Where Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography is a deep look into the person who founded Apple, why he did it and how he found success, Inside Apple has, in a way, a much narrower focus. It examines what sets this company apart as a business, with a special focus on the period at Apple since Jobs’ return, in 1997.

Lashinsky’s book reads like it was written by someone who is deeply sourced in Silicon Valley and who, in fact, has been covering Apple for over a decade. He has had firsthand experience watching Apple’s rebirth, and he has interviewed many current and former Apple employees about their work and experience with Jobs. And this can’t be stressed enough: Lashinsky did this all without any cooperation from Apple, Jobs or current Apple CEO Tim Cook.

The Isaacson biography, on the other hand, is — as was intended — a look at Jobs himself with his full cooperation. It means that the detailed history of the computer industry and Apple we read are through Jobs’ Lennon-style lenses.

This is not to dismiss Isaacson’s work: His book provides an interesting view into the very private Jobs’ personality, his personal life and his contributions to the world. But Inside Apple is far more insightful about the question so many of us — from the curious to students of business — have: why Apple is so different from any other successful, large company on the planet.

Lashinsky illustrates this by reporting on the startup mentality Jobs instilled, the way the executive team functions, how marketing and public relations create and maintain the brand, the way the caste system inside the company enables its “magic,” and especially the importance of jarring secrecy and top-down control of information play.

Lashinsky also offers us his analysis on the perils Apple faces without Jobs. It’s a topic you can read anywhere, but here, again, he has a closer view than many. He looks at the shortcomings of the way Jobs, the entrepreneur-in-chief, kept all fellow entrepreneurs out of his inner circle of executives and what that will mean for the company’s future success. He also examines how Cook as CEO may mix things up. From being a former IBMer and his first moves elevating certain executives to establishing company-wide philanthropy and strong hints he won’t hoard cash they way Jobs did, the new chief executive clearly has his own ideas about the company.

This book’s real strength — besides lots of insight from people who knew and worked with Jobs, Cook and the rest of the executive team — is the way it frames different scenarios that could result from Apple sans Jobs. Here is how he captures the tension for Apple’s future, in my favorite quote that sums it all up:

Over the next fifteen years or so, the business world will get to watch the drama of whether Apple truly has found a way to cheat the hangman’s noose or if the period between 1997 and 2012 or so was a golden aberration driven by one extraordinary individual the likes of which we’ll never see again. If the former is true, then Apple will defy almost all of business history.

You get the feeling when reading this that people inside the company will be just as keen to pick up a copy as those of us on the outside.

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Steve Jobs sold 383,000 copies in the U.S. during its first week of sales, and it is also one of the fastest-selling nonfiction titles ever in the UK. The title broke records in many international markets, too, including Taiwan, where preorders were higher for it than for any previous book, and in Brazil, where it became the best-selling e-book ever in the country just two weeks after its initial release. Production plans for a movie are already reported as under way, after Sony Pictures acquired the rights.

I would wager there are a few records left for the Steve Jobs biography to break yet, since a lot of the holiday shopping season still remains, and interest in the book will likely spike when the paperback version is introduced. Subsequent major Apple product launches could also help renew interest in the company’s original driving creative force, so expect sales to remain strong throughout the new year.

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• Forecast: the evolution of the e-book market
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• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

Amazon introduced Kindle Cloud Reader on Wednesday, an HTML5-based web application that runs in mobile Safari on the iPad, Safari on the Mac and PC, and Chrome on the Mac and other desktop operating systems. Amazon has promised support for additional browsers and platforms soon, but the fact that the iPad is in the launch group of devices makes clear Amazon’s main goal with this endeavor, which is to provide its customers with a full Kindle experience on the Apple tablet, including access to the integrated Kindle Store.

So how does it work? Once you navigate to http://read.amazon.com in your iPad’s Safari browser, you’ll be greeted with an invitation to sign in with your Amazon/Kindle account. Signing in will bring you to a screen featuring your library of Kindle book purchases, as well as a prompt directing you to allow Safari to increase the size of the database permitted for the site. This is used for the offline cache Cloud Reader maintains for reading without an active internet connection. Kindle Cloud Reader lets you tap and hold books from your library to download them to local storage for offline reading, and also stores books you are currently reading offline automatically, so that your reading won’t be interrupted if you lose connection.

Actually reading books in Cloud Reader is a pleasure, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell that you aren’t using a native app, especially if you place a shortcut to the web app on your iPad’s home screen, which launched the reader in a chrome-less, full-screen browser. You can change the font size and color of your books in Cloud Reader, and also view highlights, notes and bookmarks you’ve made on other devices. You can’t make new notes or highlights using the web app, but you can add new bookmarks just by tapping the upper right-hand corner of any page, even offline. It also works in both landscape and portrait orientations, as does the integrated store.

Some of the frills of the native app are missing, like page turn animations, access to Kindle periodicals, and the ability to search through a book for keywords. You also can’t look up terms in the dictionary the way you can in the full-fledged native Kindle app. But if you use those extra features sparingly, and go through books quickly, then Cloud Reader’s built-in bookstore might make up for those omissions.

The Kindle Store included in Cloud Reader makes browsing for books on your iPad a pleasure. You get a scrollable selection of recommendations at the top of the interface, and a list of best sellers and category navigation below that. You can search the store at any point, and navigate back and forward as you browse. The individual book listings actually provide you with more info at-a-glance in a more sensibly organized way than on the Kindle Store in the desktop browser, and you can try a sample of any book in the Amazon e-book library, which loads up right in the standard Cloud Reader reading interface. Unfortunately, it doesn’t remember where you were when you switch to your library; jumping back to the store brings you to the front page.

In the end, Kindle Cloud reader works, and works well, but purely for e-reading purposes, it doesn’t really match up to its native app counterpart. That said, the ability to shop for books and read them immediately might outweigh the disadvantages for some. For me, Kindle Cloud Reader will remain on my home screen, but I won’t be using it primarily for reading; I’ll be using it to buy. The iPad-optimized Kindle Store is a pleasure to shop, and thanks to iOS multitasking, I can pretty easily switch back and forth between the native and web-based Kindle apps. Even if I don’t use Cloud Reader as a native app replacement, it does prove one thing: Keeping integrated e-book stores out of native apps benefits no one but Apple.

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The listing reports some info about iLife ’11 that would suggest its author has insider information about the technical specs of the suite. In the summary, iLife ’11 is described as being composed of 64-bit applications, with improved social networking integration for iPhoto and a completely rewritten iWeb. It also claims that iDVD is gone, replaced by another, mysterious application. Maybe Apple’s finally come up with a way to let consumers create and install their own basic iPhone apps?

A red band on the image of the books cover  translates roughly into “iPhoto, iMovie and more with apps for Mac, iPhone 4, iPod and iPad.” Does that mean we’ll finally see a full iLife release on iOS? I’m okay with the current iMovie release, but I’d love to see a pocket Garage Band, and the Photos app just isn’t on par with iPhoto. Give me basic image tweaking tools, for instance. A scaled-down iWeb would also be a welcome addition for those who maintain a site on MobileMe.

Books from the same publisher also appeared purporting to deal specifically with iMovie and iPhoto ’11. Take this all with a grain of salt, however, because some of the details on those products make specific mention of iDVD, apparently contradicting the summary of the first, in which iDVD’s demise is mentioned.

It’s possible these are just placeholders, and that real versions will be written immediately upon iLife’s release, but all of the products do announce an anticipated release date of November 2010. Apple has updated its MacBook line in either October or November for the past four years, so it’s not unlikely that they’d ship a new iLife just in time for the holidays, too, alongside new notebooks.

Would you like to see iLife on the iPhone/iPad, or is it just overkill for a mobile platform?

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New Stuff to Learn

There’s been a lot of press lately about Apple development tools and the programming language, which is Objective-C. While folks that come from a C and C++ background feel quite at home with Objective-C, there are various developer groups feeling left out of the iPhone app gold rush. Specifically, I am speaking to the legions of .NET and Flash developers who have spent many years mastering their craft and are now being asked to learn a new set of tools, programming language and SDK.

As someone who went through that transition I thought I would document the books that helped along the way. While I did learn Mac development in a classroom setting, the books I’ll recommend were instrumental to it all making sense. My recommendations are listed in suggested reading order.

The Basics

The first book that can help orient new Mac developers is Learn Objective-C on the Mac by Apress. While the book doesn’t specifically focus on the iPhone SDK it does provide fundamental answers to beginner programming questions. This includes how to program Objective-C properties, methods, classes, variables and OO design. It also introduces important concepts such as NSDictionary and NSPredicate which become useful when learning database development using Core Data.

Build On What You’ve Learned

Once you get your bearings you can build on the fundamentals by reading Beginning iPhone Development by Apress. This book introduces the basic aspects of the iPhone SDK. As you may know, learning Objective-C doesn’t necessarily make you an iPhone expert. You will also need to learn how to apply the iPhone SDK using Objective-C which is the focus of this book.

Create User Interfaces

I’ve heard a lot of people comment about their experience with Interface Builder (IB). Granted, IB may not be what most existing developers are used to, I do find working with it to be fun and different. There’s a lot you can do with IB, but working with XIB files (pronounced “nib”) IBOulets and IBActions can be complex. In the book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass, he provides almost all of his code examples in an illustrated step-by-step approach. Readers also get exposed to additional concepts such as Key-Value-Coding, which is used in Mac desktop development.

Fill In the Gaps

At this stage you’ll certainly understand most, if not all of the language syntax and SDK fundamentals. However, you may not understand why some things work they way they do. This may include items such as memory management, synthesizing properties, calling delegates and handling notifications. One of the best books to help fill in the gaps is Head First – iPhone Development by O’Reilly. It provides one of the best introductions to Core Data that I’ve seen. One cruise through this book and you’ll be a happy camper.

Build Something Cool

By now you should have the knowledge to put your development ideas into action. Add to your new found expertise by reading More iPhone Development by Apress. This book skips the preliminaries and gets right into the good stuff such as Core Location, GameKit and the MediaPlayer Framework. I’ve been surprised by how many times I go back to this book as a reference for new and existing projects.

Have a Reference

Finally, the last resource that I recommend is the online reference material provided by Apple. This is not to say that its documentation is not good. On the contrary, it’s a great resource, but almost to a fault. Due to the complexity of its documentation I find it most useful as a reference and not for learning new concepts. I feel many new developers rush to the iPhone Developers Reference documentation as their first information source only to be discouraged when none of it makes sense.

Conclusion

Learning iPhone Development is indeed challenging but is not impossible with the right resources. As you continue to build your skills in app development we’ll be here to help take your ideas from concept to the App Store. In meantime these books should ease the learning curve.

The app comes from Atomic Antelope, which makes iPhone apps, including one called Bauble that lets you turn your iPhone into the world’s most expensive Christmas card. The Alice app brings an interactive element to the pages of this children’s classic, with features that are based on the original illustrations and allow readers to stretch Alice’s body when she comes to the table with the “Drink Me” bottle, to throw tarts at the Queen of Hearts and watch them bounce off her, and to rock the baby that turns into a pig. The app costs $8.99, although there’s also a free “lite” version. Chris Stevens, one half of Atomic Antelope, wrote about creating the app here.

So is this the future of e-books — every book its own app? It’s certainly a great example of the kind of full-color and interactivity and motion (using the accelerometer) that isn’t possible on other e-readers. These kinds of apps could certainly help the tablet app market hit the $8 billion-mark that GigaOM Pro analyst Mike Wolf forecast it would in a recent report on the sector (sub req’d). It’s also a sign of the creativity that traditional publishers seem to lack, as they try to maintain their traditional stranglehold on book prices in the online world, as Paul Sweeting detailed in this recent GigaOM Pro analysis. Now I’m trying to imagine what a Dr. Seuss book would look like as an iPad app.

Penguin is apparently looking to sidestep the iBookstore altogether and sell content through the regular App Store, at least unless Apple has additional formats beyond .epub to offer for the iBook app. The publisher wants to offer embedded interactive content in its titles, including audio, video and device-to-device functions.

Looking at what Penguin is planning, I’m reminded of those elaborate electronic reading learning systems designed for children, or the original electronic books, which included simple noisemakers alongside traditional paper texts. In other words, it’s kind of neat, especially if you’re a five-year old, but it doesn’t really strike me as the exciting future of books Penguin is making it out to be. Besides, I don’t want a five-year old getting my iPad all grubby and sticky. Here’s a video of what the publisher was showing off:

The books demoed that were aimed at a more mature audience were a little more impressive, but I was mostly struck by how much they resembled regular apps more than anything else. They seemed like slightly less capable apps, in fact, in that they were still trying to look like books despite there being no point to that. People have developed great medical and astronomy apps for the iPhone (and iPad, by extension) platform. Why would I choose a book that’s been somewhat awkwardly made into an app instead of something designed, from concept to finished product, specifically for the platform?

As someone who avidly enjoys reading, and also buys more iPhone apps than is probably wise or justifiable, even if I do write for an Apple-centric blog, I’m not sold on Penguin’s vision of the future of books on the iPad. I don’t read books for the same reason that I use software applications or interact with rich media, and I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of mixing the two concepts. I think in doing so, you run the risk of losing the value of one or both of these activities.

A quote by Makinson illustrates exactly what scares me about Penguin’s plans:

We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do. The .epub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about.

Cool stuff? Books aren’t cool. They don’t need to be, and your desperate attempts at staying relevant won’t change that.

Naturally, as a contributor to this blog, my first thought was to upgrade from iPhoto to Aperture. The problem is, where do I turn to learn how to use all of Aperture’s features? The One to One program would be perfect for me, but that’s no longer an option unless I purchase a new computer from Apple.

For those of you who may have forgotten, the old One to One program cost $99 and included weekly one hour (read: one academic hour, which actually means 50 minutes) sessions for an entire year. Customers could learn about a wide variety of topics, from how to use a Mac, to uploading photos to MobileMe, to editing images in Aperture.

In order to provide an alternative for those like me who’ve been hung out to dry, I’ve done my best gathering resources for people who like a little guidance when learning new software. Fortunately, Aperture is designed so that newcomers can easily figure out how to import photos from a memory card and organize them into projects, but anything more advanced may require additional patience and resources.

• Apple tutorials podcast
• Quick Tips with Richard Harrington podcast
• Apple’s Aperture forum
• Apple’s Exploring Aperture book
• Amazon’s Aperture 4+ star books
• Retail workshops – Don’t expect much unless you live close to a major store. Those in Northern California have two options: San Francisco and Corte Madera.

Let us know about any other good resources you’ve come across for learning Aperture.

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• People want to learn how to write programs on the Mac
• People don’t want to learn how to use programs on the Mac (or PC, for that matter)

The latter is especially interesting to me. Though my time in support taught me well about RTFM syndrome, there were always certain people interested in learning to use software to its fullest. This group understood that reviewing documentation was likely the best way to do that.

But expectations have changed. Usage should now be obvious or a lot of people won’t bother. I don’t mind the expectation that a manual shouldn’t be required to start using software right away. In fact, I like that attitude because developers must now give more care to their user interfaces. However, even in the best interfaces there are limits.

For my own usage, I bought an iWork 08 book to get a better feel for that suite of programs. Additionally, I downloaded a lengthy third-party Aperture guide to understand the various tools better.

I’m curious, at what point have you crossed the threshold, and either studied the full documentation or bought a supplemental book to learn a program in more depth?

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On the O’Reilly Radar blog, Mike Hendrickson analyzed figures from Nielsen Bookscan retail sales data. This is data collected in the U.S. from bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, or online from Amazon.

The Nielsen figures make for depressing reading, illustrating how the computer book market has seen a steady decline in sales since mid-2008. Hendrickson notes there are “few signs the book-buying slump is going to turn around anytime soon.” In total, the market saw more than half a million fewer units sold in the first half of 2009 than were sold in the same period last year (the red line in the graph below.)

O'Reilly Report - Computer Books 2009 First Half Unit Sales

Only eight subjects (from a list of over 100 categories) saw a year-on-year increase in sales by the end of the first half of 2009. “The market performance this year is the worst we’ve seen since the fall of 2001,” Hendrickson said.

Of the eight subjects showing improved year-on-year sales, “Mac Programming” tops the list, followed by “Objective C,” “Online Video,” “Global Position Device,” “Computerized Home” and “Mobile Programming.” However, all major categories have seen lower first-half sales for 2009. Interestingly, the biggest “loser” in the list is “Office Suites.” Also in that list; “Mac OS,” “Spreadsheets,” “Digital Photography” and “Windows Consumer.” The figures seem to mirror the recent sales decline seen in the computer market in general.

O'reilly Report - Categories

The report also claims that of all programming languages, Objective C has seen the biggest growth in sales, fueled by a feverish interest in iPhone and Mac development.

O'Reilly Report - Programming Languages

Hendrickson refers to the report as “…lots of bad news peppered with small glimmers of hope.” He adds that some of those glimmers include improved sales driven by the release of Windows 7 and major new versions of Sharepoint and Visual Studio due for release later this year. Also on the radar is Mac OS X Snow Leopard coming “soonish,” Hendrickson comments, bringing with it a “nice boost for computer book sales.”

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Print media isn’t dead, it’s just slowly becoming digital media. Which I guess would mean that it’s dying. Regardless, it’s good news for those of us who actually like using our iPhones as e-readers. And it’s good news for Scroll Motion, a company responsible for bringing lots of best-sellers to the iPhone platform via its Iceberg Reader titles. Those titles, until now, have each been published as standalone apps, much to the consternation of me, and others who have to wade through the tangled mess that is the App Store to locate the few gems.

With the advent of iPhone OS 3.0, it will begin offering its titles via one, centralized app (something which, I should point out, Stanza was able to do just fine before 3.0) thanks to in-app purchasing. And though they already have about 500 titles on offer, they have bigger plans for the 3.0 Iceberg Reader software. 2,000 times bigger, give or take.

During its part at the WWDC keynote today, Scroll Motion revealed its upcoming Iceberg Reader app, which will take advantage of Apple’s new in-app purchasing to offer subscriptions to more than 50 major magazines, and, eventually, over a million books. That’s a lot of books. During the demo, the one they used to show how purchasing works was priced at $9.99, which is on par with many of its current standalone offerings. It is more expensive, however, than the average book I buy via the Stanza app, though you’re actually going through an external content provider for those transactions, whereas with Iceberg you’ll be able to just use your iTunes account.

Scroll Motion also showed off plans to offer text books for sale for students, and then proceeded to show how it might use copy/paste to plagiarize their betters. Or maybe use properly cited quotes, depending on their moral bent.

I’m not sure I’ll switch to Iceberg just because it enables in-app purchasing, especially if prices still favor Stanza, but the sheer volume of content it seems to be bringing to the platform definitely excites me as a reader. I want choices, and I want them in one place, easily accessible without a lot of switching stores and digging around as is currently the case with Stanza. Hopefully Amazon follows suit with its newly acquired property and answers Scroll Motion with as much content, and maybe more subscription offers. It could easily leverage its Kindle relationship to make that happen. Unfortunately, it will never give over purchasing control to Apple, so buying in-app will probably stay the exclusive province of independent operators like Scroll Motion.

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Only a little while ago, we published a story about Apple’s inconsistent review process for the App Store. In that case, the question was one of imagery, and focused on some icons that Apple seemed to be of two minds about. Well, inconsistency is one thing, but their latest gaffe represents an entirely different kind of failing. In a move that garnered worldwide attention, Apple yesterday approved and then later removed an app called “Baby Shaker.”

If you aren’t already aware of the details of the app, it basically allowed users to simulate shaking a baby to death on their iPhone or iPod touch. On screen, you saw a pencil-drawn animation of a baby that would progressively move less and less as you shook your phone, until big red X’s would appear over its eyes and it would stop moving altogether, at which point the baby is presumably dead. Even just describing what the app does is horrific, let alone actually playing it.

It’s surprising, then, that such an app would sneak by Apple’s generally very conservative App Store review process. The very same process which, until recently, wouldn’t allow fart noises or overtly sexually suggestive material within their hallowed walls. Infanticide, though? No problem.

The quick removal of the app seems to suggest that its approval in the first place was a mistake or an oversight, and that in general, Apple is definitely not in favor of depicting this sort of thing on their platform. Nonetheless, it was there, it was live, and at least some people downloaded it before its removal. Advocacy and awareness groups are up in arms, and they’re looking for an explanation from Apple for why this could be allowed to happen.

I’d like an explanation, too. How about we celebrate the billionth app downloaded (imagine if it actually was Baby Shaker?) with some transparency regarding your review process? Because as of right now, considering this screw-up, the Instapaper/Pocket God issue, and the Tweetie misunderstanding regarding foul language, it seems like there are 10 guys at the office who draw straws to see who’s in charge of policy for the day.

On a slow news day like yesterday, something like Baby Shaker can quickly obscure any other message you might be trying to get across, like how much money you’re raking in, for instance. Apple would be wise to put a cap on this sort of thing before it starts interfering with bigger, more important messages, like new product announcements, for instance. Establish a clear and straightforward review process, with redundancies and checks and balances, and let developers know what the pipleline looks like. Do it now, before it taints people’s anticipation of your 3.0 release.

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The new device brings a lot of improvements over the previous model, including more battery life, an incredibly sleek, much thinner design, and better rendering of images. It also brings an experimental text-to-speech feature to the table that enables the device to read aloud, 2GB of internal storage, and a new sync feature that allows you to read on your original Kindle, and then switch to the Kindle 2 without losing your place. This feature is also supposed to support other devices in future.

All of this is interesting, but what does it have to do with Apple? If you ask Apple, they might coyly answer “Nothing.” But if you ask Amazon, I’ll bet that if they’re being honest, they’ll say they’re giving a lot of thought to Apple with the Kindle 2. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even noted that the Kindle 2 was much thinner than the iPhone during the launch event.

Consider the recent success of the iPhone and iPod touch as e-book reading devices. In fact, the iPhone recently garnered press for surpassing Amazon’s original Kindle in popularity in that category. To me, that sounds an awful lot like competition. And what’s really frightening, from Amazon’s perspective, is that Apple isn’t even actively trying to lock up that market, yet they’re making significant headway.

I think that’s probably why the Kindle 2 has so many feature improvements over the original. Without the advent of the iPhone’s success via apps like Stanza, we might have seen a very different Kindle 2, one that improved on physical design and usability, but not necessarily one that includes features the iPhone lacks like text-to-speech and the new syncing feature.

Don’t think that Apple hasn’t noticed the success of their device as a book reader, even if they didn’t plan on marketing it that way. In fact, I suspect that if they are working on a larger format iPod touch, or a tablet-type device, it’s safe to say that they’ll play up that angle and even offer an official, integrated solution that will definitely give the Kindle a run for its money. An iTunes e-book category would then be a perfect tie-in.

It may seem like a far-fetched prediction, but there’s no way Apple can look at the success of Stanza on the iPhone and not imagine ways they might more directly capitalize. And if they’re already working on a larger-format device, there’s no good reason not to challenge Amazon.

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What I don’t think I will ever do, though, is buy an individual book application. To me, that would be like buying individual albums as independent applications instead of through iTunes. Why would I opt to have a thousand different icons on my desktop, one for each album, when it would be far easier, more organized, and more sensible to keep them all in one place, i.e., my iTunes library. The same applies for electronic books. How is it beneficial, to anyone besides publishers and developers, to have discrete applications for individual books?

The problem is that it does represent a significant benefit for those parties. iPhone users vary greatly in terms of their knowledge level and expertise. I still know someone who is, as of yet, not really sure how you get apps on to the device, and he owns one. Obviously, he’s an extreme case, but the point is that there’s still a large segment of the market that might not even be aware apps like Stanza even exist. Hence the need for books-as-apps, like the recently released ScrollMotion Iceberg Reader titles like Stephenie Meyer’s crazily successful Twilight.

Even beyond being impractical, books-as-apps prove annoying to end-users like myself who browse the app store regularly, and have to sift through a great many of them some days to find quality new releases. Might there be a way to satisfy both commercial interests and the interests of the consumer, without clogging up the app store and home screens with hundreds of unnecessary apps?

The answer is the iTunes store. Whether as a model for successful, centralized distribution, as with Stanza, or quite literally, meaning that they begin selling books through the iTunes store itself (not audio books, those don’t count). And yes, Stanza does already do this, but it needs the backing and promotional power of the iTunes store in order to convince publishers to use it instead of creating individual books-as-apps. Now if we could just get comics from major publishers distributed in a similar manner, the world would be a perfect place.

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This week I pick my 12 favorite apps of the year as we lead 2008 around the back and shoot it’s face off, while gently beckoning a fresh-faced 2009 through the front door.

Just because it’s the holiday season, doesn’t mean Apple news stops happening. Quite the contrary in fact because this week we got all existential with Psystar’s ever-more-fantastical litigation, waxed lyrical with the creators of 12seconds.tv, and even chucked in a special Mac-themed gift — from us to you – for good measure.

Seeing as it’s not just the end of a week but the end of an entire year, I thought a special year-end Roundup was in order. Below I’m bringing together some of the best apps I’ve featured over the year and a few that I didn’t have space to mention. (Note, those looking for my Twitter app recommendation should check out my 12 Twitter Apps article.)

This year, I’ve been looking at Evernote, Harvest, Urbanspoon, Locly, Klick, iPolaroid, Backgammon Online, Cookie Bonus Solitaire, BeatMaker, FourTrack, Stanza and Palringo.

Organization & Productivity

Evernote (free)
It’s the app that tends to be a constant in everyone’s list of essential iPhone apps, enabling you to create quick lists, voice memos and even geo-tagged photos when on the move. Plus, paired with the fantastic (and also free) desktop app, it’s a tool that’ll keep your life in order and your mind clear. Combine this with Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders, providing organizational tips and tricks for creative folk, and your life should be a little less stress free and lots more productive.

Harvest (free)
The folks over at Harvest have created the ultimate tool for freelancers and small businesses wanting to stay on top of time-keeping, invoices, estimates and project management. Alongside the app itself, there’s also a desktop web app and even an OS X dashboard widget. Note that this is an old-school web app — installed by visiting the site and bookmarking it to the home screen. 

Out & About

Urbanspoon (free)
Having just made the move to London, I frequently partake in the many gastronomical delights on offer in the city. When I’m at a loss as to a suitable dining location on one of my frequent food-themed expeditions, Urbanspoon makes the decision for me using a natty little shake-activated slot-machine-style interface (complete with clunky sound effects).

Locly (free)
And for those times when I need other local services, or just a point in the right direction to the nearest ATM, bar, restaurant or hotel, Locly is my multi-faceted GPS-enabled weapon of choice. It can even search for nearby points of interest using Flickr and grab Wikipedia information on the local area.

Photos & Images

Klick (free)
It’s the Swiss Army Knife of Flickr apps, albeit without the toothpick, tweezers or tiny protective shiv. Klick allows you to upload direct to Flickr (with tags), browse photos from your contacts or based on your GPS location, plus even mark favorites and comments. A wonderful app, bewildering both in its feature-set and for the fact it’s still, inexplicably, free.

iPolaroid (free)
Frequently perturbed by grainy photos from my iPhone, I set out to find an aesthetically effective solution to this problem. Rather than employ an iPhone photo editing app — many of which on the store tend to promise much more than they deliver — I settled on iPolaroid. This app applies various retrotastic digital processes to your photo before setting it in a Polaroid frame. It’s silly, brilliant and draws attention away from the dire iPhone camera.

Games & Play

Backgammon Online ($4.99)
Steeped in history and consistently exciting, Backgammon is a wonderful game: skill, luck and competitive yet inane banter makes it an essential multiplayer experience. The thing is, the few Backgammon apps that are on the store are designed more as singleplayer time wasters. This game steps up to the mark by incorporating the FIBS.com game server, meaning there’s an almost constant stream of potential contenders to take on.

Cookie Bonus Solitaire (free)
It’s sometimes the simple games that really endure. Downloading Cookie Bonus Solitaire back when it was originally released, I expected a basic (and perhaps boring) solitaire experience. My expectations were duly slapped to the floor and stamped on, like a young Gary Coleman fighting an angry polar bear, when I discovered that this game incorporates online play, a weird yet compelling scoring system and even several sly cheats.

Sound & Music

BeatMaker ($19.99)
It may seem somewhat pricey, but it’s astoundingly good value considering how feature-packed this iPhone-based sequencer is. Anyone familiar with desktop music-making (from Garage Band to Logic) will know how a sequencer works and be familiar with sampling, effects units and maybe even recording sound too. BeatMaker does all that, and then a little more, on your iPhone or iPod touch. For both amateurs and pros, this is a fantastic creative tool to carry in your pocket.

FourTrack ($9.99)
And where some may feel that BeatMaker is geared towards electronic music producers, FourTrack will appeal to  acoustic musicians (especially guitarists and singers). This is a four track recorder, iPhone and touch compatible, with panning, punch in and out, levels, multiple song storage and even easy sync to desktop. As a composer and producer, this is my ultimate essential tool whenever I stray from my Macbook Pro.

Words & Sentences

Stanza (free)
Having dipped in and out of e-books for several years now, I’d never really enjoyed reading in digital form until Stanza. The app is connected to several online libraries containing tons of free reading material. Most importantly, this means I have access to several (free) Doctor Who books and this is an unexpected yet entirely welcome benefit to having an iPhone with Stanza installed.

Palringo (free)
There are several iPhone IM apps out there that cost a few bucks — including IM+, MobileLinked IM, BeeJive IM and MobileChat — but, while I have standards, I’m also cheap. Not wanting to shell out for an IM app means I chose Palringo: it’s got all the features I need for those moments when I (very rarely) simply must chat with someone on my iPhone.

Back in ’09

That’s it for the 2008. I’ll be back next year with the first weekly roundup of 2009. Here’s hoping we see more polished, useful and entertaining apps and fewer shoddy, flatulence-based cash-ins.

Before you run off to celebrate the future’s impending arrival at the present, drop by the comments and let me know what apps are your must-haves from 2008.

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The giveaway represents a long-term marketing strategy, not a one-off promotion. According to Neelan Choksi, Lexcycle CEO:

“We are thrilled to bring Stanza readers a sampling of the wealth of titles published by the Random House Publishing Group imprints. But this is just the tip of the iceberg: we look forward to extending this promotion to make even more free titles available.”

Presumably, Choksi and Lexcycle are hoping that the move by Random House will result in other major publishing houses following suit. Penguin Books currently offers an iPhone application, featuring book excerpts, podcast and blog postings, and critical essays. They eventually wish to offer full titles for sale through the app as well, but Stanza has far greater appeal and market penetration, so they may change their strategy based on the success of Random House’s campaign.

The free Random House title are currently available in a special category in Stanza’s iPhone/iPod touch Online Catalog.

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