Date Night: App Store Gets Valentine’s Apps

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching (mark your calendars, gentlemen) Apple thought it might be appropriate to launch a new dedicated App Store section to showcase apps that can turn out to be useful on that day. Like Yelp and OpenTable (because you want to go to a classy restaurant, right?), OkCupid and iLoveYou in 50 Languages. Apps can be romantic too.

If you don’t feel like going to a fancy place with your loved one, you can follow some cooking advice with the 20 Minute Meals app, featured as well. Oh, and if the dinner turns out to be a disaster, you can call a cab with Taxi Magic.

Date Night: App Store Essentials is available here.

“A Lot Happens In 10 Years”→

“A Lot Happens In 10 Years”

Bottom: Graphite iBook G3, circa 2001-ish.

Top: 11.6” MacBook Air, 2010

Approximately 20x the RAM, 8x the hard drive space (now SSD instead of magnetic), Bluetooth and 802.11n standard, built-in camera, no optical drive, multitouch trackpad, at least 2x the battery life. ~300 MHz to 1.4 GHz x 2 cores on a new architecture. Completely new operating system. 3 or 4 pounds lighter, and who knows how much thinner, but a heck of a lot thinner.

No matter the decade, it always feels like we’re just getting started.

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Personal Hotspot On The Verizon iPhone? That’s An Additional $20

Earlier today, Verizon confirmed the iPhone will launch on their network on February 10 with an initial unlimited data plan priced at $30; speaking to Macworld, Verizon Wireless’s Executive Director of Corporate Communications, Brenda Raney, confirmed that in order to use the Personal Hotspot feature provided by Apple iPhone users will have to pay $20 more:

Raney said that Verizon iPhone owners will be able to take advantage of the 3G wireless hotspot feature for an extra $20 per month on top of the iPhone’s required voice and data plans—that’s the same price that applies to current Verizon smartphone owners.

The hotspot feature comes with its own 2GB monthly data pool, separate from your iPhone’s data plan. That covers the use of any and all devices using your iPhone’s 3G data connection. The downside? Go over that amount, and each additional gigabyte will cost you another $20.

Personal Hotspot is a functionality that allows users to turn the iPhone into a mobile hotspot to share the 3G connectivity with nearby devices, via Bluetooth, USB or WiFi. The feature will officially debut with the Verizon iPhone (which at the time of the media event, was running an unreleased iOS 4.2.5 version) and it’s already been implemented in the iOS 4.3 developer betas. Carriers, however, will retain the ability to disable the functionality on their network, or charge extra fees in order to activate it.

The Finder’s Legendary Selections→

The Finder’s Legendary Selections

Terrific post by Mike Lee on the Finder’s selection behavior. Lots of things I didn’t know in there:

If you’re not a software engineer building apps for the Mac, none of this really matters. It’s just an interesting bit of trivia you can use to not really impress anyone.

If you are a software engineer building apps for the Mac, buckle up, because like Past Me, you have no fucking idea how these selections work, which is a real problem, because one day you are going to implement selection behavior in your app and completely fuck it up.

I say go read it no matter if you’re a software engineer or not.

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White iPhone Production Issues Fixed By New Japanese Paint?

With the appearance of the white iPhone 4 on various international carrier websites, rumors about the new device finally becoming available in the next weeks have been intensifying lately. Last summer, several reports suggested that the white iPhone might or might not have been delayed due to manufacturing issues with the white paint on the rear glass of the unit.

As noted by iLounge, a new report from blog Macotakara suggests that a new Japanese paint has fixed the production woes with the white iPhone 4.

Citing an unnamed source, the report claims that the new material allows for the thickness of the painted layer to be specified prior to application, which apparently results in better yields and fewer defective products.

Will Apple be able to meet the rumored Spring 2011 deadline at this point? The white iPhone 4 sure has become a hot subject again.

Superstash For iPad Snaps And Annotates Web Clippings: Review & Giveaway!

More and more time is seemingly spent on the iPad than the Mac as of late, and it’s funny that I’d forgo the comfort and speed of a laptop for the wrist-destroying aluminum slate. Maybe it’s because of all the great apps developers keep sending us! Casually my iPad resides in a proper case (the Macally Bookstand) that allows me to prop the iPad at a slight typing angle, complete with the “kitchen lean” where I ruin the back legs of my favorite wooden chair. I’ll swipe through Flipboard, pinch into Reeder, and browse Safari before starting my work & school day over a couple hot cups of coffee. Those moments in the morning are often spent finishing the previous evening’s Instapaper & Read It Later queues, then spending the remaining free time looking for new content. On the Mac I’m accustomed to saving bits and pieces of pictures and web pages I find to LittleSnapper, and I haven’t had that luxury on the iPad without some manual work dragging content out of iPhoto.

Superstash for the iPad solves this dilemma: it is the web browser for web hoarders, creative thinkers, and anyone looking to collect, annotate, file, and share good ideas. You’d never think about collecting pictures and web clippings in a browser, but Superstash arrives on the iPad with every intention to reshape those ideas, and to get us thinking about using our iPads as a proper discovery and collection bin.

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FaceMan Is Like Photo Booth For Your iPhone

I should have seen this coming. With iOS 4.3 rumored to introduce Photo Booth-like features for FaceTime or the Camera app, a developer created a full-featured alternative to Photo Booth that’s called FaceMan and it’s available now in the App Store at $0.99.

Put simply: FaceMan is great. It comes with 20 effects from the most popular Squeeze and Bent to a geek’s dream like Broken TV and LED; it’s got a slider to adjust the strength of effects; it can do both photos and videos WITH effects applied. Videos don’t have audio right now, but it’s coming with the next update, almost ready to be submitted to Apple. The interface is clean and polished, supports the Retina Display and you just need to flick through pages of effects to pick one and snap a picture. I did, and the terrible result can be viewed in the screenshot above. Full effect list includes: Swirl, X-Ray, Stretch, Heat, Sketch, Sepia, Dent, Led, Emboss, LightTunnel, Bulge, Squeeze, BrokenTv, Mirror, Toon, BlackAndWhite, AsciiArt, ModernArt, 100Me and NightVision.

Last, you can share photos on Twitter, Facebook, email and Tumblr. The app has a dedicated album to view all the photos and videos without having to open the iOS camera roll. I don’t know what else will Apple add in their own Photo Booth app, but FaceMan is an excellent alternative, available now. And it does videos. Go get it.

Macworld Releases “Daily Reader” Free iPad App

Macworld, the decade-long printed and digital publication on all things Apple, has released a free app for the iPad today that takes full advantage of the tablet’s unique form factor and brings the best of Macworld.com to the device. The Daily Reader app, in fact, is a selection of the best content from the website, and not a replica of the printed magazine available to subscribers every month. In Daily Reader, you’ll find popular content from Macworld organized in sections you can also access from a navigation bar at the top.

I’ve just tried the app for a few minutes and it’s quite nice. You can increase / decrease font size, flick through sections with a swipe. I did not like the poor layout of some article clearly taken out of Macworld’s RSS feed without formatting for the iPad; this was an isolated issue though. Most of the articles have been updated with graphics and banners that look really great on the iPad. The app takes a few seconds to load contents and images, there is advertising between articles and sections but, again, it feels good. I also like the fact that there is a box on the right side to access a live feed of authors from Macworld. You can share articles on Twitter / Facebook / Email and bookmark them for later reading into a specific page inside the app.

Unlike many blogs’ apps for the iPad and iPhone, Macworld Daily Reader is really, really nice in my opinion. The layout is clean and there’s lots of information to look at. Here’s to hoping the app will be regularly updated with new content. In the meantime, go download the app here and take a look at more screenshots and promo video below. Read more