This is the Option symbol, which you’ll see quite a lot of as you use Mac OS X.

Depending on the age of your Mac or your keyboard, the key itself might have all sorts of different things on it. It might just have the option symbol. It might have the word “Alt” on it, or the word “Option”; or both; or some combination of one of those words and the symbol.

This can make things confusing for newcomers. To make it easier, remember that Option = Alt = ⌥, and that the key you need is adjacent to the Command key.

Just as the Mac Command key is similar to the Windows Control key, so the Mac Option key is similar to the Windows Alt key, or the AltGr key. Hold it down while pressing other keys, to make them do different things. It’s a modifier.

Dear Steve Jobs:

What happened to quality?

Not long ago, before Apple became big and popular, your company was loved by many of us without hesitation. We still love Apple, but it’s getting harder to feel that way. Apple is clearly loosing a foothold on quality. Perhaps you are taking on too much at one time.

I’m writing this letter after experiencing a ton of problems with my new iPhone 4, including issues with Bluetooth, the proximity sensor, and yellow-tinged photos from the camera. I just took it back to the Apple Store to be replaced. Customer service is still awesome, but quality is slipping.

It’s obvious you’ve noticed quality problems too. That’s why you just appointed Jeff Williams as a Senior Vice President of Operations, and gave him the job of ensuring the highest standards in quality for Apple products. He’s got his work cut out for him. So we hope he’ll hit the ground running.

Steve, please consider the following examples of why Apple’s attempts to do too many things at once are resulting in quality failures in just about everything it does.

Remember the recent iPod Shuffle rumor predicting Apple will shortly launch a new version with a 3-inch multitouch screen?

Well, here’s how it might look.

Our friend Graham Bower from MacPredictions made this mockup. He has some good ideas about how it might work. Graham predicts the device is a bit bigger than the current iPod shuffle. It has two buttons on the bottom: On/Off and Shuffle. The square screen shows nothing but album art.

In shuffle mode, it transitions quickly between multiple album covers, moving in different directions to suggest shuffling.

Swiping your finger from left to right across the screen cues the next track, and in the other direction it goes back to the previous track.

Swiping your finger up and down controls the volume. Tapping on the screen toggles between pause and play. It’s that simple.

No need to resort to physical violence to escape from jail, just let an engrossing iPhone game do the work for you.  GamePron brings us of this tale of a gaming fix with a higher cost than usual:

Everybody knows that there’s a certain risk one takes when playing addictive, engrossing games when you’re meant to be doing something else.  The prevalence of awesome games on the iPhone hasn’t helped that risk – as a Philippines police officer has learned.

Five inmates recently escaped from a police precinct in Cagayan de Oro City, snatching up the officer’s keys where he’d left them while playing a quick few levels of Plants vs. Zombies.   Apparently, the convicts had no trouble getting the keys and gaining their freedom – although four of the five were recaptured shortly after.

A cautionary tale for those playing addictive games on the clock – though I suspect one (likely) former prison guard now has a lot more time to work on his high score!

[via SlashDot]

I love my iPhone photography apps, and I thought I knew about all the best ones. Turns out there’s always something new to learn.

Heather Powazek Champ posted a list of her favorite iPhone photography apps, and among them was one that was totally new to me: Diptic.

The gaping security hole in Mobile Safari has been fixed with updates to Apple’s iOS operating system.

Apple has just updated iOS to 4.0.2 for the iPhone (and iPod touch) and iOS 3.2.2 for the iPad. The updates patch a security vulnerability that allowed Safari to run code embedded in PDF files.

The updates are available through iTunes. Click “Check for Update” to download.

If you are plannign to jailbreak your device, do it before updating. o not get surprised, if the latest firmware includes a baseband update as well. If that happens, it will block the ultrasn0w carrier unlock as well.

Obviously, the new iOS updates break the jailbreak at JailbreakMe.com, which exploited the vulnerability.

The updates may also contain new baseband firmware, which will break carrier unlocking. To jailbreak and unlock your iOS device, see our Jailbreak Superguide.

Here are the details from Apple:

To celebrate Woz’s 60th birthday today, his wife Janet commissioned this song as a gift.

“That’s Woz,” is sung by Jonathan Mann, an up-and-coming YouTube singing star whose song about the iPhone 4 antenna was played by Steve Jobs at a press conference. Mann followed this up with a song about Jobs. A song once wrote a tune about Paul Krugman that went wildly viral and landed him on the Rachel Maddow Show.

Mann’s song about Woz is a tribute to the Apple co-founders pure geek values. “Do it for fun,” he sings during the chorus. “Don’t do it for the money. That’s just Woz.”

Mann is singing a song a day and posting them to his YouTube channel and his Song A Day website.

(See also Mann’s funny NSFW tribute to heroic JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater.)

We start another day of deals with something for everyone. Today’s featured bargains include a leather case to protect your iPad, a 1.33Ghz iBook G4 for $269 and Apple’s on-going Back-to-School hardware sale, which offers a free iPod touch when you buy a computer.

Along the way, we’ll also check out new iPhone and Mac software, hardware deals and gadgets that caught our eye. As always, details on these and many more items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Are notebook PC makers feeling the pinch from Apple’s line of portable computers? A trio of Taiwan-based notebook manufacturers announced July orders fell by up to 25 percent.

Quanta, which had a goal of 10-20 percent growth for the third quarter, announced July notebook shipment fell 25 percent to 3.6 million units compared to June. Compal said shipments dropped 20 percent to between 3.2 million and 3.3 million units for the same period. Wistron announced June shipments were off 13.7 percent.

There’s no shortage of purveyors of dead tree flesh out there willing to swaddle your iPhone in a wafer-thin bisection of maple or walnut, or at least the simulacrum of such, but Portland-based Recover seems to be the best-of-breed of such Apple-accessorizing lumberjacks: they offer a number of attractive skins for the iPhone, iPad and MacBook each made out of real wood and priced as low as $15 for an iPhone skin, or $30 to slather your MacBook.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83eXWu9_BRs&feature=player_embedded#!

The most obvious reason not to perform a death grip on your iPhone is to prevent it from dropping your signal, but as the above video by Israeli software company Tawkon shows, there’s also a more invisible and dastardly effect: the death grip also causes your iPhone 4 to pump more radio frequency radiation into your brainpan.

It makes sense: when your iPhone 4 senses that it’s losing its connection to the nearest cell tower, it increases its radio frequency output to try to get a better signal. That’s true for all smartphones. It’s just how cell phones work.

As for whether or not you have anything to worry about by that radiation increase, no one knows the long term health effects of cellphone use, but me and Herb — the sentient, Kuato-esque goiter growing out of my left temple — say hell no. You cell phone hypochondriacs in the audience might want to start bumpering your head in tin foil anyway.

Apple next-generation iPad is rumored to appear later this year or early 2011. Along with a smaller form-factor, the new tablet may include some technology already unveiled for the iPhone 4, such as 3-axis gyroscope.

Apparently, an iPad prototype included a gyroscope, but Apple decided to use that technology in its new iPhone handset. That’s the word from a company that tore apart an iPad and poked around inside.

If you’re a true iPhone 4 shutterbug, you’ve probably expressed irritation at one point or another that the built-in Camera app doesn’t tie into a physical shutter button. If you act quick — real quick — Camera+ has you covered: they just added a feature that allows the app to take over the volume button to trigger a snap.

It’s a hidden feature, and when Apple gets wind of it, they’re going to pull Camera+, so if this is the sort of feature you’ve been looking for, download the latest version of the app and then type this URL into Mobile Safari to turn the feature on: camplus://enablevolumesnap. Turning it off is done the same way: camplus://disablevolumesnap.

What’s the point of this kind of functionality? Well, it can be particularly difficult to take a good picture with an iPhone if you’re taking a self-portrait, since it can be difficult to hit the shutter trigger button on the touchscreen when you can’t actually see it. Repurposing a volume button as a physical shutter button takes care of that problem nicely, but obviously, Apple’s worried about confusing users.

It makes me wonder why Apple doesn’t introduce a single physical shortcut button on the iPhone 4, which can be assigned to functionality in any application. I suppose it’s a slippery slope, but I can’t be the only one who has wanted a physical Instant Rimshot button on my iPhone. Can I?

[via Gadget Lab]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zVmW4NYkwE&feature=player_embedded

Perhaps the most bizarre meta deconstruction of Oregon Trail for the Apple II ever made hit the App Store this week. So Long, Oregon! by BlinkBat Games takes the trappings and retro-style of Oregon Trail, but where the latter title is all about historical edutainment, resource management and not dying of dysentery, this one’s all about hurtling your team of bison over mountain ranges as you commit xenocide against the native fauna while batting back plagues, pestilences, venereal diseases and infections.

Not sold on the concept? One review in the App Store remarks, “[T]here is no way to improve upon this game. It’s a masterpiece of game design and modern thought.”

You can get So Long, Oregon! now as a universal app for just $1.99.

Good news! You can now have H.264 hardware-decoded Flash on your Mac without resorting to installing beta software… just like Windows users have been enjoying for years!

Yep, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is now official and available for download. But it doesn’t work on all Macs. The new video acceleration API is only available in Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later and it’s limited to Macs with GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M.

More specifically, here are the Macs that can take advantage of the new Flash player’s hardware decoding:

• MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009
• Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009
• MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008
• iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009

For the record, we loved the earlier Adobe Flash 10.1 beta: it’s a huge leap forward for Flash performance on Macs, specifically when it comes to streaming high-definition video. If you’re rocking one of the supported Macs listed above, you should install the latest Flash update now.

[via Hard Mac]

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has an excellent track record when it comes to casually dropping details about the next Apple product, so we’re inclined to believe his latest:

[I] if you wait a few weeks to buy the Touch, you’ll get one with a Retina Display and dual cameras.

The Retina Display has been an assumed given since the iPhone 4 hit the market, but the insistence on dual cameras is interesting. We knew the next iPod Touch was bound to have at least a FaceTime camera, but according to a story last month, the iPhone 4’s 5MP camera module simply can’t fit into the existing iPod Touch, so Apple would either need to make the iPod Touch thicker or max the iPod Touch’s back-facing camera out at 3.2MP.

The “within a few weeks” is also interesting, since it seemingly contradicts a rumor that we heard earlier this week that Apple would be hosting their annual iPod event by August 17th. Then again, since we haven’t yet seen press invitations for that event, that rumor’s pretty much contradicted itself.

The death of reformed cad and marginally inept Mac writer John Brownlee was predicated by what seemed to him, at the time, to be the most innocuous sally into pre-dinner small talk.

“I heard today, baby, that OK Cupid says that iPhone users have twice as much sex as Android owners. Isn’t that interesting?”

Brownlee only realized his mistake as the first of many skull-crushing blows rained down upon his head, but by then it was too late to identify himself as a statistical anomaly: all 4.3-inches of his girlfriend’s discarded Droid X had already been deftly crammed past his uvula while she screamed, “Never again, you bounder, I said never again!”

Apple now admits some early iPod nano devices can overheat. The admission comes five years after Japanese iPod owners reported the units became unusable after overheating, and in some cases caused fires and minor injuries.

In a statement, Apple announced there were “very rare cases of overheating” caused by recharging batteries in iPod nanos sold between September 2005 and December 2006.

Finally, carbon and silicon based entities can repose and recharge side by side!  FurnitureWorld brings us news of one of the Ultimate iPad Accessories, the iCon Bed, a luxury offering from Hollandia International and mattress brand Therapedic.  Dual adjustable mattresses pair with a high tech headboard for the ultimate in sleep workstations:

The iCon Bed’s upholstered headboard is in a class of its own with its sleek, modern look, along with four fully enclosed speakers, 250 watt amplifier and docking stations for two iPads built into the furniture. It is available in more than 200 fashionable colors and fabrics to complement any bedroom decor.

Like the iPad, the iCon Bed is more about a lifestyle choice than it is about a product, and caters to consumers who know how to balance work, rest and play, said Hollandia CEO Avi Barssessat.

This trendy staple will set you back a cool $20k. Perhaps an opportunity for creative DIY projects?

We start off the day with two hardware deals from Expercomm. First is a Mac Pro Quad desktop running at 2.8GHz. The unit is bundled with three years of AppleCare for $2,799. For mobile users, there is a MacBook Pro with a 15-inch screen and running a 2.86GHz Core 2 Duo. The bundle also includes a three-year AppleCare all for $1,979. We finish our highlighted deals with the latest crop of App Store price drops for the iPhone and iPod touch. This group includes a price cut on the popular “Monopoly” board game.

Along the way, we check out another iPad stand, another Dock, an 8-pack of iPhone skins, as well as several deals on iPhone and Mac software. As always, details on these and many more items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

European Union regulators are now looking into Apple’s ban on Adobe Flash on its iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The EU would join an earlier-announced probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into the Cupertino, Calif. firm.

According to the New York Post, which first reported the June FTC investigation, the EU’s European Commission probe could stretch another four to six weeks. “According to a source, the European Commission recently joined the FTC probe into whether Apple’s business practices harm competition,” the newspaper reported Tuesday.

Apple’s on a roll today with new options for developers. In the same day that they brought educational bulk discounts to the App Store, Apple has changed the way iAd works by allowing devs to sell their apps directly from within an iAd.

In other words, instead of tapping an iAd for an app and going to the App Store, you will now get a pop-up asking you to confirm your purchase. Click “OK” then enter your iTunes password and the app will be automatically sucked down.

According to 9to5Mac, this move might be prompted by low iAd fill rates. Either way, it’s a welcome change not to be filtered through the App Store as an extraneous step to sucking down that new app.

It is only three words, but it was enough to get speculation revved-up: Is AT&T admitting it’s iPhone deal is coming to a close? In a late-Friday filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, Apple’s U.S. partner told regulators exclusivity contracts on ‘a number of attractive handsets’ are about to end.

Although Apple’s iPhone was not mentioned by name, the oblique reference had analysts scurrying to connect the dots. For some time, rumors have floated that Apple is preparing to introduce a CDMA version of the iPhone, potentially for AT&T rival Verizon. While neither firm has spoken directly on the issue, AT&T’s statement is just the latest piece in the puzzle.

Miss being immersed in a blue cathode glow as you slumber in front of your staticky black-and-white television. Designer Jonas Damon did, so he built a dock in the style of an old cathode-ray television… complete with an Apple Dock Connector snaking like an electrical cord out of the back. Load up an MP4 of an old episode of Elvira’s Movie Macabre and you’ve got yourself a pixel-perfect recreation of a 1980s bachelor life.

As college students prepare to return to the classrooms, many of them are carrying an Apple laptop. An Apple MacBook is favored by 47 percent for those college students who’ve yet to purchase a computer and 27 percent of students who already own a laptop are fans of the Cupertino, California company. As Fortune points out, this is a complete turn-around from 2005, when 47 percent of laptop buyers chose Dell.

This year, Dell is the No. 2 (24 percent) laptop brand chosen for college dorms, followed by HP with 15 percent of the college market and Toshiba with 10 percent, according to research firm Student Monitor, a New Jersey firm who has been doing these surveys for nearly a quarter century.