What it is: An iTunes add-on for cleaning mislabeled tracks, downloading art and finding music videos, concert info and artist bios.

Why it’s good: After years of downloading weird crap off the internet, my iTunes library is a swamp of mislabeled and unidentified tracks, and I’m sick of it. So I downloaded TuneUp — and I’m in love. TuneUp handily cleaned up a bunch of mislabeled tracks using the Gracenote database (which uses the track’s “audio fingerprint” to identify it). Cleaning takes a few seconds per track and was about 70-80 percent effective on my odd library (British punk, post-punk and lots of electronica). Previous track cleaners I’ve tried have been useless. But it’s the extra artist info via the Net that I’m really digging. TuneUp sits to the side of the iTunes window and displays all kinds of artist info: Wikipedia bios, Google News stories, music recommendations, upcoming concerts and YouTube videos, which I’ve wasted hours watching. The information is truly useful, fascinating, appropriate and timely. Apple thinks so too. TuneUp was added to the shelves of Apple’s retail stores this week — a rare honor granted only to tip top software.

Where to get it: TuneUp is available as a free download with 100 cleans and 50 album covers. Full version costs $29.95 (or $19.95 for an annual subscription),

NOTE: Use CULTOFMAC activation code to get a 15% discount.

The Mounties in British Columbia just busted their biggest counterfeiting operation ever — and the brains of the operation were a very sinister and criminal-looking iMac and MacBook.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia raided a counterfeit “currency lab” in Surrey, B.C. last week, seizing more than $220,000 in American and Canadian notes and arresting four people.

They also seized a new iMac, a MacBook, and what look like a pair of inket printers and a laser printer. HP is the ink of choice for funny money, looks like.

(I’ve always suspect Macs were the machine of choice for counterfeiters, given their graphics history. I’ll look into it).

RCMP news release.

Vancouver Sun story.

Via TUAW.

Gnh! That’s pretty much the sound we made, surprisingly loudly, on reading Gruber’s ‘Regarding Eucalyptus’ post. The gist? App Store idiocy strikes again! The specifics…

It seems Apple, not content with plumbing the depths by rejecting Tweetie for a rude word being in the day’s Twitter trends, has now rejected an e-book reader, because you can potentially read ‘objectionable’ content on it. Gruber sums things up nicely, calling this the “shittiest and most outrageous App Store rejection to date, and that’s saying something”, and we agree wholeheartedly.

As Gruber notes, Apple’s got a bug up its ass regarding the fact that you can read Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana on Eucalyptus. (Won’t somebody think of the children?) However, you can read this on a few other apps, too—you know, apps like Kindle and Stanza and, er, Safari. So Apple had best get ready to kick those off the iPhone for warping our fragile little minds.

But there’s more! What makes matters even worse is on reading the developer’s blog, it’s pretty clear the approvals process is even more broken than we all thought. Had Apple made a mistake and rectified it (see: Tweetie), fine… Dumb, but fine. Here, though, it’s pretty clear Apple keeps rejecting the app again and again for precisely the same utterly asinine reason. When the developer argues his case, it’s like shouting at a brick wall— a particularly dumb brick wall.

Far be it for us to say that perhaps ‘reversals’ for Tweetie and the NIN app actually came from Apple caving to dreadful publicity. But, hell, if the way to get a perfectly good app into the App Store is for a whole bunch of blogs to kick up a fuss and show, yet again, how the App Store approvals people seemingly have the combined intellect of a drunk, lobotimized woodlouse, we’re happy to do our bit.

Labor protestors outside Apple’s Taiwan Office on Thursday. The Apple laptop says “Responsibility.” Images: Global Post.

Apple’s office in Taiwan drew protesters on Thursday complaining about layoffs and unfair working conditions at one of Apple’s main contractors.

A group of 30 to 45 workers complained of exploitation at Wintek, one of Apple’s major suppliers of LCD panels. The company is rumored to be supplying screens for the long-awaited Apple tablet. The workers chanted slogans and held signs saying “black-heart business” and “responsibility” outside Apple’s office in Taipei.

“We want to go through Apple to put pressure on Wintek,” one of the protestors told the Global Post.

The workers hope the action will force Apple to enforce it’s Code of Supplier Responsibility, instituted after 2006 allegations of exploitation at an iPod factory run by Foxconn, another Apple supplier factories in mainland China.

iPhone game developers must contend with an arguably small but extremely dedicated and fast-moving population of app pirates on the voyage to the Land of iPhone App riches, according to iCombat developer Miguel Sanchez-Grice, who suggests giving away free “lite” versions of an app could be the most effective strategy for the smaller developer.

Sanchez-Grice ‘s shooting tank game was immediately popular on the App Store thanks to coverage in gaming and gadgetry venues, which came about because of its resemblance to Combat for Atari and Wii Tanks games. The developer said he considered the nature of the pirate challenge prior to launching his 99¢ app. and while he chose a path very civilly inviting pirates to support his work by buying a legit copy of the app after reaching level 5 of the 20 level game, he understood he could only hope to “maybe convert a tiny fraction of those users into sales.”

His experience with the pirate community showed hacked versions of his game in use at an astounding ratio of more than 5:1 over paid apps in the first week of release, with cracked apps being posted to Twitter within 30 minutes of the official game going live on the App Store.

“The goal behind launching an app isn’t thwarting pirates, it is getting users and generating sales,” Sanchez-Grice  wrote, suggesting game developers “leave the ‘making a point’ anti-piracy measures to the big guys.” With competition so fierce for getting noticed in the App store, he concluded “any attention is good attention.”

In the end, the first-time developer concluded the best strategy for dealing with pirates may be creating a free “Lite” version to give away alongside a more fully functional and fulfilling paid version.

“I think the best solution is to create a version akin to a lite version of the app for pirates. It is no good to shut off access to your app completely, but it also doesn’t get you very far to give away the core value you are offering to the paying user.”

… along with Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates, of course, as part of a stained glass piece spotted on a Chelsea gallery tour recently by tefjr77. I have to say, I find it incredibly funny that Steve holds an iPhone, while Bill Gates is being buzzed by a Steve Ballmer cherub. Charming.

Flickr via iPhone Savior

UpNext 3D NYC iPhone App from Danny Moon on Vimeo.

The 3D NYC iPhone App from UpNext is unbelievably cool. It renders Manhattan in 3D, allowing you to zoom up and down the city streets, in-between buildings, finding places to eat and things to do. The rendering is amazing — see the video above.

It overlays the subway map and crowdsources popular destinations. All this for only $2.99 from the iTunes App Store. Worth buying even if you don’t live in NYC.

Apple will launch a $700 touchscreen tablet with a new operating system and optimized apps in 2010, new research claims.

Apple’s response to the fast-growing netbook market will a touchscreen tablet like an outsized iPod touch. It will have a touchscreen measuring 7- and 10-inches; will cost between $500 to $700; and may have built-in 3G wireless, claims Wall Street analyst Gene Munster of investment bank Piper Jaffrey.

But thanks to the complexity of the tablet’s hardware and, more importantly, the new version of OS X and the apps it will run — it will not be ready until early 2010, Munster said i.

In a long and detailed research note to clients, Munster cited “mounting evidence” for his claims:

Apple is indeed working on a version of OS X to power a tablet device more robust than an iPod Touch yet still more limited than the operating system that powers the company’s line of notebook and desktop computer systems, according to Gene Munster, the widely followed Piper Jaffray analyst.

“We expect the development of such an OS to be underway currently, but its complexity, along with our conversations with a key company in the mobile space, leads us to believe it will not launch until CY10,” Munster said (meaning 2010) in a note released to clients Thursday.

Many in the Apple universe have long predicted a tablet device to compete in the growing market for netbooks, smaller, less-powerful – and less expensive – mobile devices designed for surfing the Internet, watching movies, reading and composing email and other “computer-lite” activities.

Not a few people will be disappointed if Apple fails to launch such an offering in the current year, but Munster implies that such a market, while growing fast, remains relatively small and believes Apple has plenty of time to get its entry right before joining the fray.

Parents with children aged 8 – 12 and relatively easy access to an Apple Retail Store might consider enrolling in Apple’s free summer camp workshops during July.

Beginning the week of July 13, Apple stores will offer a series of 3 hour workshops where kids will be introduced to Macs and Apple software and learn how to make a movie, create a photo slideshow, write and record a song or craft a presentation.

Space in each workshop is limited and kids are limited to no more than two workshop sessions each for the summer, but it is a free opportunity to kill six hours out of what can be a long, boring summer break for some – and a chance to get hands-on instruction with some of the hardware and software many kids are likely to encounter in school during the coming years.

The workshops break down into two weekly sessions in movie making, music, photography and presentation arts, where Apple instructional staff will teach kids the ins and outs of iMovie, GarageBand, iPhoto and Keynote.

A quick check of some of the session availability shows all sessions in New York City’s Apple stores are already full, though the rest of the country – even in populous California cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco – have spots still open.

Apple also offers similar youth programs year-round to help cultivate the next generation of evangelists.

This handmade set of two cotton applique pillows inspired by Mac keys is a nice way to put some fandom in your living room or office lounge without going overboard. Specify your initial on the letter key pillow to personalize.

$65 for the set on Etsy.

Location based software applications in Blackberry’s new App World store are four times more expensive than similar titles in Apple’s App Store, according to a Skyhook Wireless report released Wednesday.

The company’s Location Aware App Report (PDF), a monthly survey of titles available in the online stores of mobile handset manufacturers Apple, Blackberry and Android, found the App Store offers a greater percentage of paid to free apps across a wider variety of title categories than either Blackberry or Android.

With over 35,000 apps in the App Store at the time of the survey (around 10,000 having been added since), and 2,300 of them location aware, Apple’s average price for a paid location aware app was $3.60. In contrast, the average price for a location aware app from Blackberry’s App World store was $13.60, while bargain-basment titles could be had from Android’s Market at an average price of just 84¢

The survey results are skewed in that Apple’s App Store has been open nearly a year, while Blackberry’s App World is only in its second month of operation. On the other hand, in its first six months of operation, the App Store saw more than 800 location aware apps released, while Android’s Marketplace produced fewer than 200 in its first two quarters.

For now, location aware software developers have shown a clear preference for Apple’s iPhone platform, even if some seem to believe the Blackberry platform might support quite a bit more revenue per title.

Source: DisplaySearch 2009 Touch Panel Market Analysis

Thanks to the success of the iPhone, touchscreen technology will see explosive growth in the next few years.

The touchsreen market will nearly triple in the next few years, growing from $3.6 billion now to $9 billion in 2015, predicts a new report by market research firm DisplaySearch.

“With the success of the iPhone, the touch panel market has entered a dramatic new growth phase.,” the DisplaySearch report said.

The report predicted big growth in projected capacitive touchscreens — the technology used in the iPhone and iPod touch.

“Projected capacitive touch screens have increased substantially and become the second biggest touch technology following closely behind resistive touch,” the report said. “About 27 touch screen suppliers manufacture it. Not only have more resistive touch screen manufacturers moved to produce projected capacitive, but projected capacitive technology has evolved to single layer or film type, and can serve sizes larger than 100-inches.”

Whoa  — a 100-inch iPhone in 2015.

Mobile phones and smartphones will be the most popular application of touchscreens, but they will also be the primary interface for media players, navigation devices, and games. More than 40 percent of mobile phones will have touchscreen interfaces by 2015, the report predicts, up from 16 percent now.

Touchscreens will also become popular in applications like retail, ticketing, information kiosks, and education and training terminals, the report said.

One million potential iPhone developers downloaded Stanford’s dev course since it started in April. The 10-week course from the Palo Alto university’s school of engineering is offered gratis on iTunes.

Steve Demeter, the founder of Demiforce and maker of the popular Trism iPhone game, spoke to the class Monday, the SF Chronicle reported, and touched on the opportunities and growing challenges of developing for the iPhone.

Demeter earned $250,000 in the first two months of Trism but acknowledged his good luck in breaking through early and having the support of Apple, two things that most developers now can’t count on.
You can still catch the video lectures of about an hour long each are available here.

Screenshot from Steve Marmon’s May 8 lecture, courtesy Stanford, iTunes.

Via SF Chronicle

Rumors that the new iPhone will feature a glowing Apple logo on the back of the handset have generally been met with derision. The idea that Apple’s designer’s would waste precious battery life with a glowing logo is so abhorrent, many have used it to dismiss the rumors altogether.

But a group of Russian hackers in August last year hacked an iPhone to make the logo glow. The hack — as seen in the video below — involved a Dremel tool and about $300 in parts, according to reports.

And it had no effect on the battery life whatsoever, the Ruskies said.

But why would Apple add a frivolous glowing logo?

To make the Apple logo more visible, of course. Just like glowing lighthouse on the lid of a MacBook, or the iPod’s white headphones, Apple is not shy of using us to advertise its wares.

Photo: Alf Ove Hansen/Dagbladet.no

Nerdy Norwegian Petter Roisland helped police find a fugitive drug dealer, thanks to his stolen MacBook.

Roisland, a 23-year-old who lives near the southern Norwegian town of Stavanger, lost a computer in a burglary last year.

Determined not to get ripped off twice, Roisland installed Orbicle’s Undercover recovery software on two MacBooks he bought as replacement machines. And then in February, they too were stolen.

The designer of the brilliant “PhotoShoplifter” t-shirt (see the pic after the jump) is back with a new design honoring old Macs.

Roger of RubyRed T-shirt Designs has created the “Sad Chimes Rest Home” shirt featuring three vintage machines that are loved but no longer used.

“Old Macs deserve more than ending up on the scrapheap after a life of creation and innovation,” Roger says. “Be sympathetic to your old Apple in its time of need, send it to the Sad Chimes Rest Home for retired and redundant Macs. A place where the Mac Classic and the G3 iMac can reminisce about operating system developments.”

More of Roger’s work after the jump.

Chart: Silicon Alley Insider.

UPDATED: YouGov sent a little more info about the survey’s other metrics — posted after the jump. Basically, Apple still leads on quality and reputation, but MS has caught on value, satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ad campaign is hurting Apple, according to a new consmer survey by YouGov BrandIndex.

Redmond’s new ads portray consumers rejecting Apple’s laptops as too expensive. Though clearly a defensive reaction to Apple’s successful “Get a Mac” ads, they are nonetheless reinforcing the stereotype of the “Apple tax,” says YouGov.

“With the Laptop Hunters campaign, Microsoft is making an impact on the perceived value score in the mind of consumers, particularly young consumers,”  Ted Marzilli, global managing director of BrandIndex, said on Tuesday afternoon when I phoned him up.

YouGov is an international market research firm based out of London. Its BrandIndex survey queried about 5,000 people online from a pool of about 1.5 million, Marzilli said. It claims to be representative of the U.S. adult population.

Its latest survey shows a clear uptick in Microsoft’s “value,” and a clear downtick in Apple’s. The change coincides with Microsoft’s high-profile campaign.

Credit: Dystopos, used under a Creative Commons license.

Wal-Mart is busy re-vamping the electronics departments in 3,500 of its giant retail stores, in a move to both fill the void left by Circuit City’s recent bankruptcy and to compete with another electronics mega-chain, Best Buy. But some believe it’s also actively lobbying Apple to become a distributor for more than just iPods and iPhones.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is widely perceived as a low-end discounter whose vast properties are largely filled with the cheapest, most useless junk Americans could dream of importing from China, which makes Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes’ opinion that Wal-Mart is angling to one day carry Macs all the more disconcerting.

Speculation over Apple’s interest in expanding its fewer than 10,000 worldwide distribution points comes amid recent data indicating that Microsoft’s advertising blitz over the past year has succeeded in re-positioning devices that run the Windows OS as value propositions in the computer world.

But this Mac user wonders whether a move into retail’s hoi-polloi might cost Apple more in the long-run than it would gain from the increased revenue that would surely come from the greater retail exposure a distribution deal with Wal-Mart could represent.

There has always been something satisfying, from the user perspective, about the panache of owning an Apple product; in many respects – as mythical as the concept of an “Apple premium” might in reality be – some Apple owners believe they get more for their money, and are willing to pay for the sense of exclusivity the company’s limited distribution network provides. Similar perceptions have maintained the public’s high regard and brand loyalty for companies such as Bose and Bang & Olufsen for years.

If the demands of a rebalancing global economy and of shareholders’ inexhaustible lust for profits cause Apple to seek a different path it would be a real shame, and likely signal the beginning of the end for the company that once implored the world to Think Different.

CC-licensed photo by David Paul Ohmer.

In an effort to reach out to young, tech-savvy Catholics, the Holy See will launch an iPhone app to coincide with its World Communications Day, celebrated May 24.

The Vatican app was created by Father Paolo Padrini, the priest who developed iBrevary, an app that puts morning prayer, evening prayer and night prayers on the iPhone and a Facebook application called Praybook.

“The pope is inviting us to promote a culture of dialogue, of respect and friendship, especially among young people,” Archbishop Claudio Celli told Catholic News.

The initiative to put the Pope in your pocket comes after  the Vatican youtube channel and will launch from a website (not yet live) called www.pope2you.net. So far the app lets people send and receive “virtual postcards” of Pope Benedict along with inspiring excerpts from the pope’s various speeches.  No word on whether its gratis or, like the iBreviary, will cost $.99.

Would you download the Vatican app?

Via Catholic News

The new iPhone will be available July 17 and will have a bunch of new features, including video recording and editing, a digital compass, turn-by-turn directions, and a better battery, according to an obscure blog called iPhone Apps.

The blog, who no one has ever heard of before, claims to have been contacted by a “reputable source,” who is “closely connected to Apple’s hardware development team.”

Whatever. I’m dubious, but the rumor somewhat gels with previous rumors and the site’s detail and specificity lend the claims are certain credence. Kinda.

Full specs after the jump.

CC-licensed iPhone homescreen screenshot by Blake Patterson.

Developers are sneaking Easter Eggs into their iPhone apps to get around onerous App Store restrictions, Brian Chen at Wired.com reports.

Programmer Jelle Prins’ song lyrics app Lyrics, for example, was initially rejected by the App store because it included songs with naughty words. Apple bans profanity, pornography and basically anything adult and fun.

But the Lyrics app will include swear words if you go to the About page and swipe downward three times. Up pops an option to turn off a swear word filter.

“Lyrics has slipped in a quiet ‘Screw you’ to Apple’s App Store gatekeepers albeit one mumbled behind their backs,” Chen writes.

Has anyone else discovered undocumented features in iPhone apps? If so, leave them in the comments. A prize for the best one.

Apple published a support article Monday indicating “It’s possible to receive a small and quick electrical (static) shock from your earbuds while listening to iPod or iPhone.”

The article reads like a schoolbook primer on the nature and causes of static electricity and points out that the condition is not limited to Apple hardware, that static can potentially build up on almost any hardware and could be discharged using any brand of earbuds. Support staff also helpfully note that receiving a static shock from a pair of earbuds does not necessarily indicate an issue with the iPod, iPhone, or earbuds.

OK. And the company found it necessary to publish this information because…?

Have iPod and iPod users been experiencing an inordinate build-up of static electricity with their devices?

Let us know in comments below if you find it shocking to use your Apple mobile device in windy, low-humidity conditions.

[Techmeme]

Palm’s long-awaited rival to the iPhone, the Pre, will go on sale on June 6, Palm said on Tuesday, and will cost $200 and up with a two-year contract, depending on the plan.

The Pre goes just two days before Apple’s WWDC keynote, where he company is expected to announce the third-generation iPhone.

The Pre looks like a genuine rival to the iPhone. The software looks very slick, powerful and easy to use, and the hardware includes a built-in keyboard, an important distinguishing feature.

But Palm already seems to be pulling consumer-unfriendly stunts with pricing. The $200 price tag is dependent on a $100 mail-in rebate, which is never popular. And the data plans appear to cost between $70 and $90 a month (it’s not clear on Sprint’s page which plan the Pre needs). Plus, Palm is charging an extra $70 for the innovative Touchstone charger, and $30 for a car charger.

Apple of course charges extra for an iPhone docking cradle, but Palm seems to be nickle-and-diming consumers already.

Jonathan Ive, Apple Senior VP of Design, has been named the #1 most creative person in business by Fast Company magazine.

Citing Ive’s decade-long influence over Apple’s rise to prominence as a trendsetting company with global reach, Fast Company‘s “100 Most Creative People in Business” list builds on an interview the magazine did with Apple’s young design star not long after he’d produced the groundbreaking Bondi Blue iMac. “We feel that we’re just getting going,” Ive told the magazine then, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Robert Brunner, Apple’s previous design chief, and the man who hired Ive and recommended him as his successor, said, “He likes to make perfect stuff,” describing what sets Ive apart from his peers in the design universe. “Ive has this design ability combined with a craftsmanlike mentality,” Brunner added, pointing to Ive’s understanding of the interplay between design and manufacturing as keys to the success of more recent products such as the iPhone and unibody laptop computers.