Category: I-phone

Disney has posted a pretty cool video that shows how their “Imagineers” are using iPads to monitor and make changes to the New Fantasyland at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Using proprietary Disney software on the iPad, which allows Imagineers to view and manipulate a 3D digital rendering of Fantasyland, the Imagineers can communicate with the engineers and contractors working in the field to immediately see if any conflicts of design vs. practicality emerge.

If there are any conflicts, the contractors can use the iPad’s built-in cameras to photograph or record the areas in question. If there’s a conversation to be had, they can kick off meetings right on the spot with Cisco’s WebEx for iPad software. Check out the video below to see the whole process as well as some cool behind-the-scenes footage of how a theme park is built. It’s wonderful to see Apple’s “magical and revolutionary” device helping create magical and fantastic places.

iPads aid Disney’s Imagineers in expansion of Magic Kingdom originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ninja Fishing is a new title coming on the App Store that combines Fruit Ninja’s hacking and slashing mechanic with a fishing game, where you throw fish up in the air and then chop them down for fun and profit. Unfortunately, quite a few people have noticed a resemblance to a Flash game called Radical Fishing, which itself was already being made into an App Store title called Ridiculous Fishing. Sure enough, the original Flash title has you fishing and then shooting fish out of the air, and the planned iOS title plays generally the same way, it would seem.

So what’s the deal? Certainly there is a resemblance between the two games, even if the swipe-to-slash mechanic is a new addition. And this obviously isn’t the first time we’ve seen game mechanics from another medium apparently ripped off for an iOS title. But the developers of Ridiculous Fishing seem to be taking it in stride anyway — they’re still working hard on their iOS title, and they say it’ll have lots of cool new ideas and “an amazing visual style” as well.

Gamenauts, the company that released Ninja Fishing, says that the title was inspired by the original Flash game, and that credit will be given, though they weren’t specific on how that will be done. Mistakes were made, it seems, but given how many titles are available on the iOS store, it’s probably not too surprising that we’ve got a few overlaps.

Ninja Fishing for iPhone looks eerily similar to popular Flash title originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chinese authorities already shut down two fake Apple Stores located in the Kunming area, but that was apparently just the opening salvo. According to Reuters, 22 more unauthorized Apple retailers have now been located and shuttered.

It’s not clear from the report if these retailers went all-out like the first two, with stores that looked virtually identical to the real thing. Sources were also unable to confirm if these retailers were actually selling Apple products or just broadly similar fakes.

Situations like this are apparently an ongoing issue in China, which is generally lax about enforcing copyright or IP restrictions. Given that the majority of Apple’s devices are manufactured in Chinese factories, it’s not particularly surprising that so many of them are finding their way onto the grey and black markets of China, and this latest crackdown is probably only a temporary setback for these fake retailers.

China finds and shuts down 22 more fake Apple Stores originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bloomberg is reporting that Nintendo shareholders are growing irate with the company and its president, Satoru Iwata, after shares of the company hit a six-year low. Nintendo has seen slouching profits in recent years as mobile phones like the iPhone and other devices like the iPod touch have quickly become must-have portable gaming devices. Shareholders say the company should begin porting its catalog of titles to devices like the iPhone, iPad, and Android phones, something Iwata says won’t happen as long as he’s in charge.

Nintendo’s attempt to push back against smartphone gaming — the Nintendo 3DS — flopped causing the company to cut its price by 40% in Japan. With smartphones selling more than ever, and a majority of apps for the iPhone being games, there’s no sign of smartphones as the new mobile gaming platform of choice abating. That spells bad news for Nintendo and other makers of dedicated portable gaming platform like Sony.

Another way out of Nintendo’s slump if Iwata continues to refuse to port Nintendo’s game portfolio to non-Nintendo devices would be for the company to acquire a successful iPhone game developer. That way Nintendo could at least have a presence on the iOS platform while keeping its classic portfolio of games and characters for Nintendo-only devices. Short of doing either of those things it doesn’t look like even a real life Mario can save Nintendo’s future.

Nintendo shareholders revolt, demand Mario & Co. on iPhones originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is investing heavily into “Ultrabooks” — thinner and lighter PCs similar to the MacBook Air. The company has made a US$300 million commitment to the technology and hopes to “define” the category the same way it defined the netbook category a couple of years ago.

Two of the chief requirements for the Ultrabook label are a thickness of no more than 21 millimeters and a wake-from-sleep time of seven seconds or less. By contrast, the MacBook Air’s maximum thickness is 17 millimeters, and any newer Mac that takes more than seven seconds to fully wake from sleep probably has something wrong with it (or is experiencing a relatively widespread Wi-Fi bug introduced in OS X Lion).

Intel’s new focus on Ultrabooks goes alongside a renewed focus on reducing power consumption in its CPUs. Reportedly, Apple threatened to switch to another chipmaker if Intel didn’t drastically reduce the power consumption of its chips. The threat of losing one of its main customers has prompted Intel to refocus its product roadmap on reducing power consumption from its current level of 35-40 watts all the way down to 15 watts.

Intel’s Ultrabooks will be arriving in three phases, tied to ever-lower power consumption in successive chip generations. The first Ultrabooks should be debuting later this year. While they’ll likely be marketed as competitors to the MacBook Air, Apple will have access to the same technology and will likely use it to focus on improving the battery life across its entire notebook range.

Intel betting big on ‘Ultrabooks’ after Apple threatens to dump it originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Getting to grips with the files and folders on your hard drive can be a chore, but the right tool makes it easier. WhatSize is a tool that combines the best of several disk visualisers into one package.

WhatSize scans your disk(s) and reports on the size of your files and folders with a straightforward, color coded, Finder-esque presentation. From there you can click through folders, drilling down to large problem areas, identifying files and folders was you go.

WhatSize can also give you a pie chart representation of your data with labels and concentric folder display. For instance, your home directory is held within the “Users” folder on the root of the drive, so the Users folder is displayed in the innermost ring, while your home directory is displayed on the next ring out. You can drill down by double clicking folders, or zoom out by double clicking on white space. It’s simple and intuitive.

There’s also a table view that you can sort by file size, or you can scan for duplicates, which scans and compares your files, which takes a while (read: hours) if you have lots of files, but then allows you to easily see what’s doubled up. WhatSize will also let you scan files and folders with Administrator status, allowing you to scan other users data on your drive.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive, simple disk space visualiser, WhatSize does the job admirably for US$12.99 and is available from whatsizemac.com. But don’t take our word for it, download the free trial and give it a whirl.

Thanks to Klajd Deda for the suggestion.

Daily Mac App: WhatSize originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s turning out to be a pretty big week for Apple’s patent portfolio. Earlier this week the company was granted nearly 20 new patents, and it’s just filed for two more eyebrow-raising patents. The first patent, described in detail at Patently Apple, covers so-called “pico” projectors that could display information from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac against a wall for presentations and other applications. The patent describes built-in projectors for iDevices (which have been a pie-in-the-sky rumored feature for years) and a small projector accessory for Macs. According to the patent this goes beyond simple projection, however, with a “shared workspace” feature enabling images from one projected display to be shared and transferred to another.

This projector patent also describes support for a gesture-based interface that sounds broadly similar to the Kinect peripheral for the Xbox 360. The advantages for Keynote presentations are obvious, and it’s likely that third-party game developers would jump on this feature too. Between the gesture-based interface and the projected images, this all sounds very evocative of the computer interface from the early 00s film Minority Report.

Apple may just be covering its patent bases and may have no plans to actually debut this feature any time soon, but MacRumors notes that Apple did recently purchase the applepico.com domain, possibly related to these new pico projector concepts.

AppleInsider describes today’s other major patent application, Schematic Maps. This patent describes a feature whereby relevant features on a map would be emphasized for a user. For example, roads along a driving route could be distorted to represent only those roads relevant to the route, with distances warped so the entire route could fit on an iPhone’s small display.

This would of course render the map inaccurate in several other ways, but it would definitely simplify navigation compared to the current Maps app, which must zoom in and out among various levels of detail for longer routes with multiple turns. This would also be more in line with how most users actually think about navigation; the emphasis is usually less on accurate representation of distances, cartography, etc., and more about finding landmarks and relevant points of interest along a route.

AppleInsider notes that this second patent is credited to two former employees of Placebase, a Google Maps competitor that Apple purchased nearly two years ago.

Apple patent roundup: Pico projectors and schematic maps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Photo Stats is a cool little US$0.99 iPhone app that provides statistics on your photo-taking habits, like number of photos taken, storage they occupy, frequent shoot locations and more. While none of the supplied information is of the “mission critical” variety, I found them interesting. Your compiles stats can be shared via email or Twitter.

Photo Stats also tracks the time of day you’re most likely (and least likely) to shoot, the frequency of portrait vs. landscape mode, ISO settings, shutter speed and more. I actually saw some things that will help me improve my pictures. I have lots of low light images, and don’t usually use flash. It seems obvious, but I never think to turn it on.

I like apps that collect and present information in an interesting and “hands-off” way. One thing I’d like to see added is a way to create these graphs from albums other than the camera roll. It would give me more data and therefore more information to evaluate my images.

The UI is well done, and sometimes there are comments about my photo habits. Photo Stats is clever, and not a big investment. The app runs on an iPhone with iOS 4.2 or later. It runs on the 4th generation iPod touch, and the iPad 2. Check the gallery for a look at some of the graphs.

Photo Stats tells you where and how you are using your iPhone camera originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Why pay Apple $69.99 when you can build your own Lion install drive for the App Store purchase price of $29.99 — plus the cost of an inexpensive thumb drive. Here’s how to create a full install on a drive, not just the recovery disk that we recently posted about.

You’ll need a copy of the OS X Lion installer. If you saved a copy when you first installed Lion, great. If not, you’ll need to re-download it from the Mac App Store.

To do so, launch the App Store and option-click the Purchases tab. An “Install” button should appear next to Lion. Click it to re-download the installer. You can use this option-click-Purchases trick to re-download any purchase, not just Lion.

Once the 3.74-GB installer finishes downloading, go to your Applications folder to find the installer itself. It is called Install Mac OS X Lion. Right-click (or Control-click) the installer and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual pop-up. A new Finder browser window opens, showing the normally hidden material inside the installer bundle.

Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport. There you’ll find a disk image called InstallESD.dmg.

Open a new Finder window with Command-N (File > New Finder Window). Navigate to /Applications/Utilities and launch DiskUtility.

Attach a thumb drive to your Mac that is at least 4GB 8GB in size. (Update: some readers say 4GB isn’t enough. As you can see, I used a 16GB drive) Prepare it for use by creating a single HFS+ partition. Select the drive (e.g. SanDisk Ultra) in the left hand column. Drives are listed first with their partitions listed after them, each partition indented slightly.

With this drive selected, click the Partition tab and choose Partition Layout > 1 Partition. Choose Format > Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Click the Options button at the bottom-right of the partition layout. Select GUID Partition Table.

Click Apply. Disk Utility asks you to confirm. Click Partition. Wait as it unmounts, partitions, and remounts your disk.

Next, select the new partition (Untitled 1 by default). Click the Restore tab.

Click Install next to the source field. Drag InstallESD.dmg into the file-open window and click Open. Drag Untitled 1 from the left column to the destination field. Click Restore and agree to Erase the drive and replace it with the contents of InstallESD.dmg. You may have to authenticate as an administrator.

Wait. It will take some time for the drive to be written. Once it’s done, eject it, label it clearly, and put it away for a rainy day.

Meanwhile, go out and spend the $40 you just saved wisely.

Build your own Lion install USB thumb drive for cheap originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:00:00 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 stories of the day in three to five minutes, perfect 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 listening through iTunes, click here.

Daily Update for August 11, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As promised, Apple has begun selling Mac OS X Lion on flash USB sticks in its retail stores. The US$69 drives (seventy dollars?!) contain a full install of the operating system and look much like the recovery drives that ship with MacBook Airs.

You can use the little doohickey to install Lion (or reinstall it), attempt a repair with Disk Utility or run Time Machine. They’re not yet available online, so stop by your local Apple Store to buy one. Happy recovery!

Apple starts selling Lion USB sticks originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looptastic HD is a remixing application that lets you create new mixes using a catalog of 900 loops. The loops are broken down into individual track components including drums, bass, keys and effects. As with most mixing apps, Looptastic HD uses clips from music genres such as trance, hip hop, breakbeat, progressive house and more.

The app itself has clean interface that lets you drag and drop loops to the mixer work area as you create your mix. The mixer area is broken into three zones and you can crossfade between zones using a convenient slider. You can adjust the tempo of the music and add effects on the fly as the music is playing. A touchpad are at the bottom lets you easily toggle the effects such as stutter loop and change the effect on the different zones of the track.

Controls on music playback are familiar and include a play, pause and record button. The recording can be hit or miss as it is timed strangely and doesn’t always start recording when the music starts playing. Once you get used to the timing, you can use it to save your creations as an AIff file. There’s also a file save option so you can save a partially created mix and tweak it later.

Looptastic HD is a great app for on-the-fly creation of beats and mixes. It’s great for DJs and those who just enjoy mixing up loops to see what they can create. Looptastic HD is available from the App Store for US$14.99.

Daily iPad App: Looptastic HD originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Herald-Tribune is reporting that Apple is planning to bring a retail store to Southgate Mall in Sarasota, Florida, which could open by December. Currently Southgate Mall is going through major renovations, the end of which will bring 30 new stores to the mall.

Westfield, who owns the mall, is moving two of its current tenants, LensCrafter and GNC, from the number 14 and 15 spaces in the mall in order to accommodate the new Apple store. When completed the new Southgate Apple Store will be 42-feet wide, with a total square footage of 4,100 feet. As noted by ifoAppleStore, the Southgate Mall store will fill an Apple store in the area of Florida’s west coast south of Tampa that has no stores.

New Southgate, Florida Apple Store confirmed originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gartner’s numbers were released for the second quarter in 2011 and Apple continues to show strong growth. The smartphone manufacturer is number four globally in the mobile phone market trailing Nokia, Samsung and LG. Its market share almost doubled from last year, climbing from 2.4% in 2010 to 4.6% in 2011. These figures are impressive for a company that makes a single smartphone and is competing against companies that produce a variety of smartphones and feature phones.

Apple is also the #3 platform with almost 20 million iPhones flying off the production line. It now has 18.2% market share, up from 14.1% in 2010. Much of this growth is due to Apple’s partnership with 42 new carriers and its expansion into 15 new countries during Q2 2011. According to Gartner, Apple still trails Symbian which has 22.1% market share, a significant drop from its 40.9% in the same quarter of 2010. Apple also trails Android which now has a 43.4% market share, up from 17.2% in 2010.

Gartner: Apple’s global mobile phone share almost doubled in Q2 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Apple Newton is ancient history, right? The short-lived device made its debut in 1993 at Macworld Boston, going through seven design iterations before being cancelled by Apple in early 1998. For a hardy group of souls, the Newton is still in daily use.

New Zealand-based blogger “Genghis7777” is an investment banker who loves him some Newton. He has a few of them, along with a pile of necessary and useful peripherals — four MessagePad 2000s, two MessagePad 2100s, and a pair of eMate 300s.

To show how he’s still using the devices (presumably one at a time) in his everyday life, Genghis7777 listed a typical day with a Newton. His day starts with Adam Tow’s Alarm Clock app waking him up at 6:00 AM, he uses the MoreInfo app (see screenshot) as a personal information manager to see how his appointments for the day are looking, and does some reading from several Newton ebooks before heading off to work.

In the office, he uses the built-in Notepad app to take notes and adds new tasks to MoreInfo. On the way home from work, there’s a stop at the supermarket where he uses the ShopList app to check his grocery list. Later, he writes up a journal entry in NotePad and looks at MoreInfo to see what’s coming up in the next few days.

It’s great to see that there are still people who find the Newton platform to be a useful and productive part of their lives. If you’re curious about the Newton, be sure to visit the My Apple Newton blog and some of the other sites listed on the rather impressive blogroll.

How one Newton owner uses his device every day originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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