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Yup. I’ve been down this road before. Still, I never expected I would be traveling it for an app of my own. Yet that is exactly what happened. I am the author of an ebook called Take Control of iPhone OS 3. Last year, Adam and Tonya Engst (the people behind the Take Control Books…

Apple’s business model for its new, but not yet open, iBooks Store for books and magazines follows the same model the company uses at the App Store: Publishers and app developers would receive 70% of the revenue from a book sale or a subscription, and Apple retains control over the relationship to the customer, including…

There are no categories, and they are listed in no particular order. Without further ado, below you’ll find the recipients of the The Mac Observer’s Editors’ Choice Awards for 2010. Office2 from Byte Squared – iPhone Office application. Office2 allows you to view, create and edit MSWord .doc and Excel .xls documents right on the…

The two hackers that have been blocked so far are Sherif Hashim and iH8sn0w. Hashim discovered an exploit in iPhone OS 3.1.3 that could let users owners unlock the iPhone 3G and 3GS for use on any cell network, and iH8sn0w is behind the Sn0wbreeze project that lets Windows users jailbreak iPhones updated to OS…

The book is said to be in the early planning stages by to anonymous people that are familiar with the project, and no one is officially commenting to confirm or deny the book is in the works.Despite the lack of official confirmation, reports are claiming Mr. Jobs will be giving Mr. Isaacson a tour of…

Imagine a different reality for a minute, though. Apple doesn’t attend, so exhibitors, no longer competing with the company, get more exposure than ever. Attendees, who have already seen Apple’s latest offerings, get to focus on the other companies plying their wares. They get to attend conference sessions where instructors have already seen and perhaps…

Adobe AIR has been available for Mac OS X and Windows for some time, and lets developers create small cross-platform Web-like applications that run without requiring a Web browser. The new mobile version of Adobe AIR will support gestures, multi-touch interfaces, geolocation, accelerometers, and screen orientation.Mobile device support good be big news for Google’s Android…

CarMD is a hardware and software system that can retrieve diagnostic information from any car made after 1996, as well as some vehicles made in 1994 and 1995, if they have a diagnostic connector that is OBD2 compliant. To start, you plug the CarMD device into your vehicle’s diagnostic port, and the device will retrieve…

I didn’t fair much better in junior or senior high school, either. More dates and events meant more sad grades. The stuff I wanted to know about, The Black Plague, The Crusades, Greek and Roman culture were glossed over. Even the things that were covered in some detail, like World Wars 1 and 2, were…

By-the-way, I don’t know how that man can work all day putting on something like Macworld and then spend three and half straight hours playing mean guitar as part of The Mac Observer All Star Band along with Bryan Chaffin, Dave Hamilton, Bob Levitus, Chuck La Tournous, Chris Breen, and assorted friends. The TMO party…

Of course, a lot of work in high speed networking has already been done by the U.S. Department of Energy. Its nationwide network of National Laboratories, like Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore are connected via cross country backbones made up of multiple OC-192 optic fiber lines, and scientists at those labs have been…

Microsoft’s response was the launch of the MSN Music Store the following year. It ceased operations in 2006 and was never compatible with the company’s Zune media player, which uses the Zune Marketplace for music, videos, and the few apps that run on the touch-based Zune HD.The 2003 emails are part of the thousands made…

He writes: “The prevailing assumption is that nobody really needs an iPad like they need a laptop or a phone. After all, the iPad is for entertainment purposes only, right? It’s time to correct those assumptions.”Mr. Schwarz goes on to describe the iPad as “Apple’s upgraded version of a netbook, only it’s better than any…

If you prefer iPhone games that challenge your mind rather than how fast you can shoot, I encourage you to take a look at Texas Tea. The Premise The player must match dice using typical poker hands to clear the game boards to make their way across Texas from El Paso to Austin for the…

Computing, as we know it is going to change dramatically over the next decade. A slew of new technologies, appliance computing, better security models, Android, and mobile computing will fundamentally change the nature of our computer experiences. All of this new technology is being formulated by Apple and Google, and Microsoft, with questionable leadership, is…

While the two conclusions may seem incongruous at first blush, a more in-depth look at the numbers clears up any confusion, and we’ll start with the timing of the surveys. Retrevo asked customers in the days leading up to the iPad announcement if they had heard about a new Apple tablet that might be revealed…

TrueCrypt is a cross-platform data encryption solution that is available for Mac OS X, as well as various flavors of Windows and Linux. To get started, run the TrueCrypt software and choose Create Volume. This launches the TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard. The first choice you’ll need to make is if you want to create an…

On Thursday, Bryan Chaffin posted news of an op-ed article in the New York Times, written by a former Microsoft V.P. Dick Brass. In addition to the revelations there, but I’d like to add a little background because what Mr. Brass described is not peculiar to Microsoft alone. In fact, Apple itself was troubled by…

 The Tenqa SP-109 is a Stereo Bluetooth speaker that lets you listen to audio from any device equipped with stereo Bluetooth A2DP such as most Macs, iPhones, and other mobile smartphones. Setup was simple on all of the systems I tested it with — three Macs and two iPhones. All of the devices recognized the speaker…

The news was broken by Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which reported that company president Xiaolong Wu, said: “I was very angry and flabbergasted two days ago when I saw the news of the iPad presentation. It is certainly our design. They’ve stolen [it] because we presented our P88 more than six months ago at the…

The book gives you the lowdown on some of the best apps in 16 different categories, many of are presented with full color screen shots to help explain the app. The book is presented in the easy-to-read “For Dummies” format, a format at which we think Mr. LeVitus is the master. Mr. LeVitus told us…

I’ve been using this app ever since it was released, and I love it. Not only is it well conceived and beautifully laid out, but it also displays, at least in the weather section, both English and metric values. The first thing of interest is the easiest to find, snow totals for the last 24,…

Macworld Expo runs from February 9 through February 13, 2009, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. For additional information about the Expo and events, visit the Macworld Expo Web site. iMacworld 2.0 is free and available for download at Apple’s App Store.

Doing its part to add to the iPad camera rumors, Mission:Repair, a company that specializes in repairing Apple products, claims it has iPad frames in stock, and they include a place for the same iSight camera used in Apple’s laptop computers.”Upon opening them up and getting our hands on some of these rare items, we…