News

On February 11th, I wrote an editorial, “What Should Apple Do About Adobe?” Part of the discussion related to Adobe’s Flash Player on the Mac, updates and security. Inevitably, the comments escalated to a discussion of Steve Job’s distaste for and blocking of Flash on the iPhone and iPad. The question is: is Apple’s stance…

Each of those characters feature powers that help players solve puzzles, such as the White Rabbit’s ability to stop time and the Cheshire Cat’s knack for making things appear and disappear. Players can also use their iPhone’s GPS, camera, and photo library unlock hidden objects, which are also unlockable by playing the game, for those…

One new product that garnered a lot of attention at Macworld Expo 2010 is YAPPER from SachManya. The application, which won a DEMO: Best of Show award during the convention, is new on the market. Using a WYSIWYG style editor, it creates apps for iPhone and iPad and processes them through the Apple acceptance process,…

As is typical for this sort of hot-button issue, reactions to Apple’s move have been sharply divided. Some applaud Apple’s decision; others view it as an unwanted and unnecessary intrusion. However, for this article, I want to step back from the smaller controversy surrounding “sexy apps.” Instead, I want to focus on what I believe…

DJAY from Algoriddim is an all-in-one DJ application for Mac OS X with features for new and experienced DJs. Watch David Gallant’s video review to see if DJAY is ready for your next party. DJAY lets users beatmatch music, organize playlists, use transition effects, and organize party tunes in a simple Mac OS X interface.…

Apple has so far been mum on what it intends to do with the facility, which first came to light in 2009, and was officially confirmed by local North Carolina sources in July of 2009. It is largely assumed that the company will begin expanding its cloud computing services, and that the facility will be…

Also note that when I refer to the iPhone in this article I also mean the iPod touch as well. Someone famous once said that there is nothing certain in life but death and taxes. I believe it. In fact, of the two, taxes is worse. You can only die once. It seems that every…

There are applications on the market that can be designed to help monitor financial records. Quicken and Excel come to mind, but both are expensive and neither will actually remind you to pay your bills on time. Chronicle, by LittleFin Software is designed to do just that. The recently introduced Chronicle 3, allows you to…

Mr. Jobs met with The Journal’s editorial staff to pitch them on launching the paper on the iPad, part of which included a salespitch to dump Flash for video and slideshows for presentation on the iPad. In the process, he called Flash a “CPU hog,” and said it was filled with security holes, and even…

Launched in 2006, the two STEREO satellites are actually in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, one ahead of the Earth and one trailing behind the Earth. The goal is to monitor the Sun, with stereo capability, and reveal eruptions and events that could affect power grids and near Earth orbit satellites.View of Sun (171…

“Steve Wozniak is a renowned technology leader and innovator, and we are pleased he will kickoff MILCOM 2010,” Joanne Maguire, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space Systems and co-general chair of the conference, said in a statement. “For industry, government and other stakeholders involved in communications technologies, MILCOM 2010 is the single must-attend event where…

There are many solutions for sharing files with others on the Internet. Some have some risks, and some are rather technical and not appropriate for non-technical associates. Pogoplug is a device that serves files, isolated from your own LAN, to others on the Internet in an easy, secure fashion. Think of it as your personal…

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…