Category: I-phone

Siri is quickly becoming everyone’s favorite personal assistant. It helps you navigate, sends messages on your behalf and provides quirky answers to life’s most difficult questions like “Where do I hide a dead body?” Siri’s capacity for juvenile amusement was not lost on Conan O’Brien who used Apple’s Siri commercial as the basis for his latest Apple parody. As you would expect, his short skit pokes fun at the voice assistant’s ability to answer just about any question you ask of it. For a chuckle or two, check out the Team Coco video below.

Conan O’Brien pokes fun at Siri originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve Jobs’s biography debuted ahead of schedule this week and skyrocketed to the top of the charts at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Exact sales numbers are not available, but the biography is the top seller on Amazon’s Kindle, hardcover and audiobook bestseller lists. It also tops the charts on Barnes and Noble’s hardcover, Nook and audiobook lists.

The biography, written by former Times editor Walter Isaacson, was originally scheduled for a March 2012 launch. That date was pushed up to November 21, 2011 over the summer. The biography unexpectedly became available on Sunday via the Amazon Kindle Store and Apple’s iBookstore, while the hardcover version went on sale in stores and online starting yesterday.

Now that it is officially in the hands of Apple fans worldwide, details of the book are now being publicly released. The juiciest tidbit to come from the biography is the suggestion that Jobs and Apple were possibly working on an Apple-branded television set. The book also details Jobs’s dislike of Android and his vow to go nuclear in his fight against the competing platform.

Steve Jobs bio debuts atop Amazon, Barnes & Nobles best-seller list originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whale Trail is a catchy little game that combines a few of my favorites lately into a cotton candy sweet package. Jetpack Joyride is in there, as you need to press on the screen to move upwards and avoid obstacles. Tiny Wings is in there too, as you keep a cute little whale flying using swooping patterns to stay up in the air. And Baby Monkey (going backwards on a pig) is in there too, as a goofy little song plays for you while flying along.

In short, it’s cute, fun, and pretty darn addictive. The polish on this one is excellent — the graphics are as airy and light as the sound effects, and while the story itself is nonsensical, the controls definitely aren’t. You can do some pretty precise swinging with this little whale. A frenzy mechanic will keep you chasing down the various routes available as the game goes on, and Game Center integration offers up plenty of achievements to go after as well.

Whale Trail is an excellent title — simple but fun, and perfect for the iPhone. It’s available on the App Store right now for 99 cents.

Daily iPhone App: Whale Trail originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Updated to link the source post.

Apple is known for its attention to detail. The layout of its stores, the design of its icons and the colors used in its promotional materials are all carefully planned. This attention to the littlest of things even appears in the iPhone 4. As pointed out by David Goldman of Edible Apple, pointed out by Dustin Curtis, the placement of the iPhone speakers is almost perfect.

Unlike its competitors which place the speakers on the back of the phone, Apple places the speakers on the bottom face. This bottom location gives you a loud, clear sound when the phone is laying on the table. Competitor’s handsets with a rear-facing speaker will be muffled when they are placed in the same position. This might not seem like a big deal until you miss a meeting because your handset is laying on your nightstand and the muffled alarm is too quiet to wake you up.

You can also see this attention to detail in Apple’s design of copy and paste. Other mobile platforms include copy and paste, but their implementation is awkward. Selecting the correct text is hit or miss because your fat fingers block the text that you are highlighting. Apple’s version of copy and paste, though, lets you zoom in with a magnifying glass that appears above your finger. This simple magnifier makes it easy to select the first and last letter of the text. It’s this attention to detail that makes Apple products a pleasure to use.

[via Edible Apple]

Apple design and the little things originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS 5 tethered and Semi-tethered jailbreak solutions are available but iBooks keeps on crashing on all iOS 5 jailbroken devices making it difficult to purchase and read Steve Jobs’ eagerly…

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While Android has been the leader in market-share for mobile OSs for quite some time the OS was still behind iOS when it came to apps being downloaded, but not anymore. According to this InformationWeek article, 56% of folks who purchased a smartphone opted for an Android powered device, 28% went with an iPhone. In addition to that, Android now holds a 44% share in app downloads compared to the iPhone’s 41% share.

In September 2010, Apple had over 40% share in downloads. That number climbed to over 50% by December, but has been steadily declining since then. It now holds 31% of the download share. Android has jumped to 44% from just a bit over 20% last year.

Source: Android Surpasses iPhone in App Downloads

When the iPhone 4S was announced, Apple also introduced quite a few other products including Cards, which made everyone tilt their heads slightly to the left and say, “Huh?” It didn’t make a lot of sense to most people, but to me, I got it. I tweeted this right away:

New Cards app for iOS. My mother will buy this today, guaranteed. Make your own greeting cards on your iPhone.

Apple has sold greetings cards for a long time now through iPhoto, but this will take it up to the next step. Get ready to see lots of Apple cards in your mail this holiday season.

Why

As I write this, I’m sitting in front of a cabinet located across from the dining room table. Inside said cabinet are a stack of Thank You cards, blank, that have the same colors as my wedding three years ago. My wife says she’s bad at sending out cards of any type, and those wedding cards are proof of it (although admittedly, I’m accountable for that error as well). With Cards for the iPhone, I think we may stop that trend in its tracks.

We’re told from a young age that we should send out cards to celebrate various occasions, but more often than not, we forget to do it. It’s not that we’re bad people, it’s just that sometimes life gets in the way and we get busy. Running to the store to spend 20 minutes picking out that perfect sentiment on paper can be a bit tricky, and forget all the hassle of buying stamps and getting it mailed. We’ll just send them a quick email to say thanks instead.

Cards streamlines the entire process. Pick out your card, customize it to your liking, fill out the address and pay for it via your iTunes account. For a little over $3 with tax, you can send a fully custom card to your friend or relative, and you don’t have to even visit a Hallmark store.

How It Works

None of this would matter if it was a pain to make those cards, so Apple has made it easy. There are six different categories to choose from, and inside each category are various templates. Maybe you just want to write a quick note and don’t want to deal with adding a picture, or possibly you want to customize the image with a shot taken right at that moment to enshrine the situation. Pick your poison and procede.

Once the image is sized and placed to your liking, then it’s time to edit the text which is just a touch away. Tap on the text to call up the keyboard, then enter whatever you like.

Moving to the Inside

Once you’re done with the cover, tap on one of the remaining two options on the top of the screen, Inside or Envelope. For the inside, just enter in whatever you want and move on to the envelope. The app automatically fills out your information, and then you can pull a contact from your Address Book or just type it in manually, whatever you prefer.

With that, it’s time to buy your card, and that’s pretty easy. Click on the $2.99 price tag in the upper right corner, confirm and enter your iTunes password to get the sale moving.

From here, the info goes to Apple where they print the card themselves and ship it off, all for the $2.99 price tag.

The Results

It took a few days to get things printed up and sent off, but a few days later my mother got a card in the mail that looked exactly like the one I had seen previewed just a few days before on my iPhone. When I opened it up, the card looked like this:

These are letterpressed cards, which means they have cool grooves in the paper for the artwork. Originally I thought this meant that the text itself was also embossed, but it turns out that it’s not. Instead, all of the designs are letterpress, but the text and image are just printed on the card.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t look good, because it looks pretty amazing. The text was a little gray instead of the sharp black I expected, but not so much that it made me mad. It almost matched the muted colors of the card template that I chose, so I wasn’t quite sure if it was accurate or not.

Overall, I was very impressed with the card itself. It’s on thick stock, pressed nicely, and just looks amazing. In another interesting twist, there is no identification on the card anywhere that says it was made by Apple. My wife and I have one of the iPhoto books, and that has Apple branding all over the place. I can’t say that I’m surprised that there’s no branding, but I do think it’s an interesting decision to make.

Final Verdict

I’m not a card guy. I don’t buy them for people very often, and when I do, I don’t tend to spend days or weeks working on them. Cards makes it easy for me to make a card and send it out quickly, taking all the hassle out of picking the card in the first place, and making it a very simple process. That’s what I want in a card, because as a guy, I just don’t want to waste my time finding that perfect sentiment in the aisles of my local Target. Why not just create something myself and really express how I feel?

My mother loves it as well, and I expect to get quite a few cards from her in the coming months. Most of them, I suspect, will star her grandson.

As for you, the question goes like this: Do you need to send greeting cards frequently? And if so, do you want custom ones or do you prefer the process of picking them out? Let us know in the comments.

Whether you are renovating, buying a new home or just redecorating, it is not uncommon to spend dozens, if not hundreds of hours poring over shelter magazines, books, websites and blogs. Not only is interior/exterior design information and photos scattered (and oftentimes costly), it can be utterly overwhelming.

Houzz, which is touted as the “Wikipedia of interior and exterior design” by CNN, consolidates everything from finding home improvement professionals in your area to gathering inspiration into Ideabooks, all in just one app.

And that’s not the half of it. Learn more after the jump.

The Basics

Born from the inability to find a consolidated online resource for design when renovating a 1955 house in Palo Alto, California, Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen created Houzz, the holy grail of all things design.

Featuring over 180,000 interior and exterior photos, an incredible network of design professionals, product recommendations, articles by design professionals and sample Ideabooks, Houzz is the most comprehensive interior/exterior design app on the market.

The Features

Setup is as basic as creating an account.

The home screen lets you dive right into Houzz’s endless stream of photos. You may notice that some of the photos have dangling green tags (when you move your phone from side-to-side, activating the iPhone gyroscope, the tags swing). These are for “tagged” products. When you tap on a green tag, a new page will pop up giving you vendor information and links to the vendor’s website if applicable.

Another option you might see at the bottom of the screen while perusing the photo stream is a Professional tab. This tab will open a new page providing profile information on the architect or designer that designed the space.

The other options for utilizing the Houzz app are to browse by the following categories: Photos, Products, Ideabooks and Professionals.

The Photos category is divided up into different sections ranging from Wine Cellar to Powder Room. This category also has a search function, just in case you need something more defined, for example “turquoise bedroom.” Once you determine your specific category, you have the option to narrow your findings by selecting one of the dozens of available metro areas or one of the specified style groupings (Asian, contemporary, eclectic, Mediterranean, modern, traditional and tropical). For a narrower list of results, choose both a style and a metro area.

The Products category is divided into the main general groupings of various home products, all of which include more specific sub-categories.

The Professionals tab is like the Yellow Pages — with the further benefit of a bio or description — of the Houzz app. This category offers the following groupings to choose from: all, architect, general contractor, home media, home staging, interior designer, kitchen & bath, landscape architect, media & blogs, photographer and showroom. Once you tap on any of the professional categories, you can further narrow your search by your closest metro area.

And finally, the Ideabooks. These are the inspiration guides and answers for commonly asked questions for the design world. You may have noticed an Add to Ideabook tab in the upper right hand corner when viewing products or photos. This is exactly as it sounds; an easy to use add function for when you find relevant inspiration or ideas while browsing the Houzz app. Once you tap the add tab, you will be asked to describe why you like the photo, or really any notes you might want to include, and have the choice of which Ideabook to drop the image into.

The Ideabook is a great way to keep track of inspiration for yourself and if you are working with an architect or interior designer, it is even more beneficial as you are able to visually explain your ideas.

There is also a share function at the bottom of every photo or article enabling you to share via Twitter, Facebook and Email.

Findings

Hands down, this is the best app for all interior/exterior related things. Houzz’s database is incomparable, the app is easy to use and the design is comprehensive. My favorite design aspect of the app would have to be the motion-sensitive product tags. I must admit, I found myself shaking my phone from side-to-side just to see the little guys move.

One thing that I wish the Houzz would have is the ability to share Ideabooks. With the sharing functionality available for the products, articles and photos, it would seem natural that an Ideabook could be shared as well.

Overall, this app is a handy tool, and I for one, am glad to have found it.

I prefer applications that provide some sort of syncing service. This is pretty advantageous compared to other apps, since you don’t need to worry about backing anything up in case you restore your iPhone (or if you lose it), and you can use the same information from different devices and even different services. For example, you can use Wunderlist from nearly any device or computer, even a browser, which is a lot more comfortable than just having your tasks on your iPhone.

Considering the advantage of having an app that syncs with any service, here’s a list of approximately 40 apps that have this functionality.

Task Management

File Management & Productivity

Note Taking

Finance

News

Calendars

Browsers

Do You Know Any Other Apps That Sync?

I tried to include most of the apps that provide some syncing functionality in this article. You probably already use at least one of these, but if you know any other app that I might have forgotten, please tell us in the comments!

I’ve talked a little bit about how single-function apps help me manage the different aspects of my life, and how utilities can be extremely beneficial and excel at one key aspect. Dialvetica is one of those apps.

What can Dialvetica do for you? Well, that depends on what you want it to do. The possibilities aren’t quite endless, but this utility is one of the favorite apps that I’ve added to my iPhone. Why? Read on and find out.

Introduction

Dialvetica is made by Mysterious Trousers, a group that also publishes two other apps: Calvetica, the recently redesigned calendar that makes adding entries a snap, and Event Calendar, a simple calendar app that reminds me of the original Calvetica and Agenda, another simple calendaring app.

The premise behind Mysterious Trousers’ apps is simple: do one thing well and look good while you’re doing it. As you may have gathered by the name and icon, Dialvetica’s design takes inspiration from the clean Swiss typeface, Helvetica. We’ll discuss the app’s purpose and take a deeper look at the interface below.

Contacts on Steroids

The easiest way to describe Dialvetica is as a speed-dial/contacts app on steroids. Dialvetica makes it insanely easy to call, text or email anyone in your contacts list with just a few taps of the custom keyboard. Names are organized by how often you contact the person using the app, but scrolling through is made simple and intuitive.

The running Favorites list that the app opens with is easily my favorite feature. Because I use Dialvetica so often, it knows who needs to show up above everyone else in my contacts list, allowing me to skip the alphabetical sorting of Apple’s own Contacts app and get to the people that I would actually like to communicate with quickly.

Dialvetica also has the ability to sort your contacts by company. While this may not be helpful for most people, I imagine that those who have lots of work numbers stored in their iPhone that aren’t called particularly frequently will appear the more powerful search.

Because the Favorites list gets updated each time you use the app, contacts can sometimes jump around unexpectedly. This can cause an issue if you talk to one person more often (for whatever reason) than usual in a week, but would prefer that they slink back to the bottom of the list once you’re done. Just from an observational standpoint, I noticed that the app will sometimes order my contacts in haphazard ways, moving them up and down the list almost arbitrarily.

Don’t mistake that as a heavy criticism; for the most part, the app does an excellent job of ordering the people in your life (and phone).

Interface

It seems odd to harp on an interface for an app that’s designed to be as fast as possible, but there are some excellent things that I feel should be touched upon (as well as a few gripes that need to be aired).

First is the custom keyboard. Instead of using the default iOS keyboard, Dialvetica has a custom flavor that not only serves the benefit of showing more contacts on the screen, but also behaves in a way that makes finding your other contacts a snap.

Say I want to call someone and they don’t show up in the Favorites view. While I could scroll through all of my contacts, it’s easier to just start tapping on letters. Whenever you touch a letter you’ll notice that the key stays lit and works in conjunction with your following inputs. This is because Dialvetica doesn’t search by full name or by consecutive lettering; instead, it searches names based on how often you contact someone and the individual letters that appear.

If I wanted to call Jacob Smith for example, I could type in J, A; O, I; or C, S and Dialvetica would be able to find him. This is handy for those times where you have that friend with an ‘X’ in his or her name, or when you’d like to tap the closest letters possible. At first this is jarring, but eventually it becomes second nature.

Now, besides the excellently-designed custom keyboard, Dialvetica falls flat. The spacing, font-rendering, and color chosen all remind me very heavily of Android. This may not be a bad thing to some people, but to most I believe that “looks like Android” is synonymous with “looks pretty terrible.” If the app weren’t as functional as it is I wouldn’t use it; thankfully, I’m not left looking at the interface for too long.

Saving Space on your Home Screen

For me, a lot of the benefit from Dialvetica is a combination of what it does and how little space it takes up. As I’ve mentioned before, the app is extremely fast, meaning that it doesn’t have a very heavy feel to it. It’s designed to make your life easier, and definitely hits the mark in the speed department.

Where Dialvetica really cemented itself into my workflow is with the space that it freed up on my home screen. I used to leave the Phone and Messaging apps on the Dock of my iPhone within easy reach in case I wanted to send someone a message or contact them in another way. With Dialvetica I’m able to move those two apps to the second screen, shoved into a folder that is only accessed through Dialvetica or notifications.

Is that one extra space worth it to everyone? Maybe, maybe not. I do know that it’s helped me get my Home Screen the way that I want it, and despite my misgivings for the interface the icon really is much nicer than those striped-green default icons that Apple ships.

Customization

Most of the customization for the app comes through use, changing your contacts into a personally-organized list for fast communication. It is also possible, though, to change the way that the app functions through the Settings app/screen on your iPhone.

First, if you find the custom keyboard to be too jarring or cumbersome, you can opt to use the default iOS keyboard. I personally feel that the keyboard is part of the utility in the app, but this comes down to personal preference.

Second, and most importantly, you can change the app’s default behavior when you tap someone’s name. I have a tap set to call the person, as I find that being able to hit one button when I need to call somebody (I rarely call people, so when I do I want it to be as fast as possible) a tremendous help. This can be changed, though, by setting the default behavior to either Text or Email. Dialvetica fits your workflow, not the other way around.

Beyond that, the latest addition added some much-wanted functionality, including support for Google Voice and the ability to import data from an older version, clear calls history, or change default behavior.

Conclusion

So, would I say that Dialvetica is worth the low cost of entry? Absolutely. Not only is it a fast, well-designed (functionally) utility that does everything that it promises, but it also has just enough customization and feels personal enough that I can’t imagine going back to using Apple’s default Contacts app.

If you’d like to save some throughout the day as you call, text, or email someone, Dialvetica is the best place to get started.

No doubt that any of you who have ever had the fortune of travelling by plane have had the confusing experience of locating information on the boarding pass. These things, it seems, were designed by a “small, blind, parakeet” (from Tyler’s post) and finding what you want can be a mission in its self.

Well the guys from Sylion took it upon themselves to solve this issue and quite simply reinvent the boarding pass. Head on past the break to meet Flight Card, and see how their stunning design has influenced the way we fly — forever.

Getting Started

The opening screen you are faced with is your Flight list which shows you your itinerary of Flights. Tapping on the plus button in the top right corner will bring up the Search Flight option to either find your flight by the Flight number, or the route.

Once you’ve found your flight and checked that it is correct, you can add it to your Flight List and you get beautiful view of your boarding pass. On here you see all the information you need for your flight at a glance such as the Terminal and Gate of depature as well as the arrival, rather than being forced to scour that ugly piece of white paper, then find the big ticker board and browse through about 50 flights to see yours.

Design

As you can probably tell by now, this app is no ugly tool. Designed by the awesome Jonatan Castro, this is a real piece of beauty — simple and sublte. Not only is it designed to give you all the information you need at a glance, but it is colour co-ordinated depending on the state of your flight, such as Scheduled or Cancelled. This makes finding out about your flight details not only pleasurable, but essentially effortless.

Functionality

In case you got the wrong impression, this is purely for personal use (currently at least) and is not a complete replacement for your boarding pass. You can’t hand your iPhone over at the gate and expect to be allowed on the flight. However, that’s not the point. This app is aimed at you, and it does a pretty damn good job of it.

The whole process is very easy, from finding your flight to checking your information (tapping on either the Time or the terminal/gate on the screen will alter between your departure and arrival information) and even to sharing your boarding pass via email or SMS. The sharing aspect is actually really useful, allowing you to quickly send a text your mate waiting for you or an email to your driver — a nice touch.

In terms of the backend, Flight Card is powered by FlightStats which is a very powerful service which delivers over 90,000 flights per day on more than 1500 airlines from over 16,000 airports. Essentially, you are going to struggle to find a flight that’s not covered by the service. This is an essential part of the app because if it was hit and miss whether your flight was there, it would render this app almost useless. It would be no good if it only worked part time.

The app is not only useful for those travelling, but can be extremely handy for those wondering where you are or if you have people meeting you upon arrival. With instant updates of delays or cancellations it can be an essential app for anyone even indirectly involved with your flight (I actually had a flight redirected the other day, which was highly irritating, and it would have been made much easier if the person meeting me new had this app and thus would have known of my hour-long delay).

Downsides?

One downside I hear people complaining about is the price — $4.99. You may be thinking that it’s a lot of money for an iPhone app, especially when compared to some of the games you can get for that price, however there is justification. Firstly, this is a very powerful tool that could save you time and significantly more money, but also the service they use (Flightstats) costs money as well which adds to the production costs. I believe its a very reasonable price considering its value.

Conclusion

This app is a very well finished with great design and functionality. If you fly frequently, heck even if you don’t, I would strongly recommend this app to anyone who wants to make the flying experience easier. Flight tracking has never been easier and it’s a sign that our lives can, and will, be made easier by technology.

Today we present collection of best Free iPhone Applications for education .

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Apple’s online store has gone down. When the store goes down in the middle of the week it’s often an indication that new stuff is in the wings, but that’s not always the case. The recent MacBook Pro refresh snuck in completely under the radar, after all, and sometimes Apple takes the store offline for maintenance or minor tweaks.

Oddly enough, as of this writing it seems only the US Apple Store is down. All the international stores we’ve checked so far still seem to be up. One possible addition to the US store is sales availability for the unlocked iPhone 4S, although according to Apple that wasn’t supposed to happen until November.

We’ll keep an eye on things and let you know if anything new comes up. Things have been pretty quiet as far as Apple’s product pipeline goes, however, so we’re not expecting any surprises.

The US Apple Store is down originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’ve just finished a marathon session of reading all the way through Steve Jobs on my iPad — and I’m sure Jobs would have appreciated the odd harmony of people reading his life story on a device he helped create.

After reading his biography, I’m no longer convinced that Steve Jobs would have liked me if we’d ever met in person. At least not at first. More likely, he’d have torn me a new one in our first meeting and told me that I sucked and everything I did was worthless. Then, in our second meeting, he’d have parroted my ideas back at me as though they were his own. It was apparently one of his signature moves, and it probably would have made me want to throw a chair at him.

But even if I had been provoked that far, he most likely would have just bellowed that I should have thrown a better chair.

Reading biographies is perhaps a different experience for me than it is for most people, since I spent most of my Master’s thesis examining the concept of truth in biographical works. Most of the memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies I’ve read have fallen into one of two categories. Either the text was something designed to lionize its subject and make him or her seem larger than life, or else the writer had taken pains to focus on only the parts of the subject’s life that fit into a clean narrative arc while leaving everything else on the cutting room floor, an approach that leads to easy and almost cinematic storytelling but leaves out much of the facts.

Neither approach to biographical writing strikes me as particularly true; in fact, almost every biography I’ve read seems to contain about as much actual truth as an episode of Star Trek. The tendency to over-praise or over-dramatize is both pernicious and pervasive throughout the various forms of biographical texts.

Walter Isaacson’s 656-page profile of Steve Jobs falls in neither category. It is quite possibly the truest biography I’ve ever read. In the process of telling the unvarnished truth about Steve Jobs, it dispels much of the myth and magic surrounding the man and his legacy. It does not depict Steve Jobs as the information age’s equivalent of Moses descending from Mount Sinai with an iPad in each hand. It would have been easy for some misinformed hack to portray Jobs that way in a quick cash-in “unauthorized” biography soon after Jobs’s death, but it also would have been closer to fiction than biography.

What Isaacson gives us instead is a portrait of a man with keen insight, brilliant powers of observation, and a stubborn determination to “put a dent in the universe.” However, the biography also depicts a man with deep flaws, some of which arguably contributed to his early death. It humanizes a man who’s spent much of the past decade as a living legend in multiple arenas, and it gives valuable insight into the person Steve Jobs was, not just the icon he became.

After reading his biography, I get the sense that no matter how brilliant Steve Jobs was or how many fundamental shifts in our landscape he spearheaded, in the end, he was as human as the rest of us. It’s a testament to Isaacson’s skill as a biographer that readers can at last obtain the picture of Steve Jobs as a human being rather than a legend.

Jobs’s reputation as a control freak was legendary, yet he relinquished all control over the contents of his biography. It’s a surprising move from a man who insisted on so much control over all of his life’s projects — the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all born and thrived partially because Jobs refused to cede control over them. Jobs explained his motivations to Isaacson for his atypically hands-off approach to the biography. Partially it was because he wanted his children to know him better, flaws and all. It was also because he wanted to make sure that only someone possessed of all the facts about his life would write his story. “When I got sick, I realized other people would write about me if I died, and they wouldn’t know anything. They’d get it all wrong. So I wanted to make sure someone heard what I had to say.”

Jobs’s biography manages to allow him to get the last word in many debates. Many of the people who have toasted both him and his achievements will find themselves bearing the brunt of his last barbs against them. Some, like Jobs threatening to go “thermonuclear” on Android, have already been outed. Others are a bit more deeply buried within the text, but once found they’re both candid and a bit stunning.

“IBM was essentially Microsoft at its worst,” Jobs said, reminiscing about the early days of the personal computer revolution. “They were not a force for innovation; they were a force for evil. They were like AT&T or Microsoft or Google is.” My jaw dropped at this quote, but another later on in the book was more alarming. Immediately after heaping praise on his successor, Tim Cook, Steve said, “Tim’s not a product person, per se.” Considering that at many other points in the book Jobs heaped scorn on people like Bill Gates or John Sculley whom he also considered more concerned with profits than product quality, his unfiltered opinion of Cook’s product sensibilities definitely raised an eyebrow.

Much of the biography will be familiar to hardcore Apple enthusiasts. Chapters on the birth of the Macintosh will be familiar to anyone who’s read Andy Hertzfeld’s recollections at folklore.org, and if you’re a regular TUAW reader there won’t be too much in the chapters about the iPod, iPhone, or iPad that you haven’t already read. Older Apple fans will likely find the earliest chapters about the founding days of Apple not much more than a refresher course. But I suspect that few people will be able to read the entire book and not discover some surprising fact about Steve Jobs that they didn’t already know.

If you come into Steve Jobs already hating him, the biography gives you plenty of reasons to hold onto that opinion. If instead you view Jobs as a personal hero, there are plenty of episodes within his life story that might make you reconsider that opinion. Isaacson doesn’t shy away from describing Steve Jobs’s darker moments or personality deficiencies, some of which border on the downright despicable. To put it lightly, Steve Jobs was not a “people person.”

One of his ex-girlfriends read about Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the DSM and said, “It fits so well and explained so much of what we had struggled with, that I realized expecting him to be nicer or less self-centered was like expecting a blind man to see.” Even his closest friends, like Apple design guru Jonathan Ive, noted that Jobs often exhibited a vicious and unnecessary lack of empathy for those around him. The fact that so many people all over the world have been lauding him since his death, both friends and dogged competitors, speaks to the complex and paradoxical nature of Steve Jobs, a man whose greatest goal was to establish empathy between people and technology but who often displayed precious little empathy of his own.

Isaacson’s biography of Jobs isn’t a character assassination by any means (though I do wonder why the first third of the book dwells so often on Jobs’s body odor during the 1970s). That said, I still feel terrifically sorry for any employees who find themselves at the mercy of a supervisor who uses Steve Jobs as a managerial handbook, just like the legions of young would-be entrepreneurs trying to emulate the callous Mark Zuckerberg they saw in The Social Network.

If anyone comes away from reading Steve Jobs thinking that being a leader makes it okay to be an asshole, they’ll have missed about 99 percent of the point. Anyone can cut an employee to shreds or throw epic temper tantrums at the slightest provocation, but replicating Jobs’s intuition, perfectionism, dedication, and vision is arguably something that only one person in seven billion can manage to pull off.

Steve Jobs is at its core the study of the man himself, but along the way it’s also a fascinating history of the genesis, near-death, and resurgence of Apple. It also describes the birth, near-death, and ascendancy of Pixar, with fascinating details I’ve never read before. As the book follows Jobs through the personal computer revolution, the birth of the Macintosh, his “wilderness years” at NeXT and Pixar, and his return to Apple and subsequent paving over of the landscape for the music industry, cell phones, and tablet computing, Steve Jobs’s biography also offers incredibly detailed insights into how our world shifted from the hobbyist computing era of the mid-’70s to the ubiquitous techscape we live in today. Steve Jobs didn’t enact any of these revolutionary changes singlehandedly — his biography takes pains to make that clear — but he was most assuredly at or near the center of all of them.

Though the book makes his flaws obvious to readers, it also makes clear that we would be living in a very different world if Steve Jobs hadn’t set out to put a dent in the universe. Anyone with even a passing interest in Apple’s history, and anyone who’s ever wondered how so very much about the technology landscape has changed so fundamentally in just 35 years, owes it to themselves to read this book.

Review: Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’ originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Powder Monkeys from XMG Studio (US$0.99, universal) is a big, varied game for the iPhone and iPad with enough going on to entertain kids and adults alike. Its good looks, many quests, game mechanics and upgrade opportunities increase longevity and keep players coming back for more. Plus, who wouldn’t want to help monkey pirates battle enormous bugs on the high seas? Here’s our look at Powder Monkeys.

Way back in the 17th century, a “powder monkey” was a member of a warship’s crew. It was his job to deliver bags of gunpowder to the gun crew, and keep the fight alive. XMG has had a bit of fun with the term, casting animated monkeys as its seafaring heroes, sworn to defend their turf against evil, enormous bugs. As the player, you must aide the monkeys by completing quests, surviving battles, upgrading your weapons and more. Before we get to that, let’s take a look at the game itself.

UI

Powder Monkeys features big, chunky “cartoonish” illustrations that look fantastic on the iPad as well as a less detailed overview of your character’s position on the sea. Other elements are easily identified, like treasure chests, islands of interest and enemy ships. There’s not a lot of reading to be done, either, which benefits younger players (both my 6-year-old and 8-year-old tested out Powder Monkeys for me).

As you sail around the environment, seeking adventure, a large ship’s wheel appears, though you only really need to drag to move. If you’re on a quest, an arrow points you in the right direction.

Other elements, like the store (for buying ammo, coins and upgrading equipment) repair shop and quest log are also attractive and legible, and a badge identifies the number of open quests you’ve got.

Finally, two badges in the lower right-hand corner of the screen monitor your inventory.

Gameplay

The real advantage here is the variation. This could easily have become a game of repetitive shooting, which gets old fast. Instead, XMG has included asset management, travel and some puzzle solving, which keeps the games interesting.

You begin by sailing into a cluster of islands and receiving a quest to visit one in particular. Of course, the bugs are waiting! Engage in your first battle.

Battle mode begins as two ships line up side-by-side. Each ship has four canons and various “bullets,” including watermelons, darts and, if you’re desperate, cutlery. Load a canon by tapping the type of ammo you’d like to load and then tapping the desired canon (bullets will destroy incoming bullets mid-air). A shot is fired and health decreased. The first player to run out of XP loses.

Fortunately, you’ve got powerups at your disposal. These special, upgradeable attacks will slow down the action, erect a defensive shield or increase your rate of attack, among other things. They’re all handy when your enemy’s vessel is superior to your own. If you win, a barrage of coins appear. Pick them up with a tap.

Pick up additional quests by traveling from island to island. One required me to navigate a maze filled with superior ships. Another had me escort a companion across dangerous seas. Again, the variation keeps it interesting.

Other elements

Gather coins by winning battles and completing quests. You’ll also need wood, iron and special Banana Coins. These can be obtained by completing quests, opening treasure boxes (found floating in the sea) or spinning the wheel! Some treasure boxes contain goodies, while others offer a Wheel-Of-Fortune type spinner, lined with various assets. Tap anywhere to stop the spinner and see what you’ve won.

Coins are used to buy additional ammo, powerups and upgrades via the “store.” Additionally, changes to your ship’s hull, canons, rigging and armor also require wood and iron.

The all-important Banana Coins can be found in the game or purchased with real money via an in-app purchase. My 6-year-old was tempted to put dad’s hard-earned cash down on a pretend coin, but I put the kibosh on that (big meanine). Plus, the app required my Apple ID (as you’d expect) which he does not have.

Conclusion

My only complaint is with the overhead map. You can zoom out at anytime to get an overview of your location, but must zoom back in to move. This probably defeats the sense of adventure, but I’d like to be able to move while in the distant, overhead view. Plus, the tiny island icons are tiny indeed on the iPhone.

Other than that, Powder Monkeys is a winner. It feels much deeper than you’d expect from a 0.99 app, with all the questing and upgrade options. Game Center achievements are also supported. It’s just as comfortable on both devices and just plain fun. Plus, I dare you to get that Caribbean theme song out of your head.

Powder Monkeys offers challenging fun for young gamers originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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