Category: I-phone

In the years since the iPhone was introduced, the platform has grown by leaps and bounds, making it far easier and better to do the simple tasks we tend to do every day. In the process, iPhone gaming has become wildly popular, with all sorts of different styles making the transition from the web, consoles and PCs to the tiny phone that sits in our pockets or purses.

But for all the talk about how great the iPhone is for games, what are the limitations? What is good on the iPhone and what just plain sucks? I started thinking about it the other day, and you know, iPhone gaming sure is cool but it’s just not quite perfect for everything. Let’s hash this puppy out after the break.

What It’s Good At

The iPhone has a speedy processor, amazing graphics and a completely fluid interface, making it perfect for certain types of games, and absolutely horrible for others. Take, for example, Scrabble. I can play that by myself or against a partner and have no problems at all wiping the virtual board with my opponent. And when it comes to word games, the iPhone is just great.

In fact, any game that doesn’t require you to touch a very specific area at one point in time or another is just great for the iPhone. Let’s use Tiny Wings as an example: Touch anywhere on the screen and the bird dives into the landscape with no problem. It doesn’t matter if you touch the bird specifically, or the corner by where your thumb naturally sits, it all works. And for those types of games, the iPhone is king.

Virtual D-Pads and Joysticks

Where things start to get hinky is when the developer tries to mimic the gestures that made the game popular on another platform. Confused?

Think about that time you played Super Mario Bros. on your cousin’s NES, or when you spun down hills at a million miles an hour playing Sonic the Hedgehog on your friend’s Sega. Both those, and many other consoles, used a D-Pad controller that navigated the protagonist through your world. Since the iPhone is now powerful enough to play games that were designed to run on consoles built just 10 years ago, they try to emulate those controls on the iPhone, and most of the time it just sucks.

This has popped into my head before, but it really hit home when I was playing Grand Theft Auto III, one of my all-time favorite games. My frustration, as I pointed out in the article, comes down to the controller, or lack thereof:

I will say that the controls have been the main reasons for my frustration. Although there are many different ways to tweak and fine tune them, it’s just so frustrating when you’re close to making a turn but your finger slides away from the control area. I will say though that if you turn on analog steering, you get a joystick that repositions to your hand. It’s not perfect, but it can be easier to use.

Since then, I’ve played the game quite a few times, and although I’m getting the hang of it, there’s just no easy way to replicate a 14-button controller complete with d-pad and multiple joysticks on an iPhone without littering the screen with icons. But even if you do attempt it, then there’s the other problem: Your thumbs.

Two Hand Gaming

I was born with two hands, so when I play a game that requires them, I think that these things really come in handy (See what I did there?). But since the screen on the iPhone isn’t that big, and my hands are, trying to tap on two sides of the screen can limit my viewpoint.

Take a moment and pull your iPhone out of your pocket. Hold the iPhone horizontally in your hands and put your two thumbs in the lower corners of the screen. If you’re anything like me, you’ve instantly lost 1/3 of the viewing area, just because of where the controls are located. This sucks pretty bad if you’re trying to fight a bad guy who surrounds you at all turns, or shoot the enemy with your gun and can’t target him because he’s under your thumb.

Also, because there’s no tactile response from the screen, you have no idea if your finger has slipped off the d-pad and onto no man’s land, and you won’t know until you die or get injured. Take a look at that Sonic The Hedgehog screenshot above. That’s a d-pad and one button, and more often than not, I found my finger sliding all over the d-pad, leading to an untimely death.

That’s why I find one-handed games so much better than the alternative. More often than not, I find myself getting frustrated because I either can’t see the action or something is in my way. It’s never like that with a console game, whether it’s on a Nintendo 3DS or a PS3, so it sucks that it is that way here.

The Solution That Wasn’t

The solution, it seems, just doesn’t exist.

I mentioned in my GTA III review that I had considered buying a joystick for the iPhone, but apparently I’m not the only one because many of the types that I’m interested in are sold out. But a stick-on joystick isn’t the perfect option; what would be is a dock that has handles like on your PS3 controller, but also has buttons, too.

Thing is, that’s just not going to happen, even though it’s technically possible. I have a PSP charging adaptor that has two handles just like my PS3 controller, and it slides right around the PSP, keeping it in place and charging it simultaneously. And the same thing could work with your iPhone, be it through a Bluetooth connection or a plug into the dock, but it’s just not going to take off.

Why? Because it would need universal adoption, something that’s just never going to happen. Let’s say that you’re a manufacturer, and you want to build this mythical controller that I’ve dreamed up. To get it to sell, you need app developers to make it work with their apps, otherwise it’s just a useless hunk of plastic that no one wants to buy. Sure, you might get a few games to join in, but unless the company who makes this controller is huge (think: Apple, EA, Zynga, etc.), then there just won’t be widespread adoption. You’ll get a few niche games here and there, but that’s it. And that sucks.

The Answer?

So how does this all get fixed? Well it doesn’t, which is why we have to know and accept the limitations of gaming on the iPhone. We can’t just expect to have the full console experience in our pocket, because the physical nature of the iPhone just won’t allow it to happen. Sure, we can get really close, but we’ll never be all the way there because there are no buttons or joysticks to press.

For me, that’s fine. Sure, I really wanted GTA III to bring the console experience to my pocket, but it just wasn’t meant to be — at least not with my big mitts. So I’ll keep playing the Angry Birds, Words with Friends and other games that really don’t try to reinvent hardware through software, and instead use the multitouch nature of the iPhone to its advantage.

For me, that’s where the iPhone really has no limits — and that’s where iPhone gaming should be headed.

If there is one area which has been revolutionized by the invention of the iPhone (and iPad) it has been photography and photo manipulation. It’s just that easy to snap a photo and share it with your friends, since you carry your iPhone with you almost all the time.

Percolator, a universal app, adds a new dimension to post-processing your images. It’s a mosaic app, but it’s also much more than that. We’ll take a closer look right after the break.

You Want Coffee With That?

Wait! Yes, we’re still talking about the iPhone app and if you don’t like coffee, stick around anyway. Percolator is a mosaic app that makes your images look tasty and the default settings will remind you of a fresh, hot and wonderful aromatic cup of coffee. No kidding!

The basic idea is that your images are going to be processed (brewed) according to settings you choose and the result will be your image consisting of circles and textures.

As you can see, there are not too many options when you start Percolator for the first time. Simply load an image into the app and watch the magic happen.

Serving to Your Taste

The actual brewing of your new image takes a a couple of seconds, depending on the complexity of the original photo. Just be patient and read the messages on the bottom of the screen for entertainment.

Once the processing is done, you’ll see … well, you’ll see circles and a lot of them. Also, there is a settings bar on the bottom of the screen where you can manipulate the effects. There are three areas, each with a subset of settings. They allow you to fine tune your image. Simply play around with them.

Grind manipulates the number of circles or the texture used. The finer the grind, the more circles are used and the more details can be displayed and vice versa. After every change, you have to re-calculate the image. If you opt for the coarse grind, it will be quite fast. The finer the grind, the longer it takes, but it’s still just about 5-10 seconds.

The Brew changes the texture that makes up the new images. You can choose between tasty brews like Overprint (which applies a water color effect), Full of Stars (which turns your image dark and fills the details with glittering stars), Ishihara (which are one-dimensional circles) and many more. All in all, there are eight choices.

And finally, you decide how you want your image Served. Again, there are many choices. Basically, they change the background of the textures. Black outlines circles with a black border or generates a black background. Light and Sweet does the same, just in white. If you want to be surprised, just hit the spoon and watch it whip something up (yes, it’s even animated!).

For Refined Tastes

If you thought that this was the extent of the available options, you were just as fooled as I was. I stumbled onto the more advanced settings by mere accident. If you tap on the names of any of the areas (Grind, Brew, Serve) a more detailed settings pane opens for each of the three. Needless to say, that with those options the number of possible combinations just skyrocketed. There’s so much to discover that it will last you for hundreds of photos.

For Grind, the middle wheel allows you to fine tune the the level of detail while the last wheel offers basic image improvement like sharpening or saturation.

In Brew, the middle wheel controls just how visible your original image is and the last wheel adjust the texture. There are an impossible amount of combinations.

And when you are ready to Serve, the middle wheel sets the color of the image while the last wheel changes the texture. This ranges from clouds, linoleum to napkin and many more.

Don’t drink alone

Once you found the perfect combination for your photo, love it by hitting the heart icon. You’ll be presented with a choice of sharing options.

If you opt for a social network, Percolator will prepare the message for you, but you can of course change it before posting. For best results, have your image to go (save to your photo album). Percolator supports output up to 2048 pixel by 2048 pixel.

If you zoom into your final image, you can see that the perfection is in the details. The circles have a texture to them which gives the image more than a one-dimensional look.

Verdict

Percolator is full of surprises. The basic options already serve interesting images, but once you discover the pro settings, you’ll have a hard time stopping.

My only gripe is with the size of the exported images. The iPhone 4S has a much larger resolution camera and therefore the original images are in a higher resolution. It would be great if down the road this original size could be kept.

But other than that Percolator is incredibly fun to use. The changes to the image are animated, the entire user interface is deliciously designed and the resulting images — well, they rock!

So, if you haven’t already, get your photo brewing. For less than a Starbucks coffee you get a universal app which will bring many, many hours of fun.

Some people believe that the route to a healthy body lies in religiously tracking every calorie consumed and burned, each gram of sodium or fat accounted for and logged. While we’ve covered the Fitbit app, which allows you to monitor your eating and exercise habits on a micro scale, some take a look at the grander scale of their health.

For them, tracking calories, fat, sodium and carbs is not only a waste of time, but also unnecessary. They want to know if what they’re eating is healthy, plain and simple. The Eatery is an app that allows you to do this, effectively crowd-sourcing the fitness of what you’re eating.

Snapping More than Your Jaws

The main idea behind The Eatery is the notion that you want to eat healthier. Everyone knows that meeting any goal — be it fitness related or not — is often best accomplished with a support group in place, and The Eatery aims to provide this on a large scale.

As a warning, you’re going to be taking a lot of pictures with this app. The idea is to Snap what you’re eating, and then post it within the app where people can vote on whether it’s Fat or Fit. These ratings are done on a sliding scale, so something might be completely fat (I’m looking at you, Cinnabon) or completely fit (water collected from a maple leaf) or something in between; my homemade pizza, for instance, was rated to be about 48% healthy, so it’s not the best for me but it could certainly be worse.

If you aren’t comfortable sharing what you’re eating you won’t get much out of this app. Since what you post is rated by anyone that stumbles through the app you might be discouraged, but since everything is anonymous it’s doubtful that your feelings will really be hurt.

After the Picture

After you’ve snapped the picture, you can add a comment to clarify what exactly it is. This takes some of the guesswork out of foods that I was unfamiliar with, and would often aid some less-than-helpful pictures.

You can also share how much you ate. This is handy if you want to snap a picture of that lasagna you slaved over, allowing you to avoid that crisis that flies through your mind as everyone rates you as Fat because they didn’t know how much they ate. The amount is displayed via a blue circle within a plate, and unfortunately is only accessible from a detail screen after you’ve already posted something.

Once your picture is uploaded and you’ve added a comment, it’s time to rate your food yourself. You’ll often have a fairly good idea of whether something is healthy or not, and the app tries to make you accountable by forcing you to rate your own food.

Giving Something Back

So you’ve posted your food for other people to rate. Now what do you do? Rate other people’s food, of course! Rating food in the app is technically easy, but it might stump some people so far as what the rating should be.

Let’s say, for example, that someone says takes a picture of a salad, full of vegetables and free-range lettuce or whatever the rage is these days. By now you’re thinking Fit, right? Well, what if the person also added some chicken and had a ton of Ranch dressing slathered over the whole mess? Still Fit?

These grey areas are what make the sliding scale necessary. If you have a feeling that something isn’t quite healthy but is clearly better than some alternatives, you can rate it closer to the Fat side of the scale while still letting the person know that they could do better. While it isn’t a perfect solution, when taken to a larger scale the app tends to balance out and give you a fairly accurate idea of how healthy your food is.

The foods shown are seemingly random, and if you run across something that you don’t want to (or can’t) rate, it’s easy to skip an item by tapping on the little black X in the top right corner. The app will ask you to explain why you skipped an item and then you can continue with your ratings.

Taking it Further

One feature that seems nice on paper but can quickly get irritating are notifications. Notifications will automatically be sent to your phone when someone rates your phone, which is nice when you aren’t sure whether or not anyone else is using the app. The problem arises when you realize that a lot of people are using the app and rating your food, and you feel the constant vibration against your leg from someone else telling you not to order that Big Mac.

A detailed view is available of how healthy you’ve eaten over the past week, and I’m sure that this would be handy for most people. In practice this doesn’t work as well if you aren’t completely devoted to the app, which I’ll discuss more below.

It’s possible to add friends from Facebook into the app, but I don’t see much point in it. If you wanted to an invite a friend to critique your eating habits you wouldn’t need an app to do it, and part of the appeal from The Eatery is having this information crowd-sourced and mostly anonymous.

Should You Use It?

The Eatery is an enjoyable app. The developers have good intentions, and I never experienced a crash during my testing. They also continue to improve the speed and stability, making a functional app even better.

The problem with The Eatery really comes down to the user. It’s up to you to take a picture of what you’ve eaten, something that I often don’t think to do until I’ve already cleared my plate. Something like Fitbit allows me to add this information retroactively, but without a picture The Eatery quickly loses its functionality. Alarms might help with this if you’re used to eating at around the same time every day, but if your eating times change (as mine do) they aren’t that valuable.

The Eatery really comes down to discipline. While the developers have been able to crowd-source how healthy your food is, they haven’t been able to instill a sense of discipline into the app. If you think that you’ll remember to snap a picture of your food and rate other people’s dishes this is a fine app that will fit your needs well, but if you’re as forgetful as I am, you’ll quickly notice an empty app.

So it’s the day after Christmas, and those of you who celebrate the holiday are probably still working your way through piles of tinsel and empty cartons of eggnog. It seems like at our house, an iTunes gift card is usually standard fare under the tree, but more recently we’ve been getting apps given to us via the App Store.

What about you? Have you found yourself with an app under the tree? Have you given one yourself? How about gift cards? Let us know in the poll to the right.

We live in an awesome and exciting world of digital organization and electronic communication. With my phone, I can be contacted through approximately eight different channels and never miss a single message. My entire office is paperless, which allows me to be extraordinarily mobile as well. The one activity, however, that seems to have resisted a nudge into the digital world is the age-old tradition of exchanging business cards.

Some of the more tech-savvy and anti-paper professionals devised their own system for scanning business cards and archiving them digitally. We’ve also seen a series of attempts to make the process faster, such as the invention of the vCard format, or iPhone apps like Bump that require all parties involved to be using the same technology.

Today I’m going to look at a LinkedIn companion app called CardMunch. CardMunch is designed to streamline the professional networking process and make quick work of archiving contact information for later use. Hit the jump to find out more!

Deceptive Simplicity: A Narrative

Because I get so emotionally charged about iPhone apps, discovering CardMunch was a bit of a journey for me. Allow me to guide you through the emotional roller coaster that I experienced when I first launched the app. At first, I was excited.

CardMunch first starts you off on the camera screen, where you are prompted to take a picture of a business card with your iPhone’s built in camera. Since I recently received the business card from Envato’s very own Scott Wills, AudioJungle site manager, I decided to use his business card to give this app a test.

The interface for CardMunch is, as the subtitle above suggests, deceptively simple. Upon snapping an image of the business card, the app gave me the option to append a note to the image, and then seemed to simply log the image in the app for me. I thought “What? Just a library of business card images? Well that’s cool … I guess.” I was let down.

However, after some poking and prodding, trying to figure out if there was any more substance to this app, I discovered that upon tapping the image of the business card, I was shown a message informing me that the LinkedIn team was hard at work transcribing said image. I didn’t know what that meant, but before long, that image disappeared and was replaced by a name bar. It seemed as though CardMunch had dug through the LinkedIn databases and found Scott’s profile, all from a simple image of a business card. I was excited again.

If the person who gave you the business card isn’t on LinkedIn, CardMunch will do it’s best to scan the information on the card and create a contact for them based on that information.

As I poked around the profile information that CardMunch returned, my excitement faded briefly. I assumed that the app was simply cataloging my business cards and building a thorough, yet unintegrated address book based on LinkedIn profiles. It was cool, I thought, to be able to access this information based on a simple business card, but what was I going to do with it?

Enter the final, and probably most valuable feature of the app: integration. I discovered that by tapping the Edit button in the upper right corner of the contact list, I was given a few options. Not only could I export all of this information to Apple’s own Contacts app, but I could also connect with Scott on LinkedIn straight from CardMunch. My excitement, needless to say, jumped back up to maximum capacity.

Implications

After discovering, assuming, and discovering some more, I was mentally exhausted in a sense. But once I’d come to terms with what the app did, I considered the implications. Personally, I aim to remain as paperless as possible, and the bane of such an existence is small pieces of paper (like business cards) that I have to keep track of. With CardMunch, I can snap a picture of a business card, let the hamster wheel at LinkedIn do all the work for me, and bury the physical card in a file where I never have to worry about losing it again.

There have been several attempts by various developers to streamline the professional networking process as it functions in real life (see: Bump), but the glory of CardMunch is that it doesn’t rely on your networking target to be using the same service. Most professionals are on LinkedIn these days, and with this app you can connect with that person online almost as instantly as in person.

Conclusion

After all of the emotional flip-flopping was all said and done, I found CardMunch to be well designed and extremely useful. At the very least, it will encourage me to do a better job of managing my LinkedIn connections.

As it’s considered one of the major social networks, I’m glad to see that LinkedIn is developing companion apps to it’s main one. I think that the major social networks and services have a lot to offer, and could benefit from a fragmented mobile market like LinkedIn appears to be doing.

Give CardMunch a spin at let us know what you think. Do you have another system for keeping your professional contacts organized? If so, we’d love to hear about that too!

The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you — the readers — and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We’ll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often!

TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPad accessory of 2011. Some of our readers apparently didn’t read the nomination post closely, as we received nominations for cases (a separate category) and apps.

As a result, the nominees are: Bubcaps (4 for US$5.00) by Paperclip Robot, which are tiny caps that are used to keep toddlers or special needs kids from hitting the home button and changing to another app; the iKlip ($39.99) from IK Multimedia, a microphone stand mount for musicians using the iPad; the $99.95 iProp, a very flexible stand for hands-free use of the iPad; Pix & Stix ($24.95) which includes two capacitive drumsticks and one guitar pick; and iPad Kicks ($11.95) from Bluelounge.

And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on December 30, 2011.

View Poll

TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPad accessory originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to TUAW’s 2011 Holiday Gift Guide! We’re here to help you choose the best gifts this holiday season, and once you’ve received your gifts we’ll tell you what apps and accessories we think are best for your new Apple gear. Stay tuned every weekday from now until the end of the year for our picks and helpful guides and check our Gift Guide hub to see our guides as they become available. For even more holiday fun, check out sister site Engadget’s gift guide.

It’s the middle of the winter break and most students are enjoying a short respite from course work, classrooms and cramming for exams. Students should use some of this free time to clean up their old Mac or setup their new Mac before their hectic school schedule begins again. To help you get organized for the 2012 Spring semester, we’ve compiled some of the top Mac apps for students. Check out the list below and add your favorites in the comments (all prices are USD).

Dropbox (Free)

Dropbox is a popular, web-based file hosting service that lets you upload files to a cloud account and share them with other Dropbox users. It’s an easy way to store files for yourself or others to view. Besides the Dropbox client which uploads files from your Mac, there are many other apps that use Dropbox for file sharing or file backup. Dropbox gives you 2 GB of storage space for free, but you can purchase additional storage if needed (50 GB for US$9.99 monthly or $99.99 per year; 100 GB for $19.99/month or $199.00/year)

Evernote (Free)

Evernote is an excellent note-taking app that stores all your notes in the cloud, so you can access them from your iPhone, iPad or desktop. You can create normal text notes, clip portions of web pages and record audio notes. You can also search and modify existing notes. It’s available for free and is a must-have for anyone taking notes.

iHomework ($2.99)

iHomework is an app to help you manage your course workload. It’ll keep track of your assignments and set reminders for when they are due. You can also log all your grades, so you know how well you are doing in a class. There’s even a section for course information that lets you store the course location, time and the professor’s contact information. It’s available on the Mac, and it is sold as a universal app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Garage Tunes ($4.99)

Garage Tunes is a lightweight music player that’ll scan your hard drive for music files and add them to the app. It also scans the library of other computers on your local network that have Garage Tunes installed. It’s an easy way for roommates to share their music over a LAN.

WiFi Radar ($9.99)

If you’re the traveling type who likes to study in the library or at your local coffee shop, you’ll need a decent WiFi tool like WiFi Radar to help you find available WiFi networks. WiFi Radar will list all the available wireless networks in your area and provide you information about the SSID, channel, signal strength and password state. Once you connect, the app will graph your network signal and let you monitor the reliability of the connection.

Coffee Break ($2.99)

Coffee Break is a small utility that resides in the menu bar and reminds you that it’s time for a break. You can setup alarms that’ll dim the screen and tell you take a break for a set number of minutes. Conventional wisdom says you’ll stay more alert during those marathon studying sessions if you take regular breaks.

Caffeine (Free)

Unlike Coffee Break, Caffeine will help keep your computer going during a marathon study session. The app is a small utility that sits in the menu bar and gives you quick access to some of the options in Energy Saver. You can click it once to stop your Mac from going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again and everything is restored back to normal. It’s perfect for those times when you’re deep in thought and not actively interacting with your Mac.

PDF Expert ($19.99)

PDF Expert will let you read, annotate, and search within PDF files on your Mac. The app has all the basic functions you need to highlight, underline or add other annotations to a PDF. You can also add notes and bookmarks. PDF Expert will even read the PDF back to you when you want to listen to the document instead of read it. If you don’t need the search functions of PDF Expert and have Mac OS X Lion, you can use the built-in Preview app to annotate your PDF document and add bookmarks. A warning to prevent confusion- PDF Expert for the Mac is not associated with the popular PDF Expert for the iPad made by Readdle.

iProcrastinate (Free)

iProcrastinate is an easy-to-use task manager that’ll help you get things done without delay. The app lets you organize tasks into subjects (basically, a category) and add sub-tasks to a task which is great for projects that require several steps. It’ll sync between devices on a LAN and upload your file to Dropbox. If you have an iPhone, there’s a companion version of the software that’ll let you take your tasks with you on the go.

Spotify (Free, service has an optional subscription)

Spotify is a music streaming service that debuted in Europe and recently made its way to the US. Spotify, like Rdio, lets you browse its music catalog and choose individual tracks to add to a playlist. It’s much different from Pandora which plays random tracks based on an artist or genre that you choose. Spotify is available for free on the desktop and includes advertising to support the free model. You can pay $4.99 monthly for an Unlimited plan which gives you all-you-can-eat streaming without ads or sign up for a $9.99 monthly Premium plan which gives you ad-free unlimited streaming, offline caching and Spotify on your smartphone.

iWork ($60)

iWork is Apple’s suite of productivity apps that’ll let you create documents, presentations and graphs. The suite includes a document editor (Pages ’09), a spreadsheet application (Numbers ’09) and a presentation application (Keynote ’09). You can buy the apps individually for $20 each on the Mac App Store.

Sparrow Mail ($9.99)

Sparrow mail is a lightweight email client for Gmail, MobileMe, Yahoo!, AOL and other IMAP providers. The app has a unified inbox and supports both labels and folders so you can keep your email organized. A recent update added Dropbox functionality, which lets you send large attachments via email. There attachments are automatically pushed to Dropbox and recipients can download the file using a link within the email. If you find OS X’s mail client to be clunky and slow, you should check Sparrow.

Adium (Free)

Staying in touch with friends is important and an easy way to chat while on your computer is through Instant Messaging. One of the best free desktop IM clients is Adium, an open source app available for Max OS X. It’ll let you connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, Facebook and more. The app uses tabs to separate your different conversations and supports Growl notifications so you never miss an incoming message. It also merges your contacts, so you won’t have the same person listed three times. Advanced features include OTR encryption, file transfer and many, many customization options that’ll let you change the look and feel of the app.

iStudiez Pro ($9.99)

iStudiez Pro is an all-in-one app that’ll help you schedule your courses, keep track of your assignments, and calculate your GPA. It’s very similar to iHomework mentioned above, but has a different look that some might prefer. It also has a companion app for the iPhone if you want to take your schedule with you wherever you go.

Alfred (Free)

Alfred is a productivity app that resides in the menu bar and is available via a quick keyboard shortcut. Alfred will let you launch apps, search the web, search your hard drive, perform calculations and more. It’s faster and has more features than Spotlight and will become your favorite Mac assistant.

Reference books (Variable pricing)

Besides applications, there’s a variety of reference material available for the Mac. You can download comprehensive guides like Muscle System Pro II, which details the muscular system of the human body. There’s also iElement, which contains everything you need to know about the elements in the Periodic Table, and for Political Science majors, there’s an app that’ll let you study the US Constitution.

Holiday Gift Guide: Mac apps for students originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SkySafari from Southern Stars is an app for the astronomy enthusiast with an iPhone. It’s the perfect companion for a new telescope owner, who can use the app to help locate celestial bodies in the sky, or the casual observer who wants to know the name of that bright star cluster overhead. It’s also useful for the seasoned astronomer who wants a pocket reference that’s chock full of information.

The basic app (US$2.99) displays over 120,000 stars and has images of all the major planets and their moons. It also includes information on well-known asteroids and comets. SkySafari lets you look up details on each heavenly object including its catalog number and its coordinates in the sky. The app also explains the history and mythology behind each celestial object, so you can learn about the object as well as find it in the sky.

If you have an iOS device with a compass or gyroscope, you can point the app at the sky and use an augmented reality view to locate stars and planets. It even includes a night mode which preserves your dark-adjusted vision when you’re out stargazing at night.

One of the best features is “Tonight’s Best,” which lists the best celestial objects to observe that night. The app generates this list based on your location and the local date and time. The app also has SkyWeek, a list of notable astronomical events pulled from Sky and Telescope Magazine’s popular weekly column. Both Tonight’s Best and SkyWeek are fantastic places to start if you’re new to astronomy and don’t want to miss an important event.

SkySafari is also available in a Plus ($14.99) and Pro ($59.99) version which includes information on millions of stars, deep sky objects and every comet or asteroid ever observed. If you have a motorized GoTo mount, the Plus and Pro versions also let you control your telescope using the iPhone app.

SkySafari is similar to Star Walk, another iPad and iPhone-based astronomy app. Both apps give you an augmented reality view of the sky and have information on the objects that you see. SkySafari, though, has additional features like SkyWeek that’ll appeal more to the serious hobbyist than the casual observer. The depth of the information available and the option to control your telescope make SkySafari one of the leading astronomical apps available for iOS.

Daily iPhone App: SkySafari originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I recently added a second external monitor to my 13″ MacBook Pro. My problem comes with the OS X Lion features that give windows a 3D depth-look, specifically, the shadow effect.

As a window on the external monitor approaches the virtual border of the built-in LCD of the MBP, the shadow extends between monitors, creating a shadow/shade over the windows on the LCD (that is to say, if you park a window to close to the edge, the shadow extends the other display).

Anyway to turn off the shadowed window effect?

Your loving nephew,

Seth

Dear Seth,

Auntie turned to TUAW’s braintrust, who quickly pointed her to Unsanity’s Shadowkiller haxie. Released in 2006 and “Not compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Leopard,” Auntie can confirm that the haxie works just fine with Lion.

Download the dmg, copy the app to your Applications folder and then launch to kill the window shadows. Launch again to bring them back.

Hugs and a big thanks to everyone who helped find Seth the answer,

Auntie T.

Particular thanks to @shabooty, @basraayman, @oboewan, @jtregunna, and @capii

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me nix the window shadows in Lion originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The People’s Daily is reporting that an Apple device with the model number A1431 has received China’s Compulsory Certification. This is the model number for the iPhone 4S that recently received a network entry permit, indicating that the phone has cleared the remaining hurdles before it can be sold in mainland China.

This positions Apple to release the iPhone 4S in the new year, most likely coinciding with Chinese New Year on Jan. 23.

[via CNN/Fortune]

iPhone 4S passes last hurdle to launching in mainland China originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We all expected that iOS sales would be incredible during the holiday season, but now a study by Localytics reported on GigaOM shows that the activation level for new iOS devices was even greater than expected.

The study showed that 12.5 times more iOS devices accessed games and apps using Localytics’ platform during the holiday weekend than over previous weekends. That’s the worldwide average — in the US and Germany, the average was 15 to 16 times greater than the average new device activations. For the competing Android platform, the gains were in the 11 to 12 times greater range.

Other fascinating numbers from the Localytics study include the fact that in the US, activations of iPod touch devices were 21 times greater than usual, while iPhones were activated at 14 times the standard rate.

Apple ruled the roost in terms of activation gains in the US, UK, and Germany, while Android won the contest in other European countries and in Asia.

Study finds many iOS activations during the holidays originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DigiTimes reports that Intel plans to “fully release” Thunderbolt technology in April of 2012, and that many “top-tier PC vendors” are readying Thunderbolt-ready motherboards.

Apple has shipped Thunderbolt-compatible devices, including the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, iMac, the Thunderbolt cable and a Thunderbolt Display. DigiTimes reports that falling costs will allow the technology to proliferate across lower-end devices and machines.

All of this means we should finally start to see more Thunderbolt-compatible peripherals, etc. some time next year. That’s good news for early adopters who’ve been waiting to make the most of their Thunderbolt ports.

[Via MacRumors]

Thunderbolt PC motherboards on the way for Q2 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has been fined 900 thousand Euros by the Italian Antitrust Authority [Google translation], citing unfair business practices against consumers. Specifically, the ruling cites two offenses against Apple, Apple Sales International and Apple Retail Italy.

First, the judgement says that Apple’s retail arm did not fully inform consumers that they are eligible to receive free care every two years via the Consumer Code, instead focusing on Apple’s own warranty plan (one year, plus subsequent paid AppleCare service).

Additionally, the Italian authorities said Apple allowed customers to pay for an Apple Care Protection Plan even when the supplementary plan overlapped the two-year coverage guaranteed by the Consumer Code.

As a result, Apple was fined 400,000 Euros for the former offense and 500,000 Euros for the latter (a total of about US$1.2 million as of this writing). Apple will also publish an explanation to its Italian consumer website. Finally, Apple must adapt sales packages of the Apple Protection Plan to include information on the free service that’s available to customers after two years. That change must be made within 90 days of the decision.

Thanks to Marc and Jacopo for sending this in.

Apple fined in Italy for poor communication around warranty policy originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Small Bluetooth speakers for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad seem to be the current rage. Recently, I did a review of the Logitech Mini Boombox, an amazing small speaker that packs a punch. However, I felt that the bass end on that speaker was bit on the weak side. Satechi has recently come out with the new BT Wireless Pocket Speaker (US$44.99) with a unique patented fold-out resonator that is designed to boost the bass without increasing the size of the speaker. How did this work? Read on for a full review of this little speaker.

Design

The design of the Satechi BT Wireless Pocket Speaker is completely unique. It’s a small four-sided blob that is reminiscent of a small turtle. There are no visible buttons — they’re hidden under a chrome bezel strip that winds its way around the exterior of the device. On top of the speaker is a rounded area that, when rotated, causes a resonator to pop out. While the drawings in the user manual seem to show the resonator more than doubling the height of the speaker, it actually only pops up about a half-inch.

The Pocket Speaker comes with a USB to mini-USB cable for charging, as well as a small pouch for protection. On the bottom of the speaker is a short cable that neatly tucks into place if you’d prefer to plug the Pocket Speaker into your iPhone’s headphone jack or chain several of the Pocket Speakers together to make an über-speaker.

It’s cute, it’s tiny, and it is attractively priced. But how does the Satechi BT Wireless Pocket Speaker sound?

Functionality

The speaker pairs with your iPhone, iPad, or pretty much any Bluetooth device. The pairing process is simple — you press and hold the power button (designated by the universal power icon on the chrome bezel) until you see the blue light flashing. Once that happens, going into Settings > General > Bluetooth reveals the unpaired device, and typing in 0000 as the pairing code makes the connection.

Unlike the more expensive Mini Boombox, the Pocket Speaker is not a stereo speaker. Basically, you’re getting monaural sound from the device and hooking up more of them in series is only going to give you monaural sound from a bunch of speakers. Multiple speakers would make the sound louder, but wouldn’t give it true stereo.

The volume is adjusted either on the device or using the Music app controls. I found it worked best to turn the Pocket Speaker’s volume to the maximum and then use the Music controls to adjust the level.

The maximum volume on the Pocket Speaker isn’t all that loud. While the Logitech Mini Boombox would work admirably to blast music at a noisy party, the Pocket Speaker would probably be drowned out by conversation. I didn’t find the sound quality to be as good as that of the Mini Boombox either — a side by side comparison showed that the resonator on the Pocket Speaker, while a good idea, just didn’t add any “punch” to the bass. Both of the speakers are rather weak and low in terms of bass, but that just seems to be a side effect of small size.

Like many of the other speakers of this type, the Pocket Speaker can be used as a speaker phone for your iPhone as well. The same button that allows you to turn up the volume or go to the next track on a playlist also answers an incoming call, while the play/pause and power button also serves to reject or end a call. Note that the Pocket Speaker doesn’t have a built-in microphone — instead, it’s using the microphone on your iPhone.

Finally, the speaker “Safety Rules” in the owner’s manual gave me a good laugh, especially rule number 3 — “Take note that this speaker is not edible and should not be placed in your mouth.”

Conclusion

This is without a doubt the smallest Bluetooth speaker that I’ve seen so far, and it works reasonably well. The small size of it keeps the bass sounding rather weak despite the innovative design of the resonator, and it’s not a stereo speaker, so if you’re looking for big bass and good stereo separation, look elsewhere.

On the other hand, if you just need a small travel speaker that doesn’t take up a lot of room, works as a speaker phone, and has an eye-catching design, then the Pocket Speaker might be the one for you. The low price is also a plus for the Pocket Speaker. Satechi also has an even smaller speaker that is designed for the iPhone and iPod touch — the SD Mini Portable Pocket Speaker — that sells for $29.99. Kudos to Satechi for creating these tiny speakers and making them affordable for everyone.

Satechi BT Wireless Pocket Speaker review originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no rest for the weary in retail this year, but at least on Christmas Day most of the shopping frenzy was online and not in line. IBM’s Smarter Commerce unit, which tracks 500 online stores (but not Amazon, the largest, and probably not Apple’s store either) told the AP that Christmas Day online shopping increased by 16.4 percent year over year.

It’s not clear if that number represents the number of individual transactions or of unique purchasers, but IBM did say that the dollar amount of online purchases made via mobile devices was up a whopping 172.9 percent over last year. Moreover, IBM exec John Squire reported that almost seven percent of all online purchases on 12/25 originated on a single device: the iPad.

Seven percent of all transactions isn’t bad for a platform that hasn’t yet celebrated its second birthday, but the iOS slice of mobile e-commerce is a lot wider than that. According to a report released last week by retail insights firm RichRelevance, the overall dollar share of online purchases made from mobile devices has doubled over the past eight months and now stands at 3.74% of sales spending online. Of that chunk of cash, 92% of the December purchase transactions originated on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad (up from 88% in April 2011).

Think about that for a moment. Nine out of every 10 mobile transactions recorded by RichRelevance in December came from an iOS device; since RichRelevance, like IBM, can’t see into Amazon or (probably) Apple’s sales data, the true ratio could be somewhat lower or higher, but still. Even the average dollar value per order is higher for iOS than for Android ($123 vs. $101 in December), and both mobile platforms walloped the $87 AOV for desktop browser orders. As GigaOm noted, the volume of mobile transactions seems to spike on holidays and weekends, when shoppers are less likely to be sitting at their PCs.

RichRelevance says it analyzed more than 3.4 billion transactions to arrive at its results, including data from 10 out of the 25 largest web retailers. Both Apple and Amazon hold their sales data very close to the chest, but you can bet that both companies are also mining through their records and coming up with similar conclusions — shopping on mobile devices is growing fast, and iOS is leading the way and/or lapping the field.

[via Business Insider & GigaOm]

Photo by Ramberg Media Images (CC)

Online shopping gets iPad surge on Christmas Day, iOS dominates in December originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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