Maybe some of you were lucky enough to snatch up this gem while it was available ever so briefly. I’m talking about the Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone platform that’s been in development by Manomio for many months now.

According to 9 to 5 Mac, it made a short-lived appearance after finally being approved by Apple, the product of much back and forth by the two companies. The app was finally approved after Manomio removed a BASIC interpreter that violated the terms of the SDK. Or appeared to remove it, anyway.

The BASIC interpreter actually remained in place, one user found. The iPhone Blog describes the easter egg-type glitch required to make bring it up:

If you’re dying to get your BASIC on, however, reader Stooovie let us know you can still access it by enabling “always show full keyboard,” starting a game, paging over to the EXTRA keyboard, and then tapping RESET.

Clearly, Apple reviewers weren’t aware that of this fun little secret when they gave the emulator a pass. We end users should figure out some way to talk in code about this stuff so that we can share and enjoy it without alerting the authorities.

Manomio is maintaining that it wasn’t trying to sneak anything past Apple’s review process. Or at least, it didn’t intend anyone to be able to access it, end users included. The developer claims it left in the BASIC interpreter in the hopes that Apple would later relax its policies, at which point it could be activated remotely:

Unfortunately Apple this night pulled the C64 App from the App Store. We had agreed with Apple to remove basic from the application, but as we believed it would be possible to convince Apple to let it in later on, we left it in the app to be activated remotely by us when we had “go” from Apple.

Due to the extreme publicity the app has received over the weekend and the fact that several users found a way to enable the basic back, Apple decided to remove the app from App Store until we have solved the issue.

This is very frustrating as we had no intention of tricking basic into the app and the fix was done in a few minutes the moment we found out – a new version has been submitted to Apple, and we can only hope Apple will appreciate our efforts to apply the changes they need in order to put it back on.

Whether or not it’s true, that excuse is unlikely to prompt Apple to let the app back in the store any time soon. Oh well, guess it’s time to shelve those dreams of playing Altered Beast on my phone once again.

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Last week, we discussed the evolution, rhyme and reason behind some of Apple’s icons since the public release of OS X in 2001. This week, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the “Easter eggs” that are hidden in these icons.

Hidden Detail

An easy way to one up the competition when you release a new OS is to release your OS with bigger icons. Before Mac OS X, icons were limited to a paltry 32×32 pixels. It got the job done, but there wasn’t anything exactly spectacular about it. With newer versions of operating systems, Leopard brought about a new maximum size of 512×512 pixels and Windows Vista settled on a maximum size of 256×256 pixels. In the Windows world, that just meant your screen could be cluttered by large icons. But in the Mac world, larger icons meant they could take on a whole new meaning.

In a lot of these large icons, Apple has given extra detail, such as the flecks in folders, in an attempt to make them more photorealistic. (Cool tidbit: In Snow Leopard, a generic folder icon appears to open as you drag files into it.)

Here are a few examples where Apple has added Easter eggs to their icons.

The most recognized is the inclusion of Apple’s infamous Think Different poem on the TextEdit icon.

The Keynote icon from iWork ’09 references Q4 2009. Q4 stands for fourth quarter, the final quarter of a company’s fiscal year; results from both it and the full-year period are reported simultaneously. The writing depicted on the icon, quoted below, is actually lyrics from Spring Awakening. Thanks to Ken Drake for decoding it.

Hidden inside the Dictionary app icon is a reference to the Latin-esque placeholder text displaying “Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet Etiam.”

A closer inspection of the Disk Utility icon shows in tiny print, “Handle the hard drive carefully to avoid damaging the circuit board. Make sure you are properly grounded.”

Looking close at the iTunes icon, you can see “iTunes 7” and “Apple 2006” inscribed on the inside of the disc. (The file is a transparent PNG, so if you have issues seeing it, save it out to your computer and view it with a colored background).

The icon for Font Book features a book with an “F” and two type blocks for “A” and “K.” Was it intentional for them to read as “AFK,” or the abbreviation for internet slang “away from keyboard?”

The Mail icon is also “postmarked” with the phase “Hello from Cupertino, CA.”

Of course, even Apple’s own icon for Windows computers on a network takes on a very familiar sight.

Apple’s Dashcode icon features actual CSS code on the icon.

Interface Builder, Apple’s developer tool for creating user interfaces, also features extra detail, labeling its contents.

Jar Launcher, an application for loading Java JAR files, features code written on the napkin.

Apple’s icon for Aperture also features a familiar “Designed by Apple in California” line, seen on other Apple products. The other markings, 55mm and 1:1.4 indicate the lens has a large maximum aperture. Kinda fitting, don’t you think?

The Fun Goes On

Even other third party developers have been creative with messages hidden in their icons. For users of CSS Edit, look closely to find “ie sucks” on the icon. There are likely many other icons that feature these types of Easter eggs, so please use the comments below in case I might have missed some!

P.S. All of these icons were pulled from the original applications. If you’d like to explore and dig out your own, right click on an application and pick “Show Package Contents.” Inside the Resources folder you will find lots of glyphs and other images as well as a .icns file which contains the 512×512 version of the icon.

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If you ask any of the Apple “fanboys” why they are so devoted to Apple, at least one of the reasons you will hear is that Apple “sweats the small stuff,” which really proves its dedication to user experience and attention to detail.

Here’s a few of my favorites that demonstrate Apple’s attention, not just to its hardware and software, but to even the product packaging. See how many you may have noticed before, and feel free to add any that I might have missed in the comments below.

Serial Numbers

In the world of computers, serial numbers are important for a variety of reasons, including verifying warranty status and determining the correct specifications, to name a few. Many Apple products feature, in addition to their standard serial number, a barcode that makes reading this serial number much easier for Geniuses or other technicians.

Though some newer models have forgone barcodes, such as the 2009 model MacBook Pros and MacBook Air, barcodes can still be found on many other Apple products. In addition to serial numbers represented as barcodes, some Macs, like the Mac Pro, also include a barcode for the system’s MAC address. Though it changes from model to model, Apple has often put these barcodes and serial numbers in easily accessible places.

On the Power Mac G5, the serial number was located on the inside of the tower, behind the aluminum side panel. On iMac G4s and eMacs, the serial number was located on the inside of the optical drive cover. This really made it easy to quickly locate a serial number if you couldn’t access it through the OS.

Fiat Lux a la Mac

As many people leave their Macs running non-stop throughout the day, they have likely stumbled upon the infamous sleep light. Much like a heartbeat (or “snoring”), the little light pulses while your Mac sleeps. When the iMac G5 originally shipped, its sleep light indicator was bright! It didn’t bother people during the day, but for those who kept their iMac in an office or bedroom, it could light up the whole room at night. Apple issued a firmware update that reduced the sleep light’s brightness during evening hours, giving a much more relaxing pulse than before.

Beyond sleep lights, other indicators on newer Macs are typically hidden until needed. Take for instance the iSight indicator light, built into displays, which is seemingly non-existent until the camera is activated. Similar to the sleep light on the unibody MacBook Pros, the power light on the new aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard blends in seamlessly until its activated. The thin aluminum that has been perforated with tiny holes for the light to shine through, but when there is no light, the keyboard looks seamless.

Indicator lights on power adapters are also worthy of mention. With once quick glance, you can easily see what is going on. If the light is amber, the battery is charging. If the light is green, the battery is fully charged and ready to go.

Another interesting use of light is the Apple logo on the rear of the portables. The light that illuminates this logo is simply excess ambient light from your display. Go ahead and take a look. Lower the brightness on your display and watch the apple dim.

Product Shots

The next time you see a promotional shot for an Apple product, take notice of the time. For many years, whenever a Mac has been shown displaying the OS X desktop, the clock indicates the system version that the Mac ships pre-installed. This trend even carries forth to Apple’s retail stores, where display signage and wall banners that showcase Leopard prominently feature the system clock at 10:50. Due to only having 60 minutes in an hour, showing a clock at 10:60 for Snow Leopard would not make much sense. Pre-release screenshots from Apple still display 10:50, so this trend will likely end soon.

In the iPhone arena, all of the promotional images of the iPhone and iPod touch all display 9:42 (except one preliminary image,which displayed 9:41). What’s the significance of this? Some think it may relate to the time the iPhone was originally introduced; others see it as a somewhat disjointed homage to Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.” Most of my research seems to confirm that 9:42 was the actual time of the iPhone announcement during Steve’s keynote in 2007.

Hidden OS X Easter Eggs

Apple’s attention to detail moves beyond the hardware and into its software as well. Take for example the Clock widget in the Dashboard. Look closely at the second hand and notice how it vibrates much like a real clock does.

For those that use Mail, as you drag the divider between the date column to expand or make the column smaller, the formatting of the date dynamically adjusts to fit. If there’s room to display the time, it shows up. As you make the column smaller, the formatting reduces to fit. Most email applications would just truncate whatever did not fit in the column.

This is just a small list of a huge number of little details found on a lot of Apple products that really make them a joy to use. The tipping point, so to speak, is that Apple doesn’t market any of these as “features,” it’s just the fact that they took the time to integrate them subtly into the Apple experience that makes it all worthwhile.

If you’ve found other examples of Apple’s attention to detail, let us know in the comments!

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