Twitter has updated its Twitter for Mac client, and you can see all of the new changes on the official company blog. The biggest update is that you now get a camera icon when you're composing a tweet, which makes it easier than ever to share pictures straight from your desktop (other Twitter clients have had this for a while, and you could always drag pictures over, but this is a clearer way to do this anyway). The app has also added Retina display support, which is nice, and there are now 14 more languages: Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, and Turkish.

As always, the app is available for free directly from the Mac App Store. Twitter says to keep an eye out for more changes as well, so it's working hard on...

It was in the news recently that the Fair Trade Commission had formally set up a case to investigate whether Samsung was deceptively pitching its products online and attacking its rivals' devices. There's a fine line between a marketing team being aggressive and crossing an unethical line. That's where the Fair Trade Commission comes in to keep dirty tricksters out of the market, or more realistically, fine them and embarrass these companies publically. But now another kind of game seems to brewing over at Samsung. No one is saying it's illegal. It just smells bad. ...

alphadogg writes "The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in just two minutes today, blowing away last year's record of two hours. Tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m. PDT, as was announced yesterday, when Apple said its event would be held June 10-14 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Apple WWDC runs neck-and-neck with the annual Google I/O event in the race for hottest tech show. The Google event, slated for May 15-17 at Moscone Center, sold out in 45 minutes this year. While transferring tickets for WWDC is generally not allowed, an ambitious eBay seller is attempting to get $10K for the $1,600 ticket."

...

Apple CEO Tim Cook has offered up a coffee meeting for a charity auction benefitting the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. Estimated to go for US$50,000, the auction earned 54 bids in just the first few hours and is sitting at $190,000 as of this writing.

Originally slated for launch next month, the Leap Motion controller will now see public release at the end of July, with the company saying a larger and longer beta testing period is needed to ensure a quality product.  ...

The shipping date for the Leap Motion 3D Motion Controller has been delayed from May 13th until July 22, says the company's CEO. Michael Buckwald revealed the information during a conference call earlier today. "There's nothing catastrophically wrong," he explained, "we're very proud of the product Ö if we'd tried very hard we would have been able to ship the product [on the original date] but we wouldn't have had the time to do the iteration and testing that we would want to do otherwise."...  ...

@bsetter iPad is in the works and desktop is on our roadmap!—
Mailbox (@mailbox) April 25, 2013

After some controversy for the popular Mailbox iOS app earlier this week, some good news for Mailbox users comes today in the form of confirmation of new features and an iPad app coming soon.

As noted in the tweets above and below, the Mailbox devs have publicly confirmed in a number of recent tweets that and iPad version of the app is currently “in the works” and expected to launch soon. We also learn that desktop and Android versions of the app are on the company’s roadmap, while iCloud support, landscape typing, alias support, and “Send as” features are also on the list for future updates:

@...

Though a minor update for some users, Apple’s Apple Store app (free) has been updated to version 2.6 — the app now lets users receive notifications noting when they’re eligible for upgrade pricing on a new iPhone. Sega’s unpredictable history of…

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has ordered T-Mobile to change “deceptive advertising” that promised no contracts for customers, notably coinciding with the carrier’s long-awaited announcement of iPhone availability. The Attorney General’s Office said the company “failed to disclose that customers who purchase a phone using the 24-month payment…

We went hands on with the Leap Motion controller a couple times already and we were quite looking forward to the potential for gesture controlled apps that it offers devs. Back in February the company announced that it would be ready to ship the device by May 19 with pre-orders available through BestBuy, but today Leap Motion announced its gesture controller would be pushed back over two months until July 22nd.

Leap said the decision behind the delay is to allow more time for testing (via TNW):

“There’s nothing catastrophically wrong,” Buckwald added, “we’re very proud of the product...

Fotopedia Reporter is a unique, free iPad app that I would describe as a socially aware, digital coffee table book that lets you see and share photos that tell stories. The stories can be travel photos, landscapes, a restaurant visit, or a dive trip. Anything that would be of interest to others that you know or don't know.

To help you get started, the app provides some attractive designs. Your creation can be shared on Facebook or Twitter, or you can email a web link and it can be viewed in a browser. You can view others' projects and leave comments. Of course, you don't have to be a contributor, you can just browse the many stories and photos submitted.

One question I had to the developers was the issue of rights. The answer is that people who publish photos choose their license type (all rights reserved, creative commons or public domain) and the poster retains the rights. The...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Subscribe via RSS

Daily Update for April 25, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:45:00 EST. Please see our...

T-Mobile's newly-launched "Uncarrier" plans are seeing some resistance from judicial channels. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has demanded T-Mobile correct "deceptive advertising" that promised customers no annual contracts not requiring the user to "serve a two-year sentence," despite having what the office calls hidden charges for early termination of a new device plan that amounts to the same two-year contractual obligation.... ...

Google has released a beta Office Viewer extension for the Mac and Windows editions of Chrome. The add-on requires either the Chrome 27 beta or the latest Canary release, but enables viewing Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files within Chrome instead of separately. To protect against trojan attacks the extension is sandboxed, limiting the reach of any malicious code hackers might insert into a document....  ...

As expected, WWDC 2013 tickets sold out in record time. If you are one of the many disappointed developers locked out of Apple's premier developer event yet again, take heart. The folks behind Appsterdam and a number of other developer events are organizing AltWWDC this year, a free 5-day event that will be held in San Francisco June 10 - 14, 2013.

Appsterdam's Mike Lee, TUAW editor-in-chief Victor Agreda, our very own wizard Brett Terpstra, Brent Simmons, Saul Mora, and Steve "Scotty" Scott are among the confirmed speakers at the event, which is sponsored by 360|Conferences, Hidden Memory and Server Density.

Read the press release below for...

Apple will open its first-ever retail store in Germany's capital city of Berlin next Friday, May 3, the company has officially announced.   ...

Apple has sold out of Worldwide Developer Conference 2013 tickets already -- this time, in just over an hour beating last year's pace and record. Apple has promised to early copies of OS X 10.9 and iOS 7.

Are you going to be in San Francisco during WWDC 2013? MacTech is sponsoring ALTWWDC.  Sign up for udpates at 
http://altwwdc.com/updates/

read more

Twitter has released an update for its official Mac client, v2.2. The update is Twitter's first for the software in years, and adds several awaited features, such as Retina support for the MacBook Pro. Another is support for a much wider number of languages, including Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and simplified and traditional Chinese....  ...

Following the launch of T-Mobile’s new “Uncarrier” strategy alongside the $99 iPhone 5 and new no subsidy pricing plans last month, today the Washington State Attorney General has ordered T-Mobile to change its advertising calling its promise to offer no annual contracts “deceptive”.

The result of a court order filed by Attorney General Bob Ferguson and signed by T-Mobile will ensure the carrier’s commitment to changing advertising in order to properly outline “the limitations of its new no-contract” service plans. It will also allow “customers duped by the deceptive ads to exit their contracts with no penalty.”

“As Attorney General, my job is to defend consumers, ensure truth in advertising, and make sure all businesses are playing by the rules,” Ferguson said. “My office...

Zynga's Draw Something, the incredibly popular drawing game for iPhone, now has a follow-up: Draw Something 2. It's available now on the U.S. App Store as an ad-supported free download or premium, ad-free version at US$1.99.

It was just in February that Zynga VP and General Manager, Dan Porter, said there were some exciting things in the pipeline for Draw Something, and we now know what he was talking about.

Draw Something 2 has many new additions and features, including 5,000 new words, more drawing tools and over a...

A Chinese court in Beijing slapped Apple with a US$118,000 fine for copyright infringement over three titles available through the iBookstore. The Intermediate People's Court ruled that the books shouldn't have been available through the iBookstore and that Apple was responsible even though it was actually other people who apparently didn't have permission to distribute the titles that added them to the online store.

The Mac Observer Spin:
China's culture is very different from the United States, but it still seems a little wrong that its copyright protection favors pirate publishers and punishes the resellers like Apple.

...

(Updated with corrected timing) Apple has already sold out of passes to attend WWDC 2013 in San Francisco, according to the company's website. AppleInsider notes that sales were ended just two minutes after they opened at 10AM Pacific time. The pace beats last year's record, when passes were gone in roughly two hours....   ...

Like any good Apple project, it appears that the Apple "Campus 2" building project in Cupertino, California has undergone some revisions to make it perfect. The spaceship-like building is expected to be finished in 2016, about a year later than originally planned and US$2 billion over the original budget.

The revised plans were published today on Electronista and include a host of changes: 240 more parking spaces (bringing the total to 10,980 spaces), four new public art installations, and more bike and walking paths along the private roads around the main building.

But the biggest change is to what is known as the Tantau Development, a separate set of buildings that were going to be built along North Tantau Avenue that would house about...

On April 25, 2013, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a round of eleven original patent applications from Apple today excluding 15 continuation patent filings. In this report we cover two patent applications relating to Apple's "Maps" App, a new buckling shock mounting system to better resist mechanical shock and a list of five others covering matters such as data transfers using the Low Energy Bluetooth standard and battery technologies. ...

If you are tired of holding the arrow keys and waiting for your cursor to move, there are alternatives to greatly speed this up.

Lex Friedman

Apple's 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) appears to have sold out in… (wait for it…) about two minutes. What we originally thought was a joke appears to actually be true, according to numerous developers who went to buy a ticket Thursday. This marked a new record for Apple's increasingly popular conference.

Apple made an unusual move this year when announcing the dates for WWDC. Instead of surprising the world with this information and ticket sales at once, the company gave a day's warning for when tickets would go on sale: today, April 25, at 10am PDT. At the time, developers were relieved to have some notice of when to be at the computer. But when the clock ticked 10:02 on Thursday morning, people began receiving messages that tickets were already...

In 2014, tickets to Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference will possibly sell out before they go on sale. Tickets for this year’s WWDC, which went on sale at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) sold out in fewer than three minutes.

Last year, tickets to the conference took nearly two hours to sell out; in 2011, the event took 12 hours to sell out.

WWDC is Apple’s conference for iOS and OS X developers to attend educational sessions, spend lab time engaging with hundreds of Apple engineers, and socialize with their peers. This year’s conference runs from June 10 through June 14.

This year, Apple promises for the first time to post session videos during the conference, instead of asking those who missed out on attending to wait days or weeks for...

Tickets for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in a matter of seconds after they went on sale on Thursday, marking the fastest sell-out in WWDC history.   ...

After going on sale at 10:00 AM Pacific Time today, tickets for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco have already sold out in two minutes.

WWDC has sold out increasingly quickly in recent years, and this year in particular saw a massive rush of developers ready to purchase at the launch time due to Apple having announced the on-sale time a day in advance. Previously, Apple had begun sales at the moment it announced details on the annual conference, but with last year's tickets selling out in under two hours, some developers found themselves out of luck before they had even woken up for the day.

WWDC 2011...

Today, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is being dedicated on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. David Greene of NPR talked to former first lady Laura Bush about the library as well as her husband, former president George W. Bush, and his new iPad-inspired hobby.

About three minutes into the conversation, Mrs. Bush talks about her husband's new past time, drawing. His hobby was kicked off when he downloaded an app and started sketching on his iPad. He communicated with Mrs. Bush and their daughter Jenna by sending them self-drawn images of things at home while they were traveling.

You can listen to the Morning Edition clip on...

Apple's June-quarter MacBook shipments should increase about 10 percent over the previous quarter, say DigiTimes supply chain sources. The people claim that Apple has almost finished consuming excess inventory, and will probably start placing new orders in mid-May. Most of the ordered systems will likely be Haswell-based MacBooks, the sources comment....  ...

Nokia is expected to unveil its response to Apple's iPhone 5 at a newly announced Lumia smartphone media event set for May 14 in London.   ...

Twocanoes Software has released some really cool utilities today as open source software.  So far, they have released an app called Salute that lets you lock your screen using Control-Command-Delete, one called Audit that lets you configure and read OpenBSM logs and Debug which lets you enable and disabled debug logging from your system preferences.

About Nate Walck

Nate is a Macintosh Systems Engineer at Tamman Technologies, Inc in Philadelphia, PA. He is the managing editor for afp548.com and one of the founding members of the ##osx-server IRC channel on freenode.net. He loves being involved in the Mac Admin community and using Open Source projects whenever possible, especially Munki and The Luggage...

6 Wunderkinder, the developers behind the ‘Wunderlist’ to-do app that’s currently home to over 4 million users, today announced a new “Pro” version of the cross platform productivity app. Launching today on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and on the web, the new pro version comes with the introduction of the developer’s first premium model that will see users pay $4.99 a month (or $49.99 a year) to get access to new team oriented collaboration features:

• Assigning – now you can add an extra level of accountability and assign tasks to your colleagues

and friends.
• Unlimited subtasks – sometimes the task on hand is so big that you need to break it down into

small manageable subtasks. Now you can add as little or as many needed to get the job done.
• Backgrounds – Wunderlist Pro subscribers will have access to eight new backgrounds – from a minimal dark wood and soothing sands to vibrant florals and the...

Samsung mini-stores have begun launching in Best Buy locations across the nation, giving the South Korean tech giant a presence in the retailer previously held only Apple.   ...

Delicious Library 3, the library organization application from Delicious Monster, debuted on Thursday. This latest update embraces Mountain Lion, and also features, for the first time, iOS integration. (Though some may remember that a previous Delicious Monster iOS app was pulled from the App Store in 2009, over a dispute with Amazon.)

If you’re not familiar with its predecessors—the last major version of which, Delicious Library 2, was launched in 2008—the app lets users organize and track their collections of books, movies, other media, and even tools. The easiest way to add an item to your libary is by holding its barcode up to your computer’s webcam for scanning, which enters pertinent information of...

Horace Dediu takes a look at Apple’s gross margins back to 2005.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Firaxis, 2K Games, and Feral Interactive have launched a promised Mac port of XCOM: Enemy Unknown in the form of the Elite Edition. The download includes the content of the main game plus a soundtrack, desktop wallpapers, and three DLC add-ons: the Slingshot Pack, the Elite Soldier Pack, and the Second Wave update. The two packs allow for more soldier customization, and add more council missions and the Shaojie Zhang soldier. Second Wave adds a collection of gameplay modifiers....  ...

It's time to save some of that hard-earned cash with our Daily Deals, featuring a handy list from Dealnews and our own hand-picked selections that include some sweet deals on iOS and OS X software (all prices are USD).

Deals from Dealnews

• GamersGate: [PC Games] GamersGate Spring Sale: Up to 90% off game downloads for PC or Mac
• TigerDirect: [USB Flash Drives] Centon 64GB USB Flash Drive, security software for $0 after rebate + $4 s&h
• Adorama: [Laser Printers] Dell WiFi Monochrome Laser Printer for $50 + free...

Cyberduck is a robust FTP/FTP-TLS/SFTP browser for the Mac whose lack of visual clutter and cleverly intuitive features make it easy to use. Support for external editors and system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, Keychain and AppleScript are built-in.

Cyberduck is a open source product licensed under the GPL and free to use. Donations are welcome to help advance development in the future. Thanks to contributors, Cyberduck is available in English, Japanese, German, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, and Polish.

Version 4.3:

• [Localize] Arabic Localization
• [Feature] Retina resolution support (#6760)
• [Feature] Notification center support (10.8) (#6792)
• [Feature] Gatekeeper support (10.8) (#6888)
• [Feature] Bucket location in South America (Sao Paulo)...

You’re gonna either love or hate this.

Per CNET, Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro is the “best performing” Windows laptop.

The MacBook Pro won out over established PC makers like Dell, Acer, and Lenovo, according to Soluto, which was quick to explain its finding.

A main factor in this machine’s metrics is the fact that every Windows installation on it is clean. With PC manufacturers loading so much crapware on new laptops, this is a bit of an unfair competition. But, on the other hand, PC makers should look at this data and aspire to ship PCs that perform just as well as a...

Tickets for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference are set to go on sale at 10AM pacific time, or 1PM eastern time, on Thursday, and they'll likely go fast. Last year, the event sold out in just under two hours, and thanks to Apple's decision to announce ticket sales a day in advance, they'll probably go even quicker this year.

WebStart is a US$0.99 utility in the Mac App Store that lets you customize a browser home page with frequently used links, like search engines, news or weather. Yes, you can just use standard bookmarks as you are already doing, but this simple app presents your preferred links on one page.

When you open the app for the first time you'll get a brief tutorial. Basically you create topics and add relevant URLs. You can customize the fonts by color, style and size and choose the fill and background colors.

To further customize the look of your home page, drag and drop headings and topics into an order that works for you. When you are done, save it all, and the app will provide the link for your browser. You can paste it into the location where your browser sets the home page and you're ready to go. You can get a better idea how WebStart works in this...

Want to use binoculars or a telescope as an iPhone lens? There's a Kickstarter for that. Hi Resolution Enterprises designed the Snapzoom, which is an adapter that connects your iPhone to lenses you wouldn't otherwise think of as camera attachments. Your photos benefit from the optics in your binoculars and other long distance viewing tools, and lets you use the gear you already have as a telephoto lens. Snapzoom is compatible with pretty much any smartphone in or out of a case, and fits most binoculars, telescopes, and spotting scopes. The team behind the project is hoping to raise US$55,000 to get Snapzoom off the ground, and there's still about a month left to hit that goal.

...

On Thursday, software company Delicious Monster released version 3.0 of the shareware favorite, Delicious Library. Delicious Monster allows Macs with webcams to scan the bar codes of any book, movie, music CD or video game, then creates an archive based on background information from the Internet. Additional features help keep the library organized and reseller’s tools allow for items to be quickly posted for sale online.

The new version, an 81 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and changes:

Major New Features:
- Fully 3D cover view.

- All items are drawn in full 3D [industry first], with multiple light sources and normal, reflection, and environment maps.

- Books...

On April 25, 2013, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a new In-Plane Keyboard Illumination system designed to allow future MacBooks to be even thinner. Apple's engineering teams are always pushing the boundaries of industrial design to deliver the very best products in the marketplace.  ...

As part of its new revamped Contacts section coming soon for select users on the desktop, LinkedIn today is also launching a standalone Contacts...

Last year tickets for WWDC sold out about as quick as a Justin Bieber concert with Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars opening up. And this year, I see no reason to expect any less, despite the wonky logo on the website. For more, check out the WWDC site at:

https://developer.apple.com/wwdcSimilar Articles:

• WWDC Tickets On Sale
• WWDC Videos

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The use of this feed on other websites breaches copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it makes the page you are viewing an...

That has to hurt.

∞ Read this on The Loop

Delicious Monster is known for Delicious Library, a comprehensive inventory app that lets you track items from every nook and cranny of your life. The OS X app was updated today to version 3.0, and the changes that Delicious Monster made to Delicious Library are impressive.

First and foremost is an improved UI that not only looks better, but has nice touches like the book icons, which vary their thickness based on the number pages in the book. The bookshelf now has crown molding as well as improved lighting and reflections to make it more realistic. Items on your bookshelf now have a 3D look and even pivot to follow your mouse cursor.

New features are abundant in Delicious Library 3 and include a recommendations engine, a wishlist pane and smart shelves that let you create rules to easily populate any shelf. There's also a global search function that supports voice search and shows results from your collections and...

Earlier this week, we gave a brief preview of Delicious Monster's Delicious Library 3, a brand-new version of the company's popular cataloging app for OS X. The app is now available in the Mac App Store [Direct Link], and Ars Technica has a thorough overview of the new features.

Among the most immediately obvious changes for existing users of Delicious Library is its updated look, which includes the use of SceneKit to boost the realism, along with subtle animation that allows shelf items to constantly move to face the user's mouse cursor."We cranked up all the visuals and then cranked down every visual effect so it was...

Literature & Latte has introduced Scapple, a project planning and organization tool for Mac OS X (10.6.8 or higher).

Scapple is designed to help you get ideas down quickly and make connections between them. More like a freeform text editor, it allows you to make notes anywhere on the page and to connect them using straight dotted lines or arrows.

read more

On April 25, 2013, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that generally relates to future iPhones being able to locate your vehicle in a multi-tiered parking lot. In fact, Apple states that a "parking location" can be any place where a vehicle can be parked, stored, or docked. For example, in the case of a boat, a parking location can refer to a berth in a marina; in the case of an aircraft, a parking location can refer to a location at a municipal airport (e.g., outdoors or in a hangar). The vehicle can go beyond a car and it could be useful in trying to find a bike that you've parked. This new parking system application is likely a sub-system of a broader application. Part one of ......

Image: Engadget

China Daily (via ZDNet) reports that Apple has been ordered by a court to pay 730,000 Yuan ($118,000) to three Chinese authors as their books were apparently uploaded to the iTunes Store without permission.

The uploads appear to have been made by third-parties rather than by Apple directly, and it’s unclear who did upload them, but the court ruled that Apple has a duty to ensure that uploads don’t breach copyright.

The fine is of course small-beer to Apple, but does form further bad PR in the country after previous...

Famed iPhone jailbreaker Comex, whose real name is Nicholas Allegra, tweeted on Tuesday that he will be joining Google as an intern in the coming weeks.

Allegra originally made a name for himself when he released a jailbreak tool dubbed JailBreakMe. As the name implies, the tool enabled users to easily and quickly bypass Apple's iOS security measures.

Allegra's work eventually caught the attention of Apple who decided to hire the Brown University student as an intern in August of 2011.

Allegra lasted 14 months at Apple before being let go under somewhat murky circumstances in late 2012.

As for what Allegra will be up to over in Mountain View, well that's anybody's guess. It...

From 9to5Toys.com:

Firaxis and 2K Games have officially launched the critically acclaimed XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Mac today. Known as the Elite Edition, the Feral ported Mac version will come with the base game, the Slingshot Pack, the Elite Soldier Pack and the Second Wave update as well as some wallpapers and the soundtrack for $49.99.

The Slingshot and Elite Soldier DLC brings additional character customization as well as extra council missions and the “Shaojie Zhang”...

I admire Tim Cook's unflagging patience with investors and analysts during quarterly conference calls. However, I'm starting to wonder if his subtle digs and point-by-point comments are enough for a guy who's stuck on the biggest tech company stage in the world right now. I just wish he would conduct these calls while languidly sharpening a knife. In fact, I want the guy to pull out a freaking sword -- a metaphorical sword, of course. I want him to use that sword to eviscerate the asinine complaints about Apple.

Perforce Software (www.perforce.com) has released five tips for software teams to consider this spring when managing their development environments. The suggestions are guidelines for maintaining well-organized codebases and improving development processes.

"Springtime is when software projects begin to pick up steam, but longer days don't have to equal longer delivery cycles," says Randy DeFauw, senior product manager at Perforce. "With a well-maintained and well-managed codebase, companies can have peace of mind while ramping up to launch various projects."

read more

Perforce Software (www.perforce.com) has released five tips for software teams to consider this spring when managing their development environments. The suggestions are guidelines for maintaining well-organized codebases and improving development processes.

"Springtime is when software projects begin to pick up steam, but longer days don't have to equal longer delivery cycles," says Randy DeFauw, senior product manager at Perforce. "With a well-maintained and well-managed codebase, companies can have peace of mind while ramping up to launch various projects."

read more

Native Instruments has released Pulswerk, a new Maschine Expansion designed for minimalistic house and techno. It was created by sound designer Denis Gökdag, the creator of NI's Maschine Expansion Transistor Punch, and the name behind Surround SFX and Zynaptiq.

Aside from its 30 drum kits, Pulswerk contains 20 Special Kits created exclusively with pitched sound sources. The Expansion also features an array of Multi-Effect Kits containing pre-sequenced, tempo synced effect chains and 60 new Massive presets.

read more

Sonnet's xMac mini Server 2H is a second model of the company's xMac mini Server Thunderbolt-to-PCI Express (PCIe) expansion system and 1U rackmount enclosure for a Mac mini with a Thunderbolt port.

The new xMac mini Server 2H enables the use of two half-length, full-height PCIe cards, allowing users to select from and install the majority of Thunderbolt-compatible cards into either slot. The original xMac mini Server accommodates one full-length, full-height PCIe card and one half-length, half-height (low-profile) card.

read more

You can never have too much juice for your laptop. Which is where QuickerTek's US$299.95 EyeBattery for all MacBook Pros comes in handy. It adds up to four extra hours of battery power to the MacBook Pro.

read more

Apple’s first store in the German capital Berlin is opening at the unusual time of 5pm on Friday 3rd May. (If you’re confused by the graphic, European dates have the day before the month.)

The graphic has a small play on words, Kurfürstendamm being the area of Berlin in which the store is opening, and the highlighted text reading ‘Apple for Berlin’.

This brings the total number of Apple Stores in Germany to 11. We previously showed some photos and videos of the store preparation here.

(Thanks to Alex and Jim for the tip.)

//

...

A pair of patent filings discovered on Thursday reveal Apple is actively investigating the possibilities afforded by the iOS mobile platform's various wireless connectivity options, including the ability to interact with, and at times control, a Bluetooth-enabled automobile.  ...

Apple sold $2.4 billion worth of apps, music, movies and books via its iTunes store last quarter. That’s almost twice what the company was doing two years ago. And no matter how you look at it, it means Apple is a giant force in digital media retail.

That said, it looks like iTunes’ sales growth may be slowing down.

Last quarter iTunes sales increased 28 percent; in the previous quarter they increased 23 percent. Most retailers would be very happy to see those kind of leaps, but as far as I can tell they are the smallest increases Apple has seen in the last two years.*

You can see what the last two quarters looked like in context, below:

So what does that mean? Dunno. Maybe nothing more than a statistical blip.

If I had to bet, though, I’d put money on a couple different culprits:

• In the old days, when Apple only sold music, iTunes sales rose along side iPod sales: Whenever someone bought a new gadget, they spent some money on songs...

1Password is a password manager that uniquely brings you both security and convenience. It is the only program that provides anti-phishing protection and goes beyond password management by adding Web form filling and automatic strong password generation. Your confidential information, including passwords, identities, and credit cards, is kept secure using strong encryption.

1Password fully supports major Web browsers, including Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. All browser extensions share the data stored in the keychain which means you never need to manually copy your passwords between browsers or from the password manager to a browser ever again!

1Password has received numerous awards, including 4.5 mice from Macworld magazine, MacLife Editors pick, and was the Pick of Week on MacBreak Weekly by both Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann.

1Password also has a companion iPhone/iPod touch application available in iTunes App Store.

Version...

Although it got off to a rocky start, Apple's iAd service is now the second-largest such service online, behind Google. The program has quietly but slowly improved over the years, and the improvements have now filtered through to a new major version of iAd Producer, the program that allows artist to create both typical iOS ads as well as the elaborate, beautifully-produced promotions that have become a signature showcase of Apple's approach to advertising. The new version, 4.0, improves nearly every aspect of the program.... ...

When I was a kid, I begged my parents to line the walls of my room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I loved collecting books, and it was my early teenage dream to catalogue everything on my Motorola Mac clone (Starmax 3000 FTW!) so I could run a privately owned lending library for my peers out of, well, my parents' house. Back then, I was relegated to creating a giant list of books in a text file along with their ISBNs, basic descriptions, and current lending status—certainly no cover photos—that I would send out to friends via e-mail.

What I wouldn't have given back then for software like Delicious Library. An OS X application first released by Delicious Monster nearly a decade ago, Delicious Library has been a useful tool to those who become obsessive about cataloging their books, DVDs, CDs, and even video games. The software has evolved some throughout the years—Delicious Library 2 is quite...

Why would they be worried about construction costs?

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Apple has just revised its plans for its massive upcoming new headquarters, scheduled to be completed by 2016. The revised plans, known as Submittal 6, focus less on the structure of the building itself, instead highlighting the surrounding land and facilities, showing off new bike paths, larger parking areas, and photos of street renderings.

The parking areas have been increased in capacity from 9,000 to 9,240 in the main lot, and 1,500 to 1,740 in an additional location, the report states. Updated bike access plans include new features such as enhanced bike lanes called “buffered bike lanes,” as well as bike boxes and two-stage turn boxes (images below).

Although there will be an incremental increase in gross office and research and development floor area of...

Earlier this month, a report revealed that Apple's upcoming "spaceship" campus in Cupertino is both behind schedule and $2 billion over budget. Apple was said to be looking to cut costs on the project, which is apparent in the revised campus plans that it submitted to the city today.

Apple originally planned on constructing a 600,000 square foot area of buildings (known as the Tantau Development) in two phases. Phase 1 was to take place alongside the construction of the main Apple campus, while Phase 2 would be delayed until later.

In order to trim 300,000 square feet of construction costs from its budget, Apple has pushed...

After more than one year of going without email push notifications, Apple iCloud users in Germany may soon see a restoration of services as a high court on Wednesday stayed Motorola's patent trial against the iPhone maker.  ...

Soluto has ranked a few different brands of Windows laptops based on their performance against trouble and crashes, and here's a fun twist: Apple topped the heap. That's right, on a list of laptops that included Acer and Dell, an Apple MacBook Pro running Windows via Bootcamp got Soluto's best rating, the lowest score based on "a combination of crashes, hangs, BSoDs, boot and background processes."

Soluto says the reason Apple scored so well is probably because this was a "clean" Windows installation, which means that it didn't have any of the crapware that PC manufacturers usually have to install on their sold devices to try and turn a profit (buying a computer with something installed on it that you don't want -- can you imagine?). But Soluto also says there are obvious issues with running Windows on a Mac, first and foremost that drivers for any accessories (customized keyboards or mice) may not work correctly. Still, if...

Following the SimCity server debacle in early March, publisher Electronic Arts and developer Maxis promised to fix many of the problems with the troubled Game with a 2.0 patch. The patch was released earlier this week by the pair, and was met with complaints that not only did it not fix many issues, but made some aspects of gameplay worse, netting an overall worse gameplay experience....  ...

Brian Stucki is the developer behind MacMiniColo (the Mac mini colocation outfit in Las Vegas), and he recently sent us a fun project he's hosting called "Ransom Apps." It's just a silly little web app, but the idea is that you enter phrase of text, and Ransom Acts returns your phrase written in App Store app icons. I don't know if there's a real use for it, but it's fun and creates some neat designs.

Speaking of using App Store icons creatively, Ransom Apps reminded me of App Icon Quiz (free), which is kind of ingenious. It's a trivia quiz based around identifying App Store icons. The app uses real icons (with the permission of the actual developers -- more on that in a second) to create quiz questions, challenging you to match the icon with its app. It may sound goofy, but in practice, it's actually fun, especially if...

Charity Buzz has launched an auction for coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. The meeting is valued at $50,000 with the current bidding as of press time at over $14,000. This is the first time that one-on-one access to Cook has been offered via auction.

What cause could inspire Cook to open his door for the right sum? The answer is the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, whose mission is the advancement of human rights advocacy around the world "from Cambodia to California."

Other auction highlights include lunch with Francis Ford Coppola, a speaking role with Chris Hemsworth in an upcoming Michael Mann film, a meeting with Alex Trebek at a taping of Jeopardy! and more. You can find the complete list of auctions here....

A new study by a cloud-based PC admin software maker, Soluto, concludes that bloatware included on most Windows PC notebooks by the manufacturers is harming the Windows experience to such an extent that the best portable on which to run Windows is now Apple's MacBook Pro. In part this is because, like the other PC models judged to be the most reliable, the Mac requires a "clean" copy of Windows. The company gathered boot-up times, crash or hang incidents, background process logs and BSOD reports from 150,000 notebook PCs to come up with the rankings.... ...

Charity auction site CharityBuzz kicked off a charity auction for a cup of coffee with Tim Cook this morning and the listing, which has an estimated value of $50,000, went from $5,250 to $100,000 in a matter of hours.

Here are our best guesses of the identities of the top contenders vying to win a coffee date with Cook:

owclarry - Larry O’Connor, the founder and CEO of Other World Computing, a company that provides computer upgrade products and services for Macs. "We would love the opportunity to sit down with Tim and maybe get some insights on where the future lies in his eyes," he told MacRumors.

rory.oneill3 (now charitybidder10) -...

Fandango, the movie ticket service that is currently integrated into Siri, today announced an update to its iOS app for iPhone and iPad. On top of enhancements that lets iPad users scroll through photos & videos and view in full screen mode, the app also now features the ability for Visa Signature account holders to purchase tickets faster and receive special offers by saving their card. The feature is only available on the iPhone initially and comes alongside better Facebook sharing options by creating and signing into a Fandango account.

A full list of what’s new below:

What’s New in Version 5.6

• iPad users – now scroll through photos & videos and view in full screen
• Feeling social? Sign into your Fandango account to manage Facebook sharing
• Visa Signature account holders – save your card for faster ticket purchasing & access to special...

Tickets are on sale for this developer conference that takes place September 17-18, 2013 in Germany.

∞ Read this on The Loop

There's plenty of Apple news to talk about this week on TUAW TV Live. Yesterday's earnings report sparked some interest in the fortunes of our favorite company, as well as what Apple CEO Tim Cook referred to cryptically as "new product categories" to be announced in the fall and throughout 2014.

Shawn "Doc Rock" Boyd and I are joining up via the modern miracle of FaceTime HD to discuss this and other news, and you our invited to jump into the IRC chat room to add to the discussion.

Below, you'll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. You'll be watching the show in glorious HD!

If you're driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you're stuck in traffic, please don't -- keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by...

Apple product sales are flattening out a bit compared to last year, save for iPads.

Casey Johnston

Apple boosted its research and development spending by 33 percent in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the same period last year, according to a quarterly report filed with the Securities Exchange Commission. If the rate of spending continues, Apple could drop over $4 billion on R&D this fiscal year.

During the quarter ending March 30, 2013, Apple spent $1.119 billion on R&D, compared to $841 million from a year ago. In the first six months of its fiscal year, Apple has spent $2.129 billion total on R&D, while it spent only $1.599 billion last year.

Apple stated that the spending for the quarter was up 33 percent due to “an increase in headcount” and “expanded R&D activities.” The statement went on to say that the “focused...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Subscribe via RSS

Daily Update for April 24, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:20:00 EST. Please see our...

A new act was introduced to the House of Representatives yesterday seeks to update the "Lifeline" FCC program. The intent of the legislation is to expand the Lifeline program, and offer recipients the option of discounted telephone, mobile, and now, internet broadband access. The FCC chairman-supported bill was introduced on April 24 by representatives Doris Matsui (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and Anne Eshoo (D-CA)....  ...

It's time to save some of that hard-earned cash with our Daily Deals, featuring a handy list from Dealnews and our own hand-picked selections that include some sweet deals on iOS and OS X software (all prices are USD).

Deals from Dealnews

• Adobe: [Graphics & Publishing Software] Adobe CS2 for PC or Mac for free
• StackSocial: [Mac Software] The Name Your Own Price 10-App Mac Bundle 2.0 downloads for $9
• Other World Computing: [Computer Accessories] OWC 2012 Featured Move 'em Out: RAM, accessories, HDDs, more
• ...

Former Apple employee and JailbreakMe.com hacker Nicholas Allegra, better known as Comex, will be interning at Google, reports Forbes.

Comex, who tweeted the news on Tuesday night, was hired by Apple as an intern in 2011. News broke that he was no longer with Apple late last year, after he forgot to respond to an email that offered him continued employment at the company.

Though Comex did not mention...

Most every publication has expressed dismay over Apple's new product drought. A lack of innovation is often cited. In fact, something very big may be coming, and that takes time to prepare.  John Martellaro explains.

Conversion apps feel like a design playground, with so much potential for uniqueness and variety in their interfaces. The trend has been towards multifunction, multi-purpose Swiss-army knife apps that attempt to cover a whole range of disparate measurements. In my experience, as a result of racing to add one more ratio to their feature list, the simplicity of these apps suffer.

Currency sidesteps this battleground entirely and, as the name implies, focuses solely on converting amounts of money. The app touts support for over 160 currencies from around the world, which was more than enough to satisfy my needs. The app surfaces a handful of common currencies at first launch, each accompanied with a beautiful representation of its respective country’s flag.

//

The primary currency (which are the ‘from’ units in the conversion)...

Apple announced its 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this morning, with plans to put tickets up for sale tomorrow at 10am.

Tickets for WWDC can be hard to come by and sold out within two hours last year, but current students might be able to attend the conference through a WWDC 2013 Student Scholarship.

Apple has set aside 150 scholarships for full or part-time students aged 13 years or older. Students must be current members of the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer University Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or Mac Developer Program.

To win a scholarship, students must submit an application and create...

Your iPhone's camera is great for those wide angle or panoramic shots, but the lens just isn't that wonderful for telephoto images. Daniel Fujikake and Mac Nguyen of HI Resolution Enterprises discovered quite by accident that by holding an iPhone camera up to a pair of binoculars, they could get some amazing video and still images of surfing action.

Out of that realization came the inspiration for a universal smartphone adapter that connects to binoculars, telescopes, or spotting scopes to give your phone "bionic eyes". That potential product is now a Kickstarter called Snapzoom, just launched today and looking for your support. [The Snapzoom prototype was one of the competitors in our sister site Engadget's Insert Coin...

Last week, while in New York for our D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Walt Mossberg and I went on the “Charlie Rose” show to talk about the fast-growing mobile arena and where it is headed next.

But Rose also asked about our memorable joint interview with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs in 2007 at D5 and we told him what happened between the two icons in the greenroom before their onstage appearance. He also asked Walt and me how we met, which I did not realize was being recorded — after all, who would care but us! — although it turned out to be a pretty good story (and a great partnership, too).

Here is a link to the video on the “Charlie Rose” site and it is also embedded below:

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple's research and development related expenses have grown by 33 percent this year and are on pace to top $4 billion in fiscal 2013, as the company toils away on new "surprises" in its top-secret labs.  ...

Amazon is planning to extend its range of tablets and ebook readers by selling a set-top box, according to a report. The device, said to be coming out sometime in the fall, will provide streaming content, such as movies and TV shows to the user from the company's Instant Video catalog as well as Prime Instant Video....  ...

Good news for students interested in developing for iOS or OS X: Apple is awarding 150 scholarships to those who want to attend WWDC 2013 to benefit from the conference's many workshops. On its site, Apple states that it wants to “reward creative, talented, and outstanding student developers” by offering up these scholarships.

There is criteria for eligibility, however:

To apply, you must be a full or part-time student, 13 years of age or older, and a current member of the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer University Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or Mac Developer Program. You will need to provide proof of enrollment from your school when you submit your application.

Students must also use their existing coding skills to create an application that tells Apple something about...

Apple CEO Tim Cook is offering the chance to chat over coffee, and all it might cost is a charity donation ? to the tune of $50,000.   ...

Otterbox has added a new case to its Commuter line with its Commuter Series 3D Case ($45) for iPhone 5. The 3D case comes in three distinct raised patterns in green, teal, and pink. The cases feature an interior rubber…

via Business Insider

Unless the “April-ish” predictions come true for the iPad 5 launch event, Apple will have gone 230 days without a keynote when it holds WWDC on June 10-14th. 

To make it worse for Apple hardware-lovers, that event is billed as showing off the next version of iOS and OS X so we’re not guaranteed to see any new Apple gadgetry there. The wait is unusually long for Apple as Jay Yarrow demonstrates...

According to a Charitybuzz release today, Apple CEO Tim Cook is holding a charity auction (the listing says ‘donated by Tim Cook’) for ‘coffee’ with him at the company’s headquarters. The auction benefits the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights and just went live this morning.

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