This Week's Sponsor:

Quip

A supercharged clipboard manager for Apple devices with on-device intelligence, iCloud sync, and text expansion.

AnandTech’s Epic MacBook Air Review→

AnandTech’s Epic MacBook Air Review

While both models are extremely light, the 11-inch MacBook Air is portable perfection. It’s the closest thing to an iPad with a keyboard (short of an iPad with an actual keyboard). I’m afraid that’s where the comparison ends. Despite what Apple would have you feel, the new MacBook Air is no more an iPad than its predecessor.

If you need to read another review about the new Airs, make sure it’s this one. Insightful and unbiased. [tip: print the page as .PDF and read it on your iPad]

Permalink

AppleScriptObjC Explored by Shane Stanley→

AppleScriptObjC Explored by Shane Stanley

AppleScriptObjC Explored by Shane Stanley is the most advanced, thorough, and in-depth documentation for the creation of AppleScript Objective-C applications. Utilizing a hands-on approach, the book guides you step-by-step through the process of integrating the power of Cocoa into your AppleScript applets and applications, demonstrating each concept and technique in fully editable and annotated example projects.

Recommended. [via DF]

Permalink

Friendly Gets Huge 3.0 Update, Aims At Becoming Best Facebook App for iPad

Well, at least until Facebook comes out with its official app for iPad. Until then, Friendly for Facebook, an app that’s been around for a few months now, is seriously aiming at being the ultimate solution to access Facebook from your tablet.

Criticized in the past for being nothing more than a custom stylesheet for Facebook sold at full price, Friendly was updated earlier today to version 3.0, which brings a lot of new features and a new login system. Friendly 3.0 now uses Facebook Connect to access your wall and friend lists, so I guess that means the app is an actual app now. Also, the developers added multi-account support to easily switch between accounts from a single dashboard screen with big profile pictures. If your iPad has become a “family device”, your kids and wife must be happy about this. Read more

Meet My New Gmail App for iPad

Every day I check on 7 different Gmail accounts. Both personal and work-related, I have to keep an eye on them. On the desktop I use Mailplane, which is a must-have application that wraps Google’s Gmail web UI around a Cocoa native interface for the Mac, and adds a lot of features to it. If you haven’t tried it yet, go get Mailplane right now.

On iOS we don’t have anything like Mailplane. There’s Mailroom, but it’s not as rich or powerful as Mailplane and it’s only for iPhone. I use Mailroom, but I’d like to be able to do more stuff with it and have a full-featured iPad version as well.

So I’m forced to either keep on switching between accounts on Google.com (not a chance in hell), or use different apps on the iPhone and iPad to enjoy this useful “easy multi-account” feature. Like I said, I use Mailroom on the iPhone; on the iPad I’ve been using MailWrangler and Mailboxes for months, but I think I’ve found something that’s faster, equally powerful and free.

MultiG is a simple app for iPad that lets you switch between regular Gmail accounts and Google Apps ones, it’s got a lightweight and fast integrated browser and it even comes with Instapaper support. Read more

A Cloud Over The Mac App Store

Wayne Dixon over at Macgasm, about how app data will be backed up with the Mac App Store:

So this leads me to wondering something: how does the application’s data get backed up? Right now within the iOS App Store, your data is backed up when you sync your iOS device and this information is then backed up again when you backup your computer (you do backup your computer, right?). But if your application data is just stored locally and you do have to do a re-install of your computer, even though you are able to download the software itself again, your data may not be easily placed in the correct location, even with backups.

When Apple announced the iOS-like model for the desktop we didn’t really wonder much about how the backup model was going to be carried over to the Mac. Is it going to be carried over at all? On the current version of OS X (and on previous iterations as well) each app stores its data in various folders on the hard disk. Usually it’s the “Application Support” folder inside a user’s library, but preferences, caches and databases may be stored somewhere else. Not to mention the possibility to manually select a different destination for the main database in some applications, think of 1Password, Candybar and DEVONthink. Is the Mac App Store going to change this? Read more

FaceTime In The Middle Now Possible With A Jailbreak Hack

Whether it’s been blocked by carriers or Apple, FaceTime in the Middle East has been a highly discussed subject on tech blogs in the past weeks. First silently pulled from Apple’s website, then confirmed, then tested on Macs and iPods, the lack of FaceTime in those countries has pissed off quite a few users.

Now the story seems to be finally over with a hack available in Cydia that solves a problem caused by…we don’t know who caused it. The hack is called “FaceTime Hacktivator”, is developed by the iPhoneIslam team and it’s available for free in Cydia. Read more

Steve Jobs Is “Back to the Jet”

Steve Jobs is back in the air. Well not the Air (which apparently is doing great), but literally in the air with his private jet. Taking a look at Apple’s 10K form for fiscal year 2010, Fortune noticed a $93,000 reimbursement to Steve Jobs for private jet expenses in Q4 2010, namely fuel and pilot salaries.

Private jet expenses accounted to only $12,000 in Q3. Clearly Steve traveled a lot during the last quarter, and we can only speculate about the people he met and the deals he closed.

Read more