Update (3/9 2:54pm): From what I can see so far, this banning/not approving apps that are template-based/cookie-cutter type apps doesn’t seem to be happening. There is a new developer, LMK.com, that has added 51 new apps all of which use the same app to display different data. Just the kind of think that Apple would not be approving if they were targeting them. So, as of this moment, template-based apps are still being approved.

All I can say is: Its about fracking time!

iPhone app purge: Are template-based apps next? | Software | iPhone Central | Macworld: “Apple’s campaign to get tough on iPhone applications is reportedly continuing with a new target: template-based iPhone applications. You can find services that build these so-called cookie cutter applications all over the Web, and they have been used by a variety of prominent celebrities, bloggers, and brands including Ashton Kutcher, blogger Seth Godin, and the U.S. Army.”

There are soooo many applications in the AppStore that are just duplicates of a single app over and over again, sometimes hundreds of times. One of the biggest contributor of “template-based” apps is Brighthouse Labs. Latest approximate count puts them at 4332 applications. An example of this cookie-cutter/template-based application is “iNewsPro”. That single application template has 282 apps so far with titles like:

iNewsPro – Johnstown PA • iNewsPro – Joplin MO • iNewsPro – Parkersburg WV • iNewsPro – Peoria IL • iNewsPro – Rocky Mount NC • iNewsPro – Saginaw MI • iNewsPro – Salinas CA • iNewsPro – Salt Lake City UT • iNewsPro – San Angelo TX • iNewsPro – San Antonio TX • iNewsPro – San Diego CA • iNewsPro – San Francisco CA • iNewsPro – San Luis Obispo CA • iNewsPro – Santa Barbara CA • iNewsPro – Santa Fe NM • iNewsPro – Sarasota FL • iNewsPro – Savannah GA • iNewsPro – Scranton PA • iNewsPro – Sebring FL • iNewsPro – Sharon PA • iNewsPro – Sheboygan WI • iNewsPro – Sherman TX • iNewsPro – Shreveport LA • iNewsPro – Sioux City IA • iNewsPro – Sioux Falls SD • iNewsPro – South Bend IN • iNewsPro – Spokane WA • iNewsPro – Springfield, IL • iNewsPro – Springfield, MA • iNewsPro – Springfield, MO • iNewsPro – State College PA • iNewsPro – Steubenville OH • iNewsPro – St. Joseph, MO • iNewsPro – St. Louis, MO • iNewsPro – Stockton CA

Trust me when I say that there are many more of this specific template alone.

The article says that Apple isn’t planning on removing the existing apps, just not letting any new ones into the store. Personally, I think they should send the developers a letter stating that they need to turn these multi-app templates into a single app with in-app purchasing or Apple will remove them.

There is just no reason for developers to produce thousands of apps when in-app purchasing can compress hundreds of apps into a single app. This will please customers since it means that they don’t have to have several app icons taking up valuable Springboard space, it will be way easier on the developer since they only have to maintain one visible app. I can’t speak for the in-app catalog, but it has to be easier than using Apple’s interface to update entries.

Now it’s just a matter of time to see if this actually happens.

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Update: It’s official, Valve announced it’s move to the Mac today on their own website.

According to Inside Mac Games, Valve Software sent out info to Mac and PC websites confirming it’s intent to bring Steam and a catalog of games to the Macintosh.

This is great news for the Mac. Steam is a great digital download platform for gaming. Its pretty much as easy to buy games in Steam as it is to purchase applications in Apple’s AppStore. Plus, if for some reason, you need to download your game again, that is just as easy as well.

Looks like there will be a more official announcement at the Game Developers Conference next week (March 9th – 13th).

I can’t wait for Steam to arrive for the Mac. It’s one more sign that the Mac is just as much a gaming platform as Windows is. Sure, there are not as many titles out there yet, but if Valve feels that there is enough to bring Steam over, then its growing pretty quickly.

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Well, its that time of year again! Baseball season is once again almost upon us and just like clockwork, MLB.com has the latest installment of [MLB.com At Bat 2010](http://bit.ly/ayq5bC) ready for purchase.

This time it’s $14.99 instead of last year’s $9.99 price. I can’t remember what features were in last years app to see if they have up’ed the anti as it were for this version since the price is $5 more than last year. However, the application description states:

• Spring Training statistics, LIVE audio and LIVE video (mid-March)
• Breaking league and team news
• Schedules, rosters and player stats for every team
• Video library searchable by player and team
• Enhanced LIVE game video (Regular Season)
• Home/Away broadcast feed selection (Regular Season)
• Background audio playback
• Additional enhancements to come during 2010 season

The new features sound pretty good, although it would be nice to be able to watch games (video) no matter about the blackout rules. It looks like if you purchase the [MLB.tv Premium subscription](http://bit.ly/b2SGJP) ($119.95 yearly / $24.95 a month) you will be able to see all the games on your iPhone/iPod touch/iPad, home or away. A bit pricy, but less than a single ticket to a game a month. If you are truly a fan or you are a fan of a team that isn’t the home team of the city you live in, this might be a good way to go to see them play.

Either way, I’ve already nabbed the app and so far, it’s living up to it’s hype. It will be interesting to see what happens when they turn on the live video/audio for the spring training games.

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Update: Didn’t take very long for Plants vs. Zombies to top the Paid Apps chart as well. I wonder if they had a free trial version of the game if the game would top all three charts. Or, if players had a chance to see the game in action before purchasing it, they wouldn’t buy it.

PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies made it’s appearance in the AppStore this morning and before the end of the day has made it’s way to the #2 Paid App and #1 Top Grossing App. A truly amazing feet for a PopCap game, much less any game in the AppStore.

It’s currently received 458 ratings, 444 of which are 5 star, and only 3 are one star. The one star complaints are that the mini games in the PC game are not in the iPhone game. One reviewer spent the $2.99 so that he could basically tell us that he would rather be: “SHOT, ELECTRICUTED, FLAMED, BOMBED, AND BURIED ALIVE THEN PLAY THIS PIECE OF $&@!” (That is an exact character for character quote). The third one star review basically thinks the game is boring and can’t believe all the positive reviews are from players. Has this guy never gone to the PopCap website and played the free web version?

I mention these reviews because the game is pretty much an exact copy of the PC version (minus the mini games mentioned in that one star review). It plays very well, and is actually a bit easier to play since you just have to tap the sunlight instead of trying to chase it down with a mouse.

PopCap has a real winner here and is probably going to make a fortune off this title alone. Especially at the $2.99 price point. This app is definitely one to grab if you are a fan of PopCap.

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I must say that I am pretty impressed with Apple’s Magic Mouse. It’s sleek, with a good 3/5 of it’s surface being available for multiple-touch functions. Being made from aluminum, it’s sturdy, solid feeling, and clicks like you would expect a mouse with real buttons.

Unlike the “Mighty Mouse”, when you click and drag with the Magic Mouse, it doesn’t feel like you are trying to hold the mouse so that the ‘whole mouse button’ doesn’t release.

Also a great feature of this mouse is that when you scroll windows by sliding you finger down or up the center of the mouse, you can tell the Mouse Preference Pane to glide just like you were flicking your finger across the iPhone/iPod touch’s screen.

There is also a great $5 shareware program called MouseWizard that adds all kinds of great functionality to the multi-touch abilities of the Magic Mouse.

MouseWizard is a great supplement to the System Preference Mouse Pane. It’s a program that can reside in the MenuBar, Dock, or both, not in System Preferences, so it won’t conflict with Apple’s Mouse Preference Pane.

The Menubar items include battery status, 3 settings entries as well as the standard application menu items.

MouseWizard lets you set tapping instead on clicking the mouse for both the right and left clicks. Two finger gestures include: Middle Click, Fourth Click, Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Swipe Left, Swipe Right, Zoom / Shrink. Three finger Click and Whole Hand Click. All can be configured to do one of many functions:

I’m currently waiting for a D-Link DBT-120 Wireless Bluetooth 2.0 USB Adapter from Amazon to hook it up to my Mac Pro. When I purchased the beast 3 1/2 years ago, I didn’t see the need to have Bluetooth and WiFi in the box. I now realize that I should have configured the order with both. A hindsight… Apple has tested their wireless keyboards and mice with the D-Link adapter which is why I ordered it rather than the many others to choose from.

Back in the days of the Mighty Mouse, I would never have suggested to anyone to use it. With the Magic Mouse, I have to say that so far, I have to problems suggesting the mouse. Mind you, I have only just started to use it, and there might still be some issues with both left and right buttons down in games. However, what I have seen so far is darn amazing and I’m very pleased I got one.

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Really, what is the deal with you guys. Every time you update iTunes, the Maximize button/Keyboard Shortcut (Ctrl-Command-Z) works differently. At first, tapping Ctrl-Command-Z would toggle the user between the normal view and the Mini Player:

Then updates started showing up that when the keyboard shortcut is used would cause iTunes to “Maximize” it’s window to the full screen. Then with iTunes 9.0-9.0.2, the shortcut was toggling between normal and Mini Player again.

Now with iTunes 9.0.3, the Ctrl-Command-Z maximizes the iTunes window again. I now see that there is a “new” shortcut: Shift-Command-M. That toggles between the Mini Player and the normal iTunes window.

Apple, please, make up your mind and stick with it. You guys are so much better than Microsoft and Windows, yet with iTunes, I feel that you decided to give the project to a bunch of Windows developers you recently hired.

So is it safe to assume that “Shift-Command-M” is the toggle now and forever? Please?

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Today’s “The Joy Of Tech” hit the whole rumor/speculation/hype thing perfectly on the head! I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Thanks ‘Joy of Tech‘ guys, your humor always makes my day!

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No sooner than the iPad news is released than rumors of yet another “real” Mac Tablet computer are floating around again!

Don’t get me wrong here, I consider myself to be a pretty faithful Apple Fanboy. I have quite a few iPods (3G, 4G, 5G and an iPod touch), two iPhones (myself and my wife), and two Macs (MacBook and Mac Pro). I lust for the new Unibody MacBook’s, I would love to have that new trackpad. I would also love to get the new iPad when it comes out and I am pretty much planning on getting the next-gen iPhone when it comes out.

However, I think all this speculation and rumor business is totally over the top and ridiculous. For probably a year, there has been nothing but rumor, speculation, and lust over a nonexistent Mac Tablet that finally turned out to be the iPad. We still haven’t heard the end of that damn thing. Why does the 3G cost so much more than the hardware ($500 vrs. $630), will it be able to make phone calls?, will it be able to record movies?, etc… Not to mention all the humor that has arisen from the whole feminine product name: iPad.

Will Apple come out with a real Tablet computer? Who the F**K cares! Oh My God people? You all are worse than stalkers! Unbelievable! You monitor web log files for browser types that could mean that a new device from Apple is coming. You even figure out that there were 50 iPad devices in Apple with various types of applications on them before the announcement.

Do you people have lives? I used to work for a company that makes MMORPG’s. In one of the games, the GM’s created a vine that started growing outside the main cities gates. Once someone noticed it (about 10 minutes after it was put into the game), players started watching the vine to see what would happen next to it. They organized watch schedules so that there was at least a couple of people watching that vine ever minute of every day. We’re not talking a graphical MMORPG either here. We are talking text based, so they had to “Look” at the room and the vine repetitively over and over again. That went on for over a month!

With Apple, it seems that I am seeing that behavior all over again. When the store closes for 5 seconds, blogs post about the closure as if something wonderful is going to happen. If a store that sells Apple products make a mistake, the blogs post an image of the mistake within seconds, if Steve Jobs blinks out of pattern, he’s either going to announce something or he’s dying! Just look at the over analysis of the invitation to the iPad announcement. Every paint splotch was analyzed trying to make heads or tails of what the announcement was going to have in it. Because they all knew that one of the announcements was going to be an Apple Tablet. (Which it wasn’t)

TUAW, even scored themselves over the predictions they made and way over scored themselves. They pretty much had all the predictions wrong, yet the worst they did was 5 out of 12 or something like that.

My God people, get over it. Get on with your lives. As William Shatner once said: “Get a life!”

If Apple comes out with new hardware, you will hear about it when Apple announces/leaks it, not a moment sooner. You can speculate all you want, but that is not going to make Apple/Jobs create a device that you folks have been having wet dreams about for over a year.

Just be happy that your favoriate computer company is making money and doing pretty darn well for itself. They are not likely to die anytime soon, and a real Tablet will not put them over the edge and become the new Dell/HP.

Sheesh!

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Interesting…

Really! That’s about all I can muster. It’s really just a very large iPod touch with 3G and “assisted GPS” (what exactly is “assisted”?). It’s probably pretty fast. However, it’s hard to tell with a processor called A4. What exactly is an A4? What does it compare to?

The iLifeiLife suite of applications that will run on it sound pretty cool. Plus, $30 for the suite is way better than $80.

If I were getting a computer for my parents now, I would probably get them this iPad. It will be way easier to maintain since they would have a much harder time messing it up than the Mac Mini they have now. It would be way faster than the Mac Mini. My mother only does email and web surfing so she would be fine with it. My father plays games so would probably find most the casual games on it perfect for him.

As a “netbook” it’s severely lacking. No USB port or any expansion capabilities at all. No CD/DVD drive. No physical keyboard, but I suspect the on screen keyboard is probably just fine. The biggest problem, the AppStore and Apple’s censorship/review policy. Programs for the iPad will be vetted just like for the iPhone/iPod touch. This means that it’s not, I repeat, NOT a laptop/netbook at all. It’s a very large iPod touch!

That said, if I were getting a portable computing device (notebook, netbook, etc…), I would seriously be looking at an iPad. It’s really lite at 1.5lbs yet still pretty large for screen space. 10 hour battery life is pretty nice, but lack of expansion and the AppPrison AppStore makes it a tough option to fully decide on.

Also, as an ebook reader, I would have to say that Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble, don’t have a lot to worry about. The reason e-ink was invented was to make a display that was easy on a readers eyes. Back-lit screens, no matter how they are back-lit, are not easy on a readers eyes. Otherwise, reading books with notebook computers would be way more popular. That said, the fact that the iPad can do so much more than just be an ebook reader, that Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble probably should worry a bit.

So, all that said, will I be running out to buy one when they are available? Even if I had the money to get one? Probably not. I’ll play with someone else’s iPad and if some generous relative gives me one for Christmas, I certainly won’t return it. However, I’m not all that excited about it.

I also, don’t see this being the “tablet computer” that will attract current tablet computer users. I’m thinking of doctors here. I could be wrong, but it just doesn’t seem like a device that they would want to switch to. Even if all the software that they currently use were available.

So, good luck Apple. I hope you do well with it. I just don’t see this being the iPod/iPhone device you are hoping it will be.

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