&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/"&gt;Macworld Expo&lt;/a&gt; 2010 kicks off tomorrow in San Francisco. Is it going to fly without Apple? I don&amp;#8217;t know. I don&amp;#8217;t think anyone does yet. Apple&amp;#8217;s traditional presence at Macworld was so large, both figuratively (with the attention paid to their keynote address) and literally (with their massive booth on the show floor), that their absence has effectively rendered Macworld a new event. I think it&amp;#8217;s smart that IDG moved the date back a month; anything they could do to emphasize that it&amp;#8217;s going to be new and different this year can only help. (I have no idea if it was feasible, but if it had been, I&amp;#8217;d have advised moving the show across the street to Moscone West, just to make it &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; different, too.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple&amp;#8217;s absence will be felt in two ways. First, the lack of an Apple keynote address has significantly diminished the amount of media attention. That was inevitable. But it wasn&amp;#8217;t really Macworld Expo, the trade show and conference, that was garnering that attention. It was Apple itself. Apple&amp;#8217;s keynotes really didn&amp;#8217;t have much at all to do with the exhibit floor or conference sessions. I suppose there were some number of attendees who considered attending the keynote as a major reason to buy a conference pass, but percentage-wise only a small number of attendees could ever see the keynotes in person. It&amp;#8217;s not like Apple hasn&amp;#8217;t given us much to talk about recently &amp;#8212; hello, iPad &amp;#8212; it just wasn&amp;#8217;t announced at Macworld itself.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The more worrisome factor for me is Apple&amp;#8217;s absence from the show floor. They had a huge booth in a prominent spot and they drew people in. The role they played on the show floor is very much analogous, I think, to the role played by a big department store like Macy&amp;#8217;s or Nordstrom at a shopping mall.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;To me, though, the reason to walk the show floor has always been about the small companies &amp;#8212; often the &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; small ones. The ones where the employees manning the booth are the engineers and designers who made the product they&amp;#8217;re promoting. I&amp;#8217;ve been to a bunch of Macworld Expos and I never once failed to discover at least one fascinating product by walking the show floor. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In terms of what&amp;#8217;s going on other than the trade show, I&amp;#8217;ve long thought that the inordinate amount of front-loaded attention paid to Apple&amp;#8217;s keynote address drew attention away from the fact that Macworld has turned into a large and successful conference, with tracks spanning everything from programming to graphic design.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Nothing could replace a Steve Jobs keynote address, so, wisely, they&amp;#8217;re not trying. Instead, Macworld has scheduled a &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/fp"&gt;bunch of featured speakers&lt;/a&gt; throughout the week, including David Pogue, Kevin Smith (yes, &lt;a href="http://www.viewaskew.com/"&gt;that Kevin Smith&lt;/a&gt;), Leo Laporte, and, yours truly. &lt;a href="http://macworldexpo.com/sessions?s=QSHOWA0005AZ"&gt;I&amp;#8217;ll be speaking Friday at 4:30pm&lt;/a&gt;, where I&amp;#8217;ll share the secret recipes for my award-winning cupcakes and melt-in-your-mouth croissants.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;(DF readers: you can register for the show using the discount code &amp;#8220;GRUBER&amp;#8221; to get a &lt;em&gt;free&lt;/em&gt; expo pass that will get you into my talk (and the show floor, and the other feature presentations). That code is also good for a 20 percent discount on any of the conferences. Just keep in mind that with that code, it&amp;#8217;s &lt;em&gt;totally free&lt;/em&gt; to come see my talk and the other feature presentations.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The bottom line for me is that the potential is there for Macworld to remain a great show. Imagine if there&amp;#8217;d never been a Macworld Expo before, and that this was the first year. It wouldn&amp;#8217;t be surprising that Apple declined to participate. But is there demand for a days-long nerdfest for Mac and iPhone professionals and aficionados? I say yes.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Some good questions &lt;a href="http://www.scripting.com/stories/2010/01/31/whatIfFlashWereAnOpenStand.html"&gt;from Dave Winer regarding Apple, Adobe, and Flash&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;What if Apple were trying to erase something that&amp;#8217;s not company-owned? Either a formal or de facto standard? Further, what if their alternative were something that was locked-down and owned by a company? Further, what if the company was Apple?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I&amp;#8217;d say that&amp;#8217;d be a different ball of wax entirely. It would depend, for one thing, on the specific open / de facto standard technology.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But as for open &lt;em&gt;web&lt;/em&gt; standards, the evidence &amp;#8212; actions and shipping code, not just words &amp;#8212; strongly indicate that Apple is a major proponent of them. Apple didn&amp;#8217;t have to release WebKit as an open source project &amp;#8212; they could have kept their extensions atop the LGPL-licensed WebCore private.&lt;sup id="fnr1-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn1-2010-02-01"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; They&amp;#8217;ve re-written WebKit&amp;#8217;s JavaScript engine from scratch at least twice, and released it all as open source. (Apple has also been aggressive about releasing its advanced non-web developer technology, &lt;a href="http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/DOCUMENTATION/Cocoa/Conceptual/Blocks/Articles/00_Introduction.html"&gt;like blocks and LLVM&lt;/a&gt;, as liberally-licensed open source.) All of Apple&amp;#8217;s top competitors in the mobile space have either already adopted WebKit or soon will: Android, WebOS, even BlackBerry. Members of Apple&amp;#8217;s WebKit team have been helping drive HTML5 since its inception. In short, I&amp;#8217;d say Apple likes its technology open and its products closed.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;E.g., it makes all the difference in the world that Apple is pushing H.264 rather than, say, QuickTime as the way forward for embedded web video.&lt;sup id="fnr2-2010-02-01"&gt;&lt;a href="#fn2-2010-02-01"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I do understand &lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/31/ipad-review-comments-naughton"&gt;the fear&lt;/a&gt;. It&amp;#8217;s indisputable that Apple seeks large amounts of control over its products. So it&amp;#8217;s a reasonable question to ask whether Apple sees the web itself, which they have no control over, as a problem. I don&amp;#8217;t think that&amp;#8217;s the case at all, though. The web, as a whole, is arguably the single most entrenched computer technology ever created. So where Apple seeks control with regard to the web is in the technology to render it &amp;#8212; HTML, CSS, JavaScript. No one can tell them what to do with WebKit; they wait for no one to shape and bend WebKit to suit their needs.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;My feeling is not that Apple seeks total control over all content and software in iPhone OS. I&amp;#8217;d say it&amp;#8217;s more like they&amp;#8217;re providing two well-defined, nice, neat, easily-understood extremes: the totally controlled native Cocoa Touch, and the totally open web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Winer ends with a suggestion for Adobe:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe might want to consider, right now, very quickly, giving Flash to the public domain. Disclaim all patents, open source all code, etc etc. That would throw the ball squarely back into Apple&amp;#8217;s court and would frame the question right now in its most stark terms.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;d be an interesting move, and it would certainly shake things up. But what if the source code to Flash Player is &amp;#8212; as many would wager &amp;#8212; a huge steaming pile of convoluted C++ horseshit? It&amp;#8217;s sort of like what if Microsoft open-sourced the Internet Explorer rendering engine. It&amp;#8217;s not like anyone who is now using WebKit or Gecko would switch to that just because it was opened &amp;#8212; or that WebKit, Mozilla, and Opera would suddenly be obligated to or even interested in adopting IE-specific web features.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The problem for Flash is just like the problem for IE &amp;#8212; the web has already moved on.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div class="footnotes"&gt; &lt;hr /&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li id="fn1-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;An earlier version of this article stated that the entirety of WebKit is BSD-licensed. That&amp;#8217;s wrong; the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML"&gt;KHTML library&lt;/a&gt; that Apple started with is LGPL-licensed, and so therefore is the WebCore component in WebKit. We regret the error.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr1-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;li id="fn2-2010-02-01"&gt; &lt;p&gt;H.264 is an open standard, but admittedly and unfortunately &lt;a href="http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codecs/"&gt;not a free standard&lt;/a&gt;, hence Mozilla&amp;#8217;s opposition to it. My point here is simply that H.264 is not owned by Apple or any other single company.&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href="#fnr2-2010-02-01" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text."&gt;&amp;#8617;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Robert Scoble &lt;a href="http://scobleizer.com/2010/01/30/can-flash-be-saved/"&gt;has a good analogy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like &lt;a href="http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/apples_ipad_--_a_broken_link.html"&gt;Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail&lt;/a&gt; because of its own set of broken links.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Regarding those blue boxes that indicate embedded Flash content in MobileSafari, think of it this way: Who can make them go away?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adobe can&amp;#8217;t. They can&amp;#8217;t put Flash Player on iPhone OS on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Apple could, &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash"&gt;but they won&amp;#8217;t&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Users could make Apple change its mind by refusing to buy iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads because they don&amp;#8217;t support Flash. That does not seem to be happening. In fact, iPhone sales are accelerating.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Web site producers could do it, by replacing or providing an alternative to the Flash content on their sites.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ol&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe&amp;#8217;s &lt;a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/01/29/porno-flash"&gt;initial reaction to the iPad&lt;/a&gt; seems to be geared toward #3 &amp;#8212; emphasizing publicly that iPhone OS devices are not capable of rendering the (admittedly, substantial amounts of) Flash content on the web today. Good luck with that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Adobe&amp;#8217;s fear, of course, is that #4 is what will happen. And with good reason, since I think it&amp;#8217;s fair to say that we&amp;#8217;re seeing this happen already. Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow &lt;a href="http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703"&gt;made his little poster&lt;/a&gt; showing what a bunch of Flash-using web sites look like without Flash without actually looking to see how they render on MobileSafari. Ends up a bunch of them, including the porno site, already have iPhone-optimized versions with no blue boxes, and video that plays just fine as straight-up H.264. iPhone visitors to these sites have no idea they&amp;#8217;re missing anything because, well, they&amp;#8217;re not missing anything. For a few other of the sites Brimelow cited, like Disney and Spongebob Squarepants, there are dedicated native iPhone apps.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kigiphoto/4314276957/"&gt;Kendall Helmstetter Gelner put together this version&lt;/a&gt; of Brimelow&amp;#8217;s chart using actual screenshots from MobileSafari, the App Store, and native iPhone apps. The only two blue boxes left: FarmVille and Hulu.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The explanation is simple. Web site producers tend to be practical. Those that use Flash do so not because they&amp;#8217;re Flash proponents, but because Flash is easy and ubiquitous. Few technologies get to 100 percent market penetration; Flash came remarkably close. A few years ago you could say that, effectively, Flash was everywhere. It made total sense for sites like YouTube and Hulu to go with Flash.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There&amp;#8217;s a big difference between &amp;#8220;everywhere&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;almost everywhere&amp;#8221;. Adobe&amp;#8217;s own statistics on Flash&amp;#8217;s market penetration &lt;a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html"&gt;claim 99 percent penetration&lt;/a&gt; as of last month. That&amp;#8217;s because, according to their &lt;a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/"&gt;survey methodology&lt;/a&gt;, they&amp;#8217;re only counting &amp;#8220;PCs&amp;#8221; &amp;#8212; which ignores the entire sort of devices which have brought about this debate. Adobe is arguing that Flash is installed on 99 percent of all web browsers that support Flash, not 99 percent of all web browsers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That&amp;#8217;s no longer true, and Adobe&amp;#8217;s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What&amp;#8217;s Hulu going to do? Sit there and wait? Whine about the blue boxes? Or do the practical thing and write software that delivers video to iPhone OS? The answer is obvious. Hulu doesn&amp;#8217;t care about what&amp;#8217;s good for Adobe. They care about what&amp;#8217;s good for Hulu. Hulu isn&amp;#8217;t a &lt;em&gt;Flash&lt;/em&gt; site, it&amp;#8217;s a &lt;em&gt;video&lt;/em&gt; site. Developers go where the users are.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;h2&gt;Automatic Transmission&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn&amp;#8217;t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That&amp;#8217;s not to say there aren&amp;#8217;t trade-offs involved. Car enthusiasts (and genuine experts like race car drivers) still drive cars with manual transmissions. They offer more control; they&amp;#8217;re more efficient. But the vast majority of cars sold today are automatics. So too it&amp;#8217;ll be with computers. Eventually, the vast majority will be like the iPad in terms of the degree to which the underlying &lt;em&gt;computer&lt;/em&gt; is abstracted away. Manual computers, like the Mac and Windows PCs, will slowly shift from the standard to the niche, something of interest only to experts and enthusiasts and developers.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Popovers and Split Views&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Across the iPad system, Apple has introduced a new UI element, which they&amp;#8217;re calling popovers. It&amp;#8217;s a perfect name. Popovers are like a cross between dialog boxes, drop-down menus, and inspector palettes. One example is the list of mailboxes in Mail when in vertical mode. When iPad Mail is in horizontal mode, you see a split view with two panels at once: accounts/mailboxes/messages on the left, and an always-present message detail panel on the right. When iPad Mail is in vertical mode, you just get one panel, but you can tap a button at the top left to show a popover of messages in the current mailbox.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;They&amp;#8217;re very well thought-out. As their name implies, they appear on-screen &amp;#8220;over&amp;#8221; existing views. But you can&amp;#8217;t drag them around. They aren&amp;#8217;t windows. They&amp;#8217;re in a fixed position, always with an arrow pointing to the button or other control (like an event in Calendar) that the user tapped to open the popover. To close a popover, you just tap away from it &amp;#8212; tapping anywhere other than within the popover closes it. Perhaps conceptually, it&amp;#8217;s more like tapping the view &lt;em&gt;under&lt;/em&gt; the popover to make it disappear. So popovers don&amp;#8217;t have an &amp;#8220;X&amp;#8221; button in the top-left corner, or anything explicitly labeled &amp;#8220;Close&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;Cancel&amp;#8221; or &amp;#8220;Done&amp;#8221;. You just tap away. This is one of those aspects of the iPad UI that you just have to &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; to get. It feels perfect.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;According to the iPad Human Interface Guidelines (which, alas, are only available to registered iPhone SDK developers), there is a modal variant:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Popovers and modal views are similar, in the sense that people typically can’t interact with the main view while a popover or modal view is open. But a modal view is always modal, whereas a popover can be used in two different ways:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Modal, in which case the popover dims the screen area around it and requires an explicit dismissal. This behavior is very similar to that of a modal view, but a popover’s appearance tends to give the experience a lighter weight.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Non-modal, in which case the popover does not dim the screen area around it and people can tap outside its bounds to dismiss it. This behavior makes a non-modal popover seem like another view in the application, not a separate state.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#8217;t recall encountering the modal variety during my all-too-brief iPad spelunking expedition; the non-modal ones seem far more prevalent.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The overall effect of popovers is that you do &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; less view switching in an iPad app than you do an iPhone app. Things that slide an entirely new full-screen view on screen on the iPhone &amp;#8212; like say going back from a message to a list of messages, or displaying your Safari bookmarks, or showing the details of a calendar event &amp;#8212; on the iPad instead appear as popovers on a main view.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;So imagine, say, an iPad Twitter client in horizontal mode. You could have a split view with a list of tweets running down the left. On the right, you could have a web view for reading web pages linked from tweets. Rather than sliding over and replacing the tweet list, they could exist side-by-side. And then a popover could provide an interface for switching between different accounts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Information Density&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPad display offers 1024&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;768 pixels. At 9.7 inches diagonally, the pixel density is roughly 132 pixels per inch. That&amp;#8217;s less than the iPhone and iPod Touch, which have 480&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;320 displays with roughly 162 pixels per inch. So text looks a little less sharp on the iPad. But it seemed to me that I naturally held it further away from my face than I do my iPhone, such that it seems just about equally sharp &lt;em&gt;effectively&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;What I found interesting is that I&amp;#8217;m very familiar with this resolution &amp;#8212; for &lt;em&gt;years&lt;/em&gt; I used PowerBooks and iBooks with 1024&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;768 displays running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X. 1024&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;768 somehow seems very different on the iPad than on Mac OS &amp;#8212; physically smaller but conceptually bigger. The full-screen concept, without Mac-style overlapping draggable windows, leaves the iPad free to use as many pixels as possible for display &lt;em&gt;content&lt;/em&gt; rather than UI chrome.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;With the iPad Calendar app for example, the month view seemed more efficient and information-dense than iCal running on my 1440&amp;#8201;&amp;#215;&amp;#8201;900 pixel MacBook Pro display.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Also interesting is iPad Safari. Even though the screen offers the same pixel count as what was once the standard size for a laptop display, iPad Safari renders pages like iPhone Safari. The web surfing experience is all about zooming and panning.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Hardware Keyboard Support&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The announcement that most surprised me is the iPad&amp;#8217;s support for hardware keyboards &amp;#8212; not just the new docking unit, but also Bluetooth keyboards. I&amp;#8217;m surprised because it is a very practical decision, but not elegant. There&amp;#8217;s a certain beauty to how, with the iPhone and iPod Touch, input is completely and utterly limited to the touchscreen.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Needless to say, though, I&amp;#8217;m surprised in a happy way. I can totally imagine traveling to conferences (or events like this) without a MacBook, but rather with an iPad and a keyboard.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The on-screen iPad keyboard is not bad at all, for what it is, but it&amp;#8217;s exactly what you think &amp;#8212; it&amp;#8217;s for &lt;em&gt;pecking&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;typing&lt;/em&gt;. If you want to do actual writing, you&amp;#8217;re going to want a hardware keyboard.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Having used the hardware keyboard yesterday, though, it is clearly a secondary form of input. You cannot even vaguely drive the iPad interface by keyboard alone. It is almost entirely only for text input. The arrow keys really only work for text editing. Shift-arrow combos work for selecting ranges of text, and Command-arrow combos work for moving the insertion point to the beginning/end of lines. Option-arrow combos do not work for moving a word at a time, though.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Arrow keys don&amp;#8217;t work for navigating the interface. This is the sort of thing I expect to improve over time (and who knows, maybe even before it actually ships), but there are some glaring holes. For example, in iPad Mail, when you start typing in the To: field to address a message, and the iPhone-style autocomplete suggestion list appears under the field, you cannot select from it using the keyboard. You have to touch the screen. The docking keyboard has no Esc key, replacing it instead with a key to simulate the iPad Home button. But so if you try to dismiss a popover with &amp;#8220;Esc&amp;#8221; and hit that button, boom, you&amp;#8217;re dropped back to the home screen. And once back at the home screen, there doesn&amp;#8217;t seem to be a way to launch apps via keyboard alone. It just seems like it&amp;#8217;s not finished yet.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Typography and iBooks&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPad&amp;#8217;s version of iPhone OS contains more fonts than iPhone OS 3.1, including my beloved Gill Sans. The iBooks app lets you switch the text face, but only from a choice of five fonts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;iBooks uses full-justified layout for books, with no apparent option to switch to ragged right. It doesn&amp;#8217;t do hyphenation, so you wind up with very unsightly word-spacing gaps. No e-reader I&amp;#8217;m aware of does justice to proper book typography, but I was hoping for better from Apple. It&amp;#8217;s decent web-caliber typography, not print-caliber typography.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;As for Amazon, they might wind up delighted with this thing. Apple&amp;#8217;s in the business of selling devices first, content second. I think Amazon is in the content business first, the device business second. A world where Kindle hardware sales pale in comparison to the iPad but where there&amp;#8217;s a very popular Kindle app for iPad that competes against iBooks is not a bad situation for Amazon. Apple is only selling e-books for use on their own devices; Amazon is willing to sell e-books anywhere they can.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;h2&gt;Money on the Table&lt;/h2&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, a thought regarding the iPad&amp;#8217;s aggressive pricing. Apple is obviously leaving money on the table here. They could easily charge $999 as the starting price and have hundreds of people lined up outside every Apple Store ready to buy one on day one. Then they could drop the price later in the year, as the holiday season approaches.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Clearly they&amp;#8217;re more interested in unit sales than per-unit margin. The mobile computing landscape is in land-grab mode, and Apple is trying to stake out a long-term dominating position.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;There was a meta-message in today&amp;#8217;s Apple event, not about the iPad in particular, but rather about Apple as a whole. Jobs&amp;#8217;s brief preamble included a bit of extra emphasis on the fact that the Apple now generates over $50 billion per year in revenue. (Apple also emphasized this $50 billion revenue thing in their &lt;a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/25results.html"&gt;PR two days&lt;/a&gt; ago announcing their Q1 2010 financial results.) He also said that when you consider MacBooks as &amp;#8220;mobile&amp;#8221; devices, Apple generates more revenue from mobile hardware than any other company in the world; the three competitors he singled out were Sony, Samsung, and Nokia. The adjective he used was &amp;#8220;bigger&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Lastly, there&amp;#8217;s the fact that the iPad is using a new CPU designed and made by Apple itself: the Apple A4. This is a huge deal. I got about 20 blessed minutes of time using the iPad demo units Apple had at the event today, and if I had to sum up the device with one word, that word would be &amp;#8220;fast&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It is fast, fast, fast. The hardware really does feel like a big iPhone &amp;#8212; and a big &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; iPhone at that, with the aluminum back. (I have never liked the plastic 3G/S iPhones as much as the original in terms of how it feels in my hand.) I expected the screen size to be the biggest differentiating factor in how the iPad feels compared to an iPhone, but I think the speed difference is just as big a factor. Web pages render so fast it was hard to believe. After using the iPhone so much for two and a half years, I&amp;#8217;ve become accustomed to web pages rendering (relative to the Mac) slowly. On the iPad, they seem to render nearly instantly. (802.11n Wi-Fi helps too.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The Maps app is crazy fast. Apps launch fast. Scrolling is fast. The Photos app is fast.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The iPad hardware is exactly what you think. It looks great, it feels great. It&amp;#8217;s very nice to hold. (People are &lt;a href="http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2010/01/27/apple-drops-an-idud.aspx"&gt;complaining&lt;/a&gt; about the wide bezel around the display, but without that, where would your thumbs go? You don&amp;#8217;t want your thumb that&amp;#8217;s holding the device to cover on-screen content or register as a touch. Trust me, it&amp;#8217;s just right.) Just like with the iPhone, it&amp;#8217;s all in the software. And the software is obviously marvelous in many ways. It is clearly the result of deep thought and hard work.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;But: everyone I spoke to in the press room was raving first and foremost about the speed. None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast. (And our next thought: What happens if Apple has figured out a way to make a CPU like A4 that fits in an iPhone? If they pull that off for this year&amp;#8217;s new iPhone, look out.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t talk much about the technical details of the iPhone. They never talk about CPU speed or the name of the chip being used. They don&amp;#8217;t tell you how much RAM is in there. Part of their vision for moving computers from technical culture to popular culture is about getting away from defining these things by their technical specs. So the prominent talk about A4 is telling. This is something they want us to notice.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I mentioned this year-ago quote from Apple COO Tim Cook the other day, but it&amp;#8217;s apt here, too. &lt;a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2009/tc20090621_038917_page_2.htm"&gt;Cook told BusinessWeek&lt;/a&gt;, &amp;#8220;We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.&amp;#8221;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren&amp;#8217;t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn&amp;#8217;t just own and control &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world. Software aside (which is a huge thing to put aside), it may well be that no other company could make a device today matching the price, size, and performance of the iPad. They&amp;#8217;re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they&amp;#8217;re getting into it to kick ass.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;They&amp;#8217;re Microsoft and Intel rolled into one when it comes to mobile computing. In the pre-taped video Apple showed, Bob Mansfield said of the iPad, &amp;#8220;No one else could do it.&amp;#8221; Only Apple.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And so my takeaway from this &amp;#8212; with the bragging about making their own CPUs and their annual revenue and their size compared to companies like Sony, Samsung, and Nokia &amp;#8212; is that this is Apple&amp;#8217;s way of asserting that they&amp;#8217;re taking over the penthouse suite as the strongest and best company in the whole ones-and-zeroes racket.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;On my flight to San Francisco yesterday, I finished reading &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/1578062977/ref=nosim/daringfirebal-20"&gt;Stanley Kubrick Interviews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, an excellent collection edited by Gene D. Phillips. I was struck by this passage by Richard Schickel from Time magazine in 1975, a few weeks prior to the release of &lt;em&gt;Barry Lyndon&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;About his work Kubrick is the most self-conscious and rational of men. His eccentricities &amp;#8212; secretiveness, a great need for privacy &amp;#8212; are caused by his intense awareness of time&amp;#8217;s relentless passage. He wants to use time to &amp;#8220;create a string of masterpieces&amp;#8221;, as an acquaintance puts it. Social status means nothing to him, money is simply a tool of his trade.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Reminds me of &lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gruber/4307703430/"&gt;someone else&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Adobe&amp;#8217;s Larry Masinter, in &lt;a href="http://www.9to5mac.com/adobe-html5-objections-95496864#comment-66680"&gt;a comment on 9 to 5 Mac&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;No part of HTML5 is, or was ever, &amp;#8220;blocked&amp;#8221; in the W3C HTML Working Group &amp;#8212; not HTML5, not Canvas 2D Graphics, not Microdata, not Video &amp;#8212; not by me, not by Adobe.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Neither Adobe nor I oppose, are fighting, are trying to stop, slow down, hinder, oppose, or harm HTML5, Canvas 2D Graphics, Microdata, video in HTML, or any of the other significant features in HTML5.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Claims otherwise are false. Any other disclaimers needed?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Great news.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Adobe Claims Not to Be Blocking Anything Related to HTML5’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/html5-adobe-not-blocking"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;The best, most precious photographs tell stories, eliciting visceral recollections of the people, places and times that matter to you. MemoryMiner is an extremely clever photo-annotation and storytelling tool that helps you take the long view, highlighting the connections between peoples&amp;#8217; lives across time and place. Like cooking, writing or gardening, MemoryMiner takes some effort, but offers unique rewards for every step you take. To see how, watch the demo screen movie found on the home page of &lt;a href="http://memoryminer.com/?df"&gt;memoryminer.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Daring Fireball readers can purchase MemoryMiner at a &amp;#8220;one finger&amp;#8221; (i.e. 20%) discount using the coupon code &amp;#8220;daring&amp;#8221;.&lt;/p&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;In public, Adobe claims to &amp;#8220;support&amp;#8221; HTML5. On the private W3C mailing list, though, they&amp;#8217;ve placed an objection to prevent the current spec from being published. My understanding is that Adobe is trying to block the API spec for the canvas element. The canvas element hasn&amp;#8217;t gotten as much attention as the video element, but clearly, 2D graphics in canvas is competitive with Flash, and it appears that Adobe&amp;#8217;s plan is to sabotage it via W3C politics.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Adobe Puts Secret Hold on HTML5 Spec ’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/14/hixie"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Seems like a terrible mistake to glom a public broadcasting feature onto a private email system.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Google Buzz a Privacy Disaster’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/13/google-buzz"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;My thanks to Sourcebits for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Sourcebits is a contract developer specializing in iPhone, mobile, Mac, and Web software. Their iPhone apps have been downloaded over 4.5 million times from the App Store, and they have a growing list of Android and BlackBerry apps, too. If you’re looking for software development services, check out Sourcebits’s web site for examples of their work, and contact them for a quote.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Sourcebits’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/12/sourcebits"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Fascinating. ReadWriteWeb has a weblog post that ranks highly in Google&amp;#8217;s search results for &amp;#8220;Facebook login&amp;#8221;. The comments on the post are filled with complaints from confused people who think that this is the new Facebook login page.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;It&amp;#8217;s funny, yes, but it&amp;#8217;s a fascinating glimpse at just how confused many people are about how web sites and browsers work. They don&amp;#8217;t use bookmarks, they don&amp;#8217;t type &amp;#8220;facebook.com&amp;#8221; in the location field. They just Google for whatever they&amp;#8217;re looking for and assume the first result is correct. All this argument over whether the iPad is too simple &amp;#8212; if anything it&amp;#8217;s probably still too complex.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;Facebook Login&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/facebook-login"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Kottke:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Sales of CJ Corporation&amp;#8217;s snack sausages are on the increase in South Korea because of the cold weather; they are useful as a meat stylus for those who don&amp;#8217;t want to take off their gloves to use their iPhones.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Meat Stylus for the iPhone’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/kottke"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Interesting perspective: looks like they sell about 100 songs per second.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘iTunes 10 Billionth Song Countdown’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/itunes-10b"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Another little masterpiece from my friend Adam Lisagor.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Introduction to Square’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/square"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Better and better.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘SublimeVideo Now Supports Firefox’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/sublimevideo"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Now with support for extensions.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘New Beta of Google Chrome for Mac’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/chrome-mac"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Kara Swisher on the dwindling enthusiasm for Windows Mobile:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Indeed, this is why Microsoft and its giant wallet might be better served by buying one of the big and more established telecom companies, such as Research in Motion, Palm or even &amp;#8212; as another Microsoft exec said to me, “Why not?” &amp;#8212; Nokia.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Nokia has a market cap of close to $50 billion, with RIM at close to $38 billion. And Palm? A paltry $1.74 billion. Microsoft’s current valuation is $246 billion, and the company has $40 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand. [&amp;#8230;] And, in fact, many sources at Microsoft have told me that CEO Steve Ballmer has expressed interest in buying RIM many times (while also dismissing any interest in Palm).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;RIM seems like a natural fit, in terms of its customer base and the whole look and feel of BlackBerry software. Palm would be the bolder play.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Kara Swisher on Microsoft&amp;#8217;s Mobile Dilemma’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/swisher"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Bill Hill, formerly of Microsoft:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The trouble is trying to innovate at Microsoft, which is a company of geeks, run by geeks, and dominated by Windows.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;When TabletPC began at Microsoft, it was a research effort - outside of the regular Windows organization. Once it was re-organized into Windows, that was the kiss of death. I never really thought much about this while I worked there, but it&amp;#8217;s my belief that despite all the lip-service paid to end-users, the only Windows customers with any real power are the Windows Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Bill Hill on the iPad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/bill-hill"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Luke Wroblewski compares the Windows Mobile 7 photos and app store apps to their iPhone counterparts.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Information Resolution on the Windows Phone 7 Series’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/lukew"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Tonio Loewald:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is procedural bullshit, plain and simple.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I know Adobe claims they&amp;#8217;re not &amp;#8220;blocking&amp;#8221; anything related to HTML5, and many of you are taking them at their word on this. I hope you&amp;#8217;re right. But they are undeniably doing &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; behind the scenes with, as Loewald eloquently boils it down, W3C procedural bullshit. Adobe can call it &amp;#8220;seeking clarification&amp;#8221; or whatever they want. I say it&amp;#8217;s obstruction.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think they&amp;#8217;re trying to get the W3C to agree that 2D canvas is not part of &amp;#8220;HTML5&amp;#8221; proper as a first step.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Tonio Loewald on Adobe and HTML5’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/adobe-loewald"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Every major mobile platform is now either using WebKit or will be soon. Except for one.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘RIM Previews WebKit Browser for BlackBerrys’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/webkit-rim"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;I love the New York Times, and the iPad app demo they gave last month looked great, but $360 a year is insane. It&amp;#8217;s a simple choice between playing for the (digital) future and temporarily propping up the (print) past.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Gawker Reports on NYT Turf Battle Over iPad App Pricing ’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/gawker"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;At least it wasn&amp;#8217;t Flash.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Report Claims Malicious PDF Files Comprised 80 Percent of All Exploits for 2009’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/pdf"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Josh Topolsky:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The design and layout of 7 Series&amp;#8217; UI (internally called Metro) is really quite original, utilizing what one of the designers (Albert Shum, formerly of Nike) calls an &amp;#8220;authentically digital&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;chromeless&amp;#8221; experience. What does that mean? Well we can tell you what it doesn&amp;#8217;t mean &amp;#8212; no shaded icons, no faux 3D or drop shadows, no busy backgrounds (no backgrounds at all), and very little visual flair besides clean typography and transition animations. The whole look is strangely reminiscent of a terminal display (maybe Microsoft is recalling its DOS roots here) &amp;#8212; almost Tron-like in its primary color simplicity. To us, it&amp;#8217;s rather exciting. This OS looks nothing like anything else on the market, and we think that&amp;#8217;s to its advantage.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Certainly interesting and original. My first impression, though, is that if nothing looks like a button, and tappable text looks like non-tappable text, how do you know what you can tap?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Josh Topolsky&amp;#8217;s Windows Mobile 7 Impressions’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/topolsky"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Matt Buchanan:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Every phone will have a Bing (search) button and a Start button. Custom skins, like the minor miracles HTC worked, are now banned. The message to hardware makers is clear: It&amp;#8217;s a Windows Phone , you&amp;#8217;re just putting it together. Basically, phonemakers get to decide the shape of the phone, and whether or not there&amp;#8217;s a keyboard.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Microsoft&amp;#8217;s dilemma by not building their own phones: they&amp;#8217;re acknowledging that hardware matters, but if hardware matters, what&amp;#8217;s the motivation for handset makers to excel if there&amp;#8217;s nothing they can do to stand apart from others except for lowering their price? Microsoft&amp;#8217;s message to handset makers is, more or less, &amp;#8220;&lt;em&gt;You&amp;#8217;re going to do what we tell you to do and we&amp;#8217;re going to take all the credit.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;#8221; Very different from Android. Maybe that&amp;#8217;s what these handset makers want, though.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;One other word on hardware, in a manner of speaking. Hardware it won&amp;#8217;t work with? Macs. Which is kind of stupid to us &amp;#8212; a lot of the people Microsoft wants to use Windows Phone 7, like college students, have been going Mac in droves. You wanna lure them back Microsoft? Let them use your phone with any OS.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I think Microsoft has its fingers in its ears and is doing the &lt;em&gt;na-na, can&amp;#8217;t hear you&lt;/em&gt; thing regarding Mac market share (and demographics).&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yes, the browser is Internet Exploder. And yes, the rumor&amp;#8217;s true: It won&amp;#8217;t be as fast as Mobile Safari. Not to start.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;&amp;#8220;Not to start&amp;#8221;, eh?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;History is on Microsoft&amp;#8217;s side here—we know what happened the last time Apple had a massive head start.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Not to be a smug dick here, but wasn&amp;#8217;t the &lt;em&gt;last time&lt;/em&gt; Apple had a massive head start over Microsoft the iPod? Speaking of which, no word on whether Windows Mobile 7 phones will support PlaysForSure.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Matt Buchanan on Windows Mobile 7’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/buchanan"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Brad Stone, reporting for the NYT:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Apple’s chief executive is set to collaborate on an authorized biography, to be written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine, according to two people briefed on the project.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘NYT: Steve Jobs Cooperating on Biography by Walter Isaacson’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/jobs-isaacson"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;What a great product name. Not a mouthful at all.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Windows Phone 7 Series’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Steven Frank:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This is such a perfectly encapsulated nutshell of exactly why Apple does not allow third-party background processes on the iPhone.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Homebrew App for the Palm Pre Reboots Your Phone on a Schedule’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/homebrew-palm-reboot"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Chris O&amp;#8217;Brien:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;This column began when I tried to find the answer to what I thought would be a simple question: How many job cuts has Hewlett-Packard had over the past decade?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The answer shocked me: 75,505.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;That includes people who were fired or took early retirement. Despite the cuts, HP&amp;#8217;s workforce has tripled in size as the company hired people in new areas and bought companies such as Compaq and EDS.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Lessons From Hewlett-Packard&amp;#8217;s Massive Job Cuts’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/hp-jobs"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Jason Kincaid nails it: &amp;#8220;write once, run everywhere&amp;#8221; has never worked out. It&amp;#8217;s a pipe dream. More laughably, this initiative comes from mobile carriers, not OS vendors. It&amp;#8217;ll never pan out.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘The Wholesale Applications Community’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/kincaid"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Simon St. Laurent on the process forging HTML5:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;HTML5 will be damaged, its credibility weakened, but will still be important, one way or another.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Yeah, I sure wish HTML5 were going more like, say, the W3C&amp;#8217;s XHTML 2.0 spec. That worked out great.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Mark Pilgrim says to &lt;a href="http://is.gd/8su1Q"&gt;look at primary sources&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘The Widening HTML5 Chasm’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/html5-chasm"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Ian Hickson:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Since I was mistaken about the formal objection, should I prepare the drafts for FPWD publication now? What date should I use?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Either this was all a major mistake and misunderstanding, or Hickson is calling Adobe&amp;#8217;s bluff.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Ian Hickson on Adobe and HTML5’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/15/hixie-adobe"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Delightfully wonkish.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Tim Bray on the Style of the HTML5 Spec’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/17/bray"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;And just under 1 billion with Internet access on their phones.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Earth: 6.8 Billion People, 5 Billion Cell Phone Subscriptions ’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/17/cells"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Jim Ray:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;More importantly, though, with something like browser rendering engines, I’m philosophically opposed to a monoculture.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;First, I was observing more than celebrating. (But if any one rendering engine had to win the whole mobile shebang, I&amp;#8217;m delighted it&amp;#8217;s WebKit. But I&amp;#8217;d love to see Mozilla get its mobile balls on.) But, bigger point: if any individual WebKit platform vendor disagrees with the direction of the mainline WebKit trunk, or simply thinks they can do better, they can do so. Real open source.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;For one, replace “WebKit” with “Flash” and suddenly the iPhone is the holdout.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Really? Every WebOS, BlackBerry, and Android phone today ships with Flash? I didn&amp;#8217;t know that. (Not to mention Windows Phone 7, which isn&amp;#8217;t shipping until &amp;#8220;holidays 2010&amp;#8221;, and which apparently isn&amp;#8217;t going to ship with Flash.)&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Jim Ray on the WebKit Mobile Browser Monoculture’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/jim-ray-webkit"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Greg Kumparek:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;As far as I could tell, there is currently no copy/paste functionality. We were told that “developers will hear more about that” at Microsoft’s MIX conference next month, though it was implied that it would be about why copy and paste “won’t be necessary” rather than when it was coming.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;How 2007.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Windows Mobile 7 and Copy-and-Paste’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/winmo7-copy-paste"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Kontra:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Google is a $170 billion company. It employs thousands of engineers and developers. It tests, tests, tests, and tests more. In fact, its “designers” once unable to pick a shade of blue tested 41 variations of it. It’s ludicrous to think that the Buzz fiasco was simply a result of under-testing. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Kontra on Google Buzz’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/kontra-buzz"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Good questions, and some informative comments.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Simon Willison&amp;#8217;s Questions About the &amp;#8216;Blocking&amp;#8217; of HTML5’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/willison"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Me too.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘A Conversation Dan Wineman Has Every Month or So’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/wineman"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Ed Finkler:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;When folks need an elevator, we should give them an elevator, not an airplane. We’ve been giving them airplanes for 30 years, and then laughing at them for being too stupid to fly them right.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘&amp;#8216;We’re the Stupid Ones&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/16/finkler"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Rall is financing a trip to Afghanistan using Kickstarter.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Andy Baio Interviews Ted Rall’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/18/rall-baio"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#8217;re no longer in denial.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Microsoft Renames Windows Mobile 6.5 &amp;#8216;Windows Phone Classic&amp;#8217;’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/17/winmo-classic"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Excellent profile in Esquire by Chris Jones.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Roger Ebert: The Essential Man’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/17/ebert"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Judging from the description, it doesn&amp;#8217;t sound like it violates any of the rules, so I think it&amp;#8217;ll be accepted.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Dan Frakes on Whether Apple Will Approve Opera Mini for iPhone’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/17/frakes"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Matt Gemmell:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;It’s difficult to get our heads around the fact that these non-technologically-savvy users can suddenly constitute a &lt;em&gt;core market&lt;/em&gt; for a device, yet that’s the case here. Nintendo saw it, and Apple sees it too. It’s an uncomfortable realisation since these people are so unfamiliar to people like you, as hardware manufacturers, and me as a software engineer. This discomfort leads to a kind of understandable blindness, and more importantly can make us leave money on the table. The relative sales and demand figures for Wii vs PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 over the last several Christmases are indicative of that.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Matt Gemmell on How to Compete With iPad’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/17/gemmell"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

&lt;p&gt;Techdirt:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;The NY Times is now running yet another profile (they do this every two years or so) of Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures that &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/technology/18patent.html"&gt;covers the usual bogus claims by Myhrvold&lt;/a&gt; about how he&amp;#8217;s creating &amp;#8220;invention capital,&amp;#8221; with very little skepticism. However, it does reveal one interesting tidbit that we had missed. Last year, a research firm released a report highlighting that Intellectual Ventures has up to 1,110 shell companies, with which it can hide its activities. No wonder IV can pretend it doesn&amp;#8217;t sue anyone. It can simply hide behind its shell companies.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;I like how &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/technology/18patent.html"&gt;the Times story&lt;/a&gt; (by Steve Lohr) starts the second paragraph like this:&lt;/p&gt; &lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Admirers of Mr. Myhrvold, the scientist who led Microsoft’s technology development in the 1990s, see an innovator seeking to elevate the economic role and financial rewards for inventors whose patented ideas are often used without compensation by big technology companies. &lt;/p&gt; &lt;/blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;But then never goes on to actually name any of these &amp;#8220;admirers of Mr. Myhrvold&amp;#8221;. Who admires this guy?&lt;/p&gt; &lt;div&gt; &lt;a title="Permanent link to ‘Intellectual Ventures Uses Over 1,000 Shell Companies to Hide Patent Shakedowns’" href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/18/intellectual-ventures"&gt;&amp;nbsp;★&amp;nbsp;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </content>

Filed under: Macworld, Peripherals, Developer, iPad

Our videos are almost all posted, the interviews are all transcribed, and the impressions are all done and published -- we're finally bringing our Macworld 2010 coverage to conclusion. It was a heck of a show -- while there wasn't a lot of attention outside the conference floor from folks expecting more about Apple, on the show floor itself there was clearly an excitement and a sense of opportunity for lots of companies who might have been overshadowed by Apple's presence in the past. It was a smaller show, for sure, but in some ways it was also a better show. We're still not completely sure what will happen next year, but Macworld 2010 was a success -- not as big a success as it was when Apple was putting wind in the sails, but a success nevertheless.

We saw a lot of stuff at the show, from dozens of accessories, to the wild Parrot AR.Drone, and even the closest thing to an iPad that we could find. After clicking on the link below, read on to see what a few of our bloggers had to say about the best of what they saw at the show.


Mike Schramm: Flying the Parrot AR.Drone was a hoot, though I'm not actually sold on buying one -- it seems complicated for a "toy." In terms of software, both Papershow and the Algoriddim djay 3 software impressed me a lot. But my favorite product at the show wasn't even for sale -- I really enjoyed seeing the iPad mockup, and finally getting a feel for what the most-missed device at Macworld was really like.

Mike Rose: The several flavors of iPhone-friendly gloves were a stark reminder of winter's grip on most of the country, even as San Francisco was pleasantly temperate. The Papershow presentation/whiteboard system was impressively put together and will definitely appeal to educators and executives alike. What really shook me up, though, was the $10 demo of the Square payment system for iPhone and iPod touch. Just a tiny dongle and some software, but the new project from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has the potential to change lives (and ease revenue collection) for millions of independent professionals, craftspeople and consultants.

Steve Sande: The best in show? TUAW's live coverage! But I'm biased... Seriously, though, there wasn't just one thing. I was impressed with how much attention my OWLE Bubo received during Macworld Expo, and the company wasn't even at the show this year. Square was incredible, so I'll second Mike Rose's comments. Blue Microphones really stole the show with the Blue Yeti mics that they lent to us for the TUAW booth / studio, and the new version of the Mikey for iPhone. The Mophie Juice Pack Air in red with the soft-touch finish was flying off of the shelves at the Expo.

That's it from those of us at TUAW. Most of us are still wading through the piles of brochures, washing clothes, and attempting to make up for lost sleep during the week at Macworld 2010, so we'll excuse the bloggers who didn't add their comments. We would, however, love to hear from TUAW readers who attended the show. What did you think was the best or most unique thing you saw at Macworld?

TUAWMacworld 2010: TUAW's Best in Show originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, Developer, iPhone, Apple History, App Store, App Review

When it comes to famous names in the Apple pantheon, Bill Atkinson ranks very high in the list. The brains behind MacPaint, HyperCard, the Mac OS menu bar, and a host of other innovative software applications has been a professional nature photographer since 1996, but now he's melded his development mojo with photography and released his very first iPhone app, Bill Atkinson PhotoCard for iPhone.

At first glance, the US$4.99 app looks like yet another postcard app for the iPhone. But when you actually start looking at the details of PhotoCard, you realize that it's much, much more. To start with, the app comes with 150 of Atkinson's fabulous nature photographs that can be used in the creation of postcards. That takes care of the front of the postcard, but what about the back?

Like many of the apps of this genre, PhotoCard has a space for typing in a message to the recipient. It ups the ante with 150 stamps to add to your card (more on these later). There are also 325 little stickers that can be added to the back of your card. Once the card is ready to send, you have your choice of either sending it to the recipient via email or having the card printed on an HP Indigo digital press and then sent through snail mail. When it comes to famous names in the Apple pantheon, Bill Atkinson ranks very high in the list. The brains behind MacPaint, HyperCard, the Mac OS menu bar, and a host of other innovative software applications has been a professional nature photographer since 1996, but now he's melded his development mojo with photography and released his very first iPhone app, Bill Atkinson PhotoCard for iPhone.

At first glance, the US$4.99 app looks like yet another postcard app for the iPhone. But when you actually start looking at the details of PhotoCard, you realize that it's much, much more. To start with, the app comes with 150 of Atkinson's fabulous nature photographs that can be used in the creation of postcards. That takes care of the front of the postcard, but what about the back?

Like many of the apps of this genre, PhotoCard has a space for typing in a message to the recipient. It ups the ante with 150 stamps to add to your card (more on these later). There are also 325 little stickers that can be added to the back of your card. Once the card is ready to send, you have your choice of either sending it to the recipient via email or having the card printed on an HP Indigo digital press and then sent through snail mail.

TUAWTUAW review and giveaway: Bill Atkinson PhotoCard for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/photo.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />onOne has released PhotoTools 2.5, an updated version of its image enhancement plug-in for Photoshop. The upgrade now offers over 300 effects, including new MaskingBug and MaskingBrush functions which can be used to selectively place and blend multiple effects. Also added are a collection of environmental effects designed to simulate rain, snow and rainbows....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/infinitecin.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Infinitec recently announced the upcoming release of its so-called Infinite USB Memory (IUM) device, which allows users to share content and stream media from any connected device. The company promises all file formats are supported, regardless of extension or type and users can stream files from their computers to Blu-ray players, gaming consoles or most any multimedia-capable device with a USB port. Streaming of full HD files is also said to be one of the capabilities of the system....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/kingstonsdhcin.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Kingston on Thursday said it was near shipping its Class 10 SDHC memory card, which has maximum write speeds of 18MBps and read speeds of 22MBps. Available in 16GB and 32GB capacities, the card is said to keep up with the burst shooting mode of most DSLR cameras. The Class 10 spec guarantees a minimum transfer rate of 10MBps....

<img align='left' src='http://photos_macnn@photos.macnn.com/news/0910/imac2009.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />The official shipping times for 27-inch iMacs have shrunk back to 5 to 7 business days, according to Apple's online store. The timing is once again consistent with that of 21.5-inch systems, and appears to apply regardless of the processor chosen. During recent months, shipping times have stretched out to as long as three weeks....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/ipad-jobs.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Dropping Flash is no different than the decision to drop the floppy drive from the iMac, Apple chief Steve Jobs reportedly told the Wall Street Journal during his iPad promo tour at major publishers. Those who were at the meeting claim that Flash to him is obsolete technology that should be dropped in favor of a better option. He purportedly likened it not only to floppies but also to purging old technologies like FireWire 400, non-LED backlit LCDs, or the dependence on music CDs....

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store

Here's some unfortunate news out of Ngmoco: The company tells IGN that while there was a Rolando 3 (the second sequel to the very popular and excellent rolling iPhone platformer) in progress, the game has been essentially canceled, and will never see release in its current form. Why? The second game wasn't exactly a sales success (though Ngmoco's Neil Young admits "it's done fine"), and it was that lack of a big splash that made Ngmoco turn the corner into "freemium," or the model of releasing free games that offer in-app purchases for premium content. They've had a lot of success with their Eliminate Pro shooter, and they want to adapt that model for all games: get a few hits for free, spend some real money on in-app purchases for the rest.

And apparently when they couldn't bring that model over to Rolando 3, they scrapped the title. That's a real shame -- not every game on the App Store has to be a runaway hit, and Rolando 3 seems like a perfect candidate for the "slow burn"; release it at a price of $5 or $6, and just let it sit there as an example of great gaming on the iPhone (and the upcoming iPad).

But Ngmoco has made their decision, and Rolando 3 is no more. They say the series isn't gone for good -- if they can figure out a way to do "freemium" with Rolando, we could see the roly poly guys on the iPhone again. You'd think that paying for a level or two at a time would work just fine, but who knows what Ngmoco's reasoning is on this. If I get a chance to talk with them at next month's GDC, I'll ask.

[via Joystiq]

Update: Reader Zyber sent us a petition he's started to try and get the game released. Online petitions aren't exactly proven to be effective, but we'll throw our support behind it just the same.

TUAWNgmoco cancels Rolando 3, says it can't fit into a free-to-play model originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AE Portal News reported last week on a Twitter post claiming that Apple has laid off 40 members of its Final Cut team focused on the company's professional-level video editing software tools. The cuts were apparently focused on remote teams based in...

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/appcat.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Apple has made another expansion of iTunes Preview, its second in less than a month. Visitors to Preview can now browse app categories, having only recently gained the option of viewing individual app pages. Most categories simply display a collection of popular apps, with the ability to sort alphabetically. The Games selection includes a list of subcategories, ranging from Action and Adventure through to Strategy, Trivia and Word titles....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/windowsphone7-mwc.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar today claimed that Microsoft is developing a self-branded Windows Phone 7 handset. The device would be a full-touch candybar design made by ASUS and would serve as a centerpiece for the mobile OS. Microsoft had originally intended to ship the phone late this year but has reportedly encountered hitches that have pushed it back to early 2011....

Filed under: Freeware, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

I really love to find cool, free apps, and I have a good one for you. 3D Sun, developed in collaboration with NASA scientists, will alert you to solar flares and storms which can disrupt communications on earth and trigger spectacular northern lights.

Activating the push feature provides instant notification of major solar activity.. Clicking on the app will give you detailed information, as well as a current picture of the surface of the sun provided by the NASA 'Stereo' satellites. You can rotate the view of the sun with your fingers, and pinch in and out to zoom. The 2 satellites don't have a 360 degree view, so there will be a dark sliver where the cameras can't see. Using this app is a lot safer than trying to see these phenomena with the naked eye or even using some of the not-so-safe solar filters that are around.

In addition to the 'live' view of the sun, you can view recent pictures of the sun in different bands of the spectrum, and you'll get a look at the rather fascinating magnetic field lines that are above the surface of our friendly orb.

The app also features a collection of stills and movies showing solar events and events triggered by the sun.

The app is just out, so grab it if you are interested. I'd also remind our scientifically prone readers of the terrific NASA app that Steve Sande reviewed in October. 3D Sun has scads of images, videos, launch information and more, and it's another freebie.

These apps run on the iPhone and the iPod touch.

I think you should go for launch on both of these. A-OK?

Check the gallery for more screen shots:

TUAWKeep your eyes on the Sun safely with free 3D Sun app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1002/monsterbutterflyin.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Monster on Thursday releaased special edition Butterfly headphones designed by Vivienne Tam. Based on the designer's Butterfly Lovers theme from the Spring 2010 fashion collection, the earbuds have an all-metal housing that reduces resonance. A cable management system has a built-in slider and clip that will keep the weight off the headphones, reducing stress on a wearer's ears....