Category: I-phone

This one’s pretty simple. Check out the list of software titles in the current MacUpdate Bundle — 13 of them! Come back here, leave a comment telling us which app you want the most and you’re entered! Read the full rules, of course, as we can’t give the prizes to minors and to most of the world (Sorry, Moldava).

Even if you don’t win, the bundle costs only US$49.99 and is quite a deal. Oh, and if you’re OK with spamming your tweeps, you can get Jumsoft’s Process ($39 value) for Tweeting about the current bundle. Happy holidays!

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment .
• The comment must be left before Monday, December 20, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Three winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One MacUpdate Bundle (Value: US$49.99 )
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Win one of three copies of the MacUpdate Bundle originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome back to another edition of Ask TUAW. Each week this column will feature questions from readers and answers by the TUAW team. If you have questions for the following week’s column, drop them in the comments, and I will do my best to get to them.

When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify). If you’re asking an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad question, be sure to note which model and version of iOS you have.

For this week we’ve got a new batch of questions about Microsoft Outlook attachments, Apple TV alternatives, keeping an iPad, getting an iPod touch, deleting applications and more.

Lee asks:

I’m using Outlook 2011 on my iMac and many times when I receive attachments in emails the attachments are Winmail.dat files and I can’t open them. How can I fix this?

Unfortunately, those ‘winmail.dat’ files are created when the sender’s Exchange server or Outlook for Windows client encodes the file attachment; if they’ve got your contact flagged in Outlook as someone who can receive ‘Rich Text’ messages, you’ll get the Outlook PC-only winmail file.

Fortunately, there is the free TNEF’s Enough utility; this tool will quickly and easily decode your inbound attachments. (For those who are using Mail.app, there’s also the US$29.95 LetterOpener for Mail.app, which integrates winmail.dat handling and several other Outlook-savvy tools into a Mail plugin. There’s a free iPhone/iPad app, too.)

You can also contact those people sending you the attachments and ask them to change the format they use when sending email to you.

Continue reading Ask TUAW: Outlook 2011 attachment problems, Apple TV alternatives, deleting apps and more

Ask TUAW: Outlook 2011 attachment problems, Apple TV alternatives, deleting apps and more originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Word Lens hit the store with a bang, promising real-time translation of signs, menus, and any other text your camera can capture. Does the augmented-reality app work? Somewhat, yes. Is it the future? Definitely. We’re just not there yet. I’ll let the images in the gallery tell the story. But first, a quick rundown of what to expect when you download this free app.

Using Word Lens

It is fun to point your camera at text in the real world and see the iPhone start replacing text. There’s your future part. Character recognition flops all over the place if you don’t hold your hand steady, of course, but when you hit the pause button Word Lens snaps a pic and analyzes the text it has captured. There’s a little camera control you can use, including a camera light (for when you’re at Casa Bonita), basic zoom and focusing square (on supported iPhones like the 3GS, 4 and 4th-gen touch running iOS 4).

With the $0.99 entry fee you get two demo modes: reverse text and erase text. Erasing text is hilarious. Reversing it gives you a headache. If you pay $4.99 you download the Spanish-to-English dictionary leading to the real usefulness of the app. Does it really work? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Photo Tests

To test Word Lens, I picked three Spanish-language signs from Flickr to translate.

Photo 1 is a warning sign along the US-Mexico border warning of exposure if a crossing is attempted. Cuidado means caution or take care. Now see the first result from Word Lens as it tried to translate while the camera was not paused. Here’s attempt number two from the gallery, also showing real-time results. In neither case has the video been paused as a photo for analysis.

Photo 2 is a sign from a men’s restroom in Xalapa. Translated, it means “if you’re going to vomit, put your hands here.” Here’s the Word Lens version: “IF WILL TO VOMIT FAVOUR OF PUT THE HANDS HERE.” The picture on the right shows how Word lens underlines the letters/words it replaced. In this case, I did pause the camera and gave the app time to think.

Photo 3 is an elevator sign found in Spain which reads, “Warning don’t get close to the entrance. Prevent children from using the lift alone.” Well, it used to. Instead the letters have been scratched off so it now says “You get close to the entrance, encourage children to go down alone.” Word Lens translated this to say what you see in this screenshot. Kinda funny, but a tough challenge. The underlined words again show you the things which were translated.

The Verdict

Overall, Word Lens does an impressive job of recognizing characters. Its Spanish dictionary suffers a bit, and it is not performing advanced translations as Google would (not that Google Translate is perfect by any means). However, as a first step it is really impressive. If Word Lens was tied into a more powerful translating service, it would be magical. It’s pretty close already.

Gallery: Word Lens

Word Lens hands-on: Does it really translate text in real-time? originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Much conjecture has come of the Death Star that Apple is building in North Carolina. Some suspect it will power a future streaming version of iTunes or a major update to MobileMe. The folks at Data Center Knowledge have combined the rumors with their own knowledge about these things into a single, unofficial Apple Data Center FAQ.

Among their findings is the center’s size. In a word, it’s huge. At 505,000 square feet, it’s one of the world’s largest data centers. A property assessment from Catawba County revealed that the central server area is enclosed by 262,328 square feet of space. Apple has also reportedly purchased 75 acres of land across the street from the main building, according to “local officials,” though what Apple will do with that plot of land is unknown.

What’s inside? The FAQ has a few educated guesses, based on recent Apple job postings. For instance, they note that Apple says that its “…data center environment consists of MacOS X, IBM/AIX, Linux and SUN/Solaris systems.” Also, recent listings call for candidates who are familiar with storage systems using IBM, NetApp and Data Domain, and data warehousing systems from Teradata.

There’s much more, so go over and check it out. In the meantime, we’ll have to wait before we realize the power of a fully armed and operational data center.

Answered questions about Apple’s North Carolina data center originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As if Apple’s share of the online music world wasn’t big enough, financial research firm NPD Group is reporting that iTunes is now responsible for 66.2% of the market for online music purchases. That’s up from 63.2% earlier in the year, despite intense competition from Amazon, which is way behind in second place at 13.3%. Remarkably enough, Amazon also saw growth this year, raising its share from around 11% earlier in 2010.

The online retailer has been promoting “daily deal” albums that are priced much lower than the same music on the iTunes store, actually selling many of the albums below cost in order to attract new customers. Amazon has also been doing a monthly promotion of 100 albums for $5, which is done with the cooperation of record labels and artists. Despite such aggressive action, the company has yet to make a visible dent in Apple’s dominance of the online music market.

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal, digital album sales have grown rapidly in an industry where CD sales are plummeting and sales of digital single-song downloads are stalling. Apple’s album prices are generally higher than those on the Amazon music store, resulting in higher revenues. Amazon’s promotion of their online music store has taken the back seat to advertising for the company’s Kindle ebook reader, so it will be interesting to see if they decide to actively promote their music business in the future.

[via ArsTechnica]

Apple owns 66% of online music market, Amazon a distant second place originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Four new job board listings suggest Apple may be looking for engineers to help build navigation software for iOS. Each position is looking for someone to “deliver the next generation of Apple products” and asks for “experience developing navigation software.” All four job listings are identical, suggesting Apple may be building a development team dedicated to mapping and navigation.

Currently, iOS relies on Google Maps and Google Map data for its navigation solution. This reliance on a third-party solution has hindered the improvement of navigation on the iPhone and the iPad. Updates for the iOS map program have been slow and the iOS feature set currently trails its Android counterpart. The Android version now features turn-by-turn navigation and will incorporate 3D mapping in its new 5.0 version.

Continue reading Apple hiring iOS navigation software experts

Apple hiring iOS navigation software experts originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday, Yahoo!’s secret plans to shut down their Delicious bookmark sharing service were made public. While there are no published plans to shut down the popular Yahoo!-owned Flickr photography service, the general shakiness of all things Yahoo! seems to be making many people nervous.

Since many people have a ton of photos uploaded to Flickr — iPhoto makes it simple to share your pictures through the service — we decided to give you some ideas on how to quickly and easily back up your Flickr photostream to your Mac. This isn’t a bad idea anyway, since many iPhone photography apps have made it easy to upload photos to Flickr, but it’s a little less simple to get ’em back out and onto a computer. Here are some ways to back up those photos.

Direct Downloading: If you only have a few photos on Flickr and don’t particularly like Adobe Air applications to sully the silicon of your Mac, there’s a free and simple method of saving your pictures. While you’re in your Flickr photostream, select a photo and open the actions menu. Click the “View all sizes” link on the menu, which displays a page showing a number of different sized images (see below). Click on the photo you want to download (probably the largest one), and it will display a link next to the word “Download.” Click that link to download the image.

Continue reading Yahoo! making you queasy? Here’s how to backup Flickr photos to your Mac

Yahoo! making you queasy? Here’s how to backup Flickr photos to your Mac originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skyfire, the internet browser that transcodes Flash video content into HTML5 so that it can be viewed on Apple’s iOS devices (which, in case you didn’t already know, don’t support Flash), is coming to the iPad.

Alongside its main function, Skyfire for iPad will introduce some additional social networking features directly into the browser — most notably for Facebook users, but Twitter and Google Reader users are included, too. Basically, you’re now able to view feeds in pop-up windows while you are browsing the web. Sharing websites with your Facebook buddies is also made really simple and it’s super easy to “Like” a website you’re visiting by making a couple taps; there’s no need to go directly to the Facebook website.

In November, Skyfire for iPhone sold over 300,000 copies of its WebKit browser in its first weekend alone. There was so much demand for the browser that the app had to be pulled from the App Store because Skyfire’s servers were overwhelmed by the traffic. The browser was then sold in limited quantity batches on the App Store to help ease the take up.

Now that Skyfire’s teething problems are over, we’re assuming the same won’t happen for the browser’s release on the iPad. Skyfire for iPad is expected before Christmas and will cost about US$5, according to Wired’s Gadget Lab. We’ll let you know when we see Skyfire for iPad on the App Store. For now, check out a demo of the app in action in the video after the break.

Continue reading Skyfire browser headed for iPad

Skyfire browser headed for iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple and Microsoft have been competing for decades in the desktop market, so it is only natural to compare their success in other markets. Though the Microsoft Kinect and the Apple iPad are vastly different devices, the pair are the two fastest selling gadgets this year. The Next Web put together an interesting iPad versus Kinect infographic that compares the number of units sold and the estimated revenue for each device.

The infographic suggests the Kinect will outsell the iPad in terms of the total number of units sold, but Apple will generate almost 4X the revenue of the Kinect after the second quarter of sales. To be fair to the iPad, the Kinect launched in November and the number of units sold after beyond this first month are projected values. While these numbers may pan out, a future hardware or manufacturing problem with the Kinect may hurt sales and effect these estimates. The iPad figures, on the hand, are actual values confirmed by Apple. The infographic is available for your viewing pleasure after the break. Enjoy!

Continue reading iPad and Kinect: two fastest-selling gadgets of all time

iPad and Kinect: two fastest-selling gadgets of all time originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Does anyone out there want to go into business with me with a design for an iPod nano watch kit?

MINIMAL is a design house that decided to fund the development of a line of iPod nano 6G watch kits through Kickstarter. If you’re not familiar with that site, it’s where you can send your pet project up the proverbial flagpole and see if anyone salutes it with a pledge of funding.

Apparently MINIMAL founder and designer Scott Wilson has captured some attention with his TikTok and LunaTik iPod nano watch kits, since he raised US$941,558 in funding on Kickstarter. Considering he needed a mere $15,000 to go into production, this would be a case of overkill. Wilson’s stated goal is to hopefully get these kits into Apple Stores, and with the publicity he’s garnered through this highly-successful funding round, he may just get his wish.

For the time being, you can now pre-order the kits (iPod nano not included). The TikTok will sell for $34.95, while the snazzier LunaTik will pull down a cool $69.95. If you were one of the backers of the project, you’ll be getting a significant discount. Want to see what all the fuss is about? Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading iPod nano watch kits nab almost $1 million on Kickstarter

iPod nano watch kits nab almost $1 million on Kickstarter originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry owners who use Mac computers, your digital life is about to get a little easier. Just over a year ago, BlackBerry introduced its syncing software for BlackBerry handsets and Mac OS X, and it’s just been updated to version 2.0.

Along side the ability to back up and restore your handset, synchronize contacts, calenders, appointments, tasks, notes and apps, as well as the ability to move files between your Mac and BlackBerry, Research In Motion (RIM) has introduced some pretty exciting new features, too.

Mac OS X users can now sync their iTunes music library to their BlackBerry device over Wi-Fi and import and sync photos and videos taken on their handset with iPhoto. RIM has also introduced a nice device switch feature, too — if you’re migrating from one BlackBerry smartphone to another, it’s now super simple using BlackBerry Desktop Software 2.0.

The update requires Mac OS X 10.5.5 or above, BlackBerry Device Software 4.2 or above and weighs in at just over 37 megabytes. The update is available now, so hit the source link to go and download it.

[Via Engadget]

BlackBerry Desktop Software 2.0 for Mac available, adds WiFi music sync, iPhoto, more originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some same games from yesterday still on sale (I just bought Boggle for iPad, just a buck right now). Look, a Duran Duran song! But then there’s refurb and used Macs — who doesn’t love those for the holidays? As usual, these deals are from our partners at dealnews.com. These deals are time-sensitive, so if they aren’t there when you check they are likely sold out or the time for the discount has expired.

• iTunes Store: EA Games iPad App Downloads for $1: Scrabble, SimCity, Snood, more
• iTunes Store: iPhone App Store Freebies: Battle Bears -1, Doodle Games 9 in 1, more
• iTunes Store: EA Games iPhone App Price Drops: The Sims 3, Madden NFL 11, more
• iTunes Store: iPhone App Price Drops: PolyTune, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Bruce Lee, more
• iTunes Music Store: Duran Duran “All You Need Is Now” MP3 Track downloads for free
• Apple Store: 8 Refurb Apple iMac Desktops: Core i3 22″ for $1,019 + free shipping, more
• MegaMacs: Used Apple MacBook Intel Core Duo 2GHz 13″ Laptop for $520 + $20 s&h
• Musician’s Friend: MXL V63M Diaphragm Condenser Studio Microphone for $50 + free shipping
• Meritline: Network Wire Stripping Tool for 69 cents + free shipping
• MegaMacs: Apple Remote Desktop 2 for Mac for $70 + $6 s&h
• GoldenGadgets: 30% off Apple iPad and iPhone 4 Accessories: Deals from $4 + free shipping
• MacMall: Apple MacBook Air Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz 13″ Laptop for $1,125 + free shipping

Daily Deals December 17, 2010 originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re going to be agreeable and assume this picture of a MacBook Air powering 4 displays isn’t a Photoshop job (It’s Friday and we’re in a good mood). From right to left, we’ve got:

• An old-school, 20″ Apple Cinema Display
• A 7-inch Mimo 720-S USB display
• The MacBook Air itself
• An honest-to-goodness Apple //c running a terminal session through a serial cable

Add a Kinect and Minecraft and you’ve got a portable holodeck. Not bad for an “underpowered laptop,” eh?

[Hat tips to Gizmodo and MacStories]

MacBook Air powers four screens simultaneously originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After an eight month wait, the iPad is finally available for purchase in the Philippines. The popular tablet device now appears on Apple’s Philippines website and should be on the shelves of Apple resellers in the island chain. Pricing for the iPad is slightly more expensive than the U.S. with the base 16 GB WiFi model available for PHP23,990 (US$549) and the 3G-enabled 16 GB model starting at PHP30,990 (US$705).

Apple was particularly slow in getting this tablet into the hands of the Filipino people. The iPad took almost a year since its announcement to finally debut, while the iPhone 4 debuted in September, a relatively short three months after its official announcement. I wonder if Filipino customers are overjoyed to finally buy the iPad locally or if public sentiment towards the tablet is tarnished by this long rollout cycle?

This continued rollout is a testament to the popularity of Apple’s tablet device. Rather than cut back on distribution of a product that is late in its development cycle, Apple continues to push out the tablet device. Here in the U.S., retail distribution channels have skyrocketed and the iPad is now available from Target, Best Buy, Walmart, Verizon Wireless, and Sam’s Club. Of course, Apple may also be using these new retail channels to move current inventory as it prepares to possibly announce and launch the iPad 2 early next year.

Thanks to Ppip for sending this in!

[Via Yugatech]

iPad now available in the Philippines originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-exclusive publication, The Daily, is rumored to arrive on January 17. All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka quotes “multiple sources,” saying “News Corp plans to launch the publication by the week of January 17.”

The Daily is the much-rumored, iPad-only publication from News Corp. Murdoch has supposedly worked closely with Apple and Steve Jobs himself during the app’s development. It was rumored that the app would be revealed at a December press event that was to feature Jobs, Murdoch and an overview of the alleged “newsstand” feature that many believe will introduce in-app subscriptions to the App Store.

Kafka notes that The Daily will supposedly sell for US$0.99 per week, and that the extensive staff Murdoch has assembled will produce lots of video and other gee-whiz tech goodies for Daily readers to enjoy.

That rumor of a December release turned out to be a dud, so don’t get yourself all excited just yet. We’ll know soon enough.

“Daily” iPad newspaper to launch January 17 originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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