Recently in Apple Category

The launch of the Mac App Store yesterday morning brought with it many things. The long awaited Tweetie 2 (now called Twitter for Mac), and also Angry Birds, the popular iOS and Android game from Rovio.

Well, like any game loving person, the second app I bought from the Mac App Store was Angry Birds. To my dismay, the app wouldn't open. There was an error, where a file was linked incorrectly or something. Well, I made the assumption that there would be an update soon, and sure enough, there was this afternoon. Finally, the app would open. However, to my extreme displeasure, I was presented with the message that my graphics card does not support OpenGL 2.0

Little did I know that I was not the only person displeased with Rovio for doing this. I checked out the angry birds page on the Mac App Store, and saw that the rating had dropped from 5 stars yesterday, to 3 stars today. Rovio has not made any friends with this update.

There are several other games I have downloaded, all of which have run without a problem. The Incident, Chopper 2, and Flight Control HD work just fine. Why can't angry birds?

I suppose the thing that makes me the most angry is that the mac app store has no method for a publisher to post system requirements. What I'd like to see is the app store warn you when you're buying an app that cannot run on your computer, and not allow you to purchase it. That would be an ideal world.

All I really am asking for from Apple and Rovio is either a refund of my $5, or a fix to make the game work on my Mac. For let's face it, I really would rather have a working game than have my $5 back.

All for Now!

"In addition, for the first time we are publishing the App Store Review Guidelines to help developers understand how we review submitted apps. We hope it will make us more transparent and help our developers create even more successful apps for the App Store."

"We are continually trying to make the App Store even better. We have listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart. Based on their input, today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year.

In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need."

This is huge. This ends the long fought battle between Adobe and Apple over the Flash iPhone packager. Now, anyone who wants to can use Flash CS5 Professional to develop iPhone apps to sell to the public. In all, amazing!

Everyone who has been reading my blog today will know that I this morning sent my Macbook in to the apple store to have the case cracks repaired. Well i am happy to report that this repair was firstly free, and secondly a huge success! My macbook has no more palm rest cracks, though the bottom case is still cracked. That's mostly because i neglected to tell the repair guys that it was cracked in the first place. But other than that it was a fabulous repair. The ended up replacing both the keyboard assembly and the entire bevel for the screen. Which, so far as i can tell, included a new iSight camera for my computer. And on top of this all, having the keyboard be the right shape seems to bave bent my Macbook back into shape and allowed me to use my CD drive once again. That is fabulous, and was completely worth the time I was without my mac. And as you can see by the picture, the case is crack free, which is what i wanted in the end.

As everyone probably already knows, the older white MacBooks have this tiny little problem that Apple doesn't like to admit. Yes, i'm talking about the case cracks which turn your pristine white macbook into a 'Crackbook'. Well of course I had this happen to me, but didn't think that there was anything I could do about short of paying for the repair myself. I wasn't too keen on doing that, so I just let it slide and became best friends with a bottle of crazy glue to help hold it together. This worked for a long time and probably would have worked for much time to come. However, my father James found something out while getting the cracks on his iPhone fixed. In a conversation with one of the technicians at the apple store he found out that apple was in fact starting to replace the cracked palm rests and outer shells of these white macbooks. This got my ears perked up, so this morning I had James take my macbook over to the apple store on the way to work. Now, i had called earlier in the week to see if my macbook was eligible for this replacement program, and i got the standard apple response 'well, if your computer falls within a certain serial number range...'. I couldn't actually get anyone at apple to tell me what range this was, so i figured what the heck, i'd just bring it in. When James brought it in this morning, he was told 'if we see cracks, we fix em'. This was fantastic and as we speak my computer is getting surgerized and having its cracks replaced. The moral: If you've got a crackbook, go get it fixed for free. Apple is happy to help you out. 

Now, we all know about apple's 'solution' to the iPhonegate problems. Yes, I'm talking about the 'Death Grip'. As you probably also know, Apple has 'fixed' this problem by giving everyone a free iPhone case to alleviate the problem. Well, for me, this doesn't cut it. Take Toyota for example. When they had a serious problem with their cars (which turned out to be mostly user error), they started a major recall and fixed the problem. What does apple do? Not a recall, but an addition to their product that 'fixes' the problem. Here's what apple should have done in my opinion. 1: Change the iPhone 4 design so that there is a thin layer of clear plastic around the outer antenna that would prevent the two antennae from being bridged, causing signal loss. This would essentially do the same thing as the bumper does, only more efficiently and easier for the user. And finally 2: Recall all iPhone 4's and either add this coating to the outside of the iPhone or replace them with the newer one. This I feel would be a much better solution to this problem. If anyone has anything better to say about it, let me know. I'd love to hear what you think!

Well, previously I gave my thoughts on the validity of a 'leaked' iPhone 4. As made apparent at WWDC this year, i was wrong. I for one do like the new iPhone design, although i have not held one in my hand yet. I want to as soon as it is available, to see if it really is as amazing as it is said to be. I'll post a review as soon as I get my hands on one.

On what would seemingly be a normal and completely sane post with Woz giving his opinion on the whole Flash/Apple debate, there is a small portion under the video that I find a little disturbing. Let's take a look at what it says. Under the video, we see this little paragraph that has me completely baffled. 

MacDailyNews Note: 

Note to advertisers: (including those who advertise via third-party ad networks and become, in effect, our advertisers): Your Flash-based ads are no longer reaching the most well-heeled customers online: 50+ million iPhone owners. They're also not hitting 35+ million iPod touch users or 1+ million brand new iPad users. If you care about reaching people with discretionary income, you might want to consider dumping your flash-based ads and moving to a more open format that people with money and the will to spend it can actually see.

By now, everyone has seen what Gizmodo claims to be the next generation iPhone. Besides obvious reasons (not booting) there is one other reason that I personally think that this is not in fact the next iPhone. That being that the thing is not a unibody machine. Think about it. Every apple product now is a unibody product. The macbooks, the iMacs, the Mac Pros, even the iPhone 3G and 3GS are mostly unibody. There aren't any breaks in the case like there are in the phone that Gizmodo claims to have. To me, this new "iPhone" seems to be to klunky to be an iPhone as well. It is not shaped well, and doesn't fit into a person's hand that well. Apple and their human interface obsession would never release a product that looks like this. It would have to be more streamlined for me to believe that it was the real deal. As for everyone else, it's up to them to decide for themselves whether it's real or not. 

Nearly a year after the last update to the MacBook Pro family, we finally see an update today that adds the new Intel Core i7 and i5 chips in them. This is supposed to bring an extreme performance boost to the family. However, Apple didn't put the new chips in the 13-inch MacBook pros. Only the bigger ones. I guess if I get one, I'll be getting the 15-incher. 

All for now!