Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!

Mac Hardware & Amazon Deals

• New! Apple iPod nano 5th Gen 8GB - Pink: $149.99 -> $69.99 + Shipping
• New! Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 for Mac: $50 + free shipping
• Used Apple iPad Gen 1 16GB WiFi Tablet: $270 + free shipping
• Used Apple iPhone 4 32GB for AT&T or Verizon:$290 + free shipping

_________________________________________

Mac Software

• New! iGlasses: $19.95 -> $11.99
• New! RapidWeaver Classroom Bundle: $59.94 -> $29.97
• New! Become a Mobile Design Rockstar: $200 -> $77
• Tower (Git Client for Mac): $59.99 -> $44.25
• GoMedia Arsenal Complete Vector Set 12: Free with tweet
• The Envato Web Designer Pro Bundle: $500 -> $20

_________________________________________

iBookstore, Audio and Video

• New! The Godfather Trilogy: The Coppola Restoration downloads via iTunes: $18
• New! Da Chip Volume II of its chiptune compilation of Daft Punk covers: Free
• Daft Punk “Tron: Legacy” MP3 Album downloads w/digital book: $4
• Destiny: A Fairy Tale [Kindle Edition]: $2.99 -> Free
• Alfred Hitchcock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Creative Mind: Free
• Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Movies, eBooks and Audio Books: Free
• Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell: Free
• The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online: Free
• Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series: Free

_________________________________________

Mac App Store

• New! Lume (Games): $5.99 -> $4.99
• New! Delibar (Social Networking): $17.99 -> $9.99
• New! Wake Up Time (Productivity): Free
• New! SizzlingKeys (Music): $4.99
• New! Rochard (Games): $9.99 -> $7.99
• Pinna (Music): $4.99
• Caffeinated (News): $8.99
• Cut the Rope (Games): $4.99
• TinyGrab (Utilities): Free
• Thumbtack, a Minimal Pinboard Menu Bar App (Utilities): $1.99

_________________________________________

iPhone Apps

• New! CourseNotes (Education): $4.99 -> $3.99
• New! ZENONIA® (Games): $.99 -> Free
• New! NBA 2K12 for iPhone (Games): $4.99 -> $2.99
• New! Tebit Time (Games): $.99 -> Free
• Cabela’s® Dangerous Hunts 2011 (Games): $1.99 -> $.99
• Buzz: 99¢ (review)

_________________________________________

iPad Apps

• New! NBA 2K12 for iPad (Games): $9.99 -> $4.99
• Good vs Reason (Games): $3.99 -> Free

_________________________________________

Universal Apps

• New! Reckless Racing 2 (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• New! HOMERUN BATTLE 2 (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• New! Bug Heroes Quest (Games): $.99 -> Free
• New! Instalyrics (Music): $1.99 -> Free
• Comic Zeal Comic Reader (Entertainment): $7.99 -> $4.99
• Boost 2 (Games): $1.99 -> Free

My understanding is that such deals will remain intact for now but are likely to end once the Chomp team and product transitions over to Apple. The same is likely true for Chomp’s stand-alone products.

I haven’t been able to learn the exact terms of the deal, but I hear that all the investors should be very pleased with the outcome. This is not a cheap “acqui-hire”, Apple has bought the Chomp team and technology and plans to use both to completely revamp App Store search and recommendations, I hear.

With Apple’s Tim Cook famously saying he’s not religious about holding or not holding the cash (nearly $100 billion) at Apple’s disposal, the acquisition of Chomp should be a clear sign of the company’s willingness to invest in talent and technologies from startups that have proved to care about quality of their products. Chomp in particular is an interesting choice for Apple, as it might signal important changes coming relatively soon to the App Store, especially on the side of discovery of apps with recommendations targeting a user’s tastes and behaviors. With over 700,000 apps available (per AppShopper) and thousands getting approved every day, the issue with discovery is a real one: most developers struggle to get their apps noticed and the best chance for popularity still remains Apple’s own feature in the App Store’s homepage with the “App of the week” and “New & Noteworthy” sections. Furthermore, the existing App Store infrastructure doesn’t have integrated sharing features for Twitter and Facebook, which Chomp has.

It’s obviously not clear what Apple has in store for Chomp yet, but here’s a couple of wild guesses based on the app’s existing functionalities:

Improve app discovery learning what an app does, rather than just its name. Currently, Apple seems to be basing its algorithm for discovery (part available in the Genius UI, part in iTunes under an app’s description) on categories and “what other customers also bought”. Chomp is capable of learning an app’s core functions, and find similar or complimentary apps.

Build sharing of apps for Twitter and Facebook right within the App Store. This would be a nice feature in iOS 6 — alongside a mobile wish list.

Improve search with suggestions, tags, and a cleaner layout similar to what Chomp already does.

Let App Store users create profiles and revamp the whole review system, as developers have been asking for years now. The profile option would be an interesting possibility, and it could easily work in conjunction with Ping, which has failed to gain traction. This has also been experimented by other apps that have tried to compete in the app recommendation space in the past years.

As with the recent Anobit acquisition, it’s likely Apple will confirm the acquisition of Chomp soon. It will be interesting to see if and how Chomp’s technologies will be integrated with a future version of the App Store, which keeps on growing at a tremendous pace but needs a better system to discover apps and filter out less important results.

Update: Apple has confirmed the acquisition to AllThingsD without providing further details on how the service will be integrated with the App Store.

I have been writing a lot about ecosystems, file sharing and inter-app communication in the past months. After the public launch of iCloud last October, I’ve argued that Apple’s cloud solution is the platform for the next decade that might as well become the “operating system” itself, although it (and, by reflection, iOS) still lacks document-oriented functionalities to facilitate the process of creating and moving documents between apps. I have also made the case for a “universal save” option for iOS apps that might take advantage of iCloud, and, fortunately, it seems Apple is listening.

Today I’d like to go on the record with a list of features and options I’d like to see in a future version of iOS. I’m not typically huge on lists or “feature request” (last one was a series of predictions for WWDC ’11), but I believe it’s worth discussing the direction where Apple is headed with its mobile operating system and, while we’re at it, propose solutions to improve existing apps and system utilities. I’ll check back on this list after WWDC ’12.

Sync browser tabs through iCloud: We’re getting this one with Mountain Lion, so supposedly a sync feature is coming to Mobile Safari in the next major version of iOS. Whilst I think it’d be great to have full-session sync like Firefox or Chrome for tabs, bookmarks, history, and passwords, bookmarks & tabs through iCloud is a good start, and the next obvious step is a complete “browser profile” synced through devices.

Facebook integration: Twitter integration in iOS 5 is great to let you quickly share webpages and photos with your followers. Facebook integration, spotted in a previous internal seed of iOS, would be particularly good, I believe, to fetch profile pictures for your contacts, pull photo albums from Facebook and, who knows, Game Center integration (think about that for a second). I still think quick status updates and webpages are better off with Twitter, but I suppose Apple could revamp the system sharing menu to include Facebook for those as well. Either way, I think Facebook integration would be a fantastic addition, not just for the sharing aspect but for the social graph and data Facebook could integrate with Apple’s services.

Search in All Mailboxes: True, server-side, native search for all mailboxes and folders in the main screen of Mail.app. Perhaps with the same token options of Mountain Lion’s Mail.

Copy link and text in App Store: I wish the descriptions for iOS apps could be copied in the App Store, and that Apple allowed us to copy an app’s link directly from iOS devices. Which brings me to the point below…

Sharing options in App Store: This should be doable considering Apple has also enabled sharing on store.apple.com. I’d like to have Twitter, Email and Facebook integration in the App Store so I can share apps with my friends.

iTunes wish list: Similarly, why is that I can’t view my iTunes wish list items on iOS? I use the feature all the time on my Mac, and it’s strange that Apple still hasn’t brought this functionality to iOS devices. Right now, I’m forced to use AppShopper to maintain a synced wish list for apps.

Per-contact read iMessage status: You know the option to let other iMessage users see you’ve read a text? I’d like this option to gain a power-user feature so I can selectively choose which contacts know I read their messages, and which don’t. With iMessage increasingly becoming a full-featured chat app, I suppose it’s not an uncommon request to think I’d like my parents to know I’ve read their texts, and let others wonder.

Mail-style rich text system-wide: iOS needs better text facilities available to developers. Apple should build an API for rich text, and allow developers to include a Mail-style popup menu for styling text in their apps. This would be great for text editors and word processors.

AirDrop: On the Mac, AirDrop is such a fantastic little utility built into the Finder. It allows me to effortlessly push files around Macs in my local network, and it’s immediately accessible by less tech-savvy users. On iOS, it would obviously be nice to be able to exchange documents with Mac users, but I think there’s an even bigger opportunity to turn AirDrop into a mobile utility to quickly share contact cards, pictures, videos, or other documents with iOS users around you. Sort of like Bump, from Apple, integrated with the system, with a nice UI that makes it easy to pick items you want to share. One can only imagine the possibilities this would open to “beam” trial of apps to other users and improve file sharing without forcing users to upload to iCloud or Dropbox first.

Move multiple icons at once: Jailbreak tweak MultiIconMover has showed that a simple system based on multi-item selection can work as a way to move application icons on the Springboard. This, however, is part of a much bigger issue.

Rethink the iOS Home screen concept: I have already argued that the iOS Home screen as a concept is fundamentally broken as Apple has added layers upon layers of interaction over the years, breaking the physical metaphor of “items you can drag and drop on a surface” with the multitasking tray, Notification Center, folders, and Newsstand. Meanwhile, Android and Windows Phone 7 are proving that a “smarter” Home screen is possible not only because of “extra functionality” (iOS should do this! iOS should do that!), but intrinsically smarter in that apps “come alive” on the Home screen with additional information, live results, widget areas, better folders, and more. I don’t think Apple should “copy” every Home screen feature of Android and WP 7, but I believe they should look at the interactions implemented by their competitors and come out with their unique take on the subject (much like they did with Notification Center). Practically speaking, I’d like to see application icons becoming more than a simple graphic on screen, but a way to convey information prior to launching an app (think a weather app with a live-updating icon); widgets, as a way to take part of an app’s core functionality and make it easily accessible on the Home screen without having to open the full-blown version (think “quick add” for OmniFocus on the Home screen); vertical scrolling, to better blend Springboard navigation and multitasking together without burdening the Home button. The last point brings me to…

Rethink iOS multitasking: If there’s anything the PS Vita does sufficiently well, I believe that’s multitasking. Or, better: I like the way the device displays icons and open “apps” both vertically and horizontally. The PS Vita lays out installed apps and games as a vertical list you can scroll with page indicators on the left; horizontal swipes are dedicated to accessing the rightmost part of the Home screen, which lists your recent apps and games as “Live Areas” rather than icons. This is smart, I believe, for a couple of reasons. First, Live Areas enabled Sony to provide richer app previews that not only show an app’s latest screen (when available), but also include additional functionalities such as information, shortcuts, and media. Second, the mix of vertical and horizontal scrolling ensures you can get rid of a physical Home button to invoke the multitasking UI, making recent apps available on the “next pages”, thus enabling a sort of “drilling down” metaphor where the Home screen can be seen as the top layer with apps underneath. Of course, Sony’s implementation is far from perfect (they don’t have enough gestures to back up this metaphor), but it shows that a different Home screen concept is possible and technically feasible. How would Apple benefit from such a radical rethinking? First, and I’m looking at the iPad here, they could look at Mission Control on the Mac, and bring some elements of it back to iOS. Imagine a supercharged multitasking UI that takes advantage of the iPad’s screen to show app previews, perhaps grouped by windows as in webOS, alongside pinned apps (the dock). The multitasking tray feels like a waste of space on the iPad, and I think a bird’s eye view of “what’s going on” on your device with a Mission Control-like approach on the 10-inch screen could work. In general, focusing a new multitasking UI around better app previews and gestures could help Apple alleviate the Home button woes that have found some users confused and baffled by the ever-changing feature set of said hardware. I can’t help but think Apple’s implementation of multitasking is somewhat antiquated — it’s like they’re stuck in 2010, while other companies have come up with a series of clever ideas. As usual, I don’t expect Apple to copy them just for the sake of copying, but a little spark of inspiration could sure help them.

Deeper Gmail integration: This one’s fairly simple. Work out your issues with Google, and find a way to ship Android-class support for Gmail in the native Mail app. Better visualization of labels, threads, and Priority Inbox would be a nice start. Millions of Gmail users who also happen to have an iOS device would cry tears of joy over this.

Automatic app updates option: I always know one of the apps I have installed has an update available, but that’s because I’m a nerd and I follow developers on Twitter, read blogs, etc. Most users, however, rarely update their apps, and they’re often stuck with older versions of software that has, quite possibly, been updated to include more functionality or bug fixes. iOS could have an option to enable automatic app updates, much like automatic downloads are sent to an iOS device both over WiFi and 3G. This could even be integrated with Notification Center, informing a user that an update is available in the App Store if they don’t want the process to be automatic.

Open up Siri: This would be the big one for developers: wouldn’t it be great to add data or interact with our favorite apps, without actually using them? Think about the possibilities of a Siri API for developers: “Siri, tell OmniFocus that I need to write a post” or “Add [test note] to Evernote” — these are just two examples of what I imagine developers would be capable of doing with Siri as a new input method available to them. Just like the original iPhone kickstarted a revolution of a new breed of software built around touch, voice control could be the next big interface of the next five years, and generate another wave of apps meant for natural language input. This could be huge.

Better inter-app communication: Apps should be capable of easily talking to each other and share their basic features at a system level. Sort of like a Services menu for iOS and a mix of Android and Windows Phone 7, apps could advertise a basic functionality they perform (example: “upload .jpeg file” or “display .pdf document”) and allow users to easily pass along data and files through a revamped sharing menu. Make sure to check out the links at the beginning of this article for a technical background, and the reasons behind the need for apps that are not data silos.

Improve Notification Center: Months of iOS 5 usage have made me reconsider what I initially thought would only be minor annoyances given the overall convenience of the Center. Things such as the lack of a Clear All button, or the fact that you can’t tap on an app’s name to group notifications have contributed to making me feel I need to “manage Notification Center” — which is bad, because the system needs to be totally independent and automatic. UI tweaks aside, Apple needs to figure out a way to understand that if I haven’t looked at a notification for two weeks, I’m probably not interested in it, and thus it can be automatically hidden (while still optionally badging an app). More importantly, I’d love to see Apple developing a way to — get ready, this is meta — syncing notifications across devices. Case in point: my Notification Center gets filled with the same email, Tweetbot, iMessage notifications on my iPhone and iPad. iCloud could, in theory, understand that I’ve acted upon a notification on my iPhone, and “sync” its read status back to other devices. Sort of like IMAP, for notifications, to avoid clutter. This can happen.

Make iOS devices aware of each other’s presence: This plays well with the Notification Center idea above. Since the release of Messages for Mac beta, we’ve discovered how annoying it is to have the convenience of iMessage on your Macs…with an onslaught of notifications buzzing and beeping on all our devices at once. What’s the problem here? It’s that many people already have a Mac and multiple iOS devices, and whilst Notification Center does a fairly good job an unifying alerts and missed items, multiple devices mean multiple instances of the same alert at the same moment. This can be annoying. Here’s my idea to fix it: go to the root of the issue and let iOS devices see each other’s location. Make an iPhone understand that it’s sitting near my iPad in the same room of my Mac. Figure out a way to implement proximity and fire off notifications only on the device at hand. How could this be possible? A few ideas: Bluetooth 4.0, geolocation, NFC chips. The future of notifications isn’t real-time, which has been pretty much nailed down at this point, it’s context.

Bring AIM to iMessage for iOS, and let us selectively mute threads: More on this here.

Calculations in Spotlight: I can’t tell you how many times I went to Spotlight on my iPhone, thinking it could do basic operations like the Mac, only to find out it wasn’t possible.

Steal Zephyr’s gestures: They work pretty well in the jailbreak tweak, I’m sure Apple could make them even better.

Let users change default apps: As with the Mac, it would be great to be able to change the default browser and email client. No need to add an option in the Settings — once apps adopt the correct API, this could be handled directly within an app’s Preferences.

Make Notification Center for iPad Mountain Lion-like: The iPad is held differently than an iPhone, yet Notification Center is simply a bigger version of its iPhone counterpart, awkwardly laid out in the middle of the screen. With the iPad’s screen, Apple could take the 10.8 approach, and make Notification Center appear at the side — although this would probably require a smart bezel as it would lose the status bar as a starting point for the gesture.

Improve Notes with Mountain Lion features: Take the improvements made in Notes for 10.8, bring them back to iOS. Make a widget while you’re at it, too.

Documents UI for iCloud: Apple has already announced an extension for the classic Open/Save dialog menu in Mountain Lion based on iCloud. The next step: bring this to iOS, let “iCloud 2.0″ offer an improved set of documentation and APIs for developers so that they can build apps that can “save” documents directly to iCloud. Also build something like this.

VIP contacts for Mail and Messages: Again, Mountain Lion. Take VIP contacts from Mountain Lion’s Mail, bring it to iOS, and add VIPs for Messages as well (which would be great combined with muting on a thread basis). Sounds doable, no?

Easy access to WiFi, Bluetooth switches: Steal from webOS, rethink how icons are displayed in the status bar, and make the WiFi and Bluetooth area tappable to quickly toggle on/off without launching the Settings app.

Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!

Mac Hardware & Amazon Deals

• New! Used Apple iPad Gen 1 16GB WiFi Tablet: $270 + free shipping
• New! Used Apple iPhone 4 32GB for AT&T or Verizon:$290 + free shipping
• Apple Mac Mini: $530
• Refurbished OtterBox Defender Series Case and Holster for Apple iPhone 4S: $49.95 -> $14.99
• Refurb Apple iPod nano 8GB MP3 Player for $99 + free shipping, 16GB for $119
• Refurbished Apple TV Media Receiver: $85 + free shipping
• Apple MacBook Pro Core i7 Quad 2.2GHz 15″ SSD Laptop: $2,447
• MacBook Pro Core i7 Dual 2.7GHz 13″ Laptop: $1,200 + free shipping

_________________________________________

Mac Software

• New! Cashculator: $29.95 -> $14.95
• New! MathMagic Personal Edition: $79 -> $29.95
• Tower (Git Client for Mac): $59.99 -> $44.25
• GoMedia Arsenal Complete Vector Set 12: Free with tweet
• The Envato Web Designer Pro Bundle: $500 -> $20
• Build iOS Apps from Scratch: $497 -> $99

_________________________________________

iBookstore, Audio and Video

• New! Daft Punk “Tron: Legacy” MP3 Album downloads w/digital book: $4
• Destiny: A Fairy Tale [Kindle Edition]: $2.99 -> Free
• Alfred Hitchcock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Creative Mind: Free
• Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Movies, eBooks and Audio Books: Free
• Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell: Free
• The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online: Free
• Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series: Free

_________________________________________

Mac App Store

• New! Pinna (Music): $4.99
• New! Caffeinated (News): $8.99
• New! Records (Music): $9.99 -> $.99
• New! Cockpit (Utilities): $3.99 -> $.99
• New! Compress Files (Utilities): $9.99 -> $.99
• New! iDatabase (Productivity): $9.99 -> $.99
• New! Protect Files (Utilities): $9.99 -> $.99
• New! Scrawl (Productivity): $1.99 -> $.99
• New! Yummy FTP (Productivity): $9.99 -> $.99
• New! WeatherMin – Now with menu bar weather! (Weather): $4.99 -> $.99
• New! SpriteRight (Developer Tools): $4.99 -> $.99
• Cut the Rope (Games): $4.99
• Appinator (Utilities): $3.99
• TinyGrab (Utilities): Free
• TICKE-TACK (Lifestyle): $.99
• Thumbtack, a Minimal Pinboard Menu Bar App (Utilities): $1.99

_________________________________________

iPhone Apps

• New! Cabela’s® Dangerous Hunts 2011 (Games): $1.99 -> $.99
• Buzz: 99¢ (review)
• Monkey Island Tales 4 (Games): $4.99 -> $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 3 (Games): $4.99 -> $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 2 (Games): $4.99 -> $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 1 (Games): $4.99 -> Free
• Pocket Warriors (Games): $.99 -> Free

_________________________________________

iPad Apps

• New! Good vs Reason (Games): $3.99 -> Free
• Monkey Island Tales 5 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 4 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 3 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99
• Monkey Island Tales 2 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99

_________________________________________

Universal Apps

• New! Comic Zeal Comic Reader (Entertainment): $7.99 -> $4.99
• New! Boost 2 (Games): $1.99 -> Free
• Nostalgio (Lifestyle): $2.99 -> Free
• Tiny Defense (Games): $2.99 -> $.99

Adweek created a complete collection of every iPhone ad campaign to date, starting with the 2007 commercial “Hello” (aired on the night of the Oscars).

Without much fanfare, the iPhone campaign has surpassed its predecessor in terms of volume of work—”Get a Mac” lasted for 66 spots over four years (watch them all here), wrapping up its run in October 2009; the iPhone campaign is now entering its sixth year, and is up to 84 spots and counting. “Get a Mac” was beloved for its characters and wry humor. And while the iPhone work may lack that same level of charm—it is, at its heart, merely a series of product demonstrations—it is just as exquisitely produced and in many ways more varied.

I have previously written about how Apple’s commercials often tend to tell “stories” rather than simply showcasing the functionalities of a product. The complete collection of iPhone TV ads provides a fantastic example of how Apple’s marketing style can be a little different, but still effective and capable of establishing an emotional connection with the audience.

Check out Adweek’s gallery here.

The Guardian reports “buttonless” todo list app Clear has sold over 350,000 copies in nine days of App Store availability:

We’ve sold just over 350,000 copies,” says product manager Nik Fletcher. “The launch day was massive, and by Wednesday last week it was number one on App Stores around the world. It’s been an incredible response.”

Clear costs 69p on the App Store, meaning that the app has generated net revenues of just over £169,000 so far, after Apple’s 30% cut. The revenues are being shared between Realmac, software studio Impending and co-creator Milen Dzhumerov, as Clear was a collaborative project.

Clear is another example of the App Store’s uniqueness as a platform for independent developers. A simple idea such as a todo list application for iPhone, coupled with a great UI and the right marketing strategy can be a sustainable business model for smaller development shops and individuals. It’s also another example of how buzz and social networks such as Twitter can build an incredible amount of hype around software these days (just take a look at the visualizations on Clear’s Vimeo teaser).

Make sure to check out our review of Clear if you missed it, and our interview with developer Phill Ryu.

We didn’t want to give up on using Messages for Mac, and it was probably going to be a hard task to change our messaging behaviours to limit the number of messages sent, but it was clear this week that we had to do something.

Fortunately, we think we have found a solution. In iOS, Apple includes the ability to change the text tone and ringtone on a per-contact basis. What we did for everyone in the MacStories team, was to change the text tone to “None”. You can do this by going into the Contacts app, selecting a contact and tapping the ‘Edit’ button and scrolling to “text tone”.

This now means regardless of whether your phone is on Silent or not, you will not get any noise or vibration to alert you to the new message. There are two downsides to this ‘workaround’: the first is that you will still get the notification bar flipping down from the top of your screen. The second problem, which could be a deal breaker for some, is that any messages from that person will not cause a vibration or text tone — important to remember if they are a participant in a few of your group message threads.

There should be another way…

Whilst the ability to change the text tone (and ringtone) on a per-contact basis is really cool (and can be used for a number of other purposes), perhaps there should be another way to control message notifications differently — especially now that iMessage is bundled in iChat, and may lead to an increased number of messages sent to iOS devices. Specifically I’m talking about muting specific message conversations. This would allow me to mute the message thread that has all of the MacStories members, but still receive notifications from Federico, in case he urgently wanted me to cover something.

Apple could easily implement the option inside the Messages app, simply displaying a mute icon next to each message thread when in the ‘Edit’ mode. Just like changing the text tone on a per-contact basis, this power-user option wouldn’t make the UI messy, because it would only appear in the ‘Edit’ screen. That way, users could choose between completely muting on a per-contact basis or on a per-message thread basis — all whilst still receiving notifications for your other messages.

Rumors of Office for the iPad flared up again this week after The Daily posted an alleged photo of it, after apparently getting some hands on with a near-complete build. Some of you may recall me tweeting that day, what I thought was a crazy thought: Apple inviting Microsoft on stage next month at the iPad 3 keynote to demo Office for iPad. Apparently it wasn’t as crazy as I originally thought, because others are thinking it might just happen.

Office for the iPad makes total sense, though. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple did give Microsoft some stage time to unveil it at the new-iPad event in a few weeks.

Those are the words of Dan Frommer of SplatF, someone who (in my mind) has always made strong, rational cases for his arguments, never sensationalising or using hyperbole for the sake of it. In an article published a few hours ago, he lays out why “iPad + Office + Apple + Microsoft” actually makes sense. In it he lists out all the big arguments for such a Microsoft appearance at Apple’s iPad 3 keynote.

This isn’t like when Microsoft had to scratch and think before making Office for the Mac in the ’90s, when it would be lucky to sell a couple million copies per year. The iPad is way different: It should easily pass 50 million unit sales this year alone, and that’s potentially tens of millions of Office buyers for Microsoft. (Office, by the way, represented significantly more of Microsoft’s sales and profits last quarter than Windows.)

I strongly encourage you to read the full list of arguments in his article, I don’t think anyone could have laid out the argument for such a proposition any stronger than Dan did. On the flip side though, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber doesn’t think it’ll happen.

But what would be in it for Apple to offer such a spot to Microsoft? You can argue that the iPad with Office available is an even more attractive platform/device than the iPad as it stands today, sans Office. But why share the spotlight with Microsoft? Apple doesn’t need to.

Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!

Mac Hardware & Amazon Deals

• New! New Apple Mac Mini: $530
• New! Refurbished OtterBox Defender Series Case and Holster for Apple iPhone 4S: $49.95 -> $14.99
• New! Refurb Apple iPod nano 8GB MP3 Player for $99 + free shipping, 16GB for $119
• New! Refurbished Apple TV Media Receiver: $85 + free shipping
• New! Apple MacBook Pro Core i7 Quad 2.2GHz 15″ SSD Laptop: $2,447
• New! MacBook Pro Core i7 Dual 2.7GHz 13″ Laptop: $1,200 + free shipping
• Duplexing Brother Laser Printer: $69.99

_________________________________________

Mac Software

• New! FotoMagico: $29.99 -> $14.99
• New! Ruby on Rails 3: Your complete video guide: $129 -> $49
• Tower (Git Client for Mac): $59.99 -> $44.25
• GoMedia Arsenal Complete Vector Set 12: Free with tweet
• The Envato Web Designer Pro Bundle: $500 -> $20
• New! Build iOS Apps from Scratch: $497 -> $99
• PhotoStyler And LightFrame: $39.90 -> $19.99

_________________________________________

iBookstore, Audio and Video

• New! Destiny: A Fairy Tale [Kindle Edition]: $2.99 -> Free
• Alfred Hitchcock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Creative Mind: Free
• Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Movies, eBooks and Audio Books: Free
• Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell: Free
• The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online: Free
• Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series: Free

_________________________________________

Mac App Store

• New! Cut the Rope (Games): $4.99
• New! Appinator (Utilities): $3.99
• New! TinyGrab (Utilities): Free
• New! TICKE-TACK (Lifestyle): $.99
• New! Thumbtack, a Minimal Pinboard Menu Bar App (Utilities): $1.99
• Salt (Productivity): $19.99 -> $4.99
• Silkscreen (Graphics & Design): $11.99 -> $7.99
• Finch (Productivity): $8.99 -> $4.99

_________________________________________

iPhone Apps

• New! Buzz: 99¢ (review)
• New! Monkey Island Tales 4 (Games): $4.99 -> $2.99
• New! Monkey Island Tales 3 (Games): $4.99 -> $2.99
• New! Monkey Island Tales 2 (Games): $4.99 -> $2.99
• New! Monkey Island Tales 1 (Games): $4.99 -> Free
• New! Pocket Warriors (Games): $.99 -> Free
• Whacky Escape! (Games): $1.99 -> Free
• Bit-1 (Games): $1.99 -> $.99
• WeatherSnitch™ 2 (Weather): $1.99 -> $.99 (review)
• Launch Center – Tap. Tap. Go! (Productivity): $1.99 -> $.99
• Terminology Ph (Reference): $1.99 -> $.99

_________________________________________

iPad Apps

• New! Monkey Island Tales 5 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99
• New! Monkey Island Tales 4 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99
• New! Monkey Island Tales 3 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99
• New! Monkey Island Tales 2 HD (Games): $6.99 -> $2.99
• procreate (Entertainment): $4.99 -> $.99
• Whacky Escape! HD (Games): $1.99 -> Free

_________________________________________

Universal Apps

• New! Wind-up Knight (Games): $1.99 -> Free
• New! Nostalgio (Lifestyle): $2.99 -> Free
• New! Tiny Defense (Games): $2.99 -> $.99
• SAMURAI BLOODSHOW (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• Gangstar Rio: City of Saints (Games): $6.99 -> $.99
• Combat Arms: Zombies (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• Write 2 – The Best Note Taking & Writing App with Dropbox Sync & Printing Support (Productivity): $2.99 -> $1.99

For the past two weeks, I’ve been testing Buzz, the latest production by iOS design and development firm Savvy Apps by Ken Yarmosh. Similarly to Agenda, also by Savvy Apps, Buzz comes with its own clean, custom UI focused on presenting text against a light background that contributes to increasing readability and finding things in seconds. Whilst I believe Agenda benefits more from this design aesthetic because of how it handles information density (a calendar app can get pretty busy), the same focus on clarity and simplicity works equally well for Buzz, which is a quick dialer/contact management app that emulates many of Apple’s Phone functionalities in a completely new interface.

Think of Buzz as a minimalist take on Apple’s Phone app, aimed at enhancing a few important functionalities, leaving out many others that are (at least in my workflow) rarely used. Whilst Phone.app obviously offers control over recently missed phone calls, the voicemail, and your system favorites, Buzz takes the “quick shortcut” aspect of apps like Launch Center and Matt Gemmell’s Favorites, combines it with group management and native integration with the Address Book, and comes up with a rather unique implementation that allows for a very lightweight usage, or deeper full-blown contact interaction. I believe many out there will find it hard to completely give up on the native Phone app — especially for the Recents view — but I found Buzz to be enough for me and, if anything, a better solution for my daily Address Book needs.

Buzz is focused on groups. From a Facebook-like panel on the left, you can create as many groups as you want (such as “Friends”, “Family”, or “Work”) and assign contacts to them. Switching between groups is easy, as you just have to open the panel again and tap. Each group can have multiple pages of contacts, and each shortcut in the group’s grid view can be assigned a default action — be it call, message, or email. From the group’s management window, accessible by hitting the Groups icon in the upper right corner, you can reorder contacts, and organize pages if a group has more than four shortcuts. While the grid interface can be very useful for less numerous groups, if you’ll find yourself having, say, 7 people within a group, you might want to swipe right, and access a more straightforward list view that works better with groups of 5+ people. In my usage, however, I’ve found the grid interface to be a godsend in interacting with those few contacts I talk with on a daily basis, as it provides a fantastic way to have on a single screen separate options for one-tap email, iMessage, or call.

Configurable in the app’s settings, one-tap actions leverage iOS’ integrated message, email, and Phone.app redirecting to allow the app to jump straight to a phone or FaceTime call after tap, or load up an embedded email and message view for one or multiple contacts at once. This is nice, because it means I can use Buzz as simple interface for the Phone app, which will still handle calls, or as a way to initiate group messages without having to switch back and forth between apps through the multitasking tray. The “confirm calls” option in the settings will even allow you to automatically be brought back to Buzz after a phone call ends.

Aside from one-tap calls and messages (which I admittedly use more than email), I like how Buzz lets me configure default messages and other available actions exclusively through taps. A tap & hold on a contact, in fact, will trigger Agenda-like “status taps” to send frequently used phrases such as “on my way home” without having to rely on iOS’ own expansion method for snippets; a double-tap on a contact (in the grid view) will open an overlay with shortcuts to all available actions — a good idea if you fire up Buzz to, say, send an email, but then realize a text would be more appropriate. It’s also a neat way to store a single entry for a regular phone call, and access FaceTime through double-tap.

The group actions of Buzz are something I found myself using on a daily basis. By tapping on the lower section of a group’s page, in fact, you get shortcuts for group messaging and emailing that will automatically use all the email addresses / phone numbers stored in your Address Book to send emails or texts to multiple recipients at once. This is particularly handy for teams, groups of friends, or family members. It’s been a huge time saver for me, as I would have to manually re-insert each contact every time I want to start a new group message or email.

Buzz offers two more standard Address Book features that should help you consider this over Apple’s Phone app — access to all your contacts, and a dialer. I don’t use these much, but I like how the dialer allows for dialing by name or number.

I mentioned that Buzz has replaced Apple’s Phone and Messages app in my dock (and Home screen), so here’s a list of the things I’m doing with it:

• Buzz allows me to quickly call or text my girlfriend.
• Double-taps are handy if I want to initiate a FaceTime call, rather than a normal call.
• I use Buzz to send group messages to the MacStories team, or sub-groups of writers within the team (please note phone numbers are used to send texts, even iMessages, per Apple’s limitation).
• Buzz allows me to quickly fire off an email to the whole MacStories team without picking each address manually.
• Groups allow me to organize contacts without having to deal with group management in Apple’s Address Book app, which is awful (especially on the Mac).
• For those times when I’m given a phone number to call immediately, I can use the app’s dialer.

Like I said, I’m sure some people out there are so dependent on Apple’s Phone.app that they won’t be able to change their workflow overnight, but since I decided to gave Buzz a fair chance in my dock I incredibly benefitted from having all my most-accessed contacts in a single “hub” that happens to be a nicely designed application with great shortcuts and ideas.

Buzz is only $0.99 on the App Store.

Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet confirmed Tuesday that “we purchased the land and it’s for a data center,” but could not speak to details beyond that, other than to say it will be a “green” facility.

Rumors of Apple scouting out land in Prineville for another large data center emerged in December last year when it was reported that Apple was in discussions over purchasing the land. The land Apple purchased is nearby Facebook’s data center in Prinneville, which is pictured above.

[KTVZ.com via MacRumors]

Storify is an interesting service. Per se, Storify isn’t strictly focused on allowing you to create original content (images, text, or a combination of both) that you can share with your friends; rather, Storify is a curation tool that, among other services, leverages Twitter and the openness of the web to let you create “social stories” based off elements shared by people you follow, or just about anyone else on the Internet. Storify wants to tell stories by “curating social media”. I have covered the topic of curation — especially Twitter curation — several times on MacStories, and I recently mentioned Storify in my review of Tweet Library, an iOS app by Manton Reece that enables you to create collections of tweets for future reference. As I detailed in the article, Storify integration in Tweet Library means you can easily collect tweets from a variety of sources (people you follow, Twitter lists, favorite tweets — Tweet Library does a great job at breaking up Twitter sections in neatly organized “sources” panels) and publish them online as a bundle on Storify. The first official Storify iPad app, however, brings the full feature set of Storify (or at least the majority of its online functionalities) to the tablet, mirroring the web counterpart available at storify.com to allow you to create visually rich social stories that go beyond collecting data from Twitter.

I have been able to test Storify for iPad in the past weeks, using it to create and edit stories that I’ve embedded on MacStories such as this one, or this one. When I first talked to Storify CEO Xavier Damman about their upcoming iPad client, I wondered how well the team had managed to port the desktop user interface and experience of Storify, which is largely based on drag & drop, to the iPad. Furthermore, the Storify web app benefits from the desktop nature of the web browser, which makes it easy to switch between dozens of tabs, collect links, snippets of text, and images, or simply open links from other applications without having to worry about “switching back” using a multitasking tray, such as the one we have on iOS. These are all problems a native iPad app should somehow address, I thought, as it’s not just as easy and quick to switch between the browser and multiple sources on an iPad, and I wouldn’t want the Storify creation process to become slow or, worse, cumbersome. It turns out, the Storify team solved the problem with converting mouse interaction to multitouch, and quite beautifully.

Storify for iPad is a clever mix of drag & drop, touch selections, panels, and a sidebar listing all your available sources and sections. Think of it as a Sparrow-like sidebar, only on the right side of the screen, with panels reminiscent of Twitter for iPad’s ingenious navigation. The combination of icons in the sidebar, panels, and drag & drop support makes for a pleasant experience that should enable interesting curation workflows on the iPad.

The app’s main screen presents a horizontal list of your available stories, both published and drafts, with previews for the latest edits you’ve made. You can scroll through these stories, create new ones, edit an existing one, or delete it. Double-tapping a story will bring it in the foreground, opening the editing interface built exclusively for the iPad client, albeit inspired by Storify’s core concepts (and features) on the web.

Storify works only in landscape mode, which is probably a good choice considering you’ll have to keep your eyes on lots of content that will fill a large portion of the screen. On the right, a sidebar collects your available options for curation: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, and Browser. Now, the web app at Storify.com supports more input sources (such as RSS and Disqus) that I wasn’t able to find in the iPad version, and there doesn’t seem to be access to Storify’s own StoryPad functionality (a virtual scratchpad for content saved from the web with the service’s bookmarklet or Chrome extension) in this first release. It would be great to see Storify bringing the iPad app up to speed with the web’s offerings for a next update, but StoryPad and RSS aren’t features I use much on storify.com, so I didn’t really miss them. Because of its iOS nature, however, the iPad app does have some exclusive perks over its web brethren: for instance, iOS 5 Twitter integration allows Storif to compose tweets directly, send them off to Twitter, and fetch them using the app’s built-in timeline support. Twitter plays indeed a big role in Storify: it likely is the service you’ll use more to “curate social media”, and it’s the first tab you can check out at the top of the sidebar.

Tapping on the Twitter icon reveals more options: you can display your own tweets, load your favorites, open your Twitter timeline (people you follow), and search. Search allows you to look for all tweets, just images, or nearby tweets. Storify for iPad’s fundamental UI approach is all laid out in the Twitter implementation: as you tap on a source, a panel will slide out from the right side, with the main content area on the left shrinking to just a vertical list of the media you are embedding in your story. Say you want to drag a tweet onto your story — you can just tap on it, and drag it to the left. As you drag an item over to the story, the app will display a separator to indicate where it’s possible to drop it — this is fairly similar to how storify.com handles drag & drop. Once dropped, the tweet will be reformatted using Storify’s clean embedded view that shows the original text, source, date, and author. This is consistent across all the services supported by Storify, so no matter if you’re embedding an Instagram image or a tweet, you’ll always get proper attribution and profile pictures whenever possible.

Back to tweets: I don’t like how the panel doesn’t display a scrollbar to tell you just how much you have left to scroll, but at least the app seems to handle the “load more tweets” action better than many dedicated iPad Twitter clients. In the Twitter tab, you can get regular tweets as well as photo uploads, and “curate them” into a collection; you can also follow an http:// link and go directly to the source of an article. To do this, the app will open an additional layer on top of the panel, which behaves exactly like the Browser icon at the end of the sidebar. That is, the browser view is a layer above the main panel, and swiping it away or tapping the controller handle at the bottom will simply dismiss the web view, not the panel itself. This may be a little counterintuitive at first as you’re getting used to the whole metaphor or “swiping the panel away”, but it makes sense if you think of the Browser UI as an extra layer atop of Storify’s main sources. I like how the Browser has a handy “Add to story” shortcut that takes care of embedding a link (with a rich preview) in the story for you. I also like how you can load any user’s Twitter content simply by searching for its username.

Once you get accustomed to interacting with the right panel, using Storify for iPad is relatively simple, and even easier than the desktop web app. You can login with Facebook (using single sign-on with the Facebook app) and load your photos; you can login with Instagram and see all your pictures, feed, or search for someone specific; you can check on your YouTube account, Flickr, or manually enter a URL in the browser and forward webpages straight to your social story.

Unlike the panel, the content area of Storify (where you’ll be assembling your social stories) is fairly average stuff for experienced iOS users. At the top, you’ll be able to enter a title or subtitle for your story; items curated from the web and inserted below can be reordered using iOS’ standard controller to move an item up or down in a list. You can tap & hold items to delete them, and tap anywhere to add some text. And here’s my biggest gripe with Storify for iPad (and one that’s only partially imputable to the developers): because iOS has no standard rich text API, you won’t be able to format your text as you would do on storify.com — with a standard WYSIWYG editor — and the Storify team decided not to include its own rich text editing interface like, say, Evernote did. This means you’ll always end up with non-formatted text when curating from the iPad — here’s to hoping both Storify and Apple are already working on this. iOS needs rich text available to developers.

Upon completing a story, Storify allows you to publish it online (otherwise it’ll just be saved in the Drafts, which are backed up online as well) and tweet out the results of your curation efforts. I never notify the Twitter users that end up in a collection of mine using Storify’s sharing menu, but I do like how the developers put a shortcut to copy a collection’s URL in there.

I have never agreed with the assumption that the iPad is only good as a consumption device that you can’t use to get any “real” work done. As the past two years have showed, the great selection of third-party apps available for the device has allowed many different people to start thinking of the iPad as a primary device, a computer replacement that’s both good at letting you read, watch, and listen, as well as write, sketch, and take notes. Starting today, with Storify for iPad you can curate and create social stories.

As I said above, Storify for iPad is another fantastic example of how the iPad can change existing applications for the better thanks to new intuitive interaction methods and delightful interfaces that are ultimately fun to use. Storify for iPad isn’t perfect and lacks some of the features available on storify.com, but it’s a great first release that shows a promising future for portable curation of social media and the web.

If you’re a Storify user, the iPad app is a must-have, and it’s free on the App Store.

With a notice posted on the Mac Dev Center’s App Sandboxing webpage, Apple has informed developers that the sandboxing deadline, previously delayed to March 1, has been extended to June 1.

Starting June 1, all apps submitted to the Mac App Store must implement sandboxing. Take advantage of new sandboxing entitlements available in OS X 10.7.3 and new APIs in Xcode 4.3.

We have extended the deadline for sandboxing your apps on the Mac App Store from March 1st to June 1st to provide you with enough time to take advantage of new sandboxing entitlements available in OS X 10.7.3 and new APIs in Xcode 4.3.

Starting June 1, if you have an existing app on the Mac App Store that is not sandboxed, you may still submit bug fix updates without sandboxing your app. In addition, if you have technical issues that prevent you from sandboxing your app by June 1, let us know.

Sandboxing is a new technology in OS X Lion that limits the functionalities of Mac App Store applications to a list of “entitlements” that cover various areas of the operating system an app can access, such as networking, printing, or a user’s files. A sandboxed application would be unable to harm the system outside of its operational scope (managed by the entitlements), and this has caused some concerns as apps would lose access to the Mac’s entire filesystem, which is required by some functionalities of certain applications that aren’t necessary malicious or “compromised”. Similarly, inter-app communication would be a technical issue with sandboxing, as apps like TextExpander, Keyboard Maestro and CoverSutra — utilities that perform actions in the background without asking for user’s interaction in some cases (user-initiated actions can override the sandbox) — couldn’t get past the sandboxing requirement for the Mac App Store.

Since the release of Lion last summer, Apple has been touting the advantages of sandboxing as a way to increase security on OS X, whilst third-party developers began asking for more clarity from Apple in regards to the list of entitlements made available to them. For instance, sandboxing has been heavily criticized in the past months as it would theoretically prevent apps that rely on system-level technologies such as AppleScript from working, as they would require an entitlement that Apple isn’t providing. Similarly, apps that would require access to an entire user’s filesystem would be problematic with sandboxing fully enforced (think backup utilities such as SuperDuper).

Sandboxing recently became a topic of discussion again as Apple announced the next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, featuring a new security measure called Gatekeeper, while claiming that sandboxing would still be enforced starting March 1. With Gatekeeper and Sandboxing seemingly aimed at fixing different problems with OS X security, a number of third-party developers asked Apple (again) to reconsider the list of entitlements for the sandbox and figure out a way to work with longtime Mac developers to keep their apps in the Mac App Store.

Notably, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software wrote:

Apple should embrace the utility of sandboxing by shifting their focus away from sandboxing only Mac App Store titles, to a strategy that would sandbox virtually every Mac app, inside the store or out. Given the current limitations of sandboxing, a significant number of developers will not adopt the technology, so its usefulness to users and to the security of the platform will be diminished. Apple can turn that around so that sandboxing is a worthy counterpart to Gatekeeper, and a technology that any developer in his or her right mind would feel foolish not to incorporate.

To increase adoption, Apple should expand the current list of entitlements until it covers every reasonable behavior that users expect from Mac apps.

As a result of the uncertainty surrounding the sandboxing deadline prior to today’s announcement, some developers have decided to stop supporting the Mac App Store, keeping their applications available for purchase on their website — something that Mountain Lion will continue to support thanks to Gatekeeper. A notable example is Riverfold’s Manton Reece, who wrote a blog post explaining the reasons behind his decision to remove Clipstart from the Mac App Store:

Clipstart also falls into the same “needs to access the whole file system” category as Transmit. It’s not just one feature; the whole app is based on the fact that it can point to video files anywhere on the system, or manage your video library in a central location on any hard drive. These are things that are difficult to do in the sandbox, but even worse, I don’t see a clear path forward for existing customers to move into such a restrictive environment.

Maybe I could file bugs with Apple for exemptions, and reduce the functionality of my app to fit within the limits of the sandbox, but I’ve made the decision that it is just not worth it. I would much rather spend 100% of the time I have for Clipstart on new features only, not playing catch-up with Apple.

Following today’s notice sent to developers, Reece told us: “The delay is great news for developers who have been scrambling to meet the deadline. With brand new sandboxing APIs in 10.7.3, it just wasn’t realistic to expect developers to be ready. And for some apps, there are still areas where the current entitlements fall short.” As for Clipstart, Reece says he’s still planning to remove his app from Apple’s storefront: “I still expect to transition away from the Mac App Store. These delays show that Apple is listening, but also that sandboxing isn’t a stable environment yet. I want to focus my time on adding new features for users instead.”

With Apple extending the Sandboxing deadline, the company will hopefully have time to come up with a broader selection of entitlements developers can use in their apps. As a side note, Apple is expected to hold its annual WWDC in June, and Mountain Lion is set to become available this summer on the Mac App Store. Apple seems to be very flexible with the new June 1 deadline, too, promising developers that they will be able to submit bug fixes without implementing sandboxing, and asking them to “get in touch” if technical issues are preventing them from implementing the new technology.

Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!

Mac Hardware & Amazon Deals

• New! Duplexing Brother Laser Printer: $69.99
• iLive 3.1-Channel 37″ Bar Speaker with iPod Dock: $60 + free shipping
• Refurb Griffin PowerDuo Reserve Charger for iPhone: $64.99 -> $10
• Used Apple iMac Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz 24″ Desktop: $570
• Refurbished Apple USB Power Adapter, Cable for iPhone: $7 + $2 shipping
• Save 15% on ALL iPhone & iPad Accessories this weekend in the iMore Store

_________________________________________

Mac Software

• New! MAMP Pro: $59 -> $25
• New! Aimersoft YouTube Downloader for Mac: $29 -> $14.50
• New! Tower (Git Client for Mac): $59.99 -> $44.25
• New! GoMedia Arsenal Complete Vector Set 12: Free with tweet
• New! The Envato Web Designer Pro Bundle: $500 -> $20
• New! Build iOS Apps from Scratch: $497 -> $99
• PhotoStyler And LightFrame: $39.90 -> $19.99
• Grand Theft Auto Trilogy for Mac: $14 + free shipping
• JustProto: A Professional Wireframing Tool: $171 -> $81
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 for Mac: $70 + free shipping

_________________________________________

iBookstore, Audio and Video

• Alfred Hitchcock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Creative Mind: Free
• Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Movies, eBooks and Audio Books: Free
• Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell: Free
• The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online: Free
• Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series: Free

_________________________________________

Mac App Store

• New! Salt (Productivity): $19.99 -> $4.99
• New! Silkscreen (Graphics & Design): $11.99 -> $7.99
• New! Finch (Productivity): $8.99 -> $4.99
• Sprout (Tools): $34.99 -> $19.99
• Songwriter’s Pad™ (Music): $29.99 -> $14.99
• Compartments (Productivity): $14.99 -> $9.99
• Chronicle (Finance): $14.99 -> $9.99

_________________________________________

iPhone Apps

• New! Whacky Escape! (Games): $1.99 -> Free
• New! Bit-1 (Games): $1.99 -> $.99
• WeatherSnitch™ 2 (Weather): $1.99 -> $.99 (review)
• Launch Center – Tap. Tap. Go! (Productivity): $1.99 -> $.99
• Terminology Ph (Reference): $1.99 -> $.99
• Namerick – Remember Names (Utilities): $1.99 -> Free
• Sentinel 2: Earth Defense (Game): $.99 -> Free
• Pocket Lists (Productivity): $1.99 -> Free

_________________________________________

iPad Apps

• New! procreate (Entertainment): $4.99 -> $.99
• New! Whacky Escape! HD (Games): $1.99 -> Free
• MadPad HD – Remix Your Life (Music): $2.99 -> Free
• Converter Touch HD ~ Fastest Unit Converter (Utilities): $.99 -> Free
• Robokill 2: Leviathan Five (Games): $.99 -> Free

_________________________________________

Universal Apps

• New! SAMURAI BLOODSHOW (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• New! Gangstar Rio: City of Saints (Games): $6.99 -> $.99
• New! Combat Arms: Zombies (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• New! Write 2 – The Best Note Taking & Writing App with Dropbox Sync & Printing Support (Productivity): $2.99 -> $1.99
• Beat Hazard Ultra: $1.99 -> 99¢
• Sentinel 3: Homeworld (Games): $2.99 -> Free
• Awesome Calendar(+ToDos, Notes, sync with Google Calendar) (Productivity): $2.99 -> $1.99
• Zombie Gunship (Games): $.99 -> Free
• Judge Dredd vs Zombies (Games): $1.99 -> Free

We’ve had incredible feedback from our users, telling us that Things Cloud is proving to be both fast and stable. Some of our users have adopted the beta entirely and created exceptionally large databases. In the coming weeks we are going to work out some kinks and performance bottlenecks related to such large databases. This is an important final step towards enabling the import of existing data. Once the import feature is ready, we’ll post another update.

Whilst we’ll leave our thoughts for a review once the software leaves beta, it’s important to note that Cultured Code has always claimed its syncing solution would require more work (thus additional time to be implemented) because of a different technology being used to effortlessly push tasks and data across devices. For what it’s worth, I have been able to test Things Cloud, and its sync process was indeed pretty fast both on WiFi and 3G. I’ll save further considerations and tests for a proper review.

To enable Things Cloud, you can head over Cultured Code’s website and download the Mac beta. Cloud syncing can also be enabled by downloading the public version of Things for iOS, following the instructions provided on Cultured Code’s website.

Today Edovia is releasing a series of major updates to Screens for iOS and Mac, as well as ScreensConnect, which is now available at screensconnect.com to create a unique Screens ID for your Mac or Windows machine. I have been able to test the new Screens suite prior to its App Store release, and it’s still my favorite utility to quickly access my remote Mac mini, iMac, or MacBooks (Air and Pro) on my local office network. With its touch-driven UI, ease of use, and wide availability across devices (Mac, iPhone, and iPad for the Screens client; Windows and OS X for the desktop ScreensConnect utility), Screens is one of the most accessible VNC apps available on the App Store.

Since its release, I’ve always liked two things about Screens: touch controls and zero configuration. Once you download Screens, you’ll be able to search for computers that are advertising their screen sharing capabilities on a local network (on a Mac, make sure Screen Sharing is active under System Preferences -> Sharing), or add a machine that’s been configured to be reached using ScreensConnect. In the “Nearby & remote computers” window (a popover on the Mac), you’ll see computers from your local network, as well as those with an antenna icon next to them, indicating that they accept remote connections through ScreensConnect. The beauty of ScreensConnect, which is a free utility, is that it should make your computer accessible from outside your local network with literally no configuration, as the software takes care of (most) router settings and establishes a secure connection between a remote computer and Screens. As explained from the app’s Help section:

We could bore you with technical mumbo-jumbo but in a nutshell, Screens Connect monitors network changes, configures your router and sends this information on our server through a SSL encrypted connection so that Screens knows were your computer is and connect to it.

A note on ScreensConnect: whilst most modern routers support UPnP and NAT-PMP (required by Screens’ remote connection), some do not, so make sure you have a compatible model before considering Edovia’s Screens for its ScreensConnect functionality alone. I, for one, got ScreensConnect working just fine with my Fastweb connection in Italy (through Apple’s AirPort Extreme), as well as Telecom’s Alice (through an AirPort Express). Performance, as usual, depends on your Internet connection, so don’t expect ScreensConnect to magically improve speeds — there’s only so much smart connection scaling (from millions of colors to hundreds) can do.

Screens 2.0 comes with a new UI. Gone is the wooden texture of the previous versions, leaving room for a darker, more elegant background that will surely make your computer’s desktops pop. Whilst the change in visual presentation is welcome, much more functional is iCloud integration in version 2.0, which now allows you to keep your stored screens in sync across devices — and it’s just not “sync”, I was able to create a new screen on the Mac app, wait a few seconds, and see it coming up automatically on the iPhone and iPad, which were running Screens 2.0. Support for iCloud is fairly impressive and a godsend, because, honestly, adding the same screens over and over on multiple devices wasn’t really a great experience.

Alongside bug fixes, improved security and performances, and better support for wake-on-lan, Screens 2.0 comes with some additional new features. When controlling a computer, for example, Screens now displays a unified bottom toolbar that collects a series of shortcuts — including two types of keyboards, and an action button to grab a screenshot of the remote desktop (a new feature), disconnect, and open the Settings. On the iPad, this toolbar can be configured to become a swipe gesture area whilst in landscape mode, allowing you to associate a variety of commands to left or right swipes. The same app/Mac/window shortcuts can be configured with three and four finger gestures to perform directly on screen, and the selection here is very rich — for instance, you’ll be able to set up shortcuts to send the contents of your clipboard, or launch Mission Control.

Also new in Screens 2.0: you can reorganize screens in grid mode on the iPad, you can send the remote screen to an Apple TV using AirPlay Mirroring, and SSH Keys are now supported for SSH Tunneling. On the Mac, you won’t obviously get the iOS version’s custom keyboards and gesture support, but Screens 2.0 will support iCloud and auto-resume for ongoing connections.

With a new UI, better handling of remote connections, gestures, iCloud support, and a very intuitive touch-based VNC control system, Screens 2.0 is a fantastic update. ScreensConnect works as advertised, the iPad app benefits from the screen real-estate, and, overall, the app is very easy to use and configure. Screens, however, doesn’t come cheap, as the iOS app (universal) and Mac app will set you back $50 when combined. If you’re willing to pay for quality software and believe Screens’ feature set is right for you (make sure your router can work with ScreensConnect!), I’d personally recommend starting with Screens 2.0 for iOS today.

Hickey claims to have had a brief hands-on with a working prototype of the Office Suite app and notes that whilst the UI is similar to OneNote for iPad, it has hints of Metro. He notes that Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be created and edited either locally on the iPad or online (presumably using Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service).

According to his sources, OneNote will also receive an update soon to reflect the Metro design. Those same sources also noted that no Android version was in the works.

[The Daily via The Next Web]

Jump the break to view all updates to this story.

Update: In a statement released to The New York Times, Microsoft denies the rumors of an iPad version of Office coming soon.

Updated #2: As noted by The Next Web, The Daily’s Peter Ha has responded to Microsoft’s accusations of a “fake” image and inaccurate reports by pointing out that the app was demoed on an iPad by a Microsoft person. He also links to an image showing the Office icon on a 3G iPad.

Update #3: With a tweet from their official account, Microsoft is now saying all this info will be “clear” in the coming weeks.

Great respect for The Daily but regrettably someone is giving them bad info, and that’ll be clear in the “coming weeks.”

— Microsoft News (@MSFTnews) February 21, 2012

Unlike China Unicom (the second largest carrier after China Mobile), the smaller China Telecom uses the CDMA technology. Though because the iPhone 4S has support for both CDMA and GSM networks, China Telecom will be selling the same hardware that customers on China Unicom and customers elsewhere across the world purchase.

iPhone has been available on China Unicom which has 37 million 3G users. New distribution through China Telecom adds 33 million 3G subs.

— Horace Dediu (@asymco) February 21, 2012

[via The Verge]

With the (rumored) next-generation iPad approaching its (rumored) announcement on March 7th, I thought it would be interesting to collect some of the predictions we’ve made thus far based on the rumors and oft-quoted “inside reports” we have heard until today.

Unlike most Apple product launches, like, say, the iPhone 4S in October, there seems to be a certain degree of certainty in what the device is going to look like and the hardware changes it’ll feature when compared to the existing iPad. Thanks to various parts that have surfaced from China, several mentions by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, and a general assumption that “it’s about time”, it appears the iPad 3 is going to feature a high-resolution, 2048 x 1536 Retina Display. Just like the jump from iPhone 3G-era displays to the iPhone 4, a Retina iPad (which John Gruber has been predicting since 2011) would allow for crisper graphics on screen and a better reading experience thanks to the increased number of pixels per inch.

Reported in just about any recent rumor on the iPad 3, the Retina Display has become the marquee addition those who follow Apple rumors expect to see in the next-gen device. As we’ve seen with our previous coverage, however, there are other hardware changes that Apple could bring to the iPad 3, namely better cameras, faster processor, and LTE connectivity.

In the past months, I have seen reactions from people who have followed the iPad 3 rumors typically split in two categories:

Theory #1: iPad 3 has Retina Display, new cameras, LTE, new A6 processor.

Theory #2: iPad 3 has Retina Display, slightly improved cameras, faster A5 processor.

The two theories imply that the new iPad is going to be a major revision with dramatically faster CPU and graphics to power the Retina Display plus LTE connectivity, or a speed-bump of the existing iPad with the addition of a Retina Display, but no LTE, dramatically faster processor, or iPhone-class cameras. Both are based on a series of rumors, patterns, and facts to be considered.

First off, the CPU. Whilst a recent photo showed an alleged iPad 3 logic board carrying an Apple-branded “A5X” processor, all rumors to date have pointed to an all-new, quad-core “A6″ processor as the foundation for the iPad 3′s Retina Display and sharper graphics. It’s not clear whether or not the authenticity of the photo could confirm a minor update to the existing A5 processor that would follow the naming convention used by the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4S (put simply, a suffix), but some have already speculated the X could be a clever way of indicating the Retina nature of the device’s display — specifically, developers have to use images with a “@2x” suffix when developing for the Retina Display (example). If that sounds like a bit of a stretch, others have also been quick to point out that A5X could simply be a placeholder name in Apple’s production line — that is, if the photo is to be believed at all.

Revert To Saved had a nice explanation of the Retina iPad rumors:

In the context of the iPhone and iPod touch, a Retina display means a display where it is—for people with standard eyesight—more or less impossible to resolve single pixels on the screen. Instead of jagged text and graphics, the 326ppi screen provides print-like imagery. By contrast, the current iPad is 132ppi—better than most computer displays, but lacking when directly compared to current iPhones and iPods. With the next iPad, the hope is that Apple would up the resolution to 2048-by-1536, and while this wouldn’t have the same pin-sharp qualities as the iPhone and iPod, it would nonetheless be tricky to resolve individual pixels unless holding the iPad closer than is sensible and comfortable. So no playing Sniff the Angry Birds for you, if you want to keep that illusion of smoothness in the graphics.

The problem that is often mentioned when it comes to iPad 3 and Retina Display is that a quad-core CPU would require significantly more power, thus having an impact on battery life and becoming an issue for Apple, as the available space inside an iPad’s case is limited and can only fit three battery packs (see image below, from Apple’s iPad 2 video). On the other hand, however, a screen with four times the available pixels with a double resolution (read our previous Retina Display for iPad analysis here) would require more processing power and RAM, and thus a high-performance mobile CPU. Both concerns are legitimate: Apple hasn’t got much room to tweak the internals of the iPad, and when you add enhanced graphic processing to the mix you risk ending up with a tablet that’s got sharper images, but decreased battery life; similarly, Apple doesn’t like its new gadgets to run poorly, so it’s almost a given that if they’ve found a way to bring a Retina Display to the tablet, they’ve also got the proper, high-performance tech to run it.

Quad-core or not, there are a few things we know for sure: Apple cares about battery life, and miniaturization is a priority at Apple’s hardware labs. As Jobs mentioned at the iPad 2 introduction last year, the thinner form factor didn’t mean Apple had to give up on the original iPad’s “legendary” battery life — a feat that was possible thanks to Apple relying on its own “battery chemistry” (source) and on making things smaller to leave room for batteries. Combined, battery technology and miniaturization have allowed Apple to increasingly shrink the size of its mobile devices and laptops over the years, whilst keeping battery life and performances intact or superior. It’s only safe to assume the same is going to happen with the iPad 3: a design that could only be negligibly thicker, same battery life, same or better performances. Keep in mind, though, that Apple likes speed bumps, even if minor.

As for the name: I believe the “A6″ we see in the rumors is simply based on Apple’s previous naming conventions for its SOC processors. For all we know, a tweaked A5 might be enough for the iPad 3, and they might not even call it A6. I would also like to point you to AnandTech’s exhaustive review of the iPad 2 with A5/A4 comparison chart.

Next is LTE. The Apple rumor mill seems to believe the company is either going to adopt LTE connectivity with the iPad 3 or save it as a big new feature of the iPhone 5 — I have already expressed my thoughts about it in a previous story. A few points to keep in mind: LTE on the iPad 3, even if limited to the United States, might be a good way to “test” the carriers, user adoption, and download speeds of iTunes content (more on this in a bit). Verizon and AT&T would certainly offer LTE packages for iPad 3 owners in the United States, and everyone else would simply keep using the device on 3G thanks to its world-mode that doesn’t force Apple to produce multiple versions. Again, there are different reasons for Apple to adopt LTE with iPad 3 or stick with 3G for now: Qualcomm has announced LTE chips with less power consumption and the iPad would be a better device to test LTE as there is more room for experimentation inside (again, in theory, as we’ve discussed above); code strings found in various versions of iOS seem to suggest Apple has code in place for possible LTE support (the same code strings pointed to quad-core CPUs). On the other hand, you could argue that it’s still too soon for LTE, and only some customers in the United States would benefit from it today.

It gets more interesting with the definition of “better” cameras on the iPad 3. Whilst a recent rumor claimed Apple could use an iPhone 4S-like 8 MP camera in the iPad 3, the company didn’t seem to care much about camera quality with the iPad 2, implementing a 1 MP camera that has been deemed “good enough” at best. Whilst anything from 3 MP above would look sufficiently good on the iPad 3′s 2048 x 1536 screen, one has to wonder whether Apple received so many request from users willing to take great photos with an iPad, rather than simply using the device for things such as video calling and augmented reality apps. Data from Flickr suggests people aren’t exactly using their iPads as a photographic tool, and Apple’s own marketing material isn’t really pushing the iPad’s capabilities as a camera. Of course, Apple may still be planning to change this with the iPad 3 and market the device as a revolutionary take on mobile photography, but evidence collected until today suggests the opposite. If anything, it would make sense for Apple to enhance the iPad’s cameras to offer better FaceTime calling — that’s why many rumor observers believe the only camera upgrade the iPad 3 will receive is a FaceTime HD camera on the line of Apple’s recent Mac refreshes.

Rather than speculating on the camera resolution that would make sense on the iPad’s Retina Display, here’s a handy image to put things in perspective:

Assuming the iPad 3 has a Retina Display, I think it would also be safe to assume Apple could bring video recording from 720p to 1080p, while improving the quality of the front-facing camera (currently VGA) — which is used mostly during FaceTime or Skype video calling sessions. As for those who are suggesting Apple should drop the cameras in the next iPad altogether, it’s important to remember that whilst they may not be used much for photographic endeavors, the iPad’s cameras have proved an invaluable tool for FaceTime, and Apple doesn’t typically like to announce they have removed something from a new product. If Apple were to follow its established pattern of slow improvements one after the other, waiting for better cameras on the next iPad seems like a good assumption. It’s just impossible to tell how “better” they will be.

The two theories I stated above are based on four different hardware features that Apple could introduce or improve with the iPad 3. Below, I’ve collected some reactions from Twitter to a question I posted earlier today.

Plus, some interesting points that have also been raised about the iPad 3:

iOS 5.1: Apple could focus the iPad 3′s announcement on things the device can do thanks to new software, rather than hardware alone. Such as Aperture.

Siri: It’s not clear whether the iPhone 4S’ voice-based assistant will find its way on the iPad someday. A recent report suggested Siri was only enabled on the iPhone 4S due to a noise-canceling technology possible thanks to the device’s A5.

Bluetooth 4.0: Apple has been updating all its devices with Bluetooth 4.0 (except the minor late 2011 revision of the MacBook Pro line), and it would only make sense to have the technology on the iPad 3 as well (especially considering it opens the door to some interesting low-energy integrations).

More RAM: Is the iPad 2′s 512 MB enough for a Retina iPad? Likely not. We’ll have to wait and see what “a lot more” means though.

AirPlay Mirroring at 1080p: Currently supports 720p, increased output would play well with the theory below…

1080p iTunes content: With an iPad 3 carrying a Retina Display, Apple could “finally” add 1080p video content to iTunes, a move that could also have the side effect of triggering an Apple TV update to enable 1080p…and improved AirPlay Mirroring for Mac and iOS devices. The speed of LTE could also mean Apple will allow downloads of higher quality content while not on WiFi.

X times faster: The iPad 2 was “nine times faster” in graphic processing than its predecessor. With the iPad being increasingly used as a gaming device, what’s the next A-series processor going to look like from a benchmark standpoint?

NFC: This one used to be front and center in the rumors leading up to the iPhone 4S announcement. Lately, we haven’t heard much about any possible NFC-related announcement. Keep in mind that NFC was wildly speculated upon in relation to mobile payments — and John Gruber hinted Apple was “working like mad on this stuff”. There were some early reports about possible iPhone-to-iPad NFC implementations, and it’d also be interesting to see Apple enter this market with companies such as Square being so successful in it, despite lacking the scale to build a worldwide payment system (which Apple could do, given their resources).

More storage: Apps and games optimized for the Retina Display usually come with more resources (image files), 1080p content could be introduced, and a possible Aperture for iOS would have iPad users keep considerably more photos on their devices. Whilst 64 GB is enough for most people, a 128 GB iPad wouldn’t be too absurd.

iPad 2 is kept around: Another theory has Apple releasing the iPad 3 in March, keeping the iPad 2 around as a still-great option for those not interest in the Retina Display. When the iPad 2 was introduced last year, Apple kept around the iPad 1 for a limited time at $399 (as fas as this theory goes, I tend to agree with something that was recently mentioned on The B&B Podcast — an iPad 2 priced at $299 would trigger the psychological point of  ”impulse buy” for many).

3

With over 15 million units sold in the last quarter alone, the iPad 2 has been a success for Apple, shaping the post-PC era thanks to its portable form factor, great performances, and outstanding selection of apps. Whether or not Apple will release a minor speed bump or a major hardware revision built around the Retina Display, we look forward to the next iPad as the device that will redefine the rules of the tablet market for the next several years.

Last week Apple revealed its new Mac operating system, Mountain Lion, due out for this summer. While not a complete overhaul, 10.8 is a polished update that adds many similar functionalities from iOS 5. Among these changes, and one of the most important pieces, is Notification Center. As the name suggests, it is basically Notification Center ported from iOS, running at a system level on Mountain Lion. Besides having the same UI elements we see on our iPads and iPhones everyday, it also has a badge mode much like Growl, our favorite open source notification system for OS X. It’d be fair to say that almost every OS X die-hard uses Growl, as it’s very customizable with function and appearance. Last year, the Growl team overhauled the app and submitted it to the Mac App Store, where it quickly became one of the most popular utilities in the Top Paid charts.

Following Apple’s announcement, some people have said Notification Center will create a problem for Growl, as Apple’s own solution could hurt Growl by replacing its functionality on OS X. Now, as far as I know, Mountain Lion’s Notification Center will only work with Mac App Store apps, so Growl could still have a place for third-party apps that are installed outside of Apple’s storefront, as allowed by Gatekeeper.

Growl doesn’t seem to think Notification Center will immediately hinder installation or usage of their app, either. In a blog post from February 17th, the developers say Growl still has room in OS X to play with. They have listed some points as to how Growl will continue to go forward:

• The developers are investigating options for integrating Growl with Notification Center.
• Growl will work whether your application is from the App Store or not, as long as it supports Growl.
• They’re still on schedule to release Growl 1.4 and 2.0.
• Growl is great for customizable notifications.
• Development of other applications will continue, such as HardwareGrowler, GrowlTunes,  and Capster as Mac App Store apps.

The Growl developers are optimistic even though they are going to have to compete with Apple. With Growl 1.4 already in beta testing (with many great improvements) and work on Growl 2.0 underway, I wouldn’t say Growl has been been “Sherlocked” by Apple’s announcement.

As a side note, developer Collect3 released Hiss today, a free app that sends all Growl notifications directly to Mountain Lion’s Notification Center. So, if you have an app that supports Growl, not Notification Center, you’re in luck. This could be the first step in both Growl and Mountain Lion’s Notification Center working together in some way (much like Notification Center hasn’t hurt the extensibility of Boxcar), albeit Connect3 was quoted on The Verge as saying that “(Hiss was) just a result of us being impatient to start seeing Notification Center become useful.”

[image via Macworld]

Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!

Mac Hardware & Amazon Deals

• New! iLive 3.1-Channel 37″ Bar Speaker with iPod Dock: $60 + free shipping
• Refurb Griffin PowerDuo Reserve Charger for iPhone: $64.99 -> $10
• Used Apple iMac Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz 24″ Desktop: $570
• Refurbished Apple USB Power Adapter, Cable for iPhone: $7 + $2 shipping
• Save 15% on ALL iPhone & iPad Accessories this weekend in the iMore Store

_________________________________________

Mac Apps

• New! xScan: $19.99 -> $9.99
• New! IPNetMonitorX: $60 -> $29.95
• PhotoStyler And LightFrame: $39.90 -> $19.99
• Grand Theft Auto Trilogy for Mac: $14 + free shipping
• JustProto: A Professional Wireframing Tool: $171 -> $81
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 for Mac: $70 + free shipping

_________________________________________

iBookstore, Audio and Video

• Alfred Hitchcock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Creative Mind: Free
• Celebrate the 200th Birthday of Charles Dickens with Movies, eBooks and Audio Books: Free
• Writing Tips by Henry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell: Free
• The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online: Free
• Tim Burton’s The World of Stainboy: Watch the Complete Animated Series: Free

_________________________________________

Mac App Store

• New! Sprout (Tools): $34.99 -> $19.99
• New! Songwriter’s Pad™ (Music): $29.99 -> $14.99
• New! Compartments (Productivity): $14.99 -> $9.99
• New! Chronicle (Finance): $14.99 -> $9.99
• Fury – Pandora in your menu bar! (Music): $.99

_________________________________________

iPhone Apps

• New! WeatherSnitch™ 2 (Weather): $1.99 -> $.99 (review)
• New! Launch Center – Tap. Tap. Go! (Productivity): $1.99 -> $.99
• New! Terminology Ph (Reference): $1.99 -> $.99
• New! Namerick – Remember Names (Utilities): $1.99 -> Free
• New! Sentinel 2: Earth Defense (Game): $.99 -> Free
• New! Pocket Lists (Productivity): $1.99 -> Free
• New! SHIFT 2 Unleashed (Games): $2.99 -> $.99
• The Sims 3 (Games): $6.99 -> $.99
• Marvel KAPOW! (Games): $1.99 -> $.99
• Sizer (Lifestyle): $1.99 -> Free
• Dead Space™ (Games): $6.99 -> $.99
• Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• The Sims 3 Ambitions (Games): $4.99 -> $.99

_________________________________________

iPad Apps

• New! MadPad HD – Remix Your Life (Music): $2.99 -> Free
• New! Converter Touch HD ~ Fastest Unit Converter (Utilities): $.99 -> Free
• New! Robokill 2: Leviathan Five (Games): $.99 -> Free
• SHIFT 2 Unleashed for iPad (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• Reckless Racing HD (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD (Games): $9.99 -> $.99
• Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Games): $1.99 -> $.99
• Assassin’s Creed Recollection (Games): $.99 -> Free
• End Night HD (Games): $2.99 -> $.99
• NoteLedge® for iPad (Productivity): $2.99 -> $1.99
• Mirror’s Edge™ for iPad (Games): $9.99 -> $.99
• Ultimate Mortal Kombat™ 3 for iPad (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 12 for iPad (Games): $4.99 -> $.99

_________________________________________

Universal Apps

• New! Beat Hazard Ultra: $1.99 -> 99¢
• New! Sentinel 3: Homeworld (Games): $2.99 -> Free
• New! Awesome Calendar(+ToDos, Notes, sync with Google Calendar) (Productivity): $2.99 -> $1.99
• New! Zombie Gunship (Games): $.99 -> Free
• New! Judge Dredd vs Zombies (Games): $1.99 -> Free
• Grand Theft Auto 3 (Games): $4.99 -> $.99
• League of Evil 2 (Games): $2.99 -> 99¢
• League of Evil (Games): $1.99 -> $.99
• Face Fun (Entertainment): $.99 -> Free

The aim of this text then is not just in using the productivity and task management program OmniFocus, but also in getting to the creative space wherever that may be found. The hope is in getting to those things you want to do and enjoy while maintaining the responsibilities that inevitably accrue in life. Be it in work, play, or with family, we are aiming for a relaxed depth of focus and flow.

Originally released in November 2010, Creating Flow with OmniFocus by Kourosh Dini is one of the best resources available to learn more about The OmniGroup’s fantastic GTD software. Specifically aimed at Mac users of OmniFocus, the 555 pages of Dini’s book will take you through the basic concepts of the application, such as Projects and Contexts, to more advanced techniques and workflows that may involve prioritization of your tasks, context management and, overall, finding the right “flow” for your tasks and Getting Things Done system. As a reader of Creating Flow with OmniFocus myself, I’ve always been impressed with the way the author made this book about balancing your own creativity with goals and projects you have to complete in real-life, rather than simply writing a “how to” guide for OmniFocus. Sure, the book has its tutorial-oriented sections with screenshots and tips, but I found the overall “focus” on creating flow and making the system work for you quite liberating.

Creating Flow has been substantially improved since its original release. Kourosh Dini worked hard to bring the book up to speed with the latest refinements introduced in OmniFocus for Mac (now at version 1.9), and today he released an audiobook version that is available on his website. I have been able to listen to a pre-release copy of the audiobook, and it’s a good alternative for those times when you don’t want to sit down with a full copy of the eBook in your Mac or iPad PDF reading app of choice (personally, I like PDF Expert), but still would like to catch up on some great OmniFocus suggestions and discussion. In fact, I would say that the biggest advantage of the audiobook is that, once synced to your iOS device, you’ll be able to quickly navigate between chapters and instantly get to your desired section with just one tap. You’ll lose images and the overall visual style of the eBook (albeit the .zip file comes with a reference of over 300 screenshots), but you’ll gain an improved navigation that makes it easy to skip sections you don’t want to listen to again if you’ve already read the book. In this regard, existing owners of Creating Flow should consider supporting Kourosh again and get the audiobook just to have a refresh on some parts of the original book without having to go through it again.

The audiobook has been narrated by professional voice actor, Bruce Edwards, encompassing nearly 10 hours of listening material. As I wrote in 2010, Creating Flow with OmniFocus is the book every OmniFocus user should read. Now you can listen to it as well with the audiobook available here.

I had the pleasure of enjoying a casual talk with The Omni Group CEO Ken Case and took the opportunity to ask him some questions on their upcoming release, OmniPlan for iPad. We also had some time to talk about potential updates to other Omni products, as well as projects Ken would like to work on, given more time and resources.

Don: First off, what where some of the challenges you had porting the OmniPlan for Mac experience to the iPad?

Ken: One of the challenges we have had with all of our apps is that the Mac has more screen real-estate available, or at least the design we have used for our apps use a lot more screen real-estate than we have available on the iPad. We had already started noticing that some of our apps were starting to feel a bit squished on laptops — we have typically designed them to work with large desktop displays. When we watched people try to struggle through using some of our apps on the nice new MacBook Airs like the ones we’re starting to use here we found it just felt too cramped. So starting with OmniGraffle we had to re-picture what is the focus of the activity and how can we get rid of the physical controls without burying them so deep that they are no longer accessible. We faced this challenge even more so in OmniPlan for iPad because OmniPlan typically uses more screen real-estate due to its task outline on the left and the large visual GANTT chart timeline on the right. So we decided that the most relevant part of using OmniPlan is not the outline which may be of interest for structuring your plan data, but what people are most interested in is the GANTT chart timeline; so, for Omniplan for the iPad we just focused on that being the entire contents of the screen and working with that and trying to create the content in the visual timeline in ways we would normally rely on the outline for doing. If you wanted to have a task and break it down into subtasks, on the Mac we’d have you go over to the outline and create new rows and indent them underneaths as they were subtasks. If we’re only using the GANTT chart, we want to be adding subtasks – be able to show containment of subtasks under the parent task right there in that live timeline. I’m not saying we’re going to be giving up the outline, we’re not done yet, that’s the struggle we’re trying to work with and maybe the real ultimate answer is to flip back and forth between the two but there’s definitely not room to have both at the same time. Screen real-estate is a real challenge.

Don: Now when you guys released OmniFocus for the iPad, there were some things that a lot people thought the iPad did better than the Mac version. Is there anything in OmniPlan you guys feel is better suited for the iPad?

Ken: There is, but not quite as strongly as there was with OmniFocus. The biggest benefit of OmniPlan on the iPad is that it’s mobile, so you can bring it around with you and have it everywhere. But there isn’t — there aren’t any big features like the forecast and review modes we added to OmniFocus on the iPad where we could say “Oh no, now you can use the app in a whole other way that you couldn’t use it before”

Don: I read on your blog around the release of OmniOutliner for iPad that you wanted to offer 90% of the functionality that people wanted with about 10% of the effort. Do you think that also applies to OmniPlan, were you able to fit as much in without sacrificing the usability?

Ken: I think we were able to get a lot of the info in we wanted – it was a little bit harder, this was a specific challenge to OmniPlan – with OmniGraffle or OmniFocus it was easier to find parts of the application you could live without on the iPad on Day 1 or maybe forever, and just leave that out altogether and maybe bring back in later or maybe not, but you have a useable, cohesive, coherent application you can sit down and work with. With OmniPlan, you’re talking about an audience of project managers who really need to have all the same project details they’re used to typically. If we left out some piece, like, say, cost accounting, then people who are trying to do cost accounting will be stuck, and they can’t do it at all anymore. They can’t partially use it and then go up to their desktop later. If you have that then you probably want to bring all those details to a meeting that you are bringing your mobile device to. That was another challenge with OmniPlan – it was harder to find things we could cut out. We couldn’t cut out any of the data model, which we had done with all the other apps. With OmniFocus we left out time estimates altogether on the iPad — most people didn’t use it and it was more cluttered to try and fit in there. With OmniPlan we have all those fields, all those details, and the change tracking, mechanisms and so on. We did find some areas we could cut out and leave out, like printing. Our hope is, part of the reason you’re bringing this around with you on a mobile device is so you don’t have to bring paper around with you. Showing people the plan right there, live and making changes – you couldn’t do that with a printed document.

Don: So it sounds like it could be a great addition to the current OmniPlan for Mac product.

Ken: Yes, we really wanted it to be as complete as the Mac version and try to leave as little out as possible, but we did have to in some situations. For example, in version 1.0 we are not providing printing because we are not trying to make it do everything the Mac version can do. We do want it to be a standalone tool so if all you’re using is OmniPlan on the iPad, you’re still able to do the complete project management and planning you would’ve done on the Mac including collaborative editing. Plus, change-tracking is there, so you can review other people’s changes, accept and reject them and so on.

Don: Is there anything you can tell me about the tentative release or pricing for OmniPlan iPad app?

Ken: We haven’t announced pricing yet because we like to finish what we’re building, and then decide how much it costs, but if you look at our pricing to date it has been remarkably consistent. The iPad app – every single one – is half the price of the corresponding Mac app.

Screenshots: OmniPlan for iPad.

Don: Any comments on what’s next for The Omni Group after OmniPlan?

Ken: The biggest thing is document syncing. Before OmniPlan ships, we have a new document browser interface becoming available on our iPad document-based apps — OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, and OmniGraphSketcher — and that was our way to set the stage to be able to sync documents in those apps. The older interface where you’re swiping through and looking at one document at the time, it gets pretty tedious if you have many documents. When your’e syncing your documents around, you want all your documents available at all times in the interface. That’s our next round of releases and that’s in the next month or so. After that, next quarter we plan to release OmniPlan; as for document syncing – we don’t know how long the iCloud work will take. Our work on that is actually done, so at this point we’re waiting for other updates from Apple. In the meantime, we’re working on adding document syncing through our own OmniSync servers so we’re not just waiting indefinitely.

Don: Great. So with iCloud now available, how can we expect to see that utilized in up-coming OmniGroup updates or future apps coming out?

Ken: Our plan is to get iCloud into OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniGraphSketcher as soon as possible. Those are the 3 that don’t have any built-in syncing of their own. OmniFocus and OmniPlan have their own syncing that is richer than iCloud allows. iCloud allows you to sync an entire document around so you’ll get the entire state of the document as it is on one machine copied over to another machine. With OmniFocus and OmniPlan we’ve designed it so if I make a change on two devices, I’ll synchronize those changes on the two devices together so I can see the same thing on both ends and I don’t lose those changes. If you do that sort of thing with iCloud, like using OmniGraffle with iCloud and make edits with both machines, then you’ll end up with a conflict and have to choose one or the other or save both (changes don’t merge together). That’s why in our initial plan — since we already have syncing in OmniFocus and OmniPlan — we’re not planning to add iCloud for them since it’s a worse syncing system than we have available, but we are planning to add iCloud syncing to the other 3 as soon as possible.

Don: Are there any plans to update OmniFocus for Mac this year?

Ken: Absolutely. There’s an update planned for this quarter for OmniFocus – not OmniFocus 2 to be clear, but we think a lot of customers will be really happy in what’s coming up in this release.

Don: You mentioned on your blog about possibly doing a bit of a visual upgrade to OmniFocus and pull over some of the features of the iPad app.

Ken: That’s not this quarter’s release either, but it’s work that’s in progress. This quarter’s release we thought we’d hop on a feature that is requested a lot and doesn’t require big changes to the user interface, rather than having people wait indefinitely for a feature they’ve been wanting a lot.

Don: Can you give me any more details?

Ken: I will say it is one of our top 3 requests on all 3 platforms.

Since the interview, the OmniGroup released a “sneaky peak” edition of OmniFocus with a new feature: repeating of weekdays or only on specific weekdays.

Don: Okay, fair enough. I also wanted to ask you about is OmniOutliner 4.0. Is that still a focus at least for the first part of this year?

Ken: Not sure if it’ll be the first part of the year or the second half of this year, but it is certainly a big focus. The way we spread our engineering team around, the tasks we work on now, it has proportionally more than any of the other apps working on it. Actually, just since Macworld, I started feeling comfortable enough using it to edit my outlines… so that is a great milestone. It does have the new sidebar — we’re getting rid of the old drawer and folding it into a sidebar. The sidebar is present right now and you can navigate with it; the reimplementation is still very much in progress and it’s not ready for beta testing even. But the main outline is working and it is a good sign.

Don: The outlining architecture was being rebuilt from the ground up, correct?

Ken: Yes, we did rebuild it from scratch and the outlining view went into OmniPlan 2 as it’s the first app that we shipped with it, so the outline view actually works now and there’s all the other features…everything else that hasn’t been updated yet to work with the new format. So OmniPlan didn’t use all the things that people using OmniOutliner care about — things like video attachments, so that’s some of the stuff we’re reimplementing now, like QuickTime or audio attachments.

Don: I know The Omni Group has an incredibly loyal following of users that appreciate all the work you folks do so you probably spend most of your time updating your current line of products for them, but are there any projects you want to work on that aren’t necessarily one of your primary productivity apps?

Ken: Oh absolutely. One of the apps that has been on hold now for quite a while now, but I use every day, and is in desperate need of a refresh is OmniWeb. I’d like to get to update that and get built on top of the modern Safari and look into its architecture. We had a bunch of ideas that we had to put on hold for a while on how to make browsing more efficient. That was the major focus of OmniWeb 5: how to build a web browser that can save people time, so we came up with ideas like workspaces that you persistently reload and take snapshots of and work with. We’ve been using that for almost 8 years now, and in that time we’ve thought of a lot more that we could be doing with those and thinking about pieces we don’t use in a web browser at all. I don’t know about you, but I don’t use bookmarks other than maybe shortcuts up at the top of the window or as a way to do keyboard completion to quickly get back to something. I don’t ever browse a big list of bookmarks, I might have done that in the 90s. I’d rather have something nice integrated with the browser — like persistent history that’s also searchable.

Don: Right, I see what you are saying, or perhaps a smarter history capable of sorting and filtering.

Ken: If you have ways you’d normally like to lay out your window when you’re browsing, like a website that needs a different sized window than others, it might be nice when you tell your keyboard shortcut to go there that it automatically does that conditioning for you or it opens up more than one tab even. You could have a keyboard shortcut that opens a whole workspace, rather than a single webpage. Those kinds of features. But we still have a lot to do on OmniOutliner 4, OmniFocus 2, so I’m not sure when we’ll quite get OmniWeb back in to the loop.

Don: Well Ken, I think that about does it. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to speak with me.

Ken: Thank you Don, I appreciate your time as well.

As the majority of East Coast Apple users were sipping on their morning coffees either in front of their Macs or on their way to work last Thursday morning, Apple’s PR department prepared to lift the embargo on one of the most unusual Apple product announcements to date: Mountain Lion.

At 8:31 AM on Thursday, February 16, the Apple community came to a full stop as publications like The Loop (they tweeted first), Macworld, and TechCrunch unveiled the details of Mountain Lion, the next major version of OS X set to ship this summer. After an initial shock due to the surprising nature of the announcement (hotel rooms? Good hot coffee? Private briefings with Phil Schiller? Apple PR is on to something here), you could hear the Internet fell silent as millions of eyeballs quickly skimmed through the iOS-inspired feature set of the next big cat. Notification Center, Reminders, Notes, iCloud — the next OS X (just don’t call it a Mac OS X) surely is something worth keeping an eye on. Because, stay assured — the thing is going to keep its eyes on you.

With this week’s Reading List, we’ve collected the best articles from around the web about the recently announced Mountain Lion. If you’re looking for more Mountain Lion coverage, make sure to check out our newly created hub as well.

While we can’t offer you a good coffee with Apple’s Phil Schiller, we still think this week’s Reading List will fare pretty good next to your favorite cup of Americano. Enjoy.

Stephen Hackett’s piece makes a lot of sense after the formal announcement of Mountain Lion.

Apple obviously knows this. Even though it is a huge company, it acts like a small one. Everything goes through a very small number of people at the very top. It’s a bottleneck, but it’s a bottleneck by design. Apple keeps a firm hand on the throttle, and would rather move too slowly, or in just a singular direction, than too quickly. While it can be frustrating as a customer, it’s what keeps Apple products great.

- The Tick-Tock of Apple, Stephen Hackett (@ismh)

Tim Schafer reflects on the success of Double Fine’s first Kickstarter campaign in an interview with Giant Bomb:

I’ve been very surprised by the success of it so far, so it’s taught me that maybe I’m not the best at predicting. Nobody was really good at predicting this one. I guess I assumed this [the Kickstarter] would be a good test. I couldn’t take the money and make Psychonauts with it because some people have backed the project based on a certain promise that it’s going to be an adventure game, so it wouldn’t be right to take it and make Psychonauts with it. Maybe we could put it up to a vote! But I actually want to make an old graphic adventure, so we keep it this way and use this as a test to see if we can go bigger.

I think people are asking a lot of publishers and developers out there. At DICE, you can tell people are asking these interview questions, “Well, has this changed everything? Are you going to do Kickstarters to fund all your development now?” I think it really has to be a special thing. I think it’s definitely a possibility to do it a lot more, but I think each time you do it, it has to be a good story for people to get behind. I think the story of us making a graphic adventure when we couldn’t have done it any other way is a good story. I think there are more stories to be done that way, and there might be one that is equal to $20 million dollars. I don’t know.

- $1.6 Million and Counting, Patrick Klepek (@patrickklepek)

Following the announcement of Mountain Lion, Om Malik makes the case for a Social, Mobile, Cloud operating system.

When I think of today’s connected life, I see two distinct approaches to operating environments: OSes that are desktop-specific and the one OS that is a true cloud OS, for a dedicated cloud client. Back in 2008, I wrote about what makes a cloud client and asked our community to weigh in.

- The slow rise of the SoMoClo OS, Om Malik (@om)

Ted Landau thinks Mountain Lion has the right approach to bringing iOS features and apps to the Mac.

That was then. With the forthcoming Mountain Lion, Apple has done a much better job of transitioning iOS features to the Mac. As a result, I am now much more optimistic about the future direction of OS X than I was a few months ago.

- Mountain Lion Does iOS-ification Right, Ted Landau (@tedlandau)

Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software thinks Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper shouldn’t be a replacement for Sandboxing — and offers a few suggestions to Apple to improve the latter.

Imagine a future where the majority of Mac apps are signed with Gatekeeper certificates, and an accurate list of entitlements. Users will be protected by smart default settings, and by the knowledge of who their apps come from, as well as what they intend to do. Developers will be protected from their own unintentionally destructive mistakes, and from impostors selling software purported to be authentic. And Apple? Apple will be remembered as the huge, clever computer company that solved the software security problem on two fronts, without pissing off developers or customers. Much.

- Fix The Sandbox, Daniel Jalkut (@danielpunkass)

Ars Technica collects reactions from developers following Apple’s surprise Mountain Lion announcement (which, it turns out, wasn’t really a surprise for some developers who had been briefed by Apple about Gatekeeper).

Apple’s next version of its desktop operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, promises developers access to hundreds of new APIs to enable new functionality for their apps. While developers we spoke to seem mildly excited about the new functionality, their immediate focus was on the implications of Apple’s new Gatekeeper security feature.

- Mac developers: Gatekeeper is a concern, but still gives power users control, Chris Foreman (@foresmac)

Macworld’s Dan Moren talks to other developers about Apple’s changes in security for Mountain Lion.

That said, Apple is trying to make the process of embracing its new security procedures something that developers want to do, especially when it comes to the Mac App Store. Currently, it appears that certain features—such as the ability to add full-fledged support for iCloud, or support for Mountain Lion’s Notification Center—are only available to those who go the distance and submit their apps to the Mac App Store.

“The App Store-only APIs [application programming interfaces] continue to proliferate, which means we’re being marched, slowly-but-surely, to a future that’s increasingly locked down,” said Shirt Pocket’s Nanian.

- Developers unsurprised, but cautious about Gatekeeper, Dan Moren (@dmoren)

Gatekeeper Q&A by Rich Mogull.

In the past, despite being a Mac fan, I’ve been pretty critical of how Apple handles a lot of security. While I still don’t agree with how they handle everything, I’ve noticed a massive change in the past 2 years. With Lion, Apple for the first time invited certain security researchers to evaluate pre-release software (albeit under NDA) without forcing them to pay for a Developer Program subscription. With Mountain Lion they pre-briefed an outside security type for the first time ever. They have hired a bunch of very smart and experienced security experts.

- OS X 10.8 Gatekeeper in Depth, Rich Mogull (@rmogull)

CNET’s Molly Wood neatly summarizes one of the reasons behind Apple’s success in the past years.

Tech is mainstream, at this point, and for a lot of people, it’s become essential and indispensable. So, given that, computers shouldn’t still be this hard. Apple has always understood that simplicity and usability were crucial to user happiness, and although they sometimes simplified (to the point of unnecessary restrictiveness), the simplicity combined with increasingly robust capabilities is a winning combo in this complicated and busy world.

- Why Apple is winning, Molly Wood (@mollywood)

An interesting take on why Apple shouldn’t build a social network by Thomas Brand.

Apple’s products are the social network. Their stores are the hangouts. Their popularity is the hot topic in the media. Their best bet in social media is to become the dominant platform people use to access Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Building another Ping, MobileMe, or social network is not what Apple does best.

- Why Apple Does Not Need a Social Network, Thomas Brand (@thomasbrand)

The Verge’s interview with Growl’s Christopher Forsythe is particularly interesting considering Apple is going to bake Notification Center right into Mountain Lion. See also: Growl’s official response to OS X 10.8.

So about 8 years ago I was working on a few things and came to a point where I just didn’t know what was going on with anything but the main application I was working in. I found this pretty frustrating so I thought about it for a while. At the time I was working in some capacity on Adium. There was a mild argument about the interface at the time with regards to notifications. Jorge, the guy working on the notifications bezel wanted a bunch of options. Adam, the guy who created Adium wanted something simpler, more or less the Colloquy notifications.

To me it didn’t make sense that Colloquy had to create this interface, in a different way than Adium had. I contacted both Jorge and Karl (the guy who worked on the notifications for Colloquy) and asked them if they’d be interested in working on a project to create something that a lot of different applications could use. Jorge said no, but Karl said yes.

- 5 Minutes on The Verge: Growl’s Christopher Forsythe, Thomas Houston (@thomashouston)

And after all is said and done, Alex Brooks takes a look at the PR strategy Apple used to unveil Mountain Lion.

This week though Apple showed that it had a new tactic up its sleeve and this tactic really does have a death wish for the rumour. On Thursday morning at 8:31 AM Pacific Time an embargo lifted on the details of Apple’s latest major update to OS X. A carefully selected number of blogs immediately published their articles to the shock and dismay of onlookers. Since Lion had only launch seven months beforehand it seemed incomprehensible that Apple was planning another major OS update, but even more remarkable was that not a single rumour of this operating system had left Apple’s confines. Not even a hint.

- Apple’s Death Wish for the Rumour, Alex Brooks (@alexbrooks)

Subscribe

You can stay up to date with MacStories’ Reading List articles by subscribing to this RSS feed, which mirrors our Instapaper Liked items (the articles above and all previous entries). You should also be able to find us in Instapaper’s own Friends section if you’re following @macstoriesnet on Twitter.

Available for Mac, Windows, and Linux machines, VLC 2.0 is a major update that brings several new optimizations on the technical side, new features, and a brand-new Mac interface that we’ve already covered here on MacStories. It can be downloaded for free from VideoLAN’s website.

Often regarded as “the media player that can open almost anything”, VLC has indeed become many’s de-facto choice over the years when it comes to dealing with a variety of video file formats, or audio files that other media players such as iTunes won’t open. If you weren’t aware of all its functionalities and secrets, you’d say VLC’s best feat is the fact that it can launch almost any kind of file you throw at it. From the strong foundation of VLC 1.x, VLC 2.0 introduces support for new formats — as well as enhancements and fixes for the currently supported ones — with better handling of H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM thanks to multi-threaded decoding, support for 10bits codes and WMV image, completely rewritten support for images, changes in RealVideo and Real Format integration, correct support for FLAC, RV and Hi10p in MKV, and a plethora of other minor adjustments and refinements that contribute to making VLC one of the most (if not the most) versatile and customizable media players around. For instance, professional users will find support for ProRes 422 and 4444, AVC/Intra, Jpeg-2000 and DNxHD/VC-3 in 10bits and a new, faster Dirac/VC-2 encoder, whilst anime fans will be pleased to know VLC 2.0 features a “vastly improved” MKV demuxer. If you simply care about formats and the stuff VLC can open or has been optimized for, this release shouldn’t disappoint you.

With over 7000 commits to the open source project and 160 contributing volunteers in the past couple of years, however, VLC 2.0 isn’t only focused on making its media player capabilities play nicer with audio and video formats. As we detailed in our previous coverage, one of VLC’s new visible changes is the application’s design on the Mac, a radical change aimed at unifying VLC’s file management and playback functionalities in a single window that, among other things, also happens to support Lion’s native full-screen mode. Available in two color schemes — Lion gray and QTX black — VLC’s new single window interface integrates playback and browsing in a way that, for example, allows you to start playing a movie, hit a button, and go back to the browsing UI with the movie still playing in the background. In my tests, transitioning from a movie (streamed off the MacBook Pro mentioned above, now used as a media server in my house as I upgraded to a MacBook Air) to VLC’s new Library was immediate, and the footprint on system memory minimal, or not visible at all. Because the new VLC for Mac integrates media, sources, and playback in the same window, you’ll be able to open a file, invoke the Playlist shortcut from the Window menu (CMD + Shift + P), look for another file (either manually or from the integrated search view), and adjust its position in the media queue right away.

Thankfully, those who don’t like the change to a unified window will be able to revert back to VLC’s standard multi-window system with an option in the app’s Preferences. The Preferences menu has also been overhauled with a new design and more settings, including one to disable Apple’s full-screen mode for OS X Lion and enable Growl notifications on playlist item change. As usual, there’s a lot to explore within VLC’s settings if you really want to adjust the app to your tastes (and media configuration).

What I’ve always liked about VLC since I started using it in 2003 is that it can be extremely simple and accessible, or extremely complex and “advanced” thanks to the amount of options and settings it brings at your fingertips. If you really want to get geeky with video formats, inputs, codecs and streaming sessions, VLC 2.0 will most definitely have you covered with its variety of new features and tweaks to the underlying engine. If you, however, simply prefer a lightweight, elegant and powerful alternative to iTunes and QuickTime for browsing and playing your music and movies, VLC is an equally great alternative as it’s easy to use, fast, and stable. And whilst the new Mac interface will be heavily criticized (especially in its black version) by those that dislike change on principle, I think change is good, as it confirms that VideoLAN and its community strive for innovation in order to bring VLC to an even broader audience. The single window interface is useful, simple to understand, and helps you save time; performances in version 2.0 have been dramatically improved, and there’s lots more to come. Go download VLC 2.0 here.

For the release of the new VLC, I was able to chat with VideoLAN’s President Jean-Baptiste Kempf and lead Mac developer Felix Paul Kühne about the 2.0 milestone, the process that went into developing this new major release, and what’s in store for the future. Check out the interview, as well as a visualization of VLC’s development activity in 2011, after the break.

- Hey guys, congratulations on the release of VLC 2.0. Can you tell us a bit more about its development – this has been in the works for quite a while, right?

Felix Paul Kühne: Yes, we started to conceptualize a radical interface rework of VLC’s Mac OS X port back in 2008. Since the initial approach turned out too complex, work started on a complete re-write code-named Lunettes, which eventually converged into VLC for iOS.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf: For VLC 2.0, we merged ideas from our 2008 drafts with knowledge gained from the Lunettes project. This way, we were able to keep backward compatibility with our previous release while making the interface noticeably faster, more lightweight and most importantly for us way easier to expand.

- How is VLC 2.0 different from the early ideas/mockups you had for this version?

Jean-Baptiste Kempf: Well, not that much, in most things. Of course, not all widgets are the exact same as it was then, but this is the same spirit. However, the biggest difference is the cohabitation between playback and playlist, but this might evolve in a future version.

- What’s the most important achievement in VLC 2.0 from a functionality standpoint?

Felix Paul Kühne: A vastly simplified interface. Many service discovery modules and the media library displayed in the sidebar on the left used to be around in VLC for years, but these were hard to find for most users. It’s a major improvement to be able to use these with a single click or to be able to browse one’s video, music and pictures folders without using the Finder or browsing Open dialogs.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf: However, the most important changes are probably under the hood, that make VLC 2.0 way faster than the older version, even for multicore G5 hardware, notably the multi-threading decoding, the new video output with better subtitles and shaders support and the new QTKit capture modules.

- How has the VLC community helped in the development of 2.0 for multiple platforms?

Felix Paul Kühne: The VideoLAN community contributed a lot of time from volunteers who tested this release, made us aware of bugs and suggested missing features. Additionally, the VideoLAN non-profit organisation backed the development by providing hardware and access to pre-release versions of Mac OS X.

- Speaking of the Mac version, is there anything you wish could implement in time but had to save for a future update – perhaps some Lion-only stuff?

Felix Paul Kühne: There are a few improvements scheduled for 2.0.1 already, especially enhancing the time line slider for small videos. Additionally, live audio input is supported on the command-line only in VLC 2.0 since its graphical interface was not ready in time. For VLC 2.0, we decided to limit Lion-only features in order to be able to support earlier releases of Mac OS X including 10.5 on the PowerPC platform. Except for Lion’s fullscreen mode, all of VLC’s features for Mac are available on 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7. We would like to keep it like that.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf: There is still a lot of work to do for a correct Blu-Ray support too, but this will come.

- What’s the status of a VLC app for iOS? The one that was released last year didn’t end up very well.

Felix Paul Kühne: Due to libvlc’s relicensing from GPLv2+ to LGPLv2+, we might be able to pickup the development of VLC for iOS. At present, we reviewing additional legal implications of providing VLC on the iOS App Store.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf: VLC for Android is currently in the works and is going to be released later this year.

- Congratulations again on the release. What should we expect from the next updates to VLC 2.0?

Jean-Baptiste Kempf: At present, we are working on hardware accelerated video decoding for the Mac, which will be supported on Mac OS X 10.6 and later through the VDADecoder API. Also, a lot of small fixes for the new UI will appear in the smaller 2.0.1, 2.0.x revisions.

Felix Paul Kühne: Additionally, VLC’s next major release will include a completely reworked GUI for converting and streaming media, so its users will able to get proper results within a few clicks.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf: We hope that someone is going to work on AirPlay integration, but nothing was started yet.

And then yesterday, OS X and iOS announced an impromptu decision. Many had already (reluctantly) seen it coming but most chose to ignore the possibility, hurt that OS X might do that to them (to them!). But now it’s real, the two are moving in together, and that means a lot of things for the end-user.

Of the utmost importance is the fact that such a step does not suggest that the two entities are merging. Separate identities remain, but assets and possessions are shared. The decision comes when two individuals decide that, as a couple, they are better together than they are on their own. Moving in together, the couple is free to communicate more clearly with each other, to really learn about themselves, and to face complex life decisions together. The two are not somehow merging into the same entity, they’re merely moving under one roof, sharing some belongings, and generally learning how to co-exist in a new contextual environment.

The image of two OSes “moving in together” works exceptionally well in this context as Apple isn’t merging iOS and OS X — they are trying to get the best features “inspired from iPad” and bring them over to OS X. Anyone who’s ever been in a stable relationship understands that the single characteristics of a person (the “features” in OS parlance) mostly remain intact over the years, but as two people decide they are better as a couple, there might be some influence over each other’s distinctive traits (cue definition of “ecosystem” and “inspiration”). I think Matt simply nailed it with his article.

I believe, however, that there’s still much of a debate going around as to whether Apple is 100% clear in admitting “they are borrowing” from iOS to enhance the Mac, or Mountain Lion and the whole “iOS-ification” theory shouldn’t be a surprise at all because Apple isn’t trying to “iOS-ify” anything.

A few weeks ago, I wrote:

Today’s (relatively minor) software update reminds me, however, that the iOS-ification goes far beyond simply converting graphics and updating apps from one platform to another. It is actually more a conversion of the entire Apple ecosystem to an iOS-inspired system of graphical elements, user interactions, business models, user experience paradigms, and functionalities. The iOS-ification isn’t simply visual, it’s a fundamental shift of strategy that, ultimately, I believe begins and ends with iCloud — something that I have discussed before.

After the release of Mountain Lion, Jim Dalrymple wrote:

If Apple were trying to make Mountain Lion more like iOS we would be touching the screen of our computers to interact with out apps instead of using the keyboard and mouse.

Mountain Lion is about familiarity and integration. The new features and apps in Mountain Lion make sense for a desktop operating system.

To which Ben Brooks responded:

I don’t disagree with what Dalrymple is saying up and until the last line. Apple is indeed trying to bring some familiarity and integration between the two platforms, but there’s more to it than that.

The way I see it, Apple is trying to simplify OS X and bring to it some of the features from iOS that make sense. To that end Apple is very much making Mountain Lion more iOS like.

And then Jim wrote a smart counterargument:

I’m going to use the same faulty logic that some people have used to claim that OS X Mountain Lion is being iOS-ified to show how iOS is being Mac-ified.

Having watched some old Apple material on the matter (more on this in a bit), I see both ends of the controversy now — and I think the main issue here is that many  (including me) haven’t properly explained what they meant by “iOS-ification”. So, before the discussion continues, here’s my take on the feared word: I see “iOS-ification” as “inspiration” from an OS (and ecosystem of devices) that’s been insanely successful over the past five years. Inspiration, not copying, and not “making the Mac like iOS”. In fact, I think that “making the Mac like iOS” is the wrong expression to use — there is a subtle difference, but I’d use “iOS has inspired some changes in OS X” rather than “iOS-like” or “more like iOS”. It’s merely semantics, I know, but I’d like to settle this, and it’s important to use the right terminology.

In order to properly move forward, here’s a few things we can agree upon:

• OS X is the technological foundation of iPhone OS (now iOS).
• Once on iOS, Apple developed some new apps and user features for it.
• After a few years, Apple decided to take some apps and user features from iOS (iPad and iPhone) and bring them back to the Mac.

These are the facts. Now, the problem is the interpretation of these facts, and how writers like Ben and Jim see the aforementioned process of “bringing back” as iOS-ification, inspiration, natural evolution, or whatever they want to call it. In fact, I believe the real issue is the meaning we want to give to these facts, and how they play in the bigger picture of Apple being committed to the Mac platform.

As usual, I’d like to turn it over to Steve to remind us how a particular subject was first introduced. Here’s how he described the process behind OS X Lion at the Back to the Mac event in 2010:

What is the big idea, what is the philosophy behind Mac OS X Lion? Well, that’s where Back to the Mac comes from.

What we’ve done is we’ve started from Mac OS X and we created from it a version called iOS, which we used in the iPhone, and we invented some new things and we’ve perfected it over the last several years and it’s now used in the iPad as well. What we’d like to do — we’re inspired by some of those innovations in the iPad and the iPhone, we’d like to bring them back to the Mac. And so that’s what Lion’s about: Mac OS X meets the iPad.

If you watch the keynote again, you’ll notice how Steve and other executives often mention the word “inspiration” while demonstrating features that are “convenient just like the iPad” and “iPad-style” in the way they are presented on screen. I don’t think there’s any doubt that a) iOS is technologically based off OS X and b) Apple created new features on iOS that were eventually ported to OS X. The latter point is happening once again with Mountain Lion, as things like Notification Center and Twitter integration were chronologically iOS-first — and they are now displayed “iPad-style” on the Mac.

With these facts available, I’d like to lay out my own conceptual compromise we can (hopefully) agree upon while we’re waiting to see where Apple is headed with Mountain Lion and its Mac hardware line-up.

Here it goes: iOS-ification indicates the process of being inspired by the iPad’s success to port some apps and features to OS X. In this process, the operating systems are kept separate, and features are developed to take advantage of each device’s nature. Ultimately, iOS-ification is aimed at making iOS and OS X coexist in a single iCloud ecosystem.

Before I continue, allow me to present more fact-checking straight from Apple’s PR:

Lion (2010):

Lion brings many of the best ideas from iPad back to the Mac, plus some fresh new ones like Mission Control that Mac users will really like,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Lion has a ton of new features, and we hope the few we had time to preview today will give users a good idea of where we are headed.

Mountain Lion (2012).

Apple today released a developer preview of OS X Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system, which brings popular apps and features from iPad to the Mac and accelerates the pace of OS X innovation.

As I said above, I see both points in this argument. “The Mac is still a Mac and these are just features” and “The Mac is starting to be a lot like iOS” both make sense (and are factually correct) depending on how you look at the issue, which is a complex one in that it’s got a lot of history behind it, subtle changes in marketing (“best ideas” from 2010 compared to “popular apps and features” in 2012), and an overall “we don’t know yet” aspect due to Apple’s ever growing success and sales numbers.

I do believe, however, that if we consider iOS-ification as “inspiration” and agree that when iPad features comes to OS X they retain the Mac’s best advantages and functionalities (an example is Notification Center having a keyboard shortcut in Mountain Lion), we can find a sweet spot that makes everyone happy and excited about the things to come.

Whilst drawing a line between familiarity and integration is hard because, after all, we’re just writers and we’re not aware of Apple’s real goals, I believe the unification that’s happening now isn’t about the two operating system — it’s iCloud. I’ve written about this before, and I won’t repeat myself here — iCloud is becoming Apple’s “ecosystem for everything” on each release. iCloud is the platform for the next decade no matter if iOS and OS X will eventually merge or not.

I have been a heavy user of Twitter for Mac since it was first released over a year ago. While certainly not perfect, for me, it is the gold standard of desktop Twitter apps. As such, it is impossible for me to be objective when reviewing a new client, as I will inevitably end up comparing it to Twitter for Mac (hereafter Twitter.app), so I’m telling you here and now that I didn’t even try to do otherwise. As a result, much of this review consists of comparisons between Osfoora and Twitter.app, and the best I can hope for is that other long-time Twitter.app users find it useful. So let’s get into it.

UI

Scrolling and animations seem as smooth as Twitter.app, which is no small accomplishment. Switching sections with the keyboard is just as fast as it is in Twitter.app, and the similar sliding drawer animations helped me to feel right at home.

When switching sections, Osfoora does not automatically scroll you to the top. Instead, it keeps your last viewed position intact until you scroll up or down yourself. The exception is if you have “Keep Scrolled to Top (If already at the top)” turned on in the Settings and leave a section with its most recent tweets displayed. I find this better than Twitter.app in some instances (like checking a conversation in Mentions, jumping back to your timeline to view the latest tweets, then jumping back to Mentions without losing your place) and worse in others (when you want to scroll up to the most recent tweets without touching the mouse or hammering on the page up/page down keys).1

(courtesy of Said Marouf, Osfoora’s developer)

Navigation

Osfoora carries over some of Twitter.app’s most useful keyboard controls, like hitting ⌘1 to go to your timeline, ⌘2 to go to mentions, ⌘3 for DMs, and so on for all the major sections. Similarly, hitting the right arrow key on a highlighted tweet will show you the conversation (if it’s a reply to another tweet) or the user’s profile (if it’s a self-contained tweet). Other controls, like the one for viewing images, are different (right arrow in Twitter.app, Return in Osfoora). Some are not here at all, like the ability to hold down Option and hit the right arrow key while highlighting a tweet to bring up a context menu allowing you to jump to any links, users, or hashtags contained in the tweet. And there is one glaring omission: the ability to open links with a keystroke. Opening links is one of the most frequent things I do with Twitter, and as a heavy keyboard user being forced to take my hands off it to use the mouse to click a link is painful.

Speaking of things that are painful, I can’t get around the lack of a livestream. I’ve become very accustomed to seeing new tweets and replies instantly appear when using Twitter on my Mac, so having to refresh manually or wait for the auto refresh to kick in feels like a huge step backwards.

Where Twitter.app allows for multiple keys to accomplish the same tasks, Osfoora limits you to one. You can’t use any of the arrow keys to close an image, only Escape. When viewing a conversation, you can’t use Escape to go back to your timeline, only the left arrow. One of Twitter.app’s great accomplishments is how it provides multiple intuitive methods to perform the same actions, and unfortunately Osfoora feels limited in comparison.

Profiles

Unlike Twitter.app, Osfoora does not currently have a way to directly look up user profiles. The only way I have found to find a particular user was to use the Search section, which is messy and indirect as you have to look over a wide swath of tweets and then click (again, no keyboard controls) on the name you want to view.

Upon loading up a user’s profile, I found myself wishing there were Twitter-like keyboard controls to move between different profile sections. As of now, the only way in Osfoora to switch between a user’s tweets, mentions and faves is to use the mouse. On top of that, you have to go back to the user’s profile to view a different section, whereas you can switch between them freely in Twitter.app. I also wish that a user’s profile loaded up their tweets underneath by default instead of having to explicitly click on them, the way Tweetbot for iPad and, you guessed it, Twitter.app does.

Two things I do like about Osfoora’s profile views: I like that, unlike Twitter.app, you can see a user’s followers and followees without going to Twitter’s site. And I like that when you look at their mentions, you can view conversations the same way you would on the timeline, so it’s easy to see which mention is replying to which tweet.

Random Quibbles

• No pull to refresh. A small omission, but one I miss, especially as I have to reload Osfoora manually far more often than I do the live-stream supporting Twitter.app.

• No gap detection whatsoever.

• Can’t click on the name of the user who RTed a tweet to view their profile, only the profile of the user who made the tweet.

• Lacks Twitter.app’s ability to collect all related tweets in a conversation, only showing you a chain of one-to-one replies.

• I wish I could customize the menu bar icon to only glow blue when I have unread mentions or DMs. As of now it also glows whenever new tweets are loaded on your timeline, and there’s no way to change that.

• I don’t like how the default reply action is to only respond to the author of a tweet, and that it requires a separate, more cumbersome shortcut (⌥⌘R as opposed to ⌘R) to reply to all the users mentioned in a tweet. I do like that the tweet you are replying to is displayed directly underneath your reply; that is something I would welcome in Twitter.app.

• If you click on a user’s profile from a DM conversation, the button to mark all DMs read is visible in their profile, where it can be clicked but does not perform a function.

• Speaking of DMs, there’s no Twitter.app equivalent of ⌘D to DM a user straight from your timeline either. You can only DM another user from your DM section or the user’s profile. You also can’t hit ⌘R while viewing a DM conversation to send another DM in reply either.

• Can’t drag and drop an image from your computer to a tweet. You have to click the camera button and use the Open File dialogue.

• Why is there a subscribe button on your own lists (which you are subscribed to by default) that does nothing when clicked?

Things I Liked

• Tweet Marker support. Works as advertised, and is great for keeping progress in sync with Tweetbot and other Tweet Marker-supporting clients.

• Instapaper and Read it Later support. Saving links to read later is also something I do a lot of when using Twitter, so having it built-in instead of opening an article and saving it in Safari is a welcome feature. That said, I do wish there were a keyboard shortcut for it.

• In-line, full size images, including avatars and Instagram. Now that I’ve become accustomed to in-line image previews in Tweetbot, having them in Osfoora felt natural.

• Quick access to a user’s Favstar page via the gearbox menu on their profile.

• Pulling down more of my DM history than any other client I’ve seen.

• Support for muting users (for people you want to follow but whose tweets you may not want to see) and marking users (for people whose tweets you always want to see).

• Adjustable sidebar. Perfect for Tweetbot for iPad users whether you like to use TweetBot in portrait or landscape orientation (I’m a portrait fan myself).

• No “Are you sure you wish to discard this tweet?” dialogue when you press Escape on an empty New Tweet window, but still providing one when text has been entered. A small but thoughtful touch.

Bottom Line

Touch navigation is fine on iOS apps because that’s all they have, but the same is not true for the mouse and a good Mac app. Good Mac apps should not only be equally navigable via both the mouse and the keyboard, they should be optimized for the latter. And as you may have noticed from all my complaints about keyboard controls, Osfoora still has a long way to go in that area.

As many developers have lamented, building a new Twitter client is not easy. There are tons of different users with different tastes, a long list of “must have” features, new and evolving services to incorporate, and no end of existing competition. I don’t envy any client-maker their task, nor do I want to unfairly disparage their efforts. But the fact remains that, as Osfoora stands right now, it doesn’t offer enough to provide a worthwhile experience for Twitter.app users to switch, especially when the latter is free.

Osfoora for Mac costs $4.99 and can be found on the Mac App Store.

Angry Birds Space is a completely new game with innovative new gameplay, but with some of the familiar Angry Birds elements that fans already know and love — plus some surprises!

Rovio is planning on making it their biggest game launch since Angry Birds was first released and is targeting a launch on not only multiple platforms but also push the retail and publishing aspects of the game as well. Rovio will reveal more details about the game in early March, but until then you can visit the teaser site or view Angry Birds Teaser trailer below the break.

[Venture Beat via Eurogamer, Engadget]

For years, Apple and Foxconn have been synonymous with monster profits and total secrecy so it was fascinating to wander the iPhone and iPod production lines, meet the people who build them and see how they live. Our cameras were rolling when thousands of hopeful applicants rushed the Foxconn gates and I spoke with dozens of line workers and a top executive about everything from hours and pay to the controversies over suicides at the plant and the infamous ‘jumper nets’ that line the factories in Shenzhen. After this trip, I’ll never see an Apple product the same way again.

It’s the latest move by Apple to try and quell the backlash from media and consumers over the treatment of workers at Apple’s suppliers — particularly at Foxconn. Earlier this year they released their 2012 Supplier Responsibility Report a few weeks earlier than previous years. Apple also revealed who their suppliers are and then joined the Fair Labor Association, who are currently conducting an investigation in regards to working conditions at Foxconn.

Exclusive:@BillWeirABC Goes Inside Apple Factories in China to See How the Machines That Changed Our Lives are Made– Tues. 1135pmET

— Nightline (@Nightline) February 17, 2012

[PCWorld via TUAW]

Why did I just spend a paragraph talking about UAC? Because to a certain degree, Apple is facing a similar dilemma with iOS and its permission dialogs. It recently faced scrutiny after it was revealed that a number of apps were accessing a user’s entire address book and even uploading it to their servers – without any user approval. Apple has now pushed back and announced it will soon require user permission for apps to access a user’s Contacts. But will it resemble yet another blue dialog box, just like access to Location, Push Notifications and Twitter already do? If so a user will face a barrage of those dialog boxes, asking for permission, one on top of the other.

It’s after reading Marco Arment’s thoughts on this issue earlier today that I thought I would weigh into the discussion and suggest one idea that may (or may not) be a potential ‘solution’. While there can never be a single solution that will be perfect for everyone (what may be overly cautious for one user may be overly lenient for another) the goal as I see it is to arrive at a solution somewhere in the middle ground; one that achieves an acceptable mix of precaution and freedom.

Essentially, my suggestion is that rather than let users face a stacked barrage of blue permission dialogs, is to flatten them all out on one clear screen when they first launch an app after installation. Users would see a list of what the app would like permission to access and the user would be able to (with one tap) allow all, or individually deny permission for the various databases. Furthermore, with one tap, a user could see a short justification from the developer for why the app is requesting that particular access – giving a little bit more control and peace of mind to the user. If a developer lied on this page it would almost certainly be grounds for expulsion from the App Store. The one final goal of my proposal is that it would also inform the user that these options can be changed the Settings, something many users may not be aware of at the moment.

I myself am not sure this is the best option, because there is one critical weakness. With my design, an app would have to upfront ask for permissions for whatever it might want to access in the future – but as Marco points out, some apps (like Instapaper) require access to something like Location for a minor feature that not everyone would even use (in that case it is to determine if it’s night at the users location, in which case it can switch automatically to dark mode).

If I asked most careful people if Instapaper could have their location, they’d refuse, because there’s no obvious good reason. But if the app asks right when they enable a location-based setting from a screen that shows why it’s asking for their location, they can make a more educated decision. Similarly, if an app doesn’t seem to have a good reason when it asks for Contacts, a skeptical person can decline.

Although to counter that point, I would note that not only can a user choose to individually deny Instapaper access to their location, but if they were curious as to why Instapaper would need access to their location, they could quickly read Marco’s explanation with one tap. Furthermore, my suggestion wouldn’t entirely remove the blue permissions dialog, as an app could ask again for permission later on if access was initially denied but a user is trying to use a feature that requires permission — in that case, the app could trigger the dialog to ask the user permission again.

Accompanying my suggestion would be something similar to Rene Ritchie’s app permission sheet in Settings. It would list all apps that have asked for permissions and you could dive in and edit those original options from when you first installed the app. As for allowing an app to send push notifications, I would probably keep that separate, as its own blue dialog box. My permissions “screen” would be solely dedicated to access permissions, to information that is privately stored on your device. One big benefit of such a permissions screen of course is that Apple could theoretically add more things that require permission to be accessed by apps, without a user becoming too overwhelmed, because such a layout is far better than stacking dialog boxes. Think about access to NFC or perhaps your music library.