Category: I-phone

Many of us on the TUAW staff are big fans of the Mophie juice pack battery packs for iPhone, and now the company has come out with one that packs a lot of capacity into a case that’s only 1 millimeter thicker than the skinny juice pack air.

The juice pack plus for iPhone 4 ($99.95) comes with a whopping 2,000 mAh capacity, which can provide up to 8 hours additional talk time or 7 more hours of internet use on a 3G network, or up to 11 hours more internet use on a Wi-Fi network. That’s 500 mAh more than the juice pack air ($79.95) in virtually the same volume.

Mophie added some other features to the juice pack plus as well. It’s designed as a virtual speaker box that redirects sound from the bottom of the iPhone 4 — where the speakers are — to the front. That’s useful in providing richer sound and helpful during those long conference calls with the iPhone 4 in speakerphone mode.

Mophie seems to be going to the printing world for their choice of colors for the juice pack plus, as it will be CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black)). The black case is available now; the colors should be available in January according to a Mophie spokesman. We’ll have a full review and giveaway in the near future.

Mophie juice pack plus: more iPhone 4 battery life, less filling originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome back to another edition of our weekly Q & A column Ask TUAW. Each week this column will appear with questions and answers. 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. I won’t be able to answer them all every time, so please, be patient.

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 how to cancel Mobile Me, getting Windows Media files to play on a Mac, backing up an iPhone and more.

Rusty Cantor asks

How do I cancel Mobile Me? I can’t seem to figure it out. I’m 83 and this tech life is driving me nuts.

Continue reading Ask TUAW: Canceling Mobile Me, iPhone backups, playing Windows media files and more

Ask TUAW: Canceling Mobile Me, iPhone backups, playing Windows media files and more originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to the TUAW Holiday Gift Guide! We’ve sorted the treasure from the junk and are serving up suggestions to make your holiday gift-giving a little easier.

When you live in a state of amazing natural beauty like Colorado, it’s not just a given that you’ll be spending lots of time outdoors using Apple products, it’s the law. State troopers will regularly stop by and knock on your door to remind you that it’s a beautiful day out there — and don’t you want to get away from your Mac and go enjoy it? Or maybe I meant your mom instead of state troopers. Whatever.

If someone you love is an outdoor enthusiast, there are many ways that you can find just the right gift to enhance their enjoyment for getting out of the house, without having to leave their Apple products at home. Here is our TUAW holiday gift guide for the great outdoors.

Phone Gloves. With capacitive screens, iPhone devices aren’t particularly receptive to gloves. As the weather grows cold, users might find it harder and harder to keep taking off their gloves to manipulate their screens. That’s where touchscreen-capable gloves come in. You can buy gloves that work with the iPhone anywhere, from Walmart to high-end fashion retailers. Prices start at around US$15 and go on up.

These gloves work by providing a contact that allows the electrical charge from your body to transmit through to the iPhone. That means the gloves are going to have touch points that won’t feel uniformly soft and flexible at their tips. So, caveat emptor. But anyone who has tried to make a phone call while waiting in the winter wind for their child’s school to dismiss will appreciate the convenience.

Continue reading TUAW’s Holiday Gift Guide: Taking to the great outdoors

TUAW’s Holiday Gift Guide: Taking to the great outdoors originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m attending Respect The Internet in NYC, a one-day Ketchum conference highlighting the sometimes tenuous and touchy relationship between online culture and traditional marketing/media. Among the morning’s star presenters was Boing Boing founder and MAKE magazine/Maker Faire standard bearer Mark Frauenfelder, who discussed the maker ethos and the DIY manifesto (user-replaceable parts! screws not glue!) while highlighting some fascinating sites, companies and grass-roots efforts around the world.

I noticed that Mark was presenting from an 11″ MacBook Air, which had the effect of making his lap and hands look unusually large — but it also made me wonder how the idea of a hackable product ecosystem with full user access is reconciled with Apple’s attitude toward hacking in general and hardware modification/upgrades in particular. Since I had the chance to ask him about it, I did. His response is nuanced; he’s “not an extremist” about openness, although he wants to see greater accessibility in product design. “Not everything has to be open,” he noted.

A video clip of the Q & A (sorry for the Stickam quality) is in the second half of this post. The conference continues this afternoon; you can tune into the live feed here.

Continue reading Mark Frauenfelder on maker culture, openness and Apple

Mark Frauenfelder on maker culture, openness and Apple originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AppleInsider reports that, on Thursday, The Guardian announced it will be replacing its current app with an all new version “soon.” Although the current version of the app will continue to work (but eventually be discontinued), the new app is to introduce The Guardian’s award-winning video, reader comments on articles, improved live blogs and landscape reading.

Jonathon Moore, the mobile product manager for The Guardian wrote, “We’ll be launching the new app globally for the first time and although we can’t confirm exactly when it will be available, we’re working towards a pre-Christmas release.”

However, the more interesting side of this story is that the new app will be subscription-based, costing £2.99 for six months and £3.99 for a year.

Although Moore didn’t indicate that the new app’s pricing structure had anything to do with any changes in the way the App Store delivers news content, it certainly does coincide with the rumored December 9th (or thereabouts) press event — supposedly announcing an App Store news subscription service (featuring Steve Jobs as well as News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch introducing The Daily — unless it has in fact been delayed).

Publishers have been seeking a better way to deliver their content on the App Store for some time now. Is the much-speculated App Store Newsstand (perhaps similar to the iBookstore) about to be introduced in time for the holiday season? We’re holding out for December the 9th!

The Guardian announces subscription-based news app, is rumored Newsstand looming? originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s always nice when developers respond to the suggestions of reviewers.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of Mobiola Web Cam from SHAPE Services. It’s a combination of an iPhone app and a desktop (Windows and Mac) client that turns your iPhone into a webcam. At one point in my review, I suggested that it would be nice to see scripting support built into the Mac desktop client for automating the process of capturing screen shots or video from the camera.

Just over two weeks later, the app has a slightly different name (WebCamera instead of Web Cam), it’s localized in German, Italian, Spanish, French, and Dutch, and AppleScript support has been added. The app is currently on sale for US$1.99 from the usual $4.99 price, so if you’re thinking about picking it up, now’s a good time.

A quick look at the Mobiola WebCamera Scripting Suite from AppleScript showed three new verbs: take snapshot, start recording, and stop recording. With these, and a connected property that’s part of the application class, it’s quite simple to write an AppleScript that waits for the iPhone to connect to the desktop app, and then takes a picture or timed video at regular intervals.

I found that I also no longer needed to specify an IP address and port for the client and app to get the camera to connect, so it’s obvious that the developers at SHAPE Services are paying attention to reviewers and customers to make a good app even better.

Mobiola WebCamera gets localization, AppleScript support originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Deals! Continuing our march towards the end of the holiday season, DealNews sends word of several fresh opportunities to save money. Some apps for free, some Pages templates, even a few printers. Please note the printers are not on Apple’s list of AirPrint-compatible printers, however.

• iTunes Music Store: iPhone App Store Freebies: Etch A Sketch, Cops & Robbers, iQuarium, more
• iTunes Music Store: 180 for iPhone / iPod touch or iPad downloads for free
• MacUpdate Promo: Pages Templates 6 for Mac downloads for $20
• HandHeldItems: Professional Photo Studio Shooting Table w/ $3 credit for $17 + $17 s&h
• Apple Store: 10 refurbished Apple iMac Desktops: Core i3 22″ for $1,019 + free shipping, more
• OfficeMax: OfficeMax Furniture Sale: Up to 50% off, deals from $40 + $8 s&h
• iTunes Music Store: iPhone App Price Drops: MMA by EA Sports, Cupcake Shop Matching, more
• MegaMacs: Used PowerMac G4 450MHz Desktop for $70 + $31 s&h
• Meritline: Network Cable Tester for $3 + free shipping
• TigerDirect: WD Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 3Gbps Internal Hard Drive for $30 + $3 s&h
• Epson: Epson Stylus R1900 Inkjet Photo Printer for $184 after rebate + free shipping
• B&H Photo Video: Konica Minolta 4650DN Network Color Laser Printer for $230 + free shipping

Daily Deals for December 3, 2010 originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An iPad app might not be enough to convince a seasoned DJ to go iPad-only, but then, a medium-sized, multi-touch surface can only come so close to replicating a turntable, right? With djay for iPad (US$19.99 on the App Store), algoriddim has not only impressively mimicked traditional decks, they’ve added features that your average DJ setup doesn’t have. Plus, they made it easy enough for even the most inexperienced music-lover to rock their next party.

Our own Victor Agreda recently gave us a great rundown of djay for iPad’s predecessors, djay for Mac and djay Remote for iPhone. A quick recap: djay on the Mac gives you two turntables and a crossfader, BPM analysis and automatic syncing, an “Automix” feature for effortless and seamless playback and plenty of extra goodies. djay Remote on the iPhone lets you control a significant number of those features, but not all of them. The combination is really fun, but the iPhone app doesn’t do anything without a locally-networked Mac running djay. Enter djay for iPad.

Continue reading Be a turntable hero with djay for iPad

Be a turntable hero with djay for iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac users quickly come to know the /Applications/ directory, where you will find all of the default applications that come with OS X (Safari, Mail, iChat, Preview, iCal and so on), as well as the Utilities folder (/Applications/Utilities/), where more advanced users get to know Activity Monitor, Terminal, Network Utility, Airport Utility, Spaces and more.

If you have run an installer — such as for iLife, iWork, Microsoft Office and so on‚ more than likely that installer has added programs to the /Applications/ folder. The /Applications/ folder is also usually linked to when you mount a disk image (those files that end with .dmg), encouraging you to drag applications to the /Applications/ directory. The Applications folder is also in the sidebar of the Finder.

But some other users use a second Applications directory in their Home folder: ~/Applications/. Why keep two separate sets of Applications?

Continue reading Mac 101: The two Applications folders

Mac 101: The two Applications folders originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ticket seller Live Nation has released its very own iOS app on the App Store — you can download it for free there right now. Not only can you browse upcoming events and buy tickets to shows directly from within the app (as well as get news about presales and upcoming deals on tickets), but once you go to a show in person, you can pick up setlist information, see photos and videos and check-in with friends through social networks.

Personally, I have kind of an issue with Live Nation, given its rocky past with Clear Channel Communications and Ticketmaster, so I can’t really recommend the app just to buy tickets with. The company’s never really been generous to customers, to say the least, taking advantage of high ticket fees and the artists that it works with. If there’s an alternative way to buy your tickets, either from the venue itself or from the artists involved, it’ll probably be cheaper than Live Nation, and better for the industry at large.

But they are a huge company with a lot of partnerships going, and quite a few shows nowadays (if not all of the big venue shows) are sold through Live Nation. So if you’re planning to buy tickets with them anyway — and sometimes you don’t have a choice — using the app will give you some nice bonuses.

Live Nation releases free app originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two items: last night Apple seeded another build of 10.6.6 (we reported a build had been sent back in November) build 10j537, and a Mac App Store statement from Apple has put the kibosh on any demo apps.

More intriguing is this bit as reported by Macstories, wherein developers are encouraged to host demos, trials and the like on their website. Presumably developer websites listed in the Mac App Store will lure buyers to the site, where they can download a demo. Then they’ll come back to the Mac App Store and buy the full version. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers when this all shakes out. In any case, the Mac App Store is coming sooner, now that January 17, 2011 deadline is looming.

Mac OS X 10.6.6 build 10J537 seeded, Mac App Store clarification says no demos originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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FlickrExport, Connected Flow’s popular photo management plug-in, has been upgraded to version 4 for both iPhoto and Aperture. Full of new features like video uploading, support for multiple Flickr accounts, the ability to add photos to multiple photosets during uploading and metadata-only uploads in Aperture, FlickrExport is a must for anyone serious about sharing their photos via the popular online photo sharing site. It’s an easy way to quickly upload a lot of pictures, something you might want to do if you plan on using Flickr HD as a digital picture frame on your iOS device this holiday season.

Sure, you can use the Flickr export tools already built into iPhoto ’11, but FlickrExport offers you so many more options that it’s definitely worth the price of admission. Available in a feature-limited version that’s free for 30 days, licensed versions are available for iPhoto at £12 (about US$19) and Aperture at £14 (about US$22). FlickrExport requires OS X 10.5.8 and either iPhoto ’08 or Aperture 1.5.1 and up.

Click Read More to check out video demos of FlickrExport in action.

[via MacWorld]

Continue reading FlickrExport for iPhoto and Aperture updated to version 4

FlickrExport for iPhoto and Aperture updated to version 4 originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I really enjoyed (and still occasionally play) Russian developer Playrix’s Call of Atlantis on the iPhone. It’s a pretty straightforward match-3 game that nevertheless has a lot of appeal. Somehow, the pieces (including some weird-shaped boards), certain items that you need to release from the grid to match up and some special power-ups are tuned just right so that I find it more fun than most games of the type — it’s almost as great as PopCap’s own Bejeweled. And now, the company has released the next game in the series, Rise of Atlantis as an HD version on the iPad.

It’s worth checking out, especially if you’re in the mood for an iPad-specific match-3 experience. The graphics and colors are vibrant, and like Call of Atlantis, there’s a very loosely connected “story” mode to go through with 77 different levels to beat. And you can even go back and beat them for a high score if you’re into that. There’s no multiplayer or achievements or anything, unfortunately, but then again, a solid match-3 game is just a game where you sit on the couch and flip little icons to match them up by yourself — and is there any better device for a game like that than the iPad? I think not.

The Mac version of the game was spotlighted by Apple, and this one should be popular as well. You can try out the lite version for free, or pick up the full iPad game for a launch sale price of US $4.99.

TUAW’s Daily App: Rise of Atlantis HD originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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