Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad A couple of weeks before Apple announced the iPad , my wife told me she’d like to have a Kindle. I told her to hang tight, because Apple was likely going to announce a competitive device soon. They did, and we’re now set to pre-order the iPad in a couple of days. But exactly how iBooks will look and behave on the iPad, we’re not completely sure. The gang over at iPadInsider, however, have some video from Penguin that gives us our best idea yet. At the FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference in London earlier this month, Penguin Group CEO John Makinson revealed some of the company’s titles that are coming to the iPad. “We will be embedding audio, video and streaming into everything we do. The epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about.” The books, as expected, are more like applications than their print counterparts, with interactive elements and video abounding. This makes the books more for kids and more involving for adults.

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Like Spotify — and to a lesser extent, Slacker and Pandora — Grooveshark is an online streaming-music service that supports both free users (with adverts) and premium/VIP ad-free accounts.  But unlike those services, Grooveshark has been unsuccessful in getting an iPhone app accepted into iTunes.  Apple has consistently rejected the app — possibly because Grooveshark’s ability to sync playlists and favorites is a bit TOO iTune-ish. So Grooveshark has now given up on iTunes — and have released their iPhone app to Cydia.  This may be the first time in recent memory a legitimate, above-ground, commercially-motivated company has said “Hey, we want you to have our app — and if you have to jailbreak your iPhone to get it, we’re cool with that.” (Still need a reason to jailbreak your phone?  We’ve got a bunch of them …)

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Apple’s Mac mini could become the first line of general purpose computers to support high-definition video later this year, a report Monday suggests. A HDMI connector is located near a DisplayPort connector on prototype Mac mini units. The mini is often used to stream video to home theaters. The AppleInsider report cites two unnamed “people familiar

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Over at Ars Technica, Jon Stokes ponders why a company as prone to chest-thumping as Apple has been so curiously mum about the iPad’s A4 processor and ultimately comes to an interesting conclusion: Apple hasn’t talked much about the A4 CPU because it’s not really anything special. In fact, according to Stokes’ sources, Apple’s A4 appears

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Saturday Night Live spoofed cubicle-based reality show Undercover Boss — where the corner office guy or gal climbs back down the career ladder to go incognito as a menial employee — with Undercover Celebrity Boss. Steve Jobs sticks a “mainentance” badge on his signature black turtleneck and tries to sell an unimpressed secretary on the iTrash

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Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPad , iPhone Carriers , Features , Opinions and Editorials We are just past halfway through the 60 day waiting period that Apple announced for the release of the WiFi iPad. While we don’t know everything about the device, we do know there are six different models split in half by a single feature: a GSM 3G cellular radio for data only. In the last 30 days, the first question many people have asked is “Are you going to get an iPad?” But if the answer is yes, the second question is almost always “Are you going to get the 3G?” 3G … The choice to get 3G is tough. First off, the 3G radio will cost you an additional $130. It will also cost you some time if you have already decided to buy an iPad as soon as it is available; the 3G iPad is expected to be available about 30 days after the WiFi only version. This will likely mean you will have to wait until the end of April. It’s not a big deal, but it is something to consider if you aren’t the patient type. But for that $130 you will get the ability to purchase a micro-SIM card you can use to connect to a 3G or Edge network much like an iPhone does today, but you can only use it for a data connection. One big advantage is that it is currently being offered contract free in the U.S. on AT&T’s network. Apple has also leveraged their relationship with AT&T to get some pretty good rates. They are offering a $14.99/month for up to 250MB of usage and $29.99/month for unlimited usage. Again, this is contract free so you can buy it for a month and then skip several if you want to before you turn it back on. At this point, it is assumed that since you are buying the device contract free, that it will also be an unlocked device.

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Section: Mac Software , Graphics / Design , Writing / Publishing , Reviews Provides: Desktop Publishing Format: Digital download Developer: c:four, Ltd. Minimum System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger or later, G4 800MHz processor or faster, 512MB RAM, 35MB free disk space Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $49.99 ( discount rates available ) Availability: Now Version Reviewed: 1.2 Desktop publishing is in many ways a growth field, as more and more job descriptions include it as part of the deal. We all want to do well on our tasks, but in this area, one thing may stand in your way. That thing, of course is trying to use your standard word processor—such as Pages—to complete the task. In this review, we are going to look at one of your alternatives: iStudio Publishing. When you open this program, you immediately get the idea; it’s as if Pages and Photoshop decided to make a digital baby. Inheriting its easy to use interface from dad and a few advanced features from mom, this offering manages to mostly hit the mark in its current incarnation. Controls are clearly labeled and easy to use. Much more importantly, iStudio gives you the ability to do things in multiple ways. You can use the visual menu in the panes that the program provides, use the menu at the top or use a combination mouse and keyboard shortcuts to get the job done. These options are good for systems with multiple users and people with unusual working patterns. When you first open a document you get a wide latitude for shaping it.  In addition to margin and orientation, you can choose from a wide variety of page formats: letter, standard, 4A, 5A, Tabloid, extended tabloid and #10, DL or Choukei 3 envelopes. You can also define custom sizes as well.

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Our entertainment-center remotes are like tribbles; they look warm and welcoming at first, but we swear they keep multiplying to the point of overrunning the living room. We spend more time swapping between clickers than actually pressing buttons… so we’ve replaced them all with a single, universal device: Logitech’s Harmony 900. And it does more than just duplicate the original remotes’ controls–it adds new features. We had one significant setup problem, but after we corrected the issue, the Harmony 900 excelled. Programming the Harmony via your Mac is simple, amounting to answering a series of plain-English questions. When we first plugged it in via USB, however, our Mac identified it as an Ethernet device and asked if we wanted to open the Network Preferences. Huh? Since the remote had no documentation identifying the procedure–and it just seemed so crazy–we thought it was defective. But after consulting Logitech tech support, we discovered that this is what’s supposed to happen. The remote needs to be set up as an additional Ethernet profile in the Network Preferences. This change can muddle your Network Preferences and certainly was confusing. At press time, Logitech said it’s working on updating the documentation to explain the process more thoroughly. It might look like every other remote, but it feels like the future. After that initial problem, we breezed through the rest of the setup. The software prompts you to enter specific model numbers for your TV, cable box, audio receiver, game systems, and anything else you want to control, then the Harmony 900 adds all of the original remotes’ commands to its profile.

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Filed under: Apple , iPhone , App Store , SDK , iPod touch After all of the kerfuffle earlier this week about Apple shutting down racy apps in the App Store, it appears that the company might be creating a special place for all of that suggestive and sexy content. We received a tip and a screenshot (seen above) from a developer who pointed out the new “Explicit” category in the tool used to submit apps into the store. While TUAW has not yet been able to confirm this, The new category could be the first sign that Apple may provide enhanced parental controls or even a separate “adult” App Store. This would not only maintain the revenue stream from these apps for both Apple and the developers, but would stifle comments that Apple is being too strict with providers of adult content. We will update this story as it develops. Update: The new category is corroborated by Cult of Mac and MacRumors as well. Apple creating “explicit” category for App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Apple creating “explicit” category for App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Filed under: Steve Jobs , Apple It’s February 24, 2010, which means that Steve Jobs has his 55th birthday today. Not many people get to start up a company and then develop several completely new markets during their lives. Steve Jobs has been intimately involved with popularizing a number of devices during his lifetime: the personal computer (Apple II and Mac), the MP3 player (iPod), the smartphone (iPhone), and now the media tablet (iPad). All of the Apple fans here at TUAW wish Steve a happy birthday and many more years of Thinking Different. Steve Jobs turns 55 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Steve Jobs turns 55 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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