Apple has released three EFI Firmware Updates for 2010-model Macs, including the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. This update enables Lion Internet Recovery on those older Macs. Introduced in OS X Lion alongside the mid-2011 updates to the MacBook Air and Mac mini, Internet Recovery enables access to disk repair or OS X Lion installation options via a broadband internet connection. This is intended for use on a failed hard drive or a blank drive that's never had OS X installed on it.

Together with a series of earlier firmware updates, all Macs introduced from 2010 onward now have access to Internet Recovery features -- with just one notable exception. Even the newest Mac Pro is still excluded from the support list for Internet Recovery.

For both Mac Pro owners and those of you running Lion on a 2009 or earlier Mac, not having access to Internet Recovery isn't the end of the world. If you have a spare external drive, you can either build a recovery disk, or you can roll your own full Lion installer disk.

EFI Firmware Update brings Lion Internet Recovery to 2010-model Macs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mass Effect 2 got its own iOS game when it was released on the traditional consoles a few years ago, and since Mass Effect 3 is due out in another month or so here, you probably won't be surprised to hear that EA is again planning another iOS game tie-in for the release. This time around, though, it sounds like they're doing it a little more intelligently. The last game focused on the first companion you met in the full console game, telling a little bit about his backstory through a pretty straightforward (and honestly, kind of boring) action game. This time around, the iOS title will again be action-based, as a third-person shooter, but instead of just telling background story, it will directly affect one of the main game's elements.

Playing the iOS game will "increase a player's Galactic Readiness rating," which is an element directly used in Mass Effect 3's "Galaxy at War" system (which will also tie in to the multiplayer elements in the game). It sounds like the iOS title is more of an arcade title than a full campaign game, which means that the more you play it, the better your starting console game stats will be. EA also says that you'll be able to earn "exclusive weaponry" for the main title, so that's a nice bonus as well.

The Mass Effect tie-in game is called Mass Effect Infiltrator, and should be available for all modern iOS devices soon. It'll be interesting to see what EA does with this one -- the company has learned a lot about the iOS platform since the last tie-in title, and with anticipation for Mass Effect 3 at a fever pitch, this title should be the latest and greatest the big traditional console company can do.

Mass Effect 3 getting an iOS game originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

David Tupman, the VP of iPhone and iPod Engineering at Apple, made his exit from Cupertino at the end of last year, according to reports at 9to5Mac. Tupman, who grew up in the UK, has a background in engineering, and has been in the position ever since the introduction of the first iPod, all the way up through the release of the iPhone 4. It's unknown where Tupman is headed next -- it's rumored that he may be headed to work on Nest with another former Apple Engineer, Tony Fadell, but Nest denies those rumors.

As for Apple, it'll be fine, of course. A company doing as well as Apple will likely be able to pick up any engineers it would like, and even if not, there are quite a few candidates inside the company that could step up into the Engineering position, including the current head of iPad engineering, or the person in charge of iPod and iPhone design. Meanwhile, best of luck to Mr. Tupman -- thanks for all your hard work.

VP of iPhone and iPod Engineering David Tupman leaves Apple originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Zero1.tv has released its new VooMote Zapper (US$69.95) universal remote for iOS devices into the wild, and it's also now in your nearby Apple Store. I had an opportunity to try the new device out over the last week, and while less expensive and smaller than the VooMote One remote we mentioned at its release last last year, the Zapper still seems to have some of the same issues that many other iOS remotes have.

First, the good news. The tiny Zapper plugs into the 30-pin Universal Dock port on the bottom of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. As such, it's able to provide the infrared transceiver on the device with more power than some of the cheap devices we've seen that plug into the headphone jack. The company boasts that the Zapper has four IR mini-blasters for range, and it really does seem to make a difference. I found that the Zapper was able to control devices easily from across a room in broad daylight, so it's definitely got the power.

The dongle comes in eight colors that match the iPad 2 Smart Covers, and it appears that there will be colored cases for iPad 2, iPhone 4/4S, and iPod touch 4th Generation. Those cases you see in the image at the top of this post? They're not available yet.

Gallery: VooMote Zapper

Now, the not-so-good news. Even after getting an update to the free VooMote Zapper app the other day, most of the devices that make up my home entertainment system were not in the library of codes. The Zapper app has one irritating habit right off the bat: it runs upside down on the iPhone so that the Zapper is always at the "top" of the screen. Want to check email? Flip your device upside-down again. The app is not universal, so if you run it on your iPad, it's either a tiny window on your device or a fuzzy 2X version of the app. VooMote is coming out with an iPad-specific TV Guide app sometime in 2012.

The way the app works is you add a room to your home, then add individual devices to that room. The list of rooms is quite extensive, but it doesn't include that staple of American homes, the "family room." I decided to use "living room" instead, although that is a completely separate room in my home that doesn't have any tech in it. Next, I started adding devices to my "living room."

Immediately I was confused. Is my Comcast / Motorola DVR considered a DVR, or is it a cable box? There are listings for both types of devices. I decided to call it a cable box. Upon choosing cable box, I found one that was named "Comcast", but the box I have wasn't listed. The Zapper app took me through a process of trying to figure out what it was by asking me if it was changing channels, bringing the volume up, etc. When it was done, I had a virtual remote on my iPhone called "Cable-Box" that looks nothing like the remote I normally use, and it has controls that make absolutely no sense for the model I'm using.

Next I added the TV. I have a Panasonic Viera 50" Plasma TV that's about five years old. The only Panasonic TVs that are listed are about fifteen units that must be quite new. Once again, I had to go through the training process to see if the app could come up with a remote that would work with my TV. Sure, it turns it on and off, changes channels, and bumps the volume up and down, but I still have to grab my old TV remote in order to change the input (HDMI1, HDMI2, etc.).

I went through the same process with everything but the Apple TV, which miraculously was already in the database. However, it didn't actually turn the Apple TV on, so my guess is that the device settings were for the first-generation device.

Sure, this is a new device and I'm sure that the code library for devices will expand in the future. But I'd bet that a lot of TUAW readers have the same opinion that I do -- when I get a "universal remote," I want it to work out of the box without needing to go through this tedious type of hit-and-miss process.

Like the Logitech Harmony One remote that I previously used, the Zapper has a way to string together commands so that you can turn on multiple devices in sequence for doing something like watching a DVD -- turn on TV, turn on DVD player, turn on audio device (home theater), etc. I didn't even try this function.

I am not going to single out just the VooMote Zapper for having this problem; just about every iOS remote control device I've tried has been lacking, and the Logitech remote described earlier was also a pain to program. I will give the VooMote Zapper a chance, and I've set up an appointment on my calendar to see if an expanded code library in a few months makes this device easier to set up and use. I certainly like the design of the little dongle.

If Apple really wants to capture the home entertainment market, it doesn't need to come to market with a new HDTV -- it just needs to figure out how to get every type of device working together seamlessly and without a lot of annoying setup. For that, I'd be willing to pay a lot of money.

VooMote Zapper universal remote for iOS: A first look and a rant originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For Mac repair shops, enterprise tech support teams, and consultants who need to wipe all data off of hard drives before selling or recycling old Macs, there's now a fast way to erase those drives without tying up a machine for a long time. WiebeTech has a new device called the Drive eRazer Ultra (US$249) that promises to make cleaning those pesky drives a fast and easy process.

WiebeTech provided a Drive eRazer Ultra to TUAW for testing and review, and the device does an amazing job of wiping all of that private or corporate information off of hard drives. In this review you'll read about what makes the Drive eRazer Ultra such a useful device.

To start off with, erasing a computer's hard drive completely usually means that you remove the drive from the computer. Sure, you can boot a computer off of an external drive and then run a utility to do the dirty work on an internal drive, but that ties up the computer for the entire time that the drive is being erased. Using a multiple-pass erase to ensure that your drive is completely unreadable can literally take days if you're using Apple's Disk Utility to do the job, and other software-based erasure methods take equally as long.

The Drive eRazer Ultra erases drives at their maximum write speed, so the job is done faster. WiebeTech says that new drives are erased at 7 GB/minute while older drives will putt along at 7 GB/minute. No computer is required -- you just remove the hard drive, then use the included cables to connect it to the Drive eRazer Ultra. The device has a rocker switch and two-line LCD display for selecting the erase mode and showing how long it will take to the erasure to complete.

Gallery: WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra

There are ten different erase specifications that are supported by the device: a quick erase that just does a single pass writing all zeroes on the drive, a custom erase that can run 1 to 99 passes overwriting with zeroes or a user-selected pattern, Secure Erase N or E that initiates a drive's built-in Secure Erase normal or enhanced function, US Department of Defense "Clear" or "Sanitize" standards, NIST special publication 800-88 "Clear" or "Purge" standards, the Canadian CSEC ITSG-06 data sanitization standard, Great Britain's HMGIS5 "Baseline" or "Enhanced" drive erasure standard, and the Australian government's DSD ISM 6.2.92 data sanitization standard.

If your job requires you to print out labels that describe the details of the erasure (for audit reasons, for example), there's a serial port for Zebra brand label printers. Those labels can then be attached to the drives or to a box or bag used for disposal of the drive.

The Drive eRazer Ultra supports 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives, 3.5" IDE/PATA drives, and other drives using optional adapters. If you're erasing a 3.5" drive, there's a metal protective plate included that you can screw onto the drive to protect the drive electronics and help dissipate heat.

For my testing, I grabbed a 160 GB Hitachi drive that had previously resided in a MacBook and that was loaded with about 100 GB of video backups. To use the Drive eRazer, you need to plug in a power brick that's about the same size and weight of the unit itself, grab the correct cable (SATA in this case), and make both power and data connections to the drive. Flipping the power switch on the box powers up the drive, and the display shows a command for doing a quick erase.

I chose to look at the drive information screens first, which provide data on the capacity of the drive, the number of bad sectors on it, the number of times that the drive has been powered on and off, the number of times the drive has been stopped and started, and an estimate of the time to do a Secure Erase (enhanced or normal).

The user interface is really quite simple to use, and it took very little time for me to set the default erase specification to "DOD Sanitize." The device warns the user that it will erase all data -- which I thought was silly since that's what the device is supposed to do -- and then estimates how long it will take to perform the erasure.

Sanitizing is "the removal of sensitive data from a system or storage device with the intent that the data can not be reconstructed by any known technique," according to Wikipedia. The DOD Sanitize specification (DOD 5220.22-M) recommends that you "Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify" to sanitize information on writable media.

To complete this process, the Drive eRazer Ultra took about 2 hours and 16 minutes. As soon as that was done, I took the same drive and ran it through the "Most Secure" erase option in Disk Utility, which also complies with DOD 5220.22-M. That method took slightly over 8 hours to complete.

This isn't a device that most Mac owners are going to rush out and buy, but for those who are constantly erasing drives, the Drive eRazer Ultra can pay for itself quickly in terms of sheer convenience and time saved wiping data. For those teams and individuals, this is an indispensable device.

WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra provides super-secure drive wiping originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gabe Glick over at Macstories has a proposal: Aperture for iOS. On the surface, it sounds like a pretty silly idea -- Apple's high end camera app is really made for a desktop environment, and with the hassle required to get high quality photos onto iOS devices, there really isn't a point bringing Aperture over to a platform like the iPad. But Glick, though he agrees with the naysayers to a certain extent, is willing to take the opposite position. He says that he thinks Aperture is coming to the iPad with the announcement (expected sometime this year) of the iPad 3.

So we'll let him make his case. He says the Retina Display is a big benefit, for photographers who really want to see their pictures close up and in full color. Of course, the iPad 2 doesn't have a Retina Display, but if the iPad 3 gets the same kind of high definition screen that the iPhone 4 already has, Aperture would be more likely. iCloud's photo stream would make it easy to get pictures on the mobile device, a better A6 processor would make editing RAW photos and other high end resolutions easier as well, and finally, Glick says that a "professional workhorse" app like Aperture shouldn't be automatically dismissed from the iPad. Most people would have said the same thing about iMovie and GarageBand on the iPad, and both of those have done quite well.

When you put it like that, well, sure. Obviously this is all just speculation -- we won't know that Apple is releasing an app like this until it's actually announced on stage. But I will say as well that I've been trying to make noise lately for a sort of "iCamera" -- a more professional DSLR camera made and produced by Apple -- and I've been answered most of the time with the suggestion that Apple is betting on the cameras in its mobile devices rather than a separate dedicated device. If that is true, then sure, why wouldn't we want to see better official tools to deal with photos than the current Camera app offers?

Considering Aperture for iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While some tech pundits are bemoaning Apple's lack of ads during the Super Bowl on Sunday (the company hasn't run an ad during the big game for years), The Street's Jim Cramer is taking another view and one that is much more rooted in reality. Apple didn't need to pay for expensive Super Bowl air time, because the World Champion NY Giants provided tons of free advertising for the iPhone.

As Cramer noted, "... there was one ad that struck me as the most honest, most riveting and most compelling of all. You see, the game had just ended, and Colts great Raymond Berry ran the Giant gantlet with the Lombardi Trophy. Suddenly it seemed like every other Giant pulled out an Apple iPhone to snap pictures of the moment. One after another after another. And I said to myself, there it is, not some pet dangling a bag of chips or some headlights killing vampires or King Elton getting trapdoored. Nope, there was an ad worthy of Steve Jobs and the company he built."

Cramer went on to say "To me, the endorsement of Apple by real athletes who were not paid, especially when contrasted with the gift of the GM Corvette that Eli Manning didn't even seem to care about -- 'Eli, the keys, the keys, don't forget the keys!' -- said it all ... when everyone else is paying $3 million per commercial, Apple paid nothing and easily had the best ad of all."

To see what Cramer's talking about, just check out the YouTube video below and count the number of iPhones that you see snapping photos and shooting video of Raymond Berry and the Lombardi Trophy. Amazing...

Apple enjoys free Super Bowl advertising courtesy of NY Giants originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Evi is the sort-of Siri clone. The $0.99 iPhone app is aimed mainly at people who don't have an iPhone 4S and want a Siri-like voice control experience.

When I tried Evi some weeks ago it was a complete disaster. In a week of testing I could not connect once because of server issues. The developers said they were adding server capacity, and it seems they have. In extensive tests of the app this week, I only had one time when Evi was busy and couldn't respond. That is a great improvement.

I found a lot to like now that the app is working, and some things that Evi excels at. When I asked Evi who the Chancellor of Germany was, I got the correct information, as well as pictures. Siri also got the question right, but no pictures. I thought the Evi experience was a bit better.

When I asked for the best hamburger in Omaha, I got referred to a web site about Omaha Hamburger Joints from Urban Spoon. Siri rated the best ones based on reviews from Yelp. I thought Siri was more helpful, but Evi does include a web browser so you can stay in the app. Sometimes Evi does figure out the best local favorites without sending you to the web, but it seems hit and miss.

For current weather Evi is second rate. When I asked for the weather in Phoenix it suggested the National Weather Service Web Page. Siri answered me directly and brought up the iPhone weather app.

Where Evi really shines is if you ask a question with rather complicated syntax. Asking "Who is older, Barack Obama or Michelle Obama", Evi parses it all and gets it right answering the question directly. Siri gets you a Wolfram Alpha page with information, and you can scroll down to see the relative ages yourself (the President is 50, while FLOTUS turned 48 last month). Evi wins that round on presentation.

Both apps use Nuance speech recognition, and it is excellent on both Evi and Siri. Evi still has a lot of negative reviews on the App Store because it simply didn't work for weeks. Now that it's pretty much up and running, reviews are getting more positive.

If you have an older iPhone that can run iOS4 or greater, Evi is now a worthwhile investment. It can't interact with your calendar, use reminders, or wake you up, but it is very good at answering questions. If you have an iPhone 4S, Evi is probably worth the $0.99 because it does do some things better than Siri.

Of course both apps are early in their development. Siri is still called a beta by Apple, and Siri has also had some server issues rendering it unusable at times. I'm glad I took a second look at Evi, and suggest you do the same. Check the galleries for some direct Evi-Siri comparisons.

Gallery: Evi take 2

A second look (and listen) to Evi voice recognition for iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apps for mobile devices are a surprisingly robust source of jobs in the United States, according to research from TechNet. Since 2008, apps have created 466,000 American jobs. TechNet estimates that about 155,000 of those tech-related jobs are related to app development and tech support, while the remaining 311,000 jobs also require tech skills but include things like app marketing and art design.

Of those jobs, the highest percentage (23.8 percent) of the total are located in California. Other app hot spots include New York (6.9 percent), Washington (6.4 percent), Texas (5.4 percent) and New Jersey (4.2 percent). Central Florida doesn't want to be left out, as the Orlando Sentinel reports; local universities and training institutes are high on app development learning programs for would-be developers.

These numbers include not only jobs created for iOS apps, but also those triggered by the development of apps for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Facebook.

[via The Loop]

Apps have created 466,000 U.S. jobs in four years originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mashable's Lance Ulanoff raises the question of whether Apple should have advertised during Super Bowl XLVI. He points out that 28 years after the debut of the "1984" commercial that Apple sat on the sidelines and allowed its rivals to mock it during the most-watched show in U.S. television history.

"By not appearing at the Super Bowl, Apple is letting its competition frame the discussion. Founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, who died months before the Samsung ads started airing, would likely have wanted to create some sort of counter attack. He was, after all, the chief architect of the Macintosh and the remarkable first ad promoting it," Ulanoff argues.

Jobs also knew when to back away and let the buzz build.

Right before the Super Bowl, Tested posted a look at the same sort of ads that aired during the game from the iPhone's competitors, as well as other offerings. The ads are fun to watch, Ryan Whitwam points out, but they don't represent the product well. Even in the much-touted Super Bowl ad, the Galaxy Note spends seconds on screen. Instead, you get a huge street party with a chorus and dancers.

Apple's iPhone ads, by contrast, show off how the phone works. This is what makes people want one, Whitman said.

I agree with Whitman. The ads are eye-catching in the way that Apple's "1984" ad was 28 years ago, but times have changed and people are a lot more savvy when buying tech now. Apple now has the winning strategy of showing off what their devices can actually do, and that pulls in the sales. Plus, Apple particularly isn't hurting in the sales department. They needed the Super Bowl in 1984. They don't need it now.

View Poll

Should Apple have advertised during the Super Bowl? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

That didn't take long. Only a few weeks after Apple's iBooks Author app debuted, template publisher Jumsoft began shipping Book Palette (US$2.99), a collection of ten professionally designed templates for iBooks Author.

I had an opportunity to try Book Palette, which is packaged as a Mac app. Once installed from the Mac App Store and launched, the app displays ten textbook templates. To start using a template, you can either select it and click the Open in iBooks Author button, or just double-click the template. In either case, iBooks Author launches and the template opens right up.

If you've modified your own iBooks Author templates before, they're saved in the /Application Support/iBooks Author/Templates/My Templates folder. You can choose to save the templates into that folder so that they appear with all of the rest of the standard templates in the template chooser.

Like the other templates that are included with iBooks Author, Jumsoft provides layouts for textbooks only -- remember, that's the focus for iBooks Author at this point at this point in time. The templates include Biology, Cookery, Decision Making, Dental Hygiene, Environmental Design, Interior Design, IT Strategy, Managing Change, Psychology, and Team Building.

All of the templates include the standard iBooks Author attributes, including a title page, a place for introductory media, a table of contents, and a glossary. The templates also follows the Chapter / Section format of the Apple-provided templates, and pages in a variety of layouts (one, two or three columns, and blank).

Gallery: Jumsoft Book Palette

Of all the templates, I thought that Cookery was probably the most unique and least like a textbook template, but I now fear of a future of poorly written and self-published cookbooks that all look identical.

On the other hand, the Biology and Dental Hygiene templates uses the Chalkduster font for call-outs, an unfortunate design decision that can be fixed by simply changing the font in those areas where it shows up. I also found the use of Didot Italic as the standard text font in the Interior Design template to be a nightmare, as it's hard to read a lot of text in such a flowery font. Most of the other templates were well-designed and very readable, and wouldn't require much (if any) change to create good-looking electronic texts.

Jumsoft plans to release additional templates as app upgrades in the future, so book designers will have plenty of base templates to start with. For those who are currently beginning to work with iBooks Author, Book Palette is an inexpensive way to add to the paltry selection of six templates provided by Apple.

Daily Mac App: Book Palette adds ten new templates to iBooks Author originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for February 7, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The design wizards at Twelve South have come up with another unique and useful accessory for Apple gear. This time, they're introducing the HoverBar (US$79.99), a mounting clamp and flexible bar that floats an iPad 2 (or several) next to your iMac or Apple monitor.

The HoverBar can be clamped onto the upright of an iMac or Apple display, to a tabletop, or any other surface up to an inch thick. Your iPad 2 sits in a plastic clip that's mounted on a swivel ball so it can be turned to any angle. In the video below, one idle youth taking time out from doing his homework uses the iPad / HoverBar combo as a steering wheel for Real Racing. That's a different use case!

Many people will want to use the HoverBar-mounted iPad as a communications device, displaying email or providing a way to do FaceTime conferencing without the dreaded "nose vision" view. Used with an app like Air Display ($9.99), you can even have a Mac window displayed on your iPad.

We hope to get a HoverBar soon for a full review. Until then, enjoy the video and visit the Twelve South website.

Twelve South HoverBar a unique way to marry iPad and iMac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Two years ago, Tristan Schaap joined Apple's Platform Technologies Group as an intern. During his 12-week stint with the Core OS division, he worked on a project to get a piece of Mac OS X running on an ARM processor, says a report by iMore. Most people were not aware of this project until recently, when the Netherland's Delft University of Technology made Schaap's thesis available to the public.

Schaap's project was very specific - he worked with Darwin and ported it to a Marvell ARMv5te processor. Some of the ARMv5 code was present in Darwin and his job was to get it to work in both single-user mode and multi-user mode.

His report doesn't say why Apple assigned him this project, but as OSNews points out, it's possible Apple wanted to test his mettle and introduce him to the company during his 12-week tenure. Technically, Apple couldn't use his code because the project's Marvell ARMv5 processor is not found in any Apple hardware. It even predates the Samsung ARMv6 core which powered the original iPhone. Also, it's highly unlikely Apple would assign an important project like the OS X/ARM port to an intern.

[Via AppleInsider]

Apple intern thesis bears on porting Darwin to ARMv5 chips originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple and the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) both received criticism last year for a sweetheart deal in which Apple paid less rent per square foot for the Grand Central Terminal retail store space than other tenants in the facility. Well, the deal is starting to pay off for the MTA as expected, since the popularity of the Apple Store at Grand Central Terminal appears to be improving sales for other retailers.

While the trend is based on data from only one nearby restaurant, it's expected that the Apple Store is attracting business to other stores and restaurants in Grand Central Terminal as well. Crain's New York Business says that sales at Michael Jordan's The Steakhouse N.Y.C. have increased by 7 percent in the last seven weeks. A co-owner of the restaurant, Peter Glazier, says the improvement in sales isn't just because Apple displaced another high-end restaurant, Metrazur. "The jump only happened after Apple opened," according to Mr. Glazier.

Apple not only pays less rent than other tenants, but does not contribute to a revenue sharing agreement that most of the other tenants of Grand Central do. The MTA believed that the flagship Apple Store would attract significant numbers of new customers that would benefit the other tenants and the entire facility as well. For every 1 percent increase in sales for the terminal's retailers, the MTA stands to gain $500,000 in rent due to the revenue sharing agreement.

If the experience of Michael Jordan's The Steakhouse is an indication of increased sales across the board, then the Apple agreement will certainly pay off dividends to the MTA.

Apple's Grand Central neighbor sees sales increase originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Enyo is an application development platform created by HP for webOS. It's open source and based on web standards like JavaScript. Best of all, it can be used to create apps for other platforms like Android and iOS.

The first Enyo-based app for iOS, FlashCards To Go, was unveiled last month when HP announced its timetable for releasing webOS to the open source community. Created by developer James Harris, the iPad title is a full-featured flashcards app that has a strong webOS look and feel. It's available for US$3.99 and works on any iPad running iOS 5. The flash cards app is also available on Android and both a Mac OS X and BlackBerry version are under development as well.

First Enyo app makes the iOS leap originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One of my favorite navigation apps for the iPhone, Where To?, has been updated to include more pictures, more reviews, and some videos of selected destinations.

Reviews and media are sourced from users and Google. The app features 700 categories of destinations, and more than 2,400 brands (e.g. In-N-Out Burger or Trader Joe's). The app features augmented reality as a US$0.99 option, which uses the camera to superimpose directions over local scenery. The app has added direct links to GPS navigation systems Sygic, Waze, Navmii, Navfree and NAVIGON Urban (German App Store only). The app also supports TomTom, Navigon, MotionX and of course, Google Maps.

This latest version has added support for state National Parks in the US, Canada and Australia. The app itself operates in 10 languages, so it's going to be helpful for users around the globe. I did a drive-around test and found it worked reliably and smoothly. I sent a couple of destinations to my Navigon app, and that worked flawlessly. I think the app is useful in your home town, but really comes into its own when traveling and looking for that special restaurant, hotel, or even the nearest pharmacy or hardware store.

Where To? version 4.1 is a free update for anyone who has version 2 or higher. Owners of version 1.0 will have to buy this latest version if they want the upgrade. The app is $2.99 and the augmented reality feature is another $0.99. Where To? 4.1 requires iOS 4.0 or greater. I've included some screen shots of Where To? in action.

Gallery: Where To? destination finder for iOS

Where To? for iPhone updated with more reviews, pictures, and now videos originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Puzzlejuice adds all kinds of bells, whistles and fun to the "word game" genre. The equally excellent 7 Little Words (free) goes in the opposite direction, boiling wordplay down to its core. It offers just seven words and a series of letters (in groups of two or three at a time) to spell them with.

7 Little Words is one of those games that's super easy to play but fiendishly difficult to master. There are 50 puzzles in each of the game's pack (each with their own set of seven words and grid of letters to choose from), and you have to make guesses for each word from clues like "bunny food" (CA-RR-OTS), or "make dirty" (SO-IL).

It's a "pure" experience, in that there's no timer, no extra points...no points at all, in fact. It's just you, some letters, and the words you need to make with them. 7 Little Words a very "Zen" experience, yet there's a lot of pleasure to be had in sitting down, thinking hard, and hopefully coming up with the words you need.

The game comes with 50 puzzles, and extra packs can be bought for 99 cents each (more have been added since we last looked at 7 Little Words, as well as a new shuffle option). If you like crossword puzzles or just word puzzles at all, 7 Little Words is worth the download for sure. It might frustrate you a little bit (seriously, some of the puzzles will have you forehead slapping when you finally figure them out), but most word game fans like a good challenge anyway.

Daily iPhone App: 7 Little Words will cast a spell on you originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a Monday afternoon briefing, Stephen Wolfram spoke about the direction of Siri and Wolfram Alpha integration. He explained that over time, the range of queries that users can ask Siri that are served by Wolfram Alpha continues to get broader. This is apparently a natural byproduct of using a cloud-based system with the Siri API.

Wolfram stated that Siri queries are generally easy for the service to process. "Spoken queries [have] a different character from typed queries," he explained. "People are a lot less lazy in what they say than what they type." When users type, they put things into a natural shorthand. In spoken requests, they naturally fill in those missing pieces.

The verbal noise likes "ums" and "ahs" are apparently easy to remove, while the extra spoken context words allow better translation to Alpha queries.

Wolfram said he looks forward to deeper and broader developments with Siri.

Stephen Wolfram on Siri originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Soon after the 10.7.3 update to OS X Lion, people started finding subtle differences in the pointer icons for OS X (hat tip to Daring Fireball). Specifically, the link, grab, copy, and screenshot pointers have all been updated with slightly new iterations for the first time since OS X 10.2, released in 2002.

The link pointer features a slightly angled index finger rather than the traditional straight finger that's been a staple of the icon since even before OS X, and the grab pointer has been updated to more closely match the "Mickey Mouse glove" appearance of the link pointer. The copy pointer features a more pronounced green gradient beneath the "+" symbol. The old pseudo-SLR camera icon for the screenshot pointer, which comes up after hitting Command + Shift + 4 and then tapping the spacebar, has been replaced with an icon that matches the icon for the Image Capture application.

Old icon, new icon, Image Capture app icon

Apple has also updated all icons with high resolution versions for Universal Access purposes, so the pointers no longer look badly pixellated when super-sized via the Universal Access settings in System Preferences.

Beware of comically large pointer

"The simplest explanation is that Apple only just now got around to increasing the resolution of these elements for the benefit of users who use the cursor-zooming Universal Access feature," says Daring Fireball's John Gruber. Indeed, these OS X pointer icons hadn't been updated in nearly ten years. Gruber further speculates that this may be an initial step toward higher resolution "Retina Display" Macs, though he admits that we should "take my conjecture here with a grain of wishful-thinking salt."

Many blogs must have skipped that last sentence, because overnight speculation over possible "Retina Display Macs" has been rampant since the updated pointers gained wider attention. But the simplest explanation that Gruber himself cites is the best one; the pointer icons are a very minor detail in OS X and a feature that remained completely static for close to a decade without anyone noticing or complaining. The updated icons aren't terribly likely to have anything to do with forthcoming updated hardware.

OS X 10.7.3 includes new high-res pointer icons, rampant speculation ensues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple has issued a reminder to developers that it will not tolerate use of third party services to manipulate app rankings in the App Store. "When you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts," the reminder states. "Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership."

This reminder could very well be in response to a well-trafficked post in Touch Arcade where an iOS developer revealed that an ad network guaranteed his app placement in the top 25 apps in exchange for $5000. This third-party service allegedly employs bots to automatically download the targeted app multiple times, automatically increasing the app's ranking and granting the app greater exposure to potential human downloaders.

8 of the top 25 apps were allegedly developed by clients of this bot service. If true, this represents a serious problem to the legitimacy of App Store rankings, and it's therefore no wonder that Apple is reminding developers of its aggressive stance on the issue.

Apple warns of crackdown on App Store rankings manipulation originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you're looking for coverage of working conditions at Foxconn and other Apple manufacturing partners, there's plenty to go around. The drumbeat of sharply critical stories continued today with CNN's interview of a Foxconn worker; this follows a scathing New York Times story from late January that explores the gulf between electronics companies' best intentions regarding working conditions at contract facilities, and the incessant pressure to innovate and squeeze costs out of the process.

Fairness, though, requires a few reminders. There's social and political argument over the ultimate value of sweatshop labor conditions in developing countries, with the pro-sweatshop side citing enormous economic benefits for countries that can capitalize on an inexpensive and inexhaustible labor force. Even if you buy the hypothesis that cheap labor isn't necessarily good for China, it's true that Apple isn't the only Foxconn client by a long shot, and the electronics manufacturing sector may actually be one of the brighter lights for worker's rights in China. Nevertheless, the company's high-profile and highly profitable products combined with its longstanding penchant for product secrecy have made it a lightning rod for "Applerousing" activism and anger.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, the man most responsible for assembling Apple's supply chain into a strategic advantage for the company, reportedly sent a very strongly worded email to all Apple hands, noting that "any suggestion that we don't care [about the welfare of workers in our supply chain] is patently false and offensive to us.... accusations like these are contrary to our values. It's not who we are." In addition to the company's annual Supplier Responsibility Reports and auditing programs, Apple has recently taken another couple of steps that put it out in front of other consumer electronics firms; it released its supplier list for the first time, and it's the first sector company to join the Fair Labor Association. These changes should, in theory, make it easier for third parties to look into workplace issues within the Apple supplier universe.

You can get a very different take on the relative impact of Apple's policies, and the human cost of making insanely great products for entirely sane prices, by spending an evening at the Public Theater in New York City with monologuist Mike Daisey watching The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Be warned, however, that it is not so easy to leave the show with the same nonchalance about Apple's products and their origins as you might have when you arrive.

The first thing that audience members will notice as they take their seats before the start of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is the cubical and spare set. With rectangular frames in a back LED wall and a glass/chrome desk atop a glass platform, there's a definite echo of a familiar retail aesthetic; it's as if the designer was instructed "Make it look a little like an Apple Store, but don't spend much."

The mood is also evoked, carefully, with sound. The music playing before the show includes both the OS X Leopard post-installation track "Exodus Honey" and Jonathan Coulton's geek anthem "Skullcrusher Mountain." Coulton's song even gets a nod during the monologue itself, when Daisey refers to Apple as a company full of "mad geniuses" who, after Steve's involuntary departure in the 1980s, could finally realize their plans to combine a monkey with a pony.

The next thought, as the show begins: Mike Daisey is a large, loud, sweaty dude who sits in a chair and talks at you for two hours. Although this may sound like a rough session of detention with an angry phys ed teacher, or an afternoon with your conspiracy theory-obsessed uncle, the performance Daisey delivers is heartfelt, intelligent and ultimately completely watchable. His show, which was excerpted on the January 6 episode of the public radio program This American Life, recounts both his decades-long fascination with Apple, including the unforgettable arc of the late co-founder Jobs, and also Daisey's half-cocked but surprisingly effective gonzo investigation of labor conditions at Foxconn and other electronics manufacturing contractors in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Referring to his handwritten notes as he goes -- the performance is extemporaneous, so there is no canonical scripted text and the narrative has evolved over the 18 months that the show has been touring -- Daisey wants to make one thing abundantly clear. If you cut him, he would bleed six colors. To establish his bona fides as a true member of the Apple faithful for a civilian audience, he claims that sometimes after a show he relaxes by "field-stripping my MacBook Pro into its 43 component parts," cleaning each one before reassembling the laptop. "It soothes me," he purrs, stroking his chest with his fingers.

While I don't know that many Mac geeks who relax by taking apart their MBPs, it's evident from Daisey's frequent, coherent technical asides that he isn't putting on airs (or Airs). His heartfelt memories of his family's first computer (an Apple IIc, considered so pricey that it merited its own "computer room") will resonate for plenty of TUAW readers of a certain age. I may have been the only audience member who involuntarily nodded and muttered "yes, of course" when Daisey shared his favorite Mac of all time, but that was only because his choice, the compact yet powerful (for its day) SE/30, was so obviously right.

It's Daisey's love for all things Apple that makes his perception of the company's fall from grace all the more stinging. Starting with the inadvertent leak of several testing photos taken on the iPhone assembly line, Daisey's curiosity about the process and the people behind Apple's products drove him to research the circumstances of where all our stuff comes from.

In 2010, Daisey traveled to southern China and literally drove up to the gates of the massive Foxconn plant in an effort to talk to production line workers; he was in country shortly after the cluster of Foxconn employee suicides and during the incident when a Foxconn employee died of exhaustion after a multi-day workshift. He posed as an American industrialist to gain access to other companies' facilities (including dormitories with beds crammed to the ceiling), and also met with labor rights activists and workers who, despite enormous legal and personal risks, have tried to form labor unions in Chinese factories.

Daisey's recounting of his conversations with these workers is sometimes poignant and often shocking. He met laborers exposed to the neurotoxic solvent n-hexane (now banned from Apple's supply chain, but originally used as an iPhone screen cleaner) who now shake so badly they cannot hold a teacup. He spoke with underage workers outside the plant gates, although follow-up investigations by This American Life indicated that the hiring of minors is far less prevalent than it once was and that Foxconn is relatively well-positioned on that score (some independent organizations dispute this, noting that audits are easy to deceive). Daisey's own translator wonders if all these people can possibly have been through what they say, expressing shock that so many tell the same stories of mistreatment, forced/unpaid overtime and bad working conditions.

As Daisey has performed this piece around the country over the past two years, he might have been considered a lonely voice in the wilderness. (TUAW interviewed Daisey at Macworld Expo 2011, while he was performing the show in Berkeley, CA.) Circumstances have changed quite a bit since he began, however. The radio broadcast was a turning point in the show's reception, according to a flyer handed out by ushers after the performance; it was the most downloaded episode in TAL's history and, Daisey's flyer claims, was heard by many Apple employees and their families. This created what Daisey's sources call "a morale situation" within the company, and he asserts that this internal circumstance was a factor in Apple's subsequent decision to join the FLA and open its supply chain to additional scrutiny.

It may not be as simple as Daisey wishes for Apple to effectively address the condition of a massive Chinese labor force that, in the final analysis, does not actually work for the Cupertino company. His suggestion of a 'dividend for change,' where Apple would directly invest five billion dollars of its cash reserves into the supply chain, would certainly be worthy of a company founded by a Zen-loving college dropout who urged customers to think different -- but it's surpassingly unlikely. Still, public awareness and action on the question of humane labor overseas (whether contracted by Apple, HP, Asus, Sony or any other company) will make a difference in the months and years to come. As Daisey says in his online response to Apple's recent moves toward further supply chain glasnost:

If Apple would spend less energy finessing its public image, and instead apply its efforts to real transparency and accountability, it could be a true leader for the electronics industry. Apple today is still saying what it said yesterday: trust us, we know best, there's nothing to worry about. They have not earned the trust they are asking for."

Mike Daisey's monologue The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs continues through March 4, 2012 at New York City's Public Theater. The show runs approximately two hours and is performed without an intermission. Tickets and information: http://www.publictheater.org

Mike Daisey's "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" is funny, forceful agitprop originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I first saw Monster Wars a little while ago at Macworld as Liv Games was just publishing it, but the title has been out for a little while now and I've had a little longer to play with it. Monster Wars is not only another huge content pack for Legendary Wars, with tons of new stages, modes and units to play with, but it is a nice iteration on the series as a whole, with a lot of subtle but solid improvements to the gameplay.

Unit animations are generally better across the board, and the controls work basically the same. I still sometimes have trouble keeping track of which heroes I'm controlling and which lanes they are supposed to be in. The UI is much improved. The pacing of the game shows that Liv Games has learned quite a bit about how to move players from level to level. The new modes add quite a bit to the game, which was likely a tough task considering how much variety was already there.

If you loved Legendary Wars, you've probably already grabbed this one. But even if you've never heard of Legendary Wars, Monster Wars is a steal at 99 cents. New players might be slightly overwhelmed by what's going on in the new title, but Liv Games has made two really spectacular titles here.They really shouldn't be missed, especially on the iPad.

Daily iPad App: Monster Wars is a great addition to Legendary Wars series originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Anime News Network did an in-depth comparison of reading manga on an iPad vs. a Nook Color today, after Viz Media sent them both devices so they could do a hands-on look at making the digital jump. After taking a hit from the closing of Borders, Viz decided to turn its popular Shonen Jump publication into a digital-only product. Launched in January, Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha is $25.99 for an annual subscription, with three of its flagship series -- One Piece, Bleach and Naruto -- now running almost concurrent with the Japanese release. Individual issues can be rented for 99 cents for a 4-week period.

The results aren't surprising. By holding up a volume of manga next to an iPad, it shows that the iPad is right about the same size as a manga volume and the experience is just as good as reading a print book. What the article does highlight is the problems that the Nook Color has with Viz's products, especially when it comes to things such as double-page spreads. It doesn't touch on the Kindle Fire, however, since Viz hasn't ported its app out to it yet. As expected, the big drawback to the iPad is the price. While manga sold via Viz's iPad app is cheaper than the print volumes, the price of an iPad would be the barrier preventing teens from completely making that digital jump Viz wants them to make.

We originally looked at the Viz app in 2010, and we were pretty pleased with its offerings then. If you haven't considered a digital transition of your manga and comics yet, the ANN article is a good way to see if you'd want to do so. While I still prefer buying print graphic novels, my comic-buying habits are a mix of supporting my favorite local comic shop and buying digital manga through Comixology and Viz -- the latter being excellent for long series that take up a ton of shelf space.

The pros and cons of making a digital jump with comics originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Stick with us on this one -- it seems unlikely, but this case could have some wider consequences. Last year, Apple filed a lawsuit against a company named Proview Technology Shenzen in China. It was pretty common by Apple's standards: The company was using the name iPad, and Apple was trying to keep them from doing so.

While this was all going on, Proview Taiwan (only loosely affiliated with the Shenzen division) sold the trademark to "iPad" in China to a UK-based company named Application Development, which then sold it right back to Apple. All of this would normally be fine and dandy except for one thing: Apple lost the original lawsuit that was supposed to prevent Proview Shenzen from using the name.

As a result, Proview Shenzen is arguing that it still retains the rights to the "iPad" name on the Chinese mainland, and Apple may be fined as much as 2.4 billion yuan ($380 million US). Obviously, this is a tangled legal issue, and I'm sure Apple still has options in the fight before they need to cough up the fine. But there's obviously something here that needs to be worked out, and if it isn't in time, Apple could be prohibited from selling or marketing its tablet under the name "iPad" in China.

[via Gizmodo]

Apple could be forced to stop selling "iPads" in China originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I've talked quite a bit before about the growing "second screen" phenomenon, where iPads and other mobile devices are used as a second screen while either working on another computer or watching television. And with the biggest event on television yesterday, there was likely a lot of "second screen" viewing going around. ZDNet's James Kendrick says his was one of three iPads around the coffee table at his Super Bowl party, and with tens of thousands of tweets per second going out during the most interesting parts of the game, Kendrick's experience was undoubtedly not unique.

Car maker Chevrolet actually participated in the event with the Chevy Game Time app, which not only posted ads available on the iPad the second they went live on the TV, but also offered up contests and more interactivity during the show. And the NFL and NBC famously streamed the whole event live on the Internet for the first time this year -- while I didn't get a chance to pull the game up myself yesterday, I heard a few people say that it was in fact available to stream on the iPad. The commercials weren't available on the stream, though, so it'll probably be a few years before people learn the stream is out there, and before it becomes a better substitute for the TV experience.

Still, the Super Bowl certainly showed off a few major trends that we're seeing in entertainment consumption lately. Apple's devices especially are providing ways for both consumers and brands to interact and extend the "watching" experience, even outside of a standard TV broadcast.

iPads invade Super Bowl parties originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

RIM's star just sank a bit closer to the horizon. Halliburton, a household name in the energy industry and once a BlackBerry bastion, is dumping RIM's platform and switching to iOS. The company once relied heavily on RIM's platform, but after evaluating RIM, Windows Phone, Android, and iOS, Halliburton has settled on switching to Apple's platform.

"Over the next year, we will begin expanding the use of our mobile technology by transitioning from the BlackBerry (RIM) platform that we currently use to smartphone technology via the iPhone," the company said. Halliburton representatives confirmed to AppleInsider that only 4500 of the company's 70,000 employees still use BlackBerry devices, so the transition probably won't take as long as it might have a few years ago.

According to AppleInsider's sources, Halliburton actively engaged with Apple in its transition. Halliburton is far from the first company to do so; Clorox ditched the BlackBerry last year, and 92 percent of its employees replaced it with an iPhone.

RIM's platform was once synonymous with business communications, but that status has slowly eroded since the iPhone's introduction. While corporate IT spent the first few years after the iPhone's introduction scoffing at the device, quarterly reports from analysis firms like Good Technology show that iOS has penetrated enterprise markets in a way that even the stodgiest of companies can no longer afford to ignore.

Halliburton dumping BlackBerry, switching to iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Siri has been in widespread use for four months, but so far Apple's "personal assistant" is still only available on one device, the iPhone 4S. We speculated that there weren't any technical reasons Siri couldn't work on some of Apple's other devices, and the jailbreak community later proved us right by porting Siri to the iPhone 4.

AppleInsider did some digging and discovered there may be a technological reason Apple's kept Siri an iPhone 4S-only feature: noise reduction. The iPhone 4 incorporates noise reduction circuitry from a third-party vendor called Audience, and that circuitry lies separate from the A4 chip on the iPhone's logic board. The newer processor in the iPhone 4S (and possibly the iPad 2) incorporates a newer version of this noise-reduction circuitry within the A5 chip itself, reducing overall cost.

Audience's noise reduction chip works similarly to how the human brain processes audio. By sampling audio from multiple sources (the iPhone's main microphone and the noise-cancelling mic), the Audience chip is able to filter out background noise and deliver only the user's voice, just like how your brain filters out noise in a crowded room to focus on a person talking to you.

The newer noise reduction circuitry in the A5 chip is better at "far-field" noise reduction than the circuits in the iPhone 4. Essentially, the iPhone 4S can achieve the same or better noise reduction when held at arm's length that the iPhone 4 gets when held directly in front of a user's mouth.

The implications for Siri use are obvious -- because of its less advanced noise reduction circuitry, Siri wouldn't function nearly as well on an iPhone 4 in an even moderately noisy environment unless you held it up to your ear and talked directly into the microphone. Despite having an A5 processor (and possibly including the newer noise reduction circuitry), Siri might not function well on an iPad 2 either, since the iPad 2 doesn't have a noise-cancelling microphone.

Apple's product perfectionism often leads to scenarios where features that might technically work on a product wind up excluded because they don't work perfectly. I've run into this a few times with older gear; my old PowerBook G3 had no technical barriers to running OS X Panther or Tiger, for instance, but because it didn't run anything newer than OS X Jaguar well, Apple artificially restricted the device to Jaguar. Similarly, jailbreakers discovered ways to get video capture working on the iPhone 3G, but the results were rather lackluster compared to the officially-supported video recording on the iPhone 3GS and above.

Even if Siri technically works on Apple's older iOS devices, if its performance doesn't work to Apple's satisfaction, we may never see Siri ported to the iPhone 4 or current iPads after all.

Siri may be iPhone 4S-only because of noise reduction tech originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to forecasting the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is the iPad 3.

It's been a long, cold winter for TUAW. As days lengthen and Spring becomes less of a dream and more imminent, our thoughts turn to new technology. What do we expect to see in the next generation iPad and when do we expect to see it? Preorders in March, pickup in April?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your predictions.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: iPad 3 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I love Siri. I'm surprised at how much I actually use it beyond the gimmicky stuff. Texting while driving (through my car's Uconnect system) is so handy.

One thing I've noticed is that when I dictate a message, add a smiley face and have her read it back to me, she says, "Have a nice day colon comma." The odd part is that she has written :-), which is colon hyphen right bracket. Is this a glitch or does a hyphen and right bracket together equal a comma? I was never good at grammatical math.

Your doting nephew,

Damien

Dear Damien,

Ah, bless Siri. She's such a changeable creature. Auntie used to love when Siri would read out "Brr, it's cold" as "Bee. Arr. Arr. It's Cold". Thanks to Apple's live data center updates, Siri now responds "Burr" instead of "Bee. Arr. Arr."

The smiley-face being read back as a colon is similar. It's simply a text-to-speech glitch that Apple may eventually improve. You can report any bugs to Apple directly using their Bug Reporter online website.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Why does Siri read smilies as colons? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for February 6, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When you think Microsoft, you think "big." Especially from the perspective of Apple's long-time customers and loyalists -- those who remember the rough times in the 1990s, when Microsoft's US$150 million investment helped keep the company from fiscal ruin -- the idea of corporate behemoth-ness is paired irrevocably with Redmond's mastery of the Windows ecosystem.

It was Microsoft's dominance of the computer industry that led a federal judge to declare that the company had "monopoly power" in 1999. Correspondingly, the revenues and profits generated by the Windows juggernaut equate to the biggest of big money. At least, pretty big money.

In responding to Ed Bott's ZDnet article about the relative distribution of profits among the various business lines at three tech leaders (Google, Microsoft and Apple; Bott's point was that Google's cash comes almost exclusively from advertising, while Apple and Microsoft have more balance), MG Siegler noted that the pretty pie charts were missing a key piece of context. Apple's revenues and profits may weigh heavily on the iPhone, it's true, but what's not apparent from the side-by-side comparison is the scale.

It's not just that Apple is doing better than Microsoft in revenues, profits and market cap. It's not just that Apple earned and kept more than twice as much as Microsoft did in the holiday quarter. It's that the most successful Apple product, considered as a standalone business, is larger than Microsoft all on its own.

No, that's not a typo. In the quarter ending December 31, the iPhone rang up sales of more than $24 billion. All of Microsoft's businesses -- Windows, Office, Xbox, enterprise, consumers, the whole shebang -- chalked up almost $21 billion in revenues. Yes, Microsoft's strongest quarter for business sales may not be the one where IT purchasers are more focused on Christmas vacation than server upgrades. But it's still a breathtaking fact, and a striking transition from a decade ago.

[Hat tip to Business Insider]

Microsoft's $21B in quarterly revenue is nice, but it's no iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Samsung USA has been on the warpath against Apple fans lately with a series of ads that show bored, desperate people standing in line for Apple's next product while happy hipsters show off their Android-powered Sammy devices. During yesterday's Super Bowl, the company took the gloves off with a regionally-focused ad touting the new Samsung Galaxy Note.

The ad, estimated to cost Samsung a whopping US$10.5 million in air time alone, follows the same theme as the others in the campaign. As in the previous ads, what appear to be Apple customers are standing in line waiting for a new device when a happy Galaxy Note user wanders up and the crowd drops everything as the scales fall from their eyes and they see the error of their ways.

According to the book of Samsung, what iPhone users really want is a huge phone that uses a stylus. Yes, you read that correctly. The 5.3" Galaxy Note, in homage to the Palm Treo and a handful of Pocket PC Phones from the early 2000s, comes with a stylus that you can lose after you get Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher's autograph. Your chances of losing the stylus are probably pretty good, since most people lack pockets that are large enough to hold the Galaxy Note comfortably.

I'll leave you with this final quote from Steve Jobs: "If you see a stylus, they blew it."

Samsung insults iPhone owners with Super Bowl ad touting oversized stylus phone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There's a lot of speculation going around about an Apple HDTV of some sort. The Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs started a lot of the rumors when he quoted Jobs as saying that Apple had "finally cracked" the method of interacting with a television. Now the speculation is bordering on the ridiculous, with screen shots of a customer survey done by Best Buy that describes an Apple HDTV concept product appearing on a number of tech sites.

The survey describes an "all new 42" Apple HDTV" available at Best Buy for US$1499, with a 42" 1080p LED flat panel display, built-in iOS, app and iCloud support, the ability to use an iPad or iPhone as a remote control, and a "built in iSight camera and microphone for Skype."

So, an overpriced HDTV with a built-in Apple TV is all the Cupertino Kids can give us? There are other things that make this alleged story a farce, such as the survey's insistence on referring to an "iSight camera" rather than a FaceTime camera and using Skype instead of FaceTime.

Retail chains do customer surveys all the time, and this particular survey is only "newsworthy" because it has the word Apple in it. Had the survey been asking about a new Internet TV from LG, we wouldn't have seen at least four major blogs writing about it. Apple's insistence on secrecy means that we're not going to know what awe-inspiring new way of interacting with television Jobs was talking about until the product is ready to ship ... or until an Apple engineer just happens to leave an HDTV at a bar.

In the meantime, the Apple community would be better served by blog posts with a little more meat on them, instead of breathless stories speculating about the deep inside meaning of a simple market survey.

Apple HDTV in Best Buy survey is not news originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Simon Prakash, an Apple veteran with eight years of service, has left the Cupertino company to join its rival Google. Prakash most recently served as the senior director of product integrity and was responsible for product quality across all Apple product lines.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Prakash was the director of engineering design validation at Cielo Communications and a reliability and FA manager at 3Com before he joined Apple. He will join Google in an unknown capacity working on a "secret project" says Venture Beat.

Prakash will supposedly begin at Google starting Monday. Given his background in hardware and product quality, he will likely work with Motorola Mobility on their future cell phones and tablets. This is based on speculation as neither Google nor Apple has commented on Prakash's change of employment.

Google reportedly hires Apple executive to work on secret project originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Image: Shutterstock

A few days ago, I caught a tweet from Paul Haddad (of Tapbots), showing a screen full of obvious copycat apps from one developer. Of course, anyone who has spent appreciable time on the App Store knows there are plenty of copycats out there. Not all of them are small shops, either. But these copycat apps were truly astonishing in their brazen nature -- I mean, Plants v. Zombie? Temple Jump (instead of Temple Run)? Come on.

Luckily Apple finally woke up and rooted out a number of these cloned games from this single offending developer. I'm sure others will pop up again, but hopefully Apple will be more on top of things in the future. In the meanwhile, let us know if you see a copycat app. You can give us a shout either in the comments or using the "Tip Us" button at the top of our website.

[via The Loop]

Apple removes one iOS developer's copycat games originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We've seen lots of photo accessories that let you add filters and lenses to your iPhone, but SkyLight is the first to let you add a full-fledged microscope. It's a platform that attaches to a microscope and aligns the phone's camera with the eyepiece. You can view the microscope image on your phone and take photographs. It's perfect for classroom usage, for researchers who need high-quality images in their published papers and for clinicians who can take a photo and send it off for analysis.

SkyLight started as a Kickstarter project that reached its $15,000 funding goal last month. It was available for a preorder price of US$60 and will ship in March. It includes a generous five for one incentive plan that'll donate one SkyLight to global health or educational purposes for every 5 SkyLights purchased. You can read more about the accessory and its inspiration at the SkyLight website.

[Via Springwise]

SkyLight combines iPhones and microscopes originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Do you want to share files easily and quickly? Then take a look at Droplr, which has been around for some time and recently hit the Mac App Store in an improved version 2.

Droplr is free and easy way to share images, documents and other files. You can run it from a web browser or the Mac app which lives in your menu bar. To share a file, simply drag it onto the menu bar item and it's uploaded to Droplr's servers. When the upload is complete, it copies a short URL to your Mac's clipboard, which you can give to anyone you like.

There is a 25 MB upload limit for individual files, and storage is free up to 1 GB. There is a paid plan in the works, but no details are being offered yet. The app also supports plug-ins so you can quickly share from apps like iPhoto, Photoshop CS5, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, your address book and even PhotoBooth.

Things I'd like to see include a favorites list of contacts for sending files so I don't have to go through pasting the URL into mail, and I think the 25 MB file size limit is too low. I have some Photoshop files that easily exceed that.

There are some similarities to Dropbox, another excellent file sharing utility that gives you 2 GB for free and doesn't limit individual file size. On the other hand, Droplr is simpler to use and aimed primarily at sharing with other people. Dropbox can be used to share files, of course, but is more about storage and sharing across machines.

Droplr offers support for Windows machines and has an iOS app in development. Of course any computer can use it via the web, with no app needed.

I've had no problems with using Droplr, and when I asked a question at the support site it was instantly answered. If you like to share files, give Droplr a look. It will be interesting to see how the service progresses and improves.

Daily Mac app: Droplr originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Glitchsoft's oddly-titled Star Marine: Infinite Ammo (more on why that's weird in a moment) is both good at bad. First, it's good at heart. Star Marine: Infinite Ammo is a Contra-style run-and-gun title that has you controlling a soldier on a spaceship among other environments. Your job is to fight through hordes of aliens and escape. The action is great and fans of the old Contra game will find a lot to enjoy.

However, Star Marine has a few unfortunate issues. First of all, the controls are a little more wonky than they should be. For example, the action often gets fast and furious. When things heated up in Contra, you could duck and jump out of the way reliably. Star Marine's touch controls, by contrast, don't always get you where you need to go. I got hit by several stray bullets and alien flyers because the controls weren't quite as tight as they should be.

Repetition is also an issue. While the environment options eventually expand, the first few levels are basically the same hallways and enemies over and over. An enjoyable boss battle becomes drudgery after you've done it several times.

The freemium-style in-app purchase system doesn't help, either. When you discover a gun you haven't unlocked with gems you've collected, you just plain don't get it. Plus, the gems come way too slowly. If this was a freemium game, the rate might be acceptable (and I fully expect it to drop to free at some point), but for the current price of US$1.99, it's too slow.

I've got one more complaint. For a game called "Infinite Ammo," there's only one gun I found that was truly infinite. Everything else, including weapons you can buy, health packs and special attacks, are limited.

Despite those issues, Star Marine: Infinite Ammo can be fun. There's even a Boss Rush and Survival Mode to enjoy after you've finished the main campaign. I don't know that I'd recommend it at the $1.99 price, but this game seems made to be discounted, so keep an eye out for it. At a slightly cheaper price (or maybe if the freemium system is tweaked to be a little more forgiving), Star Machine: Infinite Ammo has a lot more going for it.

Daily iPhone App: Star Marine Infinite Ammo originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's not just any Sunday, this one happens to be Super! If you're over the game, or don't know what game I'm referring to, then join me at 7PM Pacific, 10PM Eastern for a look at the week's news and events.

We'll cover the latest Lion update, warts and all, as well as Siri's sitcom debut. If you want to make sure we talk about your favorite topic, get there early and let me know so we can get it on the list.

Your calls and questions help us make the show the best it can be, otherwise I'm just talking to myself! To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (yay for free cellphone weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo, X-Lite, or Blink SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk to you tonight!

Talkcast tonight, 10pm ET/7pm PT: Super Edition! originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 05 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.