Since it doesn’t come with an optical drive, giving MacBook Air buyers a DVD of the operating system wouldn’t be very helpful. That’s why Apple’s lightest laptop comes with the USB Software Reinstall Drive — a very small white USB drive. Sometimes USB flash drives are referred to as “Thumb Drives,” but this one is more like the size of a baby’s finger.

The USB stick that comes with the MacBook Air is the best way — and in many situations, the only way — to restore/reinstall your MacBook Air if something goes wrong. If you have the US$100 external USB SuperDrive, then you can try to use a DVD, but I found that my MacBook Air wouldn’t even boot from my original Snow Leopard DVD. (I believe this is because the DVD’s build of Snow Leopard is a lower version number than the Air originally shipped with, but I am not sure.)

Since my MacBook Air first arrived I have been afraid of losing the USB recovery drive. According to someone on the Apple Discussion Forums, Apple may be willing to provide you with a new one, free of charge, if you lose yours, but what I really wanted was a backup. (I have done the same thing with my Snow Leopard DVD when I bought it, just in case it was lost or damaged.) In this case, I wanted to duplicate it onto another USB drive.

I tried ‘cloning’ the Reinstall Drive using SuperDuper!, which completed without error, but after it was done, my MacBook Air would not boot with the new USB drive.

Apple created the drive so that when it is mounted by OS X, it appears as a DVD, not a USB drive. This means that it was not available for me to use as a “Restore” source in Disk Utility. I could not find any way to make a copy of the disk image from Disk Utility. (If one exists, I’d be happy to hear about it.)

That’s when my GeekInstincts kicked in.

If Apple wanted me to treat it as a DVD drive, that’s exactly what I would do. In the past I have backed up my OS X DVDs using the Terminal, and I wondered if the same thing would work here. (Spoiler alert! It did.)

Duplicating a CD or DVD the Unix way

Rather than using a GUI program such as Roxio Toast or Burn, we’re going to use the Terminal. Why? Because unlike those two programs, the Unix way is free, simple, and “just works.” Plus, you end up with a disk image, which you should be able to use to burn an actual DVD on just about any computer.

The steps are fairly simple:

1. Create an .iso file of the official Reinstall Drive
2. Mount the .iso file in Disk Utility
3. Mount a generic USB drive
4. Use the “restore” function in Disk Utility to copy the .iso file to the generic USB device.
5. Save the .iso file in case you lose the Reinstall Drive and your generic backup.

Note: you can do this same process with any CD/DVD and any Mac. In the past I have done it with Microsoft Office, iWork, and others. This article is addressing the MacBook Air specifically, but the same steps would work equally well for other media.

The Disclaimer

We are going to be using Terminal.app (found in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder in the Finder) to run a few commands. If you are not careful in the Terminal, you can do some serious damage. Then again, the same thing is true about a car. So, look both ways, stop if you aren’t sure about something, and (whenever possible) copy & paste commands rather than typing them manually, to avoid typos.

The command we will be using is /bin/dd, which I suggest you think of as “Data Duplication.” Wikipedia says that it probably originally meant “Data Description,” and it is often jokingly referred to as “data destroyer” or other scary-sounding names.

Read slowly, take your time. There should be no real danger unless you are extremely careless. Don’t proceed unless you know what you are doing and have verified your backups.

Step By Step

1) Insert your Reinstall Drive and make sure it appears in the Finder

2) Open Terminal.app (in Finder press Command-Shift-U to quickly go to the Utilities folder)

3) In Terminal, type (or paste) these following commands:

   DEVICE=`mount | fgrep 'Mac OS X Install' | awk '{print $1}'` 

 if [ "$DEVICE" != "" ]; then ; echo $DEVICE ; fi 

You should see something like “/dev/disk?s?” where the ?s are replaced by numbers. If all you get a blank line, something went wrong. Make sure the drive appears in Finder.

4) Still in Terminal, type/paste this line:

   diskutil unmount "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install" 

which should tell you “Volume Mac OS X Install on disk?s? unmounted” (again, where ? and ? will be numbers). This will unmount but not eject the drive.

5) READ this entire step, and make sure you understand it, before you do anything.

Now we will tell dd to:

a) read input from the “$DEVICE” named above. This is the “Input File” which is identified using if=/dev/disk?s? (where ? are numbers)

b) copy what you read (in step ‘a’) out to a new file. This is the “Output File” which is identified using of=WhateverYouWant.iso (I went with airinstall.iso for simplicity and clarity).

c) We also need to tell dd to use a Block Size of 2048 (this last part may not be 100% necessary, but I have seen it suggested and it is how I have done mine, and it worked).

If you put all of that together, it should look like this:

   /bin/dd if="$DEVICE" of="$HOME/Desktop/airinstall.iso" bs=2048 

WARNING: if, by some bizarre chance, you already have a file named “$HOME/Desktop/airinstall.iso” be sure to move or rename it before you enter that line. Otherwise it will be overwritten.

(The Output File does not have to be saved to the Desktop, I just chose that because it is a place most people will notice.)

If you see an error “dd: /dev/disk?s?: Resource busy” then the device did not unmount properly in step #4.

If you copied my “DEVICE=” line above in Step #3, you should be able to use “$DEVICE” in the ‘dd’ line to automatically fill in the proper device.

Note!

• the ‘dd’ command may run for 20-30 minutes, or longer. Don’t panic. Just go do something else for awhile.

• nothing new will appear on the screen until ‘dd’ is finished.

• When it is done you should see something like this:

  3738954 0 records in
  3738954 0 records out

The “records in” should equal the “records out” (although your number might not be the same as mine).

6) Assuming everything went as expected, you can now tell the computer to eject the Apple Reinstall Drive by entering this line in Terminal:

   diskutil eject "$DEVICE" 

It should tell you that the device was ejected. If so, it will be safe to physically disconnect the Apple Reinstall Drive from the USB port of your computer.

7) Open the .iso file in Disk Utility. If you used my /bin/dd line above, you can now enter:

   open -a "Disk Utility" "$HOME/Desktop/airinstall.iso" 

and Disk Utility will open and the .iso will appear in the left sidebar.

Note: we are now done with Terminal.app. You may quit it and switch over to Disk Utility for the next steps.

8) You should see airinstall.iso in the left side of Disk Utility window. If you look at the bottom of the window you will see it is not mounted. Click the “Open” button on the top toolbar to mount the .iso file.

NOTE: When you mount the .iso file, Finder will probably jump up and show you the window like an excited schoolchild. If that happens, just switch back to Disk Utility.

This is what Disk Utility will look like after you mount the .iso:

Note that the capacity it shown, and the open button is now a greyed out “Mount” button, and the “Eject” button is now available.

9) Insert your generic USB drive now. You will need an 8GB USB drive. I’m usng a SanDisk because it’s what I already had.

Here is Disk Utility showing my USB drive. A few important things to notice:

Make sure the drive is formatted as “Mac OS Extended” or “Mac OS Extended (Journaled).”

The “Name” of your drive isn’t important. Notice mine is “USB_MOUNT” but the important thing is that I have it selected in Disk Utility.

10) We are now going to tell Disk Utility to “Restore” the .iso’s “Mac OS X Install” to “USB_MOUNT” by doing three things:

a) click the “Restore” button (see red box below)

b) Control-Click (“right click”) on the “Mac OS X Install” line, and select “Set as source” as shown here. You could also just drag the Mac OS X Install volume over to the Source: field in the right-hand pane.

c) Control-Click on the “Name” of your generic USB drive (mine is “USB_MOUNT”) and choose “Set as destination.” Again, you could alternatively drag-and-drop the volume icon into the blank Destination field on the right side, per the onscreen instructions.

11) When you are ready to restore, it should look something like this:

If everything looks correct, click the “Restore” button on the bottom right. Disk Utility will give you a “human readable” explanation of what it is about to do:

Read through it to make sure that you haven’t accidentally swapped the Source and Destination fields. When you click “Erase” OS X will prompt you for your administrator password. Once you enter it, the restore process will begin.

This took 30 minutes on my MacBook Air, so it’s a good time to take that Apple Software Reinstall Drive and put it somewhere safe. (I highly recommend putting it back in the box your MacBook Air came in. You kept the box, right?)

Once the Restore Process completes, Finder will most likely mount the generic USB drive.

Disk Utility will look like this:

Now we’re ready to test it, so quit all of your applications, logout, and shutdown the computer.

The Proof is in the Booting

The only real test that matters is whether or not you can boot your MacBook Air with the generic USB drive.

After the computer id turned off, make sure that:

• the official Apple Softwware Reinstall Drive is not connected to your MacBook Air
• the generic USB drive is connected to the MacBook Air

Then power the computer on and press the Option/Alt key.

In a few moments you should a screen offering the option of booting from your hard drive or the USB drive. Choose the USB drive.

When it finishes booting, it will start into the “Install OS X” screens and ask you to select a language. Don’t panic. Select a language, and then at the next screen you can exit out of the installer.

(If you want to set an Open Firmware Password, this would be a good time to do it, since you can’t set it when booting off the internal drive, but if you do, remember that if you forget the password, a trip to the Apple Store is your only hope of recovering it.)

That’s it

The USB drive won’t work on any other computer, but it can add a little peace of mind to know that you have another copy of your restore drive in case you ever need it.

Make a backup copy of the MacBook Air USB Software Reinstall Drive originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A confession: For a short time as a kid, I was actually into cross stitching. Not that far into it, but I did enjoy the routine that turned into art, the pattern-following that, when combined with the right thread or yarn and the correct stitches, turned into a nice piece of handmade art. That’s probably why I like this iPhone case so much — it’s a case that has a part on the back you can cross-stitch into, allowing you to put together your own pattern.

The pink probably isn’t something I’d go for, but the case comes in a few different colors, and you can choose whatever pattern you’d like for yourself. The price is in British pounds, but it comes to about US $28 after conversion — not cheap, but then again, this is a one of a kind case you’d be making, something no one else would have. I like the idea a lot; maybe it would be a good way for me to rediscover my old cross-stitching talents.

iPhone case has cross-stitched back originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As expected, Spotify went live in the US at 8 am ET. The free service which limits the amount of time you can listen will be available via invites which will roll out gradually starting today. If you don’t want to wait, you can grab a paid Spotify plan right now.

Subscribers in the US can sign up for either the ad-free, unlimited service (US$4.99 monthly) or the premium, mobile service (US$9.99 monthly). You can stream directly using your Mac or go mobile with the iPhone app which is now available in the US App Store.

Spotify goes live in the US, iOS app now available originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kard Combat is a new universal iOS title from Hothead Games, the folks behind the Penny Arcade videogames, DeathSpank, and the iPhone’s Bunny the Zombie Slayer. As you may have guessed from the name, Kard Combat is a Magic The Gathering-style card game, where you use a deck of cards that represent magic spells or creatures and fight them against each other.

To be honest, Magic the Gathering isn’t really my thing, so I can’t compare the two super closely. But Kard Combat offers some innovation, I think, in the way the cards are laid out — any cards summoned to your side first attack cards laid across from them, and then the health pool of your opponent, so there’s some interesting positioning strategy involved. You also oversee a few different types of mana that grow over time or based on certain cards you have out, so that provides a lot of complexity to the gameplay. There’s a lot of content to play through as well — four decks, each with their own single player “Tower” campaigns, and then of course multiplayer gameplay.

The game’s business model is almost tougher to figure out than the actual strategy — currently, the title is a free download with five single-player missions unlocked, though an in-app purchase of $2.99 will unlock everything. After that, there are more decks and cards to buy, of course, and more to come. In the end, Kard Combat is an excellent little turn-based title. It’s definitely worth a free download, and then if you consume all the content there, you can see if you want to dive in deeper.

TUAW’s Daily iPhone App: Kard Combat originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the past I’ve posted about creating iOS style buttons mentioning this tool, and this library which allow you to draw glossy buttons similar to those found in most iOS apps.

The basic calculator app however has different buttons.  They have a rounded gloss at the top, and a steady gradient all the way down the button.  You may have noticed when using the app that when you press the buttons there is a much more noticeable effect as the button look seems to reverse giving the impression that the finger has caused the button to reverse.

A developer named the Code Padawan has written up a quick tutorial, and provided sample code demonstrating how to duplicate this effect.

You can find their tutorial here:
iPhone Glossy Buttons

The effect is done entirely using core graphics so no need to break out Photoshop or any other tool.

[via Ole Begemann]

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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In the recent past I mentioned a great open source example for beginners interested in using the Map Kit on iOS devices, and utilizing several open source projects.

I’ve come across a couple of excellent beginners tutorial on how to parse an XML feed, and display the contents on the map.  Another giving a good explanation of the Map Kit class and several code snippets for solving common Map Kit problems.   These tutorials take a different approach form the open source example that I mentioned, and no libraries outside of the iOS sdk are used.

The tutorials are from Azam Sharp and can be found  in 2 parts here:

Introduction to MapKit Framework for iPhone Development

Consuming XML Feed and Displaying Public Information on the MapView Control

Great stuff if you are just beginning to use the iOS Map Kit.

 

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Waiting for Lion to show up in App Store? We are too. Here’s how we are checking.

When you want to pull a URL from Mac App Store, you need to emulate its user agent. curl -silent -A “iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25” will do that for you.

Want to search the store? Same idea, but give it a query like this: curl -A “iMacAppStore/1.0.1 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6.7; en) AppleWebKit/533.20.25” -H “X-Apple-Store-Front: 143441-1,13” ‘http://ax.search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?q=SEARCH_PHRASE_HERE’

The search phrase must be URL-escaped, e.g. “OS X Lion” is “OS%20X%20Lion”.

Then do a little grep-fu, namely grep -iv ‘killer’ | grep ‘mt=12’ | grep ‘class=.name’ These steps search for app listings only whose name does not include “killer”, as in “Killer Guide for OS X Lion”. Who knew?

I threw together a few utilities to help with this. Lionscanner is a command line app that performs this search (or, if you give it an argument searches for that instead of “OS X Lion”) and then processes the results to kill everything but in-line text, i.e. no XML tags, following the greps I mentioned above.

If you run it without arguments it hunts for “OS X Lion”. If it finds nothing, there’s no “OS X Lion” product in App Store. Presumably. That’s why I’ve also included the basic how-to. So you can create your own tools that are a little more flexible in case Apple doesn’t name it quite “OS X Lion”.

Second, I have my handy-dandy-age-of-the-dinosaurs-csh-script as always, the one you readers always mock me for. Still works, still csh, you still need to run it with something like repeat 5000 ./doLionCheck:

#! /bin/csh
./lionscanner | grep -i “lion” > /dev/null
if ($? == 0) then
echo “Available”
say “LION MAY BE AVAILABLE”
else
echo “Nada”
endif
sleep 600

Okay, that’s everything you need. Don’t forget to make stuff executable (chmod 755). Now go forth and build some better tools for us.

Waiting for Lion: On your mark, get set, geek out originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Like the proverbial genie in the bottle, you can ask a lot of Dragon Go! and have a pretty good chance of the app granting your wish. Dragon Go! is the latest free app from Nuance, creators of Dragon Dictate for the Mac and Dragon Dictation for iOS devices. In this latest app, Nuance has delivered what they consider the next generation of voice search, and after several days of testing I have no reason to doubt it.

Here’s the deal. Speak just about anything to Dragon Go! and it will try to parse your meaning and bring up the right set of tools to complete your search. Ask for News about Libya, or news about Libya from the New York Times and the app complies. Ask for reservations for 2 at a favorite restaurant and Open Table is queried. Directions from your current location to the nearest hospital will launch Google Maps with the route. Say a product name, like JBL speakers and an Amazon page came up with the JBL speakers Amazon sells.

It gets better. Ask it to play an artist on Pandora, and if you have the app installed it will launch and start playing the artist you asked for. Say “Play the Beatles” and if you have the Beatles on your device the music will play. You can also direct a query to a particular site. I tried “stories about Apple TV on TUAW” and it brought up a list from our website. Then a tough test. I asked to see pictures of obscure character actor Whit Bissell and the images popped up right on cue. Check our gallery. Holy Moly!

No app is perfect, and every so often Dragon Go! botched a search, but most questions I asked delivered useful answers. It may seem like the app has a bit of overlap with Siri, which is also powered by Nuance Technology. There is some, but Dragon Go! reaches deeper and takes you to the appropriate place on the web, rather than try to contain the info within the app itself.

The sources Dragon Go! is using are displayed at the top of the screen. You can change those sources manually if you want. The default search engine is Google, but Bing and Yahoo! are fine if you’d rather use them.

I found Dragon Go! an extraordinarily useful app in day to day use. I can only scratch the surface of its capabilities in this review. You must try it for yourself. I was often wishing this kind of technology was built into my iPhone at the system level, and I’ll bet Nuance wishes it were too. Of course with Apple buying Siri, we may see something similar.

Dragon Go! is free, and iPhone-only at this point. According to Matt Revis, VP of Product Management at Nuance, the app is US English for now. It will come to Android sometime in the future, and also to the iPad. For all intents it replaces Dragon Search, which is not as full featured. The app will continue to function, but it won’t be downloadable from the US app store. My guess is that most people will replace it with Dragon Go! anyway. I’d seriously recommend you download and give the app a test drive. It’s a great iPhone demo, and I think it will work its way into your daily routine.

Share your experiences with us, and tell us what you like and what you don’t like.

Dragon Go! is a must-have voice search app for your iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We first spied the UnityRemote from Gear4 at CES in January. Gear4 has decided to go with a very simple device and app, and that’s a good thing. Frankly, I don’t get having social features in my TV remote (and yet I take Instagram photos of meals) or needing twenty different ways to visualize the TV guide, so UnityRemote leaves that cruft out. Unfortunately, UnityRemote leaves a couple of other things out as well, but that doesn’t mean the remote isn’t capable of meeting the needs of most users. Read on for full details.

Hardware

The UnityRemote is a cylinder smaller than half a can of soda, largely made of black plastic with a small ring of chrome at the bottom. Unlike the Peel you do not have to point this in a specific direction, as Gear4 put the LEDs all around the unit.

Three AA batteries fill up the majority of the UnityRemote hardware, with the weighted cover removable with a twist. While I don’t like the odd arrangement of the batteries (it can be hard to get the final battery out), I’ll give props to Gear4 for designing a compact and unobtrusive IR blaster.

There’s a power button just above a micro-USB port. The port is supposed to be for firmware updates, although there’s part of me which wishes it was to recharge internal rechargeable batteries (but you use standard alkaline batteries).

The UnityRemote power button (circle) and USB port

The one gripe I have about the hardware is that the power button is a bit small, and sometimes it can be tricky to turn on the UnityRemote. I don’t know if it was just my demo unit, but I had to press the power button for a second or two, then quickly launch the app to ensure the two were communicating. Not only that, but the button is small and can be hard to find if the room is dark.

Another issue is that the LED to indicate the unit is powered on is opposite the power button, which means you have to pick it up and look at it to turn it on. It may seem like a little thing, but it would have been better if the power on were more visible (perhaps a blue LED instead) and the button to power on was on top of the unit and larger. After all, this will probably be sitting on your coffee table. The hardware also blinks the LED when it receives commands from the app.

UnityRemote uses Bluetooth to connect to your iOS device, which means it’ll power down after 2 hours by default. You can change this, but the app warns you not to tinker with some settings unless being advised by tech support. More on that in a bit. Let’s look at the app itself.

Software in use

It’s clear the people on the design team who designed the UnityRemote app are AV geeks. While the app eschews bells and whistles like social features and open-ended UI configuration, it does an incredibly good job of setting up the IR blaster and providing you with the controls you need for controlling your AV gear.

The default configuration of buttons on the remote are a 3×3 grid, with additional buttons available on subsequent pages by swiping. There’s also smaller buttons on top and bottom of this grid, help on the bottom and an on/off switch up top. These buttons are available on every 3×3 grid of buttons, which is great. The buttons included are completely logical, although you’re able to add, delete and rearrange the buttons as you wish. You can’t break out of the grid as you can with Griffin Technology’s Beacon, but I found the 3×3 grid to be a great balance between size (on the iPhone) and number of functions on the screen.

Gear4 made a great decision when they chose to make iPhone and iPad versions of the app. The iPad version isn’t just a scaled-up app; it’s actually got some improvements over the iPhone version thanks to the added real estate. For example, the Devices screen, which allows you to change which device you’re controlling, appears as a small nav bar item on the iPhone but is a much larger button directly on the button grid screen. Plus, this larger button has easy access to preferences and other helpful tools which require a few more clicks on the smaller screen. The app even readjusts nicely when in portrait mode, a lovely touch.

Speaking of touches, if you tap repeatedly on volume or channel buttons, a warning will pop up to tell you it’s possible to hold the buttons down instead. You can turn this off immediately after seeing the dialog, or you can turn off all help dialogs in the settings.

The UI isn’t perfect, as backing up a screen requires the traditional tiny target of a menu item up top.

There are “actions” you can set up, similar to macros, which can trigger a series of events. You may wish to turn the TV and Blu-ray on at once, and switch inputs. Of course, beyond the control of any remote hardware is the ability to communicate both ways with a component. So Unity makes its best guess based on your setup (some TVs have discrete codes for input, but my Sony did not, so I chose not to switch inputs). The UnityRemote does a good job during setup to compensate for the limitations of IR technology, but it isn’t magical.

Another way to control the remote is via gestures, largely limited to swiping up, down, to the sides or tapping the center of the screen. As with everything else, you can assign these as you wish from all supported commands for your component. I didn’t really like the gestures, but after my experience with the Peel, I can see how they might appeal to those who don’t want to tap buttons on their remote while watching TV. The defaults made sense, with up/down being volume, and left/right being changing channels (for a TV, obviously). I encountered what could be a bug, however, when I tried to mute my TV by tapping in the center and my TV didn’t mute. I found very few bugs in the app overall, however, with one glaring issue of a debug menu that came up during Setup Assistant (see it in the gallery). Weird, but not a showstopper. In any event, Mute works fine in button mode.

Overall I found the experience of using the UnityRemote quite excellent. It successfully mimicked a physical remote while providing gestures and customization one might only find in a software-driven remote like those from Harmony. Perhaps the biggest glitch is in pairing the remote with your iOS device. To switch between devices (be it iPod touch, iPhone or iPad) you’ll have to basically turn off Bluetooth on one device, then connect from another. The app doesn’t handle this gracefully at all — you’ll have to drop into your device’s settings and do this manually. Still, it’s unlikely you’ll switch device control frequently.

If you aren’t paired with the hardware, you can enter demo mode and either pretend to use the app, or learn where things are and customize to your heart’s delight. The software supports multiple hardware units, but you’ll again have to go through the clunky Bluetooth association process.

Setup and settings

There’s an outstanding setup process for the UnityRemote, Bluetooth notwithstanding. You can activate the setup assistant at any time, but on first run you’ll walk through setup anyway.

First you’ll choose a brand, then the type of component, then answer a series of yes/no questions. When you set up a component you’re given 6 buttons to test — and these happen to be the most frequently used functions for your component. After adding the component to your list it adds a default layout for that component and proceeds to see if that component has distinct codes for things that could toggle. On and off buttons, you see, could either be one code or two — this makes it much easier to run those actions (macros) I mentioned earlier.

To determine whether items like on/off are distinct codes, the setup walks you through toggling the switch (in first run it’ll be on/off) several times and asking whether it is in one condition or another. This was where I encountered a debugging dialog about an unhanded exception, but I was able to click Continue and didn’t worry about it. No doubt it’s a minor bug, but one that would probably confuse the average user on first run.

You can then add more devices, going through the same process many times until you run out of things to control. Once you’ve added a few devices you will answer more yes/no questions to setup some basic actions, like powering up your DVR and TV when you want to “watch TV.”

As for further settings, in the Configuration menu there’s an Advanced section which allows you to trigger sounds during taps, set up auto-connect (which makes the UnityRemote automatically turn itself on during certain hours — a handy touch for frequent couch potatoes), toggle help, show errors, prevent the iPhone from locking, and share your setup with other iOS devices. That last one is great because once you setup one device, you can easily transfer those settings to another iOS device using Wi-Fi.

Under an About menu you’ll find version numbers for the app, application library, all the hardware details (firmware, etc.), the battery status of the IR blaster (which worked well, unlike the Peel) and a fantastic Admin panel with dozens of tweaks the app warns you are ill advised without a tech support person’s help. In this screen, however, you’re able to change battery consumption and tweak bursts for proper operation. This is also the panel where you can tell the hardware how long it waits to shut itself off, and as previously mentioned it is set to 2 hours by default.

The extensive admin panel

From configuration you can also open a support ticket with Gear4 or view the full manual, a welcome touch in any app.

Conclusion

If you want a largely no muss, no fuss straightforward iOS-controlled IR remote for your components, the UnityRemote is exactly that. It costs just under 100 dollars, (you can buy it on Apple’s store here), which makes it competitive with physical universal remotes from makers like Harmony. While it isn’t perfect, it certainly does the job and does it well. There are lots of customization options, provided you’re OK with a basic grid layout, but there are also gestures you can use. With the one caveat of turning the unit on being somewhat of a pain, I would say this is a great universal remote for the casual user as well as hardcore couch potatoes (also known as home entertainment enthusiasts).

Tomorrow I’ll take a look at Griffin’s Beacon, a device that attempts to go head-to-head with the UnityRemote as a dedicated universal remote.

UnityRemote: another iOS universal remote worth checking out originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Khan Academy is an online non-profit organization whose goal is to provide a “free world-class education to anyone anywhere.” Think of it as TED for everyone, except Khan’s videos, resources, and lesson plans can actually help you be one of the TED speakers one day. Currently the Khan Academy is only accessible through a browser, but, John Resig, Dean of Open Source and head of JavaScript development at the non-profit, has shown off a few alpha screenshots of the upcoming Khan Academy iPad app, and it looks awesome.

Initially the 1.0 version of the iPad app will allow video navigation and viewing, interactive transcripts, and offline support. However, future versions of the iPad app will allow for in-app exercises. No word yet on a release date for the app, but combining the Khan Academy with the iPad could prove to be a truly disruptive combination of technologies for traditional education. And especially with kids coming out of US colleges with upwards of $150,000 in student debt, perhaps our more traditional education models need to be disrupted.

Khan Academy iPad app screenshots show progress originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a move that’s sure to make developers and IT heads happy, Apple will soon allow businesses to purchase apps in volume. Apple made the announcement tonight on its business page and through an email to registered developers. Not only will Apple allow business to buy ten or ten-thousand copies of a single app in one purchase, Apple will also allow a “way to purchase custom B2B (business-to-business) apps built by third-party developers to meet the unique needs of your business.”

Apple has released an App Store Volume Purchase Program for Business guide (PDF) for businesses and developers interested in the new program. Businesses wishing to buy apps in volume must create a volume purchasing account with Apple. Once enrolled, they can go to the program’s website to purchase apps (in case you missed it, this means they aren’t using the App Store in iTunes). Right now the volume purchase plan is only available in the US, and there’s no limit to the number of apps nor the quantity of a particular app a business can buy. Businesses can complete purchases with a corporate credit card or procurement card. Free apps are excluded, which means employees will have to individually download those apps from their personal iTunes App Store accounts.

Apple to introduce volume app purchasing for businesses originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CNET UK noticed a job posting on Reed calling for full-time, seasonal sales staff to work from August 16 through October 29. The posting specifically asks for people with knowledge of the iPhone and/or mobile phone sales, and it notes that successful applicants will attend a four-day training event in London from August 9 through 12.

Building off of that, CNET speculates that the next-generation iPhone will launch on August 16, the first day these new seasonal staff begin working in UK-based Apple Stores. While the timing is interesting, we’re less convinced that the iPhone 5 will launch on this date, because iOS 5 is unlikely to be ready for public deployment by then. Granted, Apple could choose to launch the device before iOS 5 is fully-baked, but that’s not generally how Apple has chosen to do things in the past; almost without fail, major new revisions of iOS software have launched alongside new hardware.

There’s no rule saying that Apple has to hold off on launching the iPhone 5 until iOS 5 is finished, but we already have precedent showing that’s likely to be the case. Revisions of the MacBook Air and possibly other members of the Mac family have been ready to go for several weeks, but Apple reportedly chose to hold off on releasing them until after OS X Lion’s public release. One could also argue that iOS 5 might be ready for launch earlier than the previously quoted “fall” date, but I’m just going to say an NDA-infused “Uh, not likely,” to that.

The mid-August start date for these temporary sales positions may instead indicate that these employees are being given a few weeks to acclimate themselves to the Apple Store work environment before the actual iPhone launch takes place. If that’s the case, it still points to a September launch for the iPhone 5, as indicated by most other signs thus far.

UK job posting sets off iPhone 5 launch date speculation originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft is going on a retail binge in hopes of replicating the success of Apple Stores. In the next two to three years the Redmond company plans to open an additional 75 retail stores across America and in other countries as well.

As noted by Neowin.net, Microsoft announced the expansion plans today at WPC 2011 and said that after the success of the first eleven stores, which opened over the last two years, the company hopes the rapid growth will help expand the “Microsoft story.”

Meanwhile, Apple has almost 350 retail locations worldwide since opening the first store ten years ago. While an expansion of Microsoft stores isn’t so much of a threat to Apple, it could make other big box electronic retailers — like Best Buy — nervous, as customers may prefer to go to an official Microsoft store to purchase their PC.

Microsoft to open another 75 retail stores originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Victor Agreda, Jr. (Editor-in-Chief, The Unofficial Apple Weblog) interviews Dan Treiman of GameSalad at WWDC 2011. Dan was kind enough to tell us about their thoughts on the announcements on WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward.

TUAW and MacTech Magazine teamed up to speak to developers at WWDC 2011 about the keynote announcements and how Apple’s new technologies will help them and their customers. We’ll bring you those videos here, MacTech.com and MacNews.com. Also, check out the free trial subscription offer for MacTech Magazine here.

WWDC Interview: GameSalad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hawaiian company GPNE claims to hold patents on GPRS data transfer, and according to AppleInsider it’s named Apple, RIM, Nokia, Sony, and Amazon in an infringement lawsuit. GPRS is a (much) slower form of data transfer available on all of Apple’s iDevices; if you live in the U.S., chances are you’ve never even connected to GPRS on your iPhone since faster EDGE networks are fairly widespread. Other countries without nationwide 3G coverage and no EDGE to speak of (like New Zealand) have extensive GPRS coverage.

GPNE has accused Apple and other defendants of infringing on three separate patents. Oddly, all three patents have only recently been awarded: two in 2009, and one in 2010. GPRS has been around for far longer than that, however, and was standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, so it’s unclear how a Hawaiian company can reasonably assert patents over the technology.

GPNE has asked for post-judgment royalties should the court decide in its favor. Specific devices named include the iPad, iPhone 4, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and the BlackBerry Torch 9800, but according to AppleInsider the patent claim is worded broadly enough to apply to any 3G-capable device.

Apple named in suit over iPhone, iPad 3G data transfer originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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