First Look: Freeform vector drawing app for iPad
Filed under: iPad The interesting part of being a software reviewer in the early days of the iPad platform is that sometimes you test applications that show a lot of promise and are among the first of their genre in the App Store. Freeform (US$4.99), a vector drawing app for the iPad platform from Stunt Software , falls into this class of app. It’s probably the best app of its type right now, and the developer is working on making changes to the app to make it even more useful to iPad users. For those of you who aren’t familiar with vector drawing applications, they are used to place and color shapes on a background, and usually provide a way to add text labels. In other words, for creating a diagram of some sort, they work well — but they aren’t the type of app that you’d want to use for freehand sketching.
Driving around with Navigon Panorama View 3D for iPhone
Filed under: iPhone It’s been a month now since Navigon offered what they call Panorama View 3D for MobileNavigator for the iPhone. Essentially, Navigon has taken NASA terrain and elevation data and added it to the map display. If you are driving in the mountains, you see the mountains on screen. How does it work? Quite well actually. Here in Southern Arizona there is a lot of eye candy to see as we are surrounded by mountain ranges
iPad Apps? Devs Race to Be First
When you first get your hands on an iPad April 3, there will probably be about 200 apps for sale for the touchscreen device. The San Jose Mercury news reports that a frantic “land grab” is taking place as software developers race to be among the first apps available. These early settlers may make the most
Macworld 2010: iFixit.com
Filed under: Macworld , Hardware , Interviews One website that must reside in nearly every Machead’s bookmarks collection is iFixit . They provide detailed, step-by-step repair guides (and parts) for nearly every Mac , iPod or iPhone fix you can think of. Their instructions are always clear and thorough enough to make even the most daunting repair possible. If you lack those special tools , they’ve got those, too. They’re also known for being among the first to take apart brand new Apple hardware . When I sat down with Kyle Weins from iFixit during Macworld Expo , he revealed that who gets the privilege of the first teardown is determined by the flip of a coin. He also talked about the site’s history, current offerings and of course the iPad .
OnLive demos Crysis on iPhone, expects to go to iPad
Filed under: Gaming , Software , iPhone , iPad OnLive was at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas last week, where they showed their game streaming software running on the iPhone again. This time they had Crysis going, and apparently the demo ran “fast and smooth.” The way they do it is to run the game and render it all on a fast computer somewhere, and then stream video to the iPhone while streaming controls back to the game itself. Of course a demo is just a demo, and actually running a game like that out in the real world is much tougher. But OnLive is convinced they can do it. And that’s not all — they also made mention of running their app on “tablets,” which is a roundabout way of hinting that they’d like to do the same for the iPad . Now that is an intriguing opposition — you wouldn’t even need processing power for games on the iPad if you can run the software
Macworld 2010: Twicular’s Grocery Pal
Filed under: Software , iPhone , iPad When I was young, my mother spent Sunday mornings with grocery store flyers, a pen, and a pad of paper. Once she had identified the best weekly deals, she’d send my dad to buy some items from Grocery Store A, some from Store B and so on. Barclay Jiang has devised a convenient, contemporary solution to the same problem. His free app for the iPhone and iPod touch, Grocery Pal , uses GPS (or Wi-Fi location) to find all of the grocery stores in your area (you can adjust the range of search) and downloads the current sales. From there, you can generate a shopping list, sort the results by store and hit the road. It saves a lot of time and is quite convenient
Apple maintains "Think Different" trademark
Filed under: Apple Corporate , Steve Jobs , Apple History When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, the public’s perception of the company was grim. To make a long story short, Steve’s plans for resurrection included changing that, and the “Think Different” campaign was among the first steps. There were television ads , print ads and slogans printed on Apple packaging. The phrase was replaced with the ” Switch ” and ” Get A Mac ” campaigns, but didn’t disappear for good. A portion of the poem from the TV ad can be found on the high-res version of the TextEdit icon in Leopard and Snow Leopard. Earlier this year, “Think Different” began appearing on 21.5″ and 27″ iMac boxes. This week, Patently Apple reports that the US Patent & Trademark Office has published Apple’s new trademark application for Think Different (it’s application 77882684 if you were wondering)
Four free Christmas screen savers to get your Mac in the holiday spirit
Filed under: Software , Freeware , Holidays I love this time of year. I love the lights and the snow and the holiday cookies. I also love getting my Mac in the festive spirit. From widgets to desktop pictures to icons , there are countless ways to dress your Mac for Christmas. Here are four festive screen savers. Best of all, they’re free. Jubilee by Idle Time Software displays Christmas lights how you’d see them if you were rocketing through your neighborhood in a Ferrari
Marvel At The Huge Crowds Lining Up For Windows 7
A cheap shot, I know, but this is a real picture of the crowd that turned up last night at Fry’s in Renton, Washington, to be among the first to buy Microsoft’s new operating system. Renton is a town just outside Seattle, where Microsoft is headquartered. Photo by the AP. For comparison, hit the jump for
