The aesthetics and convenience of wireless devices add to their appeal, but buying batteries (no matter how special) is a bummer. MacRumors forum user MarkBog felt so strongly about buying all of those batteries that he hacked his Magic Trackpad to use a USB connection.

To accomplish this feat, he removed the pad’s batteries, stripped a USB cable down to the red and black power wires and then attached them to a battery-sized wooden dowel. He then pushed the dowel inside the pad’s battery compartment and presto! It worked.

It certainly won’t win praises from Apple, but it will save the hacker (and the environment) from a pile of batteries. Well done.

[Via Übergizmo]

TUAWApple Trackpad hacked to use USB originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the past few months, Time Inc. has been at odds with Apple over magazine subscription models in the App Store. The publishing giant took a big step forward this week in announcing that People Magazine for the iPad will now be free for those who subscribe to the paper version, though that doesn’t seem to address the company’s initial complaint.

Time’s original intention was to have users download an app from the store and then pay them directly for future issues. Apple refused, forcing Time to sell single copies of the magazine. That’s still the case for most customers, but subscribers can now consider a digital copy a part of their subscription.

People is the first title to adopt this model, and its expected that other properties, like Fortune, will soon follow suit. In the end, subscribers are happy — but the publishers still can’t sell subscriptions through their apps.

[via Apple 2.0]

TUAWTime Inc. relents on digital magazine prices originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How do you say “completely unsurprised” auf Deutsch[1]? Berlin-based blog BZiPhone reports that the German-made eiPott has been delivered the death blow, courtesy of Apple Germany (translation). The computer and phone maker has gotten a restraining order against the Erbach-based koziol, maker of cute housewares for the stylish home.

The lawsuit, which was presented in what Google Language assures me is the “Hanseatic Higher Regional Court,” means that koziol will no longer be able to use the eiPott name to sell their plastic egg holder. Apparently the item could have been confused with another product. Shocking. The iPod-inspired package will also need to be redesigned.

TUAWNo Comment: Apple Germany says nein to eiPott originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Social sharing network Digg has had their own, official iPhone app out for several months, and now StubleUpon has joined the mobile game. This week, the StumbleUpon app was released for both iPhone and Android devices, finally giving users quick and easy access to browse…er…stumble links that might interest them, depending on their profiles.

Just as with the website and its browser toolbar, the app works quite well and quickly to display photos, pages and videos on your device whenever you touch the “stumble” button. Some of the icons aren’t obvious as to what they do, such as the one identifying items in your StumbleUpon incoming links box. Other than that, though, it’s a well-polished interface.

Something the app does not do, though, is allow one to submit new links. For that you will need to use a bookmarklet with Safari or use your desktop browser. The app is available now, for free, in the app store.

TUAWStumbleUpon releases official mobile app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Touch Arcade got to speak with none other than John Carmack himself at QuakeCon last weekend, and he had some disappointing news about getting old school id games on the iPhone. While Carmack said that he’s excited about releasing Rage on the iPhone, he admits that id’s past titles haven’t sold up to snuff on the iPhone. That means that Orcs & Elves, originally created for mobile phones and then later released on the DS, won’t be coming to Apple’s App Store.

That’s too bad — you’d think that since Orcs & Elves was actually designed for mobile platforms, it would be one of the easier titles to bring over. But it sounds like Carmack is more interested in bringing new games to Apple’s platform. id Software still has a mobile game division going, but it’s just not worth porting the old games over when there’s so much work to be done on the new ones. I guess we can live with that.

TUAWid loves the iPhone, but won’t bring Orcs & Elves to App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few high profile apps have made their way over to the iPad recently. First up, Archetype is that first-person shooter that ran surprisingly well on the iPhone. It’s now available on the bigger device with updated HD graphics and a redesigned HUD to take advantage of the bigger screen space. Additionally, the game has been updated since launch with a new level and a Rocket Arena gametype. The app is US$4.99 on the iPad, compared to the iPhone’s $2.99 version.

Gameloft has released their Hero of Sparta 2 app in an HD iPad version as well, bringing God of War-style action to Apple’s tablet. HoS2 features new weapons and enemies across 12 different levels, and unlike the first Hero of Sparta for the iPad, word is that this one runs and looks great. If you were a fan of the first game and need something new to play on the iPad, you can buy Hero of Sparta 2 now for $9.99.

And finally, at GDC Europe last week, Konami announced that it would be bringing Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 to the iPad. This series is also known as Winning Eleven, and it’s supposed to be head and shoulders above most other soccer franchises out there, so seeing the brand new version out on the iPad is a nice coup for soccer fans. The app is due out in October of this year, just about a month after the new version of the game arrives on consoles. Unfortunately, there’s no word on price yet, but given the premium nature of the title and Konami’s pedigree, we’re probably talking about a $9.99 game here as well.

TUAWArchetype, Hero of Sparta 2 on iPad, PES 2010 coming originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The very insightful Stuart Dredge over at Mobile Entertainment has compiled an amazing primer on all of the numbers behind the app market (which you can also see by clicking the “Read More” link, although it’s not viewable on an iPad or iPhone). If you want to know anything about how many apps are rolling out of the store, how many apps are installed on the average device, or what kinds of apps those are, Dredge’s presentation will tell you. It’s a really excellent compilation of everything we know about the App Store and the app market at large thus far.

I don’t think anything here is new or really that surprising. We already know that Apple is, by far, leading the race on number of apps (both created and sold), and we’ve heard before that games tend to do very well on the marketplace in a number of demographics. The end of the report has some great numbers, too, on standout applications like Angry Birds and the eBay app.

Otherwise, it’s basically a big round-up of a lot of the stats that we’ve heard so far. But having them all in one place gives a nice overview of just how big this little software ecosystem has become.

TUAWThe app market, by the numbers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Although your car has a fully-capable AM radio, and you’re an NPR listener, do you find yourself jacking your iPhone into your car stereo and listening to NPR through its app instead? New data released from NPR seems to indicate that’s what a lot of people are opting to do.

According to its data, NPR has noticed a rather significant spike in its iPhone app usage during typical morning commuter time. What makes that data so interesting — at least to NPR — is that, presumably, these people are in their cars. They’re with radios capable of receiving AM FM signals and, therefore, NPR’s programming over the airwaves. So why use the app?

I say the data isn’t so cut and dry. The sample they are seeing is only 8,000 people, which really isn’t all that many when you consider there are many more people listening to NPR on a daily basis, overall. There’s also this thing called telecommuting, so I wouldn’t assume all of these people are in radio-equipped automobiles. There are also thousands of people who walk to work everyday and thousands more who simply don’t work at all.

If you’re using the NPR app and have access to an AM FM radio, why are you using the app instead of the radio? Let us know in the comments.

[via MacDailyNews]

TUAWAre morning commuters using iPhones to listen to NPR? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the new “Places” GPS check-in feature got most of the attention in Facebook for iPhone’s latest update, a more subtle feature made its way into the app’s interface: pull to refresh. Users of the official Twitter for iPhone app, previously known as Tweetie, will recognize this UI feature right away, because Tweetie creator Loren Brichter pioneered it and even filed a patent application for it.

If you haven’t had the chance to “pull to refresh,” it takes advantage of the iPhone’s “spring-loaded” page dragging behavior by refreshing content when you navigate to the top of a list and drag down. It’s a neat UI trick, and once you use it a few times, you’ll wonder why Apple didn’t think of it.

Facebook thought pull to refresh was a neat trick, too … so neat that Facebook allegedly “appropriated” some open source code in order to intro the feature on its iPhone app. Shaun Harrison of enormego writes that after digging through the Facebook app’s source code, he found some very familiar entries:

“I finally found the class: TTTableHeaderDragRefreshView. I started looking over to code to see how they accomplished it, and that’s when I realized it: this was our class […] Facebook prefixed some variables, slapped their Three20 branding on it, restructured some code, but it was the same code we wrote. The same code we wrote, with zero mention of us.”

The story has a happy ending, though: once the Facebook for iPhone team became aware of the misattributed code, they uploaded a new version with the correct authorship information. Awfully sporting of them; both the engineer who incorporated the code and Facebook’s manager of open source efforts took the time to comment on the enormego devs’ blog and apologize.

Down the road, Facebook may face an even greater hurdle with the pull to refresh UI element; if Loren Brichter is awarded a patent for pull to refresh, Facebook (and other apps) may have to pay licensing fees to incorporate it.

TUAWFacebook for iPhone’s new ‘pull to refresh’ looked a little familiar originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The good news: Portugal is getting the iPhone 4 next week. On August 27, mobile provider Optimus will start selling the iPhone 4 (here’s a Google-translated link for the Portuguese-impaired). The bad news: the price is going up by 70 euros, meaning Portuguese customers will pay more for the iPhone 4 than just about anybody else.

I thought we had it bad in New Zealand, where we pay NZ$1299 (about US$918) for an unsubsidized 32 GB iPhone 4. But at 769.90 euros, a 32 GB iPhone 4 costs nearly NZ$100 (US$71) more in Portugal than in New Zealand, where mobile handset prices are usually among the highest in the world. The 16 GB iPhone 4, at 679.90 euros, is an even worse deal: over NZ$130 more (US$92) than the New Zealand price.

I’ve never been thrilled with handset prices in New Zealand, but we are kind of in the middle of nowhere, so it’s almost excusable. It makes much less sense for the Portuguese to have to pay such a high premium for the iPhone 4. Optimus hasn’t offered any reasons for raising the price by 70 euros, and I have to wonder how happy Apple is with the decision — rumor has it that Vodafone’s bungled launch of the iPhone 4 was precipitated by pricing disputes between the two companies, so it’ll be interesting to see if something similar plays out in Portugal.

TUAWThe iPhone 4 comes to Portugal at a ‘louco’ price originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook 3.2.1 for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch is now available in app Store. Facebook pushed the 3.2.1 update soon after the Facebook 3.2 to fix a few bugs. Facebook 3.2.1 features after the jump…

New in Facebook 3.2.1

• Bug fixes

New in Facebook 3.2

• Places. Use Places to see where your friends are and share where you are.
• You can set the privacy of individual status updates.
• See all recipients of inbox messages.
• (iOS 4) Upload photos and videos in the background.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a delay when commenting on a post or posting a status update.
• Fixed some Notes display bugs.
• Fixed some reliability bugs in News Feed.

You can download Facebook 3.2.1 for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad from the AppStore for Free! [iTunes Link]

You can follow us on Twitter, Join us at Facebook, and also Subscribed to RSS Feed to receive latest updates.

If you’re app makes extensive use of trigonometry (and if you’re working on game development then you probably are) then you probably make extensive use of the built in math functions.

According to Apple  apps that make extensive use of floating point numbers should not make use of the thumb compiling option which reduces code size.

Dave Dribin has created a math library exclusively making use of integers, and based on the speed of the sine function vs. the standard libary sin and sinf functions it looks like Dave’s trigint library is at least 4x faster.

You can find the library and more info here:
Trigint: An Integer-Based Trigonmetry Library

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[via: Under The Bridge]

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