Category: Tutorials

Remember when I told you there would still be iCloud web apps once the service took over MobileMe, despite what some other sites were saying at the time? Not to brag or anything, but I was right. Today, Apple launched the iCloud.com beta for developers. Web apps on the service include Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Find my iPhone, and iWork.

The interface looks to be heavily overhauled from its earlier MobileMe incarnation, and iCloud.com’s design seems to have taken many design cues from the iPad’s iOS interface. Of note, if you’re not a fan of the “real object” design of iCal and Address Book on the iPad or in OS X Lion, you’re not going to like the web app design either, because it’s essentially the same.

Since many of us are under NDA at TUAW, we won’t provide screenshots but 9to5 Mac had no reservations and published a few which you can check out here.

The iCloud.com beta does require installing the OS X Lion 10.7.2 developer beta before you can use iCloud for OS X Lion beta 5, so if you’re not a developer and were hoping to check this service out for yourself, you’re out of luck for now. iCloud.com should launch to the public this fall, alongside iCloud itself and iOS 5.

Apple has also released pricing data for iCloud storage upgrades. All free iCloud accounts come with a standard 5 GB of online storage, but Apple will be offering three upgrade options:

• 10 GB for US$20/year (15 GB total)
• 20 GB for $40/year (25 GB total)
• 50 GB for $100/year (55 GB total)

Before it became free to all, MobileMe was $99/year and included 20 GB of iDisk storage, so these new pricing tiers for storage are a much better deal than MobileMe was.

iCloud.com developer beta opens, includes full-featured web interface originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daedalus Touch is a text editor designed for iPad and engineered to be as simple and clutter-free as possible. From what I saw, it succeeds admirably. Granted, there are lots of text editors on the App Store, but Daedalus offers a clean interface with a few nice features, like modeless search. In modeless search you can search at any time across all documents and the presentation makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. Of course, the best way to see this is to see it in action, so check out the video below to see Daedalus in action.

Video App Demo: Daedalus Touch originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon is freezing new Android app submissions to its Appstore that originate from Germany. Amazon said new admissions would be accepted again soon, but did not provide an exact date. Until Amazon re-opens the floodgates, German developers must hold onto their apps or submit them to the Android Market.

Amazon claims this ban is the result of legal action from Apple over the use of the term Appstore. The exact legal reason behind this decision was not discussed, but, according to Electronista, it may be the result of Germany’s application of International trademark law. Apple filed a trademark dispute against Amazon and asked for an injunction that would prevent the online retailer from using this term. Apple was not awarded this injunction and the case remains active in the Northern District of California. A trial is expected to begin in Ocotober 2012.

Amazon freezes new Appstore submissions in Germany originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Camino, an open source third-party web browser for Mac OS X, released a beta of version 2.1 last week. According to the release notes, new features in Camino 2.1 include:

• Enhanced Location Bar Autocomplete: The location bar’s autocomplete feature now displays results in a single list, using an improved ranking algorithm.
• Improved Plug-in Control: Camino now disables certain insecure or incompatible versions of common plug-ins. In addition, Camino now supports loading plug-ins from the profile’s “Internet Plug-Ins” folder.
• Gecko chrome and component registration: Camino 2.1 Beta 1 supports loading components and chrome from the profile, making it easier to use some simple Gecko extensions.

Camino 2.1 Alpha was released in January, and version 2.0 was released in late 2009. The somewhat stately development pace has meant Camino’s fallen behind the feature sets of big-name browsers like Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, but this latest release should get the browser closer to being caught up with its more famous cousins.

Camino 2.1 beta is a free download, with all the usual caveats that apply for running beta software. The latest stable release is Camino 2.0.7, released in March.

Camino 2.1 now in beta, features improved plug-in control originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When most people think about developer TechSmith, they think of the company’s big products like Camtasia and SnagIt. Now the company has come out with a fun little app for kids of all ages that brings video screen capture to the iPad. ScreenChomp is a free whiteboard app that captures everything that’s drawn on the screen to a video that can then be shared with others.

Not only does ScreenChomp work with the whiteboard, but it imports photos from your iPad Photo Library as well. The result? Well, it’s really easy to draw a big pirate mustache and dark goatee on just about anyone, record a soundtrack, and have a blast.

There’s more to ScreenChomp than just fun and games. TechSmith sees this as a tool for teachers to explain concepts and record their drawings and explanations for posterity. The sharing capability is tied to a specific iPad — there’s no account to sign up for, you just tap a button to have the screen capture sent to ScreenChomp.com. ScreenChomp also allows sharing with Facebook accounts, and the URL for your opus on the ScreenChomp website is easily sent to friends or students.

For students, they can draw and narrate their own movies for free. The app is extremely simple to use and cutely animated with the ScreenChomp mascot seen in the icon at the top of the post. There’s only one downside for parents who show their kids ScreenChomp — I don’t think you’ll ever get your iPad back from your child.

Giveaway

TechSmith has also provided TUAW with two licenses for Camtasia for Mac valued at US$99 each. To have a possibility of winning one of these licenses, keep an eye on the @TUAW Twitter account later this afternoon. We’ll post the two product keys at a random time. Once you see one, grab it, download Camtasia for Mac (email required) from the TechSmith website, and then paste in the product key. If you happen to be the first person to use that product key, you’re a winner.

TUAW’s Daily iPad App: ScreenChomp (and Camtasia giveaway) originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TextEdit on Lion has version control coming out of its ears, vertical layout for Eastern languages, and improved toolbars. It’s got some really great forward-looking features.

It also is slow as a hungover mule carrying ten sacks of potatoes. Launching the file open dialog takes countable seconds. It’s no longer instant the way it used to be. And losing that responsiveness has been getting on my nerves more and more the past few weeks.

Today, I finally had enough of Lion’s TextEdit. I replaced it with Snow Leopard’s. I keep an entire SL install around on a spare USB drive. (/Volumes/Backed was my last Carbon Copy Cloner backup, made as I was about to switch to my new SSD HDD.) I launched my copy off that backup. Now that I’ve been using it, I’m not sure if I’m going back anytime soon.

When you open a lot of files throughout the day, searching for items, making updates in to-do lists, and so forth, that re-found zippiness is incredibly welcome. I’m no longer plagued by “Could not create file” errors, or slow-loading screens with their pause-pause-pause delays.

Find and replace has returned to the uglier but faster floating panel from the built-in version, and “replace” is back to being a standard element rather than an option.

Returning to 10.6 TextEdit is like putting that mule on methamphetamines.

Speed, I tell you, speed.

I’m going to give this about a week and see how things go before I make a more permanent commitment. For now, I’ve remapped my Quickeys macros to open the SL version rather than the Lion one, but I haven’t changed anything else in-system.

Are you a heavy TextEdit user? How has the change to Lion affected your workflow. Pipe up in the comments.

And for all of you who are about to comment “If you hate Lion so much why not go back to Snow Leopard,” well get off of my lawn, you rotten kids.

I love Lion, but I’m not afraid to keep making it better.

Hackinations: How to bring the spring back into TextEdit’s step originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

Is there any (un)official word from Apple regarding the support for 3rd party SSD HDDs with Lion? I desire to tweak my MBP but do not wish to be without garbage collection and TRIM. What advice have you? Should I hold off on acquiring an SSD?

Warm regards,

Need4Speed

Dear N4S,

Auntie is using a 3rd party SSD without any troubles. She downloaded a TRIM enabler from groths.org after reading that the Snow Lion enabler seemed to work under Lion as well.

So far, everything seems be running well.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Can I use a third-party SSD with Lion? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Apple world knows him as Comex, the person who developed JailbreakMe to let iPhone users quickly and easily jailbreak their devices. Now Forbes has outed Comex in a preview of an article that will be published in the magazine later this week.

Comex is really Nicholas Allegra, a 19 year old student on leave from Brown University who lives with his parents in Chappaqua, NY — not too far away from IBM’s facilities in Armonk. Allegra is looking for an internship, and hopefully now that the world knows who he is, he’ll be able to get a job with Apple or another electronics or Internet firm.

Forbes writer Andy Greenberg cites security expert Dino Dai Zovi as comparing jailbreaking to “writing a ransom note out of magazine clippings,” then goes on to say that last year’s JailbreakMe 2 was more akin to “requiring an attacker to assemble a note out of a random magazine he’s never read before, in the dark.”

Dai Zovi, co-author of the Mac Hacker’s Handbook, notes that the level of sophistication in JailbreakMe is on a par with Stuxnet, the state-sponsored worm designed to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. He says that Allegra is probably “five years ahead” of the hackers who create persistent attacks on government and industrial targets.

For all of his hacking skills, Allegra refers to himself as simply an “Apple fanboy” who likes the challenges of finding — and exploiting — security issues in iOS. Let’s hope that Apple offers him a full-time job soon.

Forbes profiles Comex, the hacker behind JailbreakMe originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fancy an addictive, fun, casual game for your Mac? Look no further than the classic Bejeweled, now back in its third iteration on the Mac.

Played either in full screen or windowed, the standard game hasn’t changed, you still match three or more gems in a row to clear them from the board. There are four different play modes to choose from: classic, which you just match the gems until you can’t make any more moves, levelling up as you go; Zen, where the board is shaken up if you can’t move; Lightning, where you have to match against the clock; and Quest, where you have to complete a set task or puzzle to progress. Four secret modes are also available to unlock like Poker, a cross between gem matching and the classic card game, which are unlocked by playing the four regular game types.

Bejeweled 3 has all sorts of fancy gems, which explode, zap and annihilate the gems, while the explosions and sound effects are joined by an announcer who blasts out “Excellent” and “Awesome” when you get on a roll. The game even has a fairly decent midi sound track to it. If you’re a fan, the whole experience really draws you in so be prepared to waste a good hour or two before you know it.

As with most modern games Bejeweled 3 also comes with achievements in the form of 20 badges to collect, including five “Elite” badges, while you can level up with experience points gained from playing each of the games.

Bejeweled 3 is available from the Mac App Store for the rather dear US$19.99, but if you’ve played the free online version and want the ads gone and a native experience, Bejeweled 3 for Mac delivers in droves and there’s even a free trial to test it out.

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: Bejeweled 3 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac and iOS developer Mike Lee has announced the Appsterdam Legal Defense Team, meant to defend independent developers against the patent claims recently made by the likes of Lodsys. Mike tells his fellow developers that “rally time starts now,” while outlining the defense team’s immediate plan of action.

Texas-based technology attorney Michael McCoy (he’s also licensed in California) has been meeting with Lee in Amsterdam to develop a concrete plan of action. McCoy will head the defense fund and, Mike states, establish the Appsterdam Legal Defense Fund.

Lodsys began targeting developers earlier this year by suing them over a patent relating to in-app purchases in iOS. While Apple pays a licensing fee for the technology addressed in the claim, Lodsys insists that individual developers whose apps allow for in-app purchases ought to do the same. Shortly thereafter, Apple announced that it was “actively investigating” the claims and issued a formal response several days later.

Mike Lee, formerly of Apple and Tapulous, recently moved to Amsterdam to create an application development community. Already there is a weekly lunchtime lecture series in place.

Good luck to Mike, The Appsterdam Legal Defense team and all independent developers caught up in this sticky mess.

Appsterdam founder rallies developers for legal protection originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has won a victory over the owner of the iPods.com domain name. As we reported two months ago, Apple filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to have the iPods.com domain name transferred from its current owner to its “rightful owner” — Apple.

Rather than spend a lot of money to purchase the domain name from the existing owner, Apple used the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The UDRP allows a complainant to request a domain transfer when a domain name is identical or “confusingly similar” to a trademark that they own. In particular, if the respondent to the complaint has no “legitimate interests in respect of the domain name” and the domain name is being “used in bad faith,” the complainant (Apple) can request a transfer of the domain name to its rightful owner.

This process can be completed for just a few thousand dollars. In the past, Apple has paid seven-digit amounts for domain names, including iPhone.com and iCloud.com.

Apple wins iPods.com domain originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s Safari browser is gaining usage share dramatically, with its largest increase ever during the month of July. Net Applications provides metrics on a regular basis showing how various web browsers are faring in terms of usage, and the July figures showed Safari being used by 8.1 percent of all web users.

That’s the largest single increase in a single month for Safari, with iOS devices making up more than a third of the usage for the browser. Safari’s growth rate even beat Google’s Chrome in July — Safari’s share jumped .6 percent for the month, while Chrome grew at only a .3 percent rate.

Safari has shown continued growth for 17 months straight, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been declining. IE still has the lion’s share (no pun intended) of the browser market at 52.8%, but has shown solid declines for quite some time. Internet Explorer 9, the latest in the IE family of browsers, is showing continued growth as more businesses adopt Windows 7, but the overall browser share for IE is declining.

Firefox and Opera are also showing declining usage share, with Opera down to a measly 1.7% share — about where it was in late 2007. Safari still has a long way to go to be on top of the heap, but the gains it is making show that Apple’s strength in mobile devices and recent growth in Mac sales is also having a positive effect on Safari’s usage.

For a detailed dive into the data, take a look at Net Applications’ browser statistics.

Safari browser growth outpaces Chrome in July originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The next iPhone may arrive in October, not September according to a new report from AllThingsD. A source familiar with Apple’s plans claims the rumor that AT&T was blocking vacation at the end of September in preparation for an iPhone launch was incorrect. AT&T may still black out vacations for that time period, but it’s not for the iPhone 5.

Instead, this source claims the iPhone 5 will launch in October, possibly late October. But what about Apple’s annual iPod event in September and iOS which will launch this fall?

In the past, Apple has announced the iPhone a few weeks before its actual launch. It’s possible that Apple may confirm the iPhone 5 in September for a mid-to-late October launch. iOS 5 should also be released around that time as well.

Rumor: Next iPhone will launch in October originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Apple TV software has been updated to 4.3 with the following changes:

• Purchase TV shows through Apple TV
• Streams purchased TV shows, including access to all shows purchased through the iTunes even if deleted off your Mac — though some ATV users are reporting that a good bit of their TV purchase history is missing
• Vimeo support
• Cloud icon added

The update is available now through your Apple TV. We’ll update this piece as we find more changes in the software.

Update: The gallery below shows the changes made in the latest update. Many thanks to fellow TUAW staffer Dave Caolo for the shots! You also might be asked for the security code on your credit card associated with your iTunes account.

Apple TV update streams TV purchase history, adds Vimeo support (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests interest in the iPhone remains strong. In a recent research note, he points to a small survey of 216 mobile phone owners in Minneapolis that shows 64% will buy an iPhone as their next handset.

Breaking it down, 94% of iPhone owners plan to buy another iPhone. 42% of Android and 67% of BlackBerry owners expect to make the switch to the iPhone when they buy their next handset. Most of these switchers (60%) are waiting for the iPhone 5. This number is even higher for Verizon subscribers with 74% of non-iPhone owners waiting for the iPhone 5 to jump platforms.

In his report to investors, Munster estimates the iPhone’s market share could double after the launch of the iPhone 5. Apple will grab a substantial share from BlackBerry and a smaller amount from Android. When digesting these survey results, keep in mind the small sample size. Though interesting, the survey results may not represent the millions of iPhone and smartphone owners in the States.

Survey: iPhone retention rate at 94%, interest in iPhone 5 high originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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