Category: Tutorials

The latest salvo in the ongoing Lodsys patent dispute against third-party App Store developers has just been fired. According to Florian Mueller, Michigan-based company ForeSee Results “has filed a declaratory judgment suit against Lodsys’s four patents with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.” Mueller describes a declaratory judgment as “a pre-emptive strike by those who consider themselves or their customers/partners likely targets of an infringement suit.”

ForeSee counts Adidas and Best Buy among its customers, and by pre-emptively filing suit in Illinois, it hopes to protect itself against a Lodsys suit in the patent-holder-friendly Eastern District of Texas. Intriguingly, Mueller notes that ForeSee picked the Northern District of Illinois as the venue because that’s where Lodsys’s CEO (and sole employee) lives; this essentially means that Lodsys is only “formally” headquartered in East Texas, presumably because that judicial district has a history of decisively siding with patent holders.

If true, by choosing to headquarter its company in the Eastern District of Texas despite the company’s business operations actually taking place several states away, it’s just one more piece of evidence that Lodsys as a company exists solely to engage in lawsuits based on intellectual property claims. Put more simply: it’s Patent Trolling, Inc.

Mueller surmises that if ForeSee’s declaratory judgment agains Lodsys is successful, it could theoretically help the seven developers that Lodsys has sued thus far argue their case. However, the real problem is that many of these small developers may not be able to afford to defend themselves in such a suit, with their only option being to pay license fees to Lodsys whether its patents are valid or not.

Lodsys has yet to comment on the matter, but given its past history of blog posts on its site, the company will no doubt take great pains to defend its stance — one which we maintain is indefensible and amounts to gaming the US patent system in an attempt to extort money from third-party iOS developers incapable of defending themselves against its claims. Apple has yet to make any additional response beyond the response it made over two weeks ago, before Lodsys filed suit. If Apple’s measured reactions to recent crises is anything to go by, the company is no doubt carefully weighing its options before making its response in the matter.

Lodsys patents now face invalidation attack originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This week TUAW and MacTech Magazine teamed up to speak to developers at WWDC 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 and on MacNews. Also, check out the free trial subscription offer for MacTech Magazine here.

Our first video features yours truly and the publisher of MacTech, Neil Ticktin talking about the keynote and what we’ve seen so far of Apple’s next operating systems and iCloud. Enjoy!

TUAW and MacTech Magazine at WWDC originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Don’t raise a glass to Apple just yet. New App Store Review Guidelines explicitly ban iOS apps that identify certain DUI checkpoints. Specifically, the important passage reads:

“…apps which contain DUI checkpoints that are not published by law enforcement agencies, or encourage and enable drunk driving, will be rejected.” Note that Apple will only reject apps that identify checkpoints whose locations are not published by local law enforcement. Also, this change is specific to DUI checkpoints and does not affect speed trap apps and the like.

It’s likely that this change is a response a recent request by U.S. Senators urging Apple to pull apps that alert drivers to the location to DUI checkpoints. The same request was also issued to Google and RIM. As of this writing, Google’s and RIM’s guidelines are unchanged.

DUI checkpoint apps no longer welcome on App Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

In the latest Developer Preview of Lion, Apple has activated the new Find My Mac feature. Like Find My iPhone, Find My Mac allows users to locate their Macs from any web browser or iOS device. As noted by 9to5 Mac, the Find My Mac setup is available through the Mail, Contacts, and Calendars setting in System Preferences. Simply click “Allow” and your Mac is ready to be tracked.

Once enabled you can use any web browser or iOS device to track your Mac. When found you can choose to play a sound or send a message, remote lock the Mac, or remote wipe the Mac. Remote locking and wiping will prevent you from locating the Mac again however. The Find My Mac feature will be free, all you need to use it will be Lion and a free iCloud membership. This feature is sure to be a bane to thieves and no doubt we’ll be hearing stories about how Find My Mac thwarted more thieves in the future.

Find My Mac kicks off with Lion originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Google has updated its Chrome browser to version 12. Perhaps the coolest feature of Chrome 12 is the support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS. Any websites (like this one) and web apps that use 3D CSS effects will now have those effects rendered on your page with the help of your computer’s graphics card, which should allow for faster and smoother 3D effects.

Chrome 12 also adds a host of privacy and security features. Chrome will now warn users before they download some types of malicious files. Chrome 12 also gives you more control over the data websites store on your computer, including Adobe Flash’s Local Shared Objects. Chrome 12 is a free download.

Google Chrome 12 offers safer downloads, hardware acceleration, more originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

One of the long-standing frustrations for anyone who’s tried to edit blog posts or web documents using Mobile Safari is the absence of support for the HTML5 contentEditable attribute. The contentEditable element attribute, which began as an Internet Explorer 5.5 feature and later found its way into most modern browsers, is part of the suite of tools that makes it possible for Google Documents and other inline editors to do their rich-text WYSIWIG editing magic.

Unfortunately, up through iOS 4.3 there’s no support for the contentEditable attribute in Mobile Safari, which means that popular web editing tools either don’t work at all or have to provide severely limited iOS-specific versions. According to this thread on Hacker News, it looks like things may be changing in iOS 5; preliminary tests on the beta seem to show that the attribute is working as expected in the new version of Safari.

If this does prove out for the final builds of iOS 5 (and that’s a reasonably substantial ‘if,’ since we’re still several months away from release), we could be looking at a dramatic improvement in support for virtually all web-based rich text editing tasks on the iPad. For those of us who have struggled with this issue for a while, it’s welcome news indeed.

Thanks to Gary Poster for his question.

Will iOS 5’s Safari deliver better support for web editors? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple fans and developers apparently weren’t the only people who liked the iCloud announcement on Monday at WWDC. As reported by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt, Wall Street analysts are almost unanimous in their positive comments about iCloud’s effect on the financial future of Apple.

For example, Credit Suisse’s Kulbinder Garcha is quoted as saying “Although Google and Amazon are already offering cloud based offering, we believe Apple has continued to lead innovation in the services space with the introduction of its iCloud, which we believe is superior to existing cloud services from competition.”

RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky was even more enthusiastic when discussing the PC-Free capabilities of iOS 5, noting that by “‘cutting the cord’ to the PC, Apple may expand its addressable device market by 4x, addressing the ~3B handset users who have a phone — but not a PC.”

TUAW’s favorite analyst, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, also chimed in on the ability of future iOS devices to work sans PC, and commented that “Bottom line is that Apple is increasing the likelihood that consumers buy multiple Apple devices … Apple will be giving away iCloud for free (we had expected it to be priced between $25-$99 a year) … sharing non iTunes music will cost $25 a year. (As a point of reference, Amazon’s Cloud drive could cost up to $200 a year.)”

The future for Apple looks as bright as the sunlight in those architectural renderings of the proposed Cupertino campus of our favorite company.

Wall Street analysts think iCloud’s future has a silver lining originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Welcome to Ask TUAW, our weekly (mostly) question-and-answer column. This week we’re addressing your numerous questions about Apple’s introductions at WWDC. We’ll try to tackle questions about Lion, MobileMe and more.

By the way, we can never have too many questions. You can’t have a Q&A column without the Q, so please go to the comments of this post and ask away. Believe it or not, we’ve had a little bit of a drought of questions, so now’s your chance to get them answered! If you prefer, instead of asking questions in the comments, you can also email your questions directly to ask [at] tuaw.com, or simply ping us on Twitter.

Now, questions! John asks:

How do you remove iCloud music downloads from my iPhone and iPad? There seems to be no way to do it on the device or in iTunes when connected via USB to my computer.

Continue reading Ask TUAW: WWDC/iCloud Edition

Ask TUAW: WWDC/iCloud Edition originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

OK, maybe we won’t get around to talking about food, although the two of us are both accomplished chefs, but we’ll certainly be talking about the two new major operating system versions that will be shipping later this year.

In July, of course, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is slated to drop from Cupertino. For just US$29.99, the new OS is the first Mac operating system designed to be distributed via the Mac App Store. With a load of new features and redesigned user interface, Lion is bound to both excite and frustrate Mac users. Later in 2011, iOS 5 will hit our iOS devices and bring a variety of new features to the mobile space. We still don’t know all of the details about these two new operating systems, but that will be part of the fun of today’s TUAW TV Live.

My guest today is TUAW blogger Rich Gaywood, who will be joining me for an hour of discussion on the forthcoming OS upgrades. From your Mac or PC, go to the next page by clicking the Read More link at the bottom of this post, and you’ll find a livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments.

If you’re stuck in traffic and would like to watch TUAW TV Live, 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 Viewing Application. If you’re on an iPad, you should be able to use the Skyfire Browser to watch the stream, although you will not be able to participate 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 new TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.

Continue reading TUAW TV Live: Steve and Rich talk Lion, iOS 5, and food

TUAW TV Live: Steve and Rich talk Lion, iOS 5, and food originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The beta version of iOS 5 includes a new feature that lets you buy ringtones for alert messages, and is just one of the 200 new features that are to debut in the new operating system.

The ringtone option is found in the settings menu under the sounds. Users select any of the available alerts like Text Tone, New Voicemail, or New Mail to see a list of available sounds. You can choose from any of the default sounds as well as “Buy More Tones.” Clicking on the “Buy More Tones” button in iOS 5 launches the Ringtones Store within iTunes.

This feature and others like it were apparently too small for Jobs and other Apple luminaries to mention in the Monday WWDC keynote. Expect to see more of these little gems surface over the next weeks as developers begin diving into the beta release of iOS 5.

iOS 5 to sell text alert tones through iTunes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Earlier today Twitter user BWilks2001 posted screenshots of what is allegedly Motion 5. Motion is part of the Final Cut Studio suite and while Apple previewed Final Cut Pro X in April, it has not shown off any of the other apps from the suite — even though Apple has said the next Final Cut Studio suite will be available for US$299 in the Mac App Store by the end of June. As for those other apps, all Apple said was “stay tuned.”

Judging from the screenshots, Motion 5 will offer a “rigging” feature. In addition to Motion 5, BWilks2001 said the next Final Cut Studio suite will “supposedly” feature a new version of Color, Apple’s color-timing software. Interestingly, the BWilks2001 Twitter account no longer exists. Whether the user created the account just to leak the images, or if Apple had Twitter pull the account since the two companies are buddy-buddy, is unknown.

Reported Motion 5, Final Cut Pro X screen shots originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dear Aunt TUAW,

Do you know if there exists a nice program or plug-in for safari which decreases the iTunes volume/pauses the current played song, when I am going to watch a YouTube movie?

Each time I click a YouTube movie on Facebook, etc. I just find it really frustrating to go to iTunes, pause the current song and go back to watch the movie… and then restart the current song in iTunes again when the YouTube clip is finished. I want it to work in a similar fashion as on the iPhone.

Kind Regards,

Forrie

Continue reading Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me switch between YouTube and iTunes

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me switch between YouTube and iTunes originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

After we linked to instructions for how to burn a Lion boot disc earlier this week, Nature’s Eye Studios contacted MacStories to let them know they figured out how to get the new OS to boot off a SD card. After downloading Lion from the developer site, the video maker proceeds to wipe a SD card and use the repair option with the Lion disk image as the source to create the boot. Once you’ve created the backup, you can use the SD card as a Lion installer if needed, then pull a backup from Time Capsule.

Keep in mind that the final release of Lion will include a restore partition and Recovery Mode, meaning that you’ll be able to boot your machine from a clean Lion installer at any point without the use of external media (assuming your hard drive’s not wonky). While this means you’re a lot less likely to need install media down the road, it’s nice to know the option is there.

Check out the video below to see this process in action.

How to install Lion from an SD card originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Here’s a very welcome change to Keynote on iOS. The latest update lets you use the Keynote Remote app for iPhone as a remote for Keynote presentations on the iPad.

Reader Andreas sent us a video of the two apps in action (which you can see below). Setup is simple; first launch the slideshow on the iPad and then the remote app on your iPhone. Add the iPad as a source and you’re off!

Of course, it’s been possible to sit or stand next to an iPad running a slideshow and flip through it with your fingers. But many people like to get up and move around while they speak, and now the iPhone offers a way to do that. Good work, Apple!

Thanks, Andreas.

Continue reading Use Keynote Remote for iPhone to control Keynote on iPad

Use Keynote Remote for iPhone to control Keynote on iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments