TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Most of the people savvy enough to be reading an Apple tech blog are probably the ones who get asked a lot of computer-related questions by family and friends. Perhaps you provided tech support over the holidays. But what happens when you have a question? Who can you ask for help? My favorite spot for Apple Q&A is Ask Different,...

T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm talked to Ina Fried of AllThingsD at CES this week about a variety of topics, including the iPhone. Humm confirmed what we all assumed -- T-Mobile didn't get the iPhone because of its unique 3G technology. "The key reason we didn't have the iPhone in the past is we are on different band than globally the...

Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling spoke to Bloomberg's Business Week and confirmed the company purchased Anobit, an Israeli-based flash memory firm. Israeli newspaper Cacalist broke the story in December, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu corroborated the news when he tweeted a welcoming message to Apple. Apple's...

There's a number of live TV-streaming apps out there for cable subscribers, and Comcast has added its AnyPlay service to the mix. Part of the Xfinity TV iPad app, AnyPlay allows subscribers with Xfinity HD Triple Play to access live cable programming at home via the iPad. Those who are traveling can't access their cable but can...

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of Paramount Pictures, the company that brought you The Ten Commandments, Saturday Night Fever, the new Mission Impossible movie and hundreds of other cinematic treats. In recognition of this milestone, Paramount100 has arrived on the App Store. P100 is a free, rather massive (376 MB) app with info...

I have kids, and I live over three hours away from our nearest family. I know how difficult it is to entertain a car full of kids while driving, which is why the Ubergizmo post about the Philips In-Car screen kit caught my eye. It's simply a pair of LCDs that strap to the back of a car seat and connect to your iPad, iPhone or iPod...

You may remember the good old days when you could use Amazon's Kindle e-reader app for iOS to pop right into the online Kindle store to purchase ebooks. That feature went away in July of 2011 in order to comply with Apple's policies. Amazon today launched an iPad-optimized Kindle Store website that, while still separate from the...

Do you use the video hangout feature of Google+ on a regular basis? If so, you might be happy to hear that you can now use your iPhone to join those video hangouts from the Google Messenger IM app. There's an update now available for the Google+ app that will give you the video love you crave. I was interested in the hangout...

There's been much debate over the idea of a 7-inch iPad from Apple. Today, our pals at MacObserver jumped into the mix with their take on things. The Kindle Fire, Ted Landau points out, offers "an e-reader with added iPad-like features for half the price of an iPad." Speaking as a happy Kindle Fire owner, I rather like the medium...

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below....

It wasn't too long ago that I was faced with the task of redesigning a website -- replacing all the images, re-doing an image map and implementing a layout with multiple columns. This task required lots of on-screen measurements, and my method of taking screenshots and measuring them in Photoshop just didn't work. After some...

Market research group NPD is reporting some good news for Apple ahead of the January 24 earnings call. The three models of the iPhone that are currently for sale -- the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS -- accounted for 43 percent of US smartphone sales in October and November. Android phones saw a significant drop of 13 percent...

One of the features that graces the screens of many Android 4.0 phones is FaceUnlock, which uses facial recognition technology to unlock a phone rather than a simple swipe or swiping and entering a passcode. Now some devs have ported that capability to iOS and are promising that the capability will be available soon in the form of...

HipGeo is a free app that can create a sort of travel blog on the fly with as much or as little user input as you like. It tracks your location, allows you to add comments and photos, and can even playback an animated map of your travels. You can keep your travel info to yourself as sort of a diary, or share your adventures via...

Last month, TUAW reported on GPS navigation vendor TeleNav's plans to launch an HTML5-based free navigation system that would work on any browser. Yesterday, TeleNav introduced Scout, which is another free personal navigation product. The new service comes with a Scout by TeleNav iPhone app (free) and a companion website (scout.me),...

The iPhone 4S launched several months ago, and demand remains strong says a new survey from ChangeWave. The December 2011 survey asked customers if they were buying a new smartphone in the next 90 days and which handset they would choose. Similar to previous surveys, the iPhone was the top choice, chosen by a majority (54%) of the...

It wasn't too long ago that I was faced with the task of redesigning a website -- replacing all the images, re-doing an image map and implementing a layout with multiple columns. This task required lots of on-screen measurements, and my method of taking screenshots and measuring them in Photoshop just didn't work. After some...

As Richard said sharply a few weeks ago, there really hasn't been a rush to plenty when it comes to Thunderbolt storage options from third-party vendors. That's apparently about to change for the better, as a slew of top-tier manufacturers are announcing products at this week's CES extravaganza. The fine folks at LaCie (makers of...

Griffin has announced an accessory called Twenty, a small audio amplifier that will accept audio from an AirPort Express to drive unpowered speakers. The Twenty includes a TOSLINK cable to deliver pure digital audio from the AirPort Express to the unit, and additional connectors in the back allow you to plug speakers right in. As...

Belkin has announced its Thunderbolt Express Dock, a small unit that will allow owners of Thunderbolt-capable Macs to plug multiple peripherals into their Macs via a single cable. As reported by AppleInsider, Belkin's Thunderbolt Express Dock includes the following built-in ports: Gigabit Ethernet 3 USB 2.0 ports 1...

Lately I've become a big fan of making photo collages. They can be a bit complicated to create in Photoshop or Elements, so we're beginning to see simpler targeted apps appear for both iOS and Mac OSX. We've reviewed one nice app for iOS called Diptic and now I want to turn your attention to TurboCollage for the Mac, now available in...

Howdy kids! It's been a couple of weeks since we all got together on a Sunday evening what with all the holiday hullabaloo, so now that we're all nice and settled in to the new year, let's hang out and catch up, shall we? We have all the gifts to talk about, the trials and tribulations of heading home and ending up as tech support,...

It's January 6th, 2012, and today marks the end of the TUAW Best of 2011 awards. This was a massive undertaking, with 25 separate categories all requiring their own nominations and voting from our readers. We've learned some lessons for next year's event -- start earlier, watch for astroturfing in the nominations, drop some unpopular...

Fluid lets you create an "app" out of a website. If you use one specific website all the time, this alone is very handy. For example, if you wanted a browser specifically for Gmail, you could make one using Fluid and set its own icon, download directory, and other settings. Or maybe you heard about Facebook tracking users even when...

Target is one of those stores that quietly carries a variety of Apple products. In between speakers and keyboards, you can find iPads, iPods and iTunes gift cards. Soon, you may find an Airport Extreme and maybe even a MacBook Air. This prediction is based on a report from AppleInsider, which suggests Apple may be opening mini-stores...

Apple's MagSafe power cables are great. They quick release from their port and protect your notebook from clumsy adults and over-zealous children who get tangled in your power cord. The first generation of these cords, however, had a defect that caused the wires to fray; that posed a potential fire hazard to customers. The problem...

In its ongoing suit against unauthorized Mac clone maker Psystar, Apple has been denied in its bid to keep certain information about OS X sealed from public view. According to Bloomberg, Judge William Alsup noted that information Apple claims are "trade secrets" are already publicly available on the internet from a variety of...

Just ahead of the first days of CES 2012, Hitachi has introduced a line of new hard drive solutions for the Mac. The drives range in capacity from 750 GB up to a whopping 8 TB, and cover the gamut from internal drives to desktop and mobile solutions. The internal drives that Hitachi is bringing to the table include the 2.5-inch...

For many people, it's kind of pointless to go searching for a Dock replacement. The Dock itself is one of the most attractive features of OS X and is actually one of the things that lured me into adopting Macs at home seven years ago. But when you have a smaller screen to work with, especially on a MacBook Air, space is a premium....

Apple Stores continue to be a target for theft around the United States, apparently -- this time a robbery went down in Scottsdale, Arizona, where a trio of young thieves busted in the glass doors on an Apple Store, and tried to get away with $75,000 worth of Apple devices. The group robbed the store at around 2 AM on the second day...

Star Wars: The Old Republic is the new hotness in massively multiplayer games, and I'm really enjoying playing a smuggler on my PC. But unlike Blizzard, which makes World of Warcraft and has had a long policy of releasing both PC and Mac versions on the same disc, BioWare (who makes SW:TOR, as the kids call it) hasn't released a Mac...

As many TUAW readers know, I have a serious love affair with my 11" MacBook Air. If there's one issue that I have with it, it's that sometimes that screen seems just a little too small. Now AOC has released the e1649Fwu 16" Portable USB Monitor ($139.99) that is perfect for those situations where you want a second monitor for your...