep up with Mac OS X, the iPod, and the iPhone. The underlying reason: both Google and Microosft are tasked with maintaing support for a huge variety of hardware options demanded by all their partners. Apple has the unique circumstances to do only what it needs to do itself. Android in Windows Mobile's Shoes. Like Windows Mobile, Android faces a difficult market. In the US, it competes against the popular BlackBerry in corporate markets and the iPhone among consumers. Worldwide, it competes against entrenched market leader Nokia. The difference is that Google, unlike Microsoft, has no in. Windows Mobile was adopted by Windows-bound IT shops despite its weaknesses. Nobody has any preexisting reason to try an Android phone apart from hobbyists and open software enthusiasts, a demographic that has done little to move Linux on the PC desktop. Google also lacks Microsoft's installed base; it's starting from zero. The smartphone industry initially doubted Apple's chances of making much progress with the iPhone, despite the company having the Mac platform, the iPod, retail stores, platform development experience, marketing savvy, industrial design prowess, and so on. Google doesn't have any of those things. Mobile Providers vs Android. Apple also started with an exclusive partnership with AT&T, a three legged race that demanded effort from both. Google is hoping that hardware makers handle the hardware details and that mobile providers will be excited to sell its Android phones. While hardware makers such as HTC clearly appreciate having found a free alternative to Windows Mobile, it's not obvious why providers would be excited about Android, as it promises an openness that most mobile providers strongly oppose. AT&T took a big risk in getting behind the iPhone, as the phone encouraged users to use email rather than fee-based SMS and MMS, it supported WiFi for data access, and it bypassed AT&T's MEdia Net services to plug into iTunes instead. Verizon refused to parter with Apple and grant it those kinds of concessions. Is AT&T going to take a similar risk to partner with a phone that is not exclusive to it, and is Verizon now going to open its arms to support phones that do not exclusively support BREW, VCast and its other proprietary services? While Android may well eat into Microsoft's Windows Mobile business by stealing away its hardware makers, it seems unlikely that Android will ever serve as more than free alternative to Windows Mobile in a market where Windows Mobile is increasingly irrelevant. Android may have the dubious distinction of swallowing Microsoft's mobile business the same way Microsoft ate up the Palm OS, but even if it accomplishes that goal, Google will likely find itself unsustainably hungry immediately afterward. It will also find itself swimming in a shark tank of hungry rivals, including Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry, and Apple's iPhone. Symbian is the final generic platform vying for the opportunity to play DOS in the smartphone market. The next article will examine Nokia's chances in its bid to match Microsoft's PC dominance in the mobile market while setting out in a new venture to copy Android's open software model. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
Navigon updates iPhone app, adds some desired features

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App ReviewNavigon, as promised, has updated MobileNavigator [iTunes link] for the iPhone. According to the developer: "The free update adds a couple of new features and enhancements to the MobileNavigator. NAVIGON's route planning function known from the companies PND line enables users to plan a route with different destinations ahead of time. Taking advantage of the iPhone's own functionalities, a call POI (point of Interest) function allows to directly call the number of a POI such as a restaurant or hotel by simply clicking on the number. It is also possible to save it to the user's contacts. Furthermore, the update provides an optimized volume control when navigating and using the integrated iPod function of the iPhone at the same time. It also allows to decide which POIs should be displayed in the map view." I have tested the new functions and can verify that they work as advertised, except for the ability to save a POI in my contacts list. I've asked Navigon for the secret. Update: You hold the phone number in the POI list down for a moment, and a menu appears allowing you to save the contact, add to an existing contact, or send a text message to that number. Navigon has also updated the GUI, and while en-route you can get time of arrival and distance to destination without having to click on the screen. The map also displays your current speed, the posted speed limit (if available in the database) and the distance to your next turn. While the points of interest database is not as large as the AT&T Navigator app, which is web connected, it is reasonably up-to-date and complete. A shopping center near me which opened last November was there, along with the new roads that were built around it. The database won't be perfectly up-to-date, but frankly, even Google is behind on POI locations near me. Coming in future updates to MobileNavigator is real-time traffic, and text-to-speech, so street names get announced when approaching a turn. I know those are biggies for many buyers. The Navigon MobileNavigator is $69.99 until the end of this month, when it goes up to $99.99. There is also an update coming soon for the excellent iGO Navigator, so it is interesting to see the competition forcing new features and innovations. I just received a press release from ALK Technologies announcing their CoPilot Live [iTunes link] nav solution for the iPhone. It looks feature complete, and sells for US$34.99. We'll be reviewing it ASAP. If you are looking for nav for your iPhone, it's a good time to start comparing, and there are more apps and the TomTom solution on the way. Here are some screen grabs from the latest version: Gallery: Navigon UpdateTUAWNavigon updates iPhone app, adds some desired features originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Sponsored Topics: iPhone - AppStore - Apple - TomTom - Google
50 Common Mac Problems Solved

We present the Ultimate Mac Troubleshooting Guide, so you can banish the peskiest problems once and for all.� � Mac problems? Isn’t that an oxymoron? If you just switched to the Mac from Windows, you might be thinking that you accidentally picked up one of your old PC magazines--and, by the way, we’ve got solutions to the seven most common problems switchers encounter, too. If you’re a longtime Mac user, you could even be wondering where we get off accusing the Mac platform of being problematic.Using a Mac is generally painless and trouble free, but things can go wrong. Usually they’re not catastrophic (for solutions to true Mac disasters, click here). Sometimes the things that go wrong are those little annoying things that you just shrug off--over and over, until you finally have to deal with them.We’re here to help you tackle the 50 most common problems in eight different categories, once and for all. If your problem isn’t covered here, email us at ask@maclife.com, and we’ll try to solve it in a future issue.�General Mac Problems�The Mac OS is, fundamentally, as trouble-free as operating systems get. But nothing's perfect. Here's what to do when you hit a snag.1. I want a tabbed finder.Download the incredibly versatile Path Finder ($40, www.cocoatech.com), which gives you all sorts of features that are missing from the Finder, such as tabs, stacks, bookmarks, and panes. Sounds like fun to us!Now THIS is the Finder we've always dreamed of. Thanks, Path Finder!2. I can't print anymore.This could be caused by a variety of different issues relating to your printer hardware or printer drivers, so you may need to contact the printer manufacturer for more help. But if your Mac is causing the problem, it’s always a good idea to reset your entire printing system by going into your Print & Fax System Preference, right-clicking in the printer list, and choosing Reset Printing System.3. I travel all over town with my MacBook, and I’m sick of reconfiguring my settings every time I show up at a location I’ve been to before. Why can’t my Mac remember various location settings for me--my default printer, mounted servers, iChat screen name, Bluetooth settings, everything? Try NetworkLocation ($29, www.networklocationapp.com), which can perform dozens of actions on your Mac whenever you switch to a new location. Best of all, its AutoLocate feature will determine where you are, using the same SkyHook Wireless Wi-Fi Positioning System that your iPhone uses, and it will automatically change all of your settings for you. If you frequently switch physical locations, NetworkLocation can save you both time and headaches changing your Mac's settings.�4. I forgot my OS X password.After retyping your password very carefully at least twice to make sure you just didn’t mistype it, you’ll need to haul out your OS X install disk, insert it into your Mac and restart holding down the C button. After selecting your language of choice, in the menubar, select Utilities > Reset Password. Follow the directions and there you go. Just try not to get a lobotomy after resetting it!5. My CD or DVD is stuck in the optical drive and won’t come out when I press Eject.After holding down the eject button for several seconds to no avail, restart your Mac and hold down the primary button on your mouse--the trackpad button will work as well if you’re on a MacBook--and during startup the disk should eject.6. My Mac is not recognizing devices plugged in to one of my USB ports.First, make sure your Mac’s firmware is up to date--check Software Update and the Apple Support Downloads page (support.apple.com/downloads/) and install any firmware updates you find for your machine.If nothing happens, turn off your Mac, unplug the power cable, disconnect all peripherals, and let it sit for five minutes. Plug it back in, reconnect the keyboard and mouse, turn it back on, and try the USB ports again.Check the Support Downloads page for firmware updates for your Mac.If they’re still unresponsive, you will need to reset the PRAM (parameter RAM) and NVRAM (nonvolatile RAM), which stores some system and device settings that your Mac accesses on startup. Shut your Mac down. Then position your fingers above the Command, Option, P, and R keys on your keyboard. Turn the Mac on, then immediately press and hold those four keys before you see the gray screen. Keep them pressed until the Mac restarts again and you hear the startup chime for the second time. Then let ’em go. When your Mac is finished starting up, check those pesky USB ports.If they’re still not behaving, there’s one more thing you can try before making a Genius Bar appointment: resetting the SMC, or system management controller. Directions for resetting the SMC on your MacBook Pro are found at support.apple.com/kb/HT1411. Instructions for all other Macs are linked from support.apple.com/kb/HT1894.�In Search Of...Search Solutions�Leopard makes finding files and data on your Mac relatively trouble-free, but when it comes to search, there are improvements and tricks you can apply to make it even better. Here are two solutions to common search problems we hear about from a fair number of Mac users.�7. My Spotlight results have stopped working reliably.If it’s a single non-Apple program that isn’t showing up properly in your Spotlight results, try turning off and on the Spotlight indexing in that particular app.If you’re still getting Spotlight results for an app that you got rid of a while ago, you may not have completely deleted all of the data or databases that are associated with that program.Spotless gives you a nice GUI for managing, deleting, and rebuilding your Spotlight indexes.If it’s an Apple program--or your entire Mac--that isn’t working properly in Spotlight, try re-indexing your whole hard drive by going into the Spotlight System Preference, clicking on the Privacy tab, then dragging your hard drive into the list. Wait a moment, and then remove your hard drive from the list again.If you’re still having problems, you may need to bring out the big guns by using Spotless ($17, www.fixamac.net), a Spotlight index-management tool that can help fix most Spotlight problems.8. I need more power, flexibility, and customizability with my Spotlight searches and Spotlight results.Get HoudahSpot ($25, www.houdah.com), which lets you create extremely detailed search requests and customize the results to your liking.HoudahSpot handles Spotlight searches with much more flexability than Apple's built-in Spotlight search.� 3 Essential Utilities�Three more Mac problems solved--before they happen!�9. Disk Warrior($100, www.alsoft.com) This is a great preventative maintenance tool for rebuilding your Mac's directory and keeping your mac running quickly and smoothly. It's also a great emergency tool for repairing disks that have missing files or will no longer mount.10. Cocktail($15, www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php). This general all-purpose utility will clean the caches on your machine, run the UNIX maintenance scripts, unlock hidden features of your Mac, and much more.11. SuperDuper($28, www.shirt-pocket.com). This disk cloning utility is great for backing up or transferring all the data on your entire computer to a fully bootable state.�Next Page: Email and Web Problems...�Email and Web Problems �We know you spend most of your time in front of a Mac online or pounding out email. Here's how to answer when trouble comes knocking.�12. I use a webmail client to check email, but every time I click on an email link, it launches Apple Mail instead.You can set up Apple Mail to access your webmail account using IMAP or POP (check with your webmail provider for instructions on how to do this; some charge a fee for this service), or you can install the program Webmailer (free, www.belkadan.com/webmailer), which lets you set any webmail site as your default email program.We set up Webmailer to take us to Yahoo's webmail system whenever we click on an email link.If you use Gmail, you have a few additional choices: You can install Google Notifier (free, toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper) and set that to your default email client in Mail’s preferences. Or you can use the outstanding Mailplane ($25, www.mailplaneapp.com), which provides many more features than the Gmail website.13. I can receive but not send email messages.Outgoing email messages are typically sent over the Internet using TCP port numbers 25, 465, or 587. However, in an effort to reduce spam, some ISPs and firewalls are set up to severely restrict the use of those ports. For example, AT&T is notorious for blocking port 25 for its DSL customers, unless you’re sending email with the AT&T email address assigned to your DSL modem. If you’re using AT&T (or another service provider that has similar restrictions), call the technical support number and request that they unblock port 25 for you. If you don’t control the Internet access where you are located, contact your email host to see if they have an alternate port that you can send email on. You can specify alternate port numbers in your email app’s account settings. If all else fails, you should be able to send email through your webmail system until you can physically get yourself to a different location that has no restrictions.Our Web-hosting company, hostbaby.com, allows us to send email messages over alternate port 2525, which typically bypasses any firewall restrictions that have been put in place.14. When I reply to or forward an email, the original message isn't entirely quoted in my reply--sometimes just the header and a few characters are quoted.If you used your mouse to highlight some text in the original email, and then you clicked on forward or reply, only the words that you selected will be quoted in your new email. To override this behavior in Mail (it can’t be overridden in Entourage), go into Mail’s Preferences, click on the Composing button, and you can set it to include all of the original message. If the problem still happens after this, your Mail preferences might be corrupt. Quit Mail, and trash the file located at yourhomefolder/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. Also try upgrading to Snow Leopard, which makes Mail more reliable in general.The Composing preference in Mail ensures that your replies and forwards will always quote the original email message in their entirety.15. I want to send an email later, not now.Each email client handles this slightly differently.In Entourage, choose Message > Send Message Later or click on the Send Later button. (In Entourage 2008, you’ll need to add the Send Later button to your toolbar by choosing View > Customize Toolbar from any outgoing message.) Your messages will queue up in your outbox, and then you can send them all at once by creating an Entourage schedule (Tools > Schedules) or by clicking the Send & Receive button.In Thunderbird, choose File > Send Later. Your messages will queue up in the Unsent folder until you choose File > Send Unsent Messages.The Send Later Extension lets you schedule your outgoing messages in Thunderbird.The Send Later Extension for Thunderbird (free, www.unsignedbyte.com/?page_id=4) lets you schedule an exact date and time in the future to send your message.Surprisingly, Mail provides no ability to send messages later. You could take all your accounts offline (Mailbox > Take All Accounts Offline) before clicking on the Send button, in which case your messages disappear until you quit and relaunch Mail to find a temporary outbox with your messages sitting in them. Or, to schedule emails for a later delivery time that you specify, install the Schedule Delivery script which is a part of Mail Scripts (donations requested, homepage.mac.com/aamann/).Finally, LetterMeLater (free, www.lettermelater.com) offers another way to schedule emails to be sent at a later time.16. I have multiple folders entitled Drafts, Sent, Junk, or Trash for my IMAP email account.Setting up an IMAP account can be a little tricky. After typing your valid account settings into your email program, there are two additional steps:First, you’ll need to set the proper IMAP path prefix (sometimes called the “root folder” or IMAP server directory) in your account settings. For example, Gmail’s IMAP Path Prefix is [Gmail].Defining your IMAP server's root folder is an often-forgotten step when setting up an IMAP email account.In Entourage, you set this on the Options tab of your IMAP’s account settings. In Thunderbird, click the Advanced button on the Server Settings tab. In Mail, this is on the Advanced tab of your IMAP’s account settings.Then you’ll need to designate which folders on the server should be used for storing your drafts, sent messages, trash, and junk. In Entourage, you set this on the Advanced tab of your IMAP’s account settings. In Thunderbird, this is done in the Copies & Folders section of your account settings. In Mail, go out to your main viewer window and select a folder on the server (in the left-hand margin, underneath the IMAP account name), then choose Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For.17. Whenever I address an outgoing email, I get unwanted email addresses for people who aren't in my address book.Most email clients keep track of addresses that you’ve emailed to in the past and will suggest those addresses to you in the future when you start to type the same characters. You can turn off this feature in Entourage and Thunderbird by going into their preferences. In Entourage, this is found on the Compose tab. In Thunderbird, this is on the Composition > Addressing tab. You can’t turn off this feature in Mail, but you can clear the list from time-to-time by selecting Window > Previous Recipients, selecting the names and clicking Remove from List.In Mail, you have complete control over your Previous Recipients list.18. When I email long Web links to others, they sometimes get broken up onto multiple lines and don't work correctly.Try putting angle brackets () around long URLs to help them travel safely across the Internet without “breaking.” Or you turn to TinyURL (free, www.tinyurl.com), which will turn those long URLs into, well, tiny URLs!19. I wish Safari's built-in search field worked with more websites than just Google.You may want to switch to Firefox, which has the built-in ability to customize its search field with any number of search engines that you specify. Otherwise, check out the Safari plug-ins Saft ($12, haoli.dnsalias.com) or Glims (free, machangout.com), both of which let you customize Safari’s Google search field. And one of our favorite utilities, iSeek ($15, www.ambrosiasw.com) lets you add a global customizable search field to your Mac’s menubar that works with any Web browser.iSeek places a fully customizable search field in our menubar at all times.20. I want to filter inappropriate websites so my kids can't access them.Although Mac OS X has built-in parental controls that you can turn on for individual accounts, you can gain more control by purchasing software like ContentBarrier ($50, www.intego.com) or Net Nanny ($39.99 a year, www.netnanny.com). Even better, we’ve discovered that one of the quickest, easiest, and most effective ways of filtering all the computers in your entire household is to switch your DNS servers to the free OpenDNS servers (free, www.opendns.com).ContentBarrier is one of many options you have for blocking websites on your Mac.�21. My Internet connection is slow.That’s a tricky one. A sluggish Net connection could be caused by any number of things, so here are a few troubleshooting tips to start with:Try resetting Safari (Safari > Reset Safari). Then, try a different Web browser to see if the problem happens there as well. You may also want to uninstall any Internet plug-ins that you have installed recently.Next, check your upload and download speeds at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and see if you’re getting the speeds you’re paying for. If not, try power cycling both your modem and router, such as your Airport Extreme. Turn off or unplug the device, let it sit powered off for several minutes, then plug it in or switch it on again.Our latest speed test from Speakeasy.net shows us that we're not currently getting the full upload speeds for which we've been paying the big bucks!If these methods don’t address the slowdown, try plugging your modem directly into your Mac using an Ethernet cable to see if the problem goes away. If so, your router may be the problem. If you’re using an Airport Extreme or Airport Express, launch Airport Utility to see if there is a firmware upgrade available. If so, install the firmware upgrade and see if that helps.If not, your Mac could be the problem--you may need to perform an Archive and Install of your operating system, which is one of your options on the Mac OS X Leopard Installation DVD.And it’s always possible that your modem or Internet line is the problem too, in which case you should call your ISP’s technical support number.�Next Page: Photo and Office/iWork Problems...�Photo Problems�These solutions to common photo issues will make you want to say "cheese." 22. I need to quickly resize an image and make some color corrections to it, but I can't afford Photoshop and don't really want to learn how to use it.Preview has the built-in ability to resize images and adjust colors. Open up your image in Preview and select Tools > Adjust Size or Adjust Color.This image-size adjustment dialog box is from Preview, not Photoshop!23. I want to email photos from iPhoto through my webmail account by clicking on iPhoto's Email button.Even if you’ve installed Webmailer, as mentioned in problem #12, the email button in iPhoto will only work with four email clients: AOL, Eudora, Entourage, and Mail.However, if you use Gmail, you’re in luck because Mailplane ($25, www.mailplaneapp.com) installs an iPhoto plug-in that lets you click on iPhoto’s Email button and send your messages through your Gmail account.In any dialog box, you can activate QuickLook when browsing your iPhoto Library by selecting a photo and pressing the spacebar.Otherwise, go into your webmail program, and attach photos using the standard method. Leopard’s dialog boxes give you the ability to browse through your iPhoto library, and they even let you use QuickLook by clicking on a photo and pressing the spacebar.24. I want to use iPhoto '09 to export photos to Facebook, but there are too many problems with it.Forget about using iPhoto ’09’s poorly implemented Facebook “integration.” Instead, use the outstanding Facebook Exporter for iPhoto (free, developers.facebook.com/iphoto).Use Facebook Exporter for iPhoto to tag, add captions to, and upload your Facebook photos right from within iPhoto.25. I created a PDF file with lots of embedded photos in it, but now the file is way too large to email.Open up the large PDF file in Preview and select File > Save As. Where it says Quartz Filter, choose Reduce File Size, then click Save. Voilà! You’ve now saved a much smaller version of your PDF file, which will be easier to email.Choose this Quartz Filter in Preview to reduce the size (and quality) of large PDF files so you can email them without choking your email server.For even more control over the resulting quality of PDF size reduction--and to batch-process multiple PDF files at once--try PDFshrink ($35, www.apago.com).If you still can’t get the file small enough for your needs, try a file-sending service such as YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com).26. Somebody emailed me a PDF file with lots of embedded photos in it, and I need to extract the photos from the file.File Juicer ($18, www.echoone.com) will extract images, sounds, and more from any filetype.File Juicer can extract all these types of files out of other files.�Office/iWork Problems�Work smarter not harder with these troubleshooting tips for common productivity apps.�27. I created an awesome slide show in Keynote, but I have to present it on a PC. I tried exporting it to Microsoft PowerPoint format, but I lost my transitions, effects, transparencies, gradients, and more--basically, all the cool stuff.Export your Keynote file to a QuickTime movie instead. As long as the PC has QuickTime installed on it (which it should, if it has iTunes installed), you’ll be able to play back your presentation with all of its awesomeness intact. If the PC doesn’t have QuickTime, download it for free from www.apple.com/quicktime.With the "Fixed Timing" option, we can set our QuickTime movie to automatically advance to the next slide on a regular interval.When you export your movie, you have several options for how it should advance from one slide to the next. For example, if you set it to manually advance, you simply have to press the spacebar on the PC to move to the next slide.28. I’ve included presenter notes (View > Show Presenter Notes) in a Keynote slide show, but when I play or rehearse the slide show, the notes don’t show up onscreen.In Keynote’s preferences, click on the Presenter Display button, and check the boxes for Notes and “Use alternate display to view presenter information.” Now your notes will show up when you play or rehearse your slide show.This checkbox lets you toggle between mirrored displays and dual displays.However, if you start seeing your notes on both your computer screen and the projector’s screen, your computer is set to mirrored (instead of dual) displays. You can toggle these display modes while the projector is connected to your Mac by launching System Preferences, choosing Display > Arrangement, and deselecting the Mirror Displays checkbox.29. I use Office 2008 to create Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files, but my Mac-using colleagues can’t open the files because they’re using Office 2004.TextEdit can open and edit Word 2008 files. And if your colleagues have iWork ’09 installed, they can work with all of your Office 2008 files in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote.Otherwise, you’ll need to save the file in an earlier file format. Choose File > Save As and select the format that corresponds to Office 97–2004. You can also set this older format as the default in your preferences for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.Choose the .doc format to avoid compatibility issues with people using earlier versions of Microsoft Word.Alternatively, your colleagues can install Microsoft’s Open XML File Format Converter (free, www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads), which will convert your Office 2008 files into a format that Office 2004 can read.�Next Page: Syncing Problems... �Syncing Problems�Data syncing can be particularly stressful since we need access to info anywhere these days. We've got solutions.�30. I want to sync some--but not all--of my iCal calendars across my Macs.Don’t use MobileMe to sync, which always synchronizes all of your calendars. Instead, use BusySync ($25, www.busymac.com) or BusyCal ($40, www.busymac.com), which both give you an incredible amount of syncing options.BusyMac's products are true champions when it comes to publishing and subscribing selected calendars without any dedicated servers.31. I want to synchronize my iCal calendars and Address Book on my Mac to Outlook on a PC.Sign up for MobileMe ($99 a year, www.apple.com), which will keep all of your Macs and PCs (and iPhones!) in sync with each other.Spanning Sync effortlessly syncs your calendars and contacts to Google.Or, you can use Google Calendar and Google Contacts as a conduit. On the Mac side, you’ll need Spanning Sync ($25/year or $65/one-time purchase, spanningsync.com). On the PC side, you’ll need Google Apps Sync ($50/year, tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync).32. I keep getting duplicate entries on my iCal calendar.Sounds like you’re trying to sync your Entourage calendar with iCal. There’s a known bug with Entourage that causes repeating events to multiply out of control in iCal. We don’t know of any long-term solution at this time except to ditch Entourage’s calendar and stick to iCal for your calendaring needs. To do this, uncheck the box for syncing events in Entourage’s Preferences (on the Sync Services pane). To erase iCal dupes, try iCal Cleaner (free, www.busymac.com).33. I’m getting two of each calendar entry on my iPhone.You may be trying to sync your calendars through both iTunes and MobileMe. You’ll need to choose one method or the other, not both. If you’re syncing wirelessly through MobileMe, then go into your iPhone settings within iTunes and uncheck all of your calendars there.The exception to this rule is iCal’s Birthdays calendar (enabled in iCal’s preferences, this calendar pulls birthdays from your Address Book), which can only be synced through iTunes, so it must remain checked in iTunes.34. My U.S. Holidays and other Internet-subscribed iCal calendars are not syncing between my Mac and my iPhone.Any Internet-subscribed calendars must be resubscribed to directly from your iPhone. You can manually set up the server on your iPhone by going to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account > Other > Calendars.You must resubscribe to your iCal holiday calendars on your iPhone all over again.Or, you can automatically subscribe to a calendar by using Safari on your iPhone to choose from Apple’s extensive selection of calendars at www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars.35. iTunes no longer launches automatically when I attach my iPod or iPhone to my computer.If your iPhone or iPod is very low on power or if the battery is fully depleted, it can take up to 10 minutes to appear under Devices in iTunes.Otherwise, you may have unchecked the box in iTunes for your device that says “Automatically sync when this iPhone/iPod is connected” or “Open iTunes when this iPod is attached.”You may have also removed the iTunesHelper application from your Login Items in your Account System Preferences, which is required to automatically launch iTunes. You can get this back by reinstalling iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes) or by manually dragging iTunesHelper into the Login Items. iTunesHelper can be found by right-clicking on iTunes in the Finder and choosing Show Package Contents, then going to Contents > Resources.36. I want to synchronize files between two computers.There are many different programs available to help you with this task, but our favorite is ChronoSync ($40, www.econtechnologies.com). ChronoSync can automatically mount remote servers, wake your local Mac from sleep, schedule your synchronizations, archive backup copies of your files before syncing, and even give you a list of proposed changes before it makes any of them.Synchronizing files between two different computers is as simple as drag-and-drop with ChronoSync.While you can use ChronoSync to synchronize to any type of volume or folder, if you specifically want to sync to another computer, you may want to additionally purchase ChronoAgent for an extra $10. ChronoAgent lets you communicate directly with a remote Mac faster than using AFP or SMB, and you gain full root access, so you can copy anything without any restrictions.37. I turned on MobileMe syncing on my iPhone, but nothing is syncing to my Mac or Me.com.It’s possible that the MobileMe servers aren’t communicating properly with your iPhone. An Apple support rep recently admitted to us that this is an extremely common problem that MobileMe users may experience every few months until Apple increases the reliability of its MobileMe syncing servers. So you may want to keep these instructions handy for future reference.First, find out if MobileMe sees your iPhone at all. Activate Find My iPhone on your iPhone (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > your me.com account > Find My iPhone). Then, from a computer (not your iPhone), go to your MobileMe account page at https://secure.me.com/yourusername. Click on Find My iPhone to see if the MobileMe website sees your phone. If not, try turning off your iPhone and turning it back on again. If the MobileMe site still doesn’t see your phone, try deleting your MobileMe account on your iPhone and re-creating it again.We feel like Big Brother is watching us with Find My iPhone's crosshairs centered directly on our house!Once Me.com sees your iPhone, try adding an event or a contact to your phone and see if the change shows up on your MobileMe calendar (www.me.com/calendar) or address book (www.me.com/contacts) within a few minutes.If not, you will probably have to reset all of your sync data on Me.com with information from your Mac’s iCal and Address Book. Make a mental note of any recent unsynced changes you’ve made on your iPhone, because you’re going to lose them in this process. Also, sign out of Me.com. Go into the MobileMe System Preference on your Mac, select the Sync tab, click on Advanced, and then click Reset Sync Data. Click on the right arrow so that you are replacing all sync info on MobileMe with “info from this computer.”Log back into Me.com and verify that it now has your current information for contacts and calendars. If not, you will have to reset the SyncServices database on your Mac. Apple has instructions on this process at support.apple.com/kb/TS1627.But before following those instructions, be sure to do two things on your Mac: First, repair your permissions using Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities), and, second, repair your keychain using Keychain Access (in Disk Utility, pull down from the Keychain Access menu and select Keychain First Aid). After that, try syncing again from the MobileMe System Preference pane.This is how it should look when you're about to overwrite information on the MobileMe website with information from your Mac.Once Me.com has your current information, you are ready to go back to your iPhone. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data. Turn Push off, then completely turn off your phone for 30 seconds. Turn your phone back on and re-enable push. Then, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > your Me.com account and turn off and on each one of the sliders for the information that you’re trying to sync (Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, etc).Wait several minutes, and hopefully all your current information will reappear in your calendar and contacts on your iPhone.If not, you will probably need to have a live chat with a MobileMe support agent. Go to www.apple.com/support/mobileme. Choose any of the troubleshooting options underneath Syncing with MobileMe in the left-hand margin, and a Chat Now button will appear.�Next Page: Video, Music, and Backup Problems... �Video Problems�These tips address problems you might encounter trying to play video files on your Mac.�38. I’m trying to use my Apple Remote on my Mac to watch movies through Front Row, but the other computers in the room--along with my Apple TV--are inadvertently responding to my remote’s button presses.You need to pair each one of your Apple Remotes to a particular device. Apple has instructions on how to do this at support.apple.com/kb/HT1619.39. Sometimes I can't play Web videos.Out of the box, your Mac can only play Flash and QuickTime videos. To play other video formats, you’ll need to install one or more of the following free apps:>> Flip4Mac Windows Media Components for QuickTime (www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx)>> Perian (www.perian.org)>> Microsoft Silverlight (www.microsoft.com/silverlight/)>> RealPlayer (www.real.com)>> VLC (www.videolan.org)40. I want to convert video files to other formats, particularly those that will work on my iPod or iPhone.To convert your video files into many different formats--including iPhone and iPod compatible formats--try Video Monkey (free, videomonkey.org), VideoDrive (7.99 euros, www.aroona.net), or CosmoPod (8.90 euros, www.cocoamug.com). To convert DVDs, try HandBrake (free, www.handbrake.fr).41. I want to download a Flash video from the Web.There’s a little-known trick in Safari that lets you download Flash videos that are embedded in webpages. Bring up the Activity Viewer (Window > Activity) and look for a file that appears that it may be your video file, perhaps based on its large size or the fact that it is so large that it is still loading. When it‘s finished loading, hold down the Option key and double-click on the video file. Safari will download the file into your Downloads folder for you, and you can monitor the progress through the Downloads window.Little-known Safari secret: You can download Flash vids, like Funny or Die's famous "The Landlord" starring Will Ferrell, to your Desktop to watch at your leisure.If you’d like an easier way to download Flash videos, try TubeTV (donations requested, www.chimoosoft.com), Videobox ($15, www.tastyapps.com), or TubeSock ($15, www.stinkbot.com).42. I want to download a QuickTime video from the Web to my Mac, so I can watch it later.If you’ve purchased QuickTime Pro ($30, www.apple.com/quicktime), you can download many QuickTime videos right from the Web by clicking on the triangle in the lower right-hand corner of the video and choosing Save As QuickTime Movie.However, some QuickTime videos, including those on Apple’s website, don’t let you download them directly. To download these devious videos--with or without QuickTime Pro--view the source of the webpage in Safari (View > View Source) or Firefox (View > Page Source). Do a search for .mov (the file extension for QuickTime videos) to find the full URL of the video file. When you find it, copy the entire URL of the video file. Then, launch QuickTime Player on your Mac and select File > Open URL and paste in the URL. Now you can save the video file onto your computer.43. I bought an external USB webcam, but my Mac laptop isn’t recognizing it.If your Mac is running Mac OS 10.4.11 or later, it can recognize almost any USB webcam on the market, usually without installing any drivers.If you’re running the latest version of OS X but still having problems, the iUSBCam (www.ecamm.com/mac/iusbcam) and macam (webcam-osx.sourceforge.net) websites provide helpful tips and driver downloads.Note that Mac programs like iChat and Skype will first try to use your built-in internal camera before using any external webcams. To change this, you’ll need to go into the preferences of those programs to change your video input source.If you’re unsuccessfully trying to use your external webcam in Photo Booth, you have to switch back to the internal camera in iChat’s preferences before launching Photo Booth.�Music Problems�How to keep rocking in the free world.�44. I want to make iPhone ringtones from a song that I didn’t purchase (or isn’t available for purchase) from the iTunes Store.If you have a track in iTunes that you own on CD and that you’ve ripped to iTunes, you can make a ringtone from it for free in GarageBand ’09. Click here for instructions and scroll down to “Roll Your Own iPhone Ringtones,” which also provides instructions for doing the same thing in QuickTime Pro).45. My iTunes library is full of duplicates.For smaller libraries, use iTunes’ Show Duplicates feature (File > Show Duplicates) and manually remove the extra files. iTunes only matches on Artist and Title information though, so be careful not to delete legit alternate versions of tracks--live versions, for example. For better duplicate control, try Dupin or some of the iTunes scripts available at www.dougscripts.com.46. One of the rubber tips from a pair of third-party earbuds got stuck in my ear--help!Believe it or not, this has happened to us too--more than once. We recommend keeping a pair of tweezers handy, just in case a tip come off in your ear canal, which can sometimes happen if you pull the ’bud out too quickly. It’s happened to two Mac|Life editors, both of whom agree that having something small and unreachable lodged in your ear can be pretty traumatic.47. My iTunes library is spread across multiple Macs. How can I keep two iTunes libraries synchronized?If all you want to do is listen to iTunes music housed on another local Mac (i.e. connected to the local network), just turn on iTunes’ sharing feature (Preferences > Sharing and check “Look for shared libraries”). To share your own tracks, also check “Share my library on my local network.” You can also store libraries on a network drive that supports iTunes sharing, to share tunes without needing another Mac up and running all the time. To keep two libraries in step for syncing iPods, use a utility like TuneRanger ($29.99, my.smithmicro.com) or SuperSync ($29, www.supersync.com).You don't have to share all your iTunes content--and you can password-protect it if you want, too.�Backup Problems�Don't tell us you don't back up--especially since Time Machine makes it so easy! Here's what to do when you run into problems.�48. I want to restore a file from a Time Machine backup of a different Mac or an older backup of my main Mac that Time Machine no longer recognizes (due to a new backup drive, a new logic board, or a new internal hard drive).You can restore any Time Machine backup onto any Mac, if you know a few tricks involved with restoring.The first one is related to an odd decision by Apple: You can only browse other Time Machine volumes by adding the Time Machine icon to your dock, then right-clicking on the icon and selecting Browse Other Time Machine Disks.There's our hidden option to browse other Time Machine disks!But even if you do that, it won’t see your Time Capsule or other external Time Machine drives, even if they’re mounted on your Desktop. In Finder, you actually have to manually choose the .sparsebundle file that represents the computer that was backed up, double-click on this file, let it mount on your Desktop, and then Time Machine will let you choose the resulting mounted disk image to restore from.49. Time Machine is giving me an error message that’s too vague for me to interpret.The programs TM Error Logger (donations requested, www.carnationsoftware.com) and Time Machine Buddy (free, www.bluedog.com.au) can help you interpret what has gone wrong with your Time Machine backup.50. I’d like Time Machine to back up to multiple external hard drives, so I can keep one backup drive offsite and one backup drive onsite.Time Machine can correctly keep track of backups on multiple external hard drives. Just give your hard drives different names, and whenever you connect the other drive, you’ll need to manually make a trip to Time Machine’s System Preference and change the disk there.�
How to Use Your Mac and Your iPhone to Completely Automate Your Home

Modernize your home and simplify your life with these painless products and strategies that automate your house, apartment, castle, or whatever keeps the roof over your head.� �Illustrations by Hanoch Piven Still using jagged little strips of metal to unlock your front door? Paying someone to feed your pets while you’re away for a weekend? Then it’s time to truly enter the second decade of the 21st century. Setting up home-control automation that runs from your Mac and iPhone is surprisingly simple, and the results can feel like magic. We kick things off with a primer that takes the hassle and jargon out of home control, then dive straight into showing you the best possibilities for managing your home’s lights, entertainment, security, and loads more. Just wait until you check out the washing machine that tweets when it’s finished a load…�What Exactly is Home Control?�You might’ve also heard it called “home automation,” and you might be a bit reluctant to slog through all the jargon and devices that the phrase brings to mind. But really, it’s simple. There are two types of home-control systems: the fantasy technology you see at Disney’s Tomorrowland and the gear you can actually deploy in the real world. Unfortunately, manufacturers of home-control systems have overpromised and under-delivered for so many years that many people have just stopped listening.Good news: It’s safe to start listening again. There’s still a yawning chasm between fantasy and reality--we’re a long way from having a robot butler greet us with our smoking jacket and a perfectly muddled mojito as we step out of our flying car. But we can manage nearly every system in and around the home: lighting, heating and cooling, home theater, security, even irrigation.Why bother? Home-control systems are appealing for many reasons: They deliver unparalleled convenience and efficiency, they add value to your home, they strengthen your home’s physical security, and they help reduce your impact on the environment. With the right tools, you can monitor and manage all your home systems whether you’re on the couch, in the car, or at work. We’ll discuss those specific applications in the following pages, but first, it’s important to begin with an overview of the basics. Which home-control standard do you want to use? There are four major ecosystems to choose from, and naturally, they’re mutually exclusive (at least for the time being)…�X10/Insteon�Introduced by Pico Electronics way back in the 1970s, X10 is the granddaddy of home-control technology. The passage of time and the long absence of significant competition helped X10 amass the largest installed base of any home-control technology, despite a reputation for being as reliable as a British sports car from the same era.X10 devices use a primitive form of power-line networking, meaning commands travel over your home’s existing electrical wiring. The X10 protocol doesn’t include a feedback loop, so there’s no way for devices sending commands to know whether those commands have been received and executed. The technology is also highly susceptible to electrical noise, which X10 devices sometimes interpret as valid commands. This can result not only in false negatives (a light or an appliance doesn’t turn on or off in response to a command), but also false positives (turning on or off in the absence of a command).Insteon, developed by SmartLabs (a major distributor of X10 products) in 2001, builds and improves on the X10 protocol without rendering X10 devices obsolete. Like the ZigBee and Z-Wave standards we’ll discuss next, every node on the Insteon network is capable of receiving information and passing on the command to the next node if it’s not the intended target. Unlike those two standards, Insteon devices use both radio frequencies (RF) and power lines to communicate (this retains X10 compatibility and reaches devices where radio waves can’t penetrate).SmartLabs' Insteon uses radio frequencies and power lines to communicate.SmartLabs maintains its own online retail operation and sells directly to the do-it-yourself market. The Insteon ecosystem is extremely robust in terms of the systems it can manage. You can buy plug-in and in-the-wall lighting controls; thermostats; motion, door, and window sensors; irrigation controllers; and more. Third-party support is very good in some respects and surprisingly limited in others. For instance, you’ll find a number of Mac software controllers (see below), but none of the major lighting-control manufacturers in the U.S. (Cooper Wiring Devices, GE, Intermatic, or Leviton) build Insteon-compatible switches, dimmers, or receptacles.Insteon’s failure to gain support from other manufacturers will likely limit its long-term prospects. The development of a bridge (a device capable of translating commands from one standard to another) would save Insteon customers from getting hosed if the market ultimately embraces one of the other competing standards. �ZigBee�ZigBee is the only home-control specification based on an IEEE standard (IEEE is the leading standards organization for device manufacturers; you’ve likely heard of its 802.11 standard for wireless networking). And you might think ZigBee’s designation as an international standard would automatically render it the marketplace winner (after all, how many wireless-networking products buck 802.11?), but far fewer ZigBee products are available to the do-it-yourself crowd than either Insteon or Z-Wave.Part of the problem is that early versions of the ZigBee standard didn’t guarantee interoperability; companies were allowed to develop products that worked only within their own proprietary systems. ZigBee does have a strong presence in the energy-consumption and -management market, where it’s embedded in thermostats inside the home and in utility smart meters outside it. One of the largest home-control manufacturers, Control4, builds complete ZigBee-based systems; but you must acquire it from a contractor who will handle the installation (charging you handsomely and limiting your expansion options in the process).Few ZigBee devices are sold at retail today, and none of the Mac home-control software programs we looked at are capable of operating a ZigBee network yet. Still, ZigBee’s status as an IEEE standard carries a lot of weight, and that could make it a major contender down the road.�Z-Wave�Z-Wave is a proprietary wireless home-control standard developed by Zensys, and it enjoys robust support from more third-party manufacturers than either Insteon or ZigBee. Cooper, GE, Intermatic, and Leviton offer comprehensive Z-Wave lighting controls; Wayne-Dalton builds garage-door openers; Schlage manufactures door locks; and so on.Control your home's temperature with this Z-Wave thermostat from Trane. You can buy nearly all these products at retail, but Wayne-Dalton’s HousePort and TrickleStar’s Z-Wave widget are the only Mac-compatible home-control programs we’re aware of, and they’re both very rudimentary. But Z-Wave has gathered more industry-wide momentum than either Insteon or ZigBee (including a critical endorsement from Intel), which could help it become the eventual home-control standard. Hybrid ZigBee/Z-Wave systems are also an option--Control4, for instance, introduced a bridge device late last year that enables its ZigBee system to control Z-Wave devices. Handy.�The Future Awaits… �Even more good news: There’s no need to make a decision just yet. In the next few pages, we’ll outline the most useful automation options for everything from automatically turning on your lights to amazingly simple webcam security to streaming video servers. Once you decide what’s right for your home, refer back to this primer to decide which hardware standard and corresponding software is right for you. Then it’s time to get your DIY on… even if doing it yourself amounts to Googling “professional home automation installers.”�Home-Control Software�You'll need to manage your entire home-control system by running software on your Mac that "talks" to your various interfaced devices. The major software players are:Indigo: Perceptive Automation’s Indigo Lite ($89.95) is compatible with Insteon and X10 modules, but not ZigBee or Z-Wave. It includes both a built-in web server and client/server architecture, so you can control the entire system locally or remotely. You can also schedule events (turn on the outside lights at dusk), set up triggers (send an email message if a door sensor is activated; monitor and program your Insteon thermostat), and more. Indigo Pro ($179.95) adds a host of advanced features, such as voice-command response. You can also control Indigo with your iPhone using the free app Indigo Touch.Indigo's software enables you to control your system remotely.XTension: Sand Hill Engineering’s XTension ($149.95) is compatible with X10 devices, several RF and niche interfaces, and certain wireless weather-monitoring products manufactured by Oregon Scientific. A technically savvy audience--even home automation contractors--will find a lot to like, but the software doesn’t support ZigBee, Z-Wave, or Insteon modules, which is… odd.Thinking Home: Always Thinking’s Thinking Home ($79) works with X10 and Insteon modules, but not ZigBee or Z-Wave devices. It’s not as sophisticated as Indigo, but it covers the basics and boasts an easy-to-learn user interface. �Next Page: Lights, Power, Heating, Actions! >>Utilities: Lights, Power, Heating, Actions!�Play puppetmaster with your home's utilities from your Mac and iPhone, and reap the benefits of convenience and efficiency.�Light Your Way�Lighting automation puts the “utilitarian” into home-utility automation. These upgrades are flashy only on a literal level; you probably won’t go bragging to coworkers about how your House of the Future can turn its lights on and off. But these techniques form the foundation of home automation and make a great place to kick things off.For starters, try teaching your house to turn on the lights as you pull into the driveway. In addition to a basic home-control setup with Mac software and a hardware interface, you can add driveway-sensor modules ($169.99) or an automation-savvy garage-door retrofit ($71.99). Or just get a new garage-door opener ($189) with a Z-Wave interface to both control and monitor the door. With your Mac software, you can then build an if-then script that ties into your home lighting. If a car pulls into the driveway, activate the exterior house lighting. If you open the garage door, turn on the entryway lights inside.XTension lets you graphically assign icons that match your home setting.More sensors can create additional options. An outdoor motion sensor with floodlights ($54.88) can turn on when someone passes by. Your Mac could then log the time it happened and snap a webcam picture of your yard.You can take the process indoors, activating room lighting based on a motion sensor ($34.99). Full indoor automation can be harder since you might want to lounge around, but sitting without moving would turn the lights off. Still, it can work well in certain situations, such as lighting up a party as it moves around into different rooms.�Control Utilities and Devices Over the Internet�Most home automation software can connect online, letting you control devices from anywhere. Cancel your sprinkler schedule on a rainy day, open the shades in your teenager’s room at noon, adjust your thermostat when away, and otherwise tap into your setup over the Internet. Indigo and Thinking Home (see above for details) enable a web server within the automation interface. XTension uses an optional plug-in, X2Web ($39.95), to connect online.Indigo Touch, a free iPhone app, lets you change home-heating conditions from wherever you are. You could also remotely connect to an online Mac and control the whole computer as if you were sitting at home, directly using the automation software of your choice. Several remote-access tools enable this approach, including GoToMyPC ($19.95/month) and LogMeIn Free (free). LogMeIn even offers an iPhone version of the app, LogMeIn Ignition ($29.99). Or if you’re on MobileMe ($99/year), the Back to My Mac feature does the same thing. These tools might also be easier alternatives to setting up online components in the automation software because you shouldn’t have to make special network configurations on your home router to allow access.Open-ended plugs, such as the EZ102X4 (top) and the ApplianceLink V2, let you connect any device to your automation network.And many iPhone apps offer another way to connect to your hardware over the Internet. Indigo Touch (free) is a companion for that desktop software. Otherwise, just search for “X10,” “Insteon,” or “home automation” to browse the App Store. Be sure to read the requirements closely--some interface with software on your home Mac, while others talk directly to certain Internet-enabled automation controllers.�Create Your Own Animal House�You can more easily take good care of your pets in an automated house, especially if you’re coming home late or taking a short vacation. Some hardware ties directly into your setup, while you might have to creatively hack other devices.For occasional meals, consider an internet-connected device, such as the Petwatch feeder ($269.99). The hardware includes a webcam so you can view your pet wherever you are.With this Petwatch feeder, you can watch and feed your pets remotely.If you’re technically minded--or you can draft someone who is--get creative with other home automation devices for great pet combinations. Some pet doors unlock when Fido or Whiskers get close; their collars hold a key. For one option, try a Solo Pet Door ($395 and up). This device retracts when it senses a magnet that your pet wears.We couldn’t track down any pet doors that talk to home automation systems, but you can combine a door like this with your own sensors. Add a proximity sensor and webcam to track and record your pet movement; you could even have your Mac email or SMS a picture. If you add a power relay to the mix, such as the EZIO2X4 ($134.99) or Insteon ApplianceLink V2 ($34.99), you can lock the door remotely. Maybe you want to give your pets access depending on the time of day. Or you could lock the door after a cat returns from a night of carousing. (There’re loads of creative options out there; for a few more, see Top Ten Wonders of the Home Automation World below.)�Use Home Control To Live Greener�A home-control system can also help you to reduce your carbon footprint and use previous resources more efficiently. Here are six ways to get started:>> Rather than leaving your exterior lights on all day so your home isn’t dark when you get home, retrofit your light switches and use home-control software to turn them on when the sun sets.>> Conserve water by installing programmable sprinkler controllers that can adjust their irrigation schedules in response to weather conditions and forecasts.>> Create a vacation “scene” that turns your HVAC system off while you’re away. The system can also turn various lights on in the evening and off at night, using a randomized pattern that will fool prospective thieves into thinking the house is occupied.>> Install a programmable thermostat that turns your climate-control system off 30 minutes before you leave and 30 minutes before you’re scheduled to return home. Use your iPhone to remotely update the routine should your plans change.>> Reduce your electrical consumption and improve your media-room ambience by installing a dimmer that brings down the lights when you press Play on your remote control.>> Add an Insteon-enabled 220-volt control to your current high-voltage electrical appliances, such as a water heater (a notorious energy-waster), and conserve money and power by shutting them down during the day or when you’re away from home for extended periods.�Next Page: Become Master of All You Survey >> Security: Become Master of All You Survey�You install software updates to keep your Mac and iPhone secure. Let them return the favor by keeping tabs on your home while you're away.�Keep an iSight on Things�Mac has a built-in iSight--or almost any QuickTime-compatible camera attached--you’re one step away from a surveillance system. All you need is software like Security Spy ($50) or EvoCam ($30), and you’re in the counterespionage business. Each application records pictures and video to your Mac continuously, according to schedules you define, or when it detects motion in a camera’s field of view. Just launch the app, point your iSight where you expect snoops to sneak (like a doorway or maybe the desk holding your plans for world domination), then leave your computer running. When the camera picks up movement, the software can start recording, email you a photo of the suspicious event, or alert the Mac running your home automation system to trigger a larger security plan. If you’re more curious than concerned, both applications can upload pictures to an FTP site and serve video to the internet, letting you view your camera’s feed from a browser. You can even log in remotely and tweak your security camera’s settings.EvoCam's surveillance system indulges your counterespionage fantasies.An iSight or webcam is fine for a small room, but Security Spy and EvoCam can monitor and control multiple video sources simultaneously. If your need to know extends to several rooms or even outdoors, you’ll want to weave a larger web of spies... er, cameras.�Expand Your Horizons�Stepping up from a single-camera system doesn’t have to be difficult. The same software and principles apply; you’ll just add additional cameras, video servers, or network cameras to view and control it all from a central Mac. Video servers send footage from multiple cameras to your wired or wireless network. If your cameras are digital, other Macs running surveillance software can do the job of the server. But if you’re using analog cameras like Q-See’s night-vision-capable QSC48030 ($199.99), you’ll want a dedicated server like Axis’ 240Q ($499.99) to digitize the signals so they can be seen by your Mac.Monitor from afar with Axis's 214 PTZ camera.Network cameras have built-in web servers that can join networks without the need for extra gear. A wide range of network cameras is available for every budget, from Panasonic’s webcam-style, 802.11g-enabled BL-C131A ($299.95) to the Axis 214 PTZ ($1299.00), which wouldn’t look out of place in a villain’s lair (or on a department-store ceiling). These and many other network cameras also sport lenses that can remotely pan, tilt, or zoom in to give you a better view of the action.There are endless varieties of hardware to consider, but the good news is there’s plenty of gear out there to fit your needs. Both Security Spy and EvoCam’s sites offer lists of compatible equipment that make good starting points for building a home-surveillance network.�Sensor Yourself�Handy as video surveillance is, it probably won’t be a good fit for every room in your house. For places where cameras are impractical, obtrusive, or just plain weird, Insteon motion sensors and magnetic door switches can keep tabs on who goes there when you’ve gone out.SmartLabs Design’s battery-powered Wireless Motion/Occupancy Sensor ($34.99) installs almost anywhere to detect motion in a 110-degree arc at a range of 40 feet. When an intruder is discovered, the Mac running your Insteon system can send you an email, turn on lights, or release the hounds. Because these motion detectors work by sensing heat, you’ll want to install yours in places without extreme fluctuations in temperature. That includes areas near heating grates, fireplaces, or large windows that get lots of sun.SmartLabs' wireless motion sensor alerts you to intruders.If motion detectors won’t do the job, guard your perimeter with SmartLabs’ TriggerLinc Wireless Open/Close Sensor ($34.99). Half the sensor attaches to a door, and the other half installs beside it on the door frame. Opening the door breaks the magnetic contact between the halves, letting your network know a would-be 007 has entered the room or found the hidden compartment in your desk. Since the TriggerLinc is compact and wireless, it installs on just about anything that opens: windows, drawers, server closets, you name it. You’ll never wonder if the babysitter has raided your liquor cabinet again.�Unlock the Possibilities�Security isn’t just about keeping people out. It’s also about letting the right people in, and the internet can help. The web lets you access secure information... why can’t it open your front door? For a monthly fee of $12.99, that’s just what Schlage’s LiNK Starter Kit ($299) can do. Its lever lock (also available in a dead bolt model) replaces the one already installed in your door, and ten buttons above its traditional keyhole allow entry with a programmable access code. But the lock also sports a battery-powered transmitter that talks to the included Bridge, a base station that connects to the internet and creates a wireless network for other LiNK devices, like the lamp controller that rounds out the kit.Schlange's LiNK Starter Kit remotely opens your front door.Once you’re a LiNK subscriber, you can log in to Schlage’s site and control your lock from anywhere. Need a friend to check your house while you’re away? No problem--remotely program your lock with a custom access code. The in-laws arrived while you’re stuck at work? Just open the door for ’em (or don’t, we won’t judge). You can even use the free Schlage LiNK iPhone app to manage access while you’re on the go. If you’re worried about being locked out when the internet is down, Schlage claims its locks’ batteries will last up to three years... but keeping a spare key on hand never hurt anybody.�Put Professional Security a Touch Away�Schlage’s LiNK is one of several commercial packages that combine home security, automation, and the iPhone to monitor and control your home without fuss. Even if you’re not the DIY type, you can bring your peace of mind into this century.Commercial security companies offer plans and products designed to work together seamlessly. Products can include motion detectors, cameras, and other sensors run from a central control panel on a wall instead of your computer. While the basic idea is the same as a home-built system--devices monitor your house and warn you in case of trouble--commercial systems can offer integrated fire detection and alerts to personnel who will contact the authorities in an emergency. Plans cost anywhere from $30 to $50 a month (plus installation fees), but their features and simplicity may be worth the expense.For a monthly fee, commercial security companies can provide more than peace of mind.Alarm.com, CPI Security Systems, and Platinum Protection each offer free applications that let iPhone users control their security systems. These apps let you arm and disarm your system, monitor camera feeds, receive notifications when sensors detect something, and view a history of recent security events. Want to know what time your teenager really got home from his friend’s house? There’s an app for that.�Next Page: Just Stream It >> Entertainment: Just Stream It�Your entertainment wants to be set free... and you want it to be too. These four easy setups will help you get the most out of your music, movies, and TV.�Enjoy Your Music Everywhere�Setting up a streaming audio system for the first time is like that day when you switched to a DVR to watch TV--you’ll wonder how you ever enjoyed your tunes without it. Once all your music’s on a home network, you can listen to your songs from any computer or standalone music-playing device. Whether you’re unwinding, waking up in the morning, or broadcasting beats throughout your house for a party, you don’t have to fuss with issues like which Mac has which MP3 or where that blasted CD got to--all your music is where you want it to be.Mac fans typically choose between three major music-streaming systems: Apple AirPort Express ($99), Sonos hardware ($349 and up), or Logitech Squeezebox devices ($149 and up). Each system has its own infrastructure, including ways to control everything from an iPhone or iPod touch. And each one has benefits and drawbacks in certain situations.Apple's AirPort Express wirelessly connects your Mac to your stereo.As expected, Apple’s AirPort Express is the best match for iTunes… and little else. These little boxes connect to a small set of computer-style speakers or into a home stereo, so factor those costs into your budgeting. You’ll need one AirPort Express and speaker set for each room you want to play music in. An Apple TV ($229) can also do double duty, streaming music even when your TV is off.While AirPort Express scores with simplicity, there are a few drawbacks. One or more Macs will have to be left on to play music, and extra features that the other systems pack--such as alarms and online services beyond basic streaming radio--don’t work without additional software.Next up: the Logitech Squeezebox devices. They work well once set up, but they feel more complicated than the other choices. Their server software runs off one of your Macs, telling Squeezeboxes where to find your songs. Like the AirPort Express, you’ll have to have a Mac running to access home audio.Sonos Bundle--along with the Sonos app--turns your iPhone or iPod into a remote control.Unlike Apple’s option, Squeezebox devices can play back more internet choices, including Rhapsody and Napster subscriptions. And you won’t have to keep a Mac running when playing online sources--woot! Logitech also offers several Squeezebox devices, from a clock radio–style box with a built-in speaker to hardware that connects to an entertainment center. Consider the Squeezebox if you can sacrifice some of the AirPort Express’s simplicity for better internet features.Last but not least, Sonos rules high-end audio streaming because of the care put into its hardware and interfaces. And audiophiles can really hear the difference between a Sonos device and its competitors. Like Logitech, Sonos hardware comes in a few packages, some designed to attach to a home stereo, one with built-in speakers, and some that connect to speakers. Sonos devices lack an interface beyond volume/mute buttons, so you’ll typically control everything with the excellent standalone remote ($349) or iPhone app. Sonos’ internet streaming choices match the Squeezebox, but unlike either competitor, Sonos hardware can play music directly from a network hard drive, so you don’t need to keep a Mac running. But Sonos might K.O. your budget as much as it does its competitors. You can pick and choose which gear you want, but plan for roughly $500 or more per room. Yowza.�Share a Single iTunes Library with Multiple Macs�You’re probably thinking, wait… iTunes works well to share libraries and stream audio over a network. And if you’re happy with that method, there’s no harm in sticking with it. But iTunes sharing doesn’t let you sync music from any system to an iPod or compile ripped songs in a single location--and again, your main Mac needs to be left on for it to work. Fortunately, you can show your music who’s boss and let all of your Macs access a consolidated iTunes library.Before you begin, consider using TuneRanger ($29.99) to sync different libraries together into one master audio source. Then transfer that combined music folder to a network server or always-on Mac that everyone can reach. Launch iTunes on one Mac while holding Option, pick Choose Library, and navigate to the library file on your network.This time, the dreaded can't-find-library box is a good thing.On the other Macs, hold Option when launching iTunes, but make a new library on the local hard drive when prompted. On those systems, change the media folder location in the advanced iTunes preferences to point to the music shared on the network. Within the advanced iTunes preferences on all Macs, be sure to enable the checkbox to copy files to the media folder when adding to the library.Now install Syncopation ($24.95) on each Mac to keep the iTunes libraries synced. Check the setup documents for details, but be sure to click the option to Import Tracks Without Copying in the Advanced preferences.�Breathe Music into Old Macs and iPods�If you’ve got an old Mac sitting around, you can dust it off and turn it into an audio client. Translation: You’ll be able to control it from another computer, pushing songs over your network as if it were Squeezebox or AirPort Express hardware.You’ll never have to turn on--or even connect--a display, either. Try Airfoil on your host computer ($25) with Airfoil Speakers for Mac (free) on the old-Mac-turned-audio-client. You can even duplicate results on an iPhone or iPod touch with Airfoil Speakers for Touch (free).Stream MP3s and internet radio to your stereo with Softsqueeze.Even if you have no Squeezebox hardware, you can install the basic Squeezebox Server (free) software on your main computer to stream audio. Then add Softsqueeze (free) to your old networked Mac, and the Squeezebox software will treat it just like standalone hardware from Logitech.�Get Started on Streaming Video�Yes, your screen-viewing time can get better. Instead of sharing videos directly between various Macs, you can streamline your consumption of movies and TV by creating a central server that holds all your video. With this method, you’ll leave the server running instead of having to keep various Macs online. You’ll be better organized too.Don’t overthink the biggest piece of hardware in this process: the server. Just repurpose nearly any Mac sitting around. Even a five-year-old laptop or iMac will do the trick. Or for bonus points, turn an old PC into a Linux server.Once you scrounge up an old computer, consider its drives. For a moderate video collection, you’ll want about 60GB of free space. If you gobble down video like Wimpy takes to cheeseburgers, plan for 120GB or even more. Also aim for a speedy drive interface; essentially, just avoid connecting over original USB, which you might find on old systems. And be sure you’ve got a DVD drive if you’re going to transfer over movies. Check out this article for tips.Your network makes up the other biggest factor for streaming success. 100BASE-T is a must; if you have any old 10BASE-T devices between the server and clients, video will stutter. Ideally, consider gigabit (1000BASE-T) devices. If you must have a wireless client or server, get at least 802.11g or 802.11n Wi-Fi, and keep 802.11b devices--the original AirPort standard--off the network. In many situations, old devices slow down the network to maintain compatibility. That said, more than 10 years after Apple introduced AirPort, we still prefer an all-wired connection because it’s more reliable and faster than most wireless networks.Once you connect everything, you’ll just store all video files on the server and play them from client Macs or other devices. Again, iTunes provides the simplest way to manage everything: Run it on both systems, and use shared libraries to stream the video.iTunes can also help you get started with video streaming.But several other software options deliver fine alternatives. Bundled with OS X, Front Row’s big interface is ideal for watching shows across the room. Plex (free) and Boxee (free) are also built around long-distance interfaces and add more internet features than Apple’s software. Check out this article for even more tips, including additional TV-connected devices that can stream shows and directions to hack an AppleTV to run Boxee. Have fun!�Next Page: Top Ten Wonders of the Home Automation World >> Top Ten Wonders of the Home Automation World�You've seen home automation by the book--now check out home automation off the hook. These labors of love take the good life to a level even the Jetsons never imagined.�10. Grass Has a New Enemy� We’re all about using the right tool to make a job easier, especially when that job is mowing the lawn in the summer heat. Terry Creer must agree--his remote-controlled lawn mower grafts an electric lawn mower to the wheels of a motorized wheelchair operated with a hobby-store radio controller. Swapping out the wheelchair’s original joystick for a wireless receiver keeps the mow-bot on the right path, and a fail-safe mechanism kills the motor if the controller’s signal is ever lost. Total cost for the project was less than $500. Sipping a cold drink while the lawn mower does all the work? Priceless.�9. Tweets, Shoots, and Leaves�Want to make the world a greener place? The Botanicalls tweeting plant monitor lets you do just that, one plant at a time. It’s a $99.99 kit that, along with a soldering iron and a little patience, lets you build a leaf-shaped moisture sensor that you stick into a plant’s soil. Once installed in your plant’s pot, the Botanicalls runs on AC power and plugs into your router’s Ethernet port to tweet when your leafy friend is feeling a little dry. With Botanicalls, you can embrace the DIY spirit, expand your techie know-how, and keep the flora in your life happy. What could be better?�8. "Alcohol? Why, It's My Primary Function, Sir."�When you sense the need to party, Jamie Price’s Bar2D2 is definitely the droid you’re looking for. Built in eight months from plywood, polycarbonate, and a used electric scooter, Bar2 works the room by remote control, serving drinks wherever he’s needed. A beer elevator brings cold bottles to any partygoer’s reach, and six onboard mixers let Bar2 make a galaxy of cocktails with the push of a button. And when the music starts, his sound-activated neon lights help make the party fully armed and operational. Maybe the Empire would have been cooler about that whole rebellion thing with a few of these guys scooting around the Death Star.�7. Dryer Sheets and Washer Tweets�Getting clothes dirty is fun, but washing ’em is a drag. Who needs the stress of waiting for the spin cycle to end? That’s why we wish we had Ryan Rose’s tweeting washing machine. The limit switch installed on its timer lets a simple microcontroller know when the washer is on or off. Red LEDs added to the washer’s controls show when it’s waiting for a wash to start, and a green LED shows when a wash has begun. When the load is finished, the washer tweets an update and displays an alert on a wall-mounted screen. It’s the coolest thing to happen to cleanliness since the bubble bath!�6. The World Will Tweet a Path To Your Door� You might think a wireless doorbell would be convenient enough, but not Roo Reynolds. His tweeting doorbell transforms an everyday wireless doorbell and ringer into an internet-connected chatterbox that gets two alerts for the price of one. The doorbell works like any other, but the ringer mechanism--squeezed into an Altoids can carefully cut to expose the ringer’s wireless antenna--sports a tiny circuit board that’s attached by a USB cable to a nearby computer. When visitors drop by and ring the doorbell, the computer tweets a simultaneous alert. Now that’s a curiously refreshing idea!�5. Just the Cats, Ma'am� When the neighborhood critters started sneaking through Ioan Ghip’s cat door for free meals, he took matters into his own hands, DIY-style, to make a tweeting cat door. First he outfitted the collars of his cats Gus and Penny with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. Then he added an RFID reader and computer-controlled servo to the cat door so it would recognize only his two cats--no squirrels, raccoons, or bears allowed. Now when the spare laptop that monitors the cat door detects the lucky kitties nearby, it opens the door and tweets an update, while a webcam snaps a shot of them coming or going. Say cheese, guys!�4. And We Thought Kernel Panics Were Scary� Who says all automated homes have to be convenient and relaxing? Not automation contractor Jeffrey Lehman. Years ago he teamed with Halloween Park, a haunted-house attraction in Strinestown, Pennsylvania, to turn the spook show into a fully interactive, living videogame. Fiendishly clever use of motion detectors and other sensors guides victi… er, visitors through 26 rooms of creepy interactive puzzles that must be solved to escape the park… alive! Doors creak, lights flicker, and the terrifying Dead Fred leaps out of nowhere--all in response to people’s actions. Amazing what you can do with the right gear, ingenuity, and a healthy desire to scare the crap out of folks.�3. "Incoming Romulan Ship! Fire Blu-ray!"� Maybe it’s the big screen, but doesn’t it seem natural to mix Star Trek with a home theater? Yet that’s only half of what’s so cool about Gary Reighn’s entertainment command station, The Bridge. Sure, it’s packed with a starfleet of gear: a video projector, media players, and X10-powered lights--all under remote control. But what makes The Bridge so appealing isn’t its slick final-frontier technology--it’s that it looks like a fun place to hang out, just like the original Enterprise. Gary didn’t forget the home when he set out to build himself the ultimate home entertainment center on a budget, and it sure looks like he got his money’s worth.�2. Now U Can Automate Cheezburger?� The problem: feeding Mathew Newton’s cats Frankie and Elmo while he’s away. The solution: the internet-controlled cat feeder. A cereal dispenser stores the cat food, and a motor turns a flap to drop food into a splitter that sends the kibble to each kitty’s bowl in roughly the same portions. Here’s the trick: The feeder is controlled by the port status lights in an old Ethernet switch. Remote commands from a browser activate the lights, and their signals tell the feeder when to let Frankie and Elmo get their nom-nom on. Wow. No one can say these cats don’t have a well-trained owner.�1. Push-Button Party Palace� Each Wonder uses home automation in cool, creative ways, but the sheer excess of Zack Anderson’s MIDAS--ahem… that’s a Multifunction In-Dorm Automation System--deserves special notice. Made from a mini ITX motherboard and a battery of X10-controlled sensors, appliances, and displays, MIDAS transforms the room with the tap of a touchscreen (or even voice commands). There’s a work mode for studying and a relax mode for chilling, but when it’s time to party, swatting a big red panic button dims the lights, draws shades that serve as projection screens, and kicks out the techno jams. Sound-activated strobes, laser lights, and a fog machine do the rest. Surveillance cameras and a fingerprint-scanning security system keep everything safe while Zack’s away, but we have to wonder--why leave? �
Where To? tells you 'where to'

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App ReviewWhere To? [iTunes link] is a nice destination finder for the iPhone. The latest version is on sale on the App Store through today for US$0.99. Note: The iTunes store says it works on an iPod touch, but some people are reporting it won't install. It cleverly integrates maps, a web browser, and a tracking mode to show new points of interest as you move. You can share destinations that you find with email, SMS and the clipboard.You can also search any one of 600 categories or ask the app to surprise you with, for example, a restaurant recommendation.The app supports English, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.How did it work? Pretty well. It's nice to have all the tools you need in one app, although one of my favorite apps, AroundMe [iTunes link] integrates maps, but has no browser. AroundMe is free.It would be nice to get some integration into the new nav apps that are proliferating, because Where To? has a far larger POI database then say Navigon or TomTom. I did save a POI from Where To? in my contacts, then opened that contact in Navigon and that worked fine, but it's a little fiddly.There are a few glitches in Where To? While searching for some nearby lakes, the app found some businesses with "lake" in the name. I think the app is focusing too much on the business name, and not whatever category meta-data it is using.All in all, this app was worth the original $3.00 asking price, and today at $0.99 I'd give it a whirl for sure.Here are some screen grabs:Gallery: Where to? screen grabsTUAWWhere To? tells you 'where to' originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments Sponsored Topics: iPhone - AppStore - TomTom - apple - IPod Touch
Cruising with the AT&T Navigator

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App ReviewI love GPS. in the mid 1990s I had a Garmin unit that had no maps, just a bread crumb trail of where you were and where you'd been. I lived in England at the time, and thought I had a highly original idea to take it to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and walk across the Meridian line and watch the screen as the numbers dropped to zero longitude. When I got there, I was hardly alone. I was surrounded by other geeks doing exactly the same thing. Oh well.GPS has come a long way, and AT&T has released their subscription based Navigator [App Store] for the iPhone. It requires OS version 3.0. It is fee based, and will set you back US$9.95 a month on your AT&T bill. It is loaded with features, and has voice guided turn by turn directions. It also offers: Automatic rerouting Updated maps with no additional charge Real time traffic updates Fuel Price searches and navigation to those locations Point of interest searches in all the usual categories like ATM machines, hospitals, restaurants, airports The map gives you a 3D view from a position just above and behind your vehicle. On the setup page you can chose flat maps if your prefer. I found the maps easy to read but would have preferred a landscape view instead of portrait, but there is no option to change. I saw a little lag when driving, but generally the response was fast. The app really needs a 3G connection. It works on the Edge network but was slow to load graphics. If you are somewhere where you have neither you are out of luck. No maps are contained on the app and nothing is cached. In essence, the app is only as good as the AT&T network, and if you do a lot of driving where the network is weak or absent, you'll be navigating on your own.I found the voice very hard to hear. This is a limitation of the iPhone speaker. It just wasn't designed to be played at a loud volume. On the highway, with road noise, good luck hearing that warning to turn. Of course, the directions are on the map, but the whole purpose of voice instructions is to keep you from looking at the map.Other features are a high altitude view of your entire trip from beginning to end, a list of your turns on a scrollable page, directions to the nearest AT&T WiFi hotspots (nice), and the ability to set your default navigation method like shortest, fastest, traffic optimized, prefer highways or streets, or pedestrian routing if you're not driving.I found the voice alerts were too frequent. Frankly, the app is a blabbermouth, and it kept reminding me of a far away turn too often for my taste. It would be nice to be able to set just how aggressive the voice warnings are.The big questions for most iPhone users will be to wait for other Nav apps to appear. TomTom is imminent, as is an app from Navigon. They both download the maps to your phone, so you are not dependent on the AT&T network. You only need GPS, and that signal is everywhere. You could also buy an inexpensive dedicated unit, that on the low end will cost about the same as a year of the AT&T subscription, and will certainly have a better speaker. Of course, there will be fees to update the maps, but in my experience you can use a GPS for years without doing that. Points of interest change, but the iPhone provides other sources like Google for up to date info.I also think it is a bloody shame that the AT&T app has no access to your address book. Apple has walled that data off from 3rd party apps, and it is just senseless to have you type everything in again. You can copy and paste the data, but it is a needless pain. The AT&T app has this access when it runs on other phones like the Blackberry.In summary, the app works, and is feature laden. I'm not sure it is the best option for in-car navigation, and you might want to wait for other solutions to appear. Of course, you can always get the AT&T app and cancel. It's a month by month charge.So how is it like to drive with this app? My colleague Steven Sande did just that and his report follows.Before you go, here are some screen shots to give you a look at some of the features on AT&T Navigator:Gallery: AT&T NavigatorTUAWCruising with the AT&T Navigator originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read�|�Permalink�|�Email this�|�Comments
21 iPhone Apps -- Benchmarked for Their Data-Sucking Assaults on the 3G Network

A recent article in the New York Times points the finger at iPhone users for slowing down AT&T’s cellular network.The article charges that iPhone users use Internet connectivity more than other smart phone users, creating a wireless logjam of Tweets, Foursquare updates and Uno challenges.That we use more bandwidth should seem obvious to most iPhone users; we chose this phone because it makes Internet connectivity so easy.Maybe the accusers have a point. After all, it’s not as if the iPhone has a meter we can consult to see how much data we’re using at a given time. It’s not as if we have a natural, built-in sense for how much we are using, as we do for drinking water or eating food. Still the amount of data consumed by iPhone users is pretty substantial compared to a regular cell phone. In fact, compared to other smartphones, the iPhone is a downright data hog. According to research by Chetan Sharma Consulting, the average "feature-filled" cell phone user consumes 40MB of data during a month. The average smartphone, 140MB over the same time period. T-Mobile's G1 with the Google Android OS sucks down around 300MB on average per month. The average iPhone data sucked down during that same month? A whooping 500MB. That's just the average, there is a good chance that if you're the kind of person that partakes in all the social media out there and tries a few new apps a week, it's possible you're downloading more than that. So which of the most used apps are straining the network? Not every app needs gobs of data from a network. We looked at 20 popular apps to get an idea of how much data each sends and receives in its first 30 seconds, and the in its first three minutes, to get a sense of whether the criticisms were on the right track.�Methodology�We installed Wireshark, a network tool that lets us peek at network traffic, on a 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac. This iMac connects via Ethernet to our Airport Extreme router, which connects by Ethernet to our cable modem. Then we turned on Internet sharing on the iMac (System Preferences>Sharing>Internet Sharing), and told the iPhone 3GS to connect, via Wi-Fi, to the iMac. We trained Wireshark on the built-in Ethernet card and told it to capture all traffic to and from the iPhone’s IP address.Additionally, we turned Push notifications off (Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Fetch New Data>Off) to try to cut down on background chatter to other apps and the iPhone OS itself during the testing.We tested each app twice: once for 30 seconds, and a second time for three minutes.This method lets us look at the iPhone 3GS’s data usage on a Wi-Fi network. A drawback of this approach is that apps may behave differently on Wi-Fi than they do on a 3G network: maybe some apps throttle their data usage to suit the available network. Under good conditions, Wi-Fi is often faster than 3G, especially in places where the 3G network is congested, so these data transfer numbers may be higher than what is possible over your local 3G network.There are other caveats as well: We’re not you. Each of us uses the iPhone differently. We’ve noted the things we did during the three minutes, to give you an idea of how we got these numbers.Though we’ve turned off Push notifications, it’s possible that the iPhone OS, or some other Apple apps still need to talk to the Internet now and then. So, the data from our usage sessions may be affected somewhat by this traffic, if it exists at all.Finally, some of these apps may store information in caches, so they don’t have to be reloaded each time. Some items won’t need to be fetched from the network if they’re already cached, saving on bandwidth.Use this information to get a sense of what actions chug the data like a beer funnel, and what actions gently sip it like a fine wine.�The TestsFacebook The iPhone is great for checking Facebook while at work, especially in work places that are hostile to social networks: by tapping into the 3G network, you can get around the company firewall.�30 Seconds after launch = 72kBWe had just enough time to look at notifications, and read a few comments on friends’ threads.�3 Minutes after launch = 1.546MB After reading more comments, we looked at a friend’s profile, looked at photos of her daughter, left a comment, checked out a local band’s schedule, and followed some links to blogs.�The photos are probably what made us use so much bandwidth.��Tweetie There are a lot of apps out there that check Twitter; Tweetie is a capable, functional Twitter app that includes the ability to search for nearby users.30 Seconds after launch = 32kBWe looked at a few tweets, and tweeted once.�3 Minutes after launch = 807kBWe loaded more screens of tweets, looked at mentions, messages, favorites, trending topics, and loaded updates from nearby users. Also followed links.�The links to other sites are what made the second session use so much more bandwidth than the first. We have a feeling if we’d kept it all within twitter, we’d have used a lot less data.��Maps As they said on Saturday Night Live, "Google Maps is the best. Tru dat. Double true." That’s why the Maps app that comes with the iPhone uses Google Maps as its underlying technology.�30 Seconds after launch =19kBIn map view, we told Maps to find our location, then mapped directions to a location across the river.�3 Minutes after launch = 5.65MBIn map view, we told Maps to give us directions from Elmira, N.Y. to Philadelphia. We checked each step in the turn, and pondered the weird shape of the highway north of Scranton. Upon arriving in Philadelphia, we switched to satellite view to get a sense of what landmarks we might look for.�This is no surprise. The 19kB session was so small because the map for our location was already cached. It didn’t need to fetch many graphics to get us to the destination, only a mile away. On the other hand, We’d never looked at Philadelphia from this phone, so all of the graphics needed to come from somewhere.��Weather In days past, people used to dial on copper landlines to a number at the phone company in order to get the latest weather forecast. The Weather app that comes with the iPhone just contacts Yahoo! instead.�30 Seconds after launch = 6kBWeather loaded the current conditions and six-day forecast for the six cities we’d already set up the phone for. Then it sent and received nothing for the remainder of the session.�3 Minutes after launch = 309kBWe added another city, then decided to tap on the Y! icon in the bottom left, which loads a Yahoo! Search page for that city in Safari. We spent some time looking at news and events in Seoul, South San Francisco, and Elmira. �Once again, a web link pushes data usage up. See how easy it was?��YouTube Millions of people use YouTube daily. The iPhone app downloads compatible versions of videos to your screen, if they’re available.�30 Seconds after launch = 109kBWe found that :30 was not enough time to get a video to play; the video we picked from the most recent uploads was very slow-loading. But, some data did transfer anyway.�3 Minutes after launch = 11.62MBWe watched three videos of glorious soccer playing.�Video is one of the big bandwidth-eaters, as you can see from how much data we caused to go all over the network. Do you remember when files of that size would have been segmented onto floppy disks and tied to carrier pigeons?��iTunes The confusingly named iTunes app doesn’t play your music library like iTunes on your Mac does. Rather, it’s the iTunes store, and it lets you grow your library, no computer required.�30 Seconds after launch = 1.20MBIt took a while to load, then we listened to one song sample. �3 Minutes after launch = 14.42MBWe downloaded the free single of the week, and listened to a bunch of samples (sometimes not listening to the entire sample, but skipping to another track).�Wow. We’re honestly surprised that iTunes somehow managed to use more data than YouTube. Maybe it was because we were skipping around a lot; perhaps much of the data transferred for our 30-second samples went to waste.��App Store Arguably, the killer app of the iPhone is the app store itself. It’s the conduit to all the apps that make the iPhone do what you want it to.�30 Seconds after launch = 739kBWe spent some time searching and scrolling.�3 Minutes after launch = 28.47MBWe downloaded some free apps.�Wow. These free games we just downloaded better be good. Notice how all those pretty icons from scrolling around the app lists took up nearly a megabyte of data.��Yelp Marrying social media and consumerism, Yelp lets you see what others are saying about local businesses.�30 Seconds after launch = 34kBWe let Yelp find our location, then read a review or two.�3 Minutes after launch = 145kBWe read more reviews, looked for other things nearby, and looked at a photo someone had posted.�We have a feeling these numbers were so low because we ran our test in Elmira, N.Y., which is not exactly a metropolis.��Pandora Using algorithms kind of like Apple’s "Genius" playlists, Pandora streams audio based on the kind of music you tell it you like.�30 Seconds after launch = 3.03MBA song was already playing when we launched, and we skipped it. �3 Minutes after launch = 8.51MBWe switched to our Frank Zappa station, so the songs were pretty long. We skipped one song.�Good-sounding audio requires a lot of bandwidth. �Uno Sometimes, you can’t find nearby friends to play Uno. The Uno app lets you play against friends nearby or online, as well as against the phone.�30 Seconds after launch = 1kBWe launched the app, and poked around.�3 Minutes after launch = 555kBWe signed up for an account with GameLoft, then joined a game room.�Sorry, roller27, MJ4eva, and HanU0ldp1r8, for dropping out of the game after three minutes. ��New York Times The New York Times was one of the earlier newspapers to make the leap to the web. It also has its own iPhone app, which puts an iPhone-friendly flick and tap navigation control on top of the web site, as well as some general wizziness.�30 Seconds after launch = 1.95MBWe spent most of the time in the menu looking for a story to read.�3 Minutes after launch = 408kBSince the menu was already loaded, we spent most of the time reading stories.�We have no idea why the menu used so much data. We remember it being pretty wizzy, though. Also, time spent reading often means time spent not asking for more data.��Now Playing If you’re on the go, but not near a movie marquee, or don’t know where the closest movie theater is, Now Playing can help. It can even show you trailers for movies.�30 Seconds after launch = 455kBWe told Now Playing our ZIP code and looked at movie listings.�3 Minutes after launch = 10.46MBWe watched a trailer or two and read a review.�Once again, video makes a bandwidth hog out of the iPhone.�Safari If there’s not an app for it, there’s probably a web page about it. Safari is a major part of what makes the iPhone so indispensable.�30 Seconds after launch = 879kBWe loaded a newspaper’s front page after they first directed us to their mobile site.�3 Minutes after launch = 2.64MB We loaded another newspaper’s front page after visiting their mobile site, read two news stories, then visited a blog.�What is it with these sites that say "oh, you’re a phone. Let’s send you to the mobile site?" Then when you click to go to the real site, you’ve loaded the site twice, wasting bandwidth. If they had served the site you asked for in the first place, maybe the network wouldn’t be so congested.��Police Radio “6-oh-2 is twenty-three.” If that makes any sense to you, you’ll want Police Radio. It lets you listen to audio streams of police, fire, and emergency medical frequencies all over the United States.�30 Seconds after launch = 89kBWe navigated the menu, tried to load a stream, but never got around to hearing anything.�3 Minutes after launch = 574kBWe loaded a stream from Albany, N.Y., and gave it a long listen.�This used less data than music, because people can tolerate spoken words at low quality. (Music, not so much.)��Top Gun This game’s been getting a lot of attention lately, and it’s much more fun than the old, frustrating Nintendo Entertainment System game of the same name. It’s a single-player game.30 Seconds after launch = 0kBWe loaded the game and began the first mission.�3 Minutes after launch = 0kBWe played a lot of the first mission, then three minutes were up. So we finished the entire first mission. See? Not all iPhone apps are data hogs. This one used none of your precious bandwidth while it was playing.We did notice some bandwidth usage when we quit. It used a minuscule amount of bandwidth to "phone home" to an analytics company called Pinch Media.��Stickwars For the sadist in you, there’s Stickwars. Use your finger to pick up the stick men attacking your wall. Kill them. Again and again. It’s a single-player game.30 Seconds after launch = 21kBWe fired it up, and finished the first level.�3 Minutes after launch = 44kBWe played a few levels.�This app checked in with a server after every level, so it could register a high score. �AIM Known as AOL Instant Messenger before it came to the iPhone, this chat program lets you send and receive messages to and from other AIM users.�30 Seconds after launch = 127kBWe looked at our buddy list for someone to chat with. �3 Minutes after launch = 147kBWe found someone to chat with. We think the buddy list, with all of its icons, was why the :30 session was so close to the 3:00 session.��Wordbook English Dictionary Hey! It’s a dictionary! It weighs less than a dictionary! And it’s all there; you don’t need to fetch a definition from the network.�30 Seconds after launch = 39kB We launched the app, looked for a word, and tapped the "Web" tab to read more about it.�3 Minutes after launch = 33kBWe looked up a few works, looked up synonyms, and tapped the "Web" tab once. �It seems that the Web tab is what’s making this app use bandwidth.��Flickr Sharing photos online is fun; sharing them on your iPhone lets you pass pictures around.�30 Seconds after launch = 801kBWe looked at some pictures.�3 Minutes after launch = 6.70MBWe looked at lots of pictures.�More pictures means more data transfer.��Wikipedia Mobile Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is often a good starting point for basic information.�30 Seconds after launch = 40kBWe looked at the article of the day, and accidentally reloaded it twice trying to figure out the interface.�3 Minutes after launch = 380kBWe looked at an article about amoeba and about the Battle of Newtown. We tried to load a picture from the second article, but couldn’t get it to work.�Overall, Wikipedia is a lightweight.��Yahoo! Finance Combining stock quotes, news articles, graphs, and a dynamic, customizable interface, Yahoo! Finance may be the app you need to make financial decisions.�30 Seconds after launch = 114kBWe poked around and wished we had money.�3 Minutes after launch = 294kBWe loaded all the financial information we could, read an article or two, and looked at some graphs.�There were no images in either of the sessions. The graphs must come from data instead.��Slide to power off�It’s not always about the apps you use; it’s what you do with those apps.Video and audio use a huge amount of bandwidth. Images use less. Text and other non-audiovisual data use even less. Cached data don’t have to be repeatedly fetched.Time you spend reading instead of tapping is usually time you spend not downloading more data.While this information shouldn't matter to much financially thanks to AT&T's all-you-can-eat unlimited data plan, if you happen to travel and you need to keep an eye on how much data you use, this information can save you money. The next time someone blame iPhone users for slowing down AT&T’s network, pull out your favorite app, and ask, "Well, can you blame them?"�

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