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Jeff Carlson 1 comment

Apple Posts iPad Guided Tour Videos

We won't have iPads in our hands until this coming weekend, but if you're curious to know more about how the iPad works, Apple has posted a series of guided tour videos. For example, the video for iBooks demonstrates the capability to perform searches and look up words in the iPad's built-in dictionary.

Adam Engst 2 comments

Email Security Survey Finds Many Read Spam

ZDNet reports on a survey from the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group that finds a surprising number of people open suspect spam messages and even click on included links or forward the messages. We're not entirely sure what to make of the survey findings overall, but anyone interested in the spam problem would be well served to read the full survey (in PDF, linked in the ZDNet article) and ponder the results.

Glenn Fleishman No comments

Gmail Warns of Geographically Distant Logins

In Google's ongoing effort to prevent Gmail account hacking, Google has added warnings about geographically suspicious logins. In its blog, Gmail's engineering director says that with the feature turned on - which it is, by default - you will be warned if your account is accessed from broadly different parts of the world. Google also recently added an option to log out other open Web sessions.

Adam Engst No comments

Marketcircle Posts Daylite Details for Now Up-to-Date & Contact Users

Marketcircle, maker of the Daylite "business productivity manager" software, has posted a page showing some of the ways that Daylite can be configured to act more like the defunct Now Software's Now Up-to-Date & Contact. Daylite offers features beyond just contact and calendar management, which could be good or bad, depending on your needs. The page also discusses how Daylite differs from Now Up-to-Date & Contact, and how to migrate data between the programs, along with offering a 30 percent discount on Daylite.

Adam Engst 1 comment

Jean-Louis Gassée Opines on Verizon iPhone Possibility

Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, suggests in this blog post that we won't see the iPhone on Verizon Wireless's network any time soon because Verizon wants to run its own mobile app store and not give up control to Apple. He goes on to postulate that Apple will make deals with Sprint and T-Mobile once AT&T's exclusivity expires, as a way of pressuring Verizon into accepting the iPhone and App Store.

Adam Engst 3 comments

How Pandora Survived Thanks to an iPhone App

If you use the Pandora music-streaming service, you're probably aware that the company had long teetered on the edge of survival. So how did it manage to turn the corner and post its first profitable quarter at the end of 2009? The New York Times runs through Pandora's roller-coaster history, giving much of the credit to the Pandora iPhone app, which brought 35,000 new users per day to the service.

Adam Engst No comments

Apple Tops Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” List, Again

We lost track of this news when it happened two weeks ago, but it's worth getting in the record. For the third year in a row, Apple has topped Fortune's list of the world's most admired companies. Although Google came in second (passing Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway), Apple's margin of victory was the greatest ever. Amazon.com placed fifth and Microsoft was eleventh.

Glenn Fleishman No comments

Multi-Prong Backup Saves Gruber’s Data

Daring Fireball's John Gruber had a hard drive develop mechanical issues that prevented it from booting his laptop. Between SuperDuper, Dropbox, and DiskWarrior, he didn't lose a single thing. He details his strategy, and offers advice for achieving the same results. (Needless to say, we also recommend Joe Kissell's "Take Control of Mac OS X Backups" and "Take Control of Easy Mac Backups.")

Adam Engst 2 comments

New York Times Examines the Apple/Google Rift

The New York Times has a lengthy article laying out the history of the relationship between Apple and Google, which started close but has now developed schisms due to the huge differences in corporate approaches and increasingly competitive products. Apple prefers proprietary systems and tight control over high margin products, whereas Google's goal is to increase Web usage (and thus ad revenue) via free services and open source software. It's the iPhone OS versus Android, Mac OS X versus Chrome OS, Safari versus Chrome, and Apple's Quattro acquisition versus Google's AdMob buy. All that, and the competition between the companies is just starting to heat up.

Adam Engst No comments

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Adam Engst 1 comment

EFF Examines iPhone Developer License Agreement

Alongside Apple's undeniable success with the iPhone App Store have been the near-constant stories of app rejections for dubious or entirely bogus reasons (to be fair, most rejections are entirely legitimate). But what gives Apple the right to reject or even remove apps? The iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, to which all iPhone developers must agree. The EFF has now acquired copies of the agreement and analyzed some of the more troubling clauses. Would they stand up in court? There's no way to know until someone sues Apple.

Adam Engst 1 comment

Jakob Nielsen Criticizes iTunes App Update Interface

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen devoted his Alertbox post this week to showing how interfaces can become confusing if elements like buttons and checkboxes are too far away from the objects they act on, using the iPhone app updating interface in iTunes as an example. Our take is that the overall mistake here is that Apple is relying on iTunes for too many unrelated tasks that call out for different interface approaches.

Adam Engst No comments

Adam Discusses iPhone OS Multitasking on Your Mac Life

Your Mac Life host Shawn King admitted that he normally glazes over when topics like multitasking are broached, but a good time was had by all while discussing all the things we think of when we say "multitasking" and how (or if) we'll see support for them in the iPhone OS.

Adam Engst 2 comments

EFF Examines 12 Years of the DMCA’s Unintended Consequences

Our friends at the EFF have compiled a list of situations in which the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA - the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 - have been used to chill free expression and scientific research, attack fair use, impede competition and innovation, and interfere with computer intrusion laws. Isn't it time to rewrite the DMCA so it can no longer be used to hinder the legitimate activities of journalists, scientists, innovators, and the rest of us?

Jeff Carlson No comments

Designing for the iPad before It’s Available

How do you design software for a device that doesn't yet exist in the market? Developers can use the iPad simulator included with Apple's Xcode, but that's a limited approach when the main method of interaction is touch. In a blog post, the Omni Group reveals how they're using paper mockups, a prototype created with a 3D printer (which we saw at Macworld Expo - it's cool), and even a pad of graph paper cut down to size with a table saw to develop OmniGraphSketcher for the iPad.