Category: I-phone

Providing localized information has been critical to the success of many apps.  Typically this is done by gathering the user’s current location by using the Core Location API built into the iPhone SDK and communicating with an online service providing the data which is then presented to the user.

I found an excellent step-by-step tutorial built with Objective-C that starts right at the beginning illustrating how to use core location, and how to communicate with the Google XML Weather API and present the data to the user.

The tutorial can be found here:
Adding Local Weather Conditions To Your App Part 1
Adding Local Weather Conditions To Your App Part 2

The great thing about this tutorial is that it covers everything.  If you’re looking for a detailed step-by-step tutorial on adding localized information into an iPhone or iPad app this is an excellent starting point.

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©2010 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Since the new rules about scripting languages, I’ve seen quite a few searches here on the blog for Lua and received an e-mail over the weekend about embedding Lua into an iPhone or iPad app . This is not surprising since Lua is a scripting language that is commonly used as a scripting language in major commercial game engines.

In the past I’ve mentioned iPhone Wax which allows you to use Objective-C code in Lua scripts without first registering functions.

iPhone Wax a great project, however what if you wanted to take a more lightweight approach, and embed Lua yourself?

A quick tutorial on how to do just that has been written by GRZ Mobile and can be found here:
Integrating Lua Into An iPhone App

The tutorial goes through the process of embedding Lua within an iPhone application and provides sample code.  However, it does not cover the process of how to integrate Lua with C functions but that is covered in the C functions section of the Lua programming guide.

Seeing how time consuming the integration process can be really helps me to appreciate the iPhone Wax project.

©2010 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Location Based Services are all the rage currently. In fact 2010 is seeing the largest surge in LBS Apps being released on several mobile platforms and VCs are scrambling to invest in start up shops that have LBS products. Apps like Loopt, Foursquare and Gowala amongst countless others have quickly amassed millions of loyal users and have started to integrate unique money generating modules within them (virtual goods, points, branding etc). These apps thrive on location of the user. There is also a very high percentage of Apps on the Appstore that also have a location based component to them… and in fact a very large majority of Apps have some user location based module or feature.

As a developer you need to know how this is done. A user’s current location is derived by using the Core Location API that is built into the iPhone SDK. This API communicated with an online service that provides the data – that is then sent to the device to process or the app – and for the user to see.

Below is a link to a step-by-step tutorial on how to use core location. It is built with Objective-C and starts from the ground up and will take you through right from the beginning – and will show you how to communicate with the Google XML Weather API, to finally presnet the data on the device for the user.

Tutorial Part 1 – Adding Local Weather Conditions, Part 1
Tutorial Part 2 – Adding Local Weather Conditions, Part 2

This tutorial will cover all aspects, and is an excellent starting point if you want a step-by-step tutorial on adding localized information into an iPhone or iPad App .

Announcement time! I’m incredibly excited to let you know that the first ever AppStorm book (in conjunction with Rockable Press) is coming soon!

If you’ve ever thought about developing an iPhone app (or even if you already have), this book will be a fascinating read. It will provide you with all the knowledge and technique you need to spot a great opportunity, get the most from the App Store, make smart decisions about development, craft a stunning interface, and promote your app successfully.

I’ve conducted a series of interviews with some phenomenally successful iPhone developers that have kindly shared their expertise, and also completed a fascinating survey of over 1,000 iPhone users and developers.

Read on to find out more, and discover how you can sign up in advance for a voucher that will give you 25% off the purchase price when it goes on sale!

Read the Foreword

The iTunes App Store launched on July 10th, 2008 to much fanfare and drama. Opening up a marketplace for software developers to target the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, it has rocketed to success over the past two years. At the time of writing, over three billion applications have been downloaded.

The potential for success has proven to be phenomenal. Developers have the ability to easily reach millions of users through a central marketplace, and many are leveraging that opportunity to make thousands of dollars every day.

Unfortunately, despite the occasional success story, the fact remains that becoming an overnight App Store phenomenon is difficult. Many developers struggle to achieve great success with their application, and it’s a tough market to succeed in. If you’re wanting to strike it big as an app entrepreneur, it isn’t enough just to have a decent idea and some programming knowledge.

This book won’t give you a killer idea, nor will it teach you the ins and outs of programming for the iPhone. What it will do is provide you with all the knowledge and technique you need to spot a great opportunity, get the most from the App Store, make smart decisions about development, craft a stunning interface, and promote your app successfully.

Drawing on survey responses from over 1,000 iPhone users, and in-depth insight from a handful of incredibly talented iPhone developers, this guide will equip you with everything you need to successfully become an app entrepreneur.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy the journey!

David Appleyard
AppStorm Editor

Book Contents

Here’s what you can expect from the book. I’ll be going into a little bit more detail about each chapter in my announcement post next week:

• Foreword
• Chapter 1 – Meet The Developers
• Chapter 2 – Perfecting a Killer Idea
• Chapter 3 – The App Store
• Chapter 4 – Making a Development Decision
• Chapter 5 – The Importance of Simple, Sexy Interface Design
• Chapter 6 – Learning to Keep it Simple and Iterate
• Chapter 7 – Pricing Your App Right
• Chapter 8 – The Perfect Promotion Mix
• Chapter 9 – Useful Resources
• Chapter 10 – One Piece of Advice
• Chapter 11 – The iPhone Developer Survey
• Chapter 12 – The iPhone User Survey

Get Your 25% Discount (and a Free Book)!

If you’re interested in the book, you can sign up to receive a 25% discount off the purchase price (meaning you’ll be able to bag a copy for just $15) when the book is launched. Just sign up to The Rockin’ List to be notified when the book goes on sale, and it will include your discount code too!

By signing up, you’ll also receive a free copy of the awesome Rockstar Personal Branding, written by our very own Skellie. Well worth a read!

Signing up takes about five seconds. Which means you save $1 per second. It’s a little bit of a no-brainer, right?

Stay Tuned!

This book was something of a labour of love, and I’m really proud of the finished product. I hope you’ll enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it, and we’ll be sure to let you all know when it goes on sale. Stay tuned, and don’t forget to secure your discount in advance!

Now that Summer is coming to an end, the holidays are approaching fast; that means it’s about time we start looking forward to our favorite meal, the beginning of our vacation, or that magical morning in December.

That’s why we’ve compiled the fifteen best iPhone apps for counting down the days to our favorite events.

Big Day

If you’re looking for a classy app to let you just count the days to a special occasion, look no further than Big Day. With an absolutely delicious user interface, Big Day is sure to please. As an interesting addition, you can even save a picture of your countdown and share. It with friends!

Big Day a real gem for a low price, and we at AppStorm appreciate its refined, not overwrought visual design.

Price: $0.99
Developer: whatisid

Epoch

When you buy Epoch for $0.99, you aren’t buying the myriad features found in competing apps; you are buying pure user interface bliss.

With beautiful, painstakingly designed graphics and icons, the dark and rich interface of Epoch is sure to bring you closer every day to that Italian vacation you’ve been looking forward to. An awesome little feature that we appreciate very much is the ability to pin your event to a location on a map.

Price: $0.99
Developer: Gabe Shahbazian

Until Countdown

Until Countdown is a versatile timer that can count the months, weeks and days to an event far into the future, or simply help you time your laundry. Just tap the plus button in the upper right-hand corner to get started, and you’ll be counting the days in no time!

Until Countdown stands out with rich graphics and playful controls, and an icon you’ll be proud to keep on your first home screen. As an added bonus, it’s a Universal app, with a special version for iPad included. At only $0.99, Until Countdown is a bargain!

Price: $0.99
Developer: Lukas Burgstaller

Timenotes

Timenotes seems to be the countdown app for the designer/scrapbooker in each of us. What Timenotes brings to the table that other similar apps lack is an adorable selection of themes and colors that you get to choose from when you are setting up a countdown (for instance, “Wedding” or “Boy”).

We love the impeccable typography, beautiful landscape views, and impressive graphics; even more important to many users is that Timenotes features push notifications. For $0.99, Timenotes is a great buy, but beware: you’ll probably find yourself setting countdowns for everything, just to get another chance to ogle that gorgeous user interface.

Price: $0.99
Developer: Manufactura Software, LLC

Soon

Soon, at $1.99, is a little more expensive than its competitors, but it doesn’t disappoint. With Soon, you can not only track hoe many days are left until some event, but also how many have elapsed since (for instance, how long you have stayed on your new diet, or have been working on a certain project).

With a simple, yet lick-able user interface, as well as the added benefit of push notifications, Soon is sure to deliver.

Price: $1.99
Developer: Nick Takayama

Days To Go

Days To Go is of a different breed from its competitors: where most try to be as shiny as possible, Days To Go charms us with it’s elegant minimalism, both in visual design and feature-set.

With Days To Go, it’s dead simple to setup a countdown: just tap the plus button, enter a title and a date, and you are done! Add as many countdowns as you wish, and you can see them all on the main view of the application. Even better, Days To Go also works on your iPad at full resolution!

We love it when app developers take cues from Apple in visual design, and are pleased to see that the author of Days To Go took inspiration from Apple’s built-in Clock app in designing the gradients and shadows for the main countdowns list. At only $0.99, Days To Go is definitely worth a try.

Price: $0.99
Developer: DJM Development

Day Tracker

Day Tracker puts a different spin on the problem of managing event countdowns, letting you see all your countdowns in a beautiful grid on the first screen. When you choose to view one of your countdowns, the time left is displayed in a refined faux-LED digital clock at the top of the screen. Or course, you can add as many events to Day Tracker as you wish. As an added benefit, each event gets its own icon (for instance, a gift box, an airplane, or a television set), which makes it a snap to differentiate between your events at a glance.

From the custom (and yet classy) navigation bars, to the intuitive editing interface, it is clear that the author of Day Tracker put a lot of work into making this app as beautiful and nice to use as possible, and it sure paid off. For just $0.99, snag Day Tracker and start counting the days to your next special event!

Price: $0.99
Developer: Hurryforward Ltd

Mint Countdowns 2

Mint Countdowns 2, a free app, is a lot more advanced and fully-featured than most of its competitors. Like other apps, you can set timers to multiple special days, but Mint Countdowns 2 lets you organize many different timers into sets, which you can share online!

Even better, Mint Countdowns 2 will send you push notifications for your events. At free (ad-supported), the excellent features, beautiful icon and careful user interface design of Mint Countdowns are hard to beat. The only thing caveat is that some users have reported freezing after adding of events; we hope that Mint Apps resolves this soon.

Price: FREE
Developer: Mint Apps

Countdown Calendar

The developer of the popular Countdown Calendar Dashboard widget for Mac OS is back with Countdown Calendar for iPhone, featuring a slick and intuitive user interface with rich graphics, and a beautiful dark color scheme. One of our favorite features is that when you tap on the calendar icon to the left of each countdown, it will toggle between days, weeks, months and years.

But even better is its central countdown repository, where you can download other users’ countdowns and upload your own! This is some serious added value for a really simple, carefully-crafted application.

Price: $1.99
Developer: The Future of Pinball, LLC

Date Countdown

With Date Countdown, you don’t get to add and categorize several countdowns: this app is for when you want to focus only one one big event in the future, and count the years, months, days, minutes and seconds until it arrives.

Date Countdown displays your countdown on top of any picture from your photo library or camera roll, and offers the unique feature of setting the brightness of this background image. With positive reviews in the App Store, the radical simplicity of this inexpensive app makes it a worthy contender.

Price: $0.99
Developer: GEEx Systems

Days Until

Days Until lets you keep track of multiple events, but as an added benefit will continue to keep track of them after they pass. A neat little feature of Days Until is that the home screen icon can be adorned with a badge which can either show the number of events due in the next ten days, or the number of days to the nearest upcoming event.

Countdowns can then be displayed on top of images from your photo library or camera roll. Not only can you change the background image; you also control the font and color of the text. Days Until is a free application (with ads, that can be removed with an In App Purchase of $0.99), but if we had one complaint, it would be that the app does not do as good a job at staying within Apple’s interface guidelines. This app could be improved by replacing some of the custom controls with plain or styled standard ones.

Price: FREE
Developer: Richard Shearman

Countdown

Countdown is a fully-featured countdown manager with a few tricks up its sleeve. First, it can handle repeating events, which is helpful for holidays and birthdays; more importantly, Countdown supports iOS 4′s brand new Local Notifications technology (which lets an app schedule notifications to occur while the app is not open, but without using Push Notifications). Also of note, with a separate In App Purchase of $2.99, you can synchronize your data between multiple iOS devices over Wi-Fi.

Countdown does a nice job of sticking to the basics in terms of visual design; simple is good.

Price: $0.99
Developer: IAM Web Services

FlipDown

FlipDown is another graphical countdown app, which lets you see multiple countdowns on the opening screen, set on top of a background of your choice. What differentiates FlipDown is that each countdown is in the form of a stylized digital clock, and you can choose from several different styles.

While we would have preferred a little less overstated graphics in the main visual design of the app, we really appreciate the sexy and powerful date picker; one of my gripes with Apple’s built-in date picker is that sometimes it is hard to tell whether I am editing the day, or the month. FlipDown includes a really well-conceived augmentation of Apple’s design, complete with subtle labels.

FlipDown costs a little more than most other contenders, but it’s well worth a try!

Price: $1.99
Developer: InterHive

TymeLynz

TymeLynz is a simple app to count the days until (or since) any event, such as your anniversary, your child’s birth, or even that vacation you’re looking forward to. We very much appreciate the super-simple, understated user interface, and think will too.

TymeLynz costs $1.99, but is graced by overwhelmingly positive reviews; if you are ready to put down two dollars, it is definitely worth of a shot for your home screen!

Price: $1.99
Developer: White Wolf Software

Ticker

We use to-do lists to track what’s now, calendars to track what’s around the corner; but what about things far into the future? Meet Ticker.

Ticker features many icons that you can decorate your countdowns with, and is in general pretty nice and full-featured. If we could make a suggestion for improvement, it would be to work on the editor table views and make them feel a little bit more idiomatic (text field bezels, label colors, etc.). Ticker feels like a pretty solid app, but we feel that $4.99 is a little bit much, considering the relative quality of its less expensive competitors. But nonetheless, if you’ve got the cash, give Ticker a try and let us know what you think!

Price: $4.99
Developer: IncisiveGeek

What do you think?

These are some of the best iPhone apps for counting the days on the App Store, and we hope that you get a chance to try a few! There’s nothing like a new favorite iPhone app to get the holidays started.

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think of our selection, and if you have a favorite that we missed!

The Mac ships with a wonderful dictionary app. You get a dictionary, thesaurus, and optimized wikipedia browser all in one beautiful app. Unfortunately, the iPhone ships with nothing of the sort. There are a number of good 3rd party options out there. Today I’ll be taking a look at Terminology PH.

Terminology PH is a sleek and simple dictionary browser for you iPhone. Besides getting the basic definition you can search Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia, and Google. It aims to be a single point of entry into the world of reference.

Basics

The first view you see is search. You get a search bar and a list of words that match your current query. Tapping on one of these words takes you to the definition viewer. A fancy table view with each cell a different term. You get the definition, along with related topics and synonyms. Tapping on any link will take you to its definition. You can delete the term from the current list and mark it as a favorite for later.

At the bottom of each cell are links for more exploration. Wikipedia, Google and the like. Tapping one of these takes you to a web view pop up menu with your selected site. Nothing special here; you have the option to open it in Safari.

More Options

Terminology PH only has two other views.

Starred:
A table view of all your starred terms. Unfortunately it does not adopt the standard swipe to delete, making it awkward to manage. Tapping on a cell pops that term into the definition view cell stack. It doesn’t care if the term is already there, it will go right on top as a duplicate, which is a bit annoying. As I navigated through the app, I ended up with the same term three times. Every tap leads to the definition viewer!

Recent:

A history of your search terms. Exactly the same as the starred list. It brings along the same baggage and awkwardness.

Settings

Terminology only has one setting. Its a yes or no switch. “Filter bad words.”

Applaud and Criticisms

Several parts of the interface like the definition stack can be tricky to maneuver and manage. Duplicate terms are obnoxious and easily preventable. The app has adopted the slight delay and slide method for animated transitions between all its views. This is not a good idea in execution. Its cute for the first few times, but when I’m trying to get in and out as possible and really use the app, I want it to be as fast as possible. Developers, don’t bog us down.

I don’t care for the cumulative history table view stack. When I want to read another definition, I just want to read that definition, not have a list of my seven previous ones underneath it. Keeping track of what I last read is cool, but keep that separate.

The design of the entire application is rough. The headings have distracting drop shadows underneath them. I don’t like the color scheme at all. I disagree with the choice of the body serif font. I think something simple like Times or Georgia would be a much better choice. If I remove every item from my history cell stack, I get a blank screen. Its the standard to have a message saying you have no current terms.

I really like the simplicity of Terminology. Four windows, and only one setting. Man, is that gutsy. Some people can tweak, and tweak, and tweak forever. I think taking the minimal route on this one is very admirable.

The search is fast and snappy. I really like how it merges a dictionary and thesaurus into a single interface.

I’d really like to see the third party services get tied in better. Shoving me in a web view is not very much fun, guys. It turns the app into a glorified launchpad. I envision it differently. Clicking on a service button will push a new view to the left. Its an parsed and neatly formatted native view of the search results returned from the service.

To sum up. Take out the purposely slow view transitions. Rework the font choices. The history stack needs work. Don’t make it cumulative. Replace one item with another.

Conclusion

Terminology PH is a great choice for you dictionary needs. Its a little rough around the edges right now. The interface could use some love, as well as the integration of external search services. None of the table views meet standards guidelines. This is very frustrating. But with that said, don’t let that stop you from buying it. Terminology nicely fuses the thesaurus and dictionary aspects of searching. Although its not perfect yet, you have access to several other search engines lke Wolfram Alpha. Definitely give it a shot.

We’ve collected the top five reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in April. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, or Web apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month.

Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!

Best of iPhone.AppStorm

Best of Web.AppStorm

Best of Mac.AppStorm

Share Your Ideas

Is there something in particular you’d like to see on the site next month? We’d absolutely love to hear your suggestions for articles, topics and giveaways – just let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading AppStorm!

I’ve never heard anyone criticize cheese for not tasting like shrimp, or condemn a car for not being capable of flying like an airplane (although it’s 2010, and I still want to know when we’re going to get our flying cars).

Adobe Ideas, a nifty digital sketchbook app from Adobe, isn’t a full-featured sketching application in the vein of SketchBook Pro or Brushes . . . but it’s not trying to be. Instead, Adobe Ideas encourages you to doodle, brainstorm, sketch, and toy with concepts. In this regard, Adobe Ideas really shines.

Overview

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: Adobe Ideas is a free digital sketchbook that’s not trying to be the penultimate sketchbook app. It’s missing plenty of features and its interface has a few issues.

It’s also easy to use, effortless to figure out, and elegant in its execution. As the name implies, Adobe Ideas primarily wants to help you start something: a rough sketch to be fleshed out later, a wireframe for a website, a conceptual design to help a client understand the direction your heading. Its many uses are only as limited as your imagination.

Though it’s possible to create a surprisingly polished work of art in this app, Adobe Ideas has been tooled toward getting your initial conceptions recorded for future use. It is because of this rather focused ambition that Adobe Ideas isn’t as feature-rich as other sketchbook applications.

Jumping In

When you launch Adobe Ideas you’re presented with a blank screen that will eventually be populated with thumbnails of the different concepts you’re working on. From this screen you can choose to start an idea from either a blank canvas or an image file stored on your iPad.

Starting with a blank canvas is pretty much what you’d expect: a white background that allows you to sketch anything you’d like.

Starting with an image places that image on a separate layer from the drawing layer, allowing you the flexibility to turn off either layer at will. This makes it a snap to add artistic flair to an existing photo or to trace over your images, transforming them into works of art.

Less Can Be More

Once you’ve decided how to proceed, you’ll either be staring at a blank canvas or your image. There are only two tools available to you at this point: a vector brush and a vector eraser. There is no option to add text, shapes, or additional images (the app only allows one image per “idea”).

The brush tool allows for the adjustment of several parameters: size, color, and opacity.

The eraser tool allows for size adjustments.

If it’s starting to sound like the options for creation are pretty sparse, there’s a reason for that: they are. So how well does it all work together?

Wonderfully.

Because the options are so limited, the interface gets out of the way and allows you to create and experiment. The ability to trace an image will likely motivate you to play around with the brush options in order to best replicate your images.

I’m a graphic designer, but I rarely sketch anymore thanks to tools like Illustrator and Photoshop. Last night I broke out Adobe Ideas and worked on a watercolor-like portrait of my wife. Though I certainly don’t think it will be featured in the Guggenheim, I was pleased with what I was able to whip up in about 20 minutes. (side note: gentlemen, for what it’s worth, I highly recommend showing your wives/girlfriends that you worked up a sketch of them . . . unless you do a really terrible sketch . . . in which case you should probably never mention it)

I found having less options than apps such as Brushes or SketchBook Pro made the process more enjoyable; I worked with the limited tools I had knowing I wasn’t missing out on obscure features buried too far into menus to find.

My one complaint here is how many clicks it takes to change out the colors/sizes/opacity. There is a lot of wasted sidebar space that could be made use of in order to clean up the interface.

Minor complaints aside, a feature that really can’t be celebrated enough is Adobe Ideas’ stroke smoothing. Whenever you draw a line with your finger, it is bound to look somewhat jagged. Adobe Ideas’ vector rendering smooths out the lines you draw, giving the finished project a much more polished look than some competing programs.

Once you’re ready to export your project, choosing the envelope icon will allow you to email your idea as a PDF, complete with layered vectors intact and editable in Adobe Illustrator.

The Wonderful World of Color Palettes

Adobe Ideas has a unique way of handling colors. When you first launch the app, “Colors” is one of the options you can choose from the bottom panel. From the next screen you can choose an image from your iPad’s library and Adobe Ideas will automatically create harmonized color themes from your photo. These color themes can then be used for your brushes when you create new “ideas”.

Though you have the option to choose any color you’d like for your brushes from the color picker, using the themes is helpful for roughing out website ideas, interior design concepts, or any number of other projects that use unified color schemes.

I found Adobe Ideas to be a little inconsistent on which colors it chose. It maxes out at five, but occasionally it seemed to completely skip over the dominant color in a given photo. It’s nice that it gives you visual feedback by showing extraction circles on your image of the colors it chose, but it would be even nicer if you could adjust those circles to have it pick five colors of your choice.

Below are a few images I ran through the app to test its palette creation ability.

Final Thoughts

It would be easy to make a wish-list of features for Adobe Ideas to add: multi-layer support for artwork, the ability to add text to projects, video output, a “snap-to-end-of-line” feature, etc. However, it wouldn’t take long for a wish-list to change the app’s identity from concept-driven to a full-blown sketchpad. I can’t help but think Adobe Ideas would lose some of its appeal if it became overly bloated.

Though I’m sure Adobe will be adding more features and improving the interface as they release new versions, I’m hoping they’ll stay focused on the simplicity of this app’s goal as they move forward.

Adobe Ideas is available for free through the app store. It doesn’t taste like shrimp, it doesn’t fly, and it isn’t a full-featured professional sketchbook app; it’s simply great at what it does.

Citing an “overwhelmingly positive” response to last summer’s pilot program, Mercedes-Benz will expand its iPad program to all 355 dealerships across the globe.

In an interview with Macworld, Mercedes-Benz Financial VP Andreas Hinrichs expressed his enthusiasm for the program. “The feedback was so positive we said, we need to push this out to all the dealers and take the financing process to a new level.”

The program’s purpose was to streamline the closing of the deal by eliminating the potentially deal-killing walk away from the reality-distorting, shiny new car and into the intimidating sales office (as a former car salesman, I know the detrimental power of that journey). Salespersons can also run credit checks and pull the latest incentives with the iPads, as well as take in returning lease vehicles.

Let us know if you see one of these in action. If you’re not in the market for a Benz but still want to enjoy some iPad-powered automotive fun, check this out.

TUAWMercedes-Benz’s iPad program expands globally originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Plato said, “Necessity is the mother of all inventions.” He must have been talking about the guys at One Block Off the Grid, which is a cooperative of sorts for buying photovoltaic solar panels at a group discount. One of their staff members was running into issues trying to run Adobe After Effects on a slower Mac, so they had another staff member — Kalvin — build a fast hackintosh in the Amazon cardboard box that all the computer parts came in.

That price doesn’t include the labor involved in putting it all together, and it originally had a rather odd power switch, which was a standard jumper stuck on the end of a plastic cable tie. The computer itself has pretty good specs, with a 2.66 Intel Core i5 CPU, a 1 TB hard drive, 8 GB of 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, and an XFX Radeon HD 5770 1GB DDR5 Graphics Card. To run Snow Leopard on this computer, Kalvin used iBoot and MultiBeast.

As noted on the 1BOG blog, “this procedure may potentially violate Apple’s End User License Agreement for Mac OS X.” On the other hand, it’s a great way to get a fast computer and not spend a lot of bucks.

TUAWFound Footage: The $900 ‘Mac Pro’ in a cardboard box originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier this week, DigiTimes reported that Sintek Photonics was producing touch panels to be used in a touch-based iMac, and that demo units had been shipped to Cupertino for testing. Today, Sintek is denying the claim.

Once again DigiTimes has the story. Barry Wu, VP and spokesperson of Sintek, has said that his company has not been sending capacitive touch panels to Apple for use in the iMac. Of course we can’t verify the validity of Mr Wu’s statement, but there’s no reason not to believe him, either. Those hoping for a touchscreen iMac will continue to wait.

[Via AppleInsider]

TUAWTouchscreen iMac? Not so fast originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This MacBook decal is great, and it looks like it would work well on your iPad, too — though you might not get that glowing effect that makes it so awesome. We’ve seen quite a few fun decals similar to this before, including some specifically for the iPad, some for the iPhone, and even some other great geeky ones.

But none have made such a statement about the ubiquity of computers lately, so we’ll just post this one right here under No Comment. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do …

TUAWNo Comment: Just what do you think of this decal, Dave? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When up-and-coming iPhone company Ngmoco bought old-school Mac game developer Freeverse, one of the big worries was whether the developer would continue to program games for the Mac. But worry not — Freeverse has released a sequel to its old Hordes of Orcs 3D tower defense game, and it’s available now for both Windows and OS X.

The sequel brings new enemies into the mix, plus new towers and a completely overhauled user interface. You’ve got spells to cast that affect all enemies, and there are six different game modes to play with that range from classic tower defense to capture the flag and maze defense. The first one was a fun desktop variant on tower defense, and the sequel looks like it adds quite a few new gameplay and graphic elements into the mix.

The app is US$19.95 for either platform, and it’s available DRM-free from Freeverse’s site. Even though we have Steam for Mac and more options than ever for Mac gaming nowadays, it’s good to see the distinctly Mac developers still releasing new titles.

TUAWFreeverse releases Hordes of Orcs 2 for OS X and Windows originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Drobo family of BeyondRAID storage devices has been very popular with Mac prosumers, creative professionals, and small businesses since the first product shipped in 2007. Slowly but surely, the company has been building up its product line. Data Robotics now has three Direct-Attach Storage (DAS) devices, the Drobo, Drobo S, and DroboPro; a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) device, the Drobo FS; and a Storage Area Network (SAN) device, the DroboElite.

In a recent interview with Mark Fuccio of Data Robotics, he noted that customers were asking for a NAS device with more than the five drive bays of the Drobo FS, and they also wanted redundant network connectivity and a simple way to back up files offsite. The result? A new product that was announced this morning, the DroboPro FS.

The new product has the eight drive bays of the DroboPro and can be physically situated on a desktop or placed in a standard rack mount with an optional kit. It has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, which can be used in either a standalone mode to connect to a different subnet or in a redundant network protection mode.

TUAWData Robotics adds the new DroboPro FS to the family originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saving Private Sheep is a fun one, especially if you like Angry Birds (and there are plenty of you out there who do). Saving Private Sheep is another physics-based puzzler. This time, instead of throwing birds at pigs, you have to save sheep from wolves by tapping various wooden objects in a scene and blowing them up to try and land the pentagonal sheep safely on the ground. It may sound confusing, but once you play the game (which you can do in a free trial), it makes much more sense.

The game’s 80 levels will have you exploding crates, breaking ice, dropping pulleys, tossing objects around, and trying to earn as many gold medals as you can (by exploding as few items as possible as quickly as possible). And the best part is that the game’s on sale for just 99 cents right now. It’s not exactly the same as Angry Birds, but the game has a very Angry Birds-style feel to it, so if you like that one, give this one a shot as well.

TUAWTUAW’s Daily App: Saving Private Sheep originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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