Category: Tutorials

In 1939 and 1940, a world that was beginning to climb out of the Great Depression and about to descend into World War II had a brief glimpse of a bright future at the New York World’s Fair. After the Fair shut its gates for the last time in 1940, the organizers took their meticulous records of the event and presented them to the New York Public Library for safekeeping. 70+ years later, the library has opened the Fair to the world again in the form of NYPL Biblion: World’s Fair, an innovative and exhaustively detailed history of the Fair in an interactive iPad app. In this review, I’ll discuss this amazing app — the first in a hopefully long series exploring the NYPL’s collection — and show you some screen shots of the app in action.

User Interface and Navigation

The free app is huge — 252 MB in size — and contains essays, documents, photos, film, and audio from the Fair. With this much information on hand, the designers had to figure out a way to let users navigate the history of the New York World’s Fair in their own way. Rather than guide users by the hand in a static timeline, the World’s Fair app starts by displaying floating groups of pictures, each of which is labeled with a different title: Introduction, A Moment in Time, Enter the World of Tomorrow, Beacon of Idealism, Fashion Food and Famous Faces, From the Stacks, and You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.

If you’re new to the app and don’t touch one of those groupings, the app quickly displays a magazine-like front page with suggestions of where to go next. There’s a lot of animation involved in the app, which was produced for the library by Potion, and it makes great use of the standard gestures used on the iPad. Want to move between the “stacks?” Just flick between them. Tap on one of the stacks to read an introduction, and then tap on a bright blue and easy to see View Stories link to see a graphical representation of stories. Within the story groupings are colored bars: red for audio and video content, blue for featured images, orange for documents, and yellow for connections to related information from the NYPL stacks.

The user interface is everything in this app, since it’s your way to browse the tremendous amount of content that’s packed into it. I personally found the app to be easy to use and understand, and to give you an idea of how much I like the Biblion World’s Fair app, it actually kept me entertained one evening for five straight hours. That’s unprecedented for me, as I usually get bored and distracted by something else fairly quickly. I feel like the Biblion app literally takes me back in time to the late 1930’s, and since I’m a history buff I can easily get sucked into wandering through the articles, photos, and other audiovisual content for hours.

Knowing how much I like this app, I was surprised by several tweets by a well-known blogger/author I know. He found the Biblion World’s Fair app user interface to be “a mess.” I personally think that linear thinkers might have a bit of an issue with the user interface, as it’s really meant for exploration and wandering around the virtual library stacks. For me, a guy with an incredibly messy desk who is always working on about five things at once, the Biblion World’s Fair app was a joy to use.

There is one complaint that I have — there’s no search function built into the app. While it’s a lot of fun to zip around from subject to subject, it would be nice to be able to search for certain names or topics throughout the collected content.

Content

The Biblion World’s Fair app truly brought not only the New York World’s Fair to life for me, but provided excellent context into the historical significance of the event. The Fair was opened with a televised (yes, in 1939) speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was the first time an American president used the new medium. Unfortunately, no recording exists of that speech.

One wonderful find in the app is a group of short color movies by an amateur filmmaker by the name of H. Earl Hoover. The silent movies give a personal perspective of the event from a regular citizen who attended the fair, and the color and scope of the event really comes across in these movies.

The NYPL team was able to recreate the “Democracity” city of the future pageant that took place inside the Fair’s iconic Perisphere, using a combination of pre-production drawings, scripts, photos, musical scores, a chorus, and computer animation to create a short video. I’m sure the recreation doesn’t have the emotional impact of the actual exhibit, but it was a game attempt by the developers to show what it must have been like.

Something that surprised and delighted me was to find that many of the essays accompanying photos in the app were non-judgmental, telling the story of the New York World’s Fair without the usual postmodern “interpretation” that seems to plague many historical exhibits these days. Kudos to the NYPL for keeping the majority of the essays as descriptive as possible without tainting them with personal or political judgment.

Many of the things that we now take for granted, such as electric appliances, television, suburbs, and freeways, were first demonstrated to the public at the Fair. The impending world war is a constant undertone of many of the essays, with discussions of the fate of the Czechoslovakian exhibit after the German invasion in 1938 and how the controversial Soviet Union exhibit closed after 1939 after that nation invaded Poland and Finland.

There’s no way that I can do justice to the sheer amount and quality of the written and visual content of this app. Just know that if you have an interest in this period of time in our history, the portions of the New York Public Library’s collection that are highlighted in this app will keep you entertained for many hours.

Conclusion

The New York Public Library states that Biblion is to become a series of applications that will “explore … the Library’s vast and awe-inspiring collection.” In fact, when the app first launches, the phrase “Biblion: The Boundless Library” is displayed, and the Library intends for Biblion to become an electronic magazine of sorts that will highlight different parts of the collection and exhibits.

We’re fortunate that the NYPL decided to pick the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair as the topic of the first issue of Biblion, as they had a lot of material to work with. If this app is any indication of what we can expect in the future, Biblion is going to be an exciting and worthwhile collection of historical information.

If you’re an iPad owner, don’t worry about whether or not you like history — download this free app and give it a try. You might surprise yourself by spending hours immersed in this fascinating look at the future as seen from the past.

NYPL Biblion: World’s Fair iPad app a compelling look at yesterday’s future originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How many times have you gone to send an email, only to be distracted or even derailed by something that you found in your Inbox? I found a solution which is completely free, integrates completely with OS X, and which guarantees that it won’t happen to me again. I even found a (partial) solution for iOS devices as well.

The Problem

One night around 11 p.m. I remembered that I needed to send an email to someone so it would be there for them first thing in the morning, so I launched Gmail (actually Mailplane) as I started to formulate the message in my head as I waited for it to load. Then it happened. I saw a message from someone that I wished I hadn’t seen. I could have tried to ignore it, but my brain isn’t fooled that easily.

Once I saw the From: line, it almost would have been worse not to read it, because then I would have been wondering what it said. To be clear, I couldn’t really do anything about the message. If I had just gone to bed without checking my email, I would have seen it the next morning when I was at the office. But my brain had already started thinking and processing. I read the message, I started to think about what I needed to do in response to it, and other people I need talk about it.

Almost 30 minutes went by before I remembered, “Didn’t I come over here to start writing an email to someone? Steve. I was going to tell Steve something. What was I going to tell him?” Now hopefully your brain works better than mine does (I did eventually remember the original message I was going to send), but if you have ever tried to get into the habit of checking email less often you might have run into this same problem:

Email apps expect that when you want to send email you also want to check email. (Merlin Mann recently mentioned this problem on an episode of Back To Work, which is what reminded me about it.) I ran into this problem when I tried to start checking email once or twice a day. Quitting my email app was easy, but then a few minutes later I realized that I needed to send an email. So I launched my email app again. Hey look, new email!

Solutions which didn’t work

1) “Just ignore it.” Ideally this wouldn’t be a problem because by sheer force of will I could just ignore messages which are unread and untended. Most of the time I am very good about that. I have an extensive and elaborate set of Gmail filters which almost guarantee that nothing ends up in my Inbox directly. Everything is sorted to where it belongs, and when the time comes I can check by various folders (sorry, “labels”) later on. But, at least for me, any system which depends on sheer force of will is like building a sandcastle at the beach. No matter how tightly I pack the sand, eventually the tide is coming in. I once complained that I couldn’t go into a bookstore without buying a book, even if I just intended to browse. I always seemed to find something. My friend replied, “Look, if you know this about yourself, you have two choices: either don’t go into the bookstore, or accept the fact that if you do you’re going to buy a book. Stop beating yourself up over it.” (It’s nice to have smart friends.)

2) “Use a Dashboard Widget!” This was actually the first solution I tried. I found a Dashboard Widget which would send email through Gmail. It seemed like the ideal solution: press F12, write an email, click send, voilà! But it didn’t work well for two reasons: it didn’t autocomplete email addresses from my address book. (How many people’s email addresses do you have memorized?) When I clicked on an email address on a web page, or from my address book, or any other source, it launched my default mail client.

3) “Write and save email drafts somewhere other than my mail client, then copy/paste them into my mail client later.” I tried keeping email drafts in nvALT when I wasn’t checking email, and then when I was ready to check email, I would copy each message into a new “Compose” window, and send it. This isn’t a bad solution, but it didn’t fix the ‘click on an email address’ problem, plus it created another step every time I wanted to send an email message. Then there was the potential problem of forgetting to send the messages later, or needing to send a message immediately.

4) “Just turn off fetching new messages.” Another seemingly foolproof method that I tried was simply turning off auto-fetching of new messages. This doesn’t work very well in Gmail, of course, because there is no “fetching” in Gmail, when you login, messages are just there. Mailplane will let you turn on “Do Not Disturb” which keeps it from notifying you that new messages have arrived, but you can still see them if you look. If you use Mail.app or another client, this can work, except that many clients will automatically fetch new email whenever they are launched, even if they are set to manually fetch messages. Then there’s the whole “Oh, while I’m here I’ll just take a look at this other folder really quick…” problem. Turns out this is just another variation of the “Just Ignore It” idea.

The solution that worked

Finally it occurred to me that what I needed was a second email client, one which was setup only to send, and not to receive. I tried Mail.app and Thunderbird but found that neither one of them worked the way that I had hoped. Then I remembered Mailsmith, the mail client formerly developed by the folks at Bare Bones but which owned by Stickshift Software.

Mailsmith was ideal for several reasons: first, Mailsmith understands the concept of a “Send Only” account. I didn’t have to try to “trick it” into working that way, it was happy to do so if I just told it that’s what I wanted. That was the most important criteria. Since it is a real mail client, I can set it as the OS X default and have new messages started in it, plus it will auto-complete email addresses as I type them. As bonus, Mailsmith can also be configured to create a new blank email message whenever the application is launched or activated by either clicking on the dock icon or activate it via LaunchBar, Alfred, etc when it is already running. Since all I’m using it for is sending emails, that was nice icing on the cake.

As a long-time user of Gmail/Mailplane, I’m used to having to wait between the time I launch the browser/app and when the site actually loads. Even on a decent connection, launching Mailplane and waiting for a new compose window can take 15 seconds. Not an overly long amount of time, but Mailsmith is ready is about 1 second. That’s a significant difference. Mailsmith can also easily work offline, allowing you to queue messages for later delivery.

Lastly, Mailsmith is free. That was the least important criteria, but a free solution that works well is always a nice bonus.

Configuring Mailsmith

Setting up Mailsmith is a fairly straightforward process. I’ll outline the process for sending through a Gmail account (a Google Apps account should work the same way), but you could do the same thing with any email account.

Step 1) Download and install Mailsmith. If you have another mail client already installed and configured on your computer, Mailsmith might offer to import your settings. I recommend choosing Mailsmith Default and entering them yourself.

Step 2) In Mailsmith’s preferences under “Application” look for “Default Mail Client” and click the “Set to Mailsmith” button if you want Mailsmith to automatically respond to email addresses clicked from other applications (web browsers, Address Book, etc). This is optional but highly recommended.

Step 3) Immediately under the “Set to Mailsmith” button, look for “At Startup” and select the “New mail message” radio button. That will tell Mailsmith to create a new, blank email message whenever it is launched or activated by clicking on the dock icon or using a launcher such as LaunchBar, QuickSilver, or Alfred.

Step 4) Configure your account. Mailsmith puts Account settings under the “Window” menu, as shown here:

In the accounts window, on the “Checking” tab, leave everything blank like this:

That tells Mailsmith not to even attempt to fetch email from this account, which it is happy to do.

Then, under the “Sending” tab, enter the information as required. Google provides instructions for sending via SMTP through Gmail which we need to enter here and in the “Advanced” tab (we’ll get to that).

The “Account Name” and “Sender’s Name” can be whatever you want. The “Sender’s Name” will appear in the From line in your outgoing email. The Account name is just used for reference.

Make sure the SMTP Server Name is “smtp.gmail.com” and check the box next to “USe SMTP Authentication” then put in your Gmail email address and password in the SMTP User ID and Password fields, respectively.

Note: The “Reply Address” field must be filled in, but Gmail appears to ignore whatever you put in it. It will not set a Reply-To: header. If you want to do that, try adding one to the “Headers” tab.

Finally, the “Advanced” tab needs to have the SMTP Port set to 465, and make sure that SSL is set to “Required” because Gmail does require it.

After that it’s a simple matter of starting a new email message. Mailsmith will read email addresses from the OS X Address Book and auto-complete as you type.

If you have more than one account that you want to be able to send from, you will have to repeat this process for each of them, but you can also set keyboard shortcuts to determine which account to send a new message from. See below for more.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Mailsmith uses “Command + E” to “Send Now” (or Message » Send from the menu bar) or you can tell Mailsmith to queue your outgoing mail by using “Comamnd + Option + E” (or Message » Queue for Sending from the menu bar). Queued messages will not be sent until you choose “Send Queued Mail” either from the Mail menu or by pressing Command + Shift + K. (Queued messages cannot be edited, but can be deleted.)

If you are used to the “Command + Shift + D” keyboard shortcut from Mail.app (and Mailplane), you may want to go to System Preferences » Keyboard then click on “Keyboard Shortcuts” and “Application Shortcuts.” Click on the + (see the red box in the image below) to create a new shortcut.

Set the Application to Mailsmith, the Menu TItle to “Send Now” (note that both words are capitalized) and enter the Command + Shift + D shortcut. It should look like this:

If you add more than one account, you can setup keyboard shortcuts to send from each account. Look under File » New from Account and you will see each account listed by the “Account Name” that you added. Just make sure each one of those is unique and you can set a keyboard shortcut for it by repeating the process above and putting the Account Name in instead of “Send Now.”

What about iOS?

Once I set this up on my Mac, I realized that it would also be nice to have on my iPad as well. I am not aware of any 3rd-party mail clients for iOS, and everything I found on the App Store seemed to be focused more on notifying me about incoming mail rather than sending it.

I discovered the iOS solution via TUAW’s own Dave Caolo who wrote about a (free) app called Draftpad on his personal site, 52Tiger.net.

Draftpad is extremely fast. It launches and is immediately ready for me to start typing. When you finish typing a message in Draftpad, you can opt to send it to many different places using what Draftpad calls Assists. These will send your message to email, SMS, Twitter, or any of a bunch of other destinations using their extensive Assist Library. You can even create your own. Do you often send messages to your spouse, coworker, or maybe to yourself via Simplenote or Evernote? Create an “assist” which will automatically fill in the “To:” line of your email address. Write your message, send it to Mail, fill in the “To” line, and tap send. Couldn’t be any easier. After it goes, it will bring you back to Draftpad.

Draftpad is available on the app store for iPad or iPhone/iPod touch.

Try it, you might like it

At first it felt a little strange thinking of “writing email” as a separate task than “reading email” but I have really come to enjoy it. Naturally, I still reply to emails from within Gmail when I am reading email, but when I’m ready to be done checking email, this setup ensures that I can do that without hindering my ability to send email.

If you use Gmail or any webmail for your outgoing mail, you’ll be amazed how much faster it is to dash off a quick email using a local client. I love Gmail with Mailplane, and I’m never tempted to use an IMAP client instead, but I do like the sending speed. The ability to write emails offline is a nice plus too.

One final (tangentially related) note: another key to staying away from your incoming email is to make sure that you are not storing information that you need in your email. If you need to followup on something in your email, put it into OmniFocus or Evernote or Simplenote, or whatever you use to keep track of your tasks. Storing it in your email makes it harder to find, plus it keeps you tied to your inbox.

Use Mailsmith to create a “send-only” email account originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thinking about getting Dad some directional guidance for Father’s Day? Our package selections cover small, medium and large budgets to get where you’re going.

Of all the industries disrupted by the emergence of these odd touchscreen computers disguised as mobile phones, the standalone GPS market may be the most topsy-turvy.

Among Chris’ 33 things he doesn’t need any more now that he has an iPhone, a separate $100+ unitasker GPS unit is probably the biggest target; the same goes double for Android phone owners, who get a capable and free turn-by-turn navigation tool as part of the Google Maps application.

Just having the phone isn’t quite enough, though, if you want to help those notorious no-asking-for-directions family members (that’d be Dad) self-guide with the iPhone 4. Combining the right app with the right car bracket can turn a simple purchase into a genuine Father’s Day gift — so here are our package recommendations in small, medium and large price ranges. All apps are available on the App Store, and most of the hardware can be found at Best Buy, Radio Shack or Staples.

Small

Everyone likes free, and that’s what our first app choice brings to the table. MapQuest 4 Mobile (developed by AOL, our corporate parent) provides capable turn-by-turn navigation with voice synthesis, powered by the same map data as the mapquest.com site. The app includes live traffic data, point of interest search and more — and did I mention the free part? Drawbacks include a quieter voice than some of the other offerings; you also have to manually choose between power-saving mode (where the app will allow the phone to sleep) and high-performance mode. Still, if you’re looking for voice directions on a budget, it’s a great place to start. (Note that both MapQuest Mobile and our #2 pick require data connectivity to download maps on the go.)

For a budget vehicle mount, Arkon delivers no-frills units in windshield or lighter-socket ($20) and beanbag friction mounts ($30). Personally I don’t care for lighter socket mounts, as they make it much more difficult to glance at the map while driving when the phone is mounted so far out of the driver’s heads-up sightlines. I’ve been using the IPM512 friction mount for a while, and it works; the phone holder swivels to work either in portrait or landscape, and it includes adjustable ‘feet’ to slide out of the way of the dock port and the headphone jack. It does sometimes tend to accidentally press the phone’s sleep switch, but for the most part it works well.

To power the low-cost setup, any USB adapter will do; best to combine it with an iPhone sync cable plus a USB A-A extender to give you the slack you’ll need. The Bracketron dual adapter ($25) is available at most Staples stores and will happily charge both the iPhone and a second device.

Medium

The next navigation app up the ladder doesn’t cost much, but it’s garnered some high-powered fans. MotionX-GPS Drive ($0.99, also available for iPad at $2.99) may not have impressed Mel for last year’s gift guide, but others swear by it. The advantage here is that you can get the app at the low price, then if you like it re-up for 30 days ($2.99) or a year ($19.99) of live voice navigation as you like — visual/map navigation is free of charge after the initial purchase.

Like MapQuest, MotionX-GPS requires data service to download maps, but you have the option of caching your route to avoid any hiccups or data issues on the way. The current version includes links to Facebook’s check-in feature, full business/POI search and contacts integration. MotionX now even integrates with newer Pioneer in-dash hardware, as reported earlier this month.

The middle-range mounting solution is Griffin’s WindowSeat mobile kit, which combines both power and a mount with a microphone-equipped aux 1/8″ cable for audio. The PowerJolt universal adapter included in the package provides 1 amp charging, and the simple bracket/suction cup holder keeps the phone tucked into position.

Large

The next tier of navigation apps are all dramatically more expensive, which can cause a bit of app sticker shock. They do bring along a key advantage, though — maps are included in the app itself, rather than downloaded on demand. This means that app downloads and updates in iTunes can take quite a while, but it also means you’ll never be stranded without data service while navigating (and if you’re traveling overseas/in a roaming area, the data costs would be pretty expensive).

The ‘big three’ in full-featured, maps-included navigation are Magellan (just updated with a new look and features), TomTom and Navigon; all the apps have their adherents, but for my money Navigon MobileNavigator is the best of the bunch. I’ve used the USA East Region version (on sale for $24.99; full USA map version is $34.99 on sale) for frequent drives in and around New York City, and it’s been very consistent and reliable. Navigon offers versions for most countries and regions, so if you’re headed out of town it’s worth a look.

One of my favorite features in the Navigon app is the three-routes option at the start of navigation; the app shows you the route it thinks is best, but also two alternatives that may be better under specific circumstances. You can choose which way you want to go, rather than heading off in what the app thinks is the wrong direction and having to wait for it to clue in.

A premium app deserves a premium phone cradle; there are good options in the $100 Griffin RoadTrip HandsFree or the $70 Belkin TuneBase Direct, but as mentioned I’m not big on the power socket mounting approach. Instead, I’d suggest taking a look at the Dension Car Dock for iPhone — an integrated unit that includes both aux and FM outputs, power, and a custom app for device control and navigation links. In-app purchase adds ‘Car Finder’ mode, which saves the exact GPS spot where you parked to help you find your way back. The Dension unit lists at 80 euros, but hopefully will be coming to US distribution soon; I’d expect it to hit at about $100 when it gets here.

Of course, if you choose the TomTom app you can also get the custom-fit TomTom car kit, and for $100 it’s got to offer something more: enhanced GPS performance, a built-in powered speaker and better hands-free calling. It uses the same easy-mount back found on TomTom’s dedicated units.

If you already have a mounting solution but need a sleek, cable-minimizing power and audio solution, check out XtremeMac’s InCharge Auto Aux for $50. Using the dock/charge connector for audio, it includes an aux-out jack in the charger housing, keeping the cable clutter at bay.

Whichever size fits your needs — small, medium, or large — enjoy your summer drives!

iPhone navigation packages, in S-M-L editions originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Neil Ticktin (Editor-in-Chief, MacTech Magazine and MacNews) interviews Erik Elmgren of HansaWorld at WWDC 2011. Erik was kind enough to tell us about their thoughts on the announcements on WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward.

TUAW and MacTech Magazine teamed up to speak to developers at WWDC 2011 about the keynote and how Apple’s new technologies will help them and their customers. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll bring you those videos here, MacTech.com and MacNews.com. Also, check out the free trial subscription offer for MacTech Magazine here.

WWDC Interview: HansaWorld originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A reader wrote in to us surmising that the iPod touch is on its way out, to be replaced by a lower-cost iPhone 5. It sounded ridiculous at first, but the evidence he gave sounds pretty compelling when it’s all put together.

1. According to iSuppli, “The components that make up the 16 GB iPhone 4 cost just under $188.” That of course should be taken with a grain of salt.
2. Production of the iPhone 5 allegedly begins in July, with a launch in September — traditionally the time Apple unveils new iPod hardware.
3. iOS 5 will debut in the fall, and major iOS releases tend to come alongside new iPhone hardware.
4. Thus far, there is no mention of new iPod touch hardware in the iOS 5 betas.
5. The next-gen iPhone has reached final testing stage, destined for a September launch. With the exception of an A5 processor and possibly a universal GSM/CDMA design for its 3G hardware, it is expected to be substantially similar to the iPhone 4.
6. Unlocked iPhones are finally available in the US.
7. Recently unearthed evidence in the iOS 5 beta suggests the iPhone 5 will use the same 5 megapixel camera as the current iPhone 4 rather than the 8 megapixel camera suggested by rumors earlier this year, suggesting Apple is focused on cutting production costs.
8. This year, Apple’s Back-to-School promotion will offer a $100 iTunes gift card instead of a free iPod touch as in previous years.

Taken together, this does seem to paint a pretty stark picture for the iPod touch’s future. It also sparked off an intercontinental debate between fellow TUAW writer Richard Gaywood and myself on whether Apple is likely to lower costs on the iPhone 5 enough to make it a viable replacement for the current iPod touch lineup.

CR: I’ll say this: if the unlocked 32 GB iPhone dropped to US$299 and a 64 GB model was available at $399, the iPod touch would pretty much have no further reason to exist. Odds of that happening? Who knows.

RG: That’s a huge “if” there. The iPod touch has to be cheaper to make than the iPhone, so Apple would have to slash its own margins to cut the price of the latter to meet the former. $299 is less than half the price the 16 GB iPhone 4 is selling for today. Why would Apple do that? I don’t see much upside.

The iPod touch is also lighter and much thinner. Or, if it was as thick as the iPhone 4, it could offer much better battery life.

CR: Aside from the rear-facing camera, the GPS/3G antenna/chipset, and the case design, where’s the extra cost for the iPhone 4 versus the iPod touch? They have the same SOC, the same display, the same front-facing camera. Apple’s estimated cost to manufacture the 16 GB iPhone 4 is less than US$200. If the iPhone 5 is going to be essentially an iPhone 4S, the production cost isn’t likely to be terribly higher than the iPhone 4’s is now.

The upside to discontinuing the iPod touch line and replacing it with a lower-cost, contract-free iPhone is twofold. First, that’s one less piece of hardware Apple has to manufacture. The iPod line would be returned to music-only devices (the shuffle and nano), with only two multi-use, touch-based devices to manufacture: the iPhone and iPad. The upshot from a sales POV is that all the users who might have bought the iPod touch will buy the contract-free iPhone instead, which would go a loooong way to making up for the reduced per-device margins.

RG: According to Anandtech, “The pricing guarantees Apple is going to continue to have incredible quarters going forward. Apple found sneaky ways to reduce the total BOM (bill of materials) cost on the new iPod touch. A cheaper chassis compared to the iPhone 4, no GPS, less DRAM on package (256 MB vs. 512 MB), a cheaper screen and a worse imaging sensor.”

That’s in addition to the UMTS chip itself, the antenna for it, and (easy to overlook on a BoM listing), the considerable hardware engineering effort and testing that goes into making the cell phone part of the device work properly. They also use cheaper lower-density flash (the iPod touch has two chips, not one, so a 32 GB model of either handset is a single 32 GB chip in the iPhone and 2×16 GBs in the iPod touch).

Note that the parts Apple skimps on — the baseband, the display, the DRAM, the flash, the rear-facing autofocus camera — are some of the most expensive parts in the iPhone 4 to start with.

CR: The engineering and testing costs will likely be more than offset if the iPhone 5 has essentially the same exterior design as the iPhone 4, as virtually everyone expects it will.

The price of the unlocked iPhone must eventually come down. The unlocked 32 GB iPhone 4 is actually more expensive than a 32 GB iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G. I don’t see that situation persisting for very long. I also don’t see that as a matter of offsetting component/production costs; I see it as a high price intended to mollify the carriers. The price disparity between a 32 GB iPod touch and a 32 GB unlocked iPhone 4 is $450, too, and I find it incredibly unlikely that the iPhone 4 costs THAT much more to produce than the iPod touch.

I mean, come on. The improved camera and flash, better quality display, extra RAM, GPS/UMTS, and chassis add up to an extra $450 — or even $300? Not a chance. Even if the $130 price disparity between the 3G and non-3G iPads truly represents the cost of the 3G hardware (it doesn’t), that’s still $320 for a slightly higher-quality display, an extra 256 MB of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera, three pieces of precision-cut stainless steel, and a piece of glass.

With a BOM of $188 for a 16 GB iPhone 4, Apple’s margin for the device amounts to $461. That’s high even by Apple’s standards. No, that calculation doesn’t include R&D or shipping, etc., but if the iPhone 5 is going to be substantially similar to the iPhone 4, most of that is going to be offset anyway.

RG: BoM isn’t the whole story, though. A common rule of thumb for a R&D-heavy devices like the iPhone is 1/3 materials, 1/3 cost, 1/3 profit. If you just compare how much it costs to assemble with how much Apple sell it for, it looks like a huge margin — but all those smart guys in Cupertino don’t come cheap, nor do their swanky digs. You’re not making an Apples-to-apples comparison, because we don’t have a comparable BoM cost for the iPod touch.

CR: You’re right, BoM is only part of the tale. So let’s look at profit margins instead. It turns out Apple’s profit margin on the entry-level $499 iPad 2 is 25 percent. That’s a healthy, respectable profit margin for a consumer electronics product — but it’s far lower than Apple’s average profit margin across all products, which is a much higher 38.5 percent.

Apple’s profit margin for the iPhone? An astonishing 50 to 60 percent. For every 16 GB iPhone 4 sold, then, Apple makes about $324.50 in profit at the lower end of the scale. We can therefore assume that the break-even price for an entry-level iPhone 5 would be around $330; the A5 processor is slightly more expensive than the A4, but the iPhone 5 is expected to have mostly the same components as the iPhone 4.

RG: Bottom line for me is this: replacing the iPod touch with an iPhone at the same selling price would inevitably require Apple to sacrifice considerable profit margin, would face carrier hostility (which might be so severe as to make them refuse to issue data plans for it), would be of marginal benefit to many consumers (customers who cared about having cell data for an iPod touch already own iPhones, I’d wager), and would cannibalize sales of the more lucrative iPhone (particularly the pre-pay models, which America might get now it has unlocked iPhones). Never say never and all that, but it doesn’t feel very likely to me at this point in time.

CR: After running through the numbers a bit more closely, selling the iPhone 5 for $299 looks like a net loss for Apple (which ain’t gonna happen), but selling it at $399 would yield a profit of about 17 percent. That’s far lower than the margins Apple currently enjoys on the iPhone, but Apple’s financial guidance for the past couple quarters has warned investors to expect overall profit margins to decline. There’s certainly room enough for the iPhone’s margins to thin a bit but still make Apple tons of money.

I’m not saying Apple will do any of this, but I will not be at all shocked if it chooses to. The iPod touch has always been a sort of an “also-ran” in the iDevice line, an iPhone-lite for people who don’t want to be tied down to a contract. If the iPhone becomes available contract-free everywhere, and at a price comparable to what the iPod touch sells for today, I still believe the iPod touch would have no reason to exist anymore.

Conclusion

It turned out to be a lively debate, and we’ll see who’s right in a couple months. In the meantime, there are a couple of other things to keep in mind. First, Apple has removed the “iPod” branding from iOS 5. In iOS 4 and earlier, both the iPhone and iPad handle music playback via an “iPod” app, but in iOS 5 these two devices instead have a “Music” app just like the iPod touch. It may mean nothing, but it’s still an interesting move considering the iPod was Apple’s top-selling product for so many years.

The other thing to keep in mind is a recent quote from Instapaper developer Marco Arment, who sums up my side of this argument perfectly: “When speculating on what Apple will or won’t do, a change that gets them more iPhone customers is probably worth considering even if you think they’d ‘never’ do it. iPhone customer acquisition is a higher priority than almost everything else.”

Point/Counterpoint: On the iPhone 5 replacing the iPod touch originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released a new iPad 2 television commercial entitled “Now.” The commercial points out how with an iPad people can interact with forms of media differently than they could in the past, such as by “watching” a newspaper. From the ad: “Now, we can watch a newspaper; listen to a magazine; curl up with a movie; and see a phone call. Now, we can take a classroom anywhere; hold an entire bookstore; and touch the stars. Because now, there’s this.” You can see the ad below and also check it out on Apple’s official YouTube page or on Apple’s iPad 2 product page.

Apple releases new ‘Now’ iPad 2 ad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I have posted about many of Ray Wenderlich’s excellent tutorials – most recently this tutorial on dynamic textures with Cocos2D.

Ray has been a tribute to the community with his many Cocos2D tutorials, and he has written a Cocos2D book along with Rod Strougo that is now nearing release known as Learn Cocos2D.  I have previously mentioned the excellent Learn iPhone and iPad Cocos2D Game Development book from Steffen Itterheim. The book by Rod and Ray is not only a great book by itself, but both books complement each other well as they both use a different approach to learn Cocos2D.

Learn Cocos2D takes a very hands on approach and goes through the creation of a complete game with Cocos2D on iOS — complete with add ons like Game Center support, and particles.

The book ships on July 1st, and you can pre-order the paperback version of the book on Amazon.

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