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Origin Stories: Steve Sande
I certainly didn't start my career with plans to become a blogger and editor at one of the world's most active Apple websites. When I was a child dreaming about a future career path, computer science barely registered on the "What I want to do when I grow up" list since only corporations owned room-sized mainframes at that time and there was no such thing as a home computer. The first time I had any physical contact with a computer was in 8th grade in Aurora, Colorado in the Apollo moon landing year of 1969. The Aurora Public Schools had purchased a Data General Nova (see console photo of a similar model at top of this post) in that year for accounting and scheduling purposes, and some brilliant person came up with the idea of buying some Teletypes that could be used as dialup terminals to allow personnel at the schools to access the main computer remotely. Well, the administrators and teachers at the school weren't all that interested in computers, so guess who started using the Teletypes and Nova to learn how to program in BASIC? The students. Since they wouldn't let us save our programs to paper tape (that would come in about two or three years), any programs we ran were usually quite short out of necessity – we'd type 'em in, run them, try to figure out what the TOO MANY NESTED GOSUBS error meant, and then start all over again. It was fun, but frustrating with no real way to store the programs permanently. In 9th and 10th grade, I was only able to play rarely with the Nova or whatever computer they may have purchased as an upgrade. But when the school announced in 11th grade that the regular algebra class would also be offered in a "computer algebra" version providing access to the school system's minicomputer, I jumped on the opportunity to have a full semester of working with ... the future! Things were a little better at that point. We could save our programs out on paper tape, kind of the "floppy disk" of the era. I think part of the reason we wanted to save to paper tape was that the tape punch created some very good confetti for high school football games... About this time I became very interested in two things; transportation engineering and writing. I had a wonderful high school English teacher by the name of David Faull (still alive and kicking) who really taught me how to write, something I'd need to do in college in those pesky elective courses. I had decided to go into Civil Engineering, and was accepted at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Every engineering student at the time had to take an introductory computer class – CS 101 – in which they were introduced to two things: punch card input and FORTRAN IV. There was nothing worse than sitting down at a keypunch machine with a handwritten FORTRAN coding form, typing in several hundred cards, all of which needed to be read by a machine in order and without typos for your program to run. I can recall hearing of several computer science grad students who had nearly committed suicide after having ultra-long programs scattered to the wind when they accidentally dropped boxes of punch cards... One of my best high school buddies, Rick Brownson, was a student at CU at the same time in the Electrical Engineering department, and I recall that in 1976 he introduced me to an amazing game –- Lunar Lander –- that displayed vector graphics in real time onto a round green-screen terminal. We wasted many a weekend hour playing that game in one of the EE computer labs. Rick also introduced me to the nascent world of personal computing around that time, as he and I soldered chips into a MITS Altair 8800 kit in late 1975. I really wasn't all that impressed with the Altair, since when we finished it there was no way for us to connect it to a display (usually an old TV), and we had no keyboard for it. So we flipped switches on the front of the device to enter 8080 opcodes and then looked at the LEDs to see the results. I remember taking a weekend drive to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1976 to go to a Altair convention of some sorts; the highlight was getting a pirated copy of Bill Gates' Altair BASIC on paper tape from another attendee. At the time I graduated from engineering school in 1978, word was getting out about Apple, but at the time I really didn't see any reason to buy a computer. Even while I was working in my first job and going to grad school, I refused to buy a computer. When I was able to get a Commodore VIC-20 for about $300 I bought one, then when Commodore reduced the price on the C-64 to about $250 the next week, I returned the VIC-20, got a refund, and picked up a Commodore 64. After a short amount of time I found myself hooked. I bought an Epson printer, got the cassette tape drive, and bought the height of communications technology at the time – a 300 baud modem. I quickly found myself on some of the early bulletin board systems of the time. But the Commodore 64 wasn't a "real computer", so when IBM compatible devices started hitting the market I went out and bought a Sanyo MBC-555 PC clone complete with two floppy drives (a Sanyo MBC-550 with only one floppy is shown below)! This is where I got my first introduction to business software, with WordStar as a word processor and CalcStar as a spreadsheet. At this time, I was working for a natural gas pipeline company called WestGas. The company was a subsidiary of a larger electric and gas utility (Public Service Company of Colorado, now part of Xcel Energy), and as a subsidiary we had of control over our destiny. In the fall of 1983, the Vice President of our company came to me to see if I would perform a study of possible uses for personal computers in our company and create a five-year plan to budget the introduction of those devices, so I jumped to the task. Everything was based on costs and benefits, and a calculated rate of return on the investment in IT. In retrospect, a lot of my numbers were probably quite suspect, as they were based on estimates of time savings that most likely never occurred... The final study saw a need for no more than about 15 PCs over the next five years as well as a handful of dedicated IBM DisplayWriter word processors. About the time that my study was completed, there was a lot of speculation in the computer world about Apple's forthcoming Macintosh. I was interested in seeing one, so a few days after they were introduced my boss and I went over to a Nynex Business Center store to take a look. While the mouse, the bitmapped display, and the 3.5" floppy drive were all amazing, the lack of memory (128K) was a real turnoff. Still, I felt as if I had seen the future, and I vowed to get myself a Mac if they ever built a model with more RAM. Towards the end of the year Apple introduced the 512K "Fat Mac", and the company was doing a "Test Drive A Mac" promotion where you filled out loan paperwork, took a Mac home to use for about three days, and if you decided you wanted to keep it they processed the loan. Having the Mac at home really made me fall in love with it, so in December of 1984 I bought my first Mac. Being enthralled with the Mac, I started lugging it with me to work. By this point I was the supervisor of a group called "Special Projects", and my team was charged with a number of things: regulatory compliance, studies, project management, and now IT. Pretty quickly, my co-workers got began to turn into Mac fans, and I started tweaking the five year plan to buy fewer PCs and more Macs. I was also going to a lot of Mac User Group meetings in those days; that was the place to really try out software, as most everyone would bring boxes of floppies as well as the original disks for new applications they had purchased. Copying was rampant, but I don't remember anyone doing outright pirating; if you tried a program and liked it, you'd end up buying it. That was the case for me in 1985 when I tried out a copy of Aldus Pagemaker (the first "professional" page layout application) and then bought the application. At one point, I bragged to our financial manager that I could use the app to lay out our subsidiary's annual report at a much lower cost than sending it out to a traditional printshop; he called my bluff and for the next month I worked with the very buggy 1.0 software to create the report. In the end, I was successful and the finance department decided to get Macs for everyone. In a few more years, the engineering role ended for me and I was a full-time IT manager. Starting in 1987 and through 1994, I attended Macworld Expo in San Francisco. From about 1990 to 1994, I also went to the Apple WorldWide Developer Conference, which was held in San Jose at that point. These were the years of trying to get a new Mac OS off the ground, the intro of the Newton MessagePad, the MPW vs. CodeWarrior battles, and extremely boring keynotes by such luminaries as Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio. I also spent a lot of time using Pagemaker to create printed newsletters for WestGas and for a number of groups I was a member of. While that was a bit of work that I never really ended up getting paid for, it taught me a lot about design, layout, printing, and writing. From 1986 to 1994, I also ran a Mac bulletin board system known as MAGIC (Mac And [Apple II] GS Information Center). This started off on my original Mac 512, and by the time I quit running the BBS and moved to a website, it was a three-phone-line setup running on two networked Macs Including my favorite Mac of all time, a Mac IIcx. The BBS was the "official site" for the MacinTech Users Group, a MUG that's still going strong to this day. My first website was PDAntic.com, a play on John Sculley's acronym for the Newton – Personal Digital Assistant – and the fact that my wife often refers to me as being pedantic. I chose to run the site with news posts written in a reverse chronological order, which means that I was essentially doing blogging in 1994! I was doing some half-hearted development for the Newton at the time, and still have a working MessagePad 2100. 1995 was the start of a bad period for me personally – our pipeline company was swallowed back into our parent company, and then all of us who had any dealings in information technology were outsourced to IBM's ISSC services group (later IBM Global Services). While I won't go into details, it was the worst part of my career, with incompetent and occasionally unethical managers, a strategy that consisted of trying to do more and more work with fewer employees (with predictable bad results), and the most demoralized staff I've ever seen. I survived for nine years, after which I chose to go out on my own. At the beginning of my time with IBM our client (the company I worked for) had a total of over 1,200 Macs company-wide; by the time I left we were down to a handful in the corporate communications department. One of my first IBM projects in 1996 was to move all of the Mac users to Windows 95 –- I should have quit when I was ordered to do that. One bright spot during the years 1999 through 2006 was my participation in a number of Microsoft's Mobius conferences. These were meetings of those of us who ran mobile-oriented websites, with Microsoft showing off concepts and picking our brains for ideas about UI, built-in applications, and the direction of the mobile world. I also met a number of the top bloggers in the mobile space, including Ryan Block and Peter Rojas, who were both instrumental in starting up Engadget. Peter was one of the co-founders of Weblogs, Inc., the blog network that TUAW was a part of before being purchased by our current owner -- AOL. In 2005 I started my own consulting firm, Raven Solutions, to do Mac consulting and support. I became a member of the Apple Consultant Network (ACN), which helped my business to grow quite quickly. I also started writing books at about this time, creating a book called "Take Control of your iPod: Beyond the Music" that is still for sale from Adam and Tonya Engst's Take Control Books. One top moment about this time was seeing Steve Jobs introduce the iPhone at the 2007 Macworld Expo. That was something I'll never forget, and I have a Nitrozac painting of the event within my field of view in my office. In late 2007 I was on a weekend trip to Vegas with my wife when a friend pointed out that one of my favorite Apple sites –- TUAW –- was accepting applications for freelance writers. I turned in my requisite three sample articles, but didn't hear anything ... until April of 2008. I was on a business trip when I received a call from former TUAWite Scott McNulty, who wondered if I was still interested in being a TUAW blogger. He gave me a test that I remember quite well; I had one hour (sitting in an airport waiting for a flight) to write a news post about a new and completely hypothetical Apple product. I zapped it to him via email with time to spare and was offered the job. Since that time I've become a full-time employee of TUAW parent company AOL, I've met thousands of TUAW readers at Macworld/iWorld and other events, written a number of books (many with fellow TUAW blogger Erica Sadun), and published almost 1.8 million words of blog posts. I love sharing time with TUAW fans every Wednesday afternoon on TUAW TV Live, as well as delivering the daily Apple news on the Daily Update podcast. And when I get to join with my teammates for one of the Sunday night Talkcasts, that's like getting together with family. The only way to describe my life right now is as "blessed." I work with a great team of professionals doing what I love to do the most, writing about a company that has had such a huge effect on the course of my career and my life. I don't know how long this ride will last, but I sincerely hope it's for a long, long time.
PSA: Free iCloud storage for MobileMe users to end on September 30th
All good things come to an end, and for ex-MobileMe users, that end is fast approaching: Apple's complimentary 20GB of iCloud storage for former users expires on September 30th -- this time for good. The promotion, launched to assuage user sorrow over the death of MobileMe and to entice them to try out iCloud, was only meant to last until September 2012 before receiving a year-long extension. Users who want to keep their storage after the kill-date will need to pony up $40 per year for a 20GB subscription, or risk being bumped down to the free 5GB plan. Unfortunately, iCloud Backup, Documents in the Cloud and iCloud Mail will stop working if a user's data goes over that limit, undoubtedly forcing many to shell out for additional storage. Of course, digital hoarders could always opt to do a little housekeeping.
Complimentary iCloud storage upgrades are expiring soon
If you were a former MobileMe user who got a nice 20 GB chunk of free storage last year when iCloud came to life, the happy days are almost over. A number of the TUAW staff members have received an email similar to the one seen above, noting that we'll have to either buy a storage plan by September 30, 2013 or have the plan drop down to the free 5 GB iCloud plan. The link on the email goes to this support page, which explains how to sign up for a plan. In my case, the 20 GB plan is going to take US$40 out of my wallet for the next year. How about you, TUAW readers? Are you going to renew your iCloud plan or just make do with your Dropbox or Google Drive accounts?
So you've been Sherlocked: AirParrot developers respond to new Mavericks features
On Monday, Apple introduced OS X Mavericks, their next-generation operating system for Macs. One feature Apple demoed on stage enables users to use an HDTV as an extra monitor, courtesy of Apple TV and AirPlay connectivity. If that feature sounds familiar, you may already be an AirParrot customer. The US$9.99 app allows you to stream your screen or individual windows to Apple TV and it also offers extra screen support. The app's popular extended desktop features have been around for a while. After Monday's announcement, we contacted Sidney Keith of Squirrels to get his reaction to the Mavericks feature. Today, he provided the following, thoughtful response. We're continuing to innovate and develop at our own pace. Just because Apple released one of our features as its own doesn't mean we quit. We're still striving for quality applications that solve our customers and users needs. Honestly, we're glad Apple finally caught up. It gives us that much more motivation to innovate and create cooler applications that users want and need. Software is about progress, and that's what this is going to give us. Not only do we have the motivation to keep innovating, we now have the opportunity and obligation to help those that can't or won't upgrade to 10.9. We have a large and loyal customer base that we'll continue supporting. We don't plan on dropping support for 10.6, even though we've now seen three major releases since then, and not everyone is as loyal to Apple as we may think. Upgrades can be costly for institutions and businesses that have hundreds of systems that need to be upgraded. We're here for those users, and we're here for the ones that don't trust the first iterations of Apple products. Whatever the reason for not upgrading, we have their back. Apple has a global audience to attend to, and while we also have users all around the globe, our feature set is much more focused. We're able to focus solely on one group of features instead of an entire operating system. While Apple might add a feature, it's likely they'll not change that feature significantly in any future releases. We saw the addition of AirPlay desktop mirroring in OS X 10.8, but that feature hasn't changed since its initial release-roughly a year since the beta. We've got the ability to focus our entire teams attention on that one specific feature if we need to. That's something you'll be seeing over the next few months. We'll be doing a lot of innovation and creation in this area, and while we hope Apple doesn't steal our new features, we know it's inevitable. It's almost an honor. If you want to see what Apple's going to to include AirPlay-wise at WWDC 14, you can probably bet our next few releases will be a preview. Squirrels is also the developer of the Reflector app, which nearly all of us at TUAW have purchased. It allows you to stream AirPlay to your Mac or PC. Note: in case you're wondering what "Sherlocked" refers to, here's a definition. Looking for other examples? Here's another for your delectation. No downeys, millers, cumberbatches, lauries, bretts, etc. were hurt in the preparation of this article.
DevJuice: A real-world lesson in why you must test on-device
Dave Caolo's daughter has been working hard on a school report regarding the Everglades National Park. So he downloaded a nice-looking iPad app on the subject for her. Swiping around it looked great. And then he tapped on a video. This is what happened. In the TUAW back channel, we scratched our heads, trying to brainstorm any reason for an app to directly link to a YouTube video that didn't support mobile. The best we could come up with was this: we figure that the developer never tested the video on an actual iOS device. But then we tested this theory by trying out the video URL on the iPhone simulator. It didn't work there either. So probably the developer never tested the video at all. That said, although the simulator looks like an iPhone, it never provides a perfect representation of the physical and computation abilities of device deployment. Sometimes, it may reflect a Mac reality over an iOS one. So if you specifically provide a video as part of your app, you should really make sure that it plays back within that app, and not just on the simulator. We'd also recommend that you control the rights and distribution of any material that's fundamental and essential to the app in question. That addresses the problem of another video used within the app. It said: "YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to copyright violations." Oh, excellent.
Logitech G series now available: Gaming keyboards and mice for Mac
We heard way back in January that Logitech was possibly planning to bring its gaming peripherals to the Mac, and that's exactly what's happened. Logitech has announced that its G series of keyboards and mice, designed to entice gamers with features like lots of extra customizable buttons, backlighting and even a separate LCD screen on the keyboard, will have support included for OS X on the Mac. Officially, the Mac support is coming with six new models, which are set to be available in stores later on this month. But you can download Mac versions of Logitech's Gaming Software from its website right now, so if you have one of these gaming accessories already, chances are you can get some extra functionality out of it right away. My guess is that these keyboards and mice already worked with the Mac (Apple's done a great job making compatibility easy), but you'll now be able to take advantage of all of the extra functions that these "G" devices offer. Logitech's gaming line also includes items like gamepads, joysticks and headsets, but the company is only supporting these keyboards and mice for now. Maybe in the future we'll see company-wide support for the Mac operating system.
Little Inferno out on Mac
Little Inferno arrived on iOS in January. It's a wicked, little satirical adventure about burning toys that's gotten a lot of critical acclaim. Now, the game is available on the Mac. You can pick it up directly from the developer Tomorrow Corporation, or grab it on Steam or Gamersgate. Tomorrow Corporation says it's also working on an iOS version that's designed to work with older hardware, so the game will soon be playable on the iPhone 4 and fourth-gen iPod touch models as well. There's also a Linux version in the plans. I haven't played much of Little Inferno, but the reviews on it are really great, and it looks like a creepy, yet moving take on consumerism and "play" itself. And, of course, great games are always welcome on the Mac platform. [via Joystiq]
Panic teases a new iPad app, probably Panic Status Board
Panic is one of our favorite Mac developers -- they make the excellent Coda web editor, and Transmit, which is my OS X FTP client of choice. They have a new iPad app arriving this week, and word around the Internets is that it's an iPad version of Status Board, the internal tool the company developed for tracking projects, appointments and Twitter messages. As you can see above, the Panic tool is meant to be used by multiple people and can track updates and to-dos for multiple projects and products, but presumably a more personal iPad tool would be applicable to more than just the Panic team. Panic has tweeted teases that the app has something to do with "status," and of course we'll get to know exactly what it is when the app arrives tomorrow. There's no word yet on price, but given that Panic likes to (deservedly) pick a premium price for its software, like Diet Coda for US$19.99, odds are it'll be a nice chunk of money for a solid amount of value. We'll wait and see what the team has come up with.
Bungie's Pathways Into Darkness comes back to Mac for free
Back before Halo was the biggest title on Microsoft's Xbox, it was actually planned as a Mac title. That's because Bungie, the game's developer, was actually a Mac game company -- they made a number of really terrific shooters for the Mac, including Marathon (which has since been released on iOS along with its sequels). But the company's first game was Pathways into Darkness, and now, 20 years after its release in 1993, Bungie's first commercial release has come in a free version to the Mac App Store. The game's been "painstakingly recreated" by Bruce Morrison, a former employee from Ngmoco and Freeverse, for his company, Man Up Time Studios. Bruce notes that developer Mark Levin worked with him on the coding for Pathways' new version. Pathways features the award-winning first-person adventure gameplay that started earning Bungie its reputation back in the day. It's great to have this classic game back on the Mac, and it's even better to get to play and download it for free.
DevJuice: WebCode premieres, generates JavaScript+Canvas
As I've been working on a new book on iOS Quartz Drawing, I've been using PixelCut's PaintCode app pretty heavily. Today, a new PixelCut tool just hit the Mac App Store. WebCode (US$49.99) generates JavaScript+Canvas, CSS+HTML or SVG code on your behalf. If you've used PaintCode, WebCode will feel immediately familiar. Similar tools and same panes make the new app very much like the original. Instead of generating Objective C, however, you're presented with ready-to use Web source. The app just debuted, so I have only played with it a little bit. WebCode, I should note, supports Photoshop PSD import as part of its base features -- no in-app purchase needed.
TUAW Bookshelf: Mac Hacks
Mac Hacks ($19.99 e-book, $24.99 print, $27.49 combo) by Chris Seibold is packed with fun and useful OS X-themed tips for anyone looking for non-obvious ways to get more from their Mac. Like Seibold's earlier Big Book of Apple Hacks, Mac Hacks offers ways that technically savvy readers can better take charge of their system. This volume is current, and its tips are specifically compatible with OS X Mountain Lion. From nondestructively partitioning drives to building Mountain Lion installers on flash drives, Seibold has collected a lot of useful information into his book. When you buy a book like this, you're essentially purchasing a condensed collection of ideas. I encourage you to stop by the O'Reilly site and look at the Table of Contents for the book, which is packed with "Oh, I didn't know you could do that!" ideas. The book is a great gift for any Apple geek in your life. Just remember that the content tends to skew more "experienced" and less "noob."
Twitter Client Project: Hibari
Echofon for Mac is no longer in development. TUAW's Twitter Client Project surveys popular desktop alternatives in highly subjective reviews. Hibari (US$9.99) offers a clean, visually pleasing Twitter interface. Unfortunately, as these things go (and despite its price tag), it's not feature-complete compared to other clients currently on the market. You cannot yet load saved searches from the Twitter API, one of the most essential bits of functionality I rely on. The support page notes, "Currently, we do not sync your Hibari searches with your saved searches on Twitter.com." You cannot tweet pictures directly, as I found to my dismay. The developer has these on her to-do list, but they're not yet part of the app. I found basic bugs that probably shouldn't have gotten past a general release, especially for a $9.99 app. For example, you can type things into the built-in search field and the field does not automatically scroll to accommodate. Despite the blinking cursor, I kept typing and the field stayed stuck. The same goes for the "keyword block" and mute options I demonstrate in this video. I could not search using standard Twitter Boolean logic, and I was unable to find a global feed and/or searches for it. I pinged the developer to see if I had simply missed them, but have not yet heard back. There were also stylistic choices I wasn't fond of. You cannot hide and show the text entry field, for example. It's stuck on "always open." That takes up significant screen real estate that I'd rather use for something else. The color and font choices in the visual theme seemed to draw my eyes away from the tweets (the primary content) to the avatars (the secondary content). The app does offer clever and worthy elements like the in-line conversation expansion. Unlike other Twitter clients, it shows these details in the same window rather than using a drawer. This can lead to a sense of "Department of Redundancy Department" as you see in this screenshot. These are the reasons that Hibari won't be finding a permanent home on my Mac for now. Although I like the overall minimalism and the geek-friendly extensions built in (for details on those, see this write-up on advanced and hidden features), Hibari was less of a "wow" and more of an "I can't wait until they get to that."
EazyDraw: A hidden OS X gem of an app
We last covered EazyDraw back in 2006. Flash forward to 2013, and the age of Mountain Lion -- and this can-do app is still roaring. Selling for US$140 for a full license from the developer's website or $95 from the Mac App Store, EazyDraw is now shipping in version 5. In a world where customers complain about $2.99 apps being "overpriced," does this app have a place on your Mac? I'm happy to report that yes, it may indeed. You can think of EazyDraw as MacDraw on steroids. It offers a wide range of vector drawing tools, it supports layers, offers calibrated colors, supports SVG and PDF and more. For an interface that at first glance appears quite simple, it hides an enormous feature set. When I sat down to test the app, I kept finding hidden gem after hidden gem. Each tool I needed was there, was easy to use and offered fine detail tweaking. Each inspector appeared in conjunction with the task I was performing and fit the job. If you're looking for a highly featured drawing app, you should certainly consider EazyDraw. It's perfect for anyone building logos, creating web graphics and designing illustrations for books. In terms of flow charts, I think I'd still give the nod to Omnigraffle, but for any other kind of free-form geometry-based drawing, I feel comfortable recommending EazyDraw.
Testing for OS X vs iOS
Yesterday, I was messing around building shared NSLayoutConstraint code to be used across iOS and OS X. I put in a few #if TARGET_OS_MAC directives, assuming they'd just work. They didn't. Turns out that you should always check for TARGET_OS_IPHONE first, before TARGET_OS_MAC because the latter is true on the iPhone but the former is not on OS X. Here are some of the most common checks suggested to me yesterday as I messed with this dilemma. #if TARGET_OS_MAC #if TARGET_OS_IPHONE #if TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR #if TARGET_OS_EMBEDDED #if defined(__MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED) #if defined(__IPHONE_OS_MIN_VERSION_REQUIRED) And here are the results of running them on the Simulator, iPhone device and OS X: SIMULATOR Target OS Mac Target OS iPhone No Target OS Embedded Target iPhone Simulator Mac OS X Version Min Required is NOT defined iPhone OS X Version Min Required is NOT defined PHONE Target OS Mac Target OS iPhone Target OS Embedded No Target iPhone Simulator Mac OS X Version Min Required is NOT defined iPhone OS X Version Min Required is NOT defined OS X Target OS Mac No Target OS iPhone No Target OS Embedded No Target iPhone Simulator Mac OS X Version Min Required is defined iPhone OS X Version Min Required is NOT defined Since I was most interested in determining whether to use NSBox/NSView vs UIView, my solution ended up looking like this: #if TARGET_OS_IPHONE #define VIEW_CLASS UIView #elif TARGET_OS_MAC #define VIEW_CLASS NSView #endif This approach ensured that the iPhone platform triggered first, and then the second check mandated OS X. This created definitions that allowed my code to successfully compile and execute cross-platform. Thanks Gwynne Raskind and everyone else in #iphonedev
Apple notifies MobileMe members of iCloud.com email options
As one of the many people who purchased a MobileMe subscription in years past, you've probably already made the transition to iCloud and haven't looked back. In July of 2012, Apple noted during iOS 6 beta testing that new icloud.com addresses would be created for anyone using Apple's cloud computing solution as well as former MobileMe members. The transition to icloud.com email is apparently complete, as Apple is sending out a note to those MobileMe members telling them about their new email address option. While Apple created a new icloud.com email address for anyone who had a mac.com or me.com address in the past, any one of those three domain prefixes can be used. An email sent to tuawblogger@icloud.com, for example, appears in any tuawblogger@me.com or tuawblogger@mac.com inbox as well. Here's the text of the Apple email: All new iCloud Mail accounts now come with an @icloud.com email address. As an existing user, we'd like to offer you this new address as well. We have reserved [MobileMe user name]@icloud.com for you, and you can now use this address with your iOS devices and computers by following these simple instructions. If you prefer, you can continue to use your current email address just as you always have. No matter which address you use, you'll continue to receive all your mail, whether it's sent to your @me.com, @mac.com, or @icloud.com address. For many of us, we'll keep the me.com or mac.com address ... but thanks for asking, Apple.
Apple extends iCloud storage upgrade for MobileMe users another year
Apple's done its level best to lure help you over to iCloud from MobileMe, and it looks like it's not quite done yet. We're seeing reports from users who have received messages advising that the additional storage offered to ease the transition has been extended for another 12 months, sans cost to you. Whether a charge will kick in right away when that period ends, and at what price isn't made clear. But if you like to drag your data heels, or want to take your sweet time deciding if the new service is for you, it looks like luck is on your side. [Thanks, Jonathan C]
Editorial: Apple apologies actually aren't that infrequent, and that's okay
Today, Tim Cook made his first major apology as the CEO of Apple. It probably won't be his last. Despite the obvious knee-jerk reaction regarding the Maps debacle, it's actually interesting that this particular scenario is yet another example of humans having extraordinarily short-term memories. It's the same reason that whatever game we most recently saw is the "best or worst ever." (Packers v. Seahawks 09.24.2012, I'm looking at you.) In truth, Apple has a fairly solid history of ingesting pride in the iPhone era, when it surged headfirst into the realm of serving consumers in a way that it never had before. And moreover, hearing Cook apologize isn't something that should be mocked or berated; one can only hope that more companies of all shapes and sizes develop a policy of listening and reacting. Allow me to explain.
iCloud.com email addresses rolling out via iOS 6 beta 3
Apple released a new version of iOS 6 beta 3 today, and in the changelog for that release, MacRumors points out a note that the transition from me.com email addresses to icloud.com email addresses for iCloud users has begun. Users that are signing up for the first time will get icloud.com addresses, and anyone using iOS 6 beta 3 will have the option to get a new icloud.com address using the same email name (in addition to their mac.com/me.com address). Already, a few users are calling foul, since me.com is obviously a shorter name to type out than icloud.com. But this is the transition Apple has been planning for a while, and so what's done is done. Perhaps Apple will finally brand the Mobile Me-turned-iCloud service the correct way across the board, and everyone who uses it will benefit. Update: Note that the changeover to icloud.com is not required for current users of the service: Only those who sign up for new accounts (or iCloud accounts that have never had email enabled) will get the icloud.com domain, while those still using me.com can keep their names if they would like. So good news for those who prefer shorter email addresses!
iPhoto auto-downloads expired MobileMe galleries
They've hung out the 'Closed' sign on our old friend MobileMe, but Apple is still giving you the opportunity to download iDisk files and stored pictures for a limited time. In fact, if your iPhoto library is linked to your MobileMe account, iPhoto will take care of copying your galleries for you. Just launch iPhoto (version 9.2.2 or later) and the dialog box above will pop in. If you click Learn More, you'll end up at Apple's tech note; don't worry, you can come back and get the files later by relaunching iPhoto or by clicking the MobileMe entry in your iPhoto source list. When you do, iPhoto will download all your galleries into a "From MobileMe" folder. Handy! Note that if you're slightly behind on iPhoto versions (before 9.3), you won't get your Aperture-uploaded galleries this way. Of course, Apple's Photo Stream sharing can ease the galleries pain a bit; there are also many online photo options, including the free Pixi.me and freemium services like ThisLife, Flickr, Smugmug & Shutterfly. You may want to be a little selective with your photo site choices; as we've seen, company size is no bulwark against obsolescence or business shifts. ZangZing recently announced it is going dark (only months after encouraging MobileMe users to switch over), as did Picnik and Kodak Gallery before it. (Ars Technica has a great post up about the Kodak to Shutterfly migration in progress.) With iDisk's archives still accessible for a bit, you can still download your MobileMe websites if needed and rehost them elsewhere. Companies like LifeYo and MacMate will happily host your site for you, although you may lose some features like legacy comments. MacMate just added a Galleries feature to match up better with the late MobileMe hosting package. For a nice video rundown on the farewell to MobileMe, check out TidBITS' session from a couple of weeks back.
Daily Update for July 2, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
