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While Steve Jobs’s passing came with a lot of powerful emotional effects, it did unfortunately arrive with at least one practical effect that has to be dealt with sooner or later: Apple needs a new Chairman of the Board. A few experts say in this Reuters piece that it will probably be a tough choice for Apple to make. On the one hand, Apple’s strength is in Jobs’ legacy — the company has to be committed to continuing to follow his vision, because that’s what got them where they are today. On the other hand this may be a chance for Apple to diversify its team a bit, and bring in some new personnel who don’t have a past history of politics inside the company.

There’s of course a third option, which is that Apple’s board doesn’t appoint a new chairman for a while, instead working on other priorities before taking on the enormous task of filling Jobs’s spot. That might be the best option — before Jobs took on the Chairman of the Board position as he retired, the company didn’t have one anyway.

Otherwise, Tim Cook’s name is apparently going around as a possible successor, but insiders are saying that as CEO, he’s already too busy to take on anything else. We’ll have to see — these next few months will be critical for Apple, as it tries to turn and face the future without the visionary that has pushed it along for so long.

Apple’s board in a state of transition originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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U2 lead singer Bono paid tribute to Steve Jobs with kind comments for the man who turned the music industry upside down with the iPod and iTunes. Bono called Jobs “the hardware/software Elvis” and described him as a man who was “only interested in doing truly great things.” Speaking of his influence on music and technology, Bono said, “Jobs changed music, he changed film, he changed the personal computer and turned telephony on its head while he was at it.”

Bono worked closely with Jobs and Apple in the mid-2000s on a U2 iPod with a signature black and red design. The U2 iPod has similar specs to its comparable non-U2 iPod models, but included a download voucher for premium U2 content and the autographs of band members engraved on the back. Apple also released a variety of iPods and an iPad 2 cover under product RED, an African AIDs charity founded in 2006 by U2 front man Bono and Bobby Shriver.

Bono compares Steve Jobs to Elvis originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s funny. As the cameras in our iPhones get more spectacular capabilities, more apps are appearing every day to give those beautiful high-resolution photos scratches, tints, and frames that make them look … well, not so nice.

Analog (Realmac Software, US$7.99 introductory price) is another Mac app that lets you change the look of your photos with an assortment of filters and borders. Others that you might want to check out before you make your choice are Flare ($9.99 through the Mac App Store right now or $19.95 on the Iconfactory website) and FX Photo Studio ($9.99).

All of these apps pretty much do the same thing. You open a photo file or drop it onto the app, and you’re presented with a number of preset filters that change texture, blur, saturation, brightness, contrast and tint. There are probably more settings, but I’m just picking a few. Why would you want to do this to a nice, clear digital photo? A lot of photos look good, but seem to lack emotional impact. Adding an effect to a photo often brings back that impact, by reminding people of photos from the past or by adding dramatic coloration.

Of the apps I’ve listed here, Analog is by far the easiest to use. You just drag a photo to the app, drop it on the blank area of the Analog user interface, and then click on a filter or border. A small pop-up shows four icons, which are used to toggle between your original photo and the processed image, crop the image, rotate the image, or share. Sharing can be done a number of ways — saving it to your disk, sending it via email, or saving to CloudApp, Facebook, Flickr, or Picasa.

I ran into an interesting and very repeatable error when dragging photos from iPhoto version 9.1.5 (615) to Analog. Each time I did this, the image ended up with a black square in the middle of it. Once this bug started, any photo coming from either the Finder or iPhoto ended up with a black square in it.

Analog comes with 19 filters (plus “normal”), some of which are quite nice. However, the app lacks the fine control that is included with Flare, where you can actually adjust each filter and setting. Flare even lets you save and share your self-designed filters, and there’s actually a preset library where you can download new presets for free. That means that Flare not only has 31 filters — 11 more than Analog — but you can download well over 50 other effect presets to add to the capabilities of the app.

There are also 13 frames that come with Analog. That’s a bit of a bonus, since Flare doesn’t come with many effects that add a border — although you can add them through the preset editing function.

Realmac needs to add to the number of filters in Analog as soon as possible, and should also consider adding the capability of tweaking the effects so users can create their own. All in all, Analog is an easy-to-use app, but either needs a price cut or more capabilities to compete against some of the existing photo effects apps.

Update: Realmac Software spokesman Nik Fletcher noted that they’re aware of the “black box” bug and are working on a fix. In addition, Realmac is working on adding more filters and upload destinations, and also adding the capability to adjust effects in the future.

Daily Mac App: Analog (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Esquire’s Elizabeth Gunnison wrote a speculative piece about cafés in Apple Stores. In short, she thinks it’s a great idea. In her piece she writes:

Think about it: Apple’s retail stores are purpose-built for sucking people in and holding them hostage for hours, what with the rows and rows of shiny new devices, the Genius Bar, and their own roster of educational seminars. Why not add a café? Food and beverage margins are nothing compared to what Apple makes off its iPads and Macbooks, but a café would be just one more way of drawing shoppers toward the mothership and keeping them there.

Interestingly enough, Apple itself explored the idea of coffee-centric retail in the 1990s, and then dropped it. It’s not hard to understand why: the concept is clever, but it wouldn’t work. Apple Stores are sleek and sexy and…noisy. When I go to a café, I want free Wi-Fi, sure, but I also want to hear myself think. Even the most crowded Starbucks in London offers at least one corner that’s relatively quiet. And that’s because sales people aren’t constantly pitching the latest product while customers ask question after question.

Apple Stores are sleek, sexy and sterile. Café’s are usually the exact opposite. I want the place where I buy my tech to look like a spaceship. I want the place where I buy my coffee and read the paper to be comfy and cozy, not blindingly white.

If Apple were to add cafés to its retail stores it would require a big redesign. Sure, it could work in some of the bigger stores in London, New York, and Paris if Apple added a dedicated café — one that looked like a café, and not a stand that some bored employee set up with his Nespresso machine. But smaller stores, like the one in Highland Park, Illinois, can’t gut half of their retail space to sell coffee.

As for the idea of cafés as a customer draw…Apple hardly needs that gimmick. It’s having no trouble attracting retail customers. In fact, some people just hang out there, despite the lack of coffee. The last thing Apple Stores need are hipster geeks who aren’t buying anything sticking around even longer checking their Facebook messages on a 27″ iMac while they wait for another refill of their macchiato.

Let Apple sell computers; Starbucks can worry about the coffee.

[photo adapted from work by Roger Price]

I’ll take the MacBook, hold the macchiato: no coffee in Apple Stores, please originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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