Mac News Feeds

Filed under: Podcasting, TUAW Business

Sunday night means it's time once again for a TUAW talkcast, in which your favorite TUAW bloggers and readers all get together over on Talkshoe and chat out the biggest Apple happenings of the past week. This week, we'll be talking about that mystery key on the iPad keyboard and what it might be for, Apple's "sex apps" issues, tips for switchers (and why they're so popular), and that file that could very well be the first list of books on the iPad.

We'll also be chatting live with you -- you can call up during the show, and while you're listening on your phone, you can hit *-8 to chat live with us on the air (which is why we call it a "talkcast" rather than a podcast, don'tcha know). So if you find yourself coming down a little hard after the Olympics this evening, jump on in to our chat and we'll cheer you right back up.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

TUAWTUAW Talkcast live tonight at 10pm Eastern originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Podcasting, TUAW Business

Sunday night means it's time once again for a TUAW talkcast, in which your favorite TUAW bloggers and readers all get together over on Talkshoe and chat out the biggest Apple happenings of the past week. This week, we'll be talking about that mystery key on the iPad keyboard and what it might be for, Apple's "sex apps" issues, tips for switchers (and why they're so popular), and that file that could very well be the first list of books on the iPad.

We'll also be chatting live with you -- you can call up during the show, and while you're listening on your phone, you can hit *-8 to chat live with us on the air (which is why we call it a "talkcast" rather than a podcast, don'tcha know). So if you find yourself coming down a little hard after the Olympics this evening, jump on in to our chat and we'll cheer you right back up.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

TUAWTUAW Talkcast live tonight at 10pm Eastern originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Odds and ends, TUAW Business

The Reader's View is our weekly roundup of some of the most upbeat, thoughtful, or just plain good comments that have been published by TUAW readers. This week, we still have some post-Macworld Expo 2010 comments coming in, as well as discussion of several posts that attracted positive comments this week.

The first comment, from Ed P, was added to David Winograd's coverage of his interview with Roland Saekow of BearExtender. It appears that Ed was actually at Macworld watching the interview being done: "Hey, I was watching this while ya'll were broadcasting! Macworld was Haute! Really looking forward to next year!"

We are too, Ed! Next, David's interview of Mitch Waite, developer of iBird Pro for iPhone, generated some very positive words about the app from aptly-named reader nature: "iBird is one of the best apps I have ever found. The comments about the illustrations not being correct is obviously from a perfectionist who does not appreciate what a leap forward this app is. The average person does not need perfect drawings, they need great functionality and good photos and illustrations. iBird has those and a lot more. Like its amazing search engine that has taught me how to identify birds so that my life list is now at 222 in less than 3 months. It's amazing to me how the critics come out and jump all over good products rather than appreciate what has been done."

Erica Sadun's insight is always technically on target and sometimes controversial. Her recent post "TUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS," created its fair share of comments. One, from reader frank l, seemed to capture the essence of what what a future OS should be: "Extrapolation into the future improves with more data points. We may have further insights after the iPad and its successors are more familiar to us.

As I see it, the future of operating systems can be described in a single word, 'adaptive.' The idea is that devices will adapt to users, uses and available resources and do so in a relatively seamless fashion. In this Brave New World, there will be less for end users to learn as the sophistication of their use grows.

The OS will have a core with modules being added and jettisoned as circumstances change. The Adaptive OS."

TUAW's Michael Jones has a wonderful way of explaining things to Mac users. In his post "Mac 101: Navigating OS X with your keyboard," he spoke to Mac owners new and old about how to use your Mac without a mouse. Reader Robert gave us a tip on two useful keyboard shortcuts he uses: "I've had to work with 'mouseless Macs' every so often at the university computer labs. Here's some useful ones:

Access the Menu Bar: Control-F2
Access the Dock: Control-F3

Note that if your keyboard has an fn key, you'll need to use that in conjunction with the above key commands, or else they won't work. Then you can use the arrow keys and the return key or space bar to navigate and select menu and dock items."

Thanks for that information, Robert! Michael will be publishing a followup to that post some time soon. Next, a number of TUAW regulars made comments on my post "TUAW review: Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf." Many readers liked VanillaSurf, but couldn't get it to import bookmarks. Reader Jim figured out how to activate this feature in the app: "I finally got it to work the bookmark importing to work. I removed the profile in Firefox [v3.6] and then relaunched it so that it lets me import my Safari bookmarks [Safari is my default browser and has the latest bookmarks] Then exported the bookmarks from Firefox and tried the sync again and it worked! yay!"

Finally, it's always fun when a reader like doelcm can give the TUAW bloggers a good laugh. He responded to our post "Rumor: UK iPad pricing" with this: "Dear TUAW. Could you please put the word "rumor" (or "rumour" in this case) in the title when you're posting unsubstantiated information.

Oh, wait....never mind."

We'll be back with another edition of The Reader's View next Saturday here on TUAW. Until then, keep those cards and letters coming, folks!

Original post photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabine01/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

TUAWThe Reader's View: Best of your feedback, comments and opinions originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Surveys and Polls, iPhone, iPad

The end of this week has brought a little flurry of information about the differences between iPhone and Android users. First up, Admob has released the results of a survey that says the iPhone is twice as popular as comparable smartphones in both young and old demographics. Unfortunately, we can only guess as to why (it would be a little more interesting if either age showed a preference for one phone over another), but it seems the iPhone has yet another remarkable trait: appealing to users of all ages. No wonder Apple is jumping in on the iPad -- they really do have a pre-release audience.

But they can't sit on their laurels for too long -- according to a report at Myxer's Boombox (via Fortune), the Android OS is picking up the pace, especially in what city folk call the "flyover states." Android use of the program has actually surpassed iPhone users in Montana, the Dakotas, and Arizona and New Mexico, and the numbers are close in the Midwest, including Kansas and Missouri. That's interesting -- that could have something to do with the distribution of Apple retail stores, or maybe just more urban center dwellers are drawn to the iPhone. DC seems to be the exception, as Virginia and Maryland are much more Android, but otherwise, if you're in a state with a big population center, odds are that you own an iPhone. Fascinating.

TUAWiPhone users come in all ages but probably live near a big city originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: OS, Odds and ends, Internet, Leopard

Research released today indicates that in North America, Apple's Mac OS X is gaining traction, while the Windows share of the OS market is shrinking ever so slightly. That's the report from Quantcast, a company that measures and analyzes web traffic. They say that the market share for Mac OS X is up 7% from December to January. Microsoft held steady for the last 3 months of 2009 with the release of Windows 7, but started a slow decline again in January.

According to Quantcast, Apple has a 10.9% North American share as of January, while Windows has 86.8%. An interesting note is that the largest group of users is on Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, while Windows XP dominates on the Microsoft side. Apple's relative share in North America is up 29.4 % in a year, while Windows share is down 3.8%.

These figures measure web consumption, so if you're not web connected your OS choice doesn't count. Quantcast measures ad supported sites, so huge traffic sites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others don't supply statistics.

TUAWQuantcast: Apple share of OS growing while Microsoft shrinks slightly originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Good news for fans of good games: the terrific DS courtroom simulator (which, trust me, sounds much less fun than it actually is) Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney is coming to the iPhone, and Slide to Play has posted some hands-on video. The game takes the two DS screens and stacks them on top of each other rather than converting the game into a landscape version, so it's basically a straight port of the DS game. It'd be interesting to see a more iPhone-specific version of the game (maybe something that uses the camera or the accelerometer to show off evidence in the courtroom), but we'll take just the port, too -- if you haven't played any of the Phoenix Wright games but enjoy a good adventure yarn, you're in for a treat. The game should be out "soon."

Hexen II is on its way to the iPhone as well, and Touch Arcade has a few screens and video of that one. I was much more of a Quake fan, but Hexen, with its medieval setting and RPG elements placed in the same game engine, had its share of followers back in the day, too. Unfortunately, Vimov doesn't yet have the rights to Hexen II -- they're just working with an open-sourced version of the engine. To actually release the data on the App Store, they'll need to make a deal with Activision, so we'll have to wait and see if that can happen before you can start hacking and slashing through the world of the Serpent Riders again.

TUAWPhoenix Wright, Hexen II coming to the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Retail, Odds and ends, Apple

While this may sound like an odd pastime, for some Olympic fans pin collecting is a huge deal. The official Vancouver 2010 website store lists 459 different pins for collecting and trading with others, but those aren't all of the pins that fans will find. Often, local businesses or organizations will make their own pins to give away or sell, and at these Winter Games, Apple joined in on the fun.

TUAW reader Alan Waite was in Vancouver earlier in the week to attend the Games and visited the Apple Store at Pacific Centre. Much to his surprise, Apple was giving away a limited edition set of pins (see photo above) to store visitors to commemorate the event. Very classy, Apple! Waite noted that the Apple Store at Oakridge Centre had a special red iPod nano pin with the Canadian maple leaf on the screen.

Custom pins like these aren't as common as the mass-market versions sold by the official Olympics website, so Alan not only has cool memorabilia from the 2010 Winter Games, but a relatively rare piece of swag as well.

TUAWApple gives Vancouver Olympic visitors a rare treasure originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments