Once again, Steve Jobs replied to another email, and this time in quite a different mood. Paul Shadwell emailed el Jobso expressing his frustration about Apple’s delays for the international iPad shipping and lack of pricing information, and he got a nice “Are you nuts?” as response.
Full conversation and screenshots after the break.
We’ve heard many rumors and news about a native version of AutoCAD for Mac in the works, but we still lack an official confirmation about the release date or other specific details.
It turns out that some people have spotted comments and references in the header files of the latest ObjectARX 2011 SDK (the Autodesk programming environment) suggesting that the Mac version is the works and should come pretty soon, but it’s not exactly imminent. We’ve included the code after the break, be sure to check it out if you’re really interesting in knowing everything about your favorite Windows app coming to Mac OS X.
Soon.
Apple has posted a job offer on jobs.apple.com (link here) suggesting that they’re indeed already working on a second generation iPad which should have a digital camera.
“Job title: Performance QA Engineer, iPad Media
Description: The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines…Experience with tuning of and image pipeline, including, but not limited to AWB, Color Correction, AutoExposure, FrameRate adjustments is a plus.”
We know that a new model is coming next year. Not a reason to not love the iPad now, though.
Laura Miller has as insightful post about the importance of metadata for books, and what Apple’s iBooks Store really lacks:
“Let’s say I recently read and enjoyed Val McDermid’s “A Place of Execution,” and I want to find more crime fiction like it. On iBooks, I can discover McDermid’s other novels easily enough, but that’s pretty much it. The only other metadata about “A Place of Execution” that the Apple store gives me to work with is that this title belongs to the “Mysteries & Thrillers” category. So does Lisa Lutz’s “The Spellmans Strike Back,” a comic mystery that’s part of a series about the misadventures of a family of wacky detectives in San Francisco. Sure, they’re both crime fiction, but Lutz’s book couldn’t be more different in flavor from McDermid’s gloomy, flinty procedurals set in Northern England and Scotland.
Eventually, iBooks might collect some reader reviews for McDermid’s book; the store is too new to have many reviews at the moment, but the software does provide for it. I might learn from those reviews that McDermid writes in a mystery subgenre sometimes called “tartan noir.” If I’m lucky, the review mentioning this fact might also list some of the other authors who work in the same vein. Then I could search iBooks for their names, seeking more bleak detective fiction to feed my newly acquired appetite. But that’s a long chain of maybes.”
And I couldn’t agree more. The iBooks Store’s (but I’d put the App Store itself on board, too) navigation and organization are flawed. Apple, fix it.
Loren Brichter has had a lot on his plate recently. After all, the man who crafted the incredible beauty that is Tweetie now sings under the umbrella of Twitter. But before this whole spiel was made public, he led us on to a little preview of of the next version of Tweetie 2 for Mac. Obviously it was a joke, but somebody apparently took it to the next level.
Read more
For those with symptoms of signs of RSI and arthritis, typing on the iPad’s virtual keyboard is a less than stellar experience. Even Apple’s own keyboard dock isn’t the most ergonomic solution for those who prefer curved or split keyboards. Many of those with aching hands on the Mac have turned to MacSpeech Dictate, and on the iPhone, Dragon Dictation for their computing needs. It’s a blessing to have such amazing speech software that allows you to create documents, send email, and on the Mac, control the machine with nothing but your voice. For those familiar with the iPhone client, you may want to take notice of Dragon’s latest iteration on the iPad. It’s smart, simple, and of great benefit to those who want the portability of the iPad, but are unable to type for extended periods of time. Read more
Thanks everyone who entered the Egretlist giveaway.We also want to thank the Minds Momentum developers for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.
Here are the winners:
Windsix
Josh
Roxanna
Eric
Arsen
Olive
You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few hours. Stay tuned for other giveaways coming this week.
You can follow the official MacStories Twitter account as @macstoriesnet or Federico as @viticci
My friend ElasticThreads has just released three useful Greasekit userscripts that allow you to send links to your Instapaper account with a single mouse click, without having to move the cursor onto the bookmarks toolbar or invoke a shortcut. Available here, I’m using the holdClick version.
Great job.
Just like I wrote yesterday, the Opera guys achieved what they were aiming for: Opera Mini Web Browser for iPhone is the top free program in all the international App Stores.
