On Wednesday, Apple sold its 50 billionth iOS app. TUAW was there keeping track of the excitement and monitoring the iTunes store. Many of our colleagues and readers used this contest as an opportunity to stock up on numerous free apps, to test and explore.

Were you one of them?

What apps did you download and which ones do you love? Here at TUAW, most of our choices were word of mouth -- Megan downloaded Moves while I gave the Target app a try. I managed to convince Steve Sande to pick up Enigma.

Sadly, none of us won.

What about you? Did you discover a really great app while trying to win the prize? Drop a note in the comments and share your discoveries. And take part in our little poll. We're curious as to how many times people "entered" with the intent of winning big.

View Poll

Weekend Poll: What apps did you discover via the 50 billionth download contest? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One thing that seems to be a common attribute of hard-core Apple fans is that they are connoisseurs of great design. It doesn't matter if it's the sleek curves of a new iMac or the minimalist slab of the iPhone 5, we love how the devices are designed with pleasing dimensions and an enjoyable tactile sensation. That's why I was instantly attracted to the Kenu Airframe (US$24.95), a simple and lightweight smartphone car mount that's perfect for present and future iPhones.

Some of the car mounts I've received for review over the years have been expensive overkill. They often use a suction cup mount to stick to the front window of the car, which doesn't work very well in hot dry environments as they tend to pop off when they sit in the sun for a while, dropping your expensive phone to the floor of the car. There's usually a long arm designed to bring the iPhone closer to your hand, which has the undesirable effect of making the phone sway or bounce.

The Kenu Airframe is simplicity defined: it uses a soft plastic clip to attach to an air vent in your car. That clip rotates 90 degrees to properly fit thick or thin grilles on your vent. The idea of mounting the iPhone to your air vent is pure genius as well, as in hot conditions you'll most likely have air conditioning turned on, which will cool the phone and keep it from overheating.

Gallery: Kenu Airframe

An expandable jaw on the Airframe can hold most phones regardless of their width, giving you some semblance of insurance against needing to purchase another car mount should a future iteration of iPhone be a different width.

One other fun thing: if you need an impromptu stand for your iPhone, just grab your Airframe and a business or credit card from your wallet, then pop that card into the clip on the back. Voila! Your iPhone is standing up on its own.

Installing the Airframe is quite simple. Find a spot in your car with a vent where you'd like to hang your iPhone, and push the clip onto the plastic grille. That's it. Next, grab your iPhone and push it into the jaws of the Airframe, and you're done. One note: if you have a thick iPhone case like the Mophie Juice Pack, the Airframe won't be able to grab onto your phone. It works swimmingly with a lot of the thinner cases.

The way the clip is designed virtually guarantees that the Airframe is not going to fall out of the vent grille. There's a lot of road construction going on near my home right now and it's practically "four-wheeling" territory on one of the main drags with a lot of bumps and dips. Even at the maximum speed allowed in the construction zone, the jarring and swerving didn't move the Airframe or my iPhone a bit.

The travel stand idea with the credit card is also brilliant. It's a perfect way to use a car mount anywhere -- something that you can't do with a "normal" suction-cup equipped mount.

If there are any negatives I can think of, it's that this might not be a good idea in the winter if you have the clips inserted into a vent blowing hot air onto your iPhone. I don't know for sure if this would cause your iPhone to shut off due to high temperatures, but it's worth thinking about.

Whether you use your iPhone in the car for entertainment, directions, or just to have your phone at arm's reach when you're driving, the Airframe is a simple, sturdy, and functional car mount that takes up very little room.

Pros

• Very compact design and light (less than 1 oz.) enough to carry anywhere
• Doesn't rely on suction cups to mount your phone in your vehicle
• Using the Airframe with a credit card as a travel stand for your phone is sheer genius
• Soft rubber material on the jaws and clips ensures a tight grip to phone and vent without scratching either

Cons

• Doesn't work with thicker cases like the Mophie Juice Packs
• Rather expensive when some car mounts are available for as little as $3.57

Who is it for?

• Anyone looking for an unobtrusive and functional car mount for their iPhone

Kenu Airframe: An ingenious car mount for your iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I use my iPhone a lot to listen to music and podcasts in my car -- I connect it right up to my car stereo, and it's my main listening source while driving around LA. As a result, I really wish there were more options to control my music while driving around. Music- and podcast-streaming app Stitcher has introduced a new feature along these lines they're calling Car Mode, which is basically just a simplified interface with large, clear controls, so you can choose and play your music easily. There are also some other new features added into the app, including a new front page and faster playback. You can download Stitcher Radio for free on the App Store.

Unfortunately, this isn't really what I'm looking for -- this layout still requires you to pick up your phone and press buttons to use it, and that means that you'll still have to pull over to the side of the road to choose your music. (Because as we all know, using your cell phone while driving is illegal; just ask the LAPD.) What I'd really like to see from these streaming apps is Siri integration. I often will be driving around and get an urge to listen to a specific song or artist, and it'd be nice to use Siri to say something like, "Siri, play me some Rolling Stones," or "play me 'Bohemian Rhapsody,'" and have it automatically start playing.

I'm not sure that's entirely possible just yet, as Apple's API for Siri can be limited for some developers -- at this point, I think about all you can do is open an app. But hopefully that will change soon. The first streaming-audio app to let me start up and control songs in the car with just my voice will definitely have me interested in switching over to it.

Stitcher Radio announces a Car Mode, but it's not quite what I want originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Looking for some new games to play this weekend? You're in luck. Developer Gameloft is offering two of its premium titles, N.O.V.A. 3 and Gangstar Rio, for free this weekend in the App Store. Picking up both titles would normally set you back US$12 so jump on this deal quickly.

Gangster Rio is a 3D sandbox game in the spirit of Grand Theft Auto, complete with vehicles, combat and all the moral ambiguity you'd expect from a crime simulator. With over 60 missions, locations based on Rio de Janeiro and even an exploding football that as a weapon, Gangster Rio has a lot to offer for exploration.

First-person shooter fans should give N.O.V.A. 3 a spin for both single and multiplayer modes. The main storyline takes place over 10 levels of sci-fi combat, while the multiplayer is rounded out by 7 different play modes and support for up to 12 players. Most impressively the game has in-game chat for talking to your friends while you play.

Each game has micro-transaction options for beefing up your bankroll and ammo, so maybe this weekend, you will pass some of your savings from the free download into buying new weapons and vehicles. Or just revel in the knowledge that you got two free games. Either way act quickly, as this deal will be over soon.

Pick up Gangster Rio: City of Saints here at iTunes.

Pick up N.O.V.A. 3 here at iTunes.

Download N.O.V.A. 3 and Gangstar Rio for iOS free this weekend originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I was lucky. My mom and dad had me while they were finishing up their graduate work in the 1970's at North Carolina State University. My dad was, at the time, a bit of a gadget nut. Of course, back then "gadgets" were more commonly found in the kitchen and came from companies like Ronco. My dad was more into the electronics side, and I remember seeing TAB books about building robots around the house. We never built those robots, but my dad did buy two pieces of tech which changed my life forever. One was an HP programmable calculator, the other was an Apple II.

For those who don't remember, the early programmable calculators from HP had less than 4 kilobytes of memory on them. My dad would program the equations needed to solve various math problems (he was getting his Ph.D in chemical engineering at the time), then he'd let the HP crank away on the math over the weekend. So yes, computers were a little slower back in those days.

While the HP lived at my dad's office on campus, and I only saw it a few times until he graduated, the Apple was a Christmas present for the whole family. He bought it in a bicycle shop, as there were no real computer shops at the time. In the back of this bike shop there was a hobbyist's corner filled with old computers like the Altair, and various electronics kits and projects for the budding "computer" hobbyist. As the Apple II had a keyboard and available software, it was an easy sell.

I still remember plugging it in to our color TV and hearing that beep as we loaded up Integer BASIC and tried out a game of Star Wars using a casette to load the program. We had 2 paddles to play, and Star Wars was hard to play with those paddles; one controlled your X-Wing's X-axis, and the other the Y-axis. That is no way to fly, for sure. More fun was Breakout, and later a Star Trek game where we obliterated ASCII Klingons in turn-based play. Even more fun than that: getting to program our own applications using AppleSoft BASIC, made from a little shop called Microsoft and licensed by Apple for use on the platform (the sad story of why AppleSoft BASIC for Mac never made it to market will have to wait for another day).

Within a few years I was happily using BASIC and fastidiously entering lines of code from books and magazines to make games, "screen art" and other fun things. When we moved to Tennessee I wound up getting a Laser 128, which, along with an external disk drive, allowed me to use some of the best software on the market -- for kids and adults.

Some of the software of the 1980's also had a big impact on me. Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set featured a visual interface for easily building virtual pinball tables. Music Construction Set similarly allowed the Apple II to turn into a synthesizer. Adventure Construction Set, while primitive, was used to make entire interactive worlds using little sprites and your imagination. All of those were from Electronic Arts, a rambunctious little gaming startup at the time. Then there was Broderbund, who brought me Lode Runner and The Print Shop. Lode Runner (still around today, sort of), had a level editor that allowed total freedom. I made dozens of levels; later, when I taught game design at a technical college, the lessons in game balance I learned from play testing those Lode Runner levels were not lost on me.

Then there was The Newsroom by Springboard (there's an archived review for the Atari here). Of course Broderbund made a killing with The Print Shop -- a simple software package which allowed anyone to easily print (on dot matrix!) posters, banners and other things. Every school in my town had a copy of The Print Shop, and judging from Kodak Disc photos of birthdays back then, I think most of the parents had a copy as well. But The Newsroom was like an advanced version of Print Shop. It was basically a desktop publishing package, complete with layout options, text editor, "image" editor, plus a couple of floppies worth of clip art. The Newsroom used the metaphor of an actual newspaper, complete with layout room and copy desk, to guide kids through the process of making newsletters. It was a powerful piece of software, and required several floppies (front and back!) to create and print your work.

I was also fortunate to grow up in a small East Tennessee town with a couple of taxpaying big companies located there. Eastman Kodak and Mead Paper had operations where I grew up, and because they paid so much in local taxes our schools were quite good. I remember attending computer programming camp where we worked on the Apple IIe at a local elementary school one summer -- apparently this was not common, and certainly rare in an otherwise agrarian locale. Along the way I got Microzine, a brilliant digital magazine available on floppy disk from Scholastic.

When my dad got our first Mac, it was an SE/30. The SE/30 was a great machine, but more importantly we got our first modem with it. Naturally, I was the first in my family to infect our computer with a virus. The virus came from a downloaded sound pack (remember when you could customize sounds on Mac OS?) featuring Monty Python noises. Virus writers definitely knew their audience. If you were on the Internet back then you'll also fondly remember how it was primarily a text interface, and "finding" stuff was largely done via print or word of mouth. Ah, BBS -- back when trolls were smote daily by mods.

I recall a youth filled with electronic toys, too. I still have a Speak & Spell, and a Entex Electronics Soccer game, briefly seen in TRON: Legacy. My dad was nice enough to get me several Erector and Capsela kits, and those awesome 100-in-1 electronics project kits, the old ones with springs and a million colored wires which inevitably became tangled up. Perhaps my most prized possession was Verbot from Tomy, a voice-recognizing robot which you could order around the house by shouting commands into a microphone. Verbot worked almost as well as Siri, so there you go.

In high school I helped our yearbook staff modernize. Mine was the first class to skip the old pasting methods, creating the yearbook digitally with Pagemaker (from Aldus at the time) and Freehand. I still have Freehand 1.0 on a disk somewhere. We also bought one of the first affordable color printers, which used thermal paper, and I remember being disappointed by the quality of the images.

One big side project in high school involved taking correspondence classes in electronics from NRI. My specific degree was to be in electronic music technology, but I only took the courses up until I made a mixer and a really terrible PC. The mouse was so cheap as to be non-functional by design. Building your own PC way back then gave one an appreciation for the fit and finish of Apple products.

It was also during high school that I continued my fascination for building things in software. I was never very good at it, but when HyperCard came along I churned out dozens of choose-your-own-adventure games. Often I was the only one playing them, but it further ingrained a sense that computers were the fastest way from thought to created reality.

By the time I was in college, and after switching from Electrical/Computer Engineering to Communications, Apple had started cranking out lots of Mac models. My first personal Mac was a Centris 610, the "pizza box" variety. I wanted a Mac TV, but had to wait until I treated myself to a graduation present of a PowerMac 8500. Until then I was an active member of several boards on Prodigy, took some time to make a fake ID with my Mac, and published a 'zine using, again, PageMaker. I remember not having enough RAM to load some of the photos.

The early-to-mid 90's were not exactly kind to Apple, but there were some important innovations. I watched my first QuickTime movie on a double-density disk in my Centris on afternoon in my dorm room. It blew my mind. That's also what got me into the video streaming business way back in 1999, at a now-defunct dot com startup. By then I had enough experience to know that if you could create something in the computer, you could *publish* that content in any form.

Now that video could be shown on a personal computer, the final wall had been broken. Of course I didn't consider bandwidth concerns, etc. but that was the origin point for my former stab at a multimedia shop, Superpixel.com. I founded Superpixel having grown up making stuff in computers, either in BASIC or hand-coded from a book, or in a construction set. Using software like HyperCard, and building electronics, printing yearbooks and editing video on a computer early in life also prepped me for the work I was to do later in life, both in education and blogging.

With a PowerMac 8500 under my arm, and After Effects 3.0 and Premiere 4 loaded onboard, I set off to film school. The 8500's analog output resulted in some hilarious attempts at visual effects. I spent far too much time painting fire and lightning effects frame-by-frame in Painter, and not nearly enough time writing scripts in Final Draft (still one of my favorite word processors ever). Still, by the time my final year rolled around the blue and white G3 had become available, so I grabbed one of those, a Canon XL-1 and an ultrawide SCSI hard drive with a whopping 8.5 GB of storage on it. With this setup I shot my final project, a sort of live action Robot Chicken, with a slight touch of Tim and Eric Awesome Show.

I briefly worked in the video industry, assisting AVID editors (who used Macs) and making labels and other assistant-editor duties on an ever-evolving lineup of candy colored iMacs. By the time I left that industry Apple was on the verge of releasing the first iPod.

After a brief stint making commercial websites and internal software solutions, all on Windows machines, I wound up teaching multimedia, then game design, again mostly on Dell computers. Still, 3ds max only runs on Windows, so I was quite fortunate to graduate from Bryce, Poser and Ray Dream Studio on my Mac to a "big boy" 3D toolset. While teaching I honed my skills in Photoshop, Director and Flash. Yes, this was back in the earlier part of the century when Flash was actually useful.

While teaching is awesome, there are times when you're sort of waiting around. During those times I would log in to Slashdot, or dial up a new site called Engadget. Phillip Torrone was a podcast host at the time, and I remember going from Phil's Flash hacking blog to Engadget. Through Engadget I discovered TUAW, where I wound up becoming the top-ranked commenter -- go figure! In 2004, Ryan Block wrote up my iPod case made from a milk jug (which hack-a-day had posted first). I also wound up writing a concept for a Mac mini-based home studio, much as Barb Dybwad did on Engadget, and that's how she and I met.

Eventually, the company then known as Weblogs, Inc. decided to launch a software blog, so Jason Calacanis asked David Chartier and I, along with Jordan Running and Marc Perton, to write for the new site. I learned a lot from or first lead, Marc, who went on to work at Consumer Reports before landing at gdgt. Funny how things come full circle, as gdgt is now also part of AOL!

Anyway, Download Squad was a sincere effort to find and review the best software out there, and report on the industry. What we didn't realize was that the industry would be forever changed as the concept of "software" became more mobile, more pervasive, ultimately morphing into "apps" with a huge growth curve in mobile. Download Squad was closed by AOL just a couple of years ago, but I like to think there's still a market opportunity in quality software reviews, covering all platforms that matter.

Once AOL acquired Weblogs (not long after the launch of Download Squad, incidentally), I started full time as a programming manager, in charge of several sites at once. I assisted in the administration of all of the foreign Engadget sites. I oversaw BBHub (a BlackBerry blog, can you imagine?), DVGuru and some of the rogue, hyper-niche sites we used to have -- like a site about web radio, and The Unofficial Yahoo Weblog (yep, that was a thing).

The rest is history, I suppose. As AOL shifted focus and CEOs, I kept working on making the sites great. We launched DIY Life at some point, with an eclectic and somewhat geeky bent, but that was folded into Lifestyle and is more home-focused now.

I'm incredibly proud of the team at TUAW, as many of us have been here for several years. Dave Caolo was at TUAW before me, in fact, and now he's full-time with AOL to make sure the trains run on time every morning. We were fortunate to have Laurie Duncan introduce us to Mike Rose, as his editorial love, deep knowledge and brilliant mind consistently bring clarity to the team and the site. (Mike's a damn fine writer, too. This farewell tribute to Steve Jobs is one of the best things I've ever read.) Steve Sande just joined AOL full-time as well, although I sometimes think he was installed as a patch during some overnight update -- the guy knows his Apple tech!

Oh, I also made a fart app video.

I've also been lucky to have worked with some amazing TUAW talent, now elsewhere. Brett Terpstra is now a developer with AOL Tech, but he produces a podcast and writes some amazing software. Drew Olanoff is kicking ass with TechCrunch. Christina Warren is with Mashable, but before she was big time, here's her interviewing David Pogue. I practically watched Nik Fletcher grow up! All amazing people, and there plenty of other, equally amazing ones I haven't listed because I'm afraid I'll forget someone -- it's been that great a ride.

Over the coming months I'll let the rest of the team tell their origin stories as well. Stay tuned for those, and lots more good stuff to come here on TUAW.

Origin Stories: Victor Agreda, Jr. originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Zoombies is a fascinating little game. It's made by a company called High Voltage that is probably best known for the Conduit shooter series, though they've been making licensed games for years (I remember visiting the studio for a tour back when I lived in Chicago -- they were based out in the Hoffman Estates suburb back then). Zoombies is a title that's been in development there for a while -- it was first considered for the Wii, then possibly for Xbox Live Arcade and finally has seen release on Apple's iOS.

It's easy to see why High Voltage was trying to make this game as a motion control title -- the idea is that you're a kid trying to fight an army of invading undead zoo animals ("Zoo-mbies," get it?), and you are armed with a weapon that you can toss according to a line you've drawn on the screen. Control on the Wii or Xbox would probably have been more direct, but on the iOS touchscreen it means you swipe your finger around, and then the weapon will follow your path. This creates some interesting timing issues -- you want to throw where an animal will be, not where they are. And once you've thrown your weapon, you can't throw it again until it finishes the path, which requires you to keep things as compact as possible.

Zoombies' real charm, however, is in the tone and the art style. The whole game, as you can tell by the subtitle, is done in a joyous sort of Mexican mariachi style, and it just oozes fun. The animals are menacingly cute, the kids are great and every level has plenty of "skull goals," which are super satisfying to complete. Even if you don't like that core line-drawing mechanic, this game is totally charming anyway. Clearly, this was a labor of love for High Voltage, and you can tell they had a lot of fun making the game.

Zoombies is available for US$2.99 on the App Store now, though there are a lot of in-app purchases included, so I wouldn't be surprised to see that price come down sooner if not later. Still, $3 is cheap, so if Zoombies interests you, you might as well grab it right away.

Daily iPhone App -- Zoombies: Animales de la Muerte is cute, arcade fun originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

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Subscribe via RSS

Daily Update for May 17, 2013 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's clearly not the best time to be looking for a MacBook Air -- 13-inch versions are in especially short supply. The reason for the shortage will be obvious to those who follow Apple closely: it's almost time for the Apple World Wide Developer Conference starting June 10, and Apple is likely going to refresh the popular laptops with the next-generation Intel Haswell Processor.

Apple Insider reports that the only reseller with any significant inventory of the best selling model -- outfitted with a 1.8 GHz processor and 256 GB solid state drive -- is Best Buy. Typically, a constrained supply means new products are in the pipeline. The 11-inch MacBook Air is showing up as available at resellers.

Supply chain rumors have stated a new MacBook Air is on the way with the new Intel processors, with availability predicted for next month. The new chips from Intel promise to generate less heat, consume less power and allow longer battery life. The chips also have a new integrated graphics processor, claiming a 50 percent hike in performance.

Steve Jobs introduced the first MacBook Air in 2008, and promoted at the time as the world's thinnest notebook. Since then Apple has added new models, increased performance and battery life, and added new features such as USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt support.

MacBook Air supply dwindling as WWDC approaches originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple might have just ruined everyone’s weekend plans by pulling the provocative “Bang with Friends” iPhone app from the App Store.

BWF, which is the “anonymous, simple, fun way to find 
friends who are down for the night,” says Apple has banned it from the App Store, but that it is “working with Apple to get BWF back into the App Store shortly.”

Presumably, users who already installed the app can continue to do whatever one would do with such an app, and Android’s Wild Wild West approach to the Google Play Store almost guarantees it isn’t going anywhere for phablet users.

If you still find that you just can’t get no satisfaction, you might try using FaceTime or maybe even Google’s new Hangouts for iOS app.

Cofounder and CEO Colin Hodge told Valleywag that he’s working with Apple to get the app, which recently crossed the million user mark, back in the iPhone’s warm embrace.

Just don’t accidentally dial your parents while you have those candles lit and Drake playing in the background.

Earlier this month TUAW reported that iOS 6 had obtained FIPS 140-2 certification, "opening the door to more government use." It didn't take long for that door to swing wide open, as the Pentagon has now officially approved iPhones and iPads running a version of iOS 6 for use on secure government networks.

Two weeks ago, Samsung devices running the Knox security layer and BlackBerry devices including the BlackBerry 10 smartphones and PlayBook tablets were given the nod by the US military. Adding Apple's iOS devices to the mix was part of the platform-agnostic plans of the Pentagon revealed in February. Those plans detailed adding wireless voice, video and data capabilities for classified and unclassified communications by October 2013. The approved devices will begin to be used more widely in the military and intelligence communities late in 2013 or in early 2014.

iPhones and iPads already have a home in some parts of the government that don't require such strict security, but the new Pentagon certification should make for more widespread adoption of iOS.

[via AppleInsider]

US Pentagon grants security clearance to iPad, iPhone originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The next time you wish to hack into a Mac, it may help to grab your wand and book of spells. At the NoSuchCon security conference this week, security architect Alex Ionescu presented a talk where he revealed that special undocumented code on a Mac's SMC (system management controller) can be invoked by entering a secret spell used in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

That spell is "SpecialisRevelio," the words used by a wizard to "reveal charms and hexes that have been cast onto a target" or "reveal the ingredients of a potion." In an Ars Technica post about the secret spell, blogger Dan Goodin notes, "While most details are far too technical for this article, the gist of the research is that the SMC is a chip that very few people can read, but just about anyone with rudimentary technical skills can 'flash' update."

One of the possible attacks that Ionescu pointed out is infecting the SMC with code to pull out the FileVault key used to encrypt a Mac drive, although to implement this, an attacker would have to know details of the Mac like the model, year and screen size in advance.

Much more likely attacks provided by the spell backdoor include marking targets. The SMC could be programmed to emit audible or visual alerts through the fans or LED displays, which could point out a specific Mac to an attacker. A Mac could even be programmed to turn off at a certain time and refuse to boot again.

There's good news in all of this scary talk: to reflash the firmware an attacker has to have physical access to the Mac. Ionescu also reported that many of the SMC security holes were plugged in OS X Mountain Lion. A full copy of the presentation can be downloaded here (PDF file).

Your Mac's connection to Harry Potter originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sticher Radio, home to over 15,000+  live radio shows and podcasts, updated its iPhone app today with a new Car Mode feature that makes controlling the app even easier while driving. The new simplified UI features large, easy to see buttons and can be accessed at any time with a tap of the Stitcher logo at the top of the app. It works in both portrait and landscape orientations and is definitely a welcomed improvement for the nearly 60% of its users that Stitcher says listen to the app while in a vehicle.

The updated app also comes with a redesigned front page, one-tap access to search and Sleep timer, and a number of other performance improvements:

New! Car Mode for iPhone. A simplified interface that allows you to safely and easily control Stitcher while driving in both portrait and landscape orientations. Tap the Stitcher Logo at top of any screen to select car mode.

Improved! Redesigned Front Page, bringing you breaking news headlines from your favorite media sources.

Improved! Easier one-tap access to the shows you’re looking for via search.

New! Listen to archives of your favorite shows either newest first or chronological order.  To play episodes of your favorite shows in order, tap an episode on the episodes tab. To reverse the order to chronological, tap “Playing Next” then select the playlist order button.

New! Sleep timer quick access via the player screen – tap the equalizer icon while listening to set the sleep timer.

Improved! Faster playback start up for shows you’ve already started listening to.

Improved! Now it’s even easier for new users to get started with our new wizard.

Improved! Improved memory management and bug fixes.

There are a variety of ways to see all applications or programs which are running on a Mac, ranging from only seeing “windowed” apps running in the graphical front end, to revealing even the most obscure system-level processes and tasks running at the core of OS X. We’ll cover five different ways to view these running apps and processes in Mac OS X, some of which are very user friendly and applicable to all users, and some of which are more advanced methods accessible from the command line. Take the time to learn them all, and you can then use the method most appropriate for your needs.

The simplest way to see what apps are running at the moment is to just glance at the OS X Dock. If you see a little glowing dot under the application icon, it’s open and running.

Though there’s nothing wrong with using this approach, it’s obviously a bit limited since it only shows what are called “windowed” apps – that is, apps that are running in the GUI front end of Mac OS X – and it’s also limited in that you can’t take direct action with them. Additionally, those little glowing indicators are small and not that obvious, and many people don’t notice them at all. Fortunately, there are better ways to see what’s running on a Mac, and also be able to take direct action if there is a need to quit an app or two.

Hit Command+Option+Escape to summon the basic “Force Quit Applications” window, which can be thought of as a simple task manager for Mac OS X. This shows an easy to read list of all active applications running in OS X, and what’s visible here is exactly the same as what you’d see in the Dock:

Despite the windows name, you can use this to view actively running programs and apps without actually quitting them.

One obvious advantage to the Command+Option+ESC menu is that it allows you to actually take action on running apps directly, letting you force quit them if they have become errant or are shown in red font, which signifies they are not responding or are crashing. This simplified version is fairly similar to the basic “Control+ALT+DELETE” manager that exists initially in the modern Windows world.

The primary limitation with the Force Quit Menu is that, like the Dock indicators, it is limited to revealing only the “windowed apps” that are actively running in Mac OS X, thus skipping over things like menu bar items and background apps.

The most powerful app and process management utility in the OS X GUI, Activity Monitor is a powerful task manager that will reveal not only all running and active applications, but also all active and inactive processes. This includes quite literally everything running on the Mac, including the aforementioned windowed apps, and even background applications (those not visible as running in the Dock or the Force Quit menu), menu bar items, system level processes, processes running under different users, inactive processes, service daemons, quite literally anything and everything that is running as a process in OS X at any level.

The app itself resides in /Applications/Utilities/, but it’s also easy to launch it through Spotlight by hitting Command+Spacebar and typing “Activity” followed by the Return key.

A way to simplify all of the information initially shown in Activity Monitor is to pull down the Process submenu and select according to what you’re looking for, like “All Processes”, “My Processes”, “System Processes”, or “Other User Processes”, among the other options. The “Search” feature is also easy to use and quite powerful, since you can start typing the name of something and it instantly updates according to which processes match the query.

Activity Monitor offers a ton of tools and options, and it’s easily the most advanced way to view extended information about all active processes without jumping into the command line. It let’s you quit processes, kill applications (kill is basically the same as force quitting), inspect and sample processes, sort processes by names, PID, user, CPU, threads, memory usage, and kind, filter processes by user and level, and also search through processes by name or character. Furthermore, Activity Monitor will also reveal general usage stats about CPU, memory, disk activity, and network activity, making it an essential troubleshooting utility for determining everything from inadequate RAM levels to diagnosing why a Mac could be running slow based on the myriad of other possibilities.

As an added bonus, you can also keep Activity Monitor running all the time and turn it’s Dock icon into a live resource usage monitor to see what CPU, RAM, disk activity, or network activity are up to on a Mac.

Delving into the command line, you can use a few more advanced tools to view every single process running on the Mac, ranging from basic user-level apps to even the tiny daemons and core system functions that are otherwise hidden from Mac OS X’s general user experience. In many ways, these tools can be thought of as command line versions of Activity Monitor, and we’ll focus on two in particular: top and ps.

Top will show a list of all running processes and various statistics about each process. It’s usually most helpful to sort by processor usage or memory usage, and to do that you’ll want to use the -o flag:

Sort top by CPU:
top -o cpu

Sort top by memory usage:
top -o rsize

top is updated live, whereas the next tool ‘ps’ is not.

The ps command will default to only displaying terminal processes active under the current user, thus ‘ps’ on it’s own is kind of boring unless you’re living in the command line. By applying a flag or two, you can reveal all processes though, and perhaps the best combination is ‘aux’ used like so:

ps aux

To see all the output it’s helpful to expand a terminal window full screen, but it can still be a bit overwhelming if tons of stuff is running (which is usually the case), and thus piping it through ‘more’ or ‘less’ is often preferable to make viewing easier:

ps aux|more

This allows you to view pages of the output at a time without having to scroll up and down in the Terminal window.

To search for a specific process (or application name, for that matter), you can use grep like so:

ps aux|grep process

Or to look for applications:

ps aux|grep "Application Name"

When looking for apps running in the GUI, it’s usually best to use the same case that the apps use in OS X, or else you may not find anything.

Nos las prometíamos muy felices a finales del mes pasado, anunciando que el servicio de música en streaming de Apple estaba a punto de desembarcar en nuestros dispositivos.

Las negociaciones con las principales discográficas parecían ir viento en popa y las señales auguraban que el servicio en cuestión, conocido extraoficialmente como iRadio, se presentaría probablemente este verano, durante los eventos de la WWDC 2013.

Sin embargo, parece que Apple aún no ha convencido a sellos tan importantes como Sony o Warner (que sí parecía estar a punto de caramelo) y únicamente podrían haber llegado a un acuerdo con Universal, la compañía más importante del ramo, pero insuficiente para rentabilizar una propuesta del calibre de iRadio.

Al parecer, el movimiento por parte de Google de anunciar su propio servicio, de similares características al propuesto por Apple, habría provocado que las negociaciones de la compañía de la manzana se hayan puesto un poco cuesta arriba.

La opción de Google ofrece un servicio típico de suscripción, muy al estilo del popularizado por Spotify y habría hecho plantearse al siempre inmovilista sector discográfico a plantearse la más revolucionaria propuesta de Apple, mezcla de un sistema basado en iTunes y en el streaming de radio tradicional, sin suscripción alguna.

Estas dudas, unidas a los tira y afloja por cuestiones de royalties que incluirían a una cuarta discográfica en danza (BMG), están provocando un retraso a la hora de llegar a un acuerdo definitivo, por lo que iRadio no estaría lista para ser anunciada en la Conferencia Mundial de Desarrolladores (WWDC 2013) que se inaugurará el próximo 10 de Junio en San Francisco.

Como cada semana, Apple selecciona una aplicación o juego destacado, convirtiéndola en ‘App de la semana‘. Esta vez le ha tocado el turno a Pudding Monsters, pudiendo descargarla de manera gratuita mientras pertenezca a esa categoría.

Los creadores de Cut The Rope, nos vuelven a traer un viciante juego de puzzles en el que tendremos que ir juntando trozos de pudding para crear uno más grande.

Una idea sencilla, unos gráficos y animaciones muy simpáticos y una adictiva jugabilidad; elementos que nos hará jugar y jugar a través de sus 125 niveles diferentes. A través de ellos, iremos “conociendo” a los diferente puddings protagonistas, cada uno con diferentes habilidades que tendremos que usar para superar las pantallas.

Si os gustan los juegos rápidos, totalmente adaptados al uso de la pantalla táctil y que os hagan pensar un rato, no dudéis en probar Pudding Monsters:

Pudding Monsters | Pudding Monsters HD

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Skylanders Cloud Patrol ($1.99, Universal) is a carnival-style shooting game where you tap to shoot at your target to win coins. The targets you are shooting at are mischievous trolls that have broken out of prison.

In this game you play one of a number of different Skylanders. As a Skylander you are responsible for hunting down and eliminating the escaped trolls. To shoot a troll, or anything else for that matter, you simply tap on the screen at the target you want to hit. You can also swipe your finger up, down, across and in a variety of pattern to lock on to a series of targets in quick succession. When shooting in such a manner, the game has the same interactive feel as Fruit Ninja. And like Fruit Ninja there are targets on the screen, in this case mines, that you must avoid shooting at all costs. If you shoot and hit a mine, it will explode and end the game.

As you progress through the game you are presented with a never-ending series of targets at which to aim. Each collection of targets are laid out like individual levels. After you successfully hit all of the targets on a given level, you will be flown to the next level in the cloud and presented with a new collection of targets. These targets can be barrels, boxes, balloons, presents, sheep (yes, sheep) and of course trolls. Things do get progressively difficult as the targets you are aiming to hit do not stay in one place.

The trolls will hide behind shields, duck under rocks and even fly around the screen using propeller caps. It really does resemble a carnival-style shooting game. Some of the trolls are armed with weapons that they will use to shoot at you. You must shoot down the projectiles aimed at you before they get too close and kill your Skylander.

Swirling around the screen intermixed with the trolls are the mines.  The mines always seem to change their pattern and place themselves right in front of a troll as you are tapping on the screen to shoot. There are also magical power-ups, crates packed with explosives that will kill all visible trolls on the screen, and golden coins that you can tap on to collect. When you do finally get overwhelmed and either shoot a mine or get shot by a troll, the game will end. Your score will be tallied, coins will be counted and you will be awarded gems for each of the posted achievements you have accomplished.

The coins and gems collected can be used to buy magic items as well as different Skylanders.  The magic items can be used while playing the game to give you an advantage over the trolls you are shooting.  However, switching out your Skylander for a more powerful Skylander with special abilities can really make a difference in how well you perform.  Between each level, there are in-app purchases where you can buy more gems.  The gems can be traded for gold coins.  This can certainly help you power-up at a faster rate by enabling you to achieve your goals faster.

What really sets the game apart however is that you can also make out-of-app purchases.  This is actually the main reason that the entire Skylander series of games exists.  By purchasing real toy models of the Skylanders at your local toy or hobby store, you can use the web activation code that comes with the toy model to unlock its corresponding Skylander character within the game itself.  Through earning gems and coins in the game, buying gems and coins through iTunes in-app purchase, or buying toy models at a retail store, you can grow your Skylander army.

Rather than exclusively use Apple’s GameCenter, Skylanders also utilizes Activision’s online gamers community, Activate. With Activate you can save game progress and challenge your Activate friends to various Showdowns.  These Showdowns are like goals, and if you win the Showdown you will be awarded with gems and coins.  The interaction between the game and Activate is smooth and reliable.  This weekend is as good a time as any to Activate an Activision online gaming account and start hunting trolls.

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