Recently, in the interest of sleeping soundly through the night, I’ve been turning off my 27″ iMac every night. No, I’m not doing this for energy conservation, but the darned thing used to light up at random intervals in the middle of the night. Since I now have to power up the iMac every morning, I see the bootup process regularly.

You know how it goes. First you hear the startup chime, then you see that gray screen, then the gray screen with the Apple logo and spinning gear on it, then a light blue screen, and finally a login window or the desktop appears. What’s actually going on while all of this is showing up on your screen? Well, as those of us who have gone through the training and tests to become Apple Certified Support Professionals are aware, each of those visual cues is an indication that a milestone in the bootup process has been reached.

Follow along as I take you on a tour behind the scenes of the Mac OS X boot process, starting on the next page.

Continue reading Mac 101: What’s happening when your Mac is starting up?

Mac 101: What’s happening when your Mac is starting up? originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The next time you visit a hospital or medical clinic for a routine check or emergency, don’t be surprised if the doctor shows up with an iPad in hand.

The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that in several Windy City hospitals, the iPad is making inroads in a big way. The Loyola University Medical Center has given Apple’s tablet to all of its orthopedic residents as a pilot program, while the University of Chicago Medical Center is expanding an existing pilot by providing iPads to all of their internal medicine residents.

What are the iPads used for? At the University of Chicago, plastic surgeon Dr. Julie Park shows breast-cancer patients what they may look like after reconstructive surgery. At the Metro South Medical Center, many of the emergency room doctors purchased their own iPads once they found out that they could access the hospital’s medical record system from the devices. One Metro South doctor was quoted as saying that the iPads resolved one of the traditional problems with moving from paper to electronic records — having to go to a desktop computer to order lab tests or update patient notes.

Since the iPad is used as a portal device to the record system at Metro South, no patient info is stored on the device. Both the medical record system and iPad are password-protected as well, keeping secure information safe from prying eyes.

If you’re using an iPad in a hospital or other medical venue, let us know how it’s working out by leaving a comment.

[via MacDailyNews]

iPads join tongue depressors and latex gloves as a hospital fixture originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll start with the obvious: Samurai II: Vengeance is one of the best, if not the best, looking games I’ve ever seen on the iPhone. It is simply gorgeous, with a unique, cel-shaded look filling out incredible 3D worlds. I’m excited for Epic Citadel’s progeny, of course, but this one’s in a class all its own in terms of the graphics. It’s just amazing.

The gameplay isn’t quite as astounding, but it’s still quality. You play a samurai who (surprise!) is looking for vengeance and has to hack and slash his way through hordes of bad guys. Attacks are combo-based, and controls are responsive enough, given that they’re based on overlay buttons, to pull off the attacks you want. Enemies are somewhat repetitive, but in an action game like this, that’s kind of the way it works. And speaking of action, things can get kind of gory. Sometimes, by attacking just right, you’ll up and chop a guy’s head off or even slice him in half. That might be offputting if you’re a more casual gamer, but what did you think was going to happen if you ran around swinging a samurai sword?

The game is US$2.99, and when you consider that includes both iPhone and iPad versions as well as Game Center integration and a survival mode, Samurai II: Vengeance is a bargain at twice the price. Definitely pick it up, if only to wander through the game’s world and marvel at the way it’s all portrayed.

TUAW’s Daily App: Samurai II: Vengeance originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BusyCal is what iCal should have been. It continues to impress me the longer I use it, and recently I found a way to customize it that I did not know about previously.

Event details, like the one shown in the image here, can be customized from a much larger list than what BusyCal shows you by default. To access the Info Panel Preferences, click the small white “i” at the top right of the Event Info panel. (See item #1 in the image here. Note that you can only access these when the panel is floating on its own, not from the BusyCal sidebar.)

There are 18 different fields that you can use, and most of them are self explanatory (you can see an image in the gallery below), but I want to draw your attention to a few that I find very helpful. The first is “my URL” which gives you an easy way to link an event to a person from your address book. Simply drag the name from the address book to the my URL field and a link will be created (see #2 in image). Clicking that link will open their contact information in the Address Book.app.

You can also drag a person (or business) to the Location, Attendees, My Notes, or Notes field. For the latter two, you get more than just a link to their name, you get address and phone number information (see item #3 in image).

While you could use “Attendees” for the same purpose (and that field is shown by default), when you do that, BusyCal wants to know if you want to “invite” them or send them changes whenever you edit the event. That isn’t a feature I ever use, so I didn’t want to use Attendees, but my URL is almost perfect.

Continue reading BusyCal Info Panel Preferences give you more event options

BusyCal Info Panel Preferences give you more event options originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flickr Find: Juno’s Hamburger iPhone originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our own Dave Caolo suggested FaceTime’s widely publicized security flaw would be easily fixed, and it turns out he was right. Initially, FaceTime allowed users with physical access to a machine to edit a user’s information without first having to enter a password. According to Cocoa Touch Apps, Apple’s already patched this hole with a server-side workaround. I verified this myself: instead of giving anyone and everyone in front of your Mac access to your Apple-related info, clicking “View Account” in FaceTime now does… precisely nothing. It just kicks you back to the account preferences tab.

It’s a somewhat silly workaround, and it’s likely a temporary one until Apple releases a FaceTime update. Meanwhile, it’s good to see that Apple took this problem seriously enough to issue a quick fix for its still-in-beta software.

FaceTime security flaw fixed originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Angry Birds development head, Peter Vesterbacka, says “You don’t need publishers”. Will no longer work with publisher Chillingo.

On an unrelated note, EA has acquired Angry Birds publisher Chillingo.

Android Developers respond to Steve Jobs comments that Apple is “thrashing Google”. While Joe Hewitt disagrees with Android’s definition of “open”.

As you can see it was a slow news week in the world of iPhone development. To end the week on a good note I will pick three people to win a copy of Almost DSLR. All you have to do is comment on this post (and leave your email address).

I noticed it first a few days ago. Then people started emailing me about it. Now it’s gaining increased mention on Twitter and the rest of the net: when you go to Facebook.com on your iPad you can no longer use the pinch and zoom features of iPad’s mobile Safari web browser on the site.

Reader Stephen F. noted in an email to me that when you go to Facebook on an iPad this line of code appears: <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;” />

It’s the user-scalable=0 part that disables zooming on the iPad. Stephen also pointed out that you can test this by changing the user agent on your web browser to iPad and seeing how the code only appears for the iPad. To change the user agent in the OS X version of Safari to emulate Safari for iPad go to Safari>Preferences>Advanced>Show Develop menu in menu bar, then select Develop>User Agent>Mobile Safari 3.2.2 – iPad.

In short, Facebook has either deliberately or accidentally disabled zooming in mobile Safari on the iPad. If it’s accidental, it’s odd that they haven’t fixed it in almost 72 hours. If deliberate, the question is why? Was dinner that bad?

Facebook disabled iPad mobile Safari zooming? originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chillingo closed a huge deal with EA yesterday (becoming the second big iPhone publisher in as many weeks to be picked up), but the company’s work with its biggest title apparently left a bad taste in the mouth of the developers, Rovio Mobile. That company tells TechCrunch that they’ll never work with Chillingo, or any publisher, again. That’s not so much a reflection on Chillingo, though, as it is on Rovio’s success — Peter Vesterbacka says that with the way the App Store is set up, you just “don’t need publishers” any more.

For a lot of iPhone developers, I would disagree — Chillingo has put together a nice set of iPhone titles over the past few years, and seeing their name on an iPhone game can give a nice boost in profile to a developer just starting out. Obviously EA agrees — while this doesn’t mean we’ll see EA start taking advantage of the Angry Birds license (necessarily — I’m sure Rovio is poking around in as many places as possible to recreate the Angry Birds game on other platforms), it does mean that EA is getting access to a significant amount of experience in creating, publishing, and marketing iPhone games. Chillingo seems to have a talent for finding titles of solid quality that are willing to experiment a little bit, so this should bring us some more EA games that are outside of the standard Madden/Need for Speed/Tiger Woods ilk.

As an iPhone user, I’m excited about both the Chillingo and the Ngmoco deals recently — both will create more options for two iPhone publishers who have made a solid name for themselves, as well as bring a little more standing to the platform at large as a great place to publish and release great games. Rovio’s done with iPhone publishers, but the rest of us are just getting started.

Rovio Mobile passing on Chillingo in the future originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Less than a day after the new 11-inch MacBook Air hit shelves, iFixit’s already dissected it. The repair site gave the new MacBook Air a repairability rating of 4/10, with 10 being easiest to repair. Two major obstacles face any user trying to do their own repairs on the MacBook Air. First, the screws involved in a MacBook Air teardown are T5 Torx screws for the internals and five-point security Torx on the outside, so you’d better either have those types of screwdrivers or be prepared to file down a flatblade like iFixit did. iFixit notes that once you get those screws out, servicing the MacBook Air is relatively easy, but the second obstacle is more insidious to DIY repairers: the MacBook Air takes the phrase “no user-serviceable parts inside” to a new level. Nothing inside the MacBook Air is “off the shelf.” RAM is integrated into the logic board, the six-cell battery is in a weirdly customized configuration, and the flash memory the MacBook Air uses in place of a hard drive is proprietary.

Aside from the serviceability issues, the MacBook Air’s internals are pretty impressively put together. Once dismantled, there’s barely over a dozen major parts to the entire computer, and it’s clear that not one cubic centimeter of space was wasted. However, the multiple-cell design of the battery looks a bit odd compared to the integrated batteries of the MacBook Pro line, and it’ll be interesting to see what impact, if any, this has on battery reliability.

iFixit tears down the 11-inch MacBook Air originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A reader just emailed us to point out a post I wrote this past April. MacStories.net had published an email a developer at Chiaro Software had sent Steve Jobs to ask him if the rumors of a Mac App Store and no software running on OS X without authorization from Apple were true. Job’s answer? “Nope.”

Yesterday’s Mac App Store announcement puts a different spin on that response. Jobs sent the “nope” email in late April. It’s unrealistic to think that Apple had no plans for a Mac App Store at that time — I mean, it was less than six months ago.

Does that mean Jobs was lying? Not lying so much as ‘selectively answering.’ The developer asked Jobs a two-part question to which Jobs answered truthfully to one part (you will still be able to install & run OS X apps on the Mac that are not bought through the Mac App Store) and left out the part where Apple was actually working on a Mac App Store.

So the “nope” was true — just not the whole truth. As my colleague Erica Sadun has pointed out, regarding Apple’s future product directions and plans, when Jobs says “No” you should always hear “Maybe.”

Can you trust a Steve Jobs email? “Nope.” originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Elsewhere in the world of Apple retail, the Chicago Tribune’s blog site has a great sneak preview of that Chicago Apple Store that’s opening up this weekend. This is that store at the North/Clybourn stop that Apple spent $4 million on, with the city’s blessing, to not only design a new three-sided Apple Store, but also completely renovate the El stop nearby. Turns out the store is a “Significant Store” for the company — rather than just imitate the normal design, Chicago’s new store was specifically designed for the area that it’s in.

Sounds fascinating — the store in Chicago officially opens to the public on Saturday. I’d love to go if I was still in town (I actually used to help manage the Borders directly across the street from it), but since I’ve moved out to the West Coast, we’ll have to recruit some of you readers. If you go to the Chicago store opening this weekend, be sure to send pics and tell us how it all went.

New Apple Store opens in Australia, and a sneak preview of the new Chicago store originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Adobe’s Dreamweaver Team Blog today broke the news that they’ve created an HTML5 Video Player widget which generates code to play video in the best player for a specific platform using a variety of video codecs.

The widget is available through the Adobe Widget Browser and works with or without Dreamweaver CS5. It is based on the Kaltura open source library, and is compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.

The team blog noted that HTML5’s <video> tag has limited browser support at this time, forcing web designers to “scramble for a solution” that would work regardless of browser or platform. The widget shifts from the <video> tag to Flash Player when the tag is not supported, and does this regardless of the device on which video is being watched.

The standalone widget can run from directly inside Dreamweaver or as a standalone app using Adobe AIR.

Hat tip to our old friend David Chartier.

Adobe announces HTML5 Video Player widget originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T set a new record by activating 5.2 million iPhones in the US over summer of 2010. That’s a huge number, especially considering that it activated 3.2 million iPhones in the spring. That’s a soaring leap of 62.5 percent.

In total, AT&T switched on more than 8 million “integrated devices” during that quarter, the majority of which were iPhones. The company also grew its customer base by 2.6 million, bringing the grand total of those of us enjoying its services to 92.8 million. Finally, the iPhone is being recognized for producing AT&T’s best ever customer turnover rate of 1.32 percent.

Remember that “antenna issue” that was supposed to kill the iPhone 4? Yeah.

it will be interesting to see what happens to AT&T’s numbers should the rumors of a Verizon phone come to fruition. Would there be a mass exodus? We can only assume that AT&T hopes the answer is no.

AT&T activates record-setting 5.2 million iPhones this summer originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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