Filed under: Retail, Odds and ends, Apple

While this may sound like an odd pastime, for some Olympic fans pin collecting is a huge deal. The official Vancouver 2010 website store lists 459 different pins for collecting and trading with others, but those aren't all of the pins that fans will find. Often, local businesses or organizations will make their own pins to give away or sell, and at these Winter Games, Apple joined in on the fun.

TUAW reader Alan Waite was in Vancouver earlier in the week to attend the Games and visited the Apple Store at Pacific Centre. Much to his surprise, Apple was giving away a limited edition set of pins (see photo above) to store visitors to commemorate the event. Very classy, Apple! Waite noted that the Apple Store at Oakridge Centre had a special red iPod nano pin with the Canadian maple leaf on the screen.

Custom pins like these aren't as common as the mass-market versions sold by the official Olympics website, so Alan not only has cool memorabilia from the 2010 Winter Games, but a relatively rare piece of swag as well.

TUAWApple gives Vancouver Olympic visitors a rare treasure originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Humor, Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Apple

Happy weekend! Google may have won some hearts with its Super Bowl ad a little while back, but we all know that Apple is the king of advertising when it comes to technology, so YouTuber allenmonroeiii decided to make a little parody of the Google ad and promote the Mac instead.

Strangely, it actually works -- while the audio is straight from the Google ad (which tells the story of a guy who finds love in Paris by searching on Google), the music serves just as well to tell the story of someone frustrated by a Windows PC purchase. No, this probably won't sell any computers (it's for us Mac heads to laugh at, considering that it was made in about an hour), but go ahead and enjoy it for what it is, and enjoy your weekend.

TUAWFound Footage: Google's ad, Mac style originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nowadays convergence is a new trend with more and more technologies being integrated into mobile phones. And among those, wireless technology is one of the most common one to sustain network communication for seamless connectivity. Instead of relying on multiple discrete components to fulfill such requirements, TI (Texas Instrument) has recently unveiled a new [...]

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There are lots and lots of Direct Download Link (DLL) forums around but there aren’t many that index retro or classic movies. ShareBus is one of those rare sites that index both new movies as well as rare gems from a bygone era. It indexes a huge collection of both English and non English flicks ranging from the latest blockbuster hits in U.S to rarely heard of movies released in far eastern countries (in addition to movies, TV series are also available). Indexed movies come in a wide variety...

Windows 7 does offer a lot of interesting and more user-friendly features for users. However, the removal of some features could create some inconvenience to users. For instance, Windows 7 has removed the option “Remember each folder’s view settings” from the folder option in Windows Explorer; this can affect some users especially those who need [...]

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There’s no need to reiterate the fact that Battlefield : Bad Company 2 is one of the most anticipated games of the year. Thanks to the success of previous installments, the series now seem to have millions of fans across the globe. BF : Bad Company 2 is scheduled to be released on the 2nd of March in North America, 3rd March in Russia and 5th March in Europe. However, like all PC and console games these days, the title has leaked online several days beforehand. RELOADED, a veteran group from...

Filed under: OS, iPhone, iPad

One of the big topics of discussion yesterday in our TUAW back channel was this post from the New York Times Bits blog. In "Why can't PCs work more like iPhones," Bilton pointed out that the iPhone has given Apple a chance to build a new OS from the ground up.

This is a familiar viewpoint to us here on TUAW. Last year, I asked whether the future of the Mac OS would turn out to be the iPhone. In my write-up, I pointed out that the iPhone OS was built from scratch to work with Objective C 2.0 with its properties and other modern language features. Its API, far from being cobbled together, showed ever increasing design maturity without the weight of heavy backwards compatibility concerns. I concluded that Apple might take a lesson from the iPhone OS and consider offering a ground up redesign for Mac OS X, at least in terms of core OS principles.

In his post, Bilton considers how Mac OS X might integrate iPhone OS features into its user experience, suggesting a possible Front Row-like overlay layer, running an iPhone OS interface. The goal would be to craft iPhone-style GUI simplicity onto the desktop experience, so that users could move seamlessly between their mobile and desktop worlds.

But as much as we believe that Apple is heading cautiously in the direction that Bilton suggests, the TUAW consensus is that a desktop OS needs far more structure and, at the same time, flexibility than what the iPhone OS offers.

Our own Brett Terpstra points out that the current interface standards of the iPhone won't translate easily to desktop use. Apple's accommodations for the needs and limitations of mobile users with limited time and physical device space drive a design standard that doesn't hold up for day to day work at the desktop, where the focus is on precision and efficiency over any portability concerns.

Apple's "one app" model is a big part of the mobile user experience that would have to be quickly jettisoned. While Apple's iWork integration, announced at January's special event, points at greater desktop/iPhone OS file system integration, the iPhone OS's one app at a time paradigm simply doesn't work for a multi-purpose, multi-tasking flexible desktop environment. And that's not the only big change that would need to be made. Consider the whole question of each mobile application's GUI needing to fit the device. Desktop users are more comfortable with flexible view sizes in a multi-windowed environment. Terpstra says, "It would take too many concessions to translate the current interface standards of the iPhone OS to desktop use."

That doesn't mean that the two platforms can't share libraries. Already, OS frameworks -- the precompiled libraries of routines that OS X developers on both platforms link to to gain access to Apple-supplied functionality -- are growing closer. Under the hood, iPhone OS and Mac OS are essentially running the same OS, although the specific implementation details differ by platform. But Terpstra maintains that there are intrinsic limitations in that arena as well. He writes, " I don't see the iPhone, Apple TV and OS X ever all sharing a full code base. It would overpower mobile devices and underpower desktops. No one would be happy." That's the consensus here at TUAW as well.

TUAWTUAW redux: The future of iPhone OS and Mac OS originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals, MacBook, iPad

Apple sure likes that word 'magic' lately. We already have the Magic Mouse, and soon we may have a 'Magic Trackpad'. That's the word from the Patently Apple website that keeps an eye on these sometimes mysterious Apple filings. Apple wants to have the rights to 'Magic Trackpad', and wants to make sure no one else can can get their sweaty little hands on it.

No one knows exactly what this thing is for, or where it might be used. It could be for the new iPad, or something for the upcoming laptop refresh. It could well be an extension of the work Apple has done on multitouch, or something completely different. Apple has filed under International Classification 009 which includes touchscreen and trackpad tech, so it's possible that they're just covering their bases on their current products, and nailing down a marketing name in advance.

Frankly, we're not quite sure what else Apple's trackpads can do to be any more magic -- you've already got the gestures, the multitouch, and vast application support. What's next -- a genie that appears when you swipe it just right?

TUAWApple files for 'Magic Trackpad' trademark originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, Multimedia, Software, Apple, Developer

We met them while they were shooting on the Apple Campus, and now the creators of the Dutch site onemorething.nl have posted their interview with Apple sound designer Jim Reekes (who also appears in Welcome To Macintosh). They met up with Reekes while at Macworld in San Francisco a little while back -- he's the guy that programmed most of the sound in the early days, including the famous Mac startup chime and the legendary "sosumi" chime. What's most interesting to me is all of the math behind it -- while making music is traditionally seen as an art, there's a lot of technical know how and information that actually went into the sound's creation. Essentially, you're creating a beep that has to represent a brand, and that mix of technical data with artistic representation is fascinating.

Plus, Reekes definitely seems like a guy who's been around both the technical and musical blocks a few times before, and it's cool to hear him pontificate on all of the hard work he did back in the day. It's also interesting to see someone who has such a personal tie to a sound that is so ubiquitous and means so much to so many people -- an "ear-con," he calls it. Very nice interview.

TUAWInterview with the creator of the Apple startup sound originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPad

Business Insider's The Wire is reporting, rather humorously, that AP sources have the scoop that the Associated Press is working on its own iPad app. It will reportedly be a paid subscription news app that generates content from the AP and more than 1,000 member newspapers and broadcasters.

The AP follows the New York Times and other news sources that are developing applications for the iPad. While the AP doesn't say if the app would be available for the iPad launch late next month, the hope is that its eventual release will generate sales from the three million people who have downloaded their free iPhone app and would be willing to pay for the apps features on a larger-screen device. To get users interested in the app, it may be free upon initial launch.

From the official press release:

The group already has drawn up plans to charge for an application designed for the iPad, a 1.5-pound tablet computer that Apple Inc. is scheduled to release at the end of March. The price of the application has yet to be determined, although it might start free, according to Jane Seagrave, a senior vice president who becomes the AP's chief revenue officer Monday.

Much like the AP Mobile news product, the iPad app will show custom packages of headlines, stories, photos and video from the AP and from newspapers and broadcasters that choose to contribute their content and share the revenue. AP members also could use the same system to offer their own iPad apps that show their own content.

The AP iPad app is just the first product from the AP's new business unit known as "AP Gateway" that will focus on mobile platforms. The AP is among the legion of print-centric news organizations that have seen revenue hit hard by free papers and the internet. A week ago, a Dutch paper made the case that devices like the iPad are the newspaper industry's only hope for paid distribution. While many still debate whether the iPad is the savior the publishing industry needs, it's clear that the major publishers are gearing up for an iPad world.

TUAWAssociated Press sources report Associated Press working on iPad app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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