Filed under: iPad

With just a few days to go before we can actually get our hands on an iPad, Newer Technology Inc., better known to us as NewerTech, has introduced quite a fancy custom handcrafted Brazilian leather protective carrying case for the iPad. It's made in the US and comes in either black or red at an introductory price of US $99.99 (down from the MSRP of $129.99), for shipment on April 5th.

It seems to be built like a battleship and is backed with a lifetime warranty. It comes with a double stitched leather handle and a shoulder strap that extends from 24" to 48". The left side, sports a 7" X 10" hard backed document sleeve and two taffeta lined pockets so you won't mar whatever you decide to put in them.

The right side features 4 elastic, non-marring leather restraining straps which give you enough room to hold an iPad that's already in a silicone case. Belt and suspenders might be overkill, but can you really be too safe? Probably not, since there's also a hard shell sewn in, surrounded by soft padding and a heavy duty nylon zipper to keep it closed.

The only online seller of the case so far seems to be our friends at Other World Computing. I can see one of these in my future.

TUAWNewerTech releases the iFolio luxury iPad case originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: MobileMe

MobileMe has some great features, but Apple needs to stay on top of it to keep it competitive with other services. It's a bit pricey and hasn't changed all that much over the last couple of years, so new features are always worthy of notice.

Fortunately, Apple made one small step for mankind by releasing an update to the MobileMe Gallery app for the iPhone and iPod touch today.

Now it is easy to add your friends' MobileMe Galleries with just a couple of clicks on your touch screen. When you select "Add a Friend," the app will search your contact list and indicate which of your friends have MobileMe Galleries. Click on add from there, and it's done. Slick.

It's not a big deal, but it's a nice touch, especially for a service on which updates are sparse. The update takes the app to version 1.1 and is as close as a tap on your iPhone's App Store icon, or you can head over to iTunes and grab it from there.

TUAWApple updates MobileMe Gallery app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: iPhone

Powerpage.org cites a Wall Street Journal article reporting that Apple has worked with AT&T to "rejigger" how the iPhone works with AT&T's towers, resulting in a reduced load for some tasks. It was not clear what changes were made, but apparently a "crash course in wireless technology" allowed them to figure out how the iPhone can get along better with AT&T.

Such news indicates the lengths that Apple is willing to go to in order to be a good partner with AT&T. While few people are singing AT&T's praises, apparently there is an effort within the company to improve the network in large cities to reduce the number of dropped calls. According to Powerpage, "A random performance test released in February found that AT&T's 3G network speeds had improved by 84%."

The problem is that AT&T's 3G speed has never been the main issue. AT&T is, and has been, very happy to compare themselves to Verizon when it comes to 3G speed. When it comes to reliability (i.e. how well you can actually use that speed) and availability, however, AT&T's 3G has consistently come up short.

Not to mention that whole tethering issue that AT&T hasn't mentioned in several months, despite having originally promised it would be available by the end of 2009.
If Apple is working on a CDMA/Verizon-compatible iPhone, AT&T's efforts are probably going to be too little, too late. After almost three years of consistently disappointing iPhone users with poor 3G availability, dropped calls, late availability of MMS, and even later availability of tethering (assuming it is ever available), iPhone owners have little reason to stay with the company.

TUAWApple tweaking iPhone to work better on AT&T's network originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: iPad

CourseNotesApp developer Jon Klein was kind enough to send over this video of his upcoming iPad app. Aimed at students, this app not only simplifies iPad note taking, but helps keep those notes organized by time and subject. I showed this video around to a student-heavy group and the video received an overwhelming thumbs up.

"I think the most exciting thing about the iPad is that it's like the iPhone but it's bring it into new areas, where the iPhone wasn't practical," Klein told me over the phone. "Education is a perfect example of that. The iPhone OS will be a great platform for taking notes but the iPhone form wasn't there." With the iPad-based CourseNotesApp, now it can be.

TUAWFirst Look: CourseNotes for iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Software

The menu bar is a quintessential piece of the Mac "experience." On the left, it shows all of the menu items for the currently active application; on the right, it shows icons from various menu bar application programs: the date/time, WiFi status, MobileMe sync status, and many, many more.

The whole idea is to make the menu items easy to find and easy to "hit" with a mouse, by being connected to the top of the screen (Fitts's law and all that). But what if you have two monitors? Suddenly the menu bar might be all the way over on the other side. Yes, I realize that complaining about using a Mac with two monitors might be the quintessential "first-world problem," but the more minor irritants you can remove from life, the better.

SecondBar is an app which will extend your menu bar to a second monitor. I've been using it for a while and it works pretty well for what the author describes as an "alpha" build.

TUAWSecondBar puts your menu bar on a second monitor originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: TUAW Business

You begged. You pleaded. You filled our in-box.

We listened. We heard. We understand.

For all of you who love the Mac and Apple news but whose interest in (and, occasionally, patience for) the iPhone and iPad have been exhausted, we have a solution. We're happy to introduce the following new URLs. Behold, iPad- and iPhone- free pages!

• http://www.tuaw.com/not/ipad [/rss.xml]
• http://www.tuaw.com/not/iphone [/rss.xml]
• http://www.tuaw.com/not/ipad,iphone [/rss.xml]

These URLs are hot off the presses, sparkling with concentrated Mac- and Apple corporate-goodness. They will give you a brighter smile, cleaner breath, and a guaranteed^[1] je ne sais quoit with that certain someone or someones. You can convert any one of them into an RSS feed by tacking "/rss.xml" onto the end of the address.

This is a tag-driven system. It relies on us remembering to properly tag iPad posts with "iPad" and iPhone posts with "iPhone". While we promise to try our very, very hardest, we remain the same old fallible, carbon-based cellular automata you've come to know and love, i.e. human beings. Remember that old saying: "To tag is human; to tag poorly is human, too."

So you will be finding occasional stray posts in your no-whatever feed. And we'll feel really, really awful about that. When that happens, we strongly encourage you to count to 10 (or at least to five) before firing off that irate email about how the new feature is horribly, horribly broken.

Keep in mind that the "broken" feature is going to be us: your shiny, happy, loving TUAW team.

We love all of our readers. And we want to make all of you happy. So put a bounce in your step and take your least favorite devices off (or at least, mostly off) your TUAW reading list! We'll be trying our hardest to tag everything properly.

Happy filtering, everyone!

^[1] Satisfaction or your money back! Please include a small processing fee when filing your reimbursement request. This guarantee is fictional.

TUAWBecause you asked: iPad-free TUAW feed originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

A quick update from the realm of private torrent trackers – and this time around we have both good news and bad news. Good news is that The DVD Club (TDC), an untouched DVD and Blu Ray torrent tracker, will be open for public signups in the next couple of days. Additionally, their ‘Sci-Fi month’ theme will kick start today with all science fiction movies indexed on the tracker set on free leech throughout the month. You can also expect a lot more movies of this genre to be uploaded, thanks to a...

Filed under: Internet Tools

TED is one of my favorite sites on the net. For those of you who don't know about it, TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an conference given in Long Beach and Oxford each year that brings some of the greatest minds on the planet together to "give the talk of their lives" in a limited time of 18 minutes. The talks are recorded and put on the TED website for all the world to see -- for free (living up to its slogan "Ideas worth spreading"). Speakers include everyone from J.J. Abrams to Al Gore. If you're ever bored and need something to watch, a TED video will be eighteen of some of your most informative, entertaining minutes ever spent.

I'm happy to report that TED, following in the footsteps of so many others, has now created a Flash-free version of its website for the iPad and iPhone. The new site automatically detects your browser and OS and shows the video in either Flash or HTML5. TED curator Chris Anderson first announced a Flash-free version of TED on his Twitter account on March 28: "Excited about this. Non-flash version of http://ted.com is now live for iPhone. Videos, comments, ratings. Hurrah!"

No Flash? That is an idea worth spreading.

[via Obama Pacman]

TUAWTED launches Flash-free site for iPad, iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Video

For any of you who were hoping to get through the rest of the day without hearing the word iPad again, it ain't gonna happen. Today's TUAW TV Live, starting in just a few minutes, is going to be all iPad, all the time.

I've got a lot of iPad videos queued up and ready to roll, so if you want to see some of what's going to be available for your newest Apple toy on Saturday morning, join us for this live event.

During the livestream, you'll have an opportunity to vote on topics of discussion using a new tool we're testing (Voices Heard) -- just log in with your Facebook account or create a Voices Heard account, and you'll be voting in seconds. I may also ask you do to a Voices Heard "thumbs-up or thumbs-down" for the iPad apps that we'll see today so I can give some of the developers feedback.

And of course, we also have the regular chat open for discussion and would love to hear from you. Click that Read More link below to get to the video, my friends.

TUAWTUAW TV Live, the pre-iPad edition: live at 5pm ET originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Apple

On Saturday, when you plug in your shiny new iPad and peruse the App Store for apps, you'll see 'HD' or 'XL' designations for iPad-specific apps. You may wonder what that's all about.

It's about a lack of solid information, driven by a top-down policy of secrecy. When a company like Apple fosters a culture of anxiety amongst third-party associates and low-level employees, you're going to wind up with some bad decisions being made in the absence of clear policies.

True, the iPad offers more pixels than the iPhone, but it is hardly "HD" (whatever that means to begin with). Clearly, these suffixes are designed to let you know that they are "jumbo" versions of apps with more features than their iPhone companions, right? That may not be the case. While they might be bigger, they may not be badder. In fact, they may be more stripped down than their developers intended.

Why would these apps be less feature-filled than devs would want? It comes down to this: Apple's rush to innovation has caused a vacuum of information for developers. Around this vacuum lies fear. It is a fear generated by Apple as a byproduct of the company's own paranoia, favoritism, and lack of empowerment for middle managers unable to "think different" and use common sense. Apple is a powerhouse of innovation because it can control things completely, but the other edge on that sword is its own fear of losing control. The machine lurches forward, but is it sustainable?

TUAWApple's growing pains, culture of secrecy and the iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments