John Brownlee - page 188

A few months ago, it seemed like I switched OS X Twitter clients every other day. A long time Tweetie user, the lack of updates eventually made me ready to switch, but after plowing through client after client in rapid succession — Twitterrific, TweetDeck, twhirl, YoruFukurou — only to keep turning back to Tweetie for the admittedly nebulous reason that none of the competition felt “right” to me.

That all changed when I discovered Kiwi, my new go-to Twitter client. Despite the fact that a change to Twitter’s API meant that Kiwi often alerted me for @replies that hadn’t actually shot down the pipeline, I finally deleted Tweetie from my machine and became a Kiwi user full time.

I’m delighted to see, then, that Kiwi has been updated to its second major release, Kiwi 2. It fixes the aforementioned @reply bug, but also adds a host of new features like account grouping, inline images, gesture support for multitouch trackpads and the extension of its already-excellent themeable interface.

If you’ve been looking to trade in Tweetie for a client with more advanced features while retaining Tweetie’s simplicity and streamlined presentation, I’d recommend Kiwi 2 heartily. The ad supported version will cost you nothing, and removing the ads is a one-time fee of $9.95. Worth twice that, if you ask me.

Although they were once Thor-like with the Mjolnir of the ban hammer, Apple has become much more sparing and reluctant to ban apps outright from the App Store in recent months… a sea change that can probably be leveled more at Cupertino’s belated but common sense clarification of the App Store approval guidelines.

Bans still happen, though: an emulator here, a program tapping private APIs there, but these days, Apple’s bans are a lot less sensational than they once were. That’s what makes Apple’s latest ban so puzzling: they decided to ban a small Danish magazine app about Google’s Android OS from the App Store.

Why? According to the CEO of publisher Mediaprovider, his conversation with Apple about the app went something like this:

“So what’s the problem?” Dixon asked, knowing full well what the problem was.

“You know… your magazine,” replied the Apple rep, who identified himself only as Richard. “It’s just about Android…. we can’t have that in our App Store.”

Although this wouldn’t be a surprising ban a year ago, these days, it seems more like Richard was being a little overzealous than official Apple policy against informational Android apps to us: after all, the App Store has several apps dedicated to competing products, such as Windows 7. Granted, the war between iOS and Android these days is a lot more heated than the one between Windows and OS X — largely because Apple recognizes that mobile is the future of computing, and desktop OSes are the past — but Apple already knows that Android will eventually dominate iOS when it comes to total marketshare. Why ban an app about Android, then? Apple’s not concerned with total domination of the market… just the domination of the slice of the market that matters most.

Microsoft’s attempts out replicate Apple’s successes in the retail space have always seemed… well… rather bereft of imagination and mindlessly emulative. Microsoft Stores almost always are opened in the same malls as Apple Stores, sometimes directly across the way. Instead of a Genius Bar, there’s a Guru Bar. And so on.

Microsoft’s “Me Too”ism in the retail has simply been painful to watch… so painful that it prompted us to write a post entitled “Why Microsoft’s Mall of America Store Will Fail” just last month.

Looks like we were right. According to the LA Times, Microsoft’s retail stores are a complete bust, despite having been designed by George Blankenship, who helped build Apple’s own retail stores.

What will the CPU of your next MacBook look like? Well, it’ll almost definitely be one of Intel’s Sandy Bridge microprocessors, and if you want to see the future, you should peer into the entrails of the latest Windows notebooks.

Apple notebooks continue to meteorically rise in popularity: according to component makers, Apple will soon be shipping over a million units per month, with MacBook Air orders already accounting for almost 25 percent of the volume.

Says Digitimes:

The sources cited IDC’s figures and pointed out that Apple’s combined shipments for the first three quarters of 2010 reached about 6.88 million units, and its global notebook market share rose from 3.7% in the first quarter to 5.2% in the third, while its market share in the US market surged from 6.7% to 12.6%.

The MacBook’s only going to get bigger from here.

[via 9to5Mac]

Apple’s second-gen iPad 2 is most likely coming down the pipeline in April, and now a Digitimes is reporting what to

For more thoughts on the report, check out Computerworld’s excellent analysis.

If you want to AirPrint and you have a Mac, Printopia will do the job for you on almost any printer out there, Apple’s last minute feature pruning be damned. Windows users, however, have been in the lurch until now.

Enter Activate Printer, which according to a lot of users doesn’t work reliably a lot of the time, but it can’t hurt giving it a go if you just can’t wait.

We don’t have a Windows machine to test it out, but apparently, all you need to do is download and install the executable, share your printer under printer properties in your system preferences, then enable AirPrint.exe in Windows Firewall.

Like we said, we’re seeing a lot of “doesn’t work for me” messages about this, so don’t be surprised if it’s all for nought. Still, we’re rooting for you — yes, you! — to strike gold here.

Better iBooks management is on the horizon, according to 9to5Mac, who say that both folders (similar to the way folders work on the iOS homescreen) and “Collections” will be coming to iBooks soon, as well as printing PDFs via AirPrint.

Does your iPad feel speedier since iOS 4.2.1? Italian site iPadevice put together this handy chart, illustrating how well Apple’s managed to refine the memory requirements of certain applications under the new operating system.

In the spirit of the holiday, we here at Cult of Mac have decided to spend the day with our friends and families, but before we do, we thought we’d observe the holiday in the most Apple-centric way we know how… by each writing about the Apple product or related product that we’re most thankful for this year. You can find our choices after the jump, and we hope to hear your choices too.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Irritated as much as we are by Apple changing the orientation lock switch on the iPad to a mute switch in iOS 4.2? Jailbreak your tablet and install NoMute through the BigBoss repository on Cydia and make everything all right again.

Seriously, a mute switch, Apple? The iPad’s not a phone. Jeez.

We have a few hours to go, but it’s already Black Friday in Australia, and with discounts hovering at between 8-9%, it looks like tomorrow will be a very, very good day indeed to buy an Apple product.

President Obama’s becoming an old pro at signing iPads. At the recent Lisbon Summit, a European autograph speaker was able to get the Prez to jot down his a digitally inputed John Hancock on his proferred iPad. As he did so, he quipped: “Hey, ‘Sign my iPad.’ I’ve done this once before.” Right on.

Chinese knockoff maker DragonFly has just made their already shameless MacBook clone a little more so: while the 14-inch netbook already adhered closely enough to the Ive aesthetic to be mistaken for a real MacBook Pro by the Magoo-like, they’ve now gone even farther by replacing the original DragonFly logo with Apple’s own… plus Hackintoshing the notebook in the factory to run Snow Leopard. It even comes with a fake MagSafe charger!

Try this in America and Apple’s legal team would cram your head so forcibly up your posterior that you’d give a vomitous birth unto yourself, but DragonFly hails from China, so they’ll probably be fine. $436 will buy you one on the Beijing electronics blackmarket.

If you happened to switch to the iPhone from your old BlackBerry, you might miss UberTwitter, probably the best native Twitter client available on the BlackBerry OS. Wipe away wistful tears no longer: Ubertwitter is now available for free on the App Store, replete with its excellent UberView feature that allows you to access links within tweets without leaving either the app or the window.

This bobble-headed Steve Jobs statuette is both horrifyingly creepy and yet undeniably compelling, but unfortunately, its makers has already been asked by Apple’s legal team to lay off… not because it makes portrays Steve like some sort of murderous, hydrocephalic homunculus, but because they didn’t get permission to use the Apple logo or the likeness of iPhone in Steve’s hands.

Probably for the best: I’d almost definitely get one, put it on a shelf somewhere, then inevitably start fantasizing about it creeping into the bedroom with sewing needles in its hands during some midnight’s delirium tremens.

Safari, Chrome and Firefox might be the most talked about browsers on OS X, but Opera’s still chugging along and pushing the envelope where it can in the ultra-competitive browser space, and the first beta for the Opera 11 version manages some tricks that even the big three haven’t managed yet.

If you still rely on your TiVo more than your new AppleTV for watching television, TiVo’s soon to come out with a new app that will make it even easier to use their service from a supine position on your couch, using an iPad as an advanced remote control.

What’s at the top of most kid’s lists to Santa this Christmas season? It’s not a Red Rider BB Gun, or an Xbox 360, or some sort of transforming Killbot. It’s an Apple iPad, at least according to the latest survey by the Nielsen Company.

Ready to climb your ways out of the cave, lick a monolith, found a civilization, go to war, launch a Renaissance, fire off some nukes then load your people up in a rocket to zoom off to Alpha Centauri?

Good news, then. Sid Meier’s Civilization V is now available for the Mac through Valve’s Steam digital delivery service.

Was the Beatles on iTunes worth the ten year wait and the thousands of hours of negotiation? Probably not, but Beatles songs and albums are still selling pretty damn well now that they’re finally available, even if they’re not really setting any sales records.

Back when Apple first announced iOS game matchmaking service, Game Center, everyone thought it was going to be the death of the existing services like OpenFeint.

It wasn’t. With its founder openly laughing “bring it on” in the face of GameCenter, OpenFeint reassessed its strengths: the ability to offer cross platform multiplayer between iOS and Android devices, and a thriving virtual goods market.

It looks like OpenFeint’s strategy has paid off. According to a report released by OpenFeint, their community has actually doubled to an incredible fifty million users since Game Center first launched. Games on the network have also more than doubled since Game Center was first announced, and now the OpenFeint compatible games library has 119% more titles than it did mere months ago.

Pretty incredible. Apple entering a software niche with its own official product is often times seen as a death sentence, but if OpenFeint’s success proves anything, it’s that smart, on-your-feet thinking and a willingness to evolve can make a direct competition with Apple into a positive thing.

Ever since 2002, Oprah Winfrey has ended each year with a Christmas celebration in the form of her “Favorite Things” episode, in which she has lavished the members of her audience with the products of the year that entertainment’s most influential woman has gazed beneficently upon.

This past Monday, Oprah held her 2010 Favorite Things episode, and she gave all 275 members of her studio audience an item she declared “her number one favorite thing ever.”

What was it? A brand new iPad.

iOS 4.2.1 was just released, but already the rumor mill is churning about iOS 4.3… and it looks like it might arrive before the end of the year, much earlier than anyone had previously thought.

According to sources, Apple plans on releasing iOS 4.3 on Monday, December 13th… just three weeks after the debut of iOS 4.2.1.

Using the same engine as Unreal Citadel and the upcoming Infinity Blade, Dungeon Defenders: First Wave is a nifty looking iOS game by developer Trendy Entertainment that looks like a combination between Brutal Legend, World of Warcraft and Defense of the Ancients.

Dungeon Defenders: First Wave is due out in the middle of December for $2.99, along with an accompanying lite version, and will support Game Center for achievements and multiplayer between iOS devices, as well as Retina Display support.

Sure, it doesn’t look quite as pretty as other Unreal Enginer 3 games under iOS, but consider me sold anyway: to my tastes, Dungeon Defenders looks twice as fun.