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Being able to decompress the plethora of archive types that are flying about the intertubes these days is essential. Stuffit Expander, the free extract-only part of the Stuffit suite is a great utility to have when Finder, or even the Unarchiver, just can’t help you out.

There are quite a few free extraction tools available for the Mac. We’ve got the Unarchiver and TinyExpander just to name a few, but Smith Micro’s Stuffit Expander handles several file formats that most others just can’t, including Smith Micro’s .sitx files, with aplomb.

It’s simple to use, either open the archive from Finder with Stuffit Expander, drag-and-drop the file onto the Expander program or open the archive directly within the app. You can even just drag-and-drop your file onto Stuffit Expander’s dock icon to quickly extract the file. If you’re going to use it as your primary archive extractor you can also assign various different archive file formats to Stuffit Expander from within the program preferences.

When other extractors just can’t cope with that unusual archive type, Stuffit Expander steps in. From MIME, StuffitX and yEncode, to AppleSingle, ARC and .btoa files, Stuffit Expander can get you what you need and for that reason, regardless of whether you use the Unarchiver or its kin, it’s an essential free Mac app.

Stuffit Expander is available for free from the Mac App Store.

TUAW’s Daily Mac App: Stuffit Expander originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a world where there are plenty of PDF tools, PDF Expert distinguishes itself with a few key features. I’ve been a fan of Readdle’s past products, and PDF Expert aims to give you a truly universal tool for dealing with PDFs, whether you are a student, educator, lawyer, doctor or anyone dealing with the “paperless office.” Dave gave it a look back in March, but some new features have been added.

With PDF Expert you’re able to sign documents with your finger or stylus, send documents to 9 different services (Readdle has their own) and my favorite: fill out PDF forms. On top of these features you get the usual stable of PDF management tools for sorting and annotating your files.

To see a walkthrough of these features, check out the video below. [Video was pointing to the wrong place for a bit there, apologies. -Ed.]

Video App Demo: PDF Expert originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has released a new developer build of Chrome that fixes some of the browser navigation gestures that were disrupted with the release of Lion. On pre-Lion systems, a three-finger swipe inside of Chrome would move the user a page forwards or backwards in their web browsing history. Under Lion however, that same three-finger swipe is a system-wide gesture that moves users between different full-screen apps.

The newest developer build of Chrome for Mac, version 14.0.835.0, fixes the gesture confusion. Now in Chrome users will use a two-finger swipe to move a page forwards or backwards in their web browsing history. This adheres to Lions built-in gestures, leaving the three-finger swipe for full-screen app switching. No word yet on an exact release date for this next version of Chrome, but Cnet thinks it will be at least a few weeks until it’s rolled out to all users.

Google Chrome team working on multi-touch gestures originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I still have Lion on the brain, so today’s all-live broadcast is going to feature your questions about Lion in the chat room and my attempts to answer those questions. My broadcast machine is now running El Gato Grande, so I’ll be able to fumble around looking for an answer while you watch.

As many long-time viewers know, we use Ustream for the show. Well, just yesterday the company came out with a new version of Ustream for iPad (free) that is awesome. Not only can you watch the show or broadcast your own show if you so desire, but all of the chat tools are now available on your favorite tablet.

As usual, I’ll be starting the show at 5 PM EDT (2 PM PDT/10 PM BST) sharp, and we’ll take a few minutes to chat before the demos start. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you’re unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in iTunes or any other favorite podcatching app. The past shows are also available on the TUAW YouTube channel.

TUAW TV Live today at 5 PM: Stump the chump with Lion questions originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I love Lion’s idea of consumer-grade version control, which Apple calls Auto Save and Versions. I’m just not particularly happy with its GUI. That’s because it relies on a new vocabulary of menu choices and on users understanding what’s going on under the hood.

Take the save options for example. You can “save a version,” “duplicate,” etc. These are very good tasks to do. My question though is if these are the right tasks and the right names for the typical Lion user.

If you go out and ask a bunch of people what the “save a version” menu item means, you’re going to get a lot of answers, many of which don’t agree. In Lion, this menu option creates a new revision point for your document, committing your changes into the version control system for your file.

After saving a version, you can later revert to that save by browsing versions or by reverting to the most recent commit point. It’s like Time Machine for document edits, and it’s very, very handy.

As a developer, that’s familiar ground. We’ve been doing this stuff for aeons.

For consumers, it’s new. It’s somewhat ground breaking. It’s really putting the consumer’s needs first. This is what Apple should be doing, where it should be innovating.

The problem is this. That “save a version” description doesn’t really communicate what’s going on. This is why you get all those diverging and conflicting “explanations” of what the menu option does. It’s not expressing itself well.

I personally think Apple should have left the menu item as “Save.” Save describes what’s going on with the file, and communicates that in just four characters. “If I click Save, the computer will save this file.” If Lion passively creates versioned backups, all the better. Not only am I using a simple 4-character command, Lion’s adding value to that 4-character command for me.

Awesomesauce.

Engineers shouldn’t feel obliged to differentiate new features when people can keep on using them as if they were the old ones. Apple could have just used the original name and added value to it behind the scenes.

The old save was good. The new save is better. But Apple really should reconsider that menu option.

OS X Lion Version control, the File menu, and me originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple and arch-rival/partner Samsung are both looking at creating consumer electronic devices powered by the sun, but don’t expect to see them in the marketplace anytime soon.

According to a post on Asian technology website Digitimes, Taiwan-based solar firms are being considered as part of the supply chain for solar-powered devices from Apple, but these companies think that for the foreseeable future they’d be niche products. To get costs down, devices would need a standard-sized solar cell that could be mass-produced and extremely light.

A number of solar cell manufacturers are looking at organic photovoltaic cells, which have a fairly low conversion efficiency, light weight, and low production cost. Only about 5 to 8 percent of the light energy falling on these cells is converted to power, meaning that the solar cells either have to get more efficient or be sized larger. The latter option is contrary to contemporary electronics design, and it’s unlikely that consumers would want to move to larger devices.

One technology that’s being considered is the solar cell on paper invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). These organic photovoltaic cells are extremely light, but at present a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate is being used by most manufacturers due to poor yields for the paper cells.

Still, it’s good to see that our favorite manufacturer is looking into solar-powered devices. I look forward to the day when I can charge up a MacBook Air simply by working outside or under a bright light.

Apple reportedly considering solar-powered devices originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I’ve been trying to figure out if there is a way to add a URL to Reading List from outside of Safari, i.g. right-clicking a link in a Twitter post and using an Automator action from the services menu, etc… I don’t see ANYTHING in Automator or AppleScript about Reading List. This seems very stupid to me being that the only way Reading List has a chance of getting used instead of Instapaper is to throw things into it from every possible browsing location. Have you come across anything yet?

Your loving nephew,

Dan B

Dear Dan,

Auntie hasn’t had much opportunity to explore the new Reading List under the hood but she did find that the standard Safari bookmarks property list has been expanded. In ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist, Auntie found references like this:

ReadingList = {
DateLastFetched = 2011-07-12 23:21:06 +0000;
PreviewText = “SCHEDULES RTD SYSTEM INFO RIDER TOOLS FARES & PASSES BUSINESS CENTER INSIDE RTD SEARCH View the entire RTD system at a glanc”;
};
URIDictionary = {
title = “http://www3.rtd-denver.com/elbert/SystemMap/”;
};
URLString = “http://www3.rtd-denver.com/elbert/SystemMap/”;
WebBookmarkType = WebBookmarkTypeLeaf;
WebBookmarkUUID = “EBC18578-DF36-46B3-86A5-561DBCB0D7AC”;
},

She hasn’t had much luck discovering where the local files are cached yet, but surely one of her many TUAW nieces and nephews may be able to help out here in the comments, possibly explaining if setting items in the ReadingList here is alone sufficient to make them cache out.

Hugs,

Aunt TUAW

Dear Aunt TUAW: How do I edit that Reading List thing? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Since Amazon acquiesced to Apple’s onerous rules and removed the one-click buy button from the Kindle apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, a couple of mainstream websites have whined that it’s “too hard to buy ebooks on your iPad now.” Yes, it is horribly difficult — you now have to click or tap twice to buy and download a book instead of just once. I’m going to take you through this back-breaking and time-consuming process, just to show you how hard Apple has made it for us to buy ebooks from anywhere but the iBookstore.

To start, launch Safari on your device and navigate to the Kindle bookstore. To keep from wearing yourself out doing this in the future, add a button to your iPad or iPhone home screen by tapping the Share button in Safari and then tapping the “Add to Home Screen” button. Make sure you’re logged in with the account that you use for your Kindle purchases, and then find the book you want to purchase in the Kindle Store.

Now, here comes the hard part, so be sure to pay attention. Over on the right side of the screen is a button marked “Buy now with 1-click.” Just below it is a drop-down menu listing all of your Kindle devices, which in my case consists of the Kindle app on two Macs, an iPad 2, and an iPhone 4.

Select the first device you want to have the ebook delivered to, and then click (or tap) the Buy now button — that’s the first tap, and in the old days before Apple made our lives difficult with their burdensome rules, that would be the only tap you’d have to make. Instead, now a new page appears thanking you for your purchase. In my example, I picked my iPad 2 as the target for the book, and the web page asked if I wanted to open Kindle for iPad to begin downloading the book.

With a tap of the “Go to Kindle for iPad” button, the Kindle app launches and the ebook is downloaded. What??? I have to make a second tap to download my book? I demand that Apple make retribution for this oppressive over-control of my life!

It’s not as easy as just tapping one button in the Kindle app and having the ebook automagically appear on your bookshelf, but once you’ve found the book, it just takes two taps for it to show up. And yes, I am being totally sarcastic with this post.

Kindle ebooks: How to buy and install them now that the store is gone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most fake Apple products make us roll our eyes, but this one is cute. Mostly because it’s not trying to be an iPhone. The “shockingly thick” device is actually a personal cooling device, or “fan.”

To use it, slide off the real panel and remove the thin blue sponge inside. Get it wet, wring it out and put it back inside. Replace the back cover and then press the Home Button. The fan whirrs into action, providing the user with a cool, refreshing breeze. Keep the wind blowing by recharging the internal Lithium-ion battery by connecting to your Mac’s USB port.

Pro tip: add a little perfume to the sponge for scented refreshment.

White “iPhone 4” Air Cooler from M.I.C. Gadget on Vimeo.

Cool off with an “iPhone 4” fan originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Affinity Labs has sued both Apple and car audio maker AAMP over audio technology patents. Affinity accuses the companies of violating two U.S. patents, one for a “Content Delivery System and Method” and the other for a “Method for Managing Media.” Affinity contends that the iPhone violates both patents, while the iPhone and iPod touch allegedly violates the first patent only.

Apple has not yet commented on the suit. You can read the full complaint here.

Affinity Labs sues Apple over iPods, iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After installing OS X Lion last week, one of the things I’ve noticed is that Safari tends to run away with enormous amounts of RAM over time. A subprocess called “Safari Web Content” will sometimes use over a gigabyte of RAM. Since my Mac maxes out at 4 GB, and since it’s a rare day that I’m only using Safari and nothing else, having so much of my system’s RAM gobbled up by one process was bogging everything down.

Safari Web Content is a sandboxed subprocess of Safari that runs all webpage rendering. If you’ve got several dozen tabs open at once, it might make sense for the subprocess to use up that much RAM; however, I was seeing huge amounts of RAM usage even with only three or four tabs open. Four webpages shouldn’t be consuming over a gigabyte of RAM. Many people’s knee-jerk reaction has been to blame Flash for the excessive memory consumption, but that’s not the case here; Flash runs as its own separate process and has nothing to do with the “Safari Web Content” process or its runaway RAM usage.

A few people have recommended disabling any Safari extensions you may have running to reclaim a big chunk of the RAM used up by Safari Web Content. Whether it’s a bug in Safari 5.1 or incompatibility with older extensions, the theory goes that one or more of the extensions I’ve been running was the cause for Safari’s excessive RAM usage. Disabling all but a handful of my Safari extensions brought the Safari Web Content subprocess’s RAM usage down from 1.06 GB or more down to a much more manageable 300 – 320 MB with five tabs opened, but over time usage climbed to over 600 MB again, so it’s possible one of my enabled extensions is the culprit.

As I write this, it’s been around ten minutes since I restarted Safari the last time. I have only three extensions running — Better Facebook, Rapportive, and ClickToFlash — and I’ve browsed about ten pages between three tabs since relaunching Safari. Already Safari Web Content has consumed nearly 300 MB of RAM.

A subsequent test with all extensions disabled has caused Safari Web Content to go from its initial 148 MB all the way up to 251 MB of RAM after browsing 39 webpages — most of them on Wikipedia, which isn’t exactly known for data-heavy content. This doesn’t seem normal to me.

This bug definitely seems to have been introduced in OS X Lion or Safari 5.1, and hopefully it’s one we’ll see addressed in a forthcoming update.

OS X Lion Bug: Safari guzzling massive amounts of RAM originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’re in for a treat with this one — Bit Pilot is a dual-stick shooter without any actual shooting. You guide a tiny little ship around a screen while asteroids and various obstacles float past you, and try to stay away from trouble for as long as you can. Shield powerups also float by, but over time, of course, things get tougher and tougher, until you’re frantically trying to dodge everything the game tosses your way.

The ambient feeling of this one is where the real brilliance comes in — some awesome music and really amazing pixelated graphics sell the concept perfectly, and I love how the game basically unlocks itself as you play it. Like Tiny Wings, another really solid one-man title, different modes and goals open up the more you play, so there’s always something new to find, unlock, or aim for.

Zach Gage’s Bit Pilot is an excellent title, and well worth the buck. It’s universal with Game Center integration. I’m going to say this one is a must-have, no matter what kind of games you enjoy on Apple’s touchscreen devices.

TUAW’s Daily iPhone App: Bit Pilot originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For some time the free Augmented Reality SDK from Qualcomm – QCAR – has been available for Android devices.   The SDK offers some great capabilities and can track 3D objects, images, and frame markers.  Many commercial apps are already available on Android that utilize the QCAR SDK.

Today the beta version for iOS of QCAR was released for both the iOS SDK from Apple, and the Unity 3D game engine for iOS devices.

You can find the download the SDK here:
QCAR For iOS Download

You will need to register to download.

Included are five different demo projects, here’s a video of the Dominoes example in action:

A great day if you want to do some AR programming on iOS devices.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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There are so many useful open source libraries available for iOS devices.   I haven’t seen one with such a wide variety of uses as this toolkit.

With this toolkit there are over 40 useful open source (Apache licensed) libraries that you can use in your iOS apps.  All are useful, and the library is designed so that you won’t need to clutter your app by including a massive number of files – in most cases you only need to add a single class to your app in order to add the functionality.   You just need to add what you want to use within your app.

The open source project is known as the Cooliris-Toolkit from Cooliris, and has already been used in several apps by Cooliris including their fantastic Discover Wikipedia In Magazine app.

Here’s a listing of the classes within the toolkit taken from the project homepage:

• ApplicationDelegate: This classes offers numerous built-in functionalities for a UIApplication delegate in cooperation with the Logging and Task classes. Your application delegate class should subclass this class instead of NSObject to benefit automatically from all these features.
• AutoresizingView: UIView subclass that automatically resizes a content subview using a “center”, “resize”, “aspect-fit” or “aspect-fill” method.
• BasicAnimation: Simple CABasicAnimation subclass that allows to specify per-instance delegate and callbacks on animation completion.
• CameraViewController: UIViewController subclass to replace UIImagePickerController to take photos with customizable user interface, image scaling and EXIF metadata (including GPS location) inclusion.
• Crypto: Provides C function wrappers for MD5 and SHA2-256 hash computations.
• Database: Implements a powerful SQLite Objectice-C wrapper with automatic schema creation from class properties.
• DataWrapper: Simple NSData subclass that allows to wrap a block of memory and provide a custom C callback for release.
• DiskCache: Manages a cache on disk of NSCoding compatible objects or raw data files which can be purged to a maximum size.
• DocumentView: Displays and manages layout and user interaction of a set of “page-type” subviews arranged horizontally.
• ExtendedPageControl: Implements a page control like the one on the home screen of iOS.
• Extensions_AmazonS3: Category on NSMutableURLRequest to sign HTTP requests for Amazon S3.
• Extensions_CoreAnimation: Categories on Core Animation classes to implement various convenience features.
• Extensions_Foundation: Categories on Foundation classes to implement various convenience features.
• Extensions_UIKit: Categories on UIKit classes to implement various convenience features.
• FileSystemView: Subclass of GridView that displays the contents of a directory.
• FormTableController: UITableView subclass that implements a form with text, password or checkbox fields.
• GridView: Displays and manages layout and user interaction with a grid of subviews.
• HTTPURLConnection: Subclass of NSURLConnection that implements synchronous HTTP operations and offers features like downloading to disk or resuming downloads.
• ImageCell: UITableViewCell subclass to display images.
• ImageUtilities: Low-level C functions to perform graphic operations on CGImages.
• InfiniteView: Displays and manages layout and user interaction of a set of “page-type” subviews arranged both horizontally and vertically in an infinite presentation.
• Keychain: Objective-C wrapper to store and retrieve passwords from the Keychain.
• LibXMLParser: Objective-C wrapper for LibXML.
• Logging: Powerful logging facility with history recording and playback, and well as remote logging over Telnet.
• MapAnnotation: Basic MKAnnotation conforming class to use with MapKit.
• MovieView: Loads and displays a movie from a URL.
• NavigationControl: Implements a navigation control with customizable markers and thumb.
• NetReachability: Objective-C wrapper for the System Configuration reachability APIs.
• OverlayView: Displays a simple pop-over view with an arrow at a given location.
• PubNub: Clean and simple Objective-C interface for http://www.pubnub.com/.
• RemoteUpdater: Allows one-way synchronization of “extra content”, typically Zip archives which get decompressed on arrival, from a remote server to the application.
• RichString: Basic replacement for NSAttributedString that allows archiving of itself and its attachments.
• ServerConnection: Provides an abstract state-machine for applications that needs to be continuously connected to a server and automatically reconnect / disconnect depending on network conditions.
• ShakeMotion: Wrapper around UIAccelerometer to detect shake motions.
• SliderControl: Implements a slider control with customizable graphic assets.
• SmartDescription: Replacement for NSObject’s -description that automatically prints the values of the object’s properties.
• SwitchCell: UITableViewCell subclass to display switches.
• Task: Implements a powerful background tasks management system for your application: task dependencies, task groups, independent completion delegates… Works on iOS 3.2 using threads and GCD on iOS 4.0 and later.
• TextFieldCell: UITableViewCell subclass to display text fields.
• TextIndex: Offers a simple text indexer for Western languages.
• UnitTest: Base class to implement unit tests.
• WebViewController: UIViewController subclass that displays a UIWebView along with back and forward buttons.
• WorkerThread: Allows to start and wait for completion of background threads in an atomic way.
• ZoomView: Displays a content subview (typically a UIImageView) with automatic pan and zoom behavior.

You can find the checkout page here:
http://code.google.com/p/cooliris-toolkit/source/checkout

This is definitely a toolkit that I will be using again and again.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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