iPod Classic Stock Running Low, Refresh Imminent?

As noted by AppleBitch, it appears that iPod Classic stock is running low and several retailers (including Amazon and Apple Reseller J&R) have the device backordered or out of stock. Amazon’s page for the iPod Classic says the unit will ship in 2-4 weeks, and Target shows similar shipping times. The Apple online Store went through some changes last week as well:

The Apple Store shows that the silver iPod Classic now ships in 1-3 days, down from 24 hours last week. In addition, Best Buy has updated their website to say that the device is backordered for 1-2 weeks (last week it was shipped in 1 day) and Target also has it backordered for 2-4 weeks. Currently the shortage only seems to be affecting the silver colored model, the dark colored version appears relatively unaffected.

It is worth noting that the iPod Classic line was last updated in September 2009; several tech pundits predicted Apple would discontinue the product due to the lack of any announcement at last September’s music event (where Apple refreshed the entire iPod family except for the Classic). Recent reports also suggested Toshiba’s new 1.8” drives may bump the capacity of the Classic to 220 GB up from 160 GB, although it is unclear whether Apple may still be planning on using hard drives for its mobile devices instead of widely-used flash memory.

NewsRack RSS Reader Now Available In The Mac App Store

NewsRack is a RSS feed reader for iPhone and iPad that’s very popular among iOS users and used to be many people’s favorite choice in the App Store before Reeder came out. Especially in the early iPad days, I remember using NewsRack to stay up to date with Google Reader; the app is fast, stable and provides an elegant approach to RSS feeds. Silvio Rizzi eventually released Reeder for iPad, but I’m pretty sure NewsRack still has a loyal user base out there.

Last night, omz:software released a new version of NewsRack in the Mac App Store. The app is new to the Mac platform, and exclusively available in the Store at $6.99. NewsRack for OS X is very similar to its iOS counterpart: native interface with a sidebar for feed and folder management; unread articles in a middle panel and feed preview in the right column. The app has got a tabbed interface à la NetNewsWire to navigate between websites easily with tabs that sit on the top of the main window. NewsRack syncs with Google Reader but you can also import your feeds manually, although I wonder if there’s anyone who’s still doing that - especially considering cross-platform RSS syncing between OS X and iOS.

The app supports drag & drop for feed management, keyboard shortcuts for tabs and refresh, thumbnail previews for feeds – which should come in handy if you’re subscribed to several photo blogs and you want to quickly skim through their latest entries. Overall, the design looks really polished and based on usual OS X interface guidelines.

Personally, I don’t think I will move away from using Reeder just yet. Silvio Rizzi’s app is still in beta, but we’re pretty confident it will find its way to the Mac App Store soon. If you’re looking for a good alternative though, NewsRack in the Mac App Store is a great choice for now.

Are iOS Game Prices Creating Culture of Disposability? Nintendo Boss Thinks So

The head honcho of Nintendo North America, Reggie Fils-Aime has criticized the price levels of apps in the iTunes App Store claiming that the low prices create a “mentality” for consumers that portable games should only be a few dollars. Fils-Aimes who is the Nintendo North American president and chief operating officer felt that such a mentality also breeds a culture that believes content is disposable because of the cheap price and that this was one of the gaming industries biggest risks today.

Whilst Fils-Aime’s is not the most independent commentator on this issue with his company’s Nintendo DS platform directly competing with the gaming aspects of iOS, his points do have some validity. Games on the App store have tended to be below $5 compared to DS and PSP games that are typically well above that range. The presumption is the Fils-Aime’s fears that the App store prices will spread across to all platforms and lead to more gimmicky, simplistic games rather than well though out, in-depth game experiences.

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Some People Still Don’t Understand In-App Purchases

The Washington Post ran a story last night about 8-year-old Madison who, playing the Smurfs game for iPad, made a lot of in-app purchases. In fact. the family’s credit card got charged $1,400 for Smurfs accessories, power-ups and so forth. Unsurprisingly, parents are upset:

Parents need to know that the promotion of games and the delivery mechanism for them are deceptively cheap,” said Jim Styer, president of Common Sense Media, a public advocacy group for online content for children. “But basically people are trying to make money off these apps, which is a huge problem, and only going to get bigger because mobile apps are the new platform for kids.

The “people are trying to make money off apps” line is so obvious we’re not even trying to comment on that. The story gets better:

Apple said it tries to prevent episodes like Madison’s by requesting a password when making in-app purchases. And parents can change settings on Apple’s gadgets to restrict downloading and transactions, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said.
But parents say changing those settings isn’t easy or obvious.

Surprise: if you give your kid a cellphone, he will likely send random text messages and make phone calls. If you give a gadget to a kid, he will likely break it / change its settings. Bigger surprise: if you give your kid your iTunes account password (which Madison’s parents did) and an iPhone, the kid will download apps and in-app purchases. Shocker.

If we follow the “Apple should make it easier” argument, then every cellphone maker should put a “Kids mode” button on their latest smartphone and every car maker should create keys kids can’t touch.

The problem is, Apple gives you the tools to prevent these accidental purchases: they’re called Restrictions and they live in the Settings. Not to mention the fact that giving passwords to a kid is often considered a bad practice. Parents: next time you hand an iPad or iPhone to your kids just to “keep them happy and quiet”, think about the consequences. Because you can’t blame Apple or any other tech company if your kids break stuff.

Instagram Shifting Focus to an Open Platform With API

Instagram has been a phenomenal success story gaining a user base of 2 million people in just four months that are now uploading 300,000 photos a day and now the developers are inviting developers to sign up for access to an Instagram API. In a blog post, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said that the guiding principle for Instagram was to “create and maintain an open ecosystem that changes the way we see our world,” opening up Instagram to other developers is their next step to fulfilling that principle.

The opening up of a developers API seems to indicate a shift by Instagram from one of giving users an app to edit photos and share, to one dominated by creating a social image sharing service. This could allow other apps such as Hipstamatic to hook into Instagram and let users share their Hipstamatic photo’s on through Instagram. The blog post doesn’t quite make it clear if this is their intention but it most definitely seems like the logical iteration.

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The Daily Just Got Its First Update

The most popular iPad newspaper these days, The Daily, just got an update that aims at improving performances and stability of the app and fix Twitter login and posting issues experienced by several users.

Version 1.0.1 indeed feels slightly faster in some sections from our first tests, although the carousel view is still pretty slow to browse. The initial download of new issues takes too many seconds. Overall, there have been some improvements but the main structure of the app still doesn’t feel as responsive as a digital newspaper should be.

The Daily is available here.

Developers: Xcode 4 Will Drop Support for 10.5 SDK

A notable change in the Xcode 4 GM seed Apple released last week is the lack of support for OS X 10.5 SDK, Leopard. Several developers on Twitter and Apple’s Discussion Boards have noted that the latest release doesn’t come with the 10.5 SDK installed by default, and even though it appears that it can be enabled with a Terminal hack, an Apple engineer confirmed on Apple Discussions that Xcode 4 final won’t support building apps for 10.5:

Xcode 4 does not support building for Mac OS X 10.5. If you want to build for Mac OS X 10.5 (obviously a valid thing to want to do), you need to keep a copy of Xcode 3 around. For example installing a copy of the latest version of Xcode 3 into “/Xcode3”.

The 10.5 SDK is still included in the Xcode 4 Preview 6 Apple seeded in January. Many developers who still need to build apps for 10.5 Leopard will likely keep Preview 6 or Xcode 3 on their computers in a different location, but admittedly Apple’s move to drop the 10.5 SDK within Xcode makes sense considering we’ll soon move forward to OS X Lion.

Xcode 4 development seems to be moving steadily with new developer builds released every few weeks, so we guess it’s possible that we’ll see the suite becoming available before the WWDC in June.

New Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs To Start Shipping February 20th

The most probable next generation processor for MacBooks will start shipping on February 20th. The new Intel core i5 and i7 processors, based on the Sandy Bridge architecture shown off at CES, comes in flavors ranging from 1.4 GHz to 2.7 GHz, drawing 17 watts to 35 watts respectively under load. The new processors could be used to update Apple’s MacBook, 13” MacBook Pro, and 15” MacBook Pro line, while quad-core Sandy Bridge CPUs would populate Apple’s higher end MacBooks and desktops. Apple’s MacBook and 13” MacBook Pro continue to utilize Core 2 Duo processors, and may receive a Sandy Bridge update later this year.

Why is Sandy Bridge so impressive? Our friends over at The Next Web explain.

[via Macworld]

My New (Old) Favorite Service: Back to My Mac

Back to My Mac is often ignored by Mac users as just another feature of the equally ignored MobileMe set of online webapps, sync tools and desktop settings. Back to My Mac allows you to display a remote Mac on your local machine’s Finder as if it was within reach, just a few clicks away. Select the remote Mac in the Finder’s sidebar, browse its contents through the Finder itself or just connect to its screen using OS X built-in Screen Sharing features. Back to My Mac, ultimately, enables you to virtually sit in front of your Mac even if the computer is actually miles away from you. All of this happens over the Internet, routed through MobileMe. Read more