While talking with Tech Night Owl host Gene Steinberg, Adam explained how unlikely it is that most people would be infected by the new iPhone worm and how Apple's App Store approval policies are starting to cause real damage by driving developers away.
Influential essayist Paul Graham has an excellent take on why Apple's ridiculous policies with the App Store are a huge mistake. He argues that Apple is driving developers away, which is the first step on a slippery slope that could make it more difficult to attract the top notch employees necessary to continue innovating. Graham's most devastating point: does Apple more resemble the hammer-thrower or the dictator in the 1984 ad?
The New York Times reports on the growing trend of including user-created content and corrections in online mapping tools. Sites such as WikiMapia, OpenStreetMap, and Google Maps all rely on volunteer mapmakers to enhance their maps by adding details and fixing errors. Often the changes reflect the kind of knowledge only locals have: back alleys, public art, the exact location of a restaurant, etc.
Mac OS X can read NTFS-formatted volumes, but it can't write to them without additional software like Paragon's NTFS for Mac OS X. Today only, the Giveaway of the Day site is giving away version 6.5 of NTFS for Mac OS X, which isn't the latest version and may not be fully compatible with Snow Leopard. But it's free and could be worth trying if you need to write to NTFS-formatted drives. The current version 7.0 - which is Snow Leopard-compatible - normally costs $39.95 but is available for $19.95 at the moment.
Canadians were peeved when Amazon's international Kindle didn't include Canada among the list of countries in which it could be purchased. Amazon has amended that, offering Canadians the chance to buy a Kindle at US$259. Canadians will still pay higher prices than U.S. residents for books and subscriptions, however. The Kindle isn't yet listed for sale at Amazon.ca, but must be purchased from the U.S. store.
It's difficult work controlling everyone's iPhone apps, but if Chuck Joiner of MacVoices says I'm taking control of your iPhone apps, I have to oblige. Actually, I had a great talk with Chuck about my new ebook "Take Control of Your iPhone Apps," why the built-in apps are overlooked in favor of the 100,000 third-party apps available in the iTunes App Store, and how you can learn to use them better, whether you're using an iPhone or an iPod touch.
The latest in a long series of embarrassments for the iPhone App Store has been described by long-time Mac developer Rogue Amoeba. In short, it took over 100 days to get a 1.0.1 update to the already-approved Airfoil Speakers Touch app approved because the app displays "Apple-owned graphic symbols" that are provided by a public function in Mac OS X expressly for this purpose. Shameful.
Our friends at Macworld found themselves deep in the surreal world of Apple's App Store approval process - if it can be called that - during their attempt to publish an iPhone app version of their "Macworld iPhone & iPod touch Superguide" ebook. Once again, negative publicity turned out to be the eventual solution. When will Apple learn?
TUAW reports on a worm that changes the background wallpaper of jailbroken iPhones whose users failed to change the default password after installing SSH. It's not much of a hole, since few people jailbreak their iPhones, and hopefully most of those who do are sufficiently aware to change the default SSH password. But it's a reminder that if you leave the door open, someone just might come in and do something unpleasant.
A flaw in the recently released Apple TV 3.0 software can make all your available content appear to be missing until you re-sync to iTunes. Apple strongly recommend updating to 3.0.1 to fix this problem.
Fortune Magazine has named Steve Jobs CEO of the Decade. Why Jobs? Fortune says in the past 10 years he has, "radically and lucratively reordered three markets - music, movies, and mobile telephones - and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown."
If you're an iPhone user who regularly ships or receives packages via UPS, download the free UPS Mobile app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It lets you track shipments, create shipping labels, find nearby UPS locations, and estimate shipping costs for different services.
A beta service called Notescasts.com promises to provide users of the iPod classic, iPod nano, and 5th generation iPod with an online store for downloading free and inexpensive ebooks. It's a gutsy move, given all the attention devoted to the iPhone and iPod touch and the App Store, but will enough users of the supported iPod models notice?
Jim Rea of ProVUE Development has started producing short video training seminars for the company's Panorama 5.5 database program (which we use for Take Control order tracking and royalty databases). If you're a Panorama user, watch the first video about Live Clairvoyance (ignore the Windows interface elements, since the feature works identically on the Mac). Panorama has a ton of capabilities that most users never find; hopefully Jim's videos will expose more of them.
Adobe is now shipping Photoshop Elements 8, notable in part because the company skipped version 7 for the Mac last year. On this episode of MacVoices, Jeff Carlson talks to Chuck Joiner about what the newest Photoshop Elements offers Mac users and then discusses his current project, a book about Canon's PowerShot G10 and G11 cameras.