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I'll admit it. I'll buy almost anything Apple makes. I was going to hold out on the iPad, but after reading more about it, I wound up in line the first day it was for sale. As they say, resistance is futile.

That's not the case with the Apple TV. When Apple brings a product out, I expect a small revolution. Some exciting new concept, or new and unique feature. With the Apple TV, it's certainly lower in price, but instead of revolutionizing the idea of a set-top box, the new unit actually takes features away from the now discarded Apple TV 'classic'.

First, there is the loss of actually owning a movie or a TV show. When the VCR first appeared in the 70s, the idea of owning a movie was quite unique. Before VHS or Betamax you went to a theater, paid your couple of dollars, or watched the oldies on TV loaded with commercials.

Second, the Apple TV requires an HDMI connection -- its HDMI port means you need an HDMI hookup or nothing. I understand the reasons for going with that standard, but I'm still holding on to an older AV receiver, and my 'classic' Apple TV works just fine with that.TUAWWhy I'm not excited about the new Apple TV originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Seems like only yesterday that Linux was vastly outpacing iOS in terms of how many were using it as a browsing platform. Actually, make that last November; at that time, Linux's presence more than doubled the total iOS stake. Now, iOS-based browsers claim 1.13 percent of all browsing platforms, compared to a declining 0.85 percent for Linux.

To the right is a screengrab from Google Analytics, as I see traffic coming to one of my own websites. However, I'm sure the list looks very different depending on the content. For example, I'm pretty sure TUAW's #1 OS isn't any flavor of Windows (but I'll check).

How long before the total of all mobile-only OS clients outranks desktop OS users in this area?

[via AppleInsider]TUAWiOS surpasses Linux as browsing platform originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Analyst Katy Huberty from Morgan Stanley tells All Things D that she believes Apple is ramping up production on the iPad, aiming to build as many as three million a month by the end of this year. That would mean that the company could make 36 million iPads next year, which brings the total close to (but not quite) the whopping 40 million units predicted by her supply chain analysis. Sales estimates for next year started out around 10 million iPads, but have since risen to as high as 42 million units, which would be quite a year for a product that didn't exist before this past April.

Currently, says Huberty, Apple is producing about two million iPads a month, and that's brought shipping times on the website down, and helped availability across the board. But the manufacturing process needs to be refined even further, and of course if, as expected earlier next year, the device sees a revision, that may delay things even further. There seems to be one thing most analysts agree on, however: Apple is going to sell a whole lot of iPads in 2011.TUAWAnalyst: Apple producing more iPads originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you depend on Automator workflows for managing music or other tasks in iTunes, the upgrade to version 10 may have come as a bit of a cold shock. Macworld pointed out that most available workflows for iTunes simply would not load with iTunes 10; a frustrating circumstance, to be sure.

Fortunately, the problem turns out not to be that complicated; Automator's version checking thinks that iTunes 10.0 is a lower version than 9.0, because the versions are sorting alphabetically instead of numerically (oof!). Macfixit points to a workaround: opening up the Info.plist files inside the packages for the dysfunctional workflows and manually changing the version threshold. It's not ideal, but if you have critical Automator functionality that would otherwise keep you on iTunes 9, it's worth a try.TUAWFixing broken iTunes Automator workflows in iTunes 10 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Since people still seem to want to leave their houses and go to the movies (despite Apple's best efforts to keep them firmly on their couches), the iTunes Movie Trailers site now features a sophisticated Showtimes view. This HTML5-savvy offering uses location awareness in your browser to show the movies playing nearest you, along with the upcoming screening schedule and links to the theater sites for ticket purchases.

The site works great in Safari, Firefox 3 or Chrome on your Mac; it also works perfectly on the iPad, although on the iPhone it's a little bit compact.

Check it out for yourself, or see our gallery of screenshots below.

Gallery: Apple's Showtimes site

[via Ars Technica]TUAWApple trailers page adds showtimes and theater maps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Crokinole is a beautiful, simple game with a long history. In the tradition of pool and Carrom, Crokinole is a dexterity game that pits two (or four) people against each other around a circular wooden board. Players try to flick little wooden discs towards the center, knocking out opponent's discs if they're in the target area. It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to get frustrated at because you're just not good enough.

The trouble is, if you want a decent Crokinole board at home, it'll set you back a few hundred dollars; $130 or so is the minimum, and you can always pay more if you really want to go all out. It's not hard to find boards costing $400 or more (don't ask how much the Death Star board costs) and you need someplace to store it when it's not in use. These things are about a meter across, and made of heavy wood, so this isn't a trivial issue.

With the Croke iPhone app, you can have a somewhat similar experience on a touchscreen. It's not the same thing, but it's also only $1.99, so you're getting to play without paying through the nose. Read on to see if this flick's for you.

Gallery: Croke on the iPhoneTUAWFlick this! Croke puts Crokinole on the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

When Apple released the third-generation iPod shuffle in 2009, I saw it as a perfect example of the design hubris that many Apple detractors point to. From a usability perspective, there really wasn't anything wrong with the second-generation iPod shuffle -- it had a minimal number of buttons, true, but their functions were fairly obvious. In a textbook example of the emphasis of form over function, Apple's third-generation iPod shuffle removed all of the controls from the device itself and moved them to the headphones' inline remote. Not only was the remote far more complex to use than the old shuffle's simple buttons, it also meant that, if you wanted to use third-party headphones, you'd either have to give up all control over the iPod or shell out more money for an inline remote adapter. The third-gen iPod shuffle got savaged in reviews, and it deserved it.

Apple's fourth-generation iPod shuffle mercifully brought the buttons back. Apple even lists "buttons" as a feature on its page for the iPod shuffle. In a rare departure from typical Apple design, the fourth-generation iPod shuffle is much larger than the third-gen; it's not that Apple can't make a music player the size of your thumbnail, but it seems like Apple realized that it shouldn't. So, the return of buttons to the iPod shuffle proves that Apple doesn't always emphasize form over function. Right?

Unfortunately, although the iPod shuffle proves that Apple is perfectly capable of learning from its design missteps, the new iPod nano and iPod touch both feature design compromises that are almost as boneheaded as the buttonless third-gen iPod shuffle. Click "Read More" to see the way these new iPods, nice as they are in some respects, are in other ways an example of a "one step forward, two steps back" design.TUAWHow Apple's newest iPods prove (and disprove) that it learns from design mistakes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

This past week, Apple had a host of new patents officially approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. From streamlining the way images are rendered to preventing the accidental opening of applications, a large chunk of the patents seem to relate to the ways that a user interacts with a device. Macsimum News has a synopsis of all the patents awarded.

A few of the patents that stick out are for operations that we take for granted on a daily basis.

One of them relates to scrolling through a list on a touch input device (say your iPhone contacts list), with the acceleration of the scrolling of that list being determined by the input of your finger. That's pretty nifty!

Another is for immediate search feedback on a Web browser application, like the Safari search bar. So, for instance, when you start typing in the first few letters of a search query and a list pops up of the potential items that you're searching for - that's immediate search feedback.

I think I would be lost without this feature. Often times, I can't remember the title of a song, but if I can remember the first couple lyrics, I can type them in, and a link to the song title will appear in the list. Or when I can't quite remember how to spell a word (embarrassing, I know), I go to the Safari search bar instead of going to the dictionary. Somehow, it's always the easier place to turn to.

These are some pretty simple features, but they make such a profound difference in the ways that we use and interact with the computer devices around us on a daily basis. There's some solid innovation going on over there in Cupertino.TUAWApple awarded new patents originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Here's a cool new feature in iTunes 10 that we haven't mentioned yet: when listening to any song in your library, you can double click on the album art window in the lower left hand corner to detach it from the main window and see it full size. That's not new -- you could get a closer look at the art in previous versions of iTunes. But what is new is that when you mouse over that detached art, you now get full QuickTime-style controls for your tracks. You can then minimize the main window (using those weirdly-aligned buttons, of course), and then just control the music directly from that square widget (which can also be resized any way you want).

Pretty neat, and somewhat hard to find if you don't usually zoom in to see your album art full size. This replicates some (not all) of the functionality provided by CoverSutra and a number of other "iTunes controllers," so it looks like Apple has (yet again) decided to make a popular function in third-party apps part of the official thing.TUAWiTunes 101: Using the Album Art widget originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

As soon as the official Twitter app for iPad (free) hit the App Store, you could tell that it was going to be a controversial app. Immediately, the twitterverse was filled with people either commenting on how much they loved the innovative and unique user interface, and others ranting about how much they despised the UI. One of our bloggers said that she enjoyed the new features of Twitter for iPad so much that she "wanted to have a cigarette after I was done, and I don't even smoke." On the other hand, TJ Luoma reported in his first look at the Twitter app that "... judging by most of the comments of people that I follow on Twitter, the initial reaction is definitely one of 'too busy' and 'over designed.' "

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I have been a fan of Twittelator for iPad ($4.99) since it appeared in the App Store, so I wasn't expecting that Twitter would make an impact on my tweeting. Wrong. After a few hours of using the free Twitter app on my iPad, I'm pretty well smitten with it. The rest of this post describes how the Twitter app works to let you do more tweeting and less fumbling around trying to figure out how to do something. Be sure to take a look at the gallery below for screenshots of Twitter for iPad in action.

Gallery: Twitter for iPadTUAWTUAW Review: Twitter for iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Usually, we like to use this space to highlight developers and apps that could use a little more exposure, not call out big-budget titles from developers like Electronic Arts. But this one's worth it -- Mirror's Edge is a pretty terrific, completely original translation of the plaforming game that arrived on consoles last year. It was out on the iPad at launch earlier this year, and now the game has made its way to the iPhone, bringing Retina Display graphics and the same well done gameplay.

Out of all of the "major" game publishers, EA has shown Apple quite a bit of love in the past, and this is probably the company's best original (in mechanics, if not actually name or premise) title for the iOS platform. It's a real shame that it took so long for this one to make it around to the handheld, but now that it's here, it is worth the $4.99 purchase price for those looking for a premium iPhone experience.

And heck, if that's too much, just be patient another eight months or so and you'll probably see the game on sale. If you're interested in this gameplay at all -- basically a complicated Canabalt, with heroine Faith running, sliding and shooting her way across rooftops -- definitely give it a look.TUAWTUAW's Daily App: Mirror's Edge originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments