Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, Hacks, iPhone

Warning: If you’re baffled by people who think dismantling technology is fun, and absolutely fail to understand the excitement of building robots to battle other robots, this post may not be for you. Just so you know.

On the Make: magazine blog, they recently posted a piece about the evolution of a project. It was an iPod remote from last year that has gone from a “start and stop” only device to a full featured remote. It is a lovely piece of tech, powered by Arduino hardware. Arduinos are open-source circuit boards and software you can use to develop interfaces with all sorts of electronics.

I remember reading the first post about this remote last fall and being interested in where he would take this project, mostly because I love seeing what people do with Altoids tins. I’ve to admit hooking one up to a giant “Easy” button for my vehicle never really occurred to me, though.

I really like the idea of building my own remote; partly so I have the ability to say I did it, but also because it would be a nicer way to get my iPod or iPhone (depending) working nicely with my vehicle stereo.

Honestly I only comprehend about half of what he’s speaking about in this article, but I’m good at following instructions and I am reasonably handy with a soldering iron, so this doesn’t look totally unreasonable. If I do end up building one I’ll be sure to post all about it for you. In the meantime, have you built an unholy alliance between your Roomba and your iMac, or any other variety of Mac Tech Mashup? Tell me about it, I’d love to see what you all can do!

Hack: The iPod serial library enables homebrew remote controls originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hack: The iPod serial library enables homebrew remote controls originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, iPad

Ever since the iPad’s introduction a month and a half ago, the internet has been awash in criticism of the as-yet-unreleased device. “It’s just a large iPod touch,” many have said. “No Flash, no multitasking, no sale,” others bemoaned. And a few have gone so far as to say, “It doesn’t do a lot of things that a netbook that costs half as much will do.” For these reasons and many more, many of the pundits and forum dwellers have but one prediction: the iPad is going to crash and burn.

Don’t you believe it, because the critics have been wrong before. Several times, actually, according to The Week, which provides a list of five Apple products the critics thought would fail. Out of those five, only one, the Newton, failed to find mainstream success. The other four were industry-defining products which went on to sell millions of units each.

What did the critics have to say about these four “failed” Apple products when they first debuted, and which products were they? Click “Read More” to find out.

Continue reading Don’t trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail

Don’t trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Don’t trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone

The iLuv iMM178 shares a lot in common with many iPod docks available in the market today:

• Play and charge your iPhone or iPod — check.
• Alarm clock scheduling based on full-week, weekdays and weekends — check.
• Alarm clock with customizable sounds — check.
• Alarm clock that vibrates to wake you up — wait, did I read that wrong, or did that say that this alarm clock will vibrate to wake me up?

That’s right, folks. The iLuv iMM178 (couldn’t they have thought of a more friendly name?) is equipped with a corded “bed shaker” that, as its name suggests, will vibrate in tandem with your alarm. As the iLuv iMM178 wakes you up to The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” it can also literally give you some good vibrations of its own with its bed shaker. iLuv suggests that the bed shaker be placed underneath your pillow.

In addition to these niceties, the iLuv iMM178 also plays FM radio, and has a time sync feature that reconciles time between it and your iPhone or iPod.

iLuv’s website lists the iMM178 at US$99.99, where it’s available for buy.

Alternatively, you can improve your sleep habits with Sleep Cycle (available for $0.99), a bio-alarm clock iPhone app that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase.

iLuv iPhone dock includes “bed shaker” originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iLuv iPhone dock includes “bed shaker” originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, iPhone 101

Since you can’t just swap out the battery on your iPhone or iPod, it’s important to know how to get the most life out of your device’s battery, particularly if you won’t be able to charge it for a while. Apple has two pages on its site that detail how to prolong battery life on both iPhones and iPods. The pages are far more detailed than the general lithium-battery tips floating around, and they tell you very specific steps you can take to increase your device’s battery life.

The iPhone page is the lengthier of the two, and most of its tips apply to the iPod line as well. Apple notes that the most important thing to do is keep iPhones and iPods away from heat sources like direct sunlight or the inside of a automobile on a hot day. I can vouch for that one; my wife absentmindedly left her first-gen iPod nano in our car for several days a couple of years ago with its battery nearly fully discharged. When she finally pulled it out of the car, the nano’s battery was fried and couldn’t be recharged.

Continue reading iPhone/iPod 101: How to get the most out of your battery

iPhone/iPod 101: How to get the most out of your battery originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iPhone/iPod 101: How to get the most out of your battery originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Accessories, Humor, iPod Family, Cult of Mac, Odds and ends, Music

I’m a fan of both silly iPod docks and re-purposing old tech gear, so this how-to at Unpluggd hit me in just the right spot. It’s really more of a hack than a how-to — the guy fixed his 8-track player just by replacing a corroded belt, and then used a cassette adapter to connect the 8-track to his iPod’s audio output. But it does sound like a fun Saturday project, taking apart an old player, and the retro design of the thing is probably worth keeping around anyway.

The sound quality, as he says, is “interesting,” too. But there are probably benefits — disco just doesn’t sound the same through a crystal clear set of speakers playing a digital file as it does going through the dusty old 8-track wires. The funkiness works, in this case.

[Via Cult of Mac]

How to turn an 8-track into a speaker dock originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

How to turn an 8-track into a speaker dock originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Accessories, iPod Family, iPhone

Even though you still can’t get your Beatles fix through the iTunes Store, Apple Corps has made a license agreement with MusicSkins, the maker of music-related vinyl skin products for electronic devices. As a result, you can now buy Beatles personal device skins featuring the Beatles logo and cover art from “Abbey Road,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Rubber Soul,” “Let It Be,” “With the Beatles,” and “Hard Day’s Night.”

We’ve something totally different we’d like to give away to one lucky TUAW reader — a limited edition (one of only 250) Beatles Album Jacket set with MusicSkins for the iPhone (2G, 3G, 3GS), iPod touch (1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation), iPod nano (5th Generation), and iPod Classic (80GB, 160GB). This features the full set of album cover art from the Beatles, and there are two MusicSkins for each of the iPod / iPhone types noted. If you don’t have all of the devices, you can give some away to your friends as gifts!

To enter this special giveaway, just leave a comment below with the name of your favorite Beatle (and no, Pete Ideal, Stu Sutcliffe, and Brian Epstein don’t count). Here are the details of the giveaway:

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
• To enter, leave a comment with the name of your favorite Beatle — John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, or Ringo Starr
• The comment must be left before Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time.
• You might enter only once.
• One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One Limited Edition set of MusicSkins featuring The Beatles (Value: US$120.00)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Good luck!

Win a limited edition set of Beatles MusicSkins from TUAW originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Win a limited edition set of Beatles MusicSkins from TUAW originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, Portables, iPad

Two things happen like clockwork each year: Apple raises the capacities on its NAND flash-based iPods and the iPhone, and analysts like iSuppli release a report saying that worldwide supplies of NAND flash are likely to be constrained as a result. The supply constraints aren’t prone to affect Apple, which signed a supply deal with Toshiba last year, but other companies that depend on flash memory for their consumer electronics products may find themselves scrambling to find enough memory to keep production going … just like last year, and the year before that, when analysts said nearly exactly the same thing.

iSuppli predicts Apple will ship in excess of 33 million iPhones this year with an average capacity of 35.2 GB of NAND flash memory — consistent with a doubling of capacities across the line. 2010 sales estimates for the iPad range from 4 million units and up, and the iPod touch might also see a capacity bump to 128 GB in September/October. That all adds up to a lot of flash memory. With the introduction of the iPad and a likely storage increase to 64 GB for the next-gen iPhone in mid-year, it’s no surprise that chipmakers will have a hard time keeping up.

[Via All Things Digital]

NAND flash memory supplies constrained (again) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

NAND flash memory supplies constrained (again) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, iPod Family, iPhone

Last week we noted the impending arrival PopCap’s ridiculously addictive Plants vs. Zombies onto the iPhone / iPod touch, and now this marvelous time-waster has landed. A variant of the the tower defense genre, Plants vs. Zombies requires you to defend your house from mobs of raging zombies by placing various sorts of projectile-emitting, exploding, and zombie-eating plants between them and your front door.

Much like previous hits Peggle and Bejeweled, the PopCap team has produced a first-class iPhone port. On my 3GS it runs smoothly and the core gameplay is substantially unchanged from the desktop version, despite the smaller screen (you can get a free gameplay taste with the online version). Minor tweaks include placing your plant “catalog” along the left side of the screen and adding handy highlights which show you exactly into which row and column you’re placing your plants.

Plants vs. Zombies is available now for iPhone and iPod touch for a bargain price of $2.99. Go get it; you won’t be disappointed.

Plants vs. Zombies hits the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Plants vs. Zombies hits the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Macworld, Accessories, iPod Family, Peripherals, iPhone

I’m still skeptical about laser projectors — while the technology is impressive, the practicality is still a tiny limited. And unfortunately, Microvision’s demo of their SHOWWX projector here at Macworld 2010 didn’t do much to change my mind. It’s a nice little device — it’s nearly exactly the size of the iPhone, and the rep told me that most of the unit is actually the battery — and there are some good applications for it. But for the consumer market that Microvision really wants, the $500 unit (that will go on sale in March) is still a little too small in terms of scale and usability.

Just using the device, which will project clear images and video from an iPhone or iPod on a wall about three to four feet away (more or less depending on ambient light), you can tell that the idea of a microprojector is almost at the level where it could be really successful. As the rep said to us, the iPhone is a 1:1 device, and while many of us do use it to show pictures and video to each other, it’s really only meant to show one person at a time. But the projector goes to a “1 to few” relationship instead, and that’s a prospect that will be appealing to anyone who wants to show off business presentations, video, or pictures of family members to anyone else.

Continue reading Macworld 2010: Hands-on with Microvision’s SHOWWX laser pico projector

Macworld 2010: Hands-on with Microvision’s SHOWWX laser pico projector originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Macworld 2010: Hands-on with Microvision’s SHOWWX laser pico projector originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Macworld, Accessories, iPod Family, Apple, iPhone, iPad

Musicskins was kind enough to show us around their booth on the Macworld floor, and while we expected to see the usual vinyl case stickers, what we found was actually pretty impressive. The ’skins, which are made for nearly every accessory and device under the sun (the rep told us they add five to ten devices to their roster per week) are actually very durable.

For one thing, they’re made to be removed and replaced as much as you want, so while attaching one to the back of your iPhone, you don’t have to worry about making one minor mistake and having to stare at it every time you check Twitter. The skins themselves have tiny grooves on the surface, which we were told acted as air channels, so if you ever did get a bubble underneath, it’s much easier to squeeze out.

But the most interesting part of skins like these isn’t on the side towards the phone, it’s on the side away. Musicskins is one of the biggest licensors of art for device skins, and as you can see in the gallery below, they’ve got all kinds of different famous and infamous licenses to stick on your iPod, iPhone or Macbook. They just recently made Apple history, too — read on to learn how.

Continue reading Macworld 2010: Hands-on with Musicskins

Macworld 2010: Hands-on with Musicskins originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Macworld 2010: Hands-on with Musicskins originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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