Apple Inc
Latest
Steve Wozniak calls Apple's legendary garage 'a bit of a myth'
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has never been shy to talk about the company he helped create, regardless of whatever the topic may be. Most recently, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Wozniak touched briefly on a few topics from the early days of Apple, ranging from the vision of his long-time partner and friend, Steve Jobs, to how many Apple I and Apple II units were sold in the beginning. Wozniak was also asked a question regarding the legendary Apple garage, which has become known as the Cupertino firm's birthplace -- it's an iconic place, to say the least. To this, he said, "The garage is a bit of a myth."
Why Siri makes sense for OS X
Recently, Google added voice-enhanced search to its iOS search app. At that time, a lot of people started comparing Siri search results with Google, missing a major point about what Siri is and what it does. There's a reason Apple calls Siri a "virtual assistant." It helps you add reminders, create appointments and book tables as well as search for movie reviews and look up sports scores. The people who know and love Siri on iOS use it as a digital concierge. "Wake me at 7:15 tomorrow" and "Remind me to buy milk when I get to Albertsons" are features that go way beyond simple searches. To be fair, Google offers similar capabilities on Android but these are not available in the iOS search app, and were not really part of the discussions when that app launched. Concierge features create ways to interact with your computer that bypass keyboard and mouse. They integrate with the underlying OS to activate user-requested functionality. A concierge transforms your intent into system actions, not just producing strings of text (as with dictation) or web information (as with search). In OS X Mountain Lion, dictation arrived on the desktop along with reminders, iCloud-powered notes and other iOS-inspired features. What didn't arrive was Siri itself. Although all the trappings were there, the connection between voice and action didn't make the cut. It takes a reasonably major engineering effort to connect a voice-based assistant to OS features. Why doesn't Mountain Lion doesn't currently support Siri? Apple might have run out of time, felt it wasn't a priority, wanted to test it first among a committed user base before moving it to new platforms, wasn't convinced desktop users should be speaking to their computers, or had a million other reasons why. Siri has had a pretty bad rap as a "failed feature" among pundits. To see examples, do a Google search for "Siri and disappointment". You wouldn't know that, though, from Apple's recent advertising campaigns, which put it out front and center as a shiny selling point for iPhones. As a committed user of the service, I personally love it. I regularly use Siri while cooking ("Start a timer for 5 minutes"), for managing my kids ("Add yellow pencils to my school supply list"), for texting ("Message Steve I need those chapter review files 10 minutes ago"), and more. I'd like to see its capabilities expand even further. For me, Siri is fast and efficient. I get stuff done quickly with my voice without having to step through a lot of intermediate effort. That's a big reason I'd like to see it jump to OS X. Already, I use dictation a lot more than I ever expected to -- and I'm a really fast typist, so it's not just about overcoming mechanical issues. Adding voice has helped me multitask a lot better. I can keep doing whatever I'm in the middle of, switch over to IRC for example, and dictate a response to an ongoing chat conversation and hop back. Adding Siri would make that even better. I'd be able to shoot off messages, look up phone numbers and more, all from a central interface that doesn't require any significant task switching. How can that not be a win for users? Many of the ways you use Siri on the iPhone and iOS device family transfer directly to the Mac. "Siri, Google a recipe for lamb and garlic." "Siri, where can I get my bicycle fixed?" "Siri, is Prometheus any good?" Just because you're on a desktop doesn't mean Siri cannot help. Will Siri show up in OS X 10.9? I'd certainly like it to and I don't see many technological issues standing in the way. Should it be in the next iteration of OS X? Absolutely.
To migrate or not to migrate: that is the upgrade question
Face it, a simple migration saves you lots of work. Apple's Migration Assistant transfers information when you set up your new Mac, letting you retain all your preferences and passwords on your new system. You pick up one one machine where you left off on another. So why do so many of us here at TUAW manually set up our computers? It's all about cruft, that stuff that builds up over time. Cruft includes apps you no longer use, preferences you don't really remember setting, bits and pieces scattered around your system that accumulate with use. We love unboxing, smelling that captured Shenzhen air, and setting up from scratch instead of bringing all our old mistakes and history along with us. And quite a number of us do this whenever we upgrade. Sure, it's a much harder process. I have a migration log that I use each time I set up a Mac. It takes at least a half day of work, waiting for applications to transfer, re-entering serial numbers, adjusting the way my scrollbars work ("Show scrollbars: always, Mouse > Scroll direction, natural: disable), and tweaking my hosts file (someonewhocares.org). And that's just a taste of the customization I do. Manually setting up your system transforms an automatic act into a deliberate one. It provides an excellent opportunity to question historical choices and evaluate how you want your system to behave. It's a natural break point, where you can reconsider how you've designed key system elements and where you can try out new ones fresh. It gives you a sense that your new computer really is new, complete with "new car" smell. You wouldn't want to move over all the crumb-infested juicebox-stained seats from your old minivan to your new Porsche, so why would you want to do the same for your Mac? Agreed, that's not a fair metaphor -- but it gives a sense of the ownership some of us want to feel over our new system. There's nothing there that we didn't deliberately put there. Sure, that sense of control quickly fades away as we start building up caches and attachment folders, temp files and so forth. But at least for a while, our system is fresh. And that's something worth considering the next time you upgrade. What about you? Are you a migrator or a manual installer? Place a vote in this poll and then join in the comments with your thoughts. %Poll-78896%
iOS and OS X teams joined under Craig Federighi
Today, Apple announced that their iOS and OS X teams would join together as Scott Forstall leaves Apple. Craig Federighi (photo at right) will take over, leading the joined teams. Apple's press release stated, "This move brings together the OS teams to make it even easier to deliver the best technology and user experience innovations to both platforms." At the October 2010 Back to the Mac event, Steve Jobs first discussed what would later be known as the "Post PC" world. He talked about including lessons from iOS in the new operating system, and highlighted how consumer-centered products were the future. Today's developments follow on from that initial road map, bringing the two operating systems under a single team. Developer reaction to this change has been mixed. Some, speaking off the record, stated they do not feel that Apple's recent push towards bringing iOS features and design patterns has been a positive change for OS X. OS X Mountain Lion introduced iOS-like application sandboxing and GateKeeper along with other iOS-originated features like Notification Center and Reminders. Sandboxing curtails OS X application development in very iOS-like ways. Applications must request specific "entitlements" that provide exemptions to OS-imposed barriers. Forstall was notably not part of the October Event last week that introduced the fourth generation iPad, the iPad mini, and a revamped line of Macintoshes. The former VP of iOS, Forstall sold off 95 percent of his Apple shares this past May.
Shopping for your iPad: Picking the pad that best suits you
In a move that surprised most of us here at TUAW, Apple updated its signature iPad to a fourth generation without end-of-life-ing its second-generation, budget iPad 2. This fall, Apple will offer three distinct iPad models for sale, with quite a bit of overlap between the choices. You'll be able to shop for (all prices are USD): The new new iPad. Starting at $499, the iPad with Retina display offers many best-in-class features including enhanced cameras and an improved CPU in addition to its signature display. The iPad 2. The bestselling iPad 2 features a budget $399 starting price, saving you $100 off similar fourth-generation models. It provides a full-sized iPad experience with excellent internals that continue to power nearly any app you throw at it, 19 months after its introduction. The iPad mini. With a trim form factor and a $329 bottom line, the mini will appeal to anyone looking for a more portable and economical alternative to the standard iPad. It features all the power of the iPad 2 in a slightly less expensive model. As a field goes, there's just $170 difference between the entry models for lowest- and the highest-priced units. A lot of press has gone out today wondering why the iPad mini even exists in a market this tight. For me, the question is more about the iPad 2 and why Apple is keeping this unit alive. I think the answer to that question better explains the mini's potential appeal. Apple wouldn't keep the iPad 2 around if it weren't selling, as Phil Schiller confirmed. "The most affordable product we've made so far was $399 and people were choosing that over those devices." Although that $100 split represents a huge technology difference, especially compared with the fourth-generation iPad, the iPad 2 keeps selling. Since the iPad 2 remains in demand, the price tag really must matter. And that's what's going to create a market for the mini, I think, even more than its slender form factor. A budget iPad means that an Apple tablet isn't out of reach for many customers. It's priced on par with the iPod touch. The big message Apple kept pushing over and over yesterday is that tablets aren't just bigger iPhones. They offer an experience that's fundamentally different. The mini is going to let many families buy into that difference this Christmas at an affordable price. Yes, the $330 price is slightly more than many customers had hoped for and pundits had predicted, but that extra $70 matters, especially in this challenged economy. If you can afford it, the newly refreshed iPad is your best choice. If not, both the mini and the iPad 2 provide excellent alternatives for a first Apple tablet.
iBook lessons: Mac clients and built-in updates
iBook Lessons is a continuing series about e-book writing and publishing. Since yesterday's announcement, I've been having a series of conversations -- in email, on the phone, on Twitter -- regarding iBooks, the iBookstore, and why iBooks for Mac remains missing in action. Many in the book world are well aware that Amazon's Kindle reader runs on nearly every platform you can think of, from iOS to Android, OS X to Windows, and in web browsers as well. In a world guided by DRM, readers can ubiquitously access Kindle purchases. Apple's iBookstore continues to have a single client: iBooks for iOS. Yes, the iPad is a delightful reading platform. At the same time, there's no denying that Amazon outpaces iBookstore sales for nearly every title I've worked with. Customers like the control Kindle offers them in how and where they read their books. When faced with a buying choice, readers regularly choose Kindle by a wide margin. There isn't a practical option for a third-party iBooks solution for OS X and Windows. DRM encryption means reverse-engineering Apple's system, an unrealistic basis for establishing a business. Plus, I'm sure Apple has already explored the notion of a desktop client in the run-up to the January 2010 iBooks announcement and since then. I remain puzzled though as to why Apple is not pushing to release iBooks for Mac. I can't imagine that the technical issues for a desktop-based reader are that insurmountable, so it must be a marketing and business decision, or a failure to staff and push the initiative. A Mac and Windows reader would certainly increase book sales; could it depress iPad sales? I wouldn't think so. iBooks 3 launched yesterday, bringing with it expanded dictionaries and continuously scrolling titles. This latter is what Mike T. Rose calls "Megillah" mode, referring to a book traditionally presented as a single scroll of text. In addition, the iBookstore will now allow publishers to push book updates, letting books receive new versions the same way apps do. From an author/publisher's point of view, this provides a mixed bag of blessings and frustrations. For the most part, when a book is done, it's done. Books go through an extended process of reviews and edits that put most apps to shame. Publishers do their best to produce the most polished creations they can, and post errata for any flaws that slip through the cracks. For top-selling books, errors can be fixed in subsequent printings, but all updates involve a huge investment in production overhead and page layout. The costs have to be worth it. In the apps world, it's common to push out point releases that offer simple bug fixes. The new iBookstore update feature is where books meet apps, and it's something that offers mixed benefits. Publishers will welcome the ability to tweak and refine manuscripts. Readers, however, may expect a commitment to relentless perfection that book creators cannot provide. With updates, e-books -- like apps -- become a project that never ends. Will readers revolt with one-star reviews when authors create enhanced and new editions -- now a common practice -- rather than pushing those updates to existing customers? Book updates, like app updates, don't offer a paid upgrade path and there are, as yet, no in-book purchase programs. Mistakes happen; they are part of the human experience. As an author and publisher, I'm glad the update mechanism exists. Trying to push an update through Amazon last year was a huge hassle, and Apple's approach looks far friendlier. But will updates become a big part of my publishing methodology? At this time, I see them as a safety mechanism, not an opportunity for growing a new business.
You're the Pundit: What would make the new iPhone a "must buy" for you?
When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is the new iPhone. Last year, I was looking forward to delaying my iPhone 4S purchase (or the "iPhone 5" as we were guessing) until November, when I would have received a huge price break. Then Siri came along, not to mention that amazing camera, and I was hooked. I bought my 4S the first day it was available. I spent hours attempting to place my order, and then went and wrote an entire book about Siri with Steve Sande. Today, I was talking to the TUAW gang in our back channel, discussing what features would make us reach for the "buy immediately" button on our Macs rather than delay our purchase for a better price For me, it's haptics, similar to the ones used on the Wii. If Apple were to introduce a haptic-enabled system, I'd be there like *snap* that. No one at TUAW expects this to happen soon, primarily due to the battery-consuming nature of the beast but a lot of us would love it. Imagine if Apple could push touch feedback into the user experience! Haptics solves a real problem -- the lack of physical response on the otherwise featureless glass interface between the user and the device Other TUAW-ians are hoping for (but again not expecting) NFC, aka near field communications. This tech uses radio communications to communicate with objects within a few inches of each other. There's a lot of cool applications for this from shopping to contact-sharing to public art installations. Speaking of near-object-communication, that Samsung phone tap-to-transfer trick would be really cool to have, especially if it's realized as "AirDrop for iOS". Right now, you can beam your photos from one iOS iPhoto install to another. Why not push that to the next level? We figure it will never happen but light field photography is now out there in the market place. So why not bring it to the new iPhone? Just point-and-shoot and you can focus after the fact. That would be an amazing must-buy feature for many of us. Or, how about stereoscopic photography? Much easier than light field to implement, what if Apple simply added another camera to back of the the phone to enable 3D image capture? Tie that in to some funky software and you'd have a feature that wouldn't cost to much to ship, but add a great fun touch to the new iPhone. We already know that some level of glasses-free 3D is already possible on iOS. Which of these new features would kick you out of your contract-lethargy and into paying the early-upgrade penalty? You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis. %Poll-77325%
The dawning of the age of Pass Kit: virtual ID on the iPhone
As iOS 6 gets ready for its Autumn debut, many users look forward to Passbook, Apple's "new way to organize boarding passes, tickets, gift cards, and loyalty cards." It promises to help empty your wallet of a multitude of small items, replacing them with a single iPhone interface. Just flash your phone at your favorite retailers, and you're ready to go. Or are you? A bunch of us were chatting this morning in the TUAW back channel about electronic ID and how it works in the real world-- or, more typically, doesn't work. Among us, we use a variety of loyalty and payment solutions including CardStar, Key Ring, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, etc. One theme holds true: we inevitably end up spending more time rather than less at the check out, as employees laboriously type in our numbers manually into the register. "They need a special barcode scanner to accept the iPhone payment -- and none of them in my neighborhood have it. They always get annoyed when I show up with my iPhone," one blogger explained. "I keep asking, 'When are you guys getting the scanner?' and they reply 'Sometime next year.' Great." This blogger's experience isn't true of everyone, of course. Those in big cities often find more retailers that are already equipped to accept electronic payments. "More", here, does not mean "all"; I write from the major metropolitan area of Denver with its inconsistent scattering of scanners. Those in rural areas are often left wanting, especially in name-brand retailers like the afore-mentioned Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. My loyalty e-cards have caused no end of annoyance at King Soopers (Colorado grocery store chain), at Qdoba, at Panera, and so forth. I pull out my phone, and the cashier inevitably responds, "Why don't you just tell me your telephone number instead?" You'd think it'd be easy to add a scanner, but it apparently represents a major infrastructure change, one that's coming later rather than sooner. And that's just taking the major retailers into account. "But they promised that everyone at the Farmer's Market will have a reader!" a wiseacre TUAW editor pointed out. "But Square readers don't fit on stoneware jugs with 'XXX' across the front," replied another. All of us here deeply want Passbook to work. We're already invested in the idea of e-dentity. But somehow we can't help but feel that we're waiting for a feature that will offer a whole host of electronic identity and payment options we might not actually be able to use in the real world.
You're the Pundit: Identify the Icons
When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is the iPhone prototype icons. We were having a look through the prototype gallery over on our sister site Engadget, and a shot of some early icons caught our eye. Some icons seem to have persisted almost unchanged to modern iOS (Safari, Weather, Stocks), others underwent major redesign (Phone and Mail). Looking back at these prototypes, do you think Apple was really going to give us a 4-by-4 puzzle game (shades of OS 9!) and what was up with some of those icons like the lightning bolt, the yellow bar, and the airplane? The blue icon on the bottom bar was the contacts app, right? If anything, it's surprising how close, at least in terms of general functionality, this icon set was to the final version: from SMS to Mail, Photos to iTunes. And that doesn't even mention the dock at the bottom. What do you think of these early icon designs, and what are your thoughts about how their design has evolved in the last 5 years? You tell us. Join in the comments with all your analysis. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
DevJuice: Beeblex offers in-app purchase validation services
The security of iOS in-app purchases is a hot topic after an IAP hacking server was launched last week by a Russian developer. When The Next Web talked to Alexey Borodin, he told them he's since turned the service over to an unnamed third party -- and, as of that conversation, he'd collected only $6.78 in donations to cover his costs. While we strongly advised users to steer clear of this theft-of-service hack, that doesn't solve the problem for developers waiting on Apple to come up with a fix. In the interim, indie startup Beeblex may provide a validation workaround for developers. Some background: The underlying framework for all IAPs in iOS is StoreKit, covered in depth in my iOS Cookbook. Every successful StoreKit purchase transaction contains a receipt. This receipt, which is sent in raw NSData format, corresponds to an encoded JSON string. It contains a signature and purchase information. Apple strongly recommends that you validate all receipts with their servers to prevent hacking and ensure that your customers actually purchased the items they are requesting. You POST a request to one of Apple's two servers. The URL you use depends on the deployment of the application. Use buy.itunes.apple.com for production software and sandbox.itunes.apple.com for development. The request body consists of a JSON dictionary. The dictionary is composed of one key ("receipt-data") and one value (a Base64-encoded version of the transaction receipt data). I normally use the CocoaDev NSData Base 64 extension to convert NSData objects into Base64-encoded strings. CocoaDev provides many great resources for Mac and iOS developers. A valid receipt returns a JSON dictionary. The receipt includes the transaction identifier, a product ID for the item purchased, a unique ID, the bundle ID for the host application, and a purchase date. Most importantly, it returns a status. A valid receipt always has a 0 status. Any number other than 0 indicates that the receipt is invalid. Simply checking for the status may not be sufficient for validation. It's not too difficult to set up a proxy server to intercept calls to the validation server and return JSON {"status":0} to all requests. What's more, the receipt data that is sent along with the validation request can be easily deserialized. For that reason, always use receipt validation cautiously and as part of the overall purchase process, where it's less likely that proxy servers can override communications with Apple. Enter Beeblex. They just launched a free IAP validation service for iOS apps that, according to their marketing text, "verifies IAP receipts against Apple's servers" using time-limited tokens and strong encryption to limit IAP purchase end-runs. Encryption prevents "man in the middle" attacks; time limited tokens prevent replay attacks. Together they make it much less likely that a simple proxy could successfully spoof an IAP reciept and fool your app into providing something for nothing. It's an intriguing option. The advantage seems to be that Beeblex provides a server component for apps developed without one. Still, I'm not sure I'd want my apps to rely on a third party service when any service interruption could create a large angry user base. I wonder how Beeblex will pay for the bandwidth necessary to facilitate this service, and what would happen should they get hacked. Hacking could be a big deal, because it'd circumvent potentially hundreds or thousands of apps, instead of just one. [Update] Marco Tabini, one of the Beeblex developers, writes, "One thing that I wanted to point out is that we have, in fact, thought about the possibility that our service may go down by building methods inside the SDK that would inform the app of transaction failures due to networking errors. Of course, you are completely right that we need to show that we can grow and maintain the service, and we have a lot of work ahead of us in this respect. We'll do our best!" I'd probably feel a lot more comfortable buying from a well-known quantity than relying on a free start-up. Urban Airship doesn't appear to provide this kind of service. I gave them a call and a sales guy said it's not an option. [Update] CEO Scott Kveton replied to my email saying, "Yes we do IAP receipt verification." He adds a note from his team: "This is not really a security problem. It's long been known that you can put your own root CA on iPhones, and at that point you can basically do anything as a proxy. The people being bitten by this on the IAP side are only those that are not doing receipt verification with Apple out of band via a server, which is something we do in our IAP product as a standard. If you do out of band receipt verification, this fails and nothing is purchased/granted." My feelings on IAP and piracy are this (in no particular order): Developers use IAP too much, and often without regard for the user experience. Requiring IAP in apps for kids is, in my opinion, evil -- it should be strongly discouraged by Apple policy. If your app requires IAP to bypass gameplay segments, your game design needs some serious reconsideration. Focus on providing good experiences for your paying users instead of fighting piracy. If your anti-piracy protections tick off even one paying customer you have lost the war. Trying to fight piracy is a losing proposition with one exception. The one exception is scalable server support. If pirates are killing your servers, either find another app to build or try to limit the impact of unpaid customers. Don't save IAP unlocks in plain text files. There are keychains and other more secure solutions available.
iBook Lessons: The absolute beginner
iBook Lessons is a continuing series about ebook writing and publishing. I get asked this a lot: what is the absolute minimum it takes to get started in ebook publishing. The answer is this: a manuscript in Microsoft Word .doc or .docx format, an Amazon account, and a smile. Everything else is gravy. With just those items, you can get started publishing on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system and start earning money from what you write. Just agree to KDP's terms and conditions, provide Amazon with a bank account routing number for your earnings, and if you are an American citizen, a Social Security number. You can find all the information you need to provide on this webpage. You can use a personal account to set up your direct deposit, although you'll probably want to set up a separate business account instead. Check around for whatever free checking deals are currently in your area. These days, in the US, expect to leave a few hundred dollars deposited in the account in order to skip fees. Once you've signed up, you head over to your KDP dashboard to upload and describe your ebook. You won't need an ISBN, you won't need to pre-format your book for mobi or EPUB, you just select the doc file from your desktop, upload it, and let Amazon do all the rest. It's insanely easy. What's more, your Kindle book can be read on nearly any platform out there from iOS to Android, from Mac to Windows. In exchange for selling your book, Amazon takes a fixed 30% of the sales price (which may range from $2.99 to $9.99) off the top plus "delivery fees," which amount to $0.15/megabyte. In other words, Amazon is not the place for you if you intend to sell image-heavy picture books. There are two exceptions to this model. First, if your book costs under $2.99, you must sell it using a flat 35% royalty option (they keep 65% of list price). Second, if you want to bypass the delivery fee model, you may opt into the 35% program for higher-priced ebooks. What if you absolutely need to sell through iBooks? Then, you'll either have to start doing a bit more work in terms of securing an ISBN, filling out paperwork and contracts, and converting to EPUB, or you can look into a third party-Apple approved aggregator. Apple requires: ISBN numbers for the books you want to distribute Delivery in EPUB format, where the book passes EpubCheck 1.0.5 a US Tax ID an iTunes account backed up by a credit card An easy way to work through this is to sell through an agregator like Smashwords. In exchange for a further cut of your profits, they distribute your ebooks to a wide range of stores, including the iBookstore. Instead of earning 70%, you earn 60% and Smashwords handles all the distribution details, including ISBNs. They promise: Free ISBNs Free ebook conversion to nine formats Free unlimited anytime-updates to book and metadata Regardless of where you publish, spend as much time as you can writing a compelling book. And, don't forget the proofreading! [For Federico Viticci, who asked]
Getting Ready for Mountain Lion: Preview
Preview, the app that lets you view pictures and read PDFs in OS X, is one of Apple's unsung heroes. There's so much you can do with this app. It goes far beyond simply looking at images. It's a minimal image editor. You can crop your pictures, reorient them, and export them to new formats. It's a multi-format viewer. You can use Preview to read Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. It's a PDF masterpiece. You can annotate PDFs, reorder pages, and add bookmarks. And that's all pre-10.8 behavior! You can do all that now, today, in Lion. Mountain Lion brings a bunch of new enhancements to Preview, taking a valuable little app and putting it on steroids. To start, you get all the standard ML built-in sharing, so you can share your images and PDFs to Messages, AirDrop, Mail, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. This greatly simplifies the path from importing and previewing images to sharing them directly with family, friends, and colleagues. Next, Preview for Mountain Lion adds in iCloud support. You'll be able to load and save images directly into the cloud for access from any of your Apple devices, mobile or desktop. But it's the PDF updates that really make the new Preview shine. Continuing to roll in Acrobat-style PDF editing, Preview will soon allow you to fill out PDF forms by auto-detecting those areas that are intended for text entry. Preview will find underlining and boxes, and will let you click and type to add your text. It also supports checkboxes. Once you've filled out your form, you should be able to to use Preview's existing signature support feature to sign your PDFs. But that's not all. Preview will let you search through notes and highlights, either by author or by content. That's a huge win for anyone who collaborates with others, and may need to find annotations in large documents on a per-person basis. Apple promises that adding inline notes will be much easier as well; "Click the area where you want to add the comment and start typing. When you're done, the text is hidden. Click to read the comment." Finally, the updated version of Preview will allow you to scan images and forms directly into existing PDF documents, so you can group pages and related material together, as you scan them. I spend a lot of time during my work-week using Preview. I can't wait to get started using these features. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and Erica Sadun wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99.
Apple fined $2.29 million over '4G iPad' claims in Australia
Australia's federal court has fined Apple for "deliberately" misleading customers on local 4G capabilities of its latest iPad. The Cupertino-based company recently agreed to the terms, which included AU$2.29 million fine and a cool AU$300,000 in costs. Despite its 4G claims, Apple's new iPad can't connect with existing Antipodean next-generation phone networks, although it can hook up to US-based networks. Apple offered refunds for any customers that felt deceived and even adjusted its advertising to reflect its cellular capabilities, but the judge still deemed that the company had contravened Australia's consumer law in the ensuing confusion. Fortunately, Apple still has plenty left in the bank.
Apple closes in on $2.25 million settlement in Australia for disputed 4G iPad claim
The legal drama surrounding Apple's 4G labeling of some iPad models in Australia might be coming to an end. The Australian reports that Apple has agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle claims that the company's use of the term "Wi-Fi + 4G" was misleading because the tablet doesn't work with the country's 4G networks. Apple already offered to provide refunds to consumers who felt deceived by the labeling. The company also renamed the aforementioned model to "iPad WiFi + Cellular" in several territories. Apple hasn't quite made it across the finish line, however -- the settlement still requires court approval before it can be finalized and the Judge has adjourned the case until Wednesday to gather more information. [Thanks, Matt, Clayton]
Presidents Obama, Clinton pay tribute to Steve Jobs at Webbys
Yesterday a host of political leaders, artists, scientists, and tech visionaries paid tribute to Steve Jobs at the annual Webby Awards in New York. The tribute started with an opening from Justin Long and John Hodgman, who played Mac and PC in Apple's long-running "I'm a Mac" ads. Richard Dreyfuss, who voiced the original Think Different "Crazy Ones" commercial, then came out and said in five words (a kind of tradition at the Webbys) what he thought of Steve Jobs: "Exception that proves the rule." In the tribute video that played, people as diverse as President Obama, Buzz Aldrin, Vint Cerf, Adriana Huffington, President Clinton, George Lucas, U2's Bono, Jon Stewart, and more all said five words each about Steve Jobs. The video ends with President Obama saying, "The truth is when we are talking about Steve Jobs, we only need one word: amazing." You can view the whole tribute in the video below. Your browser does not support iframes.
Apple's iPad WiFi + 4G renamed 'iPad WiFi + Cellular' across many of its stores
Remember Apple's new iPad WiFi + 4G? Well, forget that moniker, as this variant of the company's latest slate has been quietly re-dubbed as the iPad WiFi + Cellular. As noticed by 9to5Mac, the change occurred within the last "24-48 hours" across many of Apple's region-specific webstores (update: and retail locations), including (but not limited to) those for the US, UK, Australia, Canada and various countries in Asia. If you'll recall, in many regions the best you'll get out of the slate is HSPA-connectivity, even though it's also equipped for LTE -- something that Apple itself had considered good enough to market it as 4G despite offering refunds to customers in Australia who (like many others) couldn't officially partake in its LTE. Interestingly, 9to5Mac also notes that a similar change hasn't made its way over to the iPad 2, which still has its cellular-equipped variant named, iPad 2 WiFi + 3G. We've reached out to Apple for comment, but the meantime, feel free to hit up the source links below for more insight.
ComScore: Android tips the 51% mark in US share, iPhone nips its heels with 31%
The March smartphone market share tally for the US is in from ComScore, and it paints a familiar picture that's rosy for Apple, Google and Samsung, but not so flush-cheeked for everyone else. Android is still tops and jumped almost four points to 51 percent of new American buyers. Apple's still riding high after shipping 35.1 million iPhones, however, and moved up to 30.7 percent. As is often becoming the case, it was Microsoft and RIM that took the biggest hit, with the BlackBerry dropping as much as Android gained and tumbling down to 12.3 percent. A total of 106 million Americans had a smartphone, nine percent higher than in December, and that was mirrored in the hurt dealt out among total cellphone market share. Outside of Samsung's gangbuster run in smartphones keeping it on top at 26 percent, the only other company to move up as an individual cellphone brand was Apple, which staked out 14 percent of the US cellphone space for itself. HTC, Motorola and LG are all shedding market share, with HTC no doubt hoping that the One X and One S will turn its fortunes around pretty soon.
Apple working on 21,468 square-foot cafeteria in Cupertino, wants employees' chatter to be safe
How do you keep your employees chit chat from spilling the beans on your next one more thing? You force the beans to be served in an employee-only 21,468 square-foot cafeteria -- that's how. According to Mercury News, Apple just got the go-ahead from the Cupertino Planning Commission on its scheme to build a colossal two-story bistro exclusively for staff members. While the facility will be mainly used for eating purposes during lunch hours (11:30AM to 2PM, to be exact), it'll also accommodate meeting rooms and lounge areas. Apple's Director of Real Estate Facilities, Dan Whisenhunt, says the company needs to provide its people with a sense of security "without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations." Now, we can't help but wonder if it's going to look anything like that spaceship...
Dear Aunt TUAW: Did my wife just get a free upgrade?
Dear Aunt TUAW, So my wife's 11-inch MacBook Air went into an Apple Store to get its screen replaced because it cracked. It's got a core i5 1,6ghz processor in it... Or at least it did! We've just got it back home and I clicked on "About this Mac" out of habit and it's reported that it's got a core i7 1.7ghz! So my question is: Can the "about this Mac" info be wrong? Your loving nephew, Matt Dear Matt, That's a puzzler indeed. Do you know if the serial number matches up to what it was before the repair? In Auntie's experience, "About this Mac" is pretty reliable. However, as a nice man at AppleCare pointed out to her today, the store has discretion over how it performs its repairs. If it's too hard to replace a screen on an older unit, they might theoretically pop out the drive and install it into a newer Mac for in-warranty repair. Given that the screen is physically distant from the processor and not naturally linked, this might be the answer to your mystery. Please write back and let Auntie know if all the other facets of the computer match up to the pre-repair condition, or if the Genius Bar delivered a free upgrade to you! Hugs, Auntie T.
Confirmation of Apple rejecting an app for accessing UDID
Paul Haddad of Tapbots confirmed that Apple is rejecting apps which send out UDIDs. The developer posted a rejection notice for version 2.2 of its popular twitter client Tweetbot. The notice says that Tweetbot was rejected because the "app does not obtain user consent before collecting their personal data" and points to the UDID as the culprit. Tapbots says it was using the UDID for its push notification service and has disabled the code in the most recent version of Tweetbot that it submitted to the iOS App Store. Haddad advised other developers who rely on the UDID, "If you are an app developer and depend on UDID for any functionality it's time to migrate away from it, sooner or later Apple will catch you."
