After 4 years and 66 ads, Apple's "Get a Mac" series of ads is no more. The last ads were produced in October 2009, and a comment by Justin "I'm a Mac" Long hinted that the campaign was done in an April 2010 interview. The URL to Apple's archive of the ads now redirects to the general "Why You'll Love a Mac" page. But if you're missing Long and costar John "I'm a PC" Hodgman, you can still watch all the ads at Adfreak.
The brouhaha surrounding privacy on Facebook continues to expand, with the New York Times producing a fascinating info-graphic that shows just how complex Facebook has made the topic, with 50 settings containing over 170 options. And the Facebook privacy policy? It's longer than the U.S. Constitution.
You know how many applications, when they crash, ask you for more information what you were doing at the time of the crash? Well, Garrett Murray spends a lot of time in Photoshop, and when it crashes, he sometimes feels the need to tell Adobe just what's on his mind at the time. The result is a hilarious collection of crash reports that make for great reading - one only hopes that the Photoshop engineers have enjoyed them as well.
It's not often that Apple officially denies a rumor, but when one is both completely wrong and stands to confuse customers, they'll speak out. An AppleInsider report claimed that Final Cut Pro was to be refocused on more mainstream users, but Apple tooks pains to tell CNET (and us) that it's not true and that Final Cut Pro will continue to target professional video editors.
Who'd have guessed? It turns out that you can use the iPad Camera Connection Kit to connect the rugged Alphasmart Neo - a dedicated word processor with a keyboard, six-line LCD screen, and lineage dating to 1993 - to the iPad via USB and use it as a keyboard. Thanks to Eolake Stobblehouse for this video.
Google has announced it is extending the availability of its Google Voice telephony service to anyone in possession of a .edu email address (previously, Google Voice was available only through elusive invitations). Google Voice offers features such perks as free text messaging, low international calling rates, SMS-to-email, and voicemail-to-text transcriptions, all of which could be particularly useful to peripatetic students. To sign up, simply send a request to Google from the linked page using your educational email address, and an invitation will be sent to you within 24 hours. Google Voice is currently available only to people in the United States.
Apple has announced a beta update to its Web-based mail service, MobileMe Mail. The beta offers widescreen and compact views, single-click archiving, a message formatting toolbar, increased security via SSL, server-based rules, and overall improved performance. The beta is open to all MobileMe users and you can switch back at any time. To sign up, log in to MobileMe and click the "Request An Invitation" link in the lower-left corner of the page.
The story of the lost iPhone prototype purchased by Gizmodo for $5,000 (with more promised, it turns out!) just keeps getting weirder. Wired reports on how the police recovered some of the evidence in the case after Apple's director of information security received a tip from a roommate of the guy who found the phone and claimed he wasn't able to contact Apple. Most amusing is that Gizmodo may have generated vast traffic based on its scoop, but the subsequent story has bolstered the traffic of every other publication reporting on the case.
Engadget explains how documents revealed in an ongoing class-action lawsuit against Apple confirm that Apple and AT&T signed an exclusive five-year deal for AT&T to act as the U.S. carrier for the iPhone, starting in 2007. But contracts are easily broken or renegotiated - is the deal still in place?
Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch has announced that he won't be organizing the C4 conference for independent Mac developers this year, citing both the change in Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement that bans apps built with third-party tools and the fact that the change didn't elicit much complaint from the developer community. The latter reason indicated that his interests overlapped less with those of the Apple developer community than he had hoped, eliminating his enthusiasm for organizing the conference.
TidBITS editor Glenn Fleishman offers strategies over at Macworld for how to cope with just 250 MB of cellular data a month on a 3G iPad when using AT&T's less expensive service plan. The advice is also worthwhile for non-U.S. plans that either have monthly usage caps or throttle to a lower speed after a preset monthly limit is passed.
The iPad is obviously not a Mac, but less obvious is the fact that it's not simply a scaled-up iPhone. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has now released initial results from the Nielsen Norman Group's first iPad usability tests. Criticisms raised by the tests include inconsistent app interfaces, low discoverability of interface elements, and an over-reliance on a print metaphor. We're not surprised; the iPad's combination of a multitouch interface and large screen size make it significantly different from any previous device, and iPad developers didn't even have access to physical units for their initial designs. (Although it's too soon for a complete list of design guidelines, iPad developers would also do well to read the full 93-page PDF report, in addition to this executive summary.)
Bad news for those who dragged their feet on ordering tickets to this year's Worldwide Developers Conference: the event is now sold out! Apple has set a new record by selling out after only eight days of ticket sales, showing just how compelling iPhone OS development is now, given the minimal focus on Mac-related topics at the conference this year.
On a recent MacJury podcast with Chuck Joiner, Jeff Carlson joined a conversation about the first weekend with the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G model. Among other topics, we looked at how 3G access makes the iPad more useful when walking around an unfamiliar city, whether the 250 MB data plan is realistic, and effect on battery life from the 3G radio.
Bytemobile carried out identical tasks on apps using an iPhone (presumably 3GS) and 3G iPad, and found that many generated substantially higher amounts of traffic on the iPad. This is explained by the iPad display's greater area, which shows more and larger graphics. USA Today's app used 6.3 times as much data on an iPad, while Maps ate up 2.6 time as much. This will have some impact on whether people choose a 250 MB or unlimited 3G plan (or any 3G plan at all). Bytemobile's interest? It works with cell operators to optimize content to reduce mobile data use and congestion.