Category: Tutorials

In a recent interview with Edge Magazine, Electronic Arts founder and current Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins gave his opinions on Apple’s App Store and the company’s post-Steve Jobs future. In the process, Hawkins managed to cram several tired Apple-related doom-and-gloom memes into only a few hundred words. Let’s do a checklist and see how many we can find.

Apple is “closed,” and closed is bad: Yep, right in Hawkins’s opening remarks.

“I think it would be an incredibly positive thing for the industry if Apple decided to support all of the web standards, because then Apple could be the best about everything. Right now they make a conscious choice. They want you to be in the App Store rather than the browser, so they cripple the browser.”

Odd, my iPad doesn’t feel particularly “crippled” when I use it to browse the web. Neither does my iPhone. Hmm, what could Hawkins possibly mean?

Apple is a big meany boo-boo head for not supporting Flash Player in iOS: Ah, there it is.

“Flash can actually make a really good game, and with HTML5 you can’t do that. But give HTML5 another few years to mature, and that could solve the problem. Or Apple could be more generous about deciding to support more de facto standards like Flash, or at least let it run its course.”

Look at the statistics for mobile video and try to convince me Flash hasn’t already run its course. As for games, I’ll take a native app that doesn’t slow my iPhone to a standstill and chew through 2/3 of my battery in an hour over a Flash-based in-browser game any day. The idea that Apple’s ditched Flash because it wants to control the iOS experience is correct, but not for the reasons Hawkins and others have provided. In an interview with Adobe’s CEO a couple months ago, Walt Mossberg pointed out that he hasn’t used one smartphone that provided him with a positive experience with Flash Player, and Mossberg has pretty much used them all. Apple’s “generosity” only goes so far, and anyone who expects the company to sacrifice positive user experience to placate third-party vendors is fooling themselves.

But that’s far too logical of an argument, and logic has no place here, because…

Steve Jobs is a tyrant, and Apple is a dictatorship: Variations on this constitute the bulk of the Edge interview’s excerpt. Hawkins is certainly in a position to know about Steve Jobs’s personality traits — he used to work directly with Jobs — but where this crosses into meme territory is Hawkins’s insistence that Apple as a company is directly tied to the whims of a tyrannical dictator. It’s the same story we’ve heard thousands of times before: Apple is the Chocolate Factory, Steve Jobs is Willy Wonka, and every other soul in Cupertino is a faceless Oompa Loompa without any input into the direction of either the company’s products or its overall future. Sure, that’s exactly how a business consisting of thousands of individuals becomes the most successful tech company in history. Right. Speaking of which…

Apple’s growth is unsustainable: This is the kind of thing that people used to thinking about Apple as a scrappy underdog like to repeat like a mantra. Hawkins isn’t any different.

“If you look at any institution in history — look at the Roman Empire — anything in history, and what it looks like when it’s peaking. Look at Apple, and how can you say it’s not peaking? The CEO is still alive, let’s start there. They invented this tablet thing that’s going to be really big. They’ve done really well by reinventing the phone. They breathed new life into the Mac. They’ve got this super-high marketing. All these things are about as good as they ever can be — how much better can it really get?”

I’m no history major, but even I know that the Roman Empire was already in a centuries-long decline before the Visigoths trashed the place. And if Apple is peaking as Hawkins says, I’d love to see which numbers actually support that theory. Virtually every quarterly financial statement from Apple over the past year has had the word “record” somewhere in the first paragraph. Apple takes in the majority of profits from the smartphone industry while having a relatively small slice of overall market share. It’s the same story with PCs; Apple dominates profits in the $1000 and up category. The iPad dominates the tablet market to an even greater extent than the iPod ruled the mp3 player market.

Apple’s overall worth as a US-based company is second only to Exxon, and Apple’s even closing in on them. Exxon, the company responsible for pumping liquid gold out of the ground and transmuting into the life’s blood of modern society. And as a widespread meme from last week points out, Apple’s cash reserves recently bypassed those of the US Treasury.

You might look at all this success and conclude that Apple has nowhere to go from here but down. But the only way to do that is to completely ignore the past four years of financial data. If Apple was truly peaking, the influx of dollars would be slowing down, and its profit graph would be either plateauing or declining. The thing is, that’s not happening at all. Not even close. But what about the future? Get ready for another meme.

Without Steve Jobs, Apple is doomed: How many times have we heard this one? I’ve lost count. But here we go again:

“The thing is, it may take another year or two before it starts to decline, but it has to — everything does. Everything revolves so much around Steve, and no matter how good his lieutenants are, they’re not Steve. None of us is going to live forever, though I hope he lives for a really long time.”

Steve Jobs got the ball rolling on this, yes. But even while he’s been on extended medical leave, Apple’s momentum hasn’t slowed. Like Hawkins, I hope Steve Jobs will be around for a long time, but Apple will not wither on the tree without him. Apple as a company is nothing like Microsoft, where all the forward-looking vision and drive to succeed went out the door with Bill Gates. Steve Jobs has surrounded himself with fellow visionaries, and that’s the real key to Apple’s business success. The idea that one man and only his ideas has made Apple what it is today might make for a compelling David Fincher film someday, but it doesn’t jibe with reality.

The only way I see Apple facing the kind of decline Hawkins talks about, even without Steve Jobs at the helm, is for someone to start deliberately mis-managing Apple and its assets. How else is a company sitting on a $76 billion pile of cash supposed to decline? Don’t answer that.

EA founder rehashes ‘Apple will falter without Steve Jobs’ and other memes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Something tells me kids and college students are going to love this one. Submerged is not a “useful” app like your address book or even a Twitter app — it is a toy, or novelty app. Submerged takes video from the iPhone and warps it depending upon how you shake or move the iPhone. Silly? Perhaps, but it’s the sort of thing that also shows off the fancy tricks iOS can do with your phone. A few years ago this sort of thing wouldn’t have even been possible on mobile hardware!

Of course, Submerged isn’t just looking at the world as though it were underwater — it can freeze those images and you can (at any time) poke and prod the image to further distort it. You can also modify pictures you’ve already taken. Of course you can share these images in myriad ways as well.

To see submerged in action, just check out the video below. It’s actually a kind of fun (if not entirely useful) novelty app.

Video App Demo: Submerged originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A survey by GPS mobile apps developer TeleNav reveals that 40% of iPhone users would rather give up their toothbrushes for a week than their iPhones. That number compares to 22% of total smartphone owners (Android, BlackBerry, etc.) who said the same thing. What does that mean? Either iPhone users care less about personal hygiene or they really love their iPhones.

The study, which was done for no other reason than so blogs could quote it and mention TeleNav’s brand, also reveals that among iPhone users, 35% believe the iPhone reflects their sense of style, 45% have never paid more than a buck for an app, 28% would rather go a week without seeing their partner than their iPhone, and 18% would rather lose their wallet and its contents than their iPhone.

Among total smartphone owners, 70% of people would rather give up alcohol for a week than their smartphone and 33% would rather give up sex. Still not disturbed? You can check out all the obsessive results of smartphone love in this handy infographic.

[via GigaOm]

Study: iPhone users would give up their toothbrushes before their devices originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung originally planned to host a media event on August 11 for the Australian launch of its Galaxy Tab 10.1, but it has now officially been postponed, according to TechCrunch. Over the past couple of days, Samsung’s story has changed multiple times. First it said the Galaxy Tab would launch in Australia despite Apple’s patent-related complaints to Australia’s Federal Court. Then, Samsung said it had no plans to launch the Galaxy Tab in Australia in the first place, and its decision had nothing to do with Apple’s complaint.

The latest update on the matter seems to be a combination of all the previous takes. Samsung chooses not to classify the situation as withdrawing the Galaxy Tab from sale since the launch hasn’t happened yet. The company also states that the decision to postpone the Australian launch is directly tied to the current legal situation with Apple. Samsung appears to be trying to work around the patent battle by producing a specialized Australian variant of the Galaxy Tab, but the unit is still in production with no ETA for a launch, and TechCrunch speculates that launching a variant of the same product may violate the spirit of the agreement.

Samsung isn’t characterizing this as an injunction against the Galaxy Tab’s launch, but rather a mutual agreement between it and Apple as part of the ongoing “look and feel” patent dispute between the two companies. Another hearing on the matter is scheduled for August 29, but a final resolution to the case may take years. Meanwhile, in the United States the ITC has agreed to review the case, and the Commission has the power to impose an injunction against US imports of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 if it agrees with Apple’s position.

Samsung officially postpones Australian Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has hired recruiting firm Egon Zehnder International to find a replacement for Apple Retail Chief Ron Johnson, who is leaving the company after eleven years to become the president and eventual CEO of J.C. Penney. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is intentionally seeking our a replacement from abroad and Egon Zehnder’s services were obtained on the orders of none other than Steve Jobs.

Egon Zehnder was apparently chosen because Jobs is looking for an executive with retail experience outside the US.

Apple has repeatedly said that their international expansion is a driving force in both their profits and sales. Given that China, a country which Apple had virtually no presence in until very recently, seems key to Apple’s growth, its likely that Ron Johnson’s replacement could very well come from the Asia Pacific territory or someone with extensive knowledge and experience in the territory.

Apple reportedly hires firm to help replace former retail chief Ron Johnson originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple is used to setting the standard in the laptop industry. Before Apple eschewed 4:3 screen for 16:9 ones, widescreen laptops were virtually unheard of. The 17″ laptop market only exploded after Apple unveiled their first 17″ PowerBook G4. And now that Apple’s MacBook Airs have become a huge hit, all the naysayers that bemoaned you couldn’t offer laptops with non-removable batteries and no optical drives are doing just that with Ultrabooks — MacBook Air-inspired PCs.

Intel, who is pushing the Ultrabook platform, feels like sales of the slim notebooks could make up 40% of the laptop market by 2012 and PC manufacturers like ASUS and HP originally said that users could expect Ultrabooks for under $1000 in time for Christmas. However, now PC manufactures, who are used to selling laptops at much cheaper prices than app to rope in as many customers as possible, are finding that the technology and manufacturing necessary to create the MacBook Air-like Ultrabooks are costly, and they will not be able to undercut the MacBook Air’s pricing. That could mean defeat for the PC Ultrabook initiative, according to Digitimes.

Intel Ultrabooks must compete with MacBook Air on price, parts suppliers say originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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David Drummond, Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer at Google, has posted a diatribe against Apple and Microsoft, both competitors against Google’s Android platform. “Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other’s throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what’s going on,” Drummond writes.

What’s going on according to Drummond? It’s “a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.” Some of those said “bogus” patents, it bears mentioning, were subject to a US$900 million opening bid from Google, a bid the company later lost to a consortium of companies including Apple and Microsoft. Just saying, $900 million is a lot of money to put on the table for something that’s bogus.

“Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it,” Drummond says. I can’t argue with that — Lodsys immediately comes to mind — but is he trying to tell us that Google would never leverage the Nortel patents against Apple and Microsoft if the bidding had gone the other way? Indeed, that seems to be exactly what he’s saying when he accuses competitors of “fighting through litigation” instead of “competing by building new features or devices.”

“Unless we act, consumers could face rising costs for Android devices – and fewer choices for their next phone,” Drummond says. It’s hard for me to read this, or the rest of Drummond’s piece, without translating it thus: Google is scared.

The question is, should Google be scared? That depends on a few things: the strength of the Nortel patents, any possible regulatory intervention in the purchase of those patents, Apple and/or Microsoft’s willingness to actively pursue patent claims and “strangle” Android, and finally, the courts’ determination as to whether or not Google has violated those patents. It’s pretty obvious on casual inspection that Google hasn’t been innovating in a vacuum, however, so if Apple or Microsoft actually are intent on “strangling” the free ride Android’s had so far, then maybe Google should be exactly as scared as it sounds.

Google accuses Apple and Microsoft of teaming up to strangle Android originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the time of year when all the iPad case manufacturers are getting their products ready for the “back to school” rush, so I’ve been getting plenty of emails and writing a lot of reviews. It was refreshing to see something completely different from ZooGue — the BinderPad (US$29.99) — that takes the iPad 2 and puts it into a standard three-ring binder.

Design

The BinderPad is one of those ideas that you look at and say “Why didn’t anyone think of this before?” For students or managers who are carrying around schoolwork or project notebooks anyway, the BinderPad slips into a three-ring binder with your iPad 2 inside. It’s made out of a durable cloth in either black or dark grey, and encases the iPad 2 snugly.

If you need to take a photo or movie with the iPad 2 camera, just snap the BinderPad out of the binder and hold up your iPad 2. The BinderPad has a hole in the proper location for the rear-facing camera. All of the other ports and switches are easily accessible as well.

Functionality

What can I say? The BinderPad works as it should. It’s easy to put the iPad 2 into the case, and snapping it into a three-ring binder is, well, a snap. In the video that accompanies this post, there’s another idea — you can use the BinderPad as a wall mount for the iPad 2 as well. I was a bit reluctant to put the pricey Vogel’s RingO mount up on the glass tile backsplash in my kitchen, but I’d have no qualms at all about installing some inexpensive cup hooks under my cabinets to hang the BinderPad from. Brilliant!

Conclusion

The BinderPad is the brainchild of young entrepreneur Tim Angel, who also developed the versatile ZooGue Case Genius. That case is now available in an iPad 2 flavor, and I’ll be writing a full review of it in the very near future.

ZooGue makes innovative products that it sells at reasonable prices, and the BinderPad is yet another example. Whether you want a way to pop an iPad 2 into a binder that you’re going to be lugging around anyway or you just need an inexpensive wall mount, the ZooGue’s BinderPad is a good way to go.

ZooGue’s BinderPad: A unique take on an iPad 2 case originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is considering buying InterDigital’s patent portfolio, which is worth up to US$5 billion. The patents cover a wide range of mobile technologies used to transfer information over high-speed mobile phone networks. Just last month, Apple was the leader of a consortium that bought Nortel’s patent portfolio for $4.5 billion.

The ownership of patents is becoming a key issue to smartphone manufacturers as sales skyrocket. Major tech companies all want a piece of the same pie and Apple isn’t alone in its interest of InterDigital’s patents. Bloomberg says that Samsung has also been invited to bid on InterDigital’s portfolio. Given that Samsung and Apple are locked up in patent lawsuits, it’s possible that this could turn into a heated bidding war, possibly inflating the estimated $5 billion price.

Apple considers buying another $5 billion in patents originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I was trying to figure out a clever way to describe today’s TUAW TV Live episode with TiPB managing editor Rene Ritchie. I failed miserably… Well, it is a joint effort of TUAW and TiPB, Rene’s in Canada and I’m in the U.S., and we’ll be talking about Apple, so I guess the long title to this post could make a little sense.

All that silliness aside, today’s show should be a lot of fun. Rene’s the voice behind the TiPB iPad Live and iPhone Live podcasts and a fellow Apple blogger, which gives us a bunch to talk about.

Below, you’ll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments.

If you’re driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you’re stuck in traffic, please don’t — keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It’s a universal app and is useful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat.

We’ll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you’re seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you’ll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.

TUAW TV Live: The TUAW / TiPB Joint International Commission on Apple Matters originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wreck This App is a creative iPad app based on the book series by Keri Smith. The app takes the fun of doodling and creative expression and brings it to your daily life. The black-and-white interface is child-like and simple, which adds to the allure of the app.

Wreck This App is arranged in pages and each page has a difference activity. Some require you to perform simple tasks like draw fat and skinny lines, while others instruct you to draw pictures of more complex objects. And it’s more than doodles, as sometimes the activities, like the one to document something boring or fill in a page when you are angry, make you think about what you are doing.

You have a set of standard drawing and writing tools at the bottom page and you can import images from your camera roll to include in your doodles. You don’t have to move sequentially through the app, you are free to jump from page to page and can complete each activity as you see fit. When you are done with an activity, you can share it on Facebook, Flickr or via email. You can even save it your photo roll.

Wreck This App is highly recommended. It has a pleasing interface and is whimsical and fun. In my humble opinion, it’s a great way to pass time, far better than playing Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies. Wreck this App is a universal app and is available for $4.99 in the iTunes App store.

TUAW’s Daily iPad App: Wreck This App originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Time, Inc. has announced its intention to put all of its publications on tablets during 2011. Once complete, the digital catalog will include Time, of course, and other favorites like Sports Illustrated, Fortune and People — all of which are already available in the App Store — and newcomers like Real Simple and Entertainment Weekly.

Maurice Edelson, EVP and a member of Time Inc.’s interim management committee, sees the explosion of tablet popularity as a opportunity for his company. “In the coming year, there will clearly be many more consumers using tablets, accelerating demand for content and driving advertiser interest. We are putting ourselves in a great position to take advantage of these opportunities.”

Print subscribers will have the option to add digital subscriptions at no cost. All the publications will be available on the iPad, Android tablets, and the HP Touchpad. A Time spokesperson told me that the company is following other publishers like Amazon and the Wall Street Journal and avoiding the high toll at the Apple app store. Other publishers like Hearst are selling magazines through the app store.

Time says its digital magazines and related apps have been downloaded more than 11 million times.

Time Inc. will put all 21 US publications on tablets by the end of this year originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Card games have been our entertainment fall back for generations. Solebon Solitaire for the Mac brings the quality, small screen experience of Solebon Solitaire for iOS to your desktop screen.

Solebon Solitaire for Mac features 42 solitaire card games in one. You’ve got old favorites from Klondike, Yukon and Golf to original games such as Ambrose, Provisional and Honeybees — it’s one of the most comprehensive card game collections out there.

Smallware have taken the simplicity and clean look from their original iOS offering and brought it to the Mac. It offers a slick, well-animated interface that avoids the frivolous for ease of use. The cards are large, easy to read and look great while card movement animations, deals and transitions are fast and well done.

There are no cheats or hints in Solebon; it’s serious solitaire for serious players. Some games have options like reverse layouts, the ability to switch on auto play (which speeds up repetitive tasks like moving the cards to the stocks) and the option to disable undo. Speaking of undo, there’s unlimited undo available just in case you get stuck. Each game has full lifetime stats, scoring, move tracking and a timer. If you’re new to the game there’s a full rules sidebar available to get you going.

Solebon Solitaire is a well-executed, comprehensive collection of solitaire card games that are easy to play with a mouse or a trackpad. If you like playing cards in the real world, then Solebon is definitely worth checking out for US$4.99.

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: Solebon Solitaire originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Instagram‘s 4-person team has announced that the service’s users have posted over 150 million photos. Consider that the free, social photo-sharing service now receives about 1.3 million photos per day — that’s 15 shots per second — and you realize one thing: people really like sharing photos. Make that process easy and convenient, as Instagram has with its iPhone app, and you’ve got yourself a winner.

Kevin Systrom, one of the company’s founders, described the diversity he’s seen from users: “There are Instagram photos from major events like the World Series and the Grammys, and some Instagram photos have even made the national news. Artists and celebrities have begun to give fans a unique look into their lives.”

The app is simple and fun. Once you’ve created a free account, just launch Instagram as you would Apple’s own Camera app and start shooting. You can then apply one of several artistic filters or some tilt-shift blur; then share your shot with other Instagram users as well as your Twitter, Flickr and Facebook friends.

While you can’t view a user’s entire Instagram feed in your browser (although you can see individual images), there are plenty of options for interacting with your images without the iPhone app. For example, you can tweak Google+ for instant sharing. Several Mac apps are available, including Carousel (US$4.99, our feature here) and Instadesk ($1.99, our feature here). Finally, take the analog theme to the max with Instaprint, a wireless, location-based printer for Instagram. Imagine…paper pictures!

Congratulations to Kevin and the entire Instagram team on your ongoing success. Below you’ll see the official 150 millionth photo to be uploaded by Instagram user janefot.

Instagram users have uploaded over 150 million photos originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to AppAdvice, Apple may be prepping a new re-downloading and streaming service called iTunes Replay. The service would let you re-download select movies and TV shows from iTunes and stream that content to a variety of iOS devices.

The Replay service will supposedly let you access shows that you purchased as for back as 2009 and will stream them to your Apple TV and iOS devices. Similar to Amazon Unbox, the number of downloads may vary from clip to clip and may be limited in number.

This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered this rumor; bits and pieces of it have been floating around since 2009. The only difference now is that with iCloud, Apple may have the underlying infrastructure in place to host such a streaming service.

Apple reportedly readying Replay service for streaming iTunes purchase history originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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