So, Uhm, Soon You’ll Be Able To Use AirPrint With 6 More Printers

We thought AirPrint would make us print again, thanks to the power of iOS 4.2 and printers shared through OS X or Windows. It turns out achieving stable driverless printing ain’t that easy even for Apple, and the engineers at Cupertino were forced to remove support for AirPrint on OS X 10.6.5. We’ve already heard this story.

Steve Jobs promises more is coming soon and a few alternative solutions to print via OS X have surfaced, but as it stands now AirPrint officially works only with 7 HP printers out of the box. Read more

BBC: Subscription-based iPlayer for iPad Coming Next Year

According to the Financial Times (subscription required), BBC will launch a subscription-based iPlayer service for iPads next year. iPlayer is BBC’s popular streaming service that allows users to stream programs after the original air date, and it gained support for Mac in 2008.

It also gained a lot of traction since then, with downloads exceeding 100 millions in the first months of 2010. Unfortunately, the service isn’t available in many areas – namely outside the UK. For instance, I can’t access iPlayer’s TV streaming in Italy, and I assume the same happens to US users.

It looks like things won’t change with the iPad subscription either, as Dave Caolo at TUAW reports:

BBC Worldwide said that this isn’t going to happen until “the middle of next year,” and even then only in “certain target markets.” Additionally, no word on pricing was available, though there will be ad-supported free sections as well as paid content.

In the meantime, I’m just fine with Hulu through a US-based VPN.

Gift Plan: Shopping Lists Just Got Sexy

I knew the guys at Glasshouse Apps made great apps. After all, they’re the folks behind Barista, Cellar and The Early Edition for iPad. They’ve always cared about delivering beautiful pieces of software packed with information and functionalities. But their latest adventure on the iPhone, Gift Plan?

It’s hot. It’s a gorgeous app that not only makes it easy to check on upcoming occasions (birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas) but it also serves as a nice shopping list / gift manager that helps you keep track of your friends tastes and stuff you’ve gifted them in the past. Pretty pixels are all over the place – so is a highly custom user interface – and I’m not even sure I’ll use this app regularly in the future, but I’m willing to give a try. Read more

Business Insider: Ping One Of The Biggest Flops of 2010→

Business Insider: Ping One Of The Biggest Flops of 2010

It’s not just Google that can’t master social. Apple also struggles. Ping was launched to much fanfare, but it has utterly failed to gain traction.

Ping was launched in September. It recently became available on the iPad. It also got Twitter integration a few weeks ago. I don’t use it and I don’t see many of my friends using it, but I still think a Ping for apps would be great.

Apps aren’t just for geeks anymore. Will Apple ever deploy its own social app discovery platform?

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iPads Being Used for U.S. Marine Recruiting

… This is for fighting, this is for fun!” Sorry, I was feeling inspired by the movie Full Metal Jacket.

Military Times has reported that the U.S. Marine Corps is testing out the use of iPads in recruiting. The blog reported that Maj. Gen. Robert Milstead, the commander of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said the Corps is doing well in recruitment, but (like everyone else these days) it faces a shrinking advertising budget. So they jumped on the ‘iPads in Public’ bandwagon. That’s where the iPads come in. Read more

Old Macs Still Rock→

Old Macs Still Rock

Of course, using Tiger means I personally couldn’t use a lot of the apps I require, like Espresso, nor could I manage Photoshop or InDesign with such a small visual canvas. I can’t stand notebooks anyway. But the intended audience wasn’t me. I chose Tiger over Leopard because it was intended on being used by people in an office environment, who needed word processing, internet, and email. And this is what most people use a computer for. They’ve been using the iBook for the past week, day-in day-out, and I’ve received no complaints so far — they have no clue that the brushed metal UI is ugly, even though they also have a Snow Leopard Mac mini running.

Techno-lust can lead to a flawed vision, making it difficult to see the true value in things.

Such a re-discovery wouldn’t be possible on iOS. You can’t download old versions of apps, and if you run the latest version most likely you’ll end up frustrated by the lack of optimization on older units.

You’ve got to play the update game with iOS.

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That “Official” Apple Twitter Account? Suspended.

I guess Apple cares about Twitter, after all. Steve Jobs may be out of the tweeting game, but Phil Schiller seems to be enjoying the fact that since he went public (and verified) with his Twitter account he can reply to users and fans, troubleshoot and even advise against jailbreaking. He also posted his personal email address on Twitter and got spam in his inbox. Nice.

VP of iOS Scott Forstall hasn’t tweeted yet, but we’re ready to bet he will start posting messages and Instagram pictures pretty soon. Read more

aTV Flash Available: Supercharge Your Apple TV Now

aTV Flash, the first alternative browser and multimedia center for the new Apple TV, is out and available for purchase. We have covered aTV Flash in the past week, and we saw the app it’s capable of bringing several new features to the 2nd gen Apple TV, such as HTML5 playback via a custom browser or weather information.

The first public version of the app is available for $19.95 during the beta (or pre-order) phase here. Read more