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The Associate Press reports that Apple has quietly incorporated Cherokee language support into iOS. Cherokee tribal officials have been begun to worry about the demise of the Cherokee language as the tribe ages and its younger members increasingly use the English language — and iPhones. However, instead of seeing technology as a threat, three years ago Cherokee tribal leaders opened talks with Apple to include native support for the Cherokee language in iOS.

This fall, Apple replied to the Cherokees’ request and announced that it was adding the Cherokee language to the roughly fifty languages supported by iOS. Apple’s announcement was a surprise to Joseph Erb, who works in the Cherokee Nation’s language technology division. He told the AP, “There are countries vying to get on these devices for languages, so we are pretty excited we were included.”

The written Cherokee language was created over 200 years ago when a blacksmith named Sequoyah converted the spoken Cherokee language into text. Use of the language has diminished in recent decades. Only 8,000 of the 290,000 members of the Cherokee tribe still speak the language — a number the tribe hopes to increase with a little help from Apple.

iOS 4.1 quietly added Cherokee language support originally appeared on TUAW on Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As the end of 2010 approaches, I started looking back over the Mac applications that I used this year to see which ones stood out. They weren’t necessarily released this year (although many were), but they were apps that helped me get stuff done in 2010. I didn’t try to come up with some specific number or any other predefined criteria, I just took a good hard look at my Applications folder, menu bar and System Preferences. They are presented in no particular order.

Dropbox reached 1.0 in 2010, and the milestone release included some significant Mac-specific features such as Extended Attribute Sync. This was also the first year that I exceeded the free space Dropbox provides, and paid for a 50 GB account. Thanks to the referral program, educational user referral bonus, and extra free space programs that Dropbox offers, I have 83.4 GB of space in my “50 GB” account.

TUAW folks have written extensively about our love of Dropbox, but if you’ve somehow missed it: Dropbox is a folder on your computer which syncs (and therefore is “backed up” and version-managed) online, and which you can then sync to all of your other Mac, Windows, or Linux computers. (Want to know more? Check out the official Dropbox tour.) Thanks to the API which the company announced back in May, many iOS developers have added Dropbox syncing as well, making 2010 a pretty significant year for Dropbox and its users. (Cost: 2 GB/free; $9.99/month or $99.00/year for 50 GB; or $19.99/month or $199.00/year for 100 GB.)

Read on for the rest of 2010’s best Mac apps…

Continue reading The best Mac applications I used in 2010

The best Mac applications I used in 2010 originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I love my iPhone and iPad, but two slight revisions to iOS would make my holiday wishes come true. These may not be earth-shattering to you, but they would make my life much simpler.

Mail

It’s lovely that iOS pushes mail to my my devices, but Apple just didn’t go far enough with it. When mail is pushed, or fetched for that matter, the only things pushed are what belong in your inbox. I have around 20 IMAP mailboxes that mail gets filtered into using Rules in Mac Mail, and nothing gets pushed to them. I verified this with Apple.

Since I spend a good deal of time with no Wi-Fi, and in many cases no cellular connection either, what I would love is to have an option where all mail gets pushed to me, regardless of what IMAP mailbox it’s in. That way I can take my iDevice on a train or a plane and catch up on all my email while offline.

I understand that this would be a drain on the battery, but if you were able to do it using a toggle, and not a persistent setting, I don’t think it would matter. You would use it when you want and not be bothered with the power drain when you’re not. I have a feeling this would help out a lot of people.

See the other wish I’ve got right after the break.

Continue reading Two things iOS 4.2.1 is missing

Two things iOS 4.2.1 is missing originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has filed two new trademarks right before the holidays this week. VoicePass is the first one — it’s filed in the category of “construction and repair services,” so it likely has to do with supporting broken devices. MacNN says that the VoicePass service is used when calling in to customer support — certain customers in the US and Canada can have a support number recognized automatically by the phone systerm, avoiding having to identify themselves every time they call. So this likely isn’t a new service or implementation — Apple is likely just filing to cover a little-known service it already runs.

Same deal with Express Lane, another trademark filed by Apple this week. Express Lane is Apple’s streamlined product repair system, and the company has filed for a trademark on the name involving “web based support and diagnostic services by using resources and tools for computer software and computer hardware provided on-line and over telecommunications networks.” Again — this is a service that Apple already runs, but the company is laying claim to the names in these areas, just in case.

Apple trademarks ‘Express Lane’ and ‘VoicePass’ originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I just got a nice holiday email from Alex Komorov, the publisher of Accordéon, in which Santa plays Jingle Bells on the new Christmas version of the virtual accordion for the iPad. The holiday version costs US$3.99 and is decked out for the holidays. It includes a learning center where you can learn to play popular songs easily since the keys are lit up directing you what to push.

The only holiday song at present is Jingle Bells, which you can see played after the break. There is also an iPhone and iPod touch app called Baby Accordéon that sells for $1.99; it has not been revised for the holidays.

Both Alex and I wish you the Merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Years.

Continue reading Santa plays Jingle Bells on a Christmas version of Accordéon

Santa plays Jingle Bells on a Christmas version of Accordéon originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome to the TUAW Holiday Gift Guide! We’ve sorted the treasure from the junk and are serving up suggestions to make your holiday gift-giving a little easier.

The best holiday helpers are often the ones you already have right at home. Here are some ideas for last minute creations that are fun to put together with your kids.

Whether they involve putting together an iPad Moose costume (made out of felt, popsicle sticks, and rubber bands) or building a holder for iAccessories, child-made gifts don’t have to be perfect or usable in the long term. They just have to be made with love.

Here’s a gallery to give you some ideas as a jumping-off point. But don’t feel limited by what you see here. Macaroni, glitter glue, pipe cleaners and felt offer a range of expression unlimited except by imagination.

TUAW’s Holiday Gift Guide: Crafts with the kids originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad has gained some new features that make it even more useful to business people on the go.

Quickoffice, Inc. announced today that its mobile office suite for the iPad now has an editor for Microsoft PowerPoint files in addition to the Excel and Word editors that were available earlier. You can manipulate font type, color, size, and style, and can add, delete or reorder slides in a PowerPoint deck. Graphical editing tools allow object layering changes, insertion and editing of text boxes, and insertion and rotation of common shapes, images and text boxes.

Another feature of the PowerPoint editor is that it allows the insertion of images from inside the app or from the iPad’s Photo Library. When presenting from Quickoffice, the app supports video output using the Apple Dock Connector to VGA Adapter and provides a built-in “laser pointer” for pointing out highlights on the slides. There’s also a filmstrip preview of slides to assist in making presentations on external monitors.

While Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad now allows round-tripping of animations and transitions between the desktop app and iPad, there is still no way to edit or show custom transitions or animations on the iPad. The Quickoffice developers have noted that this is in consideration for a future update. It’s also worth mentioning that the PowerPoint editing feature only supports PPT (Office 2003 format) files; PPTX (Office 2007/2010/2011 native format) presentations can be viewed and shown, but not edited yet.

The app now supports additional cloud storage services, including Box.net, Dropbox, Google Docs, Huddle, MobileMe, and SugarSync.

If you already own the suite, this is a free update for you. To kick off the new update, Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad is on sale in the App Store for US$14.99, 40% off of the usual $24.99 price.

Thanks for Mike Rose for the gallery screenshots!

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad gets PowerPoint editing for Christmas originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No two ways about it: the day before Christmas Eve is a sleepy, office mostly empty, finish your online shopping, take a long lunch kind of day. It would take a very special press release to break through the pre-holiday, here-comes-CES fog that’s hovering over the TUAW home offices this week. I’m here to tell you, though, that one very special press release just arrived in our inboxes, and we’re drooling with anticipation about this product. Literally drooling with anticipation.

Yes, it’s the iPhone peripheral that every red-blooded American male absolutely needs for next 4th of July: the iGrill. It’s a meat thermometer… with Bluetooth… and an app. You set it up by your grill. You put the probe in the roast, ribs, steak or salmon. You walk away. You enjoy a frosty beverage and tasty appetizers with your guests and family, knowing your iPhone or iPad will tell you when the food is ready.

The base unit operates as a stand-alone thermometer, but if you’re within the 200 foot (optimistic!) wireless range, you can track the progress of your culinary effort remotely. The app will alert you when your food hits the target heat, or give you a readout of the estimated cooking time remaining. It also includes cooking tips, recipes and more content for the backyard chef.

Got more than one kind of food on the grill? Fear not; the base unit has dual probe support, so you can track both target temperatures at once. The catch? Each probe is $20, and when you add that to the $99 price of the main unit (which includes a single probe) you’ve spent a lot of dough on what is, essentially, a digital meat thermometer that serves the same function as a $10 manual unit. You can get a really simple or quite sophisticated remote-enabled sensor for well under $40.

Even still. So very Jetsons. The same neural pathways that trigger hunger at the smell of grilling meat are telling us… we want. If you’re going to CES, look for iDevices and the iGrill in the Dr. Bott booth.

[h/t Engadget]

Continue reading iGrill wireless thermometer combines meat, heat, iPhone

iGrill wireless thermometer combines meat, heat, iPhone originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The good thing about iOS text editors and other programs which can sync with Dropbox is that you don’t have to use iTunes to back up the documents that you edit on your iPad or iPhone/iPod touch. The bad thing is that almost all of them save their files in a specific named folder in your Dropbox. This can lead to a lot of folders that you probably never use on your Mac, but end up looking at anytime you open your Dropbox.

OS X gives you a way to hide those folders, but it usually involves the use of a command line utility called SetFile, which isn’t included with Mac OS X unless you also install the developer tools. That’s where Cloak (free, 611 KB .zip download) comes in.

Cloak will let you hide or show any file, either by renaming the file to start with a period, or by setting the “Invisible” Finder Attribute. Renaming the file will cause problems with the aforementioned Dropbox syncing, so you want to use the Invisible Finder Attribute.

Read on for the nitty gritty…

Continue reading Unclutter your Dropbox (or any folder) with Cloak

Unclutter your Dropbox (or any folder) with Cloak originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OK, I’m not gonna lie. By this point you are pretty hosed if you haven’t bought anything for the 25th (although if you move quickly, both Apple and Amazon will still do their darndest to get you your orders on Friday). Despite a sagging economy, shoppers are out there in droves. We wish you the best in your hunt for bargains, and so we bring you more deals courtesy of dealnews.

• iTunes Store: iPhone App Store Freebies: Snowing Screensaver, Vocal Training, more
• iTunes Store: Doodle Devil for iPhone / iPod touch for free
• Apple Store: Refurb Apple Mac mini Core 2 Duo desktops from $589 + free shipping
• Meritline: OtterBox Impact Case for Apple iPhone 4 for $10 + free shipping
• iTunes Store: SoundHound with unlimited song IDs for iPhone downloads for free
• iTunes Store: iPad App Price Drops: Super Badminton 2010, Catan HD, Trainz, more
• Western Digital Store: Western Digital Outlet: My Book 1TB USB HDD for $45 + free shipping, more
• ArtsCow.com: 8 Custom Photobooks for free + $8 s&h
• Apple Store: Free shipping via next-day on orders of $50 or more at Apple Store, more
• Seagate: Seagate Outlet Sale + 10% off coupon: 250GB HDD for $36 + $8 s&h, more
• Apple Store: Refurbished Apple iPads: Up to $100 off, from $429 + free shipping
• Cellular Factory: Super Clean High-Tech Cleaning Compound for $2 + free shipping

Daily Deals for December 23, 2010 originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you are tired of standing in long lines at the mall with your children while they wait to see Santa Claus, then you should scope out your local Apple store instead. Spotted at Apple stores in the U.S. and Canada is a clever Apple display featuring a FaceTime-ing Santa. Inspired by Apple’s recent holiday advertising blitz, the FaceTime Santa is shown talking to one iPhone while a second iPhone displays an endless loop of FaceTime conversations.

Clever parents with young and gullible children could even pull off the unthinkable by simulating a conversation with the Apple store Santa. Just hire your brother Bob to don the appropriate white beard and red attire, fire up FaceTime and you have the makings for a conversation your children will remember for years to come.

Cool Apple Store Christmas display features a FaceTime-ing Santa originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has been hit with yet another patent infringement lawsuit this week. The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for Southern California by the Multimedia Patent Trust. The MPT is a subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent that was formed when Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies in 2006. The MPT controls and defends a block of patents previously owned by Lucent. The company has a litigious history and has filed infringement lawsuits against Microsoft, Dell, Disney and DirecTV.

The four patents listed in this infringement case focus on video codecs with Apple allegedly infringing on three of the four patents. Cited in the complaint are Apple’s MacBook lineup of laptops, the iPhone and its video editing solution, Final Cut Pro. Apple is not alone in this lawsuit; Canon cameras and camcorders, LG mobile phones and TiVo DVR equipment are also being targeted by MPT. MPT is asking for past royalty payments from these alleged infringing products and, at least for Apple, is not seeking an injunction.

Alcatel-Lucent trust sues Apple and others over video patents originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When technology meets art, the possibilities are endless. We have seen the iPad used as a canvas to paint portraits, most recently of Woz, and multiple iPads used to create a giant Lara Croft-emblazoned iPhone. This latest iPad-themed artistic experiment takes a traditional sculpture of Plato and places an anachronistic iPad into his hands. No longer contemplating the pressing social issues of his time, the great thinker can now ponder the meaning of FaceTime and whether he really wants it on his iPad, the influence of the App Store, and the validity of the reality distortion field.

After the break, you will find a time-lapse video detailing the sculpting process which starts with a simple wire frame armature and ends with an iPad-toting Greek philosopher. It is definitely worth the four minutes it takes to watch it from beginning to end.

Thanks to Adam who created this work of art and sent it in!

Continue reading Plato shown holding an iPad in a creative clay sculpture (video)

Plato shown holding an iPad in a creative clay sculpture (video) originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here we go. A few of the hack-and-slash RPGs we’ve covered in this space have been compared to Secret of Mana, but now Square Enix has gone ahead and released the actual thing on iOS. Secret of Mana borrows a little bit from Legend of Zelda in that you always see all of your enemies on screen, and hack away at them in real time rather than in a turn-based battle or a separate mode.

Otherwise it’s a JRPG all the way around, as you wander through towns and dungeons, level up and earn weapons of various powers, and explore a big story of an unexpected hero saving the world. This is a good one — it’s a little retro, considering it first came out back in 1993, but it’s a great title.

The only drawback? It’s been released at US$8.99 on the iPhone, and while it’s probably worth the price to some of you, most of the App Store market (especially this week, after so many big titles and so many sales already) will probably find it a little too rich for their wallet. If that’s a little high, just wait — Square Enix has done more than a few sales in its time, so we might see it a little cheaper sooner or later.

TUAW’s Daily App: Secret of Mana originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve heard before that iPad demand is super high around the world, and here’s another reason why: households that already have an iPad are actually pretty likely to go out and buy another one. In a recent survey of Americans who own iPads, 17 percent said they already own more than one iPad, and another fifth (19 percent) said that they were considering purchasing another device in the future. And which device are they considering? Another iPad, of course. The most common reason given for purchasing another iPad is that someone else in the household (either a spouse or a child) is using the one they’ve already got.

That’s pretty crazy. Not only is the iPad strongly demanded by people who haven’t bought one yet, Apple actually has a good chance of selling yet another iPad to households who already have one. This backs up what we’ve heard about customer usage as well: people are tending to use their iPad more the longer they’ve owned it.

A figure like this helps lend some credence to those gigantic predictions for iPad sales in 2011. Especially if we see a revision as predicted early next year, a lot of households in America and elsewhere might end the year with more than one tablet device around.

Survey: 19 percent of households with iPads are likely to buy another originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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