WalledGarden
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HackStore is like Cydia for Mac OS X, replaces walled garden with open dacha
Despite its loud anti-piracy notice, Andrey Fedotov's HackStore sees no issue in ripping off the official App Store's interface. Nevertheless, its aim is to gather up legit and readily available apps that didn't make it past Apple's trellis for whatever reason, and hopefully with Fedotov keeping an eye out for malware. You'll find FileZilla, Gimp and many rarer specimens -- and they're all just regular .dmg files so there's actually no hacking involved. That said, we downloaded the RTF to ePUB Converter and then struggled to make it run, so we're not ready to vouch for HackStore's ease-of-use any more than its security or legality. All we're saying, officer, is that it exists.
Talkcast reminder: 10pm ET, new gear and new month
It's the first of August -- already? -- and we're back live tonight on Talkshoe, so call in and chat with us about the biggest Apple stories of the past week. On the docket this evening, we'll be talking about what iPad owners (and the iPad's detractors) are like, the revised iMacs and Mac Pro, Apple's new battery charger and the Magic Trackpad, running iOS 4 on an older iPhone, and what exactly happened to the Michael Jackson zombie. To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac or your PC, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients or using the Talkshoe client's ShoePhone tool; basic instructions are here. We'll kick things off at 10pm ET/ 7pm PT. See you there!
The iPad as a new "walled garden" of content
John Battelle's Searchblog has an interesting post up about whether or not the iPad can be categorized as a disappointment. He begins with a mea culpa; while he predicted earlier this year that the iPad would more or less fail, the sales figures from earlier this week have proven him wrong. However, he says that the question then turns to whether the iPad will be a disappoint in its larger goal: to revolutionize computing and use the App Store model as a replacement for the usual download-and-install app method that we currently use on desktops. Battelle says that the iPad is doing what AOL (disclaimer: TUAW is part of Weblogs, Inc., a division of AOL) did back in the early days of the Web: distilling it into an easily consumable form. Just like AOL created a portal for Web browsing, the iPad creates a portal for content consumption, all through Apple's App Store (and through Apple's "approved" Web, depending on whether you think Flash's approval is a bug or a feature). Battelle also says that Apple's portal comes with the same issues that AOL's portal did; AOL, he says (and I presume he means the old AOL, not the one paying me to write this), was killed by the link, and the iPad, as he sees it, will eventually be killed by whatever links apps together. AOL was a "walled garden" of their content, and as long as Apple maintains its grip on the App Store, it's that same garden; each app works within its own flower pot, almost completely independent of the others.
