The Apple store in Beijing went crazy yesterday when the two per customer iPhone 4 rule was dropped allowing scalpers to get their grubby hands on up to 30 each! Read more
Free Your Mac’s Media Keys from iTunes→
Free Your Mac’s Media Keys from iTunes
The tricks we used before were far less than ideal, requiring you to start up Quicktime in the background, or do some serious hacking to system files within iTunes.app. NoMitsu has created a one-click installer that patches the remote control daemon, the app responsible for managing the media keys. Just download the patch and double-click on it. After entering your password, your media keys will be free from iTunes’ grasp.
I installed this and it works perfectly.
Meet Swearch: The Coolest Web App Your iPhone Has Ever Seen
My Must-Have 20 iPad Apps
Following yesterday’s post about the must-have Mac apps I install every time I have to play with a new installation of OS X, I thought it would be interesting to talk about my iPad setup as well.
Of course the iPad is a different machine from MacBooks: not just because it’s an entirely new kind of computing machine, the concept of “OS installation” itself is radically different. On OS X, installation is a clunky process that can take up to several minutes at best; as for the transition from an OS to another, OS X doesn’t come with the simple Backup / Restore system iOS has. Sure you have Time Machine and Migration Assistant, but those tools aren’t as consumer-friendly as iOS and iTunes.
Speaking of which, that’s exactly what makes iOS different: iOS devices live inside iTunes. iTunes handles the updates, backups, restores, fresh installations and applications. For these reasons, installing apps on an iPad running a fresh new OS is a different story then OS X. Most users have never messed with restore and betas, so they never really had to deal with “starting anew all over again”. I did, and here are the apps I install every single time my iPad needs to be synchronized for the first time. My must-haves. Read more
What If iChat Was One Window?→
What If iChat Was One Window?
Adium and several other clients are already part way there—they combine all the services into one list, but they still typically show one window for friends, another for open chats and a third for file transfers.
I’m finding more and more that the best way to design desktop apps is to imagine you’re building them for iOS.
Clever UI concept by Bjango.
PDFMate: Simple, Minimal PDF Reader for iPad
I think many of you have been looking for a simple yet powerful app for iPad to read PDF documents. I’m not talking about super-featured apps such as GoodReader or FastPDF: something simple, elegant and that does just one thing - read PDF files. Read more
Chromium OS and iPad: The Video
So you thought Hexxeh was joking about Chromium OS running on the iPad. Some of you even commented on his blog pointing out the usual story of EXIF data and Photoshop. Well guess what, he wasn’t joking. Chromium OS on the iPad seems to be real, and this time we have a video to see in action.
The video is pretty short and doesn’t show much, but from what we can see the build looks a little bit laggy - but working. Touch sensitivity is (kinda) working, and he even tries to install a Spotify extension in the browser. Check it out below, and hit Hexxeh’s original post (continually updating) here. Read more
Taking A Step Back
A friend of mine once asked me why he would ever need to install applications other than games on his iPhone, while he could do most of the things he needed by simply opening Mobile Safari. He’s not new to the iPhone platform: he bought an iPhone 3G in 2008 and finally switched to the iPhone 4 a few weeks ago. He reads blogs to stay updated about what’s new in iOS 4, the latest Apple news and games updates. Yet, he doesn’t install apps to “do stuff” on his iPhone, because he says Safari is such a good browser he doesn’t need to “spend money on additional apps”.
Maybe he’s missing out the best part of iOS, or maybe we, as geeks, need to take a step back and reconsider what we’ve done so far. Read more
WordPress Updates Its iOS App with Video, Autosave, WordPress 3.0 Compatibility
Well finally, I would say: after a whole summer spent looking for a decent blogging app for iPad (and to an extent, for the iPhone as well) looks like we might just have a decent WordPress app here.
The latest 2.6 version that just became available in iTunes introduces support for video, a new autosave feature to go back to a previous version of a post, a brand new media library interface. The local drafts system has been completely overhauled (quite frankly, it sucked), tons of bug fixes and enhancements are in the update, together with full WordPress 3.0 compatibility (about time).
We’ll see how this will hold up to regular daily usage. In the meantime, you can go download the free universal app here, and take a look at the full changelog and screenshots after the break. Read more