‘Edge’ Is Back in the U.S. and U.K. App Stores

Remember Edge, the iPhone game that was forced out of the U.S. and U.K. App Stores after some jackass claimed a copyright on the word “Edge”? Well, Edge is back. I bought it last night and I highly recommend it, as does my five-year-old son. Very fun. �★�

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★ The iPad

Back in December, here’s how I concluded my piece on what I expected from Apple’s then-still-unannounced tablet: If you’re thinking The Tablet is just a big iPhone, or just Apple’s take on the e-reader, or just a media player, or just anything, I say you’re thinking too small — the equivalent of thinking that the iPhone was going to be just a click wheel iPod that made phone calls. I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing. After the iPad was announced, I got two types of emails from readers. The first group saying they were disappointed, because they had been hoping I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing. The second group wrote to tell me how excited they were because I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing. Count me in with the second group. Apple hasn’t thought of everything with iPad, but what they’ve thought about, they’ve thought about very deeply. I got mine Saturday morning, and I’ve been using it since — or at least as often as I could get it away from my son. Here are my thoughts. The Big Picture The whole thing feels fast fast fast. The only thing that feels slow overall, so far, is web page rendering. Not because it’s slower than the iPhone — it’s not, it’s definitely much faster — but because it’s so much slower than my MacBook Pro. It’s easy to forget on modern PC-class hardware just how computationally expensive HTML rendering is. The funny thing is, the iPad, in raw CPU terms, is a far slower machine than a modern Mac. But the iPad is running a lightweight OS and lightweight apps. It’s like a slower runner with a lighter backpack who can win a race against a faster runner wearing a heavier backpack. Thus, many of the things you do are faster, or at least feel faster (which is what matters), on the iPad than the Mac. Like, for example, launching applications. The built-in apps, and many of the third-party apps I’ve been using the most, are ready to use within a moment of launching them. (Games tend not to load instantly, but that’s true on high-power consoles like Xbox and PS3, too.) There’s something fundamentally strange about how fast the iPad feels considering how underpowered it is versus a modern PC or Mac. How can a computer with so much less CPU speed feel faster? What Apple has done is re-think several fundamental aspects. The iPad was designed from the ground up with a different set of priorities. I think Tim Bray summarizes it well: For a 1Ghz device with limited memory, the iPad is unreasonably fast. I suspect this accounts for a whole bunch of the “Wow!” reaction the iPad obviously provokes. Since there’s no free lunch, I think it’s really important that we understand what they sacrificed to get that performance. My bet would be on some combination of windowing and virtual memory. I tend to work on lots of things at once, but in fact I look at things in rapid succession, my eyes can really only focus on one thing at one time. Given sufficiently fast switching, maybe we all ought to be getting less WIMPy. The iPad (and iPhone OS across all devices) does indeed lack virtual memory. The only memory is honest-to-god RAM. RAM is fast, virtual memory is slow. The tradeoff is that without virtual memory, the iPad can do far less at once, but what it does do is never going to require hitting virtual memory. Without a windowing system, drawing is simpler and faster. Apple has made other significantly different tradeoffs as well. Battery life on the iPad is simply stunning. Reviewers across the board are getting real-life results that beat Apple’s promise of 10 hours of battery life. This is a function both of software (which does less and works hard to keep the CPU from drawing power while the iPad is being used) and hardware — iFixit’s teardown shows that, internally, the iPad looks more like a battery with a computer than a computer with a battery. The iPad, so far, never gets warm. Browse a bunch of web sites. Play some video. Play a game. It still feels as cool to the touch as when it’s turned off. It is also dead quiet — no fan, no humming, nada. This is the future of computing. The iPad was designed with an entirely different set of priorities than Macs or PCs. Someone may well produce a worthy iPad rival in the next year, but it’s not going to be something like HP’s Slate that runs Windows 7, an operating system that epitomizes the traditional set of computer design priorities. The iPad is also eminently affordable. $500 for this thing seems hard to believe. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it at double the price. But clearly there were tradeoffs involved to hit this price point. Build quality is not one — the thing feels perfect in hand. But it only has 256 MB of RAM — perhaps the single biggest hardware weakness of the device (see the section on Safari below). It is super high-quality, but clearly designed for the mass market. Anyone who thinks Apple only makes high-priced products has completely lost sense of reality. “Affordable luxury” is the sweet spot for mass market success today, and Apple keeps shooting bulls eyes. In fact, the only thing that makes my heart ache regarding the iPad is when I start imagining a hypothetical Pro model — imagine what Apple could put in an iPad that cost as much as a MacBook Pro. (My dream iPad Pro: double the display’s pixel resolution and include a gigabyte or two of RAM.) Affordability presents itself in other ways, too. Nothing is included in the box other than the power adaptor. The dock and case are separate SKUs, and it doesn’t even come with headphones. It’s like buying a Honda, not an Acura — the base model is not “well-equipped”. $500 is affordable but not cheap, and the iPad does not feel cheap in any regard. The build quality is outstanding. The brushed aluminum back makes my plastic iPhone 3GS feel cheap. The iPad takes more cues from the current iMacs than it does from the iPhone. The seam between the glass and the aluminum is nearly perfect. It’s just one piece of aluminum and a piece of glass — there is no superfluous chrome bezel between the glass and the backing as there is on all iPhones and iPod Touches to date. Even without turning it on it looks and feels a step beyond the iPhones and iPod Touches we’ve seen to date. The Killer App One thing that’s making it hard for some people to grasp the purpose of the iPad is that no one has an answer to what precisely it is for. This was not so for the iPhone. The answer to the question of what the original 2007 iPhone was meant for was right there at the bottom of the iPhone home screen, in the “dock”: phone, email, web, music and video. The other apps were icing on the cake. The four apps in the dock were what Apple designed the iPhone to do. The iPad also has a “dock” on the home screen, and the default apps in that dock are clearly important: Safari, Mail, Photos, iPod (which, on the iPad, is only for audio). But some are treating the iPad as, fundamentally, an e-reader. Others as a gaming device. Others as a movie player. None of those things are represented in the iPad’s default dock apps. The truth is that the App Store is the killer app. The iPad is meant for anything that can be represented on a 10-inch color touchscreen. Back in January when we were playing the “What’s Apple going to name the tablet?” game, my favorite, by far, was “Canvas”. I’m not saying here that Canvas would have been a better name than iPad, but the word conveys perfectly what the iPad is. Adam Engst captured this: The iPad becomes the app you’re using. That’s part of the magic. The hardware is so understated - it’s just a screen, really - and because you manipulate objects and interface elements so smoothly and directly on the screen, the fact that you’re using an iPad falls away. You’re using the app, whatever it may be, and while you’re doing so, the iPad is that app. Switch to another app and the iPad becomes that app. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. As did Cultured Code’s Jürgen Schweizer: Steve Jobs said about the iPod that “it is all about the music”. With the iPad, Apple has done the same for personal computing as it has done before with the iPod: it made technology go away. But if the device is gone, and the operating system is gone, what is left? The iPad is an empty canvas that invites us to imagine what is possible. It inspires our imagination and it makes us want to create, because never before were we able to create software that was so close to the user. The iPad hardware and OS are profoundly humble — they put all the focus on whatever app it is that is open. Out of Box Experience One thing that is very iPhone-like about iPad is that when you first take it out of the box, it wants to be plugged into your Mac or PC via USB and sync with iTunes. In some ways, that’s understandable. USB syncing is how you load your iPad with music and videos and transfer over stuff like your email accounts, and, if you’re not using MobileMe, your contacts and calendars. But, on the whole, it feels retrograde. It’s creates an impression that the iPad does not stand on its own. It’s a child that still needs a parent. But it’s not a young child. It’s more like a teenager. It’s close. So close that it feels like it ought to be able to stand on its own. Android devices do not have this problem. You can sync an Android device with a desktop computer via USB, for transferring things like music and videos, but you don’t have to. Out of the box, a Nexus One is ready to go. Google’s big advantage here is that they’re using online services as primary data stores. The Google Way is to use Gmail for email and contacts, and Google Calendar for events. You just tell your Android device your Google ID and password, and your email, contacts, and calendars start syncing over the air. Apple has MobileMe, but because it’s a paid service, they can’t (or at least won’t) assume that all iPad owners are going to use it. But then even those of us who do use MobileMe get stuck with a first-run iPad experience that involves a tethered USB connection to a computer. The Apple Way is to assume that your primary data stores for these things are locally stored on your Mac or PC — Address Book, iCal. At the very least, these things ought to be able to sync between iTunes (on your Mac or PC) and your iPad over your Wi-Fi network. Third-party iPhone OS apps like Things do a great job with this — there’s no reason iTunes and the iPhone OS shouldn’t too. Those Heart-Stopping ‘Scratches’ On the iPhone (and iPod Touch; assume from here out that when I say “iPhone” I’m referring to both), app icons on the home screen sit atop a plain black background. On the iPad, they’re spaced further apart, which is why I think Apple has added wallpaper — making the iPad home screen look a lot more like a Mac or Windows desktop. The default wallpaper shows a sunset skyline of a mountain range in front of a like. There’s a meteor shower in the sky. And the streaking meteors look, at a glance, like a series of severe scratches on the display. It’s a curious choice. The Touchscreen Keyboard It’s a lot like the iPhone’s, but, it’s different. Because it’s bigger, there are no pop-up indicators showing which key you hit as you type. They’re not necessary. The feel, overall, is pretty much like typing on a really big iPhone. If you’re in a position where you can set the iPad down on your lap or a table top, it’s not too hard at all to type with all your fingers when the iPad is in landscape (horizontal) orientation. Now, to me, it’s nowhere near as good as even the worst full- or nearly-full-size hardware keyboard I’ve ever used. You can’t just rest all eight of your fingers on the home row keys, and you can’t feel where the key cap edges are. You have to look at the keyboard a fair amount as you type. On a hardware keyboard, I hardly ever look at the keys. But for a touchscreen, it’s good. In portrait (vertical) orientation, I can type on the iPad using just my two thumbs, as I do on my iPhone. I have relatively large hands, though — I don’t think most people can do it. The keyboard in this layout is way too small for me to type with all of my fingers, though. In portrait orientation most people will type using one finger, I expect. Now, the funny thing is, in general, bigger keyboards are easier to type on than smaller ones. That’s why big laptops are easier to type on than compact ones, and, indeed, that’s why the landscape iPad keyboard on the iPad is easier to type on than the portrait one. But at a certain point, the curve flips around and smaller becomes faster. I type much faster on my iPhone using the smaller portrait orientation keyboard than the wider landscape keyboard. In both modes, I use just my two thumbs. With the smaller iPhone keyboard, my thumbs have to travel less from one key to the next. People who aren’t very proficient at the iPhone keyboard, or who have very large thumbs and therefore have trouble precisely tapping the smaller keys, may well prefer the iPhone’s wider landscape keyboard. But for me it’s not even close. I never type in landscape on my iPhone. And in fact (and this is the aforereferenced “funny part”), I type faster on my iPhone than I do on the iPad. That’s especially true for when the iPad is in portrait mode, which puts the keyboard size in a no-man’s land — too small to eight-finger-type, too big to thumb-type. But it’s also true for when the iPad is in landscape mode. I’m hopeful that this is just a factor of experience and muscle memory — I have nearly three years of experience typing on the iPhone, and only two days experience with the iPad. Last Friday I watched Andy Ihnatko eight-finger-type on his iPad — which he’d been using for over a week — and he was typing pretty goddamn fast. One problem I’ve run into is that Apple has subtly changed the layout of the keyboard from the iPhone’s. On the iPhone, the Delete key is on the lower right, above the Return key. On the iPad, it’s in the upper right corner, and the Return key is next to the L key. The iPad adds a right-side Shift key. �� The iPad layout makes perfect sense — both these keys are now where they reside on traditional hardware keyboards. Their weird positions on the iPhone are a compromise forced by the extreme lack of space on the iPhone display. Apple has also added a new key to the iPad keyboard’s numeric/punctuation mode: Undo. It’s a good idea — I have the feeling most iPhone users don’t know about the system-wide shake-to-undo gesture, and even for users who do, the iPad is harder to shake (and, when docked, downright silly to shake). But this new Undo key moves the period and comma keys over to the right by two positions. The iPhone keyboard layout is so firmly ingrained in my mind that these changes are problems for me — I keep hitting the (new to the iPad) right-side Shift key when I mean to hit Delete, and I keep hitting Undo when I mean to type a period. I’ll get used to it soon, I’m sure, but I find it interesting that my iPad typing muscle memory is based on the iPhone keyboard, not regular keyboards. I think this is because, overall, it really does feel like a big iPhone keyboard. Hardware Keyboard Support I don’t have (and did not order) the iPad keyboard dock, but I have been using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. In fact, I’m using it to type this entire review. It works great. Pairing (via the iPad Settings app) is easy and quick. And it works great. Several essential text-editing shortcuts from the Mac OS work system-wide on the iPad: Command-Z, -X, -C, and -V work for Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste. Command-A works for Select All. You can use the arrow keys to move the insertion point. Option-Arrow keys work to move the insertion point one word at a time. Command-Left/Right moves the insertion point the beginning/end of the current line; Command-Up/Down moves the insertion point the start/end of the current text field — which, in the case of something like Pages, is the beginning/end of the entire document. Holding down Shift extends the selection range, and works in conjunction with the Option and Command keys as expected. (Certain of Cocoa’s long-standing Emacs-style text editing shortcuts work too: like Control-K (kill) and Control-H (backspace).) Certain of the function keys on the Bluetooth keyboard are useful on the iPad. The brightness keys control the iPad’s display brightness. The volume (and mute) keys work. The playback buttons — play/pause, next, previous — all work to control the iPod app. By default, once you’ve started using a hardware keyboard, the on-screen keyboard no longer appears, which is great, because the full display is now available for displaying content. But if you want to use the on-screen keyboard while a hardware keyboard is active, you can toggle it using the hardware keyboard’s Eject key. The Esc key dismisses the auto-complete suggestion — it’s like tapping the little “x” next to the suggestion under the current word you’re typing. While a keyboard is connected, you can wake up the iPad by hitting any key — completely bypassing the iPad’s slide-to-unlock screen. Very nice. The iPad is fundamentally a touchscreen device. You absolutely do not need a hardware keyboard for it. But if you’re hoping to do any amount of serious writing with it (and, for obvious vocational reasons, I plan to), you’re going to want one. There are a few places in the iPad UI where I really wish the keyboard was useful but it isn’t. For example, Safari location field suggestions. On the Mac, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move through the list of suggestions. On the iPad, you must use touch to select from the list. Since you’re already typing if you’re entering a URL, this is just begging for arrow key support. (Ditto for suggested results from the Google search field in Safari.) The Esc key does not dismiss popovers, but that’s probably OK. It’s only possible to invoke popovers via touch, so it seems OK that you must dismiss them via touch as well. The Tab key can be used to switch between text fields; Shift-Tab goes in reverse order. (When using the hardware keyboard, I do find myself hitting Command-Tab, without thinking about it, when I want to switch to another app; it does nothing on the iPad.) Display The iPad display is, overall, wonderful. Colors are bright and (unlike the Nexus One’s OLED display) accurate. Photos and videos looks great. Touches seem precisely accurate. The glass feels good. Viewing angles are shockingly good. You can lay the iPad flat on a table while you eat or drink and it looks just fine at a decidedly skew angle — far more so than with the iPhone. This IPS stuff is the real deal; here’s to hoping for an IPS display in this year’s new iPhones. The only complaint I have about the display is that the pixel resolution isn’t all that dense. The iPad’s 1024 � 768 display has a resolution of 132 pixels per inch. The iPhone’s 640 � 320 display has a resolution of 163 pixels per inch. The difference isn’t huge, but it’s definitely noticeable. Type looks crisper on the iPhone than the iPad, and type rendering falls far short of even newspaper-caliber resolution, let alone glossy-magazine caliber. (Those of you who doubt that the pixels-per-inch resolution isn’t high enough, just wait until you see the type rendering on this summer’s new iPhones.) Safari The iPad is so good as a web reader, that, if you’re a web junkie, everything else the iPad does is just gravy. It’s good. I’m so used to Safari on the iPhone, though, where the toolbar is at the bottom, that I’m having a hard time getting adjusted to the toolbar at the top. I’m not saying it’s a bad decision on Apple’s part. In fact, the iPad HIG is quite explicit that iPad toolbars should go at the top, not bottom — which makes me think Apple thought about and tested this and has concluded that the top works better for the iPad form factor. It’s just that I use Safari on my iPhone a lot, and I am really used to the button placement. When you create a new page in Safari on iPad, text focus goes to the Google search field by default, rather than the URL location field. That’s a change from both desktop and iPhone Safari. I’m finding this hard to get used to, but I can see how this might be a better design for typical users. It makes the default search engine all the more essential to the web browsing experience, though. Zooming and flicking are essential to the experience, just like on the iPhone. Flicking is how you scroll, no surprise. The zooming, though, may come as a surprise. It wasn’t too long ago when 1024 � 768 was considered a large display for full-size web browsing. But: what matters on the iPad (and iPhone) is not the pixel count of the display, but the physical size. 9.7 inches diagonally is a bit small for non-zoomed web browser. But the action of zooming — whether through double-tapping or pinching — is so smooth, fast, and natural that it feels better, not worse, than old-school desktop web browsing. There’s one severe problem in Safari for iPad, though: memory crapping out. MobileSafari for iPhone has always allowed you to open up to eight pages at a time. It tries to keep them all truly open, in RAM, so that you can quickly switch between them. But when it runs out of memory it starts flushing some of the pages. It doesn’t forget the URL for those pages, and, in recent versions, it saves a static thumbnail image of the rendered page, but when you switch back to those purged pages, MobileSafari must reload the page — thus, you must wait both for the contents of the page to download and for the page to actually render (which — the rendering — often takes longer than the downloading). It’s very noticeable. Switching between unpurged Safari pages is instantaneous. Switching to a purged page takes as long as opening it from scratch. Wolf Rentzsch, linking to this complaint from Peter-Paul Koch, wrote a brief technical overview of why Apple might have designed MobileSafari this way. (Keep in mind that iPhone OS does not use virtual memory; thus RAM is severely constrained.) This purging problem got a lot better with the iPhone 3GS. The original iPhone and iPhone 3G only had 128 MB of RAM. The 3GS has 256. MobileSafari’s ability to keep more pages in memory is probably my single favorite aspect of the 3GS. The iPad also has 256 MB of RAM. But, in my use, iPad’s Safari isn’t able to keep nearly as many pages open as I can on my 3GS. In fact, sometimes it seems I can only have one, and every page I switch to gets completely reloaded. This is more than just annoying — it can lead to data loss if you have unsubmitted form data sitting in an “open” iPad Safari page. I’ve run into this posting items to DF from the iPad — my posting interface is a web page form. When I want to link to the current page, I invoke a bookmarklet which opens a new page with the title and URL fields of the posting form set to the title and URL of the page from which I invoked the bookmarklet. Often, though, I want to switch back to the page I’m linking to copy another URL or a bit of text to quote. Twice so far, when going back to the posting form, it’s been purged and must reload from scratch — in which case I lose anything I’ve already written. I never run into this problem on my iPhone 3GS when switching between just two open Safari pages. The problem is also severe for AJAX web apps, which tend not to be designed with full page refreshes in mind. I hope this can be improved significantly in an iPad software update, but I worry that it’s endemic — that because the iPad screen is so much larger than the iPhone’s, that MobileSafari must allocate significantly more memory per page for the framebuffers. 256 MB of RAM simply may not be enough for MobileSafari to keep more than two or three pages in memory. If so, Apple really needs to consider some sort of caching or serialization scheme rather than completely flushing away purged pages. Pages I wrote the entire 4,828-word first draft of this piece on my iPad using Pages.1 I didn’t use any of the formatting or layout tools — I used it as a text editor rather than a word processor. It’s quite serviceable. What I like best is that it opens very quickly. Switching between, say, Pages and Safari and back to copy-and-paste a URL feels more like switching than quitting, launching, quitting, relaunching. You don’t need to (and can’t) save manually. Whatever you do in a document simply persists automatically. When you go back to the list of documents, they’re presented as big thumbnails — very much like the list of open web pages in Safari. Pages’s toolbar and ruler are only visible when in portrait mode. In landscape mode, all of the chrome disappears. It’s just a full-screen editing view, a la WriteRoom. I’m writing this piece in this full-screen (landscape) mode, with my iPad propped up on a table in Apple’s iPad case. It’s a nice setup, and I can genuinely imagine leaving my MacBook at home for trips in the future, with the addition of few missing iPad apps (like, say, a good SFTP client). But when I say there’s no chrome in the landscape mode, I mean none. Pages has a decent simple little find and replace feature, but it’s only possible to invoke it in portrait mode. (I must have hit Command-F a dozen times so far, to no avail.) There are already complaints piling up that the iWork apps don’t support the complete feature set of their current Mac counterparts — open a file created in a Mac version of Pages/Numbers/Keynote on your iPad and certain document features may be removed. (The iPad apps prompt you with an alert telling you which aspects of the document have been changed or removed.) Another way of looking at it though, is that the iPad iWork apps are to their Mac counterparts what the iPad as a whole is to the Mac — simpler, more focused, but in some ways faster. Pages launches and is ready for input far quicker on my iPad than on my MacBook Pro. Writing this review, I’ve been switching back and forth between Pages and Safari. It doesn’t feel like quitting Pages, launching Safari, copying a URL, quitting Safari, and re-launching Pages. It feels more like switching — it only takes a moment after tapping the Pages icon on the home screen to be back where I was in my open document. (My only complaint is that you lose the insertion point when leaving and coming back to Pages — the document re-opens to where you left off, but you must tap the screen to place the insertion point. When switching several times, that becomes slightly tedious.) This is obviously not even close to a full review of Pages, but I can say without hesitation that it’s easily worth $10. Syncing There is, however, a severe shortcoming inherent to the iWork suite of iPad apps: document syncing between Mac and iPad. It’s a convoluted mess. In short, the only way to edit a document on your iPad that was created on your Mac, or vice versa, is to go through a convoluted multi-step process of exporting, copying, syncing or downloading, and importing. Ted Landau has copiously documented the entire situation in this article at The Mac Observer. Read it and weep. What it boils down to is that there is no syncing really. Real syncing is something like IMAP for email, or the way MobileMe handles calendars and contacts. When I read a bunch of new email messages using my iPad or iPhone, when I next sit down at my Mac, those messages are marked as read in my inbox. I don’t have to do anything on the Mac for that to happen. That’s just how IMAP works. I can add a new calendar event on my Mac, then walk away from my computer, take my iPhone out of my pocket, and the event is there. I can add a note to that event using my iPhone and a few moments later the note will be synced to the event on my Mac. Certain of my favorite iPad and iPhone apps sync like this too. When I read a bunch of RSS items using NetNewsWire on my iPad, they’re marked as read on my Mac. Sitting at my Mac in my office, I can send a long article to Instapaper. I go downstairs, pick up my iPad, sit on the couch, launch the Instapaper iPad app, and a few seconds later, there’s the article I just added to my Instapaper queue. This is the sort of data flow that makes me feel like I’m living in the future — using multiple hardware devices to view, edit, and modify the same data. I don’t worry about where separate copies of my data exist. Conceptually it’s just there in the apps, and the apps do all the hard work of pushing and pulling changes made on other clients. The data flow with these iWork apps isn’t like that at all, and needs to be for them to be truly useful. It doesn’t matter how good the user interface for viewing and editing spreadsheets is in Numbers for iPad if my spreadsheets aren’t there. Here’s an example. I keep the schedule for Daring Fireball RSS sponsorships in a Numbers document. What I’d like to be able to do on my iPad is launch Numbers and access the current version of that spreadsheet. But the only way I could possibly do that today would be if I went through the following steps every single time I made a change to the document on my Mac: Before opening the current version of the file on my Mac, check to make sure there isn’t a more recent version of it on my iPad. Open the file on my Mac and make changes. Save. Dock my iPad to my Mac via USB. Switch to iTunes and go to the Apps tab for my iPad. Add the newly-saved revision of the document to the file sharing list for the iPad’s Numbers app. Sync. Even after going through all of this, when I do want to open this file on my iPad, I have to remember not to open the last revision of it listed in the iPad Numbers app’s “My Documents” list, but instead remember first to import the latest revision from Numbers’s file sharing list to Numbers’ “My Documents”. And, again, it’s effectively up to me to keep track of which machine, Mac or iPad, has the most recent revision of the file. To say the least, this is a recipe for disaster, and even if you don’t make a mistake and inadvertantly make significant changes to an out-of-date version of the document on one of the two machines, you’re stuck with a preposterously, mind-bogglingly convoluted workflow each and every time you make a change to the document. The bottom line, obviously, is that there is no way that anyone is going to use these iPad apps in the way I describe above. As-is they’re only useful to me in two ways. First, I can imagine using Pages on the iPad to compose original new documents — posts for Daring Fireball — while I’m using my iPad. I’ll either finish them there and then copy-and-paste the result into the web-based posting interface for DF, or, I’ll send the draft to my Mac for further editing (which is what I did for the piece you’re reading right now). I can also imagine creating finished Keynote decks on my Mac and then moving them, once, to my iPad, and taking only my iPad with me to the presentation — i.e. using Keynote, Numbers, and Pages on the iPad as viewers for finished documents. (And, conveniently, they’re viewers that can make edits if you notice a mistake or want to make a last-minute change or addition.) But there’s no possible way to use these apps as clients alongside their Mac counterparts on an ongoing basis. The sort of over-the-air syncing I’m imagining for iWork is, admittedly, a difficult problem to solve. But the bad news for Apple is that their top competitor in this space has a solution: Google Documents. With Google Documents, there’s no making copies, importing/exporting, manually invoked syncing, or USB tethering involved if you want to edit a single instance of a spreadsheet from multiple machines. You just make changes on one machine, and when you next look at that document from another machine the changes are there. The workflow for iWork is downright antediluvian. It’s not just pre-Cloud, it’s pre-network. It’s effectively the “Who’s got the latest revision of this file?” workflow of the days when we moved files from one machine to another via floppy disks. What in the world is iWork.com for if not for solving this problem? At least iWork.com lets you avoid having to physically tether the two machines via USB to get a document from the Mac to the iPad (or vice versa), but it’s no better than file sharing through iTunes conceptually. When you send a file to iWork.com (from either Mac or iPad) you’re pushing a copy, a snapshot of the document from that moment. After making subsequent changes, you’ve got to push those changes to iWork.com all over again. And to get them on the other device, you must manually import — making just another copy. What you ought to be able to do is specify iWork.com as the canonical shared storage location for an iWork document. iWork.com doesn’t serve as any such purpose today. iPhone Apps I predicted it’d be crummy to run non-iPad-optimized iPhone apps on the iPad — like Classic apps running on Mac OS X — and I was right. It’s OK for games — they look jaggy, but jaggy games aren’t that uncommon. But regular (non-game) apps just look and feel weird. When you run them pixel-doubled text doesn’t scale dynamically — everything is pixel doubled. It’s a good way of proving that the iPad is not “just a big iPhone”, though. The only iPhone app I find myself using on my iPad is Simplenote, for copying and pasting bits of text to and from my Mac and iPhone. Needless to say, I’d love an iPad-optimized version of Simplenote. iBooks and Kindle The iBooks app is free, but doesn’t ship with the iPad by default — you have to download it from the App Store. Apple hasn’t explained why this is so, but there are several reasons I can think of. For one thing, e-book rights are managed on a country-by-country basis — it seems likely that the iBooks store won’t be available in every country where the iPad will soon be sold. Making it an App Store app will also allow Apple to update the app on its own schedule — built-in system apps only get updates along with the entire system. So in some ways, the iBooks app is on equal footing with other e-book readers available in the App Store, particularly Amazon’s Kindle app. But iBooks does get some special treatment — the first time I launched the App Store app on my iPad, it prompted me with a dialog box asking if I’d like to down the free iBooks app. It’s impossible to miss. The iBooks app also has display brightness controls that are not availble through public APIs. Winnie the Pooh is included as a free sample, and the choice is genius — it’s a beloved story, a good read, and best of all (from Apple’s perspective) it can’t be read properly on the Kindle because the color illustrations are a big part of the experience. No book on the Kindle will ever look this good. The Kindle has its own advantages — its books are generally cheaper, its selection bigger, and e-ink works better in bright sunlight — but Winnie the Pooh epitomizes the iPad’s advantages. iBooks’s page-turning animation is delightful — it doesn’t just track your finger-swipe precisely, but even renders the type faintly in reverse on the other side of the “sheet”. The practical minded can simply tap the right and left edges of the screen to turn pages. Amazon’s iPad-native Kindle app is good, too. Oddly, to my mind, it is superior to their recent Mac app in every way. It looks better, feels better, renders text better, and has more features. I say this is odd because the iPad was announced just two months ago; Mac OS X was announced over a decade ago. I suspect part of the reason the Mac version is so crippled is that they were more worried about keeping Mac users from un-DRMing Kindle content than they were about making the Mac app an actual good-to-use app. The Kindle doesn’t do animated page-turning, but that’s not a big deal. Reading is great. And the Kindle’s ace-in-the-hole, of course, is the far larger selection of e-books in its store — hundreds of thousands versus Apple’s tens of thousands. I bought When the Game Was Ours, a new book by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. It is not available in the iBooks store. So Kindle’s advantage is library size (and, secondarily, price per title). iBooks’s advantage is the color display. I’d be shocked if every single piece of advertising Apple produces for iBooks doesn’t focus entirely on screenshots of books with color illustrations, photos, and video. I think it’s going to be easier for Apple to improve the iBooks store library than it will be for Amazon to create a Kindle hardware model with a color display. I think Amazon would do well to add color support to Kindle e-books for use on iPads and iPhones. Kindle has a better chance of long-term success as a software platform than a hardware one. Third-Party Apps in General Given that most iPad-native apps in the store right now were developed using only the simulator by developers without access to actual iPads, you might expect apps to be buggy and UIs to be awkward. I’ve found the bugginess to be true, but the UIs are actually good. I think the physical prototypes developers jury-rigged for themselves paid off, design-wise. There’s no question that UIs are going change rapidly in the coming weeks now that developers have the real deal to measure the feel of their apps against, but for the apps I’ve been using the most, they’re pretty damn good already. As for the bugginess, I’m not saying it’s inexcusable or even surprising — the SDK simulator is not a perfect simulation. Several of the bugs I’ve reported are only present when the apps are running on actual iPad hardware. On the whole, though, the quality of iPad apps on day one is better, by far, than I had expected considering that developers had to build them in the dark, as it were. Prices, so far, are significantly higher than for iPhone apps — but still far cheaper than category equivalent Mac apps. For example, NetNewsWire is $10 (and going to $15 in May); Things is $20; and OmniGraffle is $50. No doubt there are going to be wildly popular 99-cent iPad apps, but it’s also shaping up as serious platform for serious tools. Games are a bit more expensive, too, but, to me, reasonably so. The final word count is just short of 7,300, so admittedly I wound up writing quite a good chunk of it in BBEdit on my Mac.�↩
Hot Future Tech Coming to Your Mac, iPhone and iPad

Some seriously cutting-edge tech is cresting the horizon, ready to take your Apple devices and other gear to the next level of awesome. We’ve searched out the breakthroughs on the verge of becoming reality to discover how Macs, iDevices, and other tech are about to become even more impressive.�Illustrations by ArtBombersIf you’re a regular reader of Mac|Life, you know that every January we look at the fanciful future of Apple, ranging from the prototype cars to the VR goggles that might emerge from Cupertino one not-so-soon day. This is not that story. This story is about real tech that genuinely works--it’s visible on the horizon, and it could be in your Apple gear in a year or three. Think of this story as a preview of the near future.Of course, we can’t say for sure that all this technology will end up in future products (we’re good, but we’re not psychic). Some of it may never leave the lab. What you can rely on is that old standards will hit their technical limits, and progress will march on. But for a reasonable-guess preview of how Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods, and other tech will grow, evolve, and improve in the coming years, continue reading.�The Display's the Thing�Since the original Macintosh, our screens have been passive windodws into Apple's machines. That's about to change.�3D in Your Home�Three-dimensional TV has been a glimmer in the eye of television and movie studios since House of Wax and other 3D features first popped out at audiences in the 1950s. But the gimmick never caught on, thanks in large part to clunky technology that sacrificed picture quality. As James Cameron would be happy to explain to you, times and tech have changed, and in 2010, 3D is making the jump from the big screen into our homes…and hands.Despite technological advances, the principles behind 3D haven’t changed much in 60 years. When a 3D image is displayed, two pictures of the same scene taken from different perspectives are shown. Those spiffy glasses make sure each is sent to only one eye, then our brain combines the two images into one, complete with the illusion of depth. A more mysterious part of the brain is responsible for deciding if it’s worth paying 10 bucks for popcorn at the multiplex.But really, we can’t picture Steve wearing those dorky glasses at the introduction of the iMac 3D (but when we do, it always puts us in a good mood). Simplicity is Apple’s mantra, and what’s simpler than 3D screens that do the filtering for you, providing a 3D picture while eliminating the need for special eyewear? Such screens--called autostereoscopic displays--exist today. Some are peppered by tiny lenses that direct images to each eye; others use a layer of fine slits to split the display’s light in two. One of these technologies is about to get a boost from Apple’s biggest mobile-gaming rival, Nintendo. Announced this March and due for release in spring 2011, the Nintendo 3DS will be nothing less than a shot from the House That Mario Built across Cupertino’s bow. This next-gen upgrade to the popular DS handheld will sport sophisticated dual touchscreens, motion control, and--mamma mia!--autostereoscopic 3D.Competition is another Apple mantra, and it’s no secret that Apple sees games as a big part of the success of its Multi Touch devices. Steve won’t sit still if competitors like Nintendo can gain an advantage that draws gamers away from Apple and back to the Mushroom Kingdom. If Cupertino can improve on the 3D experience offered by Nintendo’s next handheld, you can bet that App Store games--and maybe even the iPhone and iPad OS--will enter the third dimension too.�OLEDs...So Pretty!�Today we watch videos everywhere from the living room to the hotel room on our HD TVs, MacBooks, and iPads. As great as those devices are, couldn’t they all stand to have even thinner, brighter, and more energy efficient screens? Trick question--of course they could. The good news is they will, thanks to OLEDs, an acronym for organic light-emitting diodes.OLED screens aren’t grass-fed, free-range displays sold at Whole Foods, but they do use organic material (that is, material derived from the element carbon) to produce a picture. Unlike traditional LCD screens that require power-hogging backlights to project their images, OLEDs generate their own light when electricity passes through the organic polymers sandwiched between layers of film in the display. Because those layers are only about 500 nanometers thick (that’s even skinnier than a human hair) and don’t require much else besides a power source to work, OLED screens can be dramatically slimmer and lighter than conventional displays now on the market.Better still, large OLED displays are relatively easier to make than LCDs, and their gorgeous picture makes your spiffy plasma TV look like a 1950s Zenith. That’s because there’s no need to grow sheets of fragile crystals. Instead, organic molecules are sprayed onto film in a process much like inkjet printing, and that film can be transparent, flexible, or even foldable. An OLED screen’s flexibility and toughness make it suitable for use in a wide range of gadgets, most of which haven’t been invented yet. From giant HDTVs and miniaturized smartphones to futuristic heads-up displays in cars, OLEDs can potentially be incorporated into almost anything--potentially even woven into clothing. And because of their brightness, vibrant colors, and wide viewing angles, you’ll always look great in your 720p iSweatshirt Pro.But don’t camp out in front of your local Apple Store for certified-organic MacBooks or casual wear just yet. While OLED screens are popping up in more and more devices (perhaps most famously in Google’s Nexus One smartphone), the technology’s best days are yet to come. Manufacturing OLED screens is still an expensive proposition, leading to high prices and tepid consumer interest. But as OLED’s momentum builds and costs drop, expect to see a gradual shift in the computer and electronics world away from LCDs, much like the transition that phased out bulky, inefficient CRTs. And expect to see Apple jump on the OLED bandwagon when the time and money are right. With its combination of energy efficiency, size, and image quality, we think OLED has a bright future in Apple’s Macs and its growing line of sleek mobile devices.�E-Papers, Please�Popularized by e-readers like the Kindle, e-paper has plenty to offer a company focused on mobile devices. Its slim design is durable, lightweight, and legible in bright sunlight. The secret lies between the sheets--plastic sheets holding tiny wells filled with black and white particles suspended in liquid. When the wells are charged, the particles move to the screen to appear as text. No backlight is required, and because electricity is only used once to draw the contents of each page, e-paper sips power compared to the LCDs in Apple’s portable lineup. Color e-paper is so hot, you gotta wear gloves. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Photo: LG.Phillips LCD., LTD.But while e-paper does monochrome well, most of today’s e-readers use filters to colorize their black and white text with pictures--and they simply can’t compare to LCDs. That will change. Philips is working on new technology using colored particles in a process much like blending ink dots in traditional print. The results should finally make good on e-paper’s promise, but they’re still years away.Even then, will Steve subscribe to e-paper? The iPad’s LCD screen would seem to be the last word on the subject, but Apple could always use multiple displays in its devices. For instance, e-paper battery monitors could offer much more information than the little green lights they use today.�The Wireless War�If you’re like us, your living room entertainment setup is the second most precious collection of gear in your home (next to your beloved Mac, of course). Every night, you’re on the couch with a bowl of popcorn in front of an HD screen complete with a Blu-Ray player and 7.1 sound. Trouble is, that sweet setup means fistfuls of wire to fuss with. But those knots may not stay tangled much longer.As home entertainment setups get more complex, something has to give. If two competing wireless standards--WirelessHD and Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI)--have anything to say about it, that something will be our HDMI, DVI, and other AV cables. Both standards promise something like Wi-Fi for multimedia. Compatible devices (laptops, game consoles, and mobile phones) will use them to find your HDTV automagically over the air in a system that “just works”--and the whole idea of ditching all those cords works in a big way for us.WirelessHD devices may be available from Panasonic, LG, Vizio, and other manufacturers by the time you read this. WirelessHD delivers uncompressed video up to 1080p, multichannel audio, and other data--including Hollywood-approved DRM--at speeds up to 4Gbps, with a theoretical ceiling of 25Gbps. That’s a lot of data, but WirelessHD will only carry it up to 33 feet. The WHDI standard will move your movies as far as 100 feet, but at only up to 3Gbps. You’ll be able to compare how the two standards fare against each other when WHDI devices hit stores late this summer or early fall. Only time will tell which of these standards will be a hit with consumers or whether Apple will adopt one or play a waiting game. Let’s hope we’re not kept waiting for the release of Avatar 2 before we can stream movies, games, and more from our iPads to our televisions.» Future Apple Devices: iPad 3, iMac 3D, Cinema Display» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: HDTVs, handheld game consoles, displays» Future Awesomeness Rating: Deeply AwesomeNext page: Printers and Processors >>Powerful Prints�Yes, print and printers have a future in our networked world. No, they won't be like anything you've seen before.�Fab It Yourself�Teleporters and matter replicators may be the stuff of science fiction, but with 3D printers, you can create physical objects with your Mac out of thin air (and a lot of plastic). Apple hasn’t sold printers since 1997, but if anything could get them back into the game, 3D printing is it.For decades, 3D printers have been used to create “rapid prototypes” for manufacturers and architects. The idea is much the same as conventional printing--you design something on your computer, and the printer produces a hard copy. But these hard copies need time to cool. 3D printers take designs built in 3D modeling programs and melt plastic to “print” them with thin strands built up layer by layer into a finished product. The idea is about to get a big boost from HP, which will begin selling 3D printers this year at “bargain” prices expected to start under $15,000. So much for 3D printing for the rest of us, right?The MakerBot prints...in 3D! Want.Not quite! If you have a techie DIY streak, 3D printing can be yours today for under $1,000. MakerBot’s compact Cupcake printer is available as a kit that, once assembled, lets you manufacture objects up to 4x4x6 inches using Lego-quality ABS plastic. The idea is catching on, and other low-cost 3D printers (like the RepRap and Desktop Factory) are poised to slowly do what HP’s high-end offerings probably won’t--make 3D printing the desktop publishing of the next decade.Of course, it will take a while for 3D printing to catch on, but if it does, expect Apple to take note. After all, our Macs have helped us make things since 1984. There’s no reason to stop now.�An Inkless Job, But Someone Has to Do It�Let’s face it, next to Mafia Wars and Farmville, printing is one of the biggest energy hogs in an office. The paper and toner cartridges required by today’s printers consume a lot of energy to use and recycle. But greener workplaces may be one step closer to reality thanks to two new inkless, reusable printing technologies that are poised to send old-fashioned hard copies sailing on a one-way trip into the wastebasket of history.Late last year, Japan’s Sanwa Newtec company introduced the PrePeat 3100 II, a compact black-and-white printer that prints using heat instead of ink. The secret’s in the “paper”--flexible, waterproof, recycled plastic that reacts to the PrePeat’s thermal mechanism. Best of all, when you don’t need a page any longer, you can just feed it back into the PrePeat to erase it or print a new document as many as 1,000 times per page. Right now this green new world will cost you (the PrePeat retails for $5,600), but expect prices to drop if the technology becomes more widely adopted.Meanwhile, researchers at Xerox are using ultraviolet light to develop a technology called Erasable Paper. The process hits specially coated paper with a specific wavelength of UV rays to print your document to the page, and you can erase and reuse a sheet whenever you need to. If that sounds like a tanning bed for interoffice communications, you’re more right than you know. Like a tan, these printouts fade away over time, and within 24 hours, a UV-printed page will be blank again. While self-destructing Mission: Impossible documents are cool (and well-suited to sharing data with short lifespans), the limitation is one reason Erasable Paper is still being refined in Xerox laboratories.» Future Apple Devices: iLife '13» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: iLife '13» Future Awesomeness Rating: Fit To Print�Dueling Processors�Current technology can only take CPUs so far. But don't worry--tomorrow's breakthroughs are being designed today.�More Cores for Your Buck�Smaller processors offer greater speed and improved energy efficiency, but engineers racing to make the best chips possible are running afoul of the laws of physics. Conventional manufacturing methods can only make circuits so small, and even the power of Steve’s reality-distortion field can’t change that. But some amazing new technologies might.For years, multi-core technology has given us Apple chips that pack the power of multiple CPUs into a single chip. Intel’s Xeon, Core i7, and venerable Core 2 Duo processors deliver up to six cores, and eight-core machines are coming soon. We hate to break it to those processors, but a new prototype from Intel unveiled late last year promises that a lot more muscle is on the way to the Mac.Intel calls it the single-chip cloud computer (SCC), and it boasts a whopping 48 cores on one processor…with room to grow to over 100. Computers derived from the SCC will bring the brawn of today’s massive data centers (the “cloud” of the chip’s name) to desktop-sized machines, paving the way for smaller, greener clusters. Initially, Intel is planning to build only 100 of these experimental chips so engineers can figure out what to do with all that power before it lands on the market. Intel is just one of the companies now developing “many core” processors, but given its relationship with Apple, it’s a good bet that the first Mac with the power of the cloud will have Intel inside.�DNA Processors�Meanwhile, another company is taking a radically different approach to building tomorrow’s processors. Last year, researchers at IBM announced a chipmaking breakthrough that uses something called “DNA origami,” and it’s as cool as it sounds. The process arranges strands of DNA into shapes used as scaffolding for carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires, the tiny structures that could one day move data through really, really small processors.DNA origami is a “bottom-up” approach to chipmaking that builds the chip’s circuits, as opposed to more conventional “top-down” methods that carve silicon away, and it has a promising future. DNA designs could potentially deliver chip circuits as small as 6 nanometers--that’s just dozens of atoms wide! So Apple has good reason to keep an eye on how its story unfolds. They’ll have to be patient. The technology is still evolving and likely won’t produce commercial chips for another five years at the soonest.» Future Apple Devices: MacPro Extreme» Expected Arrival Date: 2015» You'll Also See It In: Windows PCs, Skynet» Future Awesomeness Rating: Sheer GeniusNext page: New Wires and New Storage >>Magic Buses�Our future gadgets will do more wirelessly than ever before. But they'll be able to do even more with wires.�It's USB's World, We Just Live Here�Once an upstart newcomer, USB has become an elder statesman in the electronics world with a presence in almost every device on Earth. But USB’s data-transfer speeds, last boosted by USB 2.0’s introduction in 2001, haven’t aged gracefully. Thankfully, USB 3.0 is here to breathe new life into an old favorite.USB 3.0 cables definitely lose the beauty contest to Light Peak (below).At first glance, USB 3.0 (a.k.a. SuperSpeed USB) doesn’t seem like a radical departure from its predecessor, and that’s a good thing. It’s backward-compatible with USB 2.0 and even uses the same rectangular port we all know and love, so your old devices will work just fine with the new standard. So don’t worry, you won’t have to buy a new USB beverage warmer for your cubicle.But USB 3.0 brings two new tricks to the table. The first is speed--its transfer rates reach up to 5Gbps, or 10 times USB 2.0’s performance. The second is improved power management, which means reduced power consumption and more juice for devices that need it. USB 3.0 gear is already on the market, so it’s only a matter of time before Cupertino rolls out the first Macs with the SuperSpeed standard. We hope they come soon--we’ve got HD video to import!�One Wire to Rule Them All�Fiber optic cables, long used by telephone companies to connect landline phone calls, have numerous advantages over traditional copper wires. So why haven’t they made it to the desktop yet? Intel hopes to put that question to rest with a new technology called Light Peak.Light Peak is Intel’s answer to…well, just about every cable in use today. From HDMI to USB, if it carries data, Light Peak can replace it. That’s because Light Peak’s bandwidth starts at 10Gbps, and its theoretical ceiling is a whopping 100Gbps. And since Light Peak’s flexible fiber optic cables transmit light, not electricity, they can carry data up to 100 meters without a hitch. That’s plenty more meters than we need, but some room to grow can’t hurt, right?Light Peak brings fiber optic speed to computing. And pretty colors, too.However, despite a planned 2011 rollout, don’t expect to sync your 5G iPhone with Light Peak. Intel is still working out ways to combine power with Light Peak to charge devices while beaming data at warp speed. One thing’s for sure, though--when Light Peak finally strikes, it’ll be fast.» Future Apple Devices: Almost all of 'em» Expected Arrival Date: 2011» You'll Also See It In: Every gadget on Earth» Future Awesomeness Rating: Blazing Hot�Reading, Writing, Revolutionary�Say goodbye to your old drives. Say hello to a new world of speedy storage.�It's RAM! It's a Hard Drive! It's Both!�There’s nothing New Age about “universal memory,” but it could usher in a new age of computers and electronic devices. Universal memory is any next-gen storage that combines the speed and affordability of today’s DRAM with the permanence and capacity of flash memory. Two technologies are fighting to rewrite the rules, and the winner may be coming to the Mac sooner than you think.Phase-change memory (PCM) gets our vote, if only for its cool name, which is derived from the use of chalcogenide glass that changes from a crystalline to an amorphous state with heat. It’s the same material used to make rewritable optical discs, but in PCM, the two states represent different electrical charges, or a zero and a one. PCM represents a major leap in durability over flash memory, and can be written to up to 100 million times versus flash’s upper limit of just 100,000 read-write cycles. Samsung has already begun producing 512MB PCM modules for use in mobile phones, but 1GB modules are still on the way. Looks like phase-change doesn’t happen overnight.The race for better memory is run on a tiny field, though, and IBM’s racetrack memory may have the inside track. It uses something called spintronics--don’t you want to hear Steve say that at a keynote?--to manipulate electrons into moving magnetic bits down nanoscopic, U-shaped “racetracks” to read and write data at blazing speed. Yet racetrack memory’s biggest asset may be its scalability, theoretically allowing HDD-size capacity to be squeezed into a much smaller area than competing technologies allow. But until racetrack memory is ready to leave IBM’s labs, this dark-horse contender will be one to watch, not buy.�Kind of Blu�Steve famously quipped that bringing Blu-Ray to the Mac was “a bag of hurt,” but Sony’s multimedia power-platter is still rolling along after years of Cupertino’s cold shoulder. Movie lovers--and anyone who wants to share giant files--can take comfort that when Blu-Ray finally arrives on Macs, it’ll be better than ever. Having long shed its 25GB limit, Blu now boasts capacities of up to 400GB, and 1TB discs are coming in just a few years. The promise of this year’s 3D Blu-Ray players is just one more feature that will keep Mac fans gazing longingly--sigh--at Big Blu’s bag of tricks.» Future Apple Devices: MacBook nano, Apple TV Blu» Expected Arrival Date: 2013» You'll Also See It In: Smartphones, PCs» Future Awesomeness Rating: Memorably CoolNext page: Networking, Power, and Interaction >>Network It Out�Tomorrow's wireless communications will be more important than ever. Good thing our networks will be able to keep up.�4G or Not 4G?�Poor AT&T. Just as it’s getting the hang of supporting the iPhone on its 3G network, 4G networks will begin popping up from Sprint this year and from archrival Verizon in 2011. What does that mean for us, besides catty PR fights among the carriers? A blazing fast mobile internet with enough bandwidth for HD movies, video chats, and--we hope--fewer dropped calls.Like 3G wireless networks, 4G isn’t a single new technology. It’s a blanket term for a range of technologies and specifications that add up to the same thing: speed. Current 3G offers downloads of roughly 1.4Mbps. Compare that to 4G’s promised bandwidth of at least 100Mbps, and you’ll see what the fuss is about. 4G works its magic in part by using MIMO (Multiple In Multiple Out) technology to broadcast using several antennas simultaneously on multiple frequencies.4G’s strengths make its eventual adoption by Apple a no-brainer, no matter which carrier has the iPhone next year. Apple is serious about establishing the iPad as a mobile media device, and it’ll want a big pipe to carry movies and music to cellular customers. That’s just what 4G provides. As for the iPhone, who knows? Steve may decide to stick with AT&T and its 4G network expected to roll out alongside Verizon’s in 2011.�Crank Up the 802.11AC�Closer to home, we’ll use 802.11n Wi-Fi, but at faster speeds than we’ve seen before. Apple has sold 802.11n devices since 2007, but the protocol’s final standard was only approved in 2009. Happily, that means the business of making Wi-Fi as fast as possible can begin in earnest. Like 4G, 802.11n uses MIMO to improve performance, but manufacturers couldn’t take full advantage of the technology before the protocol was complete. Now that it is, devices can officially support maximum speeds between 400 and 600Mbps…if your hardware has the antennas to deliver the boost. Expect that hardware to start arriving in stores later this year.But the Mac life is never a simple march of progress, and there’s always something new on the horizon. Sweet! Work drafting the next Wi-Fi protocol, 802.11ac, has already begun. Devices supporting the new standard aren’t expected until 2012 at the earliest, but they’ll boast speeds of up to 1Gbps when they’re available. At press time, Ethernet’s agent was unavailable for comment.» Future Apple Devices: 2G iPad, Airport Express Plus» Expected Arrival Date: 2011» You'll Also See It In: Smartphones, netbooks» Future Awesomeness Rating: Wildly Wireless�More Power to You�Apple is going power mad. Its future devices will charge up almost anywhere.�Powered by the Sun�Solar power is overdue for a makeover, and if anyone can do it, it’s Apple. In 2008, it applied for a patent to slip solar cells beneath a device’s LCD screen, and early this year, it applied for another patent to cover portable devices with solar collectors.Solar-powered MacBooks? Yes please!�Wilder still, a March 2010 patent describes a MacBook with a solar panel that folds to collect sunlight or even to illuminate the LCD screen without drawing power from the battery. We’re still waiting for these designs to see the light of day--ha!--but it’s clear someone at Apple has spent a lot of time looking at the sun.�Go Wireless�Besides flying cars, wireless electricity is the ultimate in futuristic convenience. Today’s charging mats come close, but the magnetic induction they use keeps devices tethered to one spot. That’s why we hope Apple adopts WiTricity’s technology for truly wireless power up to several feet away from the base station. The science involved would baffle the DHARMA Initiative, but it involves something called sharply resonant strong coupling to generate an oscillating magnetic field that’s captured and converted to electricity by a sensor in your device. Or it will, anyway, when WiTricity-powered gear reaches stores sometime in the future.Wireless power? As in, electricity beamed through the air? Shocking.» Future Apple Devices: iPod solar, ElectroMagneto MacPro» Expected Arrival Date: 2015» You'll Also See It In: Nice weather, mad scientists' lairs» Future Awesomeness Rating: Simply Electrifying�Your Valuable Input�No matter how cool Apple’s upcoming products are, they’ll only be as good as what we can do with them. Here’s how we’ll interact with the future.�Touchier Mice�The mouse has plenty of life left, at least according to Microsoft. It’s produced some stellar mice over the years, but Redmond’s recent Multi Touch prototypes could be the best yet. The FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) Mouse’s high-res camera tracks finger gestures through a curved piece of clear acrylic so you can scroll, swipe, and pinch around on the acrylic in order to manipulate onscreen objects. The Orb Mouse works on much the same principle, but offers a whole hemisphere to interact with in your hand.The shrunken Side Mouse looks more like a wrist rest than a traditional rodent--its tiny camera tracks your fingers as they move across your desk or whatever surface you happen to be working on. Best of all, these mice incorporate the Multi Touch equivalent of keyboard shortcuts to perform zooms and other common commands quickly. Cupertino, start your copiers!Microsoft's FTIR Mouse makes magic out of a high-res camera and a piece of acrylic that together create Multi Touch-style input.But the coolest input technology on the horizon for Apple’s gear lies in--big surprise--touchscreens. Future Multi Touch devices will sport haptic feedback, or the sort of physical response you’ve gotten for years from vibrating gamepads and cell phones, to help make input feel more natural. In 2011, Artificial Muscle is bringing to market its EPAM (Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscle) technology, which tenses and relaxes touchscreens in response to input. That sounds pretty fascinating all by its lonesome, but Apple’s recent patent applications show it has something more subtle in mind--a layer inside the touchscreen that delivers vibrating feedback localized to specific onscreen buttons and switches. That level of fine-tuned feedback would make typing on the iPad’s large screen even more satisfying and could pave the way for MacBooks without physical keyboards.» Future Apple Devices: Majestic Mouse, MacBook Touch» Expected Arrival Date: 2012» You'll Also See It In: Microsoft's mice» Future Awesomeness Rating: Terrifically TactileNext page: Too Wild for Apple? >>Too Wild for Apple?�Some of these technologies may seem out there even for Apple, but yes--chuckles aside--they’re real. Besides, today’s head-scratchers could be tomorrow’s game-changers. Maybe.�Huff and Puff into the Mic�You’ve finally gotten your mind around Multi Touch, but are you ready for Multi Puff? Zyxio’s Sensawaft technology lets you control a mouse cursor, scroll through text, or do just about anything else with your electronic devices using only your breath. The assistive possibilities for disabled users are obvious and awesome, but breath control could have other, less practical uses, too. Imagine blowing into your earbuds’ microphone to control music playback, skipping an annoying voicemail with a hiss, or puffing on your iPhone to zoom in for a kill while playing your favorite shooter. Apple’s engineers could do so much with this, it’s breathtaking.�Keep Your Finger on the Pulse�An iPhone fingerprint scanner makes a lot of sense, especially considering that Apple has so many intriguing patents out on the idea. Sure, a fingerprint-savvy screen would simplify security--and make “slide to unlock” really mean something--but we like to think about the possibilities for everyday iPhone control hinted at in Apple’s patents. With the iPhone of tomorrow, specific fingers could be used for certain functions, letting you change settings without even looking at the screen. You could use your thumbprint to play a song, your index-finger print to rewind, and your middle-finger print to...er…emphatically skip a song for those tunes so bad that a one-star rating just doesn’t cut it.You might not be able to remember a passcode that unlocks your iPhone, but we're betting you'll be able to remember your fingerprint.�Project Your Ideas�Pico projectors--low-power, handheld projectors--are handy for quickie presentations or impromptu slideshows with the family. Some of them even project with RGB lasers instead of white light for a picture that’s always in focus. But the image of these mini projectors will really improve if Apple ever makes good on recent patents to integrate them into MacBooks and iPhones. Sure, you could strike up a Keynote presentation on the go with a MacBook Pico, but throwing up movies, music, iTunes visualizations, and photo albums anywhere sounds like a lot more fun.�Wii Want Our Apple TV�Motion control brought gamers flocking to the Nintendo Wii, but can it do the same for Apple TV? Someone in Cupertino must think so, judging by a patent for a Wii-like motion-controlled remote to go with Cupertino’s set-top box. Sounds good to us. Apple’s Remote iPhone app is great, but it’s always seemed very “un-Apple” to require another device to deliver a satisfying Apple TV experience. Motion control--especially with the enhanced precision and reliability brought by the floating magnetic compass noted in Apple’s patent--would be a slick solution, and not just for easier navigation. Apple’s patent also describes using the remote to draw on the screen and manipulate photos with the flick of a wrist. That could give Steve’s favorite hobby product some much-needed pizzazz to help it catch the public’s eye. After all, the day will come when Cupertino will update the Apple TV again, and when it finally does, you may not even recognize it. What can we say? We want to see the little guy make good.Next page: Patently Awesome >>Patently Awesome�Apple’s patents are tea leaves that portend what technology’s cutting edge will look like for years to come. Here are some of tomorrow’s ideas Cupertino thinks are worth protecting today.�Nine Lives, Three Dimensions�OS X is the big cat that makes Cupertino’s products tick, but it’s Apple’s hardware that usually captures the public’s attention. That oversight will finally be corrected if a patent for 3D OS X becomes a reality.The 3D in question depends on parallax, the effect by which objects appear to change their position relative to each other as a viewer’s perspective changes. By keeping tabs on your position (likely with a head tracking iSight camera), this “OS parallaX” would alter the appearance of onscreen objects to form a simulated 3D space in which you could interact with files, study 3D objects, and more. While this could open up exciting new ways to use your Mac, it would also require complex new hardware and software, so don’t count on peeking behind alert boxes anytime soon.�An iPhone Gamepad�Judging by a recent patent, the iPhone and iPod touch might have more than just high-tech improvements in their future. Thanks to a unique accessory, someday soon we may be gaming old-school--with a twist--on our Multi Touch devices.In a few years, near field communication will let your iPhone be the boss of your videogame console, TV, and even your sprinkler.We love playing games on the iPhone, but sometimes we pine for the 20th century simplicity of physical controls. Call Apple’s potential solution the “GameFrame,” a shell that fits around your iPhone to add a D-pad, buttons, and other handy moving parts to the iPhone experience. Too old-fashioned for you? The device could also communicate wirelessly with HDTVs, opening the door to big-screen App Store gaming on the go. Hero of Sparta 3 on a 40-inch flatscreen? We’re so there!�"Home Screen" Gets a New Meaning�The iPhone’s superpowers seem to be growing by the day, but you haven’t seen anything yet. In the future, you won’t think twice about using it to lock the door, turn on the lights, and even water the lawn of your personal fortress of solitude.Apple’s recent home-control patent hinges on a technology called near field communication (NFC), a short-range wireless technology that’s slower than Bluetooth while offering a much quicker pairing time. That’s just the thing to control the Xbox, DVD player, and garden-sprinkler system shown in the patent application. Unfortunately, this remote-control magic requires NFC-enabled devices that are, like the iPhone that will interact with them, years away.�Slice the Mac into Pieces�To create, sometimes you must destroy, and the most intriguing Apple patent we’ve come across yet takes apart the familiar Mac we’ve used for decades and scatters it into…well, something else. We’re not sure if what it describes is a portable computer, a desktop machine, or something in between, but we call it the “MultiMac.” And we want one.The "MultiMac" splits a Mac into its component parts, which live where you'll use them.If it was built today, MultiMac’s components--a projector display, input devices, and a CPU--would be separate components, each powered wirelessly and communicating with each other over the air from wherever you wanted them to be. You could tuck the CPU on a bookshelf, surf from the couch, and project a movie on the wall as if using one device. Apple’s focus (pardon the pun) seems to be on the projector, which would do more than just show vacation pictures. The patent describes it as a networked device with multiple sensors controlling focus, color, or even built-in cameras. What are the chances those cameras could power a 3D OS X? Hey, we can dream.Will MultiMac be a novel new computer that ties together exciting new technology, a sophisticated Keynote presentation system, or a hub to synchronize a home full of mobile devices? We’re not sure, but that’s half the fun of being a Mac fan. Only Apple knows what’s coming next, and they’re not telling…yet.�
★ Gizmodo and the Prototype iPhone

The Phone The first question is, how did the phone leave Apple’s campus? Starting a few weeks ago, some number of iPhone engineers who, because of the nature of their work were already familiar with the details of Apple’s next-generation iPhone, were authorized to begin using late pre-production units outside Apple’s campus. Effectively, they became permitted to use these phones as their daily carry iPhones. Strict provisos govern such units. They must remain in cases designed to render them indistinguishable, at a glance, from an (encased) iPhone 3G/3GS. Such units are not allowed to be demonstrated or revealed to anyone. Not friends, not spouses. According to Gizmodo, one of the barcodes attached to the unit read “N90_DVT_GE4X_0493”. According to several sources (of mine) familiar with the project, “N90” is Apple’s codename for the fourth-generation GSM iPhone, slated for release this June or July. “DVT” stands for “design verification test”, an Apple production milestone. The DVT milestone is very late in the game; based on this, I now believe that this unit very closely, if not exactly, resembles what Apple plans to release. Why did Apple, so secretive about unreleased products, allow these units to be used off-campus? There’s simply no other way to test a phone. Even if maintaining the maximum feasible degree of secrecy, dozens of near-final units go into field testing a few months in advance of production. (This is true for Apple products other than phones as well, but I believe the practice is more widespread with the iPhone due to the nature of cellular network testing.) The same was true for the 3GS a year ago, and the 3G the year before that. The original iPhone was announced six months before it went on sale; in the interim between the January announcement and its debut in stores at the end of June, limited numbers of them were used for field testing.1 A phone that is allowed to leave campus is a phone that can be lost or stolen. A phone that is lost or stolen can wind up in the wrong hands. And we all know Murphy’s Law. For all we know, this is not the first such prototype iPhone to have gone missing. It’s just the first to have wound up in the wrong hands. The Sellers California’s penal code, section 485: One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft. California’s civil code, section 2080.1: If the owner is unknown or has not claimed the property, the person saving or finding the property shall, if the property is of the value of one hundred dollars ($100) or more, within a reasonable time turn the property over to the police department of the city or city and county, if found therein, or to the sheriff’s department of the county if found outside of city limits, and shall make an affidavit, stating when and where he or she found or saved the property, particularly describing it. Yes, I’m quoting both criminal and civil statutes. But the plain meaning is clear. Those who found the phone on a bar stool, if that’s truly how they came into possession of it, could return the phone to its owner or they could turn it over to the police. To keep it for three weeks and then sell it makes them guilty of theft. Here is an interesting case, discussing and upholding California Penal Code 485 in the Sixth Circuit on April 7, 2010. It’s long, but here’s one good bit from it: The only mental state mentioned in Penal Code section 485 is the perpetrator’s “knowledge.” The crime is defined in terms of two acts, one omission, and one mental state. The perpetrator commits this offense if he or she (1) finds lost property (an act), (2) appropriates it (an act), (3) fails to make “reasonable and just efforts” to find the owner and restore the property to the owner (an omission), and (4) does so with knowledge of the true owner or means of inquiry as to the true owner (a mental state). Nowhere in the statutory definition of the offense is there any suggestion that the perpetrator must harbor any additional specific intent. Now, in practical terms, these fellows had another option. Speaking from personal experience as one who has spent a fair number of hours in bars, there is a universal protocol for dealing with misplaced or forgotten personal items left behind by fellow patrons. Wallets, keys, phones, purses. Whatever. If you see something like that on the floor, or forgotten on a table, you pick it up and hand it to the bartender. If you realize you’ve lost something, you ask the bartender. Everyone knows this. This option arguably does not comply with the letter of California law, insofar as the bartender is not the owner and is not the police. But no one has or ever will be prosecuted for handing a lost item to the employees of the establishment where the item was found. Effectively you’re turning the bartender into the finder of the item. And, in this particular case, had these individuals done so, the phone would have gotten back to its rightful owner, who, in the days after losing it, called the bar repeatedly to ask whether it had been turned in. Even if it didn’t occur to the “finders” of this phone to turn it over to the bartender the night it was lost, all they had to do, at any point during the three weeks before they sold it to Gizmodo, was take it back to the bar, or just call the bar and ask whether the guy who lost it had called to claim it. Here is the story about their purported attempt to return the phone, as reported by Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo: During that time, he played with it. It seemed like a normal iPhone. “I thought it was just an iPhone 3GS,” he told me in a telephone interview. “It just looked like one. I tried the camera, but it crashed three times.” The iPhone didn’t seem to have any special features, just two bar codes stuck on its back: 8800601pex1 and N90_DVT_GE4X_0493. Next to the volume keys there was another sticker: iPhone SWE-L200221. Apart from that, just six pages of applications. One of them was Facebook. From the Facebook app, they obtained the name of the Apple engineer who lost the phone. Thinking about returning the phone the next day, he left. When he woke up after the hazy night, the phone was dead. Bricked remotely, through MobileMe, the service Apple provides to track and wipe out lost iPhones. It was only then that he realized that there was something strange that iPhone. The exterior didn’t feel right and there was a camera on the front. After tinkering with it, he managed to open the fake 3GS. Note that you are not permitted by law to disassemble found items. There it was, a shiny thing, completely different from everything that came before. He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number. He thought that eventually the ticket would move up high enough and that he would receive a call back, but his phone never rang. What should he be expected to do then? Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay? Admittedly, it would be very hard to get someone on the phone at Apple who would know what a device such as this one is. Apple, like most large companies, deliberately makes it difficult for consumers to reach (non-retail) employees. There is no lost prototype hotline. But they could have simply put the phone in a bubble wrap envelope and mailed it to 1 Infinite Loop. Apple’s mailing address is right on their web site. And they had the name of the engineer who lost the phone. It defies belief that calling Apple’s public phone numbers constitutes “reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him”, as required both by law and by common sense. Take it back to the bar. Drop it in the mail. Send a message using Facebook to the engineer who lost it. Or, why not take it to an Apple Store? That’s a circuitous route, but this bit from Gizmodo’s report: Walk into an Apple store and give the shiny, new device to a 20-year-old who might just end up selling it on eBay? is how thieves think — that everyone else is as dishonest as they are. Taking it to an Apple Store, asking for a manager, and handing it over would have put the phone back in Apple’s hands. Even if you take their account at face value, it is clear the individuals who sold this unit to Gizmodo made no serious attempt to return the phone. Thus, even if the phone originally came into their hands by being lost, once they made no “reasonable and just” effort to return it and instead began trying to sell it, it became stolen. Consider, too, every coincidence that we’re asked to believe in this tale. What are the odds that the person who happened to be sitting next to the Apple engineer who lost such a phone would recognize it as something other than an existing consumer iPhone? It was snapped into a 3G/3GS-sized case. The screen is higher resolution, yes, but how many random people in a bar — even in Silicon Valley — would notice that? And they knew it might be worth thousands of dollars if offered to a site such as Gizmodo. In my book, anyone who did this with a phone left on a bar stool would be just as likely to, say, take it out of someone’s jacket pocket if they noticed its unusual nature while the engineer was using it at the bar — which, we know the engineer did, given that he updated his Facebook page that evening with a comment regarding the quality of the beer he was drinking. There is no reason to take anything thieves claim at face value, particularly when it’s all been filtered through Gizmodo, which has a decided interest in painting a picture where they didn’t realize they were purchasing stolen property. Gizmodo California penal code, section 496: (a) Every person who buys or receives any property that has been stolen or that has been obtained in any manner constituting theft or extortion, knowing the property to be so stolen or obtained, or who conceals, sells, withholds, or aids in concealing, selling, or withholding any property from the owner, knowing the property to be so stolen or obtained, shall be punished by imprisonment in a state prison, or in a county jail for not more than one year. However, if the district attorney or the grand jury determines that this action would be in the interests of justice, the district attorney or the grand jury, as the case may be, may, if the value of the property does not exceed nine hundred fifty dollars ($950), specify in the accusatory pleading that the offense shall be a misdemeanor, punishable only by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year. Given that Gizmodo claims to have paid $5,000 for the device, the latter half (regarding property worth less than $950) does not apply. Those who sold the phone to Gizmodo clearly obtained it in a manner constituting theft, whether they truly found it on a bar stool in the first place or otherwise. There can be no doubt that Gizmodo took possession of the phone, given that they’ve published photos and videos of editor Jason Chen holding it. So the question here is whether Gizmodo knew the phone was stolen. First, Gizmodo coyly suggests that they themselves were satisfied with the sellers’ tale of trying, and — alas! — failing, to return the phone to Apple by calling consumer-facing phone numbers. Regardless if the sellers truly believe that to have been a good faith effort to return the phone, would Gizmodo’s editors have us believe that they themselves believed that Apple had no interest in recovering this unit? Gizmodo’s primary defense against claims that they knowingly purchased stolen property is that they didn’t know whether the unit was truly an actual Apple prototype until after they obtained it and examined it. When posting Apple’s written request to have the unit returned to them, Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam also posted what he claimed to be his emailed response: Happy to have you pick this thing up. Was burning a hole in our pockets. Just so you know, we didn’t know this was stolen when we bought it. Now that we definitely know it’s not some knockoff, and it really is Apple’s, I’m happy to see it returned to its rightful owner. P.S. I hope you take it easy on the kid who lost it. I don’t think he loves anything more than Apple except, well, beer. Note that I’ve quoted the original version of Lam’s purported response to Apple, a copy of which I saved, and which is archived publicly here at Cult of Mac. On Gizmodo’s web site, this response was edited (after I specifically noted Lam’s use of the word “stolen”, such that it now reads: Happy to have you pick this thing up. Was burning a hole in our pockets. Just so you know, we didn’t know this was stolen [as they might have claimed. meaning, real and truly from Apple. It was found, and to be of unproven origin] when we bought it. Now that we definitely know it’s not some knockoff, and it really is Apple’s, I’m happy to see it returned to its rightful owner. P.S. I hope you take it easy on the kid who lost it. I don’t think he loves anything more than Apple. The gibberish in brackets (punctuation and capitalization sic) was added, and the knife-twisting kick-in-the-balls quip about beer was removed. Keep in mind that this isn’t the editing of a weblog post — it’s the editing of what Lam and Gizmodo claim is the response they sent to Apple’s senior VP and chief legal counsel Bruce Sewell. Again, their defense, as best I can put it, is that only upon receipt of the letter from Sewell did they “definitely know it’s not some knockoff” and “really is Apple’s”. Curious, this supposed uncertainty, considering they published their photographs and videos of the device 12 hours earlier with the quite certain headline “This Is Apple’s Next iPhone”. Now, it’s worth noting that criminal charges are at the discretion of the District Attorney, not Apple. Apple can choose to file a civil lawsuit on its own, but a criminal suit can only be filed by the DA. If criminal charges are made, and they include charging the editors of Gizmodo with the purchase and receipt of stolen property, they can make whatever arguments they want in their defense. But Gizmodo certainly knew that if it was, in fact, an Apple prototype, that it did not belong to the individuals who were selling it, and that Apple would want it back. Yes, it could have been a hoax, but that defense could (and, I’m guessing, is) made by anyone prosecuted for purchasing stolen property of this nature. Imagine, say, that someone offered to sell you a unique and notable piece of stolen artwork. You pay them and take the item. You are subsequently arrested and charged with buying stolen property. What do you think your chances are of being acquitted on the grounds that you didn’t know for certain whether the item was a forgery at the time you paid for it? Further, upon receipt of the phone, Gizmodo inspected it for “about a week” before they began publishing their photos of the device. Whatever their questions regarding its legitimacy at the outset, it didn’t take them six days to figure out it was real. In the meantime, they kept it secret and did not return it to or notify Apple. I have two issues regarding Gizmodo’s actions regarding this story. First, I’m fascinated by their apparently cavalier attitude regarding the legal implications of their actions. I’m not offended by their decision to obtain this unit and publish everything they were able to ascertain regarding it. It simply boggles my mind the stakes they have effectively wagered that Apple will not pursue this legally. Second, publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves. Gizmodo is, ostensibly, a gadget site. The interest of their readers in this saga regards the phone. Publishing his name did not clarify in the least bit how they obtained the phone. The people whose identities I’d like to know are those who obtained and then sold the phone, not the guy from Apple who lost it. There is no interest served by outing him other than taking sociopathic glee in making a public spectacle of someone who made a very serious but honest mistake. This, I’m deeply offended by. I don’t know what Apple would do with prototypes for a new iPhone that had a radically new industrial design, such that they couldn’t be disguised as an existing consumer iPhone using a case.�↩
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�
★ The iPhone 3G

Pt. 1: Macro Let’s just say it up front: the iPhone is the greatest piece of consumer electronics that has ever been made. If I could travel back 20 years and show my then 15-year-old self just one thing the future of today, it would be the iPhone. It is our flying cars. Star Trek-style wireless long-distance voice communicator. The content of every major newspaper and magazine in the world. An encyclopedia. Video games. TV. Etc. None of these features is quite what an imagination of the ’80s would have predicted. The TV, for example, is far from the imaginary “pocket TV” of my youth, which was rooted in the concept of broadcast TV channels. But it is a TV. In some ways it is worse; you cannot use an iPhone to, say, watch a live broadcast of a sporting event. In many ways, though, it is better; it stores content, including full-length major motion pictures, which you can watch whenever you want. A pocket full of movies was simply unimaginable 20 years ago. And it’s all in one easily pocketed gizmo. Each of these features is of course available in devices other than the iPhone. A checklist of the iPhone’s features is not, in and of itself, impressive. Some competing devices, in fact, offer all the same fundamental features of the iPhone. The difference is in the overall experience. (Even a $10 Nokia dumbphone, combined with today’s worldwide cellular and satellite phone network, can do the Star Trek-wireless voice communicator trick. That alone would be impressive compared to the brick-sized fabulously expensive cellular phones of the ’80s.) Everything Apple as a company has ever stood for, good and bad, was to get to the point where they could make this. It’s a computer you can take with you everywhere, so small you wouldn’t really even want it much smaller, even if it were possible. In software, Apple went back and rethought certain priorities with the iPhone compared to Mac OS X. On Mac OS X, scrolling prioritizes visual fidelity but can be painfully slow. (Not so much with today’s Mac hardware, but in the early days of Mac OS X, scrolling or resizing windows could be molasses slow. iPhone scrolling, on the other hand, is almost always fluid and perfectly responsive, but the content often doesn’t keep up. The checkerboard background in MobileSafari is the most obvious example of this. The illusion that your thumb or finger is actually moving the screen contents is astoundingly effective. Mac OS X values the visual over the feel; iPhone OS is vice versa, and I prefer it. In hardware, the radical reduction of physical buttons has proven to be genius. The iPhone not only eschews a keypad and keyboard, but also those green/red place-call/end-call buttons that you see on nearly every other phone in the world. The iPhone has just four buttons: power, volume up, volume down, and home. That seems just right. I’ve gotten satisfyingly proficient typing with the on-screen touch keyboard. My single biggest gripe is that my right thumb often hits the Return key when I’m trying to hit the space bar. In another five years, one of today’s iPhones will be no more than a sentimental curiosity, painfully slow both in terms of networking and computation. The iPhone has significant and obvious shortcomings. But it is an order of magnitude better than anything that came before it. Pt. 2: Micro I bought my original iPhone on day one. When the iPhone 3G arrived, I figured I could wait. In early August, one month after they went on sale, I upgraded. In a nut, the iPhone 3G is aptly named, in that it isn’t much more than the iPhone plus 3G. If they’d called it “iPhone 3G (and GPS)” the name alone would have completely described what was new, technically at least. The iPhone 3G uses the same CPU and has the same amount of RAM (128 MB) as the original. It is an iteration. If you’ve got an original EDGE iPhone, the only factor that really matters with regard to whether you’d be happy after upgrading is the quality of the 3G service where you live. I, apparently, am lucky. 3G service in center city Philadelphia, the surrounding suburbs, and at the New Jersey shore has been terrific. Even before the 2.1 OS update, I had few complaints about dropped calls, and network speed has far exceeded my expectations. Browsing with 3G on the iPhone generally feels just about as fast as browsing with Wi-Fi — the CPU often seems to be the limiting factor in MobileSafari’s rendering speed, not the network. In addition to the faster data speeds and higher-quality audio, 3G offers one additional advantage over EDGE: 3G can take an incoming phone call while simultaneously using the data network. I missed a surprising number of calls on my old iPhone while dicking around waiting for pages to load in Safari. The main problem I initially ran into with 3G networking was that it would occasionally get stuck. I’d try to load a web page, and the inside-the-location-field progress bar in MobileSafari would simply never get past the “h” in “http:”. In most cases, turning the iPhone completely off and back on would fix this. Even better: I have not seen this problem once since upgrading to the 2.1 OS. Tethering my 3G connection with NetShare — sadly, no-longer-available from the App Store — my MacBook Pro achieves download speeds of 700-900 kb/s, and upload speeds of 200-400 kb/s. Tethering with EDGE, I see download speeds of about 200 kb/s. Thus, for me, networking far exceeds Apple’s marketing claim of “double the speed”, and for that alone the upgrade price and slightly higher monthly plan are well worth it.1 (NetShare is simply remarkable, and deserves a full digression. After just one month of owning an iPhone 3G, the $10 I spent on NetShare is some of the best money I’ve ever spent. The multi-step process required to get it working, which you can only partially automate, is a hassle. If Apple can build a feature like this into the iPhone itself, it will be a smash hit feature, and, if it were something that only worked with Mac OS X, yet another impetus for iPhone/iPod users to switch from Windows. (My use of “can” is a reference to the challenge of getting phone carriers on board with it, not any technical hurdle.) The biggest limitation using NetShare is that because it’s a SOCKS proxy, it mostly only supports HTTP/HTTPS networking traffic. iChat can be configured to use a SOCKS proxy, but I’m aware of no way to get Apple Mail to use a SOCKS proxy for IMAP or SMTP, which means Mail doesn’t work using NetShare. But for web surfing, NetShare is a spectacular success. Yes, I’m aware that you can buy external Mac-compatible EVDO dinguses from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, but those are separate services that cost like $60 per month. With NetShare, I paid $10 one time and I can use it with my existing iPhone data plan without paying one additional cent. Performance is way better than the Wi-Fi service in most hotels.) The 3G’s ringer is louder. (I sometimes missed calls with my original iPhone because I didn’t hear or feel the phone ringing in my pocket.) The speakerphone sounds much better. As noted shortly after the 3G shipped, the color temperature of the display is different — warmer if you like it, yellower if you don’t. I prefer the original (cooler) temperature, but it’s only noticeable to me when compared side-by-side. Temperature aside, the screen seems identical to that of the original. Looking at the front face, the form factor is practically unchanged. The 3G is slightly wider overall, but since the display is the same size, there is now a small black border between the screen and the chrome, where previously the screen ran nearly chrome-to-chrome. The back is completely different, plastic instead of metal, and differently shaped. (I chose black, of course.) Aesthetically, I prefer the original iPhone case on all counts: shape, appearance, touch. The original iPhone is, to put it bluntly, sexier. I even liked the black plastic panel at the bottom of the original iPhone — it made it easy to tell which way the phone was oriented without looking at it, such as when pulling it from a pocket. From a practical standpoint, however, the all-shiny-plastic 3G has one significant and perhaps very valuable advantage: it is not slippery. There’s a tackiness to the iPhone 3G in hand. There is something to be said for the fact that the phone with the strongest brand in the world has no visible branding whatsoever on its front face. The home button on the 3G seems to require a more forceful push. The clickiness of my original iPhone’s home button is better. On the other hand, the clickiness of the 3G’s volume and sleep buttons is better. Apple sometimes seems to be the lone consumer electronics company that pays any attention at all to the tactile response of buttons. Battery life is the single biggest shortcoming. The simple truth is that the iPhone pushes the limits of what a device this size can do. Power consumption is perhaps Apple’s single-biggest engineering concern with the iPhone — both in software and hardware. Last year, when criticism of the original iPhone centered on the lack of 3G, Steve Jobs said it was about power. He was right. The iPhone 3G consumes power faster. However, the 2.1 OS update improved battery life dramatically. In particular, after upgrading to OS 2.1, the iPhone 3G does not seem to lose much power while idle. Part of it, too, is that because 3G is faster, you can do more in the same amount of time. So if you measure by time, yes, one hour of web browsing on EDGE will leave you with more battery life than one hour of browsing on 3G. But if you measure by the page, I think loading and reading, say, 15 web pages on 3G stands up just fine against loading the same 15 pages on EDGE. It just happens faster. Pt. 3: Coda “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.” — Andy Warhol So too with the iPhone. A billionaire can buy homes, cars, clothes that the rest of us cannot afford. But he cannot buy a better phone, at any price, than the iPhone that you can have in your pocket today. Once you get used to 3G performance, you’ll agree with this tweet from Adam Lisagor: “They should change the symbol for EDGE to stink lines.”�↩
★ The Fear

The NDA is dead, yes, and good riddance, but there remain serious problems with the way Apple is managing the App Store. It boggles my mind that there remain so many people who don’t see this. This piece by Dan Kimerling at TechCrunch is one example; various of the reader comments on Jason Snell’s piece for Macworld last week are another.1 One factor, perhaps, is the tendency to see everything in terms of extremes. Black or white, good or bad. But this debate is not about wanting Apple to make radical changes, such as, say, changing the iPhone from a closed platform to a more open platform a la Android. There are reasonable arguments to be made that a more open iPhone platform would be good not just for iPhone developers, but for Apple and its shareholders. But those arguments aren’t what this debate is about. This debate is about wanting Apple to make minor changes — a slight but very significant course correction. Put another way, this is not about the big picture scope of what kind of hypothetical App Store (or Stores, plural) Apple should have created. That train left the station long ago. This is about the specific details of the App Store that actually exists, and the rules that govern it. I believe that a closed, controlled App Store can work, but by definition that requires developers to place trust in Apple. The problem is that Apple is managing the App Store in certain untrustworthy ways. And I mean trust more in the sense of stability than honesty — like in the way you need to trust a ladder before you’ll climb it. Here is a complete list of what Apple must do to increase developers’ trust in the App Store system: State the rules. Follow the rules. That’s it. This is so clear that even those who are arguing the other side — that Apple’s App Store stewardship is just fine as it stands today — have jumped through hoops in an attempt to argue that Apple’s exclusion of Podcaster was in fact in accordance with the iPhone SDK Guidelines. Kimerling, in his “Stop Complaining About Apple and the App Store” piece, writes: When you create the platform, you set the rules. If Apple wants to restrict iPhone applications to those that do not compete with features built into the iPhone, well, they can go right ahead and do so. It is right in the SDK’s user agreement. That’s just not true. The iPhone SDK Agreement, at least by the standards of legal contracts, is written in clear, straightforward English. (Apple’s lawyers, in the opinion of yours truly at least, are good writers.) The rules it lays down are clear. And Podcaster doesn’t break any of them. Given any set of rules, there will always be edge cases. Judgment must be rendered, and, inevitably, some will feel edge cases were judged the wrong way. But the reason iPhone developers (and prospective iPhone developers) are appalled by Apple’s rejection of Podcaster and MailWrangler is that neither app was near any edge defined in the SDK guidelines. Podcaster was rejected for duplicating the podcast features in iTunes and the iPhone “iPod” app. MailWrangler was rejected on the following grounds: Your application duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion. The word “duplicate”, in any conjugation, does not appear in the iPhone SDK Agreement. Not a word about it. And there is clearly no general rule about third-party apps duplicating the functionality of the iPhone’s built-in apps. PCalc, along with a handful of other calculator apps, duplicates every single feature of the built-in Calculator app. There are dozens of note-taking apps that compete with Notes; MagicPad goes so far as to use the same icon as Apple’s Notes app, just with different colors. There is an entirely category in the App Store — an entire category — for weather apps, several of which “duplicate” the entire functionality of the built-in Weather app. So, not only judging by the rules set forth in the iPhone SDK Agreement, but also by the existence proof of hundreds of apps currently published in the App Store that duplicate (which is really to say compete with) built-in iPhone apps, no reasonable person would have expected Podcaster or MailWrangler to be rejected. So their rejection is problematic on three fronts. First, the submission process is such that an app rejected at the conceptual level — one that cannot be tweaked or fixed to gain entry upon resubmission, but whose fundamental premise is rejected by Apple — such an app is only rejected after it has been written. The developer does all of the work to produce the app and only then finds out it was all for naught. Second, there are clearly rules which are not listed in the SDK guidelines. Third, in its explanations for the rejections, Apple is not stating what these actual unpublished rules are, and is instead offering as the reason this “it duplicates a built-in app” rule which, given all the aforementioned counterexamples that have been accepted into the App Store, isn’t actually a rule at all. The explanation is clearly false. Taken together, these three factors lead to The Fear, which is that developers cannot trust the App Store process. You can spend all of the time and effort it takes to build an app, follow every known rule, and still get rejected. From Apple’s perspective, especially, say, in upper management, it may be all too easy to look at what’s going on with the store — thousands of published apps, a ton of money changing hands — and not see the problem. In the big picture, from both a technical and marketing perspective, the App Store is a grand success. The problem is that the apps that are the most interesting, the most important, are the ones that take the most work to create. And the apps that take the most work to create are the ones that are most likely not even to be made in this environment, because the risk is greater. The more work it takes to create an app, the more you lose if Apple rejects it. Going back to the ladder analogy, the higher you’re trying to climb, the more you need to trust the ladder before you start. It’s not about a handful of developers who’ve had their apps rejected. It’s about all the other developers who are now spooked, and that the ones who are the most spooked are the ones who harbor the grandest, boldest, most innovative ideas. Interpolation Regarding a Theory on Which Apps Apple Won’t Allow Developers to Compete With In the absence of revised iPhone SDK Agreement from Apple, we can attempt to guess what the unpublished rules are. With Podcaster, for example, the “follow the money” rule of thumb leads to the conclusion that Apple will not allow any competition with iTunes, because iTunes is a profit source. This is why MailWrangler’s rejection is the one that puts The Fear in my heart. As unjust as the Podcaster rejection appears, if Apple really wants to prohibit competition with iTunes, even anti-competitively, you can at least see the thinking behind the decision. It’s foolish and unnecessary — the fact that iTunes is wide open to total competition on both Mac OS X and Windows hasn’t hurt it at all — and it also quite possibly invites some sort of legal challenge, but at least there is a logical idea behind it. But Mail? Why on earth should Apple care if some third-party email client for the iPhone becomes wildly popular? It makes no sense. iPhone users who use the built-in Mail app don’t pay extra to do so. Mail doesn’t tie users to Apple’s own MobileMe service. In fact, Mail offers specific setup help to work with Gmail, the service MailWrangler is optimized for. If you can make a replacement for Notes and Weather and Calendar, why not Mail? I have a theory. It is more, well, emotional than logical. But it’s the only theory I can think of that makes any sense at all and fits the available evidence. The theory is that there is an unpublished rule that Apple — and in this case, where by “Apple” I really mean “Steven P. Jobs” — will not publish third-party apps that compete with or replace any of the four apps in the iPhone’s default “dock”: Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod. Go back to Jobs’s original iPhone introduction at Macworld Expo 2007. It was a masterful presentation. Carmine Gallo, writing for BusinessWeek, calls it Jobs’s greatest presentation; I agree. Gallo describes the moment it was unveiled: After laying the groundwork, Jobs builds up to the new device by teasing the audience: “Today, we are introducing three revolutionary products. The first is a wide-screen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary new mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.” Jobs continues to build tension. He repeats the three devices several times then says, “Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device … today Apple is going to reinvent the phone!” The crowd goes wild. This “three revolutionary products” pitch was inordinately effective. For one thing, live, in the hall, Jobs completely fooled the crowd, yours truly included. But then as he repeated the three product ideas over and over, while icons representing the three products rotated behind him on screen, faster and faster, it started dawning on us how we’d been tricked. By the time Jobs came out and said that it was just one device that encompassed all three products, everyone in Moscone West had come to that conclusion on their own — a nifty little way of making the crowd feel clever, as though we’d figured out a riddle. But this pitch also worked because it was true. All three of those products sound good on their own. All three in one device sounds insanely great. Jobs was introducing the iPhone simply by describing precisely what it was. A phone, a widescreen video iPod, and a breakthrough Internet communicator. The icons in the iPhone’s default dock represent the core functionality of the device. Phone, Email, Web, iPod. With nothing other than those four apps, the iPhone still would have been a hit. Not as great, but, still, great. Everything else the iPhone’s built-in apps do could be done, to some extent, through Safari: notes, calendars, weather, maps, stocks. There are a few minor exceptions. SMS is one example, but that’s really just an adjunct to the Phone app. Anything that relates to the phone network — voice or SMS — is unavailable through the third-party iPhone SDK anyway. You couldn’t write your own SMS app even if you wanted to. (Apple clearly has no problem with competing chat apps — there are several IM clients available in the App Store. That’s the same basic concept as SMS, but using IP networking.) And so my guess is that while there may not be any logic, there’s at least a notion, if only in Jobs’s mind, that these four apps are sacrosanct because they define the iPhone. Everything else, both from Apple and from App Store developers, is piffle, secondary to those four apps. Harry McCracken’s recent iPhone user survey indicates that iPhone users agree that those four apps comprise the most-used features of the iPhone. But the least essential of the four is Mail. You cannot place phone calls or play music and video from your personal iTunes library using a web browser, but can read and send email through it.2 Millions of people do just that every day, including, I’m sure, many of you reading this essay. And Google’s iPhone-optimized version of Gmail shows just how well it can be done. It’s not just good for web-based mail, it’s just good, period. And so this idea that Apple seems to have that Mail is particularly special is misguided. The Phone and iPod apps are special, because at a fundamental level they perform tasks that cannot be duplicated in a web app. But there’s nothing any more special about Mail than there is about, say, Calendar. Calendar, if anything, is more closely tied to Apple’s proprietary and commercial MobileMe service — Mail works great with any IMAP server, including Gmail, but Calendar only works for online syncing with MobileMe or Exchange. But Apple doesn’t seem to have any problem allowing Calendar competitors into the App Store. Notes Calendar is a $3 Lotus Notes calendaring client. Exchange Remote Calendar is a $10 is a $10 calendaring client for Exchange. If these are OK, why not a dedicated Gmail email client? The only explanation is that Mail is deemed untouchable and Calendar is not. The real test would be for someone to write a dedicated Google Calendar iPhone app — but given what happened to MailWrangler, it might be hard to find someone willing to try it. In short, my theory is that Mail is on the do-not-compete list not because there’s any strategic reason for Apple to do so, but simply because of a vague notion that Mail is one of the iPhone’s defining apps. This notion is wrong. Mail is important, but there’s nothing about it that needs to be protected from competition. End of Interpolation, Back to the Three Problems, Which, Due to the Grotesque Length of the Above Interpolation, I Will Remind You Are: (1) App Ideas Are Rejected Only After the Apps Are Actually Built; (2) There Exist Secret Unpublished Rules Regarding What Is Allowed; and (3) When Apps Are Rejected for Violating the Unpublished Rules, Apple Refuses to State Just What These Rules Are One thing that would make a difference would be a submission process whereby developers could submit their application ideas to Apple in advance, to find out if they’re OK. That’s how it works on game platforms from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft — developers submit a detailed proposal and wait until they get the green light before actually building the game. That sounds good, but there are problems with the idea. For developers, it would require an additional level of trust in Apple. Ideas are less valuable than actual implementations, but the more original an idea is, the less comfortable you are to share it. And for Apple, it would require significantly more work. They’d still need to examine and approve the actual shipping applications, but now they’d also have to examine and consider application proposals. The world’s hard drives are littered with abandoned unfinished software projects — there would surely be far more proposals submitted for consideration than there are actual iPhone applications. As it stands today, Apple is already struggling mightily to keep up with the work of approving new and updated application submissions — the typical turnaround time is between one to two weeks. Perhaps Apple could offer this as a service limited to ADC Select ($499) or even Premier ($3,499) members. The service is needed most by the developers who are considering the biggest apps, most of whom either are already paid ADC members or wouldn’t bat an eyelash at the cost of joining. It wouldn’t be democratic, but it might make it feasible. Platforms like Wii and Xbox ship maybe a few dozen titles a month, tops. The App Store has published 3,500 titles in just three months. (And it costs far more to join the developer programs for gaming consoles than the $100 iPhone SDK fee.) More important, though, is for Apple to address problems 2 and 3, by publishing in the iPhone SDK Agreement all of the rules they’re using to evaluate applications. If we’re not allowed to write email or podcast clients, say so. If something unforeseen comes up, Apple should make a decision, and then publish the new rule. Rules you disagree with are frustrating. Rules you don’t know about are scary. I will also note that, to my knowledge, not a single published iPhone developer has spoken out in favor of the App Store’s current rejection policies. Those developers who have spoken are against it. Those who see no problem are not themselves iPhone developers.�↩ Even if Apple were to come to its senses and allow third-party developers to write competing email clients, the built-in Mail app would hold one significant technical advantage, which is that it runs in the background. In fact, background processing is the one factor that unites the four dock apps. Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod all continue running the background; no other apps, including those from Apple, do.�↩
Google's Android Market Guarantees Problems for Users

Daniel Eran Dilger It's great news that Google is planning to deliver a market for mobile software with its own centralized “Android Market.” It should give Apple's iPhone Apps Store competitive pressure to continue to innovate, and provide a safety net for smartphone users if Apple fails to deliver progress fast enough. If Apple and Google both fail, users will be stuck with the failed third party software models related to Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian. Those high stakes make it all the more disappointing to find that the Android Market fails to answer the tough issues correctly. iPhone App Store vs Android Market. There's no doubt that there will be apps that make it into Google's Android store that aren't currently available from Apple, likely including WiFi tethering (for using your mobile's data plan to give your laptop Internet access on the road), a feature Apple forced NullRiver's NetShare to remove from the iPhone store. That was apparently at the behest of AT&T, which staunchly refuses to support tethering without charging an expensive additional fee. AT&T's 3G network is already strained to carry relatively light-duty mobile traffic; unrestricted amounts of data being dumped on the network from far more demanding desktop apps by millions of users is currently just infeasible to accommodate. Other providers have 3G EVDO bandwidth to spare, but will cut you off just as quickly when you reach their finite definition of “unlimited” data access. Finite bandwidth is not a problem Google's 'free and open' software market can solve, because Google is not the only link in the chain in providing mobile apps. AT&T isn't going to allow tethering from Android phones either, regardless of Google's intended store policies. And Verizon Wireless likely isn't going to allow WiFi on Android phones at all. So it's a joke to say Android will transcend every problem in ways that Apple hasn't. This isn't a case of Google acting like Netflix to offer unlimited content to rival Blockbuster's censorship; instead, Google is simply making great sounding campaign promises it won't be able to deliver. AppleInsider | Google reveals open Android Market to rival iPhone's App Store Will Google’s Android Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Why Apple Plays God with the iPhone SDK But Wait, There's More (And Less). The Android Market will also deliver lots of problems Apple isn't, including a way to distribute malware that can't be remotely killed, or untraceable spyware that professes to be on the up-and-up when you install it, but then works behind your back and phones home sensitive data to a rogue developer's servers. Remember all the speculation last year about the possibility of developers being able to hack the iPhone open and install their own malicious tools to watch what you're doing? Under the iPhone SDK, access to that dangerous path is simply forbidden. Under Android, there's not so much as a handrail for users. Apple has already reprimanded iPhone developers who provided inadequate protection of their users' data, and then forced them to fix their problems immediately. With Google advertising its “see no evil, hear no evil” policy for its self-policing development community, Google won't even know if there's a problem. It will also lack any way to stop or reverse problems, and having renounced any accountability for protecting users with regulatory controls, Google will lack the leverage to push malicious or possibly just incompetent developers to take any action once it does discover problems. Malware and junkware on the PC is a big problem, but on a smartphone it is orders of magnitude more serious of an issue. Having to run spyware cleanup on a PC is a nusance. Having your phone subverted into a tool for advertisers or identity thieves could easily result in issues on the level of life safety. If you thought it was embarrassing to have Outlook send out spam in your name in 2001, wait until Android starts drunk dialing all your contacts to tell them about special offers, attaching your GPS location and perhaps a recent photo from your album so they know they can trust you about it. Google seems to think it can simply ignore security problems by asking developers not to take advantage of its users. This is absurdly ridiculous in our modern context. Google may as well be building unvented fireplaces in a tornado alley trailer park. Ten Myths of Leopard: 9 Apple is Spying on Users! The Unavoidable Malware Myth: Why Apple Won’t Inherit Microsoft’s Malware Crown Wired's Grotesquely Rank Hypocrisy in Mobile Security. Where did all of those mobile phone security experts from last fall run away to? They were abuzz about the imagined catastrophe that might befall the “can't even run any software” iPhone, but none have stepped forward to posit an opinion on why Android's exposed spinning blades in a dark room might result in the world's next Windows XP. Wired, which led the witch hunt against the iPhone last fall, published an article this summer titled “Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web,” which went on breathlessly for days about how Android would solve the industry's problems with giddy can-do chutzpah. Nowhere did the article even suggest a criticism of its wide open, security-free business model. Instead, the author announced, “Engineers who write for just about any mobile operating system today have to spend time and cash obtaining security keys and code-signing certificates. Android would allow any application to be installed and run, no questions asked.” If you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, don't bother. It ended right there on the “time and money savings” of not having any security model. Microsoft saved a lot of money by ignoring security, too, as long as you don't count the $11 billion malware industry. Shame on Wired for continuing its descent into hopelessly unplugged irrelevance. UnWired! Rick Farrow, Metasploit, and My iPhone Security Interview Kim Zetter and the iPhone Root Security Myth High Risk, High Likelihood for Exploitation. The tech media more recently went into high alert to warn users that Apple's MobileMe web apps didn't perform SSL encryption, allowing the possibility for spies to target them in order to read their calendar and email transactions, were they to used the web apps over a public network. That's a valid concern to voice, but also an extremely unlikely threat for users to spend much time worrying about, particularly since there are a number of straightforward precautions users can take to avoid any risky exposure scenarios. There's also little business model behind sniffing calendar appointments and the kind of mundane email threads that .Mac users might engage in while drinking coffee at Starbucks. On the other hand, malicious software and social engineering exploitation is a billion dollar industry, and organized criminals in Korea, China, Russia, and of course Nigeria are as desperate for new dollars outside of the PC desktop as Google is. Rather than the unlikely scenario of on-site spies targeting a specific individual to sniff out truffles from their browser's email, these people have organized and profitable methods for delivering viral payloads to wide audiences from the convenience of a position thousands of miles away. On a smartphone, they can take your money simply by having installed software send a paid SMS. This is a real threat, not a contrived bunch of hysterical nonsense dreamed up by fear-mongering pundits. It is simply criminally negligent for Google to design a smartphone software platform with nearly zero regard for the safety of its users. We can justifiably criticize Microsoft for its lax stance on security in the 90s that resulted in the Windows malware crisis, but many of the potential dangers of certain decisions weren't fully recognized back then. Google is organizing an olympic-sized skating party on a lake it knows has dangerously thin ice. Is Apple’s MobileMe Secure? Store vs Market? It's also worth mentioning that the media is comparing what Google only intends to do with what Apple has already pulled off; I could easily draft plans for a phone that sounds better than the iPhone, but I certainly couldn't deliver it. Apple has years of experience in media sales and micro-payments in iTunes. It began selling software through iTunes in 2006, and spent years refining its software deployment system to make sure iTunes would work as a true market place for mobile software once the iPhone was ready. Anyone can open a store. There are a dozen online music and video stores that have gone out of business trying to sell music like iTunes. Apple created a real market, where both buyers and sellers can have confidence that they're getting a fair deal. Google has tried to backhandedly condemn Apple's App Store for being called a “store,” negatively associating the word with a commercial endeavor as opposed to the community effort Google's marketing team has branded a “market.” Never mind that the words really mean the same thing; Google isn't really creating a market, because markets have enforced rules. Without rules and authority, there is too much risk involved to do legitimate business. If Android were only setting up a barter system between the company's altruistic and noble minded PhDs in the Google cafeteria, there wouldn't be an issue. However, Google is setting up shop in the most corrupt, chaotic, and criminal setting on earth: the wide open Internet, a dirty enough place to turn a brand new PC into a viral porn spam server within fifteen minutes of being plugged in. Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth Can Great Google Getter Done? The company's Alfred E. W. Newman approach to security issues is more than a little alarming coming from a company that is fully aware of Internet scammers. Google's main job is identifying and scouring away the criminal tracks that SEO frauds try to leave behind in its search engine results. The company terminates its advertiser partners on a whim when it even suspects an irregularity, and the web is full or people complaining that Google has failed to pay them for hundreds of dollars of AdSense advertising without even a fair explanation. The company is hard edge and savvy when it comes to protecting its own revenues, so why is it being so soft and naive when the security of its users is on the line? Google's “do no evil” slogan, paired with its considerable contributions to society, from free search to free satellite imagery, and from its staunch support of the public interest related to WiFi and mobile broadband issues to its investments in progressive technologies to make the world a better place, all simply add up to leave its unreasonable stance on mobile security a mysterious puzzle. Can Google even pull its store off? The company serves up millions of free videos in YouTube, but remember that Google originally tried to build its own YouTube and failed; it had to buy YouTube to enter the market. Google also screwed the pooch when it dropped its own paid DRM video service and told its users to go fly a kite. That kind of customer-oblivious behavior isn't going to successfully lock horns with Apple's proven excellence in delivering the iTunes Store as a customer-friendly market place. Apple pulled together 14 year old torrent freaks and the RIAA's lawyers into the same room and made them play together. It turned the festering boil of the rotten mobile software market into a million dollar per day buffet. Google's Android Market not only faces the same challenges, but also has to fly in the face of the industry darling, starting at zero against Apple's ten million installed base of iPhones and its accelerating market share. The industry outside of Apple is working just as hard to grab its own slice as well. Google taking on the iPhone App Store is a bit like Sony deciding to build cars to take on BMW. That's all fine and good, but let's see the car before we start comparing its “planned” zero to 60 performance against that of today's cars with a proven legacy. And stop telling us that lacking both seat belts and brakes is a feature. 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!
50 of the Most Burning Apple Questions Answered

You asked for help with the thorniest problems facing Mac, iPhone, and iPad owners, and we answered, providing 50 foolproof solutions that’ll come in handy for anyone who uses Apple gear.�For months now, we’ve been asking you to send us your most burning Apple questions, and to put it mildly, you came through. The queue in our inbox looked longer than the lines that curled around NYC’s 5th Avenue Apple Store for the launch of the very first iPhone. And when we dug into the meat and potatoes of your queries, we could only marvel at the insightful list of vexing technical issues and twinkle-in-your-eye trivia tidbits that you challenged us with. We distilled all those inquiries down to the 50 best, most burning questions about Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple itself. Then we put our crack team of experts on the job of coming up with this ultimate answers guide for all things Apple. Struggling with iTunes syncing? iPhone backups? RAID cards? iPad printing? Or just wondering exactly what Steve actually wears every day? The answers await, backstopped and bulletproofed by the pros at Mac|Life.�1. Duplicates in iPhoto�I can’t find any options in iPhoto for removing all duplicate pictures in one fell swoop, and I don’t want to find and delete them all myself. Any ideas?iPhoto lacks iTunes’ duplicate-deleting prowess, but the shareware app Duplicate Annihilator can fill this gap and free your photo library of clutter. Despite the name, it identifies and tags duplicate pictures with a keyword so you can collect them in a Smart Folder to review and annihilate at your leisure.�2. Wi-Fi DropoutsSince upgrading to Snow Leopard, my Wi-Fi connection randomly drops for no reason. I still get Wi-Fi reliably on my iPhone, and my wife gets it on her PC. Any advice?This problem seems to be affecting many Snow Leopard users, so we’ve come up with a series of steps that should resolve it. Start with the first and work down until the problem goes away:» Update to Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later.» Restart your modem and router.» Upgrade your router’s firmware to the latest version, particularly if it’s a non-Apple router.» Turn AirPort off then on again from your menu bar.» In your Network System Preference, create a new location and delete all of the previous locations.One of our best tips for troubleshooting Wi-Fi connection problems is to create one brand-new location and then delete all of your previous locations.» Within your new location, drag AirPort to the top of the service order by clicking on the gear icon and choosing “Set Service Order.”» Delete all of your preferred networks. To see your preferred networks, click on AirPort in the left margin, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab.» Within that Advanced area, click on the TCP/IP tab and turn off IPv6. Then, go into the DNS tab and make sure that your DNS servers are correct. If in doubt, try Google’s DNS servers of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.» Run Keychain First Aid in Keychain Access, which is located in your Utilities folder.» Manually change your router’s wireless channel to another channel to avoid interference with other wireless networks. See which channels are being used by other networks with a utility like AirRadar ($20, koingosw.com).» Turn off 802.11n mode on your router, leaving it in 802.11b/g mode only.» Change the security settings on your router from WEP to WPA/WPA2.» Zap the PRAM on your Mac (get instructions here).�3. Multitouch Gestures�Why can’t I do the one-finger double-tap to open documents in Snow Leopard?You can absolutely use the one-finger double-tap on your Multi-Touch trackpad to open documents in Snow Leopard. Simply go into your Trackpad System Preference and make sure that “Tap to Click” is checked. Your confusion may also stem from the fact that your Multi-Touch trackpad is capable of understanding many gestures. So if you’ve enabled “Dragging” or “Drag Lock,” you might be holding down your finger too long after the second tap. If you’ve enabled “Secondary Click,” you might be tapping in the wrong area of your trackpad.�4. Syncing iPhone Photos�When I sync my iPhone, all 6,000 of my MacBook Pro’s photos move to the iPhone--very uncool! How do I remove them from the phone and ensure one-way photo transfers to the Mac in the future?That’s at least 5,950 pictures too many. Just connect your iPhone to your MacBook, then select the iPhone in the iTunes sidebar. Click the Photos tab, where you can choose to transfer none of your pictures or just specific iPhoto Albums, Faces, and Events to your iPhone. Re-sync to apply your new settings and get back a few gigabytes on your iPhone.�5. Uninstalling�My Mac still runs processes from a program I deleted. How do I delete an application entirely and prevent this from happening?Unfortunately, there’s no standard way to remove a program from your Mac, but some developers simplify the job by including an uninstaller with their application. It may lurk in the main folder of the app you want to terminate--check those subfolders!--or it might be in the original installer itself. Launch the installer and proceed through it carefully. An uninstall feature may be obvious, or it could be hidden among options to customize the installation process. Be sure to quit the program you want to delete before uninstalling it.If an application didn’t come with an uninstaller, then the only way to delete it is to drag it to the Trash. However, this won’t remove preferences and other support files left behind on your Mac. You can use Spotlight to search for the deleted application’s name to find these strays, but if you have a lot of applications to remove, consider investing in a dedicated uninstaller like CleanApp, AppZapper, or AppCleaner. These programs automate the process of zapping unwanted programs--and their stuff--off your drive for good.�6. File Compression�I’d like to save hard drive space with the Finder’s Compress command, but I’m not getting useful results. I recently compressed a 117.4MB file to just 116.7MB. Am I doing something wrong?Not all file types can be compressed with the same space-saving results. For example, compressing a ZIP archive won’t make a significantly smaller ZIP file. Some files, such as JPEGs, MP3s, and other media formats, have a certain level of compression already built in, but the sizes of text files and uncompressed image file formats can be dramatically reduced with ZIP compression.�7. Remote Control�When I use my iPod touch as a remote for my Apple TV, it appears to only give me access to the Apple TV’s library as if it were an iPod. Is there a way to use the iPod touch like the traditional Apple remote? For example, can I use the touch to navigate to the YouTube app and search for videos, or to browse the movie rentals?Apple’s Remote app for the iPhone and iPod touch lets you control the playback of media that you’ve already purchased or downloaded. But for content that doesn’t live on your Apple TV, such as YouTube videos or the iTunes Store, you’ll still need your traditional Apple remote to navigate to those screens. However, the good news is that whenever an onscreen keyboard appears on your Apple TV, the Remote app will display its own keyboard, which lets you quickly type what you’re searching for.�8. Photo Migration�Can Faces and Places data in iPhoto ‘09 be moved to another Mac, or do I have to click on all those faces and enter all those locations again?All your vacation sites and friendly faces will transfer to another Mac with OS X’s Migration Assistant, or you can drag your iPhoto library file from your Pictures folder to the same location on a new Mac. When you launch iPhoto on the new machine, you’ll be told the locations of pictures containing GPS data must be retrieved again, but custom locations you’ve entered yourself (for pictures taken with older cameras, say) will remain intact.�9. Gmail, Behave!�I sync Gmail with OS X’s Mail, but when I delete a message from Mail, it remains in Gmail’s All Mail folder in the sidebar. What’s the right mailbox setting to move a message deleted in Mail to Gmail’s Trash?All your Gmail goes into the All Mail folder, whether or not it’s been recently deleted and no matter which Gmail folder label is attached to the message. Google’s default IMAP Mail settings (available here) are correct, but to send a Mail message directly to Gmail’s Trash, you’ll have to drag it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder in Mail’s sidebar.�10. Crash-Tastic�It always happens at the worst possible time: I’ll be using my PowerBook G4 when the screen suddenly dims and shows a Rosetta Stone’s worth of languages telling me to restart the computer. Why does this keep happening, and how can I stop it?Ouch. What you’re describing is a kernel panic, a cute name for a not-so-cute problem. An operating system’s kernel acts as a bridge between applications and the computer’s hardware, and kernel panics are the last-ditch efforts of the operating system to recover from serious conflicts between them. The chief causes of kernel panics are faulty RAM and software incompatible with the operating system you’re running. Unfortunately, that range could include any number of bad things that may be happening on your poor PowerBook.Happily, even a kernel panic isn’t the end of the world, and we can offer some pointers to help you figure out what’s wrong. The first step is to look at your Mac’s history. Was there a time when it didn’t get kernel panics? Think back to any (and we mean any) new hardware or software you installed before the panics began. Update or uninstall them one item at a time to isolate the panics’ cause until you narrow down the trouble. Also note which hardware and software you’re using just before they strike--there may be a pattern. Whatever the issue, your Mac isn’t happy, so be sure to back up important files and verify your hard drive with Disk Utility regularly.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�11. Get Zippy iPhone Backups�How can I speed up iPhone backups so I’ll never have to cancel mid-backup again? They seem to take forever when a couple minutes really should do it.A. First off, keep your iOS software current. Not only will the latest updates squash bugs and add features, they can improve backup times. To update, sync your iPhone, select it in the iTunes sidebar, then go to the Summary tab.B. Pare down the number of applications on your iPhone. Application data like in-app purchases, saved games, and new documents are all backed up when you sync, and that can add up to a long wait while the backup progress bar creeps by. To start cleaning house, connect to iTunes, select the Apps tab, then delete your most infrequently used applications. You’ll lose the data saved in these apps, but you’ll gain speedier backups.Ask yourself this: Are those apps you never use on your iPhone really worth slowing down your backups?C. Sync often. If you sync at least once or twice a day, fewer applications will have new data to back up when you reconnect to iTunes. If you can’t bear to part with any of the applications on your Home Screen, making multiple faster backups will let you keep all your favorite apps at your fingertips.D. Keep Camera Roll clean. While the contents of your iPhone’s photo library aren’t backed up during a sync, the photos, movies, and screenshots in Camera Roll are. Transfer this media to iPhoto as soon as you begin a sync, and delete the files from Camera Roll when the transfer is complete to get this data copied onto your Mac while excluding it from being backed up in iTunes.More photos = slower backups.E. Connect to a USB port on your Mac instead of an external USB hub. Not all USB ports are created equal, and connecting to a powered, full-speed USB port that’s built into your Mac will ensure the fastest possible transfer speeds during backups. That means you can be off to your next port of call quickly, secure in the knowledge that your iPhone data is safe on your computer.F. Before you sync to iTunes, purge unnecessary SMS messages, old call histories, and non-essential files downloaded by apps that store data on your iPhone. For example, if you regularly copy files to your iDisk app or productivity apps like DocsToGo, make sure you’re only carrying what you need before a backup. Odds are these files live elsewhere on your Mac or iDisk, so there’s no need to back them up again.Junk your old, unused files, too.�12. Time Travel�I’ve been running Time Machine for months in Mac OS 10.6.3, but I’ve never seen instructions about how to go back in time and retrieve information. Help!Mount your backup drive, then launch Time Machine from your Mac’s Applications folder. Your desktop will be replaced by a timeline and Finder windows showing your Mac’s contents as they were in the past. Just click a Finder window (or click within the timeline) to return to a specific date. You can also search within Finder windows for specific filenames, and more. When you find a missing file, select it and click Restore to return to the present with your document.�13. Rip Encrypted Movies�I want an easy way to download a DVD to my computer so I can put it on my iPod or iPad. I used to use HandBrake, but that no longer works for encrypted DVDs.HandBrake (free, handbrake.fr) is still the quickest and most reliable tool for directly converting DVDs into video files that will play on your iPod or iPad. But you’ll also need to install VLC (free, videolan.org) if you want to decrypt commercial DVDs. Place both HandBrake and VLC into your Applications folder, and you’ll be able to convert encrypted DVDs with HandBrake once again.�14. Dump Discs�I want to go disc-free on my MacBook, but a few of my games require a CD or DVD to play. Is there any way to make OS X think the disc is in the drive when it’s not?OS X’s Disk Utility can make a duplicate of your game’s CD or DVD and save it to your Mac as a file called a disk image. Once created, disk images can be double-clicked to open and mount on your desktop just like a conventional disc (you’ve already seen them in software installers downloaded from the internet). But there are two things to remember: copy-protection schemes on the disc may prevent duplication, and you should have plenty of room on your MacBook’s hard drive before you begin. A DVD’s disk image will take up several gigabytes.To get started, insert the disc you want to dupe, then launch Disk Utility from your Utilities folder. Select the disc in the sidebar, then click New Image in the Disk Utility toolbar, set the image format to DVD/CD Master in the resulting sheet, and save the disk image to your Mac. Next time you want to play your game, double-click the image file, then launch your game normally once the virtual game disc mounts. When you’re finished, you can drag the mounted disc to the Trash to eject like any conventional media, leaving the disk image on your Mac for the next time you want to get your game on.�15. Branching Out�Which operating systems—and I mean all of them, not just Mac versions—will run on a PowerPC-based Mac?The PowerPC processor has become something of a museum piece since Apple abandoned it for Intel’s chips, but these Linux distributions can help you breathe new life into G5- and G4-powered Macs. Ubuntu, Yellow Dog, and Fedora all maintain builds that run on PowerPC hardware. When you’re looking to run a worthwhile alternate operating system on older Mac hardware, the penguin has you covered.�16. The $1M Question�When will Adobe Flash content be viewable on iPhones and iPads?Never. In April, Steve Jobs had this to say about Flash on Apple’s website: “Flash was created during the PC era--for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low-power devices, touch interfaces, and open web standards--all areas where Flash falls short.”�17. iLife Oops�I accidentally deleted iMovie and the Apple Loops that came with GarageBand. Can I reload them from the original disc without losing all my other iLife files?Sure! First, launch the iLife ‘09 installer from your disc. At the bottom of the final screen is a Customize button that lets you install iLife components individually. Click it, then select the items you want to reinstall. The installer will insist on installing GarageBand along with your missing loops, but your missing applications and files will return to your Mac without affecting other iLife applications and documents, including GarageBand preferences. Just remember to run Software Update afterward to ensure that everything’s up to date.�18. iPad Printing�What are the best ways to print from the iPad?Until Apple decides to build printing into iOS, there unfortunately isn’t a “best” way--although there are several apps in the App Store that might meet your needs.Canon’s Easy-PhotoPrint for iPhone runs on the iPad and will print photos to certain Canon printers. And the App Store is full of plenty of third-party apps that promise printing from your iPad, although in our experience the results are decidedly mixed. PrintBureau ($12.99) searches your network for shared printers. It reliably printed to one--but not another--of the printers on our home network without any intervention. There’s an optional free helper application you can run on a Mac to give PrintBureau access to your printers (a solution common to several iPad printing apps), but we’d hardly call that true iPad printing.We also had success with Air Sharing HD ($9.99), which is packed with features for moving and sharing files with your iPad. It didn’t work immediately with our Wi-Fi–enabled printer, but turning on Printer Sharing on our Mac made all our printers visible to the app. But--like using a companion app--that also requires that you have a Mac running. Ultimately, the least fiddly solution often ends up being emailing yourself a document and printing from a computer. Hopefully Apple has something better in the pipeline…�19. Tame Bookmarks�I have tons of Safari bookmarks on my Mac. I don’t want them all on my iPhone, but Apple only allows syncing of all or none. Is there a fix?It’s almost elegant. Xmarks (xmarks.com) syncs bookmarks across multiple browsers, and its profiles let you decide which bookmarks appear on specific devices, including your iPhone. Best of all, you can view (and even search) them in a layout formatted for Mobile Safari. Just sign up for Xmarks, follow their instructions, and disable iPhone bookmark syncing in iTunes. Unfortunately, Xmarks doesn’t sync new bookmarks made on your iPhone back to your Mac. Like we said…almost elegant.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�20. Stay Safe�How can I tell if someone is using my Wi-Fi?�Elementary, my dear Wi-Fi user! The mystery’s solution lies in MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, which are unique codes that identify network devices. Different routers have different ways of showing which addresses (and thus, devices) are accessing your network. If you have an AirPort router, launch AirPort Utility from your Utilities folder, double-click your router’s icon, then click the Advanced icon in the resulting window. Click Logging and Statistics, then Logs and Statistics. In the Wireless Clients section, you’ll see a graph showing the address of each device connecting to your network. The list will include your Mac, the AirPort router itself, and any other computers, iPhones, game consoles, or other devices using your Wi-Fi connection. Next, match the MAC addresses to your network devices. We’ll get you started: your computer’s address can be found in the Network section of System Profiler. When you’re finished, you’ll know the addresses of devices you want on your network, so you can tell when something with a foreign address is using your Wi-Fi. Then the game’s afoot!�21. Sim-plify�I have a 1G iPhone that I want to use as a simple iPod touch, leaving aside the phone features entirely, but I don’t have the original SIM card. What are my options?Your options are slim. Unlike later models, the 1G iPhone requires a SIM card to operate as a basic iPod, even after AT&T service has been terminated or transferred to another phone. You can get a new SIM card from AT&T, but this will require signing up for a new phone service contract. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this limitation besides jailbreaking your iPhone with one of the methods floating around on the internet.�22. Merge Partitions�Is there any way to un-partition a non-boot hard drive in OS 10.6 without wiping the data?You’re in luck. Since 10.5, OS X’s Disk Utility has been able to add and remove partitions from disks without affecting other data on the drive. However, Disk Utility won’t merge data from the deleted partition to another partition on the drive, so back up all your data--especially files on the partition you’ll be removing--before you begin.Once all your data’s securely backed up, launch Disk Utility from your Mac’s Utilities folder, then select the drive in the sidebar (be sure to choose the icon noting the drive’s capacity, not just its name). Click the Partition button, then in the shaded box showing the drive’s Volume Scheme, select the partition you want to remove. Click the minus button below the Volume Scheme chart to remove the partition (don’t worry, it won’t disappear right away). Click and drag other partitions to resize them and fill the empty space that will be left behind by the deleted partition. You can also click the plus button to add a new partition that can also be resized. Click Apply to commit your changes and begin Operation: Un-partition.�23. No Scratching�I just bought a new 21.5” iMac (late 2009 model) and found a serious design flaw: the CD slot has sharp aluminum edges that can inflict permanent, irreversible scratches to valuable CDs. Help!These days, Apple’s really into razor-sharp edges. For example, the unibody MacBooks also famously have sharp edges where users rest their wrists, and those very same sharp edges have made it onto the slot on the side of the iMac where CDs are loaded. Luckily, those sharp edges are just on the outside, not on the internal drive itself. So if you carefully and slowly slide in your CD without touching the outside edges, you may avoid scratching your CD. But here’s a more practical solution: Put electrical tape around the edges of the slot. This isn’t the most beautiful thing to look at, but it’s almost guaranteed to keep scratches at bay. Another option would be to purchase an external CD drive to either use as your primary CD drive or to make copies of your valuable CDs. That way, if a CD gets scratched, at least it’s not the original.�24. Font Fixes�When using Mail, any font that I use in my outgoing email always shows up on recipient PCs as Courier--that archaic, typewriter style font. How can I get my Mac fonts to translate onto PCs?In order for a font to be successfully seen on somebody’s computer, they need to already have that particular font installed on their machine. If your recipient doesn’t have the same exact font as you, their computer will substitute your font with a font that is already installed on their system. This applies to emails, websites, Word documents, almost anything. If maintaining the integrity of fonts is important to you, you’ll need to create PDF files or images and attach them to your outgoing email message.�25. App-Update Errors�When I try to update apps from my iPhone, I get a “Cannot Connect to iTunes Store” error, yet I have no problem downloading new apps, and no problem updating them in iTunes on my computer. What gives?Assuming the problem is reoccurring and not a freaky networking accident, it sounds like your iPhone (or the problematic apps themselves) may be confused about the status of your iTunes account. This could be because a different user has logged into your iPhone, because you have multiple usernames or passwords tied to your iTunes account, or even because your billing information was recently changed on another device. The easiest place to start is by navigating to Settings, tapping Store, and confirming that yours is the currently active account on your iPhone. If it is, try signing out and signing back in with your most recent iTunes account information, then verify that your address and billing information are correct. If the problem persists, the apps may the culprit. Try updating them in iTunes, then deleting them from your iPhone. Reconnect your iPhone to your computer to sync the updated apps back to the phone. If, down the road, these same applications refuse to update from your iPhone again, deleting them from your Mac and re-downloading them from the iTunes Store may fix this.�26. Make Windows Behave�I have various finder windows set to appear in different views depending on their content. But certain windows stubbornly--and randomly--refuse to remember my preferences. Is it a bug, or am I missing a setting?Setting a specific folder to open in a particular view (such as columns, icons, or lists) can make browsing files in the Finder a lot easier. Just open and set each folder to your preferred view, then select View > Show View Options in the menu bar and check the topmost button in the resulting window to force the Finder window to always open in that view. Unfortunately, the Finder has ignored these helpful preferences since the earliest days of OS X. Your stubborn folders aren’t the first!Your folders may be confused by corrupt .DS_Store files, the invisible files created by the Finder to store icon sizes, window backgrounds, and more. System utility apps like TinkerTool and Cocktail can reveal or delete these files for you, or you can use the Terminal to delete them yourself if your UNIX Fu is strong.If those options don’t do the trick, your Mac may think you don’t have permission to reset the view options of certain folders. Some, like the Applications folder, don’t technically “belong” to any user except the system itself, and only the system (also known as the root user) can make permanent changes to these directories. What looks like random stubbornness may be OS X remembering that it’s in charge of these folders, not you.To show your Mac who’s boss, log in as the root user, then set uncooperative folders to the view setting you prefer. Just be careful, and remember to log back into your normal user account and disable root access when the job is done. Moving or deleting the wrong files while logged in as root can have serious consequences for your Mac. Apple explains how to log in as root here.�27. Just Open!�I used to double-click any photo, and it would open in Photoshop. When I installed 10.6, this feature disappeared. Now I have to drop the photos onto the Photoshop icon.Snow Leopard ignores “creator codes,” which changed its file-opening behavior--it’s all about file extensions now. Right-click a JPG, choose Get Info, and under Open With, choose Photoshop, and click Change All. Do this again for PNG, PSD, TIF, and any other photo file types you want Photoshop to get first dibs on.�28. iPads Kill Wi-Fi�When enough of us use iPads on the office Wi-Fi, it can crash the Wi-Fi itself! I’ve heard this is a common problem--is there a fix?You’ve heard right, and it’ll take an OS and/or firmware update from Apple to vanquish this annoying glitch. Until then, know that the issue is caused because an iPad can stop renewing its DHCP lease when it goes to sleep, so if you set your iPad to never sleep (Settings > General > Auto-Lock > Never), you’re good. That’s hardly ideal, and at Mac|Life HQ, we set up an iPad-only Wi-Fi network, which creates a smaller pool of DHCP leases and keeps the main Wi-Fi network safe. Interestingly, iPads are also prone to other Wi-Fi glitches, like sketchy signal strength, frequent drops, and slow speeds. Bizarrely, one of the first things you should do is increase the brightness upward and turn off the Auto Brightness option (Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper). We can only guess that something’s screwy with iPad power management…�29. Mac Pros Are Hot�I just wanted to bring to your attention a widespread, frustrating issue that exists with all 2009 Mac Pros. Whenever you play any audio, the CPU rapidly heats up (core temperatures as high as 90ºC, CPU heat sink 60ºC). This problem exists in 10.5 and 10.6, but does not happen in Windows running in Boot Camp, so it appears to be a Mac OS X bug. And after spending $8,000 on Apple’s top machine, I feel like I have been had.Yes, this seems to be a prevalent problem with the 2009 Mac Pros. Playing any type of audio heats up the Pro precariously close to--but not quite at--dangerous heat levels. If your Mac actually reached dangerous heat levels, it would shut itself down. This increased heat also causes decreased performance. Unfortunately, we don’t have any solutions for you, but we’re publishing your letter in the hopes that greater publicity on this issue will help get a speedy resolution from Apple.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�30. What a Mess!One of my co-workers spilled juice on his older MacBook Pro, and now the keys are sticky (when pressed down, they don’t pop up right away). What’s the best way to clean up?Sounds nasty! Although this particular spill has long dried, we’ll start these cleanup instructions from the moment right after spillage to make them more widely useful. So: Immediately power down, disconnect the power cord from the MacBook, and remove the battery (if it’s removable). After doing as much as you can with paper or cloth towels, turn the machine over with the lid partly open to allow the liquid to drain, making sure that the laptop doesn’t close all the way. Give it about 72 hours to completely air dry and then take apart the machine to thoroughly clean the innards. The website iFixIt.com has great step-by-step guides to taking the keys off and getting your MacBook back to normal. When dabbing at disassembled keys and other parts, we recommend a bit of gauze lightly dampened with rubbing alcohol.�31. Airport Fizzles�I stream my music from iTunes to an AirPort router, but it frequently cuts out. What can I do?First, make sure your iTunes and AirPort software are up to date. If the problem persists, move your router away from possible sources of interference. Wi-Fi is convenient, but it’s not an exact science. Signals can be impeded by microwaves, wireless phones, thick masonry, and more. If dropouts continue, try changing the channel on which your AirPort broadcasts in the Wireless tab of the AirPort section of AirPort Utility.�32. Family Planning�My wife and I have our own iPhones and iTunes accounts, and we’re adding an iPad to the happy family. Can we sync both iPhones and the iPad (plus our Apple TV) to a single iTunes account, and share our apps on all devices without affecting our current library and future purchases?Bad news first: there’s no way to merge multiple iTunes accounts into one, so your family will have to keep juggling separate accounts and purchases from your iPhones, Apple TV, and bouncing baby iPad. The good news is that apps, like DRM-protected movies and TV shows, can be used on up to five authorized computers and the iDevices that sync to them. Just open iTunes, select Apps in the sidebar, then drag iPhone applications you want to share from iTunes to a networked computer or removable hard drive. Select File > Add to Library in iTunes on the second authorized computer, then choose the exported apps to load them into that computer’s library. These apps won’t retain saved data from the original computer, but otherwise they’ll be fully operational and can be updated normally. Apple TV purchases, however, will still be tethered to one of your computers. But even these files can be synced and transferred to multiple computers and iDevices.Here’s the better news: Home Sharing, introduced in iTunes 9, simplifies this process by allowing users to drag and drop media to shared computers within iTunes. Activate Home Sharing by selecting Advanced > Turn On Home Sharing. Repeat this step on all your computers, entering one iTunes account username and password on each. Then you can drag media from shared libraries in iTunes’ sidebar into a computer’s local library at will. Future purchases can be shared automatically by clicking the Settings button at the bottom of Home Sharing iTunes library, then selecting which media you’d like to share. Once you set up all computers on your network, syncing works automatically, zapping new media off to each machine.�33. Double the Addresses�Why do I have duplicate Contact entries on my iPhone but not on my Mac?Odds are your iPhone has gained multiple groups of contacts after syncing them both wirelessly through MobileMe and through iTunes when you connected your iPhone to your Mac. Whatever the cause, check your iPhone Contact app’s Groups. If you see a group named From My Mac in addition to groups you’ve created in OS X’s Address Book, it’s a sign your iPhone thinks you have two distinct sets of friends.It's hard enough to find the contact you're looking for--who needs duplicate entries?To fix the problem, first back up your Mac’s contact data. Connect your iPhone to iTunes, uncheck Sync Address Book Contacts in the Info tab, then re-sync. If that doesn’t remove the extra contacts, turn off MobileMe contact syncing in Settings on your iPhone, choosing to delete the existing contacts on your phone. Next, turn Contact syncing back on, and choose to merge MobileMe’s data onto your iPhone if asked. Now you should have just one set of contacts shared between your iPhone and Mac. You’ll have half the friends, but half the hassles.�34. Conquer Syncing�What's the most elegant way to sync iTunes libraries between work and home computers?We use SuperSync, a program that lets you sync your iTunes library among multiple computers on local networks or over the Internet. SuperSync’s busy interface can seem a little daunting, but in just a few quick steps, you can start copying music from your crib to your cubicle and back again. Casual Fridays will never be the same.A. Buy the SoftwareSuperSync looks and feels kinda like iTunes, but is a whole different beast.To get started, you’ll need a copy of SuperSync running on both your home and work computers. Two licenses will set you back $24, or you can snag ten for $34 and give one to your manager for Boss’s Day.B. Make the ConnectionsWhen you first launch SuperSync on your home Mac, it loads and displays your iTunes library in an iTunes-alike window organized by genre, artist, and playlist. While SuperSync may look a little like iTunes (and it can even play some unprotected audio files), it’s really a conduit and control panel for syncing, not a jukebox. Your DRM-protected files must still be played by an authorized copy of iTunes, although SuperSync will transfer them just fine.SuperSync can even keep metadata updated across different Macs.If your music collection doesn’t live in your Mac’s Home folder, you can point SuperSync to a library stored on a remote or network drive and share from there. To set up sharing, just check the obvious boxes and enter a password in the application’s Network preferences. While you’re there, you can fine-tune what you sync and how. For instance, you can keep specific media types--all videos, for instance--out of your shared library and pick which metadata changes will be synced back to your home machine. Whether you simply want to copy files or meticulously update their play counts, ratings, and more across your computers, SuperSync has your back.C. Start the SyncTo sync your library, install and launch SuperSync on your work machine, then turn on sharing and connect to your home computer. This is easiest (and fastest) on a local network, but you can sync your music over the internet by manually forwarding ports on your home router, or by using a UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) router and letting SuperSync do the work for you.When the syncing starts, SuperSync's interface gets pretty busy.Once you get both computers talking to each other, you can synchronize your entire library in one go, sync individual files, or transfer albums, artists, and whole genres at once. You can even sync your playlists--both their music files and the lists themselves in the iTunes sidebar. Naturally, files added to iTunes on your work computer can be synced back to your home Mac. Just finish your download in iTunes, then phone home with SuperSync. New files will be noted automatically and can be transferred with a click.�35. Hot Flash�My MacBook Pro has been acting strangely. It will become sluggish, get hot, and the fans will come on at full speed. Activity Monitor shows that a process called “PTMD” is taking over 60 percent of my CPU. How do I prevent PTMD from taking over my Mac?This may not be a common question, but it certainly is a burning one! According to Apple’s Mac OS X Reference Library, PTMD stands for “platform thermal monitor daemon,” and it communicates any OS notifications effecting thermal conditions to your hardware. This daemon is supposed to automatically quit itself when it’s done communicating, but apparently your Mac erroneously thinks that its thermal conditions are continuously changing, so it’s trying to let your hardware continuously know this incorrect information.This seems to be a new problem that has cropped up for some users in Mac OS 10.6.3, so hopefully it will be fixed in a future update to the operating system. In the meantime, you can manually quit out of PTMD in Activity Monitor (launch it from your Utilities folder) whenever it starts acting up. You may also try resetting your Mac’s System Management Controller, which is responsible for thermal management (follow the directions here).�36. It's a RAIDI have Apple’s RAID card in my Mac Pro, and it always pops up this error message: “Write cache disabled due to insufficient battery charge.” But...what is a RAID card, and what should I do?Apple's Mac Pro RAID Card improves RAID performance and reliability.RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Disks, and it’s a tech that lets you combine multiple hard drives so they appear as one. RAIDs can either be mirrored or striped--in the first, each drive is an exact copy (or mirror) of the other drives, so if one fails, you’ll still have all of your data intact on another (known as redundancy). If you configure your drives as a striped RAID, the storage space of all of your drives is added together into one larger drive. This will give you increased performance and increased storage space, but no redundancy unless you’ve configured your RAID with parity handling (which uses a portion of each drive to hold identical copies of data from one of the other drives). RAIDs can be controlled by software like Apple’s Disk Utility or the excellent SoftRAID ($129, softraid.com), or they can be controlled by hardware like your RAID card. The main advantages of a hardware-controlled RAID are increased performance and reliability. With the error message you’re receiving, it sounds like the battery on your RAID card has died, so take it into Apple to get replaced.�37. iPad 2�What upgrades will we see in the next version of the iPad? (We emailed a trio of well-known tech experts for their predictions.)��Daniel LyonsNewsweek"I'd guess the following:» Front-facing camera for videoconferencing» Multitasking (duh, already announced)» Higher-resolution screen» No Flash» Gorgeous ads that will change your life» Unicorn tears"��Christopher NullYahoo! News, Technology"Dual cameras--a front-facing camera for videoconferencing will be huge for opening up a whole new market for the iPad."��Dylan TweneyWired"One of the things most obviously missing from the current iPad is a webcam. This would instantly transform the iPad into a videophone, and its size—just slightly bigger than the human face—would be perfect for face-to-face video chats. It’s also likely that the next iPad will have more memory and a faster processor. If we’re lucky, it might have an HDMI port too, so you can hook it up to a TV to show off photos, videos, and apps. One thing it definitely won’t have, though, is support for Adobe Flash. That door is closed, probably forever."��38. Mac Van Winkle�When I wake my MacBook Pro from sleep, it doesn’t connect to my Wi-Fi. Sometimes it even forgets the Wi-Fi password. How the heck do I get it to remember?First, check out the extensive troubleshooting steps that we gave in Question #2 to see if any of those ideas solve your problem. Beyond that, your problem may be caused by one of the following issues:» Two Wi-Fi networks with the same SSID (wireless network name). For example, do you connect to one wireless router that’s named “Linksys” at work and then another router that’s named “Linksys” at home? If so, your Mac may be trying to apply the password from one router to the other router. Rename one of the wireless networks.» Keychain problems. Launch Keychain Access (in Utilities) and delete any AirPort Network password entries for the wireless networks that are giving you problems.» Preferred Networks problem. Go into your Network System Preference, click on AirPort, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab. Delete any unused networks, and drag your current network to the top of the list.» Corrupt preference file. Trash the file located at Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and restart your Mac.» Security incompatibilities. Try changing the type of wireless security on your router (for example, WPA instead of WEP).» Wireless interference. Turn on interference robustness on your router or change the wireless channel.» Your system may need a general maintenance. Run Disk Warrior on your machine, repair permissions with Disk Utility, empty the caches, and run the UNIX maintenance scripts with Cocktail.�39. Style Manual�What exactly does Steve wear on a daily basis?We asked our team of fashion experts, and they said, “The same dang thing no matter what.” So we made them stalk the streets of Cupertino and watch hours of keynote footage to bring you the scoop on Steve’s sartorial secrets. That’ll show ’em.Next page: Answers Guide continued >>�40. Sad Mac�My iMac flat-out freezes when I try to wake it from sleep. I ran DiskTools Pro, which verified and repaired my hard drive, but it still hangs after waking from sleep.This is often a symptom of a failing graphics card or a failing logic board inside your Mac, in which case you would need to take your Mac into an Apple Authorized Service Provider for repair. However, before assuming the worst, you can perform a series of basic troubleshooting steps to rule out other variables that may be causing this symptom.» External devices: When your Mac fails to wake from sleep, try unplugging any external hard drives or peripherals to see if doing so makes your Mac suddenly wake from sleep. If so, those external devices may be to blame. » RAM: You may also have bad RAM inside your machine. You can try to pinpoint bad RAM by either removing one of your RAM chips and see if the problem continues, or by running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it can identify any bad RAM. To run the Apple Hardware Test, take a look at the DVDs that came with your Mac; one of them will say that the Apple Hardware Test is on it. Insert that DVD and restart your Mac while holding down the D key on your keyboard. » Reset your Mac’s System Management Controller (get instructions here).Next, try to rule out the software problems: » Trash the following files and then restart your Mac: Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist and Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist » Reboot your Mac in single-user mode and run fsck (file system check)--get instructions here. » Back up your Mac, then erase and install Mac OS X.If all of these steps fail, it's time, sadly, to bring your Mac into an Apple Authorized Service Provider.�41. Stop Time�When Time Machine is running, my Mac virtually comes to a stop. What is happening, and what should I do?Any time an application such as Time Machine is actively reading or writing to a hard drive, you may notice a tiny bit of a speed loss if you’re also trying to access your hard drive as well because the read/write heads take time to physically move to different locations on the hard drive platter.However, the key phrase is “a tiny bit of a speed loss,” meaning that the speed loss should be negligible to most computer users. Time Machine is designed to be fast and extremely lightweight, so if your computer is actually coming to a standstill, then something else is going on. The best way to troubleshoot this is by eliminating variables. First, make sure that you do not have any virus software scanning your backup drive. This is a known factor that could slow down your Time Machine backups to a crawl and that may affect your computer’s overall speed as well.Then, eliminate the possibility that your backup drive has a hardware problem by swapping it out with a different backup drive. If you don’t have another drive handy, a utility such as Drive Genius ($99, prosofteng.com) or Disk Warrior ($99, alsoft.com) can help you sniff out failing hard drives. Your backup drive must also be partitioned properly, as explained at tinyurl.com/3zne68.Next, use a different backup program like ChronoSync to see if the slowdowns continue. If they do, ChronoSync will let you see which file is actively being backed up while the problem is happening. It could indicate a problem with that particular file or with your internal hard drive.Other than that, you can try some general tips to speed up your Mac overall: Upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard; purchase faster internal and external drives (7200 RPM or SSD); use a faster connection interface (eSATA or FireWire 800); add more RAM to your Mac; and turn off hard disk sleep in the Energy Saver System Preference (this last one has a huge impact if your hard drive is powered via USB only and has no separate AC power).�42. Display Despair�Why has Apple used so many display interfaces recently, and is the current Mini DisplayPort standard the best tech for the job?Mini DisplayPort meets VGA with this adapter.Apple’s flirtation with different video interfaces makes it seem like a puppet of the International Dongle Cartel, but it’s really all about doing more with ever-shrinking video ports. That includes today’s Mini DisplayPort, which can carry video and audio and connects to VGA, DVI, or HDMI displays at resolutions up to 2560x1600. We’re not sure if that makes it the best technology, but if it lets us carry just one small adapter that works on both MacBooks and iMacs, we’re happy.�43. Feelin' Social�Does Apple have a Twitter account or Facebook page of any sort whatsoever?YouTube has your favorite Apple commercials.Steve may be cool with answering emails, but the company isn’t too keen on Twitter. There is no official Apple Twitter account. Facebook is a bit more complicated. While Apple hasn’t set up an official company page, it has created an App Store Facebook page: facebook.com/AppStore. Our preferred destination, though, is the Apple YouTube channel, which lets us check out all of our favorite Apple commercials: youtube.com/apple.�44. Feelin' Blu�When will Apple include USB 3.0 and Blu-ray in Macs? What’s taking so long?USB 3.0 gear is already trickling onto the market, so it’s probably just a matter of time before the first computers sporting the blazing new standard roll out of Cupertino. Unfortunately, Blu-ray is another story. Apple’s interest in promoting its HD iTunes movie downloads and Steve’s declaration that bringing Blu-ray to the Mac is “a bag of hurt” don’t bode well for Blu’s chances on the Mac.�45. Photo Downloads�There seems to be no way to download my photos from my iPhone directly to my Mac without using iPhoto. Even then, I have to drill down through some crazy iPhoto directories in the Finder just to copy the photos somewhere else. Can’t I just pull these photos off my iPhone and put them wherever I want?Any photos that are in iPhoto can be easily and quickly copied somewhere else on your Mac simply by dragging and dropping them out of iPhoto. For even more control over the size, format, and name of your photos, use the File > Export command in iPhoto. You don’t need to--and you really shouldn’t--be drilling down into any iPhoto directories on your Mac.Now, onto your next question of bypassing iPhoto altogether. In Mac OS 10.6, the Image Capture application gives you a significant amount of control over what happens when you connect your iPhone. If you have multiple cameras or iPhones, Image Capture even lets you set different preferences for each individual camera.Image Capture is the place to go to directly download photos from your cameras or to set what happens whenever you connect your cameras.You could have your iPhone launch Image Capture itself, which lets you manually download your photos into the directories of your choice and then delete those photos from the iPhone. You could have your iPhone launch Preview, which lets you import iPhone photos from the File menu. You could have your iPhone run an AppleScript.But perhaps best of all, your iPhone could launch AutoImporter, a hidden application that automatically imports photos to the directory of your choice, without you intervening at all. It’s located at Macintosh HD/System/Library/Image Capture/Support/Application/AutoImporter, and you can set this application’s preferences by choosing AutoImporter > Preferences.�46. Tame MobileMe�I have four Apple devices: two MacBooks, an iPhone, and an iPad. It would be wonderful if MobileMe would do its job and sync all of my calendar and contact information, but I continually have glitches. One of the devices will often stop syncing, and then I have to wipe out data and start all over again. Is there any way to alleviate these problems?We’ve heard from an Apple support representative that syncing problems with MobileMe are very common because the MobileMe servers are not yet robust enough to handle more than 1,000 synchronizations before everything needs to be reset from scratch again. While 1,000 synchronizations might sound like a lot, consider that a sync takes place every single time you make a change to a contact or a calendar. The good news, however, is that this same representative told us that Apple is aware of its MobileMe syncing shortcomings and is continuously working to increase the competency of its servers.In the meantime, if you want to stick with MobileMe syncing, your best bet for solving the glitches you’re experiencing would be to follow our extensive guide from our November 2009 issue (or find it online here--scroll down to #37) on how to reset your MobileMe syncing from scratch on all of your devices.Alternatively, you may want to ditch MobileMe altogether and explore alternatives such as the web-based calendaring and contact solutions from Google, which can synchronize to your iPhone and iPad using Google Sync (google.com/mobile/sync). On your Mac, you can synchronize to Google using Spanning Sync ($25 for one year, spanningsync.com) or use the built-in (but more limited) syncing tools within Snow Leopard’s Address Book and iCal.If you have an extra Mac that you can use as a server machine, you can even take syncing into your own hands by using a product like Apple’s Snow Leopard Server ($499, apple.com) or the outstanding Kerio Connect ($540, kerio.com).�47. The Other Team�I’m running Windows 7 on my Mac using Boot Camp. How do I maintain my computer so both the Mac and Windows platforms stay healthy? And how can I make a clone of my computer that captures both?For tips on how to keep your Windows 7 partition healthy, you’ll want to turn to our sister magazine Maximum PC (this is a good place to start), where you’ll find the experts on all things PC-related. Although conventional wisdom about PCs dictates that you’ll want to defragment your Windows hard drive regularly and immediately install antivirus software on your Windows partition, those are two things that Mac users are not required to do.Your Mac will continue to maintain its health as long as all those hundreds of thousands of Windows viruses can’t reach your Mac files from within the Windows 7 environment. And they won’t be able to since Boot Camp only allows you to read your Mac partition but not write to it.If you gotta run Windows 7, Boot Camp can get it done on your Mac.However, if you install a program like MacDrive 8 ($49, mediafour.com), you’ll have full read and write access to your Mac partition...and so will all those Windows viruses. So be doubly sure to have antivirus software on your PC side.To clone your entire computer, you’ll need to make two clones: one for your Mac partition and one for your Windows partition. For the Mac partition, use a tool like SuperDuper ($28, shirt-pocket.com) or Carbon Copy Cloner (donations requested, bombich.com). For your Windows partition, we recommend Winclone (donations requested, twocanoes.com).�48. Log Me OutMy iMac has separate user accounts for my wife and me, plus a Guest Account for when we have parties and people are drawn to the 27-inch screen to play. Can the Mac automatically return to the login screen after some period of inactivity? I don’t want guests to have access to our accounts, and I don’t want my wife to have to remember to log out when she’s finished. I just want it to go back to the login screen to force the next person to log in as a user or guest.No problem--head to System Preferences > Security and check the box for Log Out After X Minutes of Activity, setting X to be any number you like. While you’re there, make sure Disable Automatic Login is checked too. That way, the login screen always appears when you start up, instead of a default administrator account.The auto-logout option is in System Preferences > Security.It’s also easy to lock down the Guest Account with System Preferences > Parental Controls, which lets you select which applications will be available. By default any files in a Guest Account’s Home folder are deleted when they log out, but you could park an alias in the Dock to a shared folder on your hard drive, called, say, “Save Stuff Here.” While you’re sprucing up the Dock, add some big, pretty icons for party-startin’ apps like Photo Booth and Camera Bag.Set up a Guest Account with System Preferences > Accounts, then manage--or spy on--it with Parental Controls.�49. Silence�How do I disable voice control on my iPhone 3GS? I never use it, and it's annoying when it's in my pocket and accidentally activates.Good news: You can shut off Voice Control dialing. Bad news: Voice Control everything else stays on. To shut down Voice Control dialing, you need to turn on the Passcode Lock option for your iPhone. To do this and turn off Voice Control Dialing, navigate to Settings > General > Passcode Lock. Once you turn on Passcode Lock, you can turn off Voice Dial.�50. Behind the Black Shirt�What does it take to become a Genius Bar technician?There are fewer great occupations in life than working at the Genius Bar. Think about it: When someone asks you what you do for a living, you get to tell them that you’re a Genius. On top of that, you get to manhandle Apple computers all day long, dealing with situations like figuring out what in the heck is going on with a MacBook that a carpenter impaled with his drill (remember to tell him it’s no longer under warranty). Check out our handy chart to see what it takes to become a Genius Bar employee.�A. Get Smart!�First things first: You gotta have plenty of knowledge about past and present Apple products. Geniuses must know hardware ranging across entire generations of Apple products, as well as software offered for all of the latest operating systems. After all, you never know what to expect when you work at the bar. For all you know, a customer might bring in their Performa 460 and ask you to transfer their hard drive data to one of those newfangled Mac Pros.�B. Be Happy--and Discreet�Employees at the Apple Store must be like employees at Disneyland--you’re in the Happiest Place on Earth, so smile…and keep your lips zipped tight about any advance knowledge of upcoming Apple products you might have. Or else.�C. Magic Hands�Before you can get your hands on customers’ gear, you need to get trained. A lot. Applying to be a Genius begins with a battery of tech questions--and we’re not talking the ins and outs of GarageBand, either. Applicants are expected to have deep knowledge about how to diagnose and fix serious hardware and software issues--after all, most of their job involves coping with damaged or seriously broken gear. Survive that hurdle, and it’s off to Cupertino for four weeks of sessions that include acquiring three Apple certifications (OS, Desktop, and Portable) and practice time with fake customers who are really good at being a pain in your backside. After that, the apprenticeship continues in a real live Apple Store for as much as another month before you become true blue Genius material.�D. Black is Boss�The shirt color is an essential part of working in the Apple store. The shirt depicts what department you work in and makes it so that customers know who exactly the Geniuses are who can help them with their waterlogged iPhone.�E. Load-Bearing�Can you diagnose a problem and solve it within 15 minutes? The Geniuses at the Bar can. Appointments taken at the back of the store are only supposed to take as long as it takes to get you halfway through your favorite sitcom, which ensures that even stores with heavy traffic volumes have a chance to help everyone out.
★ The Truth

The Tempest sits on a quiet side street in San Francisco, just a few blocks from the Moscone Center. Eric, the bartender and proprietor, resembles a cross between Wilford Brimley and Popeye. The interior consists of a single large square room. There is a pool table, a bar that runs the length of the wall opposite the entrance, and a sprinkling of small square particleboard tables and shabby chairs. A handful of bicycles hang from the high ceiling, for reasons unclear. The walls are festooned with various mass-market beer posters and memorabilia celebrating Eric’s beloved home-state Kansas Jayhawks. The high ceilings and generic dive bar atmosphere almost make it feel more like a movie set of a bar than an actual bar. At some bars you have a drink; at The Tempest you just drink. The beer selection is decent, the prices cheap, the service prompt. Neither the small TVs hanging above the bar (sporting events, naturally) nor the music play loudly; the only real noise is the best noise for a bar: conversation. The Tempest is exactly the bar it wants to be. And on Monday 5 January 2008, the eve of the final Macworld Expo Apple keynote address, it was filled with Mac nerds from across the continent. Because Eric is both the owner and sole employee, The Tempest is exempt from California’s law banning smoking in bars and restaurants. And so patrons smoke. For better or worse, this bestows The Tempest with a visceral timelessness. Smell is the sense most connected to memory, and The Tempest smells like a throwback to a bygone era. It is as it was. Come next January, The Tempest will remain unchanged. Macworld Expo will not. In 2004 IDG changed the name of the show to “Macworld Conference and Expo”, but it’ll always be just “Macworld Expo” to me, and, colloquially (and much to the chagrin of my friends at the same-named magazine, who are constantly fighting both to keep the w lowercase and to emphasize that the Expo is run by a different arm of the same parent company), we all just really call it “Macworld”. Even at its nadir early this decade, when the show was truly only about the Mac and not an ever-expanding universe of Apple platforms (iPod and iPhone), and when the Mac platform itself seemed on unsteady ground, Macworld Expo San Francisco was still big. For the last few years, though, the show has bulked back up to its prime fighting weight — more exhibitors, bigger crowds. The Moscone Center complex consists of three buildings: North, South, and West. West is where WWDC takes place. It’s a lovely convention and conference space, above ground, airy, flooded with sunlight. The North and South halls are older and below ground, connected by a wide subterranean passageway underneath Howard Street. There is nothing wrong with either North or South, but there’s nothing particularly right about them, either. South is the main hall, housing Apple’s massive exhibit space (“booth” doesn’t do it justice) and most of the other major A-list exhibitors. South Hall always looks good at Macworld Expo — North Hall is where you go to judge the health of the show. In weak years, North Hall has resembled more of a flea market than a top-line technology convention. In strong years, the entrance to North Hall fills you with a Holy crap, we’re only halfway done feeling after having made your way through the South Hall. (Everyone walking the show floor starts in the South Hall.) The North Hall looked good, if not great, this year. The key to a good Expo is the mix between exhibitors. It’s a cocktail. A healthy Expo has the right ratio of large, expensive, polished booths and those with a decidedly lower-rent production value to them. These small pedestrian booths are often just the exhibitors you want to meet — not glib salesmen or polished marketroids, but actual engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs, people who’ve put their lives into and banked their careers on the products they’re exhibiting to promote. These are the booths where you find Expo gold — products you need or want but had never heard of before. But an overabundance of these unpolished exhibits give the overall show floor a rather ragtag appearance. There’s a symbiotic relationship at play between the large and small exhibitors, sort of like that between the Orange Julius and Macy’s at your local mall. Apple’s massive, central exhibit space has always been the sun around which the rest of the Expo orbits. It’s hard to imagine the South Hall at Macworld Expo without it. (Perhaps the entire Expo can now move across the street to Moscone West — better to make the show look entirely different than to attempt a combover to mask the bald spot Apple is leaving behind in the South Hall.) I walked the floor several times over several days this year, and spoke to dozens of exhibitors. Always the same two questions: How’s the show going? and So what about next year? The answers were nearly always the same: It’s going pretty good — we didn’t know what to expect, but we’ve been busy. And: We’d like to come back again next year, but we want to see who else is going to be here first. I don’t know if Macworld Expo is going to survive without Apple, but the overwhelming majority of exhibitors I spoke to very much want it to. But Apple’s decision raises a crisp question. What, exactly, is the point? The show was created 25 years ago, long before personal computers even shipped with networking features. Today, everyone not only uses the Internet, they carry it with them everywhere they go.1 You no longer need to be in the same place to forge a community or to gain a customer. Apple has repeatedly asserted — including Phil Schiller, at the outset of his keynote address — that they no longer need Macworld Expo because they reach so many customers through Apple Stores. Something along the lines of an entire Macworld Expo worth of customers visit Apple Stores worldwide every single week. No doubt that’s true. But there are major differences. For one thing, at an Apple Store you meet Apple retail sales people. At the Expo, you can meet people who actually create and design Apple products. And the difference for exhibitors other than Apple is stark. First, as IDG’s Paul Kent pointed out, 90 percent of the products exhibited at Macworld Expo this year aren’t available in Apple’s retail stores. But even for those products that are, they’re just boxes on shelves. You don’t meet customers by getting your product in the Apple Store, and there is something palpably different and important about meeting your customers and your peers in person. As the world goes ever more digital, the remaining real-world interactions become more valuable. If the only purpose of Macworld Expo, from Apple’s perspective, was to showcase the company’s own latest products, then they’re right, they no longer have any need for it. But the rest of us do. Macworld Expo brings together the full spectrum of people involved in this racket. Designers, engineers, marketing guys, managers, the press, and, yes, just plain users. There is nothing else like Macworld Expo, and if it fades away, there will be nothing to take its place. What everyone wishes is that Apple hadn’t done this. That we could plan on coming back next year and have it be the same. But we can’t have that. Apple did pull out. It will never be the same. What it will be, we don’t yet know. “I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote. I suggest a corollary: that the truth often resists being written down or transmitted over a wire, and will only be told to your face. Mild irony: iPhones were, unsurprisingly, ubiquitous at Macworld Expo. But AT&T 3G and EDGE reception sucked balls the whole week. I don’t think Moscone South or North get good reception in the first place, but the bigger problem, I suspect, is that the cell towers providing coverage to the Moscone vicinity just don’t have the capacity to handle an entire convention filled with people who all own the same phone.�↩
★ Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse

Apple’s Q4 2007 financial statement is just chock full of good news. Profits are up, revenue is up, iPod sales are up, iPhone sales are strong. But the big news is the Mac. Apple sold 2.2 million Macs in the quarter — 34 percent higher than the year-ago quarter, and 400,000 more than the previous quarterly record (which was just three months ago). During yesterday’s conference call with analysts, Apple stated that half of the customers who bought Macs in Apple’s retail stores were new Mac users. I don’t think there’s any single explanation for why this is happening now. There are many factors at play, and almost every single one of them is in Apple’s favor. The key problem Apple has faced for two decades with attempts to gain new Mac users is a strange one: most people buying a new computer never even considered buying a Mac. It’s not that they’d never heard of Apple or didn’t know the Mac existed, it’s that they somehow assumed Macs were for some nebulous group of “others”, when the truth is that many of these people would be delighted with a Mac. This, I think, is how the iPod “halo effect” is helping Apple sell Macs. Don’t over-think it, because it’s not exactly rational or logical; it’s not people thinking to themselves “Well, since I love this iPod music player from Apple, that means I should buy one of their computers, too.” What the iPod has done is made more people just even consider — maybe — buying a Mac. Consider this: Do you know of anyone — anyone at all — talking today about switching from the Mac to Windows? I don’t. Not even Dvorak/Enderle-style muckraking Apple-tweaking pundits are claiming that anyone is switching from the Mac to Windows, because it’s just so preposterous. As a long-time Mac nerd, though, this seems crazy. The 1990s, for Mac users, seemed fraught with the very real possibility that the Mac would disappear altogether — or at least disappear from relevance. The Mac lost users to Windows for a variety of reasons. For many, it was a forced migration mandated by IT departments “standardizing” on Wintel — corporate art departments forced to switch. For others, it was voluntary: people who switched because Windows 95 was good enough, people who wanted faster Intel-based CPUs, people who were frustrated by technical limitations in the old Mac OS even though they preferred the Mac UI. Not to mention the fact that many of the Great New Things came out as Windows-only products. (Napster, for example — there were Mac clients eventually, but the Napster phenomenon started on Windows.) This bottomed out around the beginning of the Mac OS X era; everyone who was going to switch from the Mac had done so. What Apple was left with was a very solid, very loyal user base. Today, there are a lot of really good reasons to switch to Mac, above and beyond the same old reasons that the Mac offered a superior overall user interface and user experience, which was really all the Mac was left with in the 1990s (that, and the third-party Mac developer community that was drawn to the fact that, even at the nadir of the Mac’s market share, the Mac remained the platform for producing software that emphasized the user experience above all else — “The Show”, as Brent Simmons described it back in 2002). To wit: The web is really coming of age, and is the biggest platform, by far, in the world. Windows market share of 90 or 95 percent pales next to the market share of the web, which is effectively 100 percent. You can’t buy a computer that doesn’t ship with a web browser. When the Next Big Thing happens these days, it usually happens on the web — and that means Mac users don’t miss out. Apple’s switch to Intel CPUs was seamless, and the existence of Windows-on-the-Mac solutions like Boot Camp, Parallels, and VMWare makes the idea of switching a lot less scary. Windows really is the new Classic: in the same way that the Mac OS Classic environment eased the transition for existing Mac users switching to Mac OS X, Boot Camp/Parallels/VMWare ease the transition for Windows switchers. This wasn’t possible when the Mac was based on the PowerPC. Microsoft hasn’t done anything interesting with Windows since XP. Windows-vs.-Mac arguments tend to be inflammatory, but there’s nothing in Vista — nothing — that would tempt a Mac user to switch. And given Microsoft’s pace of Windows development, it seems obvious that Vista is it for this decade: that come 2010, Vista, with a few subsequent service packs, is going to be all Microsoft will have to show for the 2000s. It was a long wait for Vista and it didn’t seem worth it. Windows lost a huge chunk of the nerd market. Nerd switchers, in and of themselves, don’t constitute a significant enough number of people to account for anything other than a tiny blip in Apple’s Mac sales. But nerds are the people who recommend computers to friends and families; it seems inarguable that there are an awful lot of nerds recommending Macs today who weren’t five years ago. Young people love Apple. Arguably, this is another aspect of the iPod halo effect. I’ve been linking to a series of recent stories about the Mac’s tremendous rise in market share on college campuses; this one from Harvard shows that the difference is significant even between freshmen and seniors: 35 and 27 percent, respectively. Strong back-to-school sales account for an enormous chunk of Apple’s record-breaking quarter. And consider the long-term effect: hook students on the Mac today — and keep them happy — and Apple has gained new Mac customers for life. The Mac has never experienced sustained growth at this sort of pace. Breaking this quarterly sales record isn’t a fluke — it’s part of a trend. What we’re seeing now is what Mac enthusiasts have been hoping to see for 20 years: more people deciding to buy a Mac. The question now is how big can this trend get.

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