Category: I-phone

The Next Web has a fascinating link to a video documentary about Steve Jobs’s time at NeXT that gives you some further insight into how he worked, and his determined and sometime volatile personality.

The NeXT episode was filmed by John Nathan for a TV series called Entrepreneurs produced by WETA in Washington D.C.

Some of the most interesting sections are Jobs pressing Joanna Hoffman at the 11 minute mark. Hoffman was one of the original members of the Mac team. His interaction with staff about delays in shipping at 15:33 is also a peek into the Steve Jobs worldview. You can watch the video clip below.

Jobs introduced the NeXT computer in 1988 after he left Apple. In 1996 Apple bought NeXT, Jobs returned to Apple, and the rest, as they say, is history.

[via TNW]

Inside NeXT: Steve Jobs documentary video originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A new iPad 2 ad is making the rounds on TV and YouTube now. The ad, “Love,” shows various people — a coach for a basketball team, a guitarist, a painter, a young man making a movie with iMovie and a young dinosaur fanatic — enjoying their favorite pastimes with the help of an iPad 2.

As with most Apple advertising, the new ad is simple and effective. In comparison with the advertising for Android phones, for example, the Apple advertisements show regular people with a passion performing tasks that would normally require a personal computer. Those Android phones? Usually filled with explosions, flying phones, and other nonsense that doesn’t do a thing to tell viewers what the phone can actually do.

Enjoy the latest ad!

New iPad 2 ad: Love originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Booq makes incredibly nice accessories for Apple products — we’ve reviewed some like the Booq Boa Push bag and talked about others like the Booqpad Agenda before. Now the new Booq Folio for iPad 2 (US$39.95) has arrived, and it appears to be a real value. Read on for a review of this new leather iPad 2 folio.

Design

Most folio cases have a similar design — they look like a leather notebook and have a way of holding the iPad or iPad 2 in the right side. You open the cover of the notebook, and there’s your nicely protected iPad. The Booq Folio is no exception to this design meme, except it’s a bit more stylish than some of the folios I’ve reviewed.

The Folio cradles your iPad 2 in leather in one of four finishes: Arctic Ice (white), Blue Storm (dark blue), Lava Rock (black), and Red Tide (red). The front of the case is emblazoned with a silver button embossed with the Booq logo, and there’s horizontal stitching across the front that provides a nice visual counterpoint.

That cover is also useful, as it has magnets in all the right places to act as a Smart Cover surrogate. The Booq Folio offers much more protection than Apple’s leather Smart Covers, which sell for much, much more — $69.95.

Functionality

The Booq Folio works very well. It’s quite easy to slide an iPad 2 into and out of the case, and the magnets function as advertised for turning your device on and off. The leather that holds the iPad 2 in place is nicely done — some folio cases I’ve reviewed before have had crooked or bulging leather straps, while the Booq Folio has flat and precise leather pieces to cradle the iPad 2.

Since this is an iPad 2 case, there is a hole in the back for the camera to peek out of. The straps give plenty of access to all of the buttons and ports on the iPad 2, but without sacrificing protection of your device.

One other feature that I like is that the case has two long rubber strips on the “open” side of the case that allow you to flip the case over and use it as a stand for watching movies on your iPad 2.

Conclusion

Booq makes very nice products, and the Folio for iPad 2 is no exception. If you’re thinking about buying an Apple Smart Cover, think again — for less than a dollar more than the Apple cover, you can get a nice leather folio instead. This would make a perfect Christmas present for the iPad 2 owner on your list, so keep it in mind while you’re doing your holiday shopping.

Booq Folio for iPad 2: Leather luxury, Smart Cover functionality originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wild Chords is a really amazing app — at its absolute base, it’s an excellent and easy-to-use guitar tuner, perfect for kids or adults. But the real magic of Wild Chords is in actually playing the guitar along with the main game; this game will teach you, chord by chord and string by string, how to strum away some really excellent tunes.

The app very colorful and well-made — its simplicity hints that it’s for children, but even as a beginner-to-medium guitar player, it was never condescending. The app starts easy, with a quick tune-up and then just an open chord test, and things get harder from there. The basic idea is that you’re playing along to tame animals, so you need to play the right chord as your in-game character passes them while walking down a street: Eventually you’ll be playing the A chord to tame an Ape, and a C chord to tame a crocodile, and so on. The game even shows a really nice sense of musical wit: The A minor chord is portrayed by a sad ape, the A major is a happy ape, and so on.

The other level type, meant to teach individual string plucking, features birds sitting on five different telephone wires, with each of them given a number. On that game, you’re mean to hit the fret marked by their number, and then strum the string they’re sitting on. It’s a very nice visual way to show tablature, and it works great. The feedback isn’t perfect — strumming the birds just puts them to sleep, and that’s not too instinctively positive. But once you get the feedback whether you’re doing it right or not, it works.

The best part of this is that all of the animals you’re collecting and taming are all attached to real songs, so as you strum to hit the right notes, you’re actually accompanying an original song on the iPad as you play. Even the first lesson of the open chord is included in this, so Wild Chords pulls off the impressive feat of going from no guitar experience to being able to play along with a song in seconds. The later songs are really great too — unfortunately, there are no lyrics, and these are all original songs, not pop hits or even the “traditional” tunes most people learn early on in guitar lessons. But they’re all very catchy across a nice variety of styles, and given that the game doesn’t ever punish you for experimenting (as long as you hit the notes you’re supposed to hit), you can improvise and play in between the beats all you want, and it all works great.

That said, if you’re already a guitar expert, this might not quite be challenging enough. While the levels do get tough (you can even demo the more advanced levels, just to see what they’re like), expert guitar players might not find much to learn until the very last few areas. Still, I think what’s there does fit in with what most amateur players would want to learn, and Wild Chords does a lot with very little. I don’t know what note detection system they’re using or how it was designed, but considering that I was simply using the iPad’s microphone in a quiet room with no special connection or setup, I was impressed by how well the app detected what I was playing and rewarded me accordingly.

And here’s the real kicker: The app is completely free to play. There are a few in-app purchases for extra content, but there’s enough content in there already that you’ll know after downloading and playing with it for a while if you need any more levels. I haven’t done a lot of shopping for guitar tuner apps on the App Store yet, so I’m sure there are more advanced or feature-filled tuners out there, but in my mind this tuner is nice and works well enough that it alone is worth downloading the app for.

Wild Chords is a really excellent app for the iPad — it has already won awards in Europe, but just recently arrived on the North American App Store. If you’ve got young ones who’ve been looking to start learning guitar, or wouldn’t mind figuring out a few chords for yourself, grab a five-string and the app, and see what you think.

Daily iPad App: Wild Chords originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Late on Friday, Macworld’s Jason Snell discovered that the new 4.1 version of virtualization tool VMware Fusion had a special talent. Up until 4.1, Fusion would refuse to install non-server versions of Snow Leopard and Leopard into a virtual machine, since Apple’s licensing for those OS builds did not include a virtualization option. Only the server versions of 10.5 and 10.6 were legit for VM use; for 10.7, Apple moved to allow virtualization of either client or server.

In the new Fusion build, however, client versions of 10.6 and 10.5 are OK for installation in a new VM; the install tool just prompts you to make sure you’re license-compliant.

While a Lion virtual machine is pretty useful, a Snow Leopard VM has something Lion doesn’t have: the Rosetta PPC compatibility option, letting users run older applications that rely on PowerPC code. For some apps (Quicken Deluxe being the primary example), that’s a workable way to keep them compatible for the time being.

It wasn’t clear from the Fusion 4.1 release notes whether VMware had sought Apple’s permission to make this adjustment to the install process, and I asked the Fusion team for comment. Earlier this evening, in a blog post, the company announced that the licensing check for Leopard Server and Snow Leopard Server (the only legitimately virtualizable versions of 10.5 or 10.6) was left out of the 4.1 build of Fusion. A subsequent update is likely to restore the checking routines that prevent the installation of non-server 10.5 and 10.6 OS versions.

In the meantime, Fusion 4.1 remains a downloadable update for the virtualization app, which normally retails for $79.99 but is currently on sale for $49.99. A 30-day demo download is also available.

Fusion 4.1 support for pre-Lion, non-server OS X is a mistake, says VMware originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:31:00 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.

Two years ago, my best friend bought his wife an iPhone 3GS for Christmas. She totally wasn’t expecting it. When she opened the package and saw what was inside, she went crazy with glee. Two years later she still has that phone, and it’s become an indispensable tool.

People refer to a lot of things as “the gift that keeps on giving,” but it’s especially true of the iPhone. Even the iPhone’s basic functions via Apple’s pre-installed apps can vastly expand the things you’re able to accomplish while on the go; once you factor in all the apps on the App Store, the iPhone turns into a full-fledged, powerful, portable computer that quite literally fits in your pocket.

Before I get into discussing which iPhone may be right for that special person in your life, there are a couple things to keep in mind before you decide to give an iPhone as a gift.

Contracts

I called the iPhone “a gift that keeps on giving” earlier, but it’s also a gift that keeps on taking. You may think you’re doing someone a favor when you give them a US$199 iPhone 4S (and they’ll probably think so, too), but that lovely gadget also comes with a significant monthly expense attached to it in the form of a carrier plan.

The cheapest possible (on-contract) iPhone plans in the US, according to the rate plan info on Apple’s site:

• AT&T: $54.99
• Sprint: $79.99
• Verizon: $59.99

You might be able to tailor a cheaper pre-pay plan through one of these carriers if you buy an unlocked iPhone instead, but no matter how you look at it, the iPhone is going to incur a monthly expense. This may not be a big deal to you if you’re giving the iPhone to your spouse or one of your children, but buying an iPhone for one of your friends or someone outside your immediate family is kind of like buying them a pet: it’s not just a one-time gift, but an ongoing and expensive obligation.

Buying an on-contract iPhone also makes it a bit tougher to keep it a surprise, unless you’re planning on paying the monthly plan fees yourself. If you’re buying an iPhone for someone outside your immediate family and you want to keep it under wraps, the best option is probably going to be buying one of the unlocked, contract-free models — but keep in mind that those iPhones are significantly more expensive than they are when subsidized through a carrier.

Carriers

The carrier situation in the US is more involved than in most other countries due to the differing technologies US telcos use. Depending on which model of iPhone you’re looking at giving, this could considerably affect your options. Apple currently offers four iPhone models, but the carrier compatibility situation is quite complex in the States:

• iPhone 3GS: AT&T only
• iPhone 4: GSM version (AT&T only)
• iPhone 4: CDMA version (Sprint or Verizon only)
• iPhone 4S: Technically universally compatible, but all models are locked to their specific carrier when sold — even the “unlocked” iPhone 4S will only work on AT&T

Different carriers also offer markedly different quality of service depending on where you are. AT&T is notorious for having terrible service in some parts of the US, so if your gift iPhone is going to someone who lives in an area with little to no AT&T coverage, Verizon or Sprint may be a better choice. Check each carrier’s coverage map first before you decide which one to go with; if you give someone an iPhone that’s locked to AT&T, but AT&T doesn’t offer coverage in their area, you might as well have bought them an iPod touch instead.

The three US carriers also have specific strengths to consider. While AT&T is the only one that supports simultaneous voice and data traffic (and also somewhat higher 3G network speeds, assuming you have coverage), Verizon’s overall network coverage and reliability is considered top-notch. Sprint’s data plans or support may also draw you in, especially if your intended recipient already has a phone on Sprint.

The carrier situation outside the US usually isn’t quite so byzantine, because almost all other countries use the GSM standard instead of CDMA. The only specific carrier recommendations I can make for countries outside the US apply to Australia and New Zealand. For both countries my recommendation is the same: avoid Vodafone if at all possible. My experiences with Vodafone’s networks in both nations have been almost universally terrible. Your best bet for sussing out the ideal carrier for you is to ask neighbors or coworkers who already have iPhones (and who commute/hang out in the same general area as you) how they feel about their carrier of choice.

With that out of the way, let’s look at which model of iPhone fits your gift-giving mood.

Super-low budget: iPhone 3GS

The iPhone 3GS is available at a very attractive price: free from Apple and nearly free ($1) from AT&T, but both incur a two-year contract. It might therefore look like a great option for a particularly budget-minded gift-giver, and in fact if you’re looking at giving an iPhone as a Christmas gift to your teenager, this might be a good choice.

The iPhone 3GS is old, though — more than two years out of date. It lacks many features that owners of more modern iPhones have come to take for granted, like the Retina Display, faster processors, and much-improved cameras (including the forward-facing camera for FaceTime or Skype use). It’s also only available on AT&T in the States, so if you wanted to go with Verizon or Sprint, you’re out of luck.

It also comes in only one capacity: 8 GB. That’s going to be quite cramped for even light users; between apps, music, photos, videos, and other data, 8 GB just doesn’t count for as much as it used to.

The iPhone 3GS is quite far behind at this point in terms of its feature set, and it’s unlikely Apple will continue to support the device with iOS updates for the same length of time that it will support more current iPhones. Although the iPhone 3GS is still a decent iPhone, I wouldn’t recommend giving one as a gift unless your budget absolutely cannot handle giving an iPhone 4 instead.

Low budget: iPhone 4

For just $99 more than the iPhone 3GS, you can get last year’s flagship iPhone, the iPhone 4. Check out all the improvements that $99 gets you:

• More powerful processor, leading to better overall performance (especially in games)
• Much higher quality Retina Display
• Improved battery life
• Much better camera (5 vs. 3 megapixels in the iPhone 3GS) with an LED flash and improved video recording quality
• Front-facing camera for FaceTime
• Noise-cancelling microphone
• Compatibility with Verizon and Sprint (CDMA models only)

The iPhone 4 is still a great phone, and it should offer plenty of power for most users with only one exception: like the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4 now comes only in an 8 GB capacity. That may feel even more cramped on the iPhone 4, because the pictures and videos it takes have much larger file sizes than on the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone 3GS is a decent iPhone, but the iPhone 4 simply blows it away no matter how you look at it. It’s also a more attractively-designed phone, and Apple is likely to continue issuing software updates for the iPhone 4 for longer than for the iPhone 3GS. I know if I was receiving an iPhone as a gift, I would much rather receive an iPhone 4 than an iPhone 3GS. That’s likely to be true of just about everyone.

Higher budget: iPhone 4S (16 or 32 GB)

Here we hit another $100-200 price jump (depending on which capacity you choose), but again that rise in price nets you some great improvements over the iPhone 4:

• Much more powerful processor — up to twice as fast as the iPhone 4 for some applications
• Improved camera (8 vs. 5 megapixels in the iPhone 4) with face detection, 1080p video recording, and video stabilization
• Higher data capacity (16 or 32 GB versus 8 GB on the iPhone 4)
• Improved antenna (faster download speeds, better signal quality)
• Siri voice assistant

The iPhone 4S will easily outperform the iPhone 4 at any processor-intensive task, especially gaming. Its camera is much improved, too, especially in low light situations; in fact, the iPhone 4S is arguably a great replacement for a low- to mid-budget point-and-shoot camera.

The higher capacity the iPhone 4S offers over the iPhone 4 will also allow its user to store more music, photos, and apps on the device. 16 GB will probably be enough for light users — people with small music libraries, not many photos, and only a handful of apps — but it might start to feel cramped after awhile, especially if the user starts taking lots of videos with the built-in camera. A 32 GB iPhone 4S may be a better choice if the person using it has a lot of media; if this isn’t their first iPhone, the person you’re giving it to may already have lots of apps, too.

[iTunes Match users can spend less time worrying about how to fit a music library on to the portable device. -Ed.]

Let’s be frank, though: Siri is the biggest selling point for the iPhone 4S. It may or may not come to Apple’s other devices eventually, but for now the iPhone 4S is the only device that offers Apple’s revolutionary new voice-driven interface. As corny as talking to your phone may seem at first, Siri is the kind of feature that seems perfectly natural (maybe even necessary) after using it for awhile.

Money is no object: iPhone 4S (64 GB)

Even with a two-year contract, the biggest, baddest iPhone on the block is going to set you back almost $400. The unlocked, contract-free version is an even more staggering $849 — $20 more than an iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G model with the same storage capacity.

Though the 64 GB iPhone 4S offers no other improvements over the smaller capacity iPhone 4S models, the higher capacity is definitely going to come in handy for “power users” with huge music libraries, hundreds of apps, thousands of photos, or any combination of those items.

The 64 GB iPhone 4S is Apple’s first iPhone to come in that capacity, and that’s the model I snagged for myself. It holds all of my music (well, all the stuff I actually listen to anyway), almost 200 apps, over five hours of videos, and it still has enough space left over that I can take hundreds of photos or an hour of high-def video without worrying about deleting things first.

That having been said, once you get into this pricing territory you have to start wondering whether an iPad 2 might not be a better gift instead. Though it’s larger and less portable than an iPhone, it’s also available without a contract commitment to any carrier. A 64 GB Wi-Fi-only iPad costs $300 more than the on-contract 64 GB iPhone 4S, but that bigger $300 initial outlay also saves you over $1300 in carrier fees over the course of two years.

There’s an iPhone for every budget now, from the free iPhone 3GS all the way up to the credit-card-slaying 64 GB iPhone 4S. As you go up the ladder the feature set expands along with the price, but the 16 or 32 GB iPhone 4S is probably going to be the sweet spot for most users. Regardless of which iPhone you give this holiday season, the person who receives it will almost certainly be very excited — so long as he or she can afford the monthly service costs.

Holiday Gift Guide: Buying an iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to the FOSS Patents Blog, earlier today the US International Trade Commission entirely dismissed the first S3 Graphics complaint against Apple. Interestingly, the official notice (PDF link) has no explanation why the Administrative Law Judge was overruled. There is still one pending complaint by S3 Graphics against Apple which has not been ruled on.

Part of what makes this an issue is that HTC is in the process of buying S3 Graphics, and a couple of strikes against Apple patent-wise would have just sweetened that deal. At least we don’t have to wait long for more progress on the ITC front, as a date of December 6th has been set for a ruling on Apple’s first complaint against S3 Graphics.

And don’t forget there’s still a bit of tussling between Apple and HTC going on as well, with a patent infringement throwdown still not yet decided between them, either. Whew!

It’s all a bit confusing at first glance, so get comfy, get ready to take some notes, and head over to the FOSS Patents Blog for more information and links to other coverage that will help you make sense of all the legal wrangling.

ITC rules Apple didn’t violate S3 Graphics’ patents originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A lot of iPad and iPhone users have found the sweet spot for that device: the couch. And now TechCrunch reports eBay and PayPal are hoping to capitalize on that with a new addition to their iOS app. A new feature called “Watch With eBay” appears in the latest update to the iPad version of the eBay app, allowing you to cruise eBay for items related to whatever you’re watching.

Right now, the way the app determines what you’re watching is by finding out from you. After you type in your zip code and select your cable provider and channel, it shows you items related to that particular show, as illustrated in the image here. While it’s still reasonably neat to have this happen, and the searches are pretty slick, I’ll like it a lot more when there’s some sort of SoundHound functionality that can identify the TV show for me. If you want to see the new feature in action, eBay has a video on YouTube showing it off.

For my example it was mostly accurate, but I did get a few copies of the Queen Documentary mixed in with all the autographed photos and coffee table books. I searched again using “Ellen” as an example and it gave me items related to the guests on her show today. I am guessing this is just the first wave of this sort of interaction, and I’m interested to see where it ends up. Who do you think will be next, and how?

New Ebay iPad app promotes “couch commerce” originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Online shoppers aren’t just looking for tablets to buy, they are using them to do their shopping, too. The New York Times suggests that the majority of tablet owners use the device to shop, and that they prefer the shopping experience of the tablet over that of a smartphone or desktop.

Only about 8 percent of online shoppers are tablet owners, according to Forrester Research. As a result, retailers have overlooked this group of customers and focused their efforts on beefing up their websites or releasing smartphone apps instead.

The success of the iPad 2 has changed all that, and retailer Anthropologie is one of many stores taking notice of tablet users this year. The company released an iPad app right before the start of this year’s busy holiday shopping season and expects it to bring in 20 percent of the store’s sales within a year. This would be a significant jump from the 6 percent of sales that currently comes from iPad users browsing Anthropologie’s website on the device.

Other retailers like Walmart, Saks Firth Avenue and Tea Collection (a children’s clothing store) are also embracing the iPad. These retailers are using the tablet device to extend their website and offer an immersive experience. The Tea Collection, for example, is using its iPad app to let customers create outfits, share the outfits on social networks and even watch videos about how the outfits are made. It’s the start of a whole new way of shopping for tech savvy customers.

[See our past coverage of catalog apps from Google, Catalog Spree & The Find.]

More retailers see catalog gold in iPad apps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Simple handling of compressed archives is a breeze on a Mac, simply secondary-click and hit “Compress”. Likewise opening a zip file is as easy as a double-click. But what happens when you want to get a bit more advanced with your compression archives? That’s where something like iZip Archiver steps in.

iZip Archiver is available from both the Mac App Store and directly from the developer’s site. The version available in the Mac App Store is a fairly limited application, but the free version available from izip.com allows you to do a couple of things that your Mac can’t do natively, even with the likes of The Unarchiver, TinyExpander or Stuffit Expander installed.

Essentially iZip Archiver will allow you to create archives in .zip format, secure them with a passcode and share them via files.com. That bit of the app doesn’t really add anything to the default Mac-archiving experience. But what it will do is allow you to open and edit archives without extracting them first.

Opening an archive mounts it like an external drive or .dmg, and allows you to look through the contents, open, edit, rename or extract single files, as well as add to or delete items from the archive. In this way you can add files you’d forgotten to zip up, or remove files you no longer want in your archive without having to unzip and re-zip them. For small archives it only saves a little time, but for really massive archives, skipping the extraction step will save you heaps of time. iZip Archiver supports ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ and 7ZIP files, so most common archives are covered.

There are other alternatives like BetterZip 2 and Stuffit Deluxe to name just two, but most of them aren’t free. So if you’re looking for a free tool for the occasional archive modification, iZip Archiver will do the job for you for nothing. The restricted iZip Archiver is available from the Mac App Store, while the more fully featured version is available directly from the developer’s site.

Daily Mac App: iZip Archiver originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel’s new “Ultrabook” initiative designed to help PC manufacturers churn out MacBook Air clones has hit a snag. According to Digitimes, Apple has gobbled up almost all of the available capacity for producing unibody aluminum parts, which it uses to build the chassis for its notebooks. Production capacity for these parts is so constrained that PC manufacturers are reportedly only able to produce one chassis every three hours.

In order to maximize production and cut costs, Ultrabook manufacturers are being forced to fall back on tried and true (and chintzy) production methods. High-end Ultrabooks will still have an all-aluminum chassis like Apple’s notebooks, but the mid-range products will only feature aluminum on the outside; internally, it’ll be plastic parts glued to metal. Low-end Ultrabooks designed to get under that magic $999 price barrier will be constructed from high-density fiberglass. Sounds charming.

Stories like this certainly show how the tables have turned in the past ten years. Today, PC vendors who try to compete with Apple on both features and price almost inevitably find they have to sacrifice one or the other. Ultrabooks are no exception; Apple’s supply-side savvy has allowed it to lock up a significant portion of manufacturing resources, leaving less and less for the rest of the industry.

Ultrabook manufacturers look to plastic as Apple commandeers supplies originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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 November 21, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve already seen a few app sales already this month, but companies are now starting the windup to the big Black Friday holiday, and things are going to get chaotic. Starting this weekend, and rolling on through the Christmas holiday (and even up to New Year’s), new iPhones and iPads are going to be making their way as gifts into lots of consumers’ hands, and that means that app developers everywhere are going to be fighting tooth and claw to get their apps installed on those new units.

That makes it much more important to get into lists like the Top 50 paid and free apps. When Apple “freezes” the store for developers over the holiday, what’s on those lists stays there, so there’s even more incentive to sell. We’re aiming to track app sales as much as possible — stay tuned this week and all holiday season long to our holiday gift guide to see what’s dropping and on sale now.

In the meantime, here’s what’s already on sale this week:

• Hand-drawn adventure game The Train has dropped all of its episodes down to 99 cents.
• Developer Com2Us has put lots of its iOS titles on sale for a buck, including Homerun Battle 3D, Inotia 3, and Tower Defense: Lost Earth.
• Gameloft is also underway with a sale, including Eternal Legacy, the Gameloft Action Pack, and lots more for a buck as well.
• Infinity Blade is down to $2.99, both for Black Friday and because its sequel will be out on Thursday of this week.
• Konami’s charming Gesundheit is down to just 99 cents, as is Pro Evolution Soccer 2011.
• The really fascinating action RPG title Fara is also just a buck.
• Namco Bandai is planning some big sales for later this week, but Puzzle Quest 2 is already discounted to $2.99.
• Breaking Art’s Morning Motivation is down to $1.99 from $5.99, which will help with those post-Thanksgiving crises of gym dedication.
• The Comixology app has all 12 of the old Marvel Secret Wars comics on sale for just 99 cents each. Perfect time to catch up on some classic comics.
• Mortal Skies 2 is completely free today as well — it’s a pretty well-done shmup for iOS.
• The Wave Ride-esque Riptide GP is still on sale for a buck from last weekend.

Stay tuned — we’ll probably end up doing a post a day this week about all of the various sales starting up on the App Store, so come back every day to see what a dollar can get you for great software on your iOS device.

Thanksgiving app sales: Com2Us titles, Puzzle Quest 2, Infinity Blade on sale already originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod, iPhone, and iOS product marketing, shared four keys to Apple’s success at a recent event titled “Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge.” You can hit the original story at The Wall Street Journal for the full text of each point, but we’ve pared them down to the basics below.

• Focus: It means saying no, not saying yes.
• Simplicity: Make complex things simple.
• Courage: Don’t hang on to ideas from the past even if they have been successful for you.
• Best: If you can’t enter the market and try and be the best in it, don’t enter it.

Joswiak knows what he’s talking about; he’s worked at Apple for 20 years, and he’s been responsible for marketing some of the most successful electronic products ever — forget most successful Apple products, we’re talking most successful gadgets from anyone, period.

What’s refreshing about these four points is they sound as though they could have come from Steve Jobs himself; though the man himself is gone, the company he built has clearly internalized the principles that made it successful in the first place.

Apple’s Greg Joswiak describes Apple’s four principles of success originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s search app just got a big update on the iPad. The interface has been overhauled, and the app has added enough new features that it’s finally replaced Mobile Safari’s built-in search feature as my go-to source for internet info.

The differences in the interface may seem subtle at first, but Google has added many powerful new features in this latest update. The app now supports Google Instant, making searches faster than ever before, but it also offers Instant Preview, a means of visually browsing through search results in a carousel-style interface without having to fully load the page.

Search results appear in a slide-in pane from the right side of the screen; in landscape view this pane can be partially pinned to the right side, giving you a preview of pages as they load when you tap on search results in the main window. Using a similar interface to Instant Preview, search history now presents you with a visual representation of your search history, very much like the way History view works in Safari on the Mac.

Google has made access to other Google services like Google+ and Gmail easier than before, and it must have done some back-end optimization on the app as well, because it seems to be loading search results and web pages much faster than before.

Before this update, I honestly never found Google’s app all that useful on my iPad. With these new features, Google’s search app is now in my iPad’s dock. It’s a great update and a powerful tool for searching the web on the iPad. A video showing off some of the app’s new features is embedded below.

Google Search app gets new look on iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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