After reading this article over at Arstechnica I found myself with a giant itch that needed scratching. Have you ever noticed that the only people complaining about walled gardens are developers, and not consumers? Do you want to know why that is? People don’t want developers selling off their information to the highest bidder whenever they feel like it. People are happy that someone’s got their best interests in mind, however inefficient the process might be to get an app approved. Personally I’m glad Apple vets applications and protects us from the malicious practices that are going on over on the Android phone.

Don’t believe me? Duke University, Penn State, and Intel Labs teamed up to study Android applications transmission of personal information to marketers. Guess what they found, out of 30 popular free Android applications, selected at random, half of them were sending “private information to advertising servers, including the user’s location and phone number…In some cases, they found that the applications were relaying GPS coordinates to remote advertising network servers as frequently as every 30 seconds, even when not displaying advertisements.” How’s that for an open, and evil-free phone. Google might not vet the applications on their android store, but the “don’t be evil” moniker when out the window years ago.

So, the next time someone starts bitching about Apple’s walled garden, ask them how they feel about applications updating marketing servers every thirty seconds with their location, name, and personal information. When they look at you dumbfounded, point them in the direction of this article, then ask them if a wall-less garden is the best situation for consumers. Then ask them how well it worked out for them with Windows XP, that should shut them up for a while.

Article Via Daring Fireball

Things just keep getting weirder by the minute. The new Apple TV can be connected to iTunes via a mini USB cable, and then restored to the factory settings. We don’t even know what that means for the device. How bizarre.

So, jailbreakers are probably rejoicing right this second because they’ll be able to restore their devices once the Apple TV gets an official jailbreak, whenever that may be.

There’s way too many arrows pointing towards apps on the Apple TV for us to not comment on it, so here we go. iTunes support and 8GB of storage, in addition to AirPlay make the Apple TV pretty lucrative, and it’s already primed for apps. While we currently are not able to put media onto the device in any way, it certainly wouldn’t take much work for Apple to include application support. There was a rumour a while back that suggested that over the air syncing was coming to the iPhone and iPad, so if we were to add Apple TV to that discussion it could be the game changer we all thought the Apple TV was going to be.

Apps remain a software update away, or a jailbreak, whichever comes first.

Article and Image via Cult of Mac

Are you a person that takes notes for different subjects, or maybe different meetings?  Has the iPad’s core Notes app left you wanting more?  Would you like to add photos to your notes, or maybe group a series of notes under one subject?  Well want no longer: iOS developer Steven Romej brings you these features plus a lot more in his iPad app Chapters.  Chapters for the iPad utilizes a Pages style home screen, where you can flip through your various notes to choose the one that you want.  In addition you can customize each set of Notes the way you want.  So, no two sets of Notes would be the same.

What’s Macgasmic

I have found Chapters to be very useful both in my professional and personal life.  I use Chapters at work to group meeting topics together.  For example, I have a Notebook for Staff Meetings where I can easily find notes I’ve taken from previous meetings by searching key words, or by simply selecting the meeting date.  This is invaluable when I’m in a meeting, I can quickly and easily lookup notes from past meetings.  In addition, I can also export my Notes as a PDF document, and email them to my co-workers.  This makes sharing notes more practical on the iPad.

I also use Chapters in my personal life.  I recently became my son’s Tiger Cub Den Leader for his Cub Scout Pack, and I have been attending quite a few meetings where note taking is beneficial.  I use Chapters much in the same way as I do at work; moreover, I can add photos to my Notes to make them more rich and add flare to them.  Another feature I found very useful is that I can export my Notes to Google Docs to share with other parents in the Den.  Now they can access my Notes from wherever they are.

Features

Here is a list of features you’ll find in Chapters:

• Protect private notebooks with a password
• Create backup files in case you ever lose your data
• Adjust font settings per notebook
• Bullet lists
• Pick a different background color for each notebook to color code them
• Choose to write on white or sepia sheets
• Fast search with contextual snippets helps you find things
• A calendar lets you browse entries by month
• Website export is perfect for zip archival or creating online travel blogs
• Quickly navigate to other entries with the up/down buttons, like in Mail
• Adjust the date of your entries by tapping the date
• Options to show and append timestamps

Room for Improvement

This is a well put together iPad app with lots of exceptional features.  With that said I would like to have more fine tuning options.  For example, I would like to have an option for a global change as well as an individual Notebook change.  I prefer all of my Notebooks to have the Sepia paper.  As it stands now I have to make this change in every new Notebook I create.  I would also like to have more options for the manipulation of photos in the Notes, such as watermarking a photo, or having text wrap around the photo.

Since using Chapters, I have all but ceased using the core Notes app that comes on the iPad.  I find this app to be useful in every aspect from using it at work to using it home.  When you find an app that is as well rounded as Chapters is, you definitely will want to download it.

Chapters for iPad Screenshots

iFixit is up to their usual antics, ripping apart the Apple TV before most of us have even gotten our hands on one yet. Man, it sucks being Canadian. It seems like Apple forgets to ship these things to our local Apple Stores at the same time as the rest of the world.

What’s the big findings from the teardown? The Apple TV is a lot like the innards of an iPad, which is pretty curious. The Apple TV has an A4 Processor, 8GB of NAND Flash storage, a possible spot for a second NAND chip, a Broadcom WIFI chip, all on a Panasonic board. Pretty straight forward, except for this curious little tidbit. It looks like there’s a place for a dock connector on the board. This thing is a dock connector away from being a full-fledged computer for $99.00. I’d bet that the homebrew crowds are going to love hacking this puppy.

So what’s the iPad 2 relationship? Well, there’s a lot of similarities between the iPad’s innards and the Apple TV’s innards according to iFixit. The teardown crew even thinks that this may very well be the logical board of future iPads. Another interesting point is that the Apple TV has 8GB of storage, presumably for buffering your streaming content, but could it also be a tell that Apple plans on bringing apps to the Apple TV?

Article via iFixIt

I didn’t buy a 3G iPad because I thought it would be a waste of money. The device would be well worth the price, but the extra dataplan I could do without. I held out hope that I would be able to tether my iPhone to my iPad, which in theory should be possible, considering Rogers has allowed most tethering options.

My plan was crushed the day that Steve Jobs told us that Apple wouldn’t be bringing tethering to the iPad earlier this year, but it seems like there’s a bright light shinning down the tunnel now. iOS 4.2 Beta 2 seems to have some hooks for tethering.

We may see tethering available on the iPad once iOS 4.2 ships in November. It seems like it’s less about sharing the internet from your iPhone, and more about tethering from your 3G iPad to your computer.

I’m still holding out hope for being able to tether my iPhone to my iPad, through legitimate channels.

Article and Image Via 9 to 5

Why wouldn’t you go directly to the source for your chips? Qualcomm, the CDMA inventor, has been meeting with Apple to discuss “future cooperation” according to Apple Insider. It’s also being stated that Qualcomm is in the process of creating dual-carrier chips that would allow phones to be used on CDMA/EVDO networks as well as UMTS/HSPA+ networks. What does that mean in english? Well, one chip that would let your phone work on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon. There wouldn’t be a need to purchase a specific phones based on your carrier.

Things seem to be heating up for an announcement regarding Verizon, the iPad 2 and the iPhone 5. Man, it could be an interesting year for the battle between Android and iOS. If iOS was available on the CDMA/EVDO networks, we may just see another shift in the demographic numbers and market share reports. If Apple wants to compete, they need to get on the CDMA network as fast as possible. It’s the last unexplored frontier.

Article Via Apple Insider

Text editing apps have been placed on the top of my research list these days. Most people I know who have made the switch to an iPad love the device, but they just don’t seem to be able to overcome the age old problem of backing up their documents.

It’s probably our fault for beating them over the head with the need to back up all the time, so it’s going to take a while before we convince them that syncing files between an iPad and a desktop with something like Dropbox or the SimpleNote network is just as satisfactory.

IF you’re a writer who hates having a ton of crap in your face, and you’d prefer to just see your text and title, then you’re looking for PlainText. You download it, attach it to Dropbox by clicking on the gear icon, then start typing your documents.

From there it automatically syncs all of your documents as .TXT files on your desktop. The documents will also be available in the iPad or iPhone version of PlainText. Backed up, automagically.  Another cool thing is that the application lets you create a filing system, complete with folders, that also syncs over Dropbox, which is pretty nifty, and might be a first.

It’s lightweight, it’s minimal, and it lets you focus on your writing, all while backing up and syncing to Dropbox as you go. It doesn’t get much simpler or easier than that.

Oh yeah, and it’s free.

Finally, there’s some resolution for the shoddy graphics cards and the scrambled video problems that have been present in ’07-’08 MacBook Pro lines with a Nvidia graphics chipset. Essentially, Nvidia is still claiming that they’re not at fault, but have agreed to replace or reimburse anyone who has had some problems. There’s three options that you are now afforded:

1. You can have Nvidia replace the GPU or MCP
2. If you have an HP Notebook, you might be able to get a replacement of similar value and kind
3. Nvidia will pay for repairs related to the problems with the chips

You can register your email, or check to see if you’re included in the settlement at nvidiasettlement.com. But, after trying to figure out if my Macbook Pro is eligible, I realized that their detection process doesn’t even work, conveniently.

Luckily for them, I know with certainty that I bought my laptop in February of 2009.

Article Via Apple Insider