The official word on what was discussed at the meeting came from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney immediately following the event:

The President believes that American companies like these have been leading by investing in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, creating cutting-edge new technologies and promoting new ways to communicate. The President specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs. The group also discussed the importance of new investments in education and the new White House initiative Startup America, a partnership with the private sector aimed at supporting new startups and small businesses.

No doubt Obama approached this particular group to seek guidance regarding growth and expansion because of the unique abilities demonstrated by Apple, Google and others to continue to grow and operate profitably even during the peak of the recent recession. Apple’s Mac lineup of computers, for instance, outpaced industry growth for the past 19 quarters according to a report released yesterday.

Obama also seems keen to mimic the entrepreneurial spirit that has led to Silicon Valley’s role as an incubator of innovation and economic success. That the meeting took place at Doerr’s house indicates Obama is keen to learn from the startup economy (something made plain with the Startup America initiative), as well as from large, established tech firms.

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Presumably, the iSlate would also offer iPod and media playback functionality, but Hans’ post makes no mention of these features:

Our sources have told us that the rumor about Apple launching a product with the iSlate name is true, but the product won’t be an Apple tablet, it will be an eBook reader. The iSlate will be a competitor to the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook and other e-readers that are out there. Our sources have also told us that the iSlate eBook reader will run on Apple’s upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 software and will include a seperate App Store for eBooks. Apple will be announcing the iSlate eBook reader at WWDC 2010, which our sources says is being held on June 7.

Note also that if Quick PWN’s sources are correct, we won’t be seeing the iSlate or hear mention of it until WWDC, which is being held much earlier than previous rumors suggested, if the unidentified informant is to be believed. Moscone Center booking information suggests WWDC will begin on June 28, not the 7th.

I’m suspicious of this latest rumor for a number of reasons. First, the discrepancy between the WWDC dates previously reported and this one doesn’t really make any sense. Then again, maybe that actually adds credence to this rumor, since the source didn’t just go with the accepted date. I suppose the date change just strikes me as odd, but it doesn’t really preclude the validity of this report.

What I’m more wary of is the nature of the device described and the timing of its launch. Even though the e-book market is beginning to take off (if you believe Amazon’s own hype), it’s still nowhere near as strong as the netbook market was and is, and Apple was wary of jumping into that. I doubt it would create an e-reader at this point without making that a secondary feature, rather than the primary focus of the device. And if it isn’t coming until WWDC, then what’s the event next month going to be about? Why do rumors stemming from suppliers and other more reliable sources point to a different production timeline?

The iSlate, if that’s what it really will be called, will most likely have e-reader function and it will probably threaten Amazon’s market dominance in that area. But is that Apple’s aim with this device? I doubt it. Is e-reading the only or primary purpose of the new gadget? Not a chance.

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It has been a long time coming. Google’s Chrome web browser has been available on Windows for over a year, while Mac users have been left with three options — take their chances with a nightly build of the open-source fork of Chrome (dubbed Chromium), use Google’s developer release, or wait for an official Google release.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler reported yesterday that Chrome for Mac is just a handful of bugs away from a release — specifically, seven bugs, in case you’re counting. But in order to reach their end-of-year deadline for release, the code-jockeys at Google had to do a bit of a hatchet-job on the Mac version of their browser.

So far, Siegler says, all signs point to the exclusion of the Bookmark Manager, App Mode (which emulates the single-window web app functionality offered by Fluid), Task Manager, Gears, Sync for Mac (for syncing bookmarks across Macs), Multi-touch Gesture support, Full Screen Mode and Extensions.

Mike Pinkerton, Technical Lead for Google Chrome for Mac, was asked by Twitter user @boundlessdreamz “When will extensions work correctly on mac? Is that a blocker?”

Pinkerton replied, “No on extensions for beta. But we’ll get them soon. Must draw the line somewhere.”

If you’re a Safari user, you won’t feel too bad about missing Extensions support. If Safari proves anything, it’s that a fully functional and productive web browser doesn’t need to be chock-full of third-party extensions. Mine has only two; Evernote and 1Password. And I could probably live without the former, if I’m honest.

The lack of Gears comes as no great surprise, either. Google Gears doesn’t work on Snow Leopard anyway, and Google has been uncharacteristically rubbish at communicating why it’s being so slow at fixing it. On this point, Siegler adds, “Apparently, Google plans to push ahead with full HTML5 support rather than rely on Gears, at least on the Mac.”

I wonder what prompted that decision? Timing? Complexity? Or perhaps Gears becomes less desirable in a standards-compliant WebKit-world where functionality, speed and compatibility across multiple devices and multiple form-factors becomes the driving force in browser development.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know which technology more elegantly supports offline data storage; Gears or HTML5. In any case, Gears’ absence on Snow Leopard is deeply irritating for those of us who want to use GMail offline, or take advantage of drag-and-drop functionality in Google Wave. If Chrome marks the start of a Google-wide migration away from Gears and toward HTML5 (even if only for the Mac), I welcome it.

Also out of the equation (at this stage, anyway) is any mention of 64-bit compatibility. But there is, predictably, nothing surprising about that at all. If, like me, you’ve been pursuing the 64-bit dream, you’ll know how consistently disappointing the experience is — practically no one is building apps with true support for 64-bit OS X — and no, Apple’s home-grown Mail and iCal apps don’t count!

Why Should We Care?

For the last five months I’ve tried various builds of Chromium, which has so far been a bit of a mixed-bag when it comes to little things like performance and stability. Oh wait — did I say those were “little things?” Of course, what I meant to say was “stonking-great major issues.”

To be fair, Chromium shows promise, but it’s still much too “unfinished” to be my primary browser. And in case you were wondering, my primary browser is Safari. No, not because I’m an Apple fanboi, but because it’s stable, it’s lightweight, and it’s not a resource-hog. I used to love Firefox and recommended it to everyone, but I barely use the thing these days. Even with no third-party extensions installed, it takes an age to load and the UI is bafflingly inconsistent with the rest of OS X.

Ultimately, why should we care about Yet Another Browser? Well, just consider how much time you spend in a browser every day. Personally, most of my time is spent in Safari. I regularly have several dozen tabs open, often for days at a time. Most of my work is made up of hours spent reading, researching and writing, and while the latter used to take place in a dedicated word processor, Safari is now so stable and dependable I’ve gradually started doing more and more real-time, “live” writing inside the browser. I never would have taken that risk a year ago, but now I barely give it a thought.

In fact, the browser is such a primary, fundamental element in day-to-day computing that Google has built an entire operating system out of it.

In short, web browsers are big business, and make all the difference in how we perceive, experience and interact with the web. I’m all for a new browser that’s fast and functional and plays well with the websites and services I already use. I’m looking forward to putting Chrome for Mac through its paces — I hope it was worth the wait.

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Even after the newest touch model was released, teardowns revealed what looked like a space reserved for the camera internally. Apple seemed to be holding back for some reason, and recently reports have been made that that is indeed the case, and that a camera-wielding iPod touch will appear in Spring of 2010.

The news comes via The Examiner, which ascribes the information to sources within Apple. They claim that as most people suspect, a camera was indeed planned for release this fall, but the product failed to meet Apple’s exacting standards:

We have heard from an inside source who claims the camera version of the iPod Touch 3G will be released this Spring. The source confirms to us that the iPod Touch 3G with camera had actually been planned for release this past September, but had problems passing quality control. Unlike Samsung, Apple actually has a Quality Control department.

The article goes on to say that the camera going into the iPod touch will be the same as the one in the current iPod nano, not that found in the iPhone. Presumably, that means that the new touch won’t be able to shoot still photos, which is something the nano camera isn’t able to do.

This newest claim about the iPod touch is backed up by earlier reports of production problems just ahead of the September event, which were said to have frustrated Apple’s launch plans. The nature of the problem wasn’t specified, but French Apple news site HardMac reported it affected “the first dozen of thousands units produced.” 

Spring 2010 makes sense as a launch time frame, too, because Apple did upgrade the iPod touch alongside the other iPod models in September, even without the addition of a camera. Even if it resolved production issues quickly, because it went ahead and launched the product without the component, the Mac maker will have to wait a decent amount of time before introducing another new model in order to clear on-hand stock and defer unnecessary production reconfiguration costs.

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Build 10C531 lists “MacBook Pro 6,1” and “MacBook Pro 6,2”, an indication of major revisions of the MacBook Pro lineup. The current family of MacBook Pro’s range from 5,1 to 5,5.

Last week’s introduction of refreshed iMacs brought Intel’s new Core i5 and i7 (Nehalem) processors to Apple’s most popular desktop machines, but the refreshed product lineup didn’t include any new MacBook Pros. Applesana suggests that the new MacBook Pro models will likely feature quad core processors based on Intel’s Arrandale architecture which brings i5/i7 technology to a more power-efficient mobile chip.

The last time Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro line was in early June at the Worldwide Developers Conference.

Hefty Update

10.6.2 is a significant update to Snow Leopard, bringing a raft of bug fixes and performance improvements to existing functionality. Nothing has been said about new features, however, the user guide for Apple’s new Magic Mouse makes the following reference to Mac OS X 10.6.2:

To use your Apple Magic Mouse and its full range of features, update your Mac to Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or later and install the Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0; or update to Mac OS X version 10.6.2 or later.

Apple’s developers have been working hard. For those keeping count, this is 10.6.2’s fourth developer build in less than a month. The first, 10C514f, was seeded on Oct. 5. Only four days later, on Oct. 9, Apple produced build 10C519f. Developers were treated to build 10C527f just one week after that. And finally, 10C531 brings us to today.

At nearly 500MB, 10.6.2 is a hefty update, addressing an equally hefty assortment of bugs and issues affecting Snow Leopard. Most notably, this update is expected to fix a serious bug that can result in users losing all their personal data. MacRumor’s Doctor Q lists other fixes.

The seed is said to contain dozens of minor bug fixes and performance improvements in these areas: Address Book, AppleScript, AppleScriptObjC, ATS, ColorSync, Component Manager, Core Animation, Core Audio, Core Chinese Engine, Core Data, Core Graphics, Core Text, File Manager, Garbage Collection, Graphic drivers, Help Viewer, ImageKit, IOHIDFamily, Networking, NS Image, OpenCL, OpenGL, OSA, QT Kit, Speech Recognition, Sync Services, and Xtype.

There is no indication yet as to when 10.6.2 will be released, though the speed at which these builds are being developed — and the urgent need for that data-wiping bug fix — mean we probably won’t be waiting much longer.

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Despite an incremental speed increase, the biggest update to the MacBook Air at WWDC was the price. The low-end model is now $1,499, down $300, while the high-end model with a solid-state drive now sells for $1,799, a jaw-dropping $700 price drop.

Available in two models, the low-end version now features a 1.86 GHz Intel Core Duo, formerly 1.6 GHz, along with a 120 GB hard drive. The high-end now runs at 2.13 GHz, but more importantly has a 128GB solid-state drive. This is a huge improvement over the low-end model, not in capacity but speed. The problem with the 120GB mechanical hard drive is that it spins at 4200 RPM, resulting in a noticeable performance bottleneck. While the MacBook Air 128GB SSD is no Intel X-25M SSD, it’s still a big leap up from the mechanical hard drive. Apple is clearly addressing a major flaw with the MacBook Air by lowering the price on the SSD model. Unfortunately, that’s the only flaw being addressed.

Both models still have only 2GB of RAM, RAM that is soldered to the motherboard and cannot be upgraded. This seems especially curious when one considers that even the 13″ MacBook “Pro” has a high-end model with 4GB of RAM. Another deficiency, at least when compared with the MacBook Pros, is that the battery life on the MacBook Air remains at around 5 hours, the same as it was when the MacBook Air was introduced in January 2008. Another flaw, or absence of update, concerns the mouse button. The MacBook Air still has one, unlike the MacBook Pros. Why?

While the price drop is welcome, this MacBook Air is looking a lot like an interim update. Those who need the lightest, thinnest MacBook right now might want to consider it, but a true upgrade will probably come early next year. Look for more RAM, better battery life, and possibly a fast SSD drive then.

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Apple blessed the iPhone 3G with a gorgeous, large screen. There is plenty of screen real estate, so why waste it with just a wallpaper, album cover artwork, or the date and time?

Having been a Windows Mobile user for six years, the Today Screen in Windows Mobile was the one feature I sorely missed in the iPhone OS. With the Today Screen, I could, at a quick glance, see upcoming appointments and know I have new mail, new messages, or missed calls.

It is possible to replicate that experience on a jailbroken iPhone. Today, in the first of two articles, I’ll talk about two third-party apps that’ll turn the barren land that is the Lock screen into a golden field of usefulness.

IntelliScreen

The undisputed king of the hill app for enhancing the Lock screen, IntelliScreen (Intelliborn, $9.99), boasts a long list of features. To simply say it enhances the Lock screen is an understatement. It’s really a productivity suite. To understand what IntelliScreen does, think of it as being comprised of two distinct parts.

The first part puts information such as appointments, mail, messages, weather forecast and RSS feeds on the Lock screen.

This part of IntelliScreen is highly configurable. You choose what goes onto the Lock screen of your iPhone, and you can arrange the order in which each information type is displayed.

What’s more, you can launch the native app associated with each kind of item. For example, sliding across an appointment brings up a button to launch Calendar.

For items such as mail and text messages, you can invoke a QuickView pop-up and read them without having to leave the Lock screen.

The second part completely overhauls the way iPhone OS presents you with system alerts such as missed calls and scheduled reminders. This part of IntelliScreen, called IntelliAlert, is not visible unless your iPhone needs to notify you of a system event, which it does by curling up its usual view and revealing the alert beneath it. Alerts can be by sound, vibration, or a screen flash, and can be set to repeat in intervals.

In addition, IntelliAlert displays in the Status bar notification icons for each type of alert. There are icons for new mail, new messages, new voicemail, missed calls, call forwarding, and due appointments. Small as this may seem, having notification icons in the Status bar goes a long way toward enhancing user experience. More on this in Part Two.

A Rogue App

There is something that should be said about IntelliScreen. Newcomers to IntelliScreen should know that it’s an app with a somewhat bad rep. Many users have reported IntelliScreen to be the culprit in software conflicts with other apps, or that IntelliScreen was the cause of fatal crashes.

These problems are almost always attributable to the fact that IntelliScreen does not hook into Mobile Substrate, the framework that provides third-party apps and mods to inject their code into iPhone OS. Mobile Substrate is designed to boot into a safe mode in the event of a crash, so that your iPhone does not become completely unbootable. Since IntelliScreen does its thing its own way — “rogue,” if you will — the chances of incompatibility with other apps are real and potentially high.

To date I’ve had to restart my iPhone only occasionally, after IntelliScreen becomes unresponsive, but nothing as serious as having my iPhone stuck at the Apple logo has taken place.

Lock Calendar

For those of you looking for a free solution, Lock Calendar (Thomas Moore, free) is a worthy alternative.

Lock Calendar does one thing and does it very well, which is to display upcoming Calendar appointments in the Lock screen. While functionality in its first release was very basic, Lock Calendar 0.3 is a huge improvement, with some features that even IntelliScreen lacks. These include the ability to display some or all of your calendars, and to change font type, size and color. What I personally like about Lock Calendar is that it doesn’t require WinterBoard to run.

Lock Calendar has a lot of potential for becoming a replacement for IntelliScreen on my iPhone. Its developer, Thomas Moore¹, is looking into adding new features such as themes, customizable view layout, weather information, and notification alerts for text messages and mail. This is an app I am definitely keeping a close eye on.

Which is the App for You?

IntelliScreen is a must-have app for my iPhone. It’s the kind of app you only need to spend a day using to appreciate how well-rounded it is. Telephony-specific enhancements, such as QuickView and IntelliAlert, are the kind of bells and whistles that power users crave but cannot get with the stock iPhone OS.

On the other hand, Lock Calendar is an app that should be sufficient for many users. Its simplicity will appeal to those who simply want to put the Lock screen to better use. Lock Calendar should appeal to iPod touch users, too. In fact, I chose to install Lock Calendar for my iPod touch rather than IntelliScreen; without messaging, telephony or vibrating abilities, there is little else in the iPod touch for IntelliScreen to do.

IntelliScreen and Lock Calendar are by no means the only Lock screen apps available in the jailbreak world. In Part Two, we’ll look at a handful of other apps ranging from clever to plain weird. Stay tuned.

¹ Disclaimer: While I do not personally know Mr. Moore, I was involved in the internationalization work for Lock Calendar 0.3.

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It’s time for the very apex of everyone’s Easter weekend, the all important revealing of this week’s picks from the App Store.

But it’s not all about the latest fresh pickings from the App Store, before we get in to all that, I’ve collated the week’s news in handy bite-size form — think of it as factual Easter egg, especially for your brain.

The week was kicked off with rumors and speculation surrounding the next iterations of the iPod touch and iPhone. An official job posting by Apple suggested that the next generation iPod touch will feature a camera. Plus, it’s looking almost certain that video recording and FM transmit/receive will be coming to the next iPhone hardware update.

With the added potential for apps that the forthcoming 3.0 iPhone software update will bring, budding coders can now learn about development via iTunes. Stanford University is now running app development courses for download, available for download now and, what’s more, totally free.

During the week, I reviewed two new iPhone apps: novelty sound tool Amplitude and The Void, an Asteroids-esque space shooter. Note that next week, I’ll be stamping my big boot of opinion down on yet more apps, including Hysteria, a creepy choose-your-own-adventure horror game, and The New York Times Crosswords Daily.

We also kicked off our latest series iPhone Dev Sessions, with a fantastic tutorial on designing an Orientation-Aware Clock, courtesy of Bickbot’s Henry Balanon. If you’re looking to dip in to iPhone-coding, I’d highly recommend this article.

Moving on to the apps, this week I’ve been looking at Fat Tag, RjDj Shake, Japanese Massage and Tap Tap Coldplay.

Fat Tag (free)
The Free Art and Technology Lab — aka F.A.T. — is behind all sorts of clever, disruptive, challenging projects, such as SelfControl — an OS X application that can temporarily block access to specific sites (or mail servers). Their latest release is Fat Tag, a simple graffiti tagging app (with accelerometer-controlled dripping paint). The really special thing about their app though is that, in-keeping with F.A.T.’s copyright free spirit, the source code is available to download from their site. It’s a potentially valuable learning opportunity for fresh iPhone app coders.

RjDj (free)
Back in October last year, my second article for TheAppleBlog was about RjDj Album — a sound toy that the creators described as, “the next generation of walkman or mp3 player… a digital drug which causes mind twisting hearing sensation.”I talked about how RjDj could become an effective sub-platform for distributing some of the most exciting experiences available on the iPhone. That time has come. The latest RjDj app integrates scene-downloading, which means an ever-expanding library of new sonic devices to play with. Plus, you can now share your recordings via Facebook and Twitter. This is seriously innovative and exciting stuff, capturing the iPhone’s true potential. Download it now.

Japanese Massage ($1.99)
If all the action of the week has got you aching all over, this is the app for you. It’s a DIY self-help app that teaches you to squeeze, smooth and pummel that pain away, letting a river of relaxation flow through your body as if it were a blade of grass in the cool Spring breeze. Featuring 20 different massage styles, each technique contains a description and — vital to effective learning — a clear illustration. The key here is that these are all self-massage techniques, so anytime you’re feeling the burn, you can use this app to help ease the stress away.

Tap Tap Coldplay ($4.99)
Let it be stated now. I am not a Coldplay fan. If their not-so-unique brand of proto-U2 stadium rock was a bus to town, I’d rather walk in the rain…even if it took all day and I was just wearing sandals and shorts. However, and this is a big however, Brian Eno lent a hand on their latest album, and — although it’s got that Where The Streets Have No Name epic vibe (courtesy of Eno) — it’s not so bad. As for the app, blending Tap Tap Revenge with Coldplay is a serious success — it makes their music fun and, for fans of the band, this is a must-have. Plus, it’s got Life in Technicolor II, a great tune with a great video.

That’s the picks for this week. I’ll return in seven days time with more from the App Store. Drop by TheAppleBlog during the week to find the latest Apple news alongside app reviews too.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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So Apple updated the Mac mini today. It seems it’s pretty much everything the rumor sites were saying, and I can’t help being disappointed.

In my look at the various rumors, one thing I stated was that the price was out of line. I based this on the value of the machine, not the usual ramblings from pundits about the economy. In my view, the mini is overpriced and the upgrades — which only make the machine more modern after nearly a year of stagnation — wouldn’t be enough. Oh, and thanks Apple for pulling the remote from the package, I’d probably just lose it anyway.

Unfortunately, there was no price change, and Apple did nothing beyond the updates to bridge the value gap. The base mini comes with 1GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive. That’s laughable. In a day when even the old, white plastic MacBook comes with 2GB, the base mini is still left stuck at one. Apple has all but admitted that 1GB isn’t enough and yet, there’s the mini, sitting there under-performing. A desktop, machine no less.

It’s probably just as well, since the base mini only has a 120GB hard drive. Geez, Apple, mini or not this is a desktop machine, save the 120GB drives for your base laptop, but a desktop machine deserves more. Thanks for including FireWire, so I can fill up the drive in about 10 minutes.

So, six hundred bucks gets me a 1GB machine that won’t hold much data. Six. Hundred. Dollars. Want a great keyboard or mouse? When you buy an iMac these are included (albeit now without a keypad), so moving to the wireless version of both is only $50. For the mini? Well, they’ll set you back $100, and that’s not even wireless; kick in another $30 for that.

Apple, did it never occur to you that even though this is a BYODKM (bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse) system, you might have, you know, encouraged people to buy your keyboard and mouse? A hundred bucks? Are you drunk? The potential new Mac user sucked in by the supposed low price of the mini, perhaps even thinking Apple’s not so expensive after all, is going to get a shock. I’m not suggesting a wholesale lowering of prices, but rather simply selling a bundle dirt cheap for new mini buyers at the time of purchase.

Finally, yes, you can get the 2GB of memory the machine deserves, and a decent hard drive (320GB), and it’ll only set you back another $200. Eight hundred bucks and you now have a desktop machine that’s at least in the ballpark. Of course, at that price the 2.0GHz processor seems a bit weak but, hey, only another $150 is needed to bump it up to 2.26GHz! Woo hoo! I have a decent machine now, and it’s only $950, though I still have to dig a keyboard and mouse out of the garage.

Apple, barring a reduction in price on machines that do not compete at all, you should have at least tossed in some things to increase the value proposition. The cheap keyboard/mouse bundle as mentioned above, a remote, and maybe a copy of iWork, perhaps. Oh, and that second GB of memory. At $600 I might feel better about that baseline machine. As it is, it’s difficult to recommend the mini to anyone. I’d push the MacBook, but then maybe that’s what you wanted.

It’s hard to think that Apple looks at the potential mini buyer with anything but a bit of disdain. How else would you describe taking a year to update a machine that wasn’t competitive, and replacing it with something even less so? I get the feeling mini sales are just brisk enough that Apple can’t kill the thing, though that would probably be their preference. It appears they’d sooner run Windows Vista on their corporate machines than make the mini a good value.

Oh well, guess I’ll focus on the new iMacs next, those look like a great deal.

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The search engine that had a strong claim on the web long before upstart Google came along may be down, but they aren’t out. They’re planning a massive undertaking, a cross-platform release of a mobile suite of applications that, at least according to them, could revolutionize the way you use the web from your mobile device.

Yahoo Mobile (not Go. Forget Go ever existed.) will drop simultaneously for mobile web browsers, as a dedicated iPhone app, and as a dedicated app for other smartphones as well (which will be far easier now that everyone is launching an App Store clone). They aren’t being too clear about the specifics, but it’s basically shaping up to be a mobile web portal, which sort of is, and sort of isn’t like Google Mobile. Yahoo Mobile will integrate Mail, Messenger, News and Calendar, although it’s not made explicitly clear whether those will just be available as links to web-based content or integrated into an iPhone app. They also talk about Opera mobile being integrated into the package, but whether or not that particular piece of the puzzle makes its way onto the iPhone is another story.

This will be Yahoo!’s first major foray into the arena of the iPhone (if you don’t count the curious oneConnect social network application), and it will pit them head-to-head against their dominant rival Google. If I’m at all an accurate judge, I’d say Google is reserving fear for when something actually materializes, and even then, I don’t think Yahoo! can offer up anything to seriously challenge their dominance of the iPhone platform. Somehow getting Opera onto Apple devices would be a coup, but if it happened, it would just pave the way for Chrome Mobile, which would probably end up as another “W” in the Google column. Is it just me, or does anyone else sort of feel like Yahoo! should just throw in the towel at this point?

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So Apple is finally awarded their multi-touch patent, and the hue and cry from the Apple Bashers is pretty loud. But not only Apple Bashers are worried, Daring Fireball had this to say:

Very broad language – taken at face value, Apple effectively owns the IP rights to multi-touch in the U.S. This sucks.

DF’s major beef is with the patent office awarding the patent in the first place due to its broad language. However, what other type of language does one use for the concept being patented? We’re talking a whole new UI here. The implication seems to be that the patent is short on specifics, yet it’s 358 pages! When you’re patenting a new UI, I’m thinking you’re going to have to brush with broad strokes lest you forget a corner of the canvas that a competitor uses to white out your picture.

Other comments I’ve read on various blogs are more alarmist. Apple will become a monopoly. Apple is evil. I hated them before, I hate them even more now. Apple will kill innovation. Apple hates competition. Blah, blah, blah…

And all of this without Apple even lifting a finger. I guess it’s easier to yell and scream first, and then look for justification later.

What’s Really Going On?

My view of the whole thing is that Apple remembers a painful lesson, and has no intention of letting it happen again. They invented the computer GUI we’ve been using for 25 years and got precious little for it. It was ripped off, and those goods rammed down our throats through means that are still questionable, at best.

Back then, the idea of patenting or copyrighting software or a UI was pretty fuzzy (just ask the inventor of Visacalc, it must suck to see a bajillion dollars of Excel sold every year and get bupkis). It also didn’t help that the ’85 agreement between Microsoft and Apple could have been worded better, but I’m not so sure that back then Microsoft would have been stopped from their rip-off Windows shell even without that agreement. Today we know better.

Apple spent millions of dollars and several years developing the premiere touch user interface, and they had no intention for any other company to simply copy the primary elements and then claim it’s the same thing. Not this time.

Does Apple Deserve This?

For those claiming Apple doesn’t deserve the patent because they did not “invent” multi-touch, who did invent it? Jeff Han? Did he not rely on the works of others? Doesn’t everybody? More to the point, who is everybody modeling their product after? That’s right, that would be Apple. No one is ripping off Jeff’s, or anyone else’s, designs for the simple reasons there was nothing practical enough to rip off.

At some point, when you perfect an idea, and actually make it work, and usable, and practical, and bring it to market, and it’s affordable and reliable enough to be a huge hit then, yes, you “invented” it. Apple absolutely did this with the Macintosh, and they did it with the iPhone OS.

Will It Kill Innovation?

As for the idea that this kills innovation, please re-think that question using incentive and history as your guides:

• Incentive, because why put in the massive amounts of time, money and effort to truly innovate — and put up with all your competitors mocking and ridiculing it until the product becomes a huge hit — only to watch them change their tune and just start ripping it off? The incentive is that if you take those huge risks (does anyone not appreciate what a risk this was for Apple?) you’ll get rewarded by being afforded some level of protection. That potential reward encourages innovation, it doesn’t kill it. In fact, it’s a major reason for the patent system in the first place.
• As for history, did Apple’s lack of control over the computer GUI give us innovation? Are any of you seriously going to argue the DOS shell known as Windows was innovative? It could be argued that not being able to stop Windows ultimately set the computer tech world back 15 years. Please. Blatant knock-offs from those trying to make a quick buck (or even just survive) is not innovation, it’s stolen IP. Let’s not get all teary-eyed over supposed suppressed innovation. The rip-off artists aren’t interested in innovating anything.

And please try to think back to only two years ago, when much of the planet was mocking Apple and the iPhone. How short some memories are! That every phone should be like this seems self-evident now, but it was Apple who realized it and did the work to make it so. I do not (and should not) care that someone was demoing resizing photos on a huge screen with expensive equipment in an implementation that was not at all practical outside of a lab, or university, or demo room. That’s not what the iPhone is. That’s its genius. That’s what is being patented.

Finally…

It remains to be seen how Apple will use this patent to protect their IP. I do not dispute that many patents are used as weapons to club everything in order to make a buck. We see a lot of such “patent trolling,” but does anyone seriously think Apple is going to be a patent troll now? I mean, surely you know they have better sources of revenue, right?

I just don’t see Apple having the time nor the inclination to try to make a few bucks that way. It’s about trying to stop blatant copycats of a major game-changing design in a way they could not 25 years ago. Good for them.

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Billed as “your official, comprehensive connection to the heart of Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s campaign,” Obama’s campaign today released an official election application for the iPhone and iPod touch. This marks the first sanctioned application release from either side in the American presidential race, though several unofficial apps of varying utility have previously been available.

It’s immediately clear upon launch that the application was not rushed, but was actually developed with care and attention to detail.  The UI is clean and attractive (despite the Windows-ish color scheme) and the action is snappy.  It was clearly developed with two key aims in mind: promote all things Obama and encourage you to do the same.

The app is innovative in that it goes beyond being simply an information delivery tool.  Instead it uses the unique capabilities of the iPhone platform to attempt to make campaigners out of anyone who downloads it.  The first option you’re presented with is “Call Friends,” which searches your contact list and prioritizes your friends and associates based on whether or not their state is considered a key battleground.  You can then call them directly from the list to attempt to sway their vote.

Need ammunition? What if, for instance, your old Ohioan college roommate isn’t about Obama’s stance on seniors and social security and would like you to explain it to him?  With the “Issues” menu, you can toe the party line without even knowing it ahead of time.

All the media you can swallow regarding the Obama campaign is also only a few taps away, complete with a convenient absence of counterpoint material.  To be fair, the app never claims balance, nor should it, considering the source.

Now that the first shots have been fired in the war to win voters by way of their most beloved handheld electronic device, it’ll be interesting to see if the McCain campaign fires back.  Of course, it’s always possible that they’ll spin it as yet another example of Obama’s elitism and leave it at that.

What do you think?  Brilliant campaign move or merely preaching to the converted?

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I’m not a huge fan of Events and there are lots of little things that just annoy me now. One of which is that the iPhoto library now exists as a “package” instead of a readily accessible set of folders. Even after doing “Show Package Contents” on the library file it can get pretty hairy trying to actually get to the raw photographs.

Generally the only time I really have a desire to get to said files is when using a browser to upload photos. You can’t just navigate to your library files and grab the picture you want. There is a way to make it possible, though and it’s fairly straight forward.

1. Access the iPhoto Library Folder

Control-click (or right-click) on the iPhoto Library file and choose “Show Package Contents.”

2. Create Folder Aliases

After doing “Show Package Content” you should now see the folders and files contained in the package.

You’ll see two folders, “Modified” and “Originals,” which contain the actual photo files that iPhoto uses. These folders contain sub-folders which seem to be, for the most part, identical to the Events you might have set up. These are the folders we want access to when getting single files to upload in a browser.

What we have to do is create a folder alias to give us access directly to these folders outside of the iPhoto Library package.

Control-click on the “Modified” folder and choose “Make Alias” from the contextual menu. Leave it named “Modified alias” and then drag the new alias folder to the same directory that your iPhoto Library is in.

Repeat this for the “Originals” folder.

You can then rename the aliases to whatever you choose. You should end up with something like this:

3. Access the Files

Chances are the aliases still won’t give you access to the files when you are just in the Finder, but they will work when you are using a browser to open them.

Take a site like Flickr, for example. I’d like to upload a few of the original photo files to my account. I’m presented with the “Choose File” upload buttons and I can now access the files from within the browser:

And there we have it! It’s definitely a bit of a hack job for what should be a simple task, but until Apple changes this format we seem to be stuck with this solution.

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