Category: I-phone

Apple expanded its online reach by opening stores in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the United Arab Emirates. Apple celebrated the event with a brightly colored confetti banner on each country’s website that announced the grand opening. Customers in these above countries will be able to shop online directly with Apple, buy extended Apple Care plans, and receive online sales support just like we do here in the US. With these four new storefronts, Apple now has online stores in 37 countries.

In many of these countries, it’ll be interesting to see if Apple’s online storefront has an impact on local retailers. In the UAE, many Apple products are sold by third-party retailers like Sharaf DG and Carrefour UAE and their prices tend to be more expensive than Apple. With the global economy struggling, we wonder how well these retailers will compete against Apple’s strong online presence.

[Via The National]

Apple opens online stores for Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, UAE originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skillz for iPad is a rhythm game for existing and wannabe digital DJs. It has two turntables and lets you mix, cross-fade and scratch your way to DJ stardom. The gameplay is similar to Tap Tap Revenge and requires you to control both left and right album decks, the sampler and cross fader.

When you are ready to play, you can select your DJ avatar and adjust your audio settings in the options. You can also download extra DJs and tracks, though the choice is still limited. There are several gameplay modes including Custom Play and Career Mode.There’s also a nice tutorial that steps you through all the moves. After you have selected your mode, you can chose the venue, the song you want to sample and the difficulty level.

Once the game starts, you have to respond appropriately to notes, rhythms, scratches and crossfades coming down the sampler track. It’s a complex series of motions that takes two hands to complete. Achievements are rewarded as fans, and the better that you do, the more fans you will earn. Your fan level is important as it’ll let you unlock new levels, characters, and achievements as you play. The crowd also responds to your performance and will cheer wildly when they like what they hear.

Skillz for iPad includes 25 tracks that span a variety of hip-hop and dance genres so you have a good starting selection. The game also supports OpenFeint so you can share your achievements and post them on OpenFeint’s leaderboard.

Skillz is an enjoyable and challenging game for anyone who enjoys this genre of music. The gameplay is fast-paced, even on the easy level. The two-handed play definitely keeps you hopping. The music is decent and the graphics are bright and lively. The only complaint is that the effects are subtle. When you scratch, it’s sometimes difficult to hear the scratch sound that you’re making because of the background music. The same applies to the notes and cross-fading. This takes away a bit from the gameplay, but you can tweak the audio settings to find that your preferred balance between music and effects.

Skillz for iPad is available for US$5.99 in the App Store.

Daily iPad App: Skillz originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As last week ended, Apple stock closed above US$400 (as we publish this AAPL is at an all-time high of $410). What’s more interesting is that AAPL has climbed 7.2 percent between last Friday, September 16 and August 25, when Steve Jobs announced his resignation.

A 7.2% gain in about three weeks is impressive, but even more so on the heels of Jobs’s departure. When Steve took a medical leave of absence in 2009, anxiety was high among Apple’s investors and customers (not to mention Steve’s friends and family). Then COO Tim Cook acted as interim CEO, guiding Apple through several successful product launches.

Surely Cook’s performance in 2009 has tempered the market’s hesitation now that he’s working as CEO. It’s a nice show of faith in Tim’s abilities, and a promising start to the Cook-era Apple.

Apple up 7.2% since Jobs resigned originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I just got an email from the apple seed programme inviting me to test the next update for lion. There is some chatter on various forums but I still don’t know if this is legit. Have you heard anything?

The email and content doesn’t have the polish that I would expect from apple, hence the concern. However many say it’s legit. Big ask to hand over my apple ID.

I would love to participate 🙁

Your loving nephew,

Brian

Dear Brian,

Apple Seed is a legitimate invitation-only Apple beta program, which is completely separate from their paid developer program. Apple offers Apple Seed for early compatibility testing and feature feedback.

It goes way back and was, if Auntie has done her Google right, originally called the Customer Quality Feedback program. They have seeded both hardware and software in the past.

As you’d expect, the program requires that you accept a strict confidentiality agreement. Most recently, Apple Seed was noticed when it gave non-developers early access to OS X 10.7 Lion this Summer.

When you’re in doubt about possible phishing, it always helps to check the actual e-mail links. In Apple Mail, choose View > Message > Raw Source. (Other clients offer similar options but with different menu choices.)

Make sure the actual links (http://) lead to the same place that the text suggests. For example, this line says it will take you to appleseed.apple.com but it actually does not.

Always exercise caution when dealing with unsolicited offers but in this case, you may actually have been invited to the Apple Seed program.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Am I being phished? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I took a look at TerraRay recently, and found it a good, low priced 3D scenery generator. It didn’t have the features of the big boys like Vue or Bryce, but it is a fraction of the price. One of my biggest complaints in my review was that the rendering was slow.

Now the app has a free update to version 5 for current users, and a 50% off price of US $9.99 until September 26. You can find TerraRay at the Mac app store.

In my tests, rendering speed has increased about 3x over version 4.5. The app has also added a configurable preview window, support for Lion full screen mode, some built-in sample scenes to get you started and that you can modify, as well as improvements in texturing.

One thing I’d like to see is more control of the position of the sun. You can’t easily change the sun elevation. Instead, you have to drag the sun’s position around a bit to fiddle it into the place you want. I’d like to see the ability to just add numeric input for azimuth and elevation.

On the whole, this app is a solid, entry level renderer. If you’re not ready to spend hundreds of dollars for high end landscape creation, TerraRay is competent and now a lot faster. You can check out a video of the app here, and take a look at some screen shots from my sessions in the gallery below.

TerraRay for Mac gets a speedy update originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen a lot of iPhone 4 cases here at TUAW. Most thin polycarbonate or TPU cases are pretty much the same — brute force them on to cover the back and sides. Graft Concepts have taken the thin-polycarbonate case form factor and added something a little different with a top locking latch.

Thanks to the Graft Concepts team, we got our hands on a pre-production black and chrome version of their slick looking iPhone 4 case to put through its paces.

Design

The Leverage takes the form of a bumper-style case, which wraps around the side edges of the iPhone with cut outs for the ports and buttons. It is a single piece of rubberized polycarbonate that joins at the top, locked together by a fancy chrome latch with integrated power button push-through.

The latch design makes it easy to get your iPhone in and out of the case, while still holding the case firmly and securely on your iPhone. It looks great just as a bumper, but the Leverage comes with an optional backplate insert that you can combine with the bumper to form a full case with a single cut out for the camera and flash.

This modular design gives you the best of both worlds, and depending on your mood or how much protection you want to give your phone, it’s really quick and easy to remove or replace the backplate.

Protection

The combined case gives pretty good all round protection, covering all edges and the back. The case also covers the front edge of the phone meaning that you can place it flat on the screen and the case will keep the glass off the deck. The plastic construction will also offer some impact protection, but I wouldn’t fancy dropping it from too high as with most relatively thin cases.

The case adds about 1-2 mm thickness to your iPhone, so it’s not bulky by any stretch of the imagination. It’s also quite grippy to hold, but thankfully doesn’t suffer from too much pocket torsion when you’re trying to pull it out of your jeans pocket.

Verdict

Bearing in mind its pre-production nature, we like the chromed locking latch (that’s also available in a matte finish), which gives it something a bit different in the design stakes and functions well in practice. It provides decent protection and we like that you can swap between just a bumper and a full back case in about 5 seconds.

If you’re looking for a case for your iPhone 4 in either GSM or CDMA flavors, then the US$60 Leverage is just a little bit different. If the production case matches the quality of the version we tested, the Leverage will be a great choice.

Graft Concepts Leverage protects your iPhone 4 with ease and style originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In 1996, Steve Jobs sat down with PBS’ Wall $treet Week host Louis Rukeyser and discussed his current business ventures – Pixar and NeXT. He also touched briefly on his former project, Apple, which in 1996 was at an all-time low and considered to be “one of the failure stories of Wall Street.” You can almost feel a twinge of pain in his voice when he says the company that he helped create has failed to innovate and lost its 10-year lead on the computing industry. Little did everyone know, Jobs would soon return to Apple and restore the company to its former glory.

Steve Jobs on Apple in 1996, prior to his return originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Once upon a time, I had an application which would dim the screen of my Mac down to 0, and then exit. Somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the app and can no longer find it.

Yes, I know I could just hold F1 and do the same thing manually, but I liked having an app that just did it for me.

So I did what any self-respecting geek would do: I wrote a shell script.

Others did the heavy lifting

Let me be clear that my little shell script wrapped in Automator was only a tiny piece of this puzzle.

First I’m going to tell you who did all the heavy lifting, and then you can decide how you want to put the pieces together for yourself. (I highly recommend reading to the end before you do anything.)

Nicholas Riley wrote a C program called brightness which I found via Matt “Danger” West‘s website, which I found via Google.

Matt includes the source code on his page, or you can download the original ‘brightness.c’ here and then you can compile it (according to Matt’s instructions) using this line:

gcc -std=c99 -o brightness brightness.c -framework IOKit -framework ApplicationServices

Of course that assumes that you have Xcode installed. If you don’t, you can either download and install Xcode (warning: it’s 3 GB to download and I think it’s somewhere between 7-10 GB when installed). If all of that seems like a lot of hassle, Matt also made a pre-compiled binary available for you to download.

Here’s what I did

I wrote a shell script (dimscreen.zsh) which looks for brightness at $HOME/bin/brightness.

If it does not find it there, it will attempt to download it “automagically” from my personal website and then install it to $HOME/bin/brightness.

Once brightness is installed, it will dim the screen to 0 and then launch your screensaver.

Why does it launch your screensaver? Because otherwise when you went to use your Mac, you might have forgotten that you set the brightness to 0. If you move the mouse or type, you won’t see anything. However if the screensaver is on, one of two things will happen:

1. If you have enabled the preference which requires a password to be entered after your screensaver is turned on, you will see that prompt. (Mac OS X is smart enough to automatically turn the screen brightness up a little for you to see that you need to enter your password.)

2. If you do not require a password to be entered after your screensaver is turned on, my script will turn the brightness up as little as possible after the screensaver exits. That should keep you from getting blinded if you are working at night. Then you can adjust the brightness to whatever level you want.

I took dimscreen.zsh and made it into an app (“Dim Screen.app”) using Automator.

I put dimscreen.zsh and the ‘Dim Screen.app’ and the ‘brightness’ command (and the source code) all into one nice neat package and put it on my Dropbox as DimScreen.

“How do I use this?”

1) If you are the trusting type (or just impatient), download DimScreen, double click it to ‘unarchive’ it, and then move the ‘Dim Screen.app’ to /Applications/ (or wherever you keep your apps) and run it. The first time you run it, make sure that you are online so that it can download the brightness utility. (It will only do that once.)

2) If you are trusting to a point but don’t want the app to download anything automatically, make a directory called ‘bin’ in your home directory (that’s the one which has the ‘Desktop’ and ‘Documents’ and ‘Downloads’ directories in it).

Then double-click the DimScreen.tar.bz2 file, and move the ‘brightness’ file to the ~/bin directryory you just created.

3) If you pride yourself on your distrust, then by all means, download the source code from the links provided above, compile the ‘brightness’ command on your own, and move it to ~/bin/ (where ~ is your Home directory).

(If you are someone who likes the Terminal.app, you might want to put the dimscreen.zsh script into your $PATH as well, so you can launch it from the command line.)

Once you have it installed, launch it via whatever app launcher you prefer. If you want to make it a “one click launch” you might consider Apptivate, a handy little launcher I reviewed previously. There are other ways to do it, of course, but Apptivate is still my preferred “I want to press this key (or “this key sequence”) to run this Application/Script/etc” solution.

P.S. Yes, I know about Control + Shift + Eject

I am sure that some Mac keyboard aficionado will not have been able to wait until the end of the article, and is already writing a comment to tell me that if I press Control + Shift + Eject, then the Mac’s screen will turn off.

I know. The problem is, I never remember if it’s Control or Command, and do I have to hold down the fn key or not. Plus it’s really not the same thing, I don’t just want it off, I want it dimmed all the way down.

I still wanted an (even) easier way. I’m used to triggering all sorts of actions via LaunchBar and wanted to be able to dim my screen that way too. When I read on Apple Stack Exchange about someone who couldn’t get that keyboard shortcut to work, I went looking for that old app (mentioned at the beginning of this article) and when I couldn’t find it, I decided to just roll my own.

Are there other ways of doing this? You bet. If you have a preferred solution, feel free to let us know in the comments.

DimScreen simply dims your screen originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DragonVale is the newest game from Backflip Studios, a company we’ve covered in detail here on the site before. It represents kind of a new direction for the company, too — so far, CEO Julian Farrior and his team have gone after mostly ad views, selling cheap or even free apps to lots and lots of people, and then using ads to monetize them. And Farrior has always said that he’s open to monetizing apps in all kinds of ways, so here’s another: DragonVale is Backflip’s take on the popular freemium model going around lately.

The idea is that you’re raising a farm of dragons, more or less, and all of the standard “Farmville” style rules apply: hatch dragons into habitats which earn you money, enabling you to build more dragons and habitats all the way up the chain. And DragonVale isn’t a bad example of this game — it builds up nicely, the art is colorful and fun (Backflip actually hired a former Insomniac Games artist who previously worked on the Ratchet and Clank series), and everything runs quite smoothly. If you’re a fan of the genre (or want an easy and comfortable way to see what it’s all about), DragonVale is worth checking out.

It’ll be interesting to see how this goes for Backflip as well — as I said, generally the company has depended on larger audiences to support its games, and a title like this definitely could use a big audience, but even moreso requires that dedicated group of players willing to commit a few bucks (or more) to buying the in-game currency. If this all goes well for Backflip, we might see lots more of this from them in the future.

Daily iPhone App: DragonVale originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From special-needs classrooms to textbook publishers to free lesson movements, anxious IT administrators to Irish principals to K-12 thought leaders: education loves the iPad. Apple has even taken up the learning banner in an iPad TV ad. For all the enthusiasm (and budget resources) focused on the “magical and revolutionary” tablet, however, there’s not much rigorous research yet on how, or if, the iPad is helping students learn more effectively.

One group that’s trying to quantify these benefits is the ACU Connected mobile learning program at Abilene Christian University, which has been working for more than three years to identify the specific advantages of student mobility with a new generation of devices. This week, ACU will announce some of its study results for the iPad while welcoming seven new research fellows studying the impact of digital mobility on education.

The research results, previewed exclusively for TUAW, are uniformly positive. In one study, students who annotated text on their iPads scored 25% higher on questions regarding information transfer than their paper-based peers. In a separate project covering iPad usage patterns, two researchers studying ACU’s first all-digital class discovered that the iPad promotes “learning moments” and helps students make more efficient use of their time. Grad students working in an online program reported a 95% satisfaction rate for online iPad-based coursework. As far as the ACU studies are concerned, the iPad in education is a success story.

Of course, no two learners are exactly alike, and the iPad isn’t ideal for every education challenge; nevertheless, the ACU teams have found a lot of upside so far. We’ll be checking in with them this week for a full interview about the research programs and the opportunities for educational transformation around mobile computing.

iPad-enabled students get performance boost, says ACU study originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has posted a support article to clear up potential confusion about the capabilities of its new Thunderbolt-enabled Cinema Display. First of all, it should go without saying that only Macs with a Thunderbolt port will be able to utilize the display to its fullest capability. Fortunately, virtually all new Mac models released in 2011 feature the new I/O port.

Not all Macs’ Thunderbolt ports are created equal, however. While most Macs will be able to drive two Thunderbolt displays from a single port, the MacBook Air is only capable of driving a single display. Additionally, the 13-inch MacBook Pro’s display will automatically go black if it’s driving two Thunderbolt displays; Apple notes this is “expected behavior.” The 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros and iMacs should be capable of driving two displays in addition to their own internal LCDs. The Mac mini can drive two Thunderbolt displays plus a display connected via its HDMI port, but only if the mini has an AMD graphics card.

Apple’s notes one other caveat about the Thunderbolt display: older Mini DisplayPort displays won’t light up if they’re hooked directly into the Thunderbolt port on the newer LCD. Macworld’s testing found that Mini DisplayPort LCDs can be added to a Thunderbolt chain and work as normal by hooking them into another Thunderbolt peripheral. It’s unclear why simply hooking the older monitors directly into the newer ones doesn’t work. For best performance Apple recommends hooking the Thunderbolt display directly into the Mac’s port, then hooking Thunderbolt storage devices into the display’s relevant port.

Macworld’s first look at the new Thunderbolt Display makes it sound like an impressive piece of work; not only is it a huge and vibrant screen, it’s also a very powerful hub thanks to the inclusion of three USB ports, Firewire 800, Thunderbolt, and Gigabit Ethernet. That’s so many connectivity options that many users may find they’re able to funnel everything into their Macs via the Thunderbolt connection to the display.

Thunderbolt display daisy-chaining spec cleared up originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday night means football, the Emmys, and of course the TUAW Talkcast. It’s been a busy week of waiting: for OS X 10.7.2, for iOS 5, for some definitive expectations on the next iPhone update… but the good news is, if you were holding your breath to see how Microsoft plans to challenge the iPad’s tablet hegemony, it’s time to exhale. We’ll talk Metro, next-gen iPhones, the fate of the iPod classic, and whatever else seems interesting — so bring your questions and comments along for the ride!

To participate, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for +5 Interactivity, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (viva free weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

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

Talkcast tonight, 10pm ET: Anticipation Edition originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When it comes to forecasting the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today’s topic is the iPod. Are the non-touch units examples of dead devices walking?

The iPod classic and shuffle lines have had a big “expiration date” stamped on them for quite some time. Maybe it’s time for Apple to hold the funeral for these formerly ground-breaking devices.

The classic, with its large capacity hard drive and touch wheel, and the shuffle, with its tiny form factor and limited interface, have each served a niche market for quite a while. Does the shrinking demand for these items and the greater capacity and lower cost for the touch and nano mean an end to the ten-year-old classic collection?

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

View Poll

You’re the Pundit: Does the classic iPod have a future? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone Dev-Team has released the promised major update for the RedSn0w jailbreak. RedSn0w 0.9.9b1 is now available for download. You can download RedSn0w 0.9.9b1 for both Windows and Mac from the…

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P0sixninja and iOPK from the Chronic Dev Team announced, at MyGreatFest, that they have found record breaking 5 new exploits to jailbreak iPad 2 and the upcoming iPhone 5. During his talk about…

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