Category: I-phone

Remember my roundup of iPad clock apps a little over a month ago? Well, there was one app that I left out, but shouldn’t have — Dock Clock (US$1.99). There were a lot of readers who pointed out the app to me, so I decided to take a look.

Created by developer Dariusz Halko, Dock Clock is an iPad clock app that provides multiple alarms, skinning, weather forecasts, and moon phases. One feature I love is that you can set a “dim at night” period to keep the app from lighting up your bedroom while you’re trying to sleep. The brightness level can vary from “who needs a nightlight?” to “barely visible,” so it’s extremely helpful in making sure that the iPad is visible enough to read but not so bright as to keep bed partners awake. That’s important, since at this time, all iPad clock apps need to remain open and running for alarms to go off.

I’m extremely nearsighted, so my first test of the app was to see if the numbers were large enough for me to read without my glasses. In my favorite skin (“LCD”) the numbers are over 1.5 inches tall, so I had no problems reading them. I found that the blinking colon between the hours and minutes was disturbing to my attempts to sleep, as were the seconds counting away. A tap on the screen brings up the settings, and I was able to shut off “blink dots” and “show seconds” quickly.

Continue reading Rock around the Dock Clock

Rock around the Dock Clock originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re liveblogging today’s Apple earnings results in the CoverItLive widget below — be sure to click and join in to share your comments! You can also listen in on the call via QuickTime streaming.

TUAW Liveblog of the Apple Q4 financial results conference call originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Top line: hell of a beat. Apple today reports earnings of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 a share, in the fiscal fourth quarter, versus $1.82 a share in the year-ago quarter. Street guess was $4.08 a share on sales of $18.90 billion, according to Thomson Reuters, so like I said: hell of a beat.

3.89 million Macs were sold during the quarter (not 4M, but close, very close) 14.1m iPhones (almost 2x the previous year’s number), 4.19m iPads sold in Q4.

Looking ahead, Peter Oppenheimer forecasts $23B in revenue and $4.80 per share earnings in the holiday quarter. Given the degree to which this quarter beat the predictions… whoa.

Join us at 5pm ET for the liveblog of the analysts’ results call.

Disclaimer: I am a happy holder of a small amount of AAPL.

Apple releases Q4 results: $20.34B revenue, $4.31B profits originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier today I was looking for a Safari Extensions that could stop animated GIFs, and another to allow me to override CSS on a particular page. After a fruitless search of the official Safari Extensions page, Google turned up both Deanimator and User CSS.

Deanimator takes care of my first request. Namely, it stops animated GIFs dead. Meanwhile, User CSS lets me override a page’s CSS. I can use it to change fonts or colors, hide ads and more. Both are quite useful.

The next time you’re searching for an extension to complete a particular task, consider checking out the Safari Extensions Tumblr site. That’s a great site that keeps growing.

As an aside: I’ve got 22 Safari extensions installed, and exactly half of them are designed to make the web less annoying.

Safari Extension highlight: Stop animated GIFs, make your own CSS originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I remember the first time I made a call on my iPhone all the way back in 2007; I was truly smitten with Apple’s revolution. However, during the second call, I realized that the sharp edge really was uncomfortable to my delicate, mirror-encrusted earlobes.

Fast-forward to 2010, and the problem has only been exacerbated by the folks at Cupertino. Sure, iPhone 4 is a beauty to behold, but while it’s easy on the eyes, it’s certainly hard on the ears.

Enter Yanko Design. The Earos ear cushion is truly one of the most elegant and striking solutions to the ear pain woes of the masses. Finally, we can answer a call on our beloved iPhones without wincing in pain as we bring it near our noggins.

YD points out that ear discomfort is not the only symptom that they’re curing. The Earos doubles as protection from ambient device heat as well as an ear shield for use in colder climates. As a no-charge bonus, the Earos can be flipped around and used as a display stand on flat surfaces.

There is currently no word on pricing or availability, but you can guarantee that this will be in my stocking if they can release this in time for Christmas delivery — even if it does qualify as a No Comment.

[via AppAdvice]

No Comment: iPhone ear cushion originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Stores: St. Louis pictures, Chicago opening originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Noteshelf (US$4.99) from FluidTouch.biz is a fresh new iPad notebook app for handwritten notes that addresses most of the issues I’ve had with similar apps in the past. In fact, Noteshelf is so usable that I just deleted a couple of other apps that I was using to capture handwritten notes. Here’s what is so great about this app:

• A very responsive pen: With a Pogo Stylus and Noteshelf, I feel like I’m actually writing on paper. The pen “flows” more smoothly than in any other notebook app, and with the wide choice of tip widths and 17 different colors, it’s like having a drawer full of pens and markers available.
• Wrist protection: One of my biggest complaints with other notebook apps is that to write naturally, I put my wrist onto the paper. With most other apps, that results in wrist-writing — creating marks on the paper from where my wrist is touching the screen. Not with Noteshelf. The app has a special wrist protection mode. Turn it on, and you see a small red arrow on the right side of the paper. You can place your wrist on the screen anywhere below that arrow, and the screen won’t register it as another pen.
• Useful paper types: With most of the other handwriting apps, there are a few types of ruled and non-ruled digital papers, and that’s about it. Noteshelf has those, but it adds some very useful paper types to the mix. For business, there’s a day planner paper on which you can scrawl out your appointments and tasks for the upcoming days, and since you can have multiple pages in each notebook, you can easily keep a history of what you’ve done and what’s coming up. Now, if there was just a way to integrate this with the “real calendars” we use, I’d be in nerdvana. Other paper types include a task list, meeting notes, and shopping lists, in addition to personal journals, scrapbooks, and graph papers. If the developer can come up with a baseball scorebook paper type, he will have my undying gratitude forever (note: developer Rama Krishna of FluidTouch is actively seeking new notebook template requests).

Continue reading Noteshelf: handwritten iPad notes that really work

Noteshelf: handwritten iPad notes that really work originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seems like we’ve been hearing about rumors of iLife ’11 and iWork ’11 for months now — and usually all of them come from various Amazon sites around the world. Well, here’s the latest one: today, 9 to 5 Mac discovered the German Amazon iLife ’09 listing marking the ship date as October 20, 2010. This ship date has since been removed. However, if you check out the iLife ’09 listing on the US Amazon site, you’ll notice in the “More buying choices” box on the right side of the screen that Amazon is selling a version of iLife for $49.99 and that it will ship in “2 to 4 weeks.”

Can we put these two Amazon iLife hints together to infer that iLife ’11 will be announced on October 20th and ship two to four weeks after that? Honestly, who knows. It’s never been clear whether Amazon has any inside information about product releases or if they just update their product pages based on speculation. It is interesting however that the German site removed the October 20th date after 9 to 5 Mac reported on it, and that Amazon US currently offers iLife ’09 at a 34% discount of $52.30, yet is also selling a version for $49.99 that ships in two to four weeks.

More evidence of iLife ’11 originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With Apple’s Back to the Mac event only two days away, we’ve rounded up the recent MacBook Air rumors. If they’re to be believed, the new Air will come in two models, feature a new design, be less expensive than its predecessor, and store a boatload of batteries. Here’s what we’ve heard so far.

Where’s the hard drive?

This alleged photo of a prototype surfaced, which shows what appears to be a laptop that’s long on batteries but short on storage. There are four batteries clearly visible, but there’s no hard drive. Perhaps this is a prototype focusing on battery placement, or maybe the MacBook Air will rely on flash storage. Perhaps it will put even greater emphasis on so-called cloud-based storage.

Continue reading MacBook Air rumor roundup

MacBook Air rumor roundup originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sometimes it seems like the last thing we need is another social networking app, but how about being Unsocial?

Unsocial (free) is a new iPhone app described as the unholy spawn of LinkedIn and Foursquare. In other words, it’s oriented towards business networking, like LinkedIn, and location-specific networking, like Foursquare. The new app and service came out this morning, and according to the developers, it’s focused more on the people you don’t currently know, but should.

The launch today is a beta, and it’s currently only available to folks in the San Francisco Bay Area. The eventual idea is that when you’re at conferences or just wandering around a city business center, you can have Unsocial search for people nearby who you might want to connect with — people who meet certain search criteria based on smart tags and user profiles. For example, when I’m at Macworld Expo 2011 in San Francisco in a few months, I might only want to meet with Mac developers who meet a specific criteria. I’ll set up Unsocial, which then alerts me when those people are nearby, and I can use built-in messaging to say “Hi” and specify a place to meet.

Conferences can also supply Unsocial with agenda information, speaker profiles, and official twitter feeds, making the app much more useful to conference-goers who use the app. Unsocial is an interesting concept, and one that I look forward to trying out.

First Look: A totally Unsocial app originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just last week, we reported that Apple had made its way into the third spot for computer makers in the US (with an impressive 10.6 percent market share), and surely this has helped to boost Apple’s stock price as of late. But how would those numbers change if the iPad were to be included as a PC?

According to Fortune, that’s the question that Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore has answered. He notes that including the iPad in PC sales would easily push Apple to the number one spot with a staggering 25 percent of the market.

If we keep in mind the fact that the iPad is the fastest selling gadget of all time, the results make sense. Whitmore’s argument is that if the iPad is stealing market share from netbooks, then it is logical to include it in Apple’s PC sales numbers.

I agree with Whitmore’s take, and I think that the iPad is truly astounding. I have no problem thinking of the iPad as a personal computer because in my own experience, the use of my MacBook has sharply declined since acquiring an iPad.

What are your thoughts, though? Do you think the iPad is just a glorified iPod touch and should not be included here? Or do you think that Apple, like HP (we assume), should be allowed to include the sale of tablets in its PC sales numbers?

Is Apple actually the number one computer maker in the US? originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As Apple prepares to deliver its 4th quarter financial results, 148apps is reporting that at least 278,000 iOS apps are currently available. Specifically, there are 278,723 active apps in the US App Store (as of this writing), and just over 56,000 active publishers. For now, book apps are the most popular category (48,171 active titles) and lifestyle is the least (18,286 active titles).

Most Apple watchers expect impressive numbers from Apple this afternoon, as shares recently broke US$300, and Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities has suggested that Apple could sell as many as 45 million iPads in 2011. Considering that there are now seven retailers selling iPads in the US (Apple, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Verizon, AT&T, and Micro Center), plenty of holiday shoppers will have a chance to see one.

We’ll have live coverage of the financial conference call later today at 5:00 PM ET.

[Via iPodNN]

Report: 278,000 iOS apps available originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A lawsuit from Apple has forced HyperMac to stop selling MagSafe-compatible charging cables as of November 2nd, 2010. HyperMac has produced a number of small, portable batteries that can provide power to a variety of Apple portable devices. When connected to a MacBook Pro with their MagSafe-like connector, the “MBP-PRO,” the external batteries could be used to charge the computer’s internal battery.

The lawsuit claims that HyperMac violated patents related to MagSafe cables as well as other cables that use a 30-pin connection. HyperMac assembled their units using actual Apple parts. Note that HyperMac will continue to sell the batteries, though we don’t see how useful they’ll be without the cables.

If you’re looking to buy one of these, you’ve got until November 2nd to do so.

[Via AppleInsider]

HyperMac forced to stop selling MagSafe charging cables originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With the tide of plain text editors showing up in the app store, I’m getting a little soggy, and I know you might be, too. However, I have another one for your consideration: Note & Share (for both iPhone and iPad) adds some unique features to the standard mix, primarily from the “Share” half of the name.

First, like the recently-covered iPad app Edito, Note & Share supports Markdown and can render it for some of its output options, which include syncing the rendered HTML output to Evernote or sending it by email. The Evernote sync is of interest to me as an Evernote fan, but so is the Dropbox sync that it provides. Dropbox — which is quickly taking the lead as the preferred method for both syncing and sharing — works superbly for text files because, among other reasons, they end up fully-indexed in Spotlight on your Mac.

Note & Share can also send to Twitter or Plurk and save to its own database. Of interest to Japanese users is its support for ATOK, a fast Japanese input method, to which it can send files and then retrieve them after editing. It also has a bookmarklet for Mobile Safari that will send a shortened URL to your document for linking.

The app lacks the super-handy, extra Markdown toolbar of Edito, but its developers tell me that they’re exploring the possibilities there. Beyond that, the Markdown support is great. The sharing options only show buttons if you have them enabled, so your interface only contains what you need, not a bunch of grayed-out options. At US$1.99, it looks like a great option for handling your iPad (and iPhone) text editing, especially if your notes need to go to more than one place. Give it a shot if you haven’t already nailed down your editor of choice.

Note & Share for iOS: Markdown, Dropbox, Evernote, and more originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever since Google bought Simplify Media and killed it for the iPhone, there has been a need for a reliable way to get your DRM-free music library to your iPhone. Audiogalaxy has done that, and quite a bit more. Audiogalaxy basically streams your music collection, using a helper app, to another computer, an iPad, iPhone, or an Android phone.

To get started, you sign up for free, and a Web-based client will scan your hard drive for your music collection. If you have a lot of music, it can take a lot of time, so be patient. When that’s done, you can grab the free iPhone or iPad client, sign in, and your music is with you. The app works fine over 3G or Wi-Fi; audio quality is good, but it’s not CD quality. I tried the app several times, and it worked well on a three-bar 3G connection. The app also supports background play in iOS 4.

Continue reading Audiogalaxy brings your music to your iPhone, iPad and more

Audiogalaxy brings your music to your iPhone, iPad and more originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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