It boggles the mind, it really does. Microsoft tries so hard but for each step forward, it seems to take three steps back. Windows 7, Redmond’s answer to the train-wreck that was Vista (subscription required), has been out for just a matter of weeks and has managed to garner mostly positive reviews. But Microsoft can’t help itself. It has to do something silly, and, true to form, it has.

It seems Microsoft’s middle management can’t decide whether or not it ripped-off Mac OS X when it was redesigning its flagship product. This is the result of a bewildering comment from Microsoft Partner Group Manager Simon Aldous in an interview this week with PCR. He’s neither a developer nor a designer, and he didn’t work on Windows 7. But Aldous didn’t let that stop him saying this about Microsoft’s latest OS:

One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 […] is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.

So. Aldous just made it clear; Windows 7 copies borrows its design from the Mac. Only, no, it doesn’t. Not according to a retort yesterday from Windows Communications Manager, Brandon LeBlanc. Writing on The Windows Blog, LeBlanc said:

An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.

The tech press is going bonkers about it, of course, but let’s be honest — when it comes to operating systems, the days when these two giants outright-copied one another and it mattered are far behind us. The common elements of an OS user interface are driven largely by user need/behavior. High resolution color displays and the ubiquity of the mouse and keyboard combo would have led to these similarities irrespective of the company behind them. Put simply, thirty-odd years of OS evolution would result inevitably in functional and aesthetic similarities.

What Are They Looking At?

When people say that Windows 7 “looks like” Mac OS X, I don’t understand exactly what it is they’re looking at.

Mac OS X’s Dock and Windows 7’s Taskbar are similar in function, but not design. The desktop and windows are, again, similar in function — but they don’t look the same.

Windows 7 has gone overboard with transparencies everywhere, to the detriment of ease of use. Mac OS X, on the other hand, introduced transparencies many years ago and has consistently dialled them down in successive OS updates.

Windows was long-criticized for its drab, gunship grey interface. XP and Vista moved gradually away from grey, and now Windows 7’s UI is an explosion of green and blue (or red or pink or purple or whatever godawful theme you choose). Mac OS X, on the other hand, remains a stately, elegant… gunship grey. Not at all like Windows 7. I suspect people mistake Microsoft’s bold-yet-vomit-enducingly-colorful design of Windows 7 with the elegance of Mac OS X.

I’m aware that these observations are subjective. My opinions are just that — my opinions. You might agree with me that it’s wrong to say Windows 7 and Mac OS X look “the same.” You might think I’m desperately uninformed and waste no time telling me as much. (In fact, the predictable result of any article comparing Windows with Mac OS X is the vitriol from commenters apparently unaware they’re reading TheAppleBlog.)

In any case, consider this; here we have two Microsoft execs, one in product sales, one in product design & development. The former sees how customers perceive the Mac to be a superior product, and tries to exploit that perception by ‘connecting’ Windows 7 to it. (“The Mac is great, so by copying it, Windows is great, too.” etc.) The latter has spent years working hard on this new OS and responds with understandable indignation to the suggestion his team copied anything from the competition.

Either way, it’s embarrassing. At a time when they ought to be extolling the wonders and miracles an upgrade to Windows 7 may bring, they’re instead drawing attention to their biggest rival.

I can’t help but imagine an email winging its way through Apple’s Marketing department this week, its subject line reading, “With competition like this, who needs an ad campaign?”

If you’re like me, you have so many white plastic Apple Remotes scattered around your living space that visitors ask if they’re part of the decor. And they were quite stylish, once upon a time. But Macs started being less about plastic and more about aluminum long ago, and the Remote has languished at the back of Jonny Ive’s design studio, disregarded. Until today, that is.

Along with new iMacs, Mac minis, mice and MacBooks, Apple also quietly unveiled a made-over Remote. It still does the same thing it always has, which is control you Mac or dock-connected iPod remotely, but now it does it with a different aesthetic and improved usability.

The new remote, as you can see from the picture accompanying this post, has an aluminum enclosure and black plastic buttons, borrowing a cue from the design of recent iMacs and MacBook Pros. Note also the button layout change. The Play/Pause button now resides beneath the directional/volume/skip radial button, a new neighbor for the Menu button. The positioning should be better for folks who use Front Row, in which they activate back/forward functions, but I think I prefer the old layout myself, being strictly a VLC guy.

I am happy about the change in the battery door location. You can now use a coin to swivel out the battery cover, sort of like you do on an Apple wireless keyboard. Much better than old bottom-loading batter drawer on the plastic model, which was prone to popping open and just felt generally unstable.

I’m surprised by Apple, which has demonstrated a clear distaste for buttons recently with the iPod shuffle and the new Magic Mouse. It’s only be a matter of time before the Remote gets redesigned as a touch-sensitive slap of nondescript solid aluminum, mark my words.

Well, the Apple Store went down, and we waited with bated breath. And most of what people expected to see came true. One of those expectations was new iMacs, and Apple’s all-in-one desktops did indeed get a nice upgrade and redesign. That means you’re old hat, iMac which I’m typing this up on right now.

The new iMacs feature LED-backlit 21.5 and 27-inch widescreen displays, with a new edge-to-edge glass and seamless aluminum case design. It’s quite the sexy little get up, and it’s sure to turn a few heads. Also sure to turn heads is the introduction of quad-core processors to the iMac line, though the entry level model still sports an Intel Core 2 Duo processor by default.

In the official Apple press release detailing the new hardware, Phil Schiller focused on the LED-backlighting and the inclusion of the new Magic Mouse when talking up the new all-in-ones:

The iMac is widely praised as the best desktop computer in the world and today we are making it even better. With brilliant LED displays and the revolutionary Magic Mouse, the new iMac delivers an amazing desktop experience that we think customers will love.

The new displays feature 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution for the 21.5-inch, and 2560 x 1440 for the 27-inch, which mathematically inclined readers will note makes the aspect ratio for the screens 16:9. That’s good news for HD movie and TV show watchers, but the changed ratio might not excite web and print professionals quite as much. Still, as Apple points out, the display on the new 27-inch screen does provide 60 percent more working area, which is never a bad thing.

Graphics computing power also gets a boost in the new line. The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated card is still around, but the ATI Radeon HD 4670 discrete card is an option on the 21.5- and 27-inch model, while the ATI Radeon HD 4850 is reserved as an option exclusively available for the bigger computer. The new iMacs now have 4GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM standard, and the potential to increase that to up to 16GB.

As for storage space, you’ll get 500GB in the base 21.5-inch model, or 1TB in the mid-range 21.5-inch or top-of-the-line 27-inch versions. All drives operate at 7200 rpm. Of the four available models, only the most expensive 27-inch 2.66 GHz version offers a Core i5 chip, with an option to upgrade to the Core i7. All three of the other models offer the Intel Core 2 Duo processor operating at 3.06GHz. Four USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire 800, and a brand new SD card slot are also standard on all models.

New iMac owners get a nice bonus when it comes to input devices, as wireless keyboards and the new Magic Mouse, which only comes in a wireless (Bluetooth) variety, are now standard with every machine. Apple is clearly doing its best to de-clutter your workspace, or at least to add to the perceived value of its machines, since the price points of the new models have not changed as some had suspected. The base models are priced at $1,199, $1,499, $1,699 and $1,999 respectively.

So long as you aren’t in the market for the $2,000 quad-core beast, you can order now from the Apple Store and your computer should ship in 1-3 business days. The Core i5 model isn’t shipping until “November,” according to Apple’s website, which is maddeningly vague. Attempting to upgrade to the Core i7 does nothing to remedy the situation, which doesn’t come as a surprise.

Finally, I spotted a new Apple Remote as an add-on option on the ordering screen. Not an iMac exclusive, but the little guy does get an aluminum makeover, with black buttons, and looks much fancier. Is it worth an additional $19 now? Not sure, but at least it matches the machine it works with.

Taking you behind-the-scenes of a real iPhone app’s development, in this installment I attempt to make my own iPhone app in one weekend and learn from Ustwo about how to take an idea to the App Store in just 48 hours.

It’s been a few weeks since my last entry in the App Developer Diary. Markus, the coder based here in Helsinki, has been busy. This week he unveiled a playable prototype of our app, allowing me to test and refine the main game mechanic.

In the meantime, Matias coded up a cute little mini-game over the course of one weekend. While he worked on the programming, I created the sound, music and artwork (above). In one weekend we created a really great little game, almost ready to be released in the App Store.

We’re not the only developers who have been working on these quick-fire app concepts. Mobile development studio Ustwo also took an idea from hasty scribble to the App Store in just 48 hours. It’s encouraging to see that their first 48 hour app, simply titled .™, is now selling as a 99 cent download.

Have You Seen the Dot?

We didn’t do much planning for our own 48 hour app. Matias came up with an idea — a button-tapping game with a bizarre musical twist — and built it. Ustwo, being a little more strategic, managed to sketch out a few concepts before coding up their app.

Ustwo founder Mills sat down with his iPhone development team and threw together a development plan. Their app would be cool, simple and addictive. Most importantly though, it would stake a claim in the App Store, showcasing their ability to think fast and be creative under pressure.

Mills laid down a fundamental ground rule too: the scope of the project would go no further than two days. The app would be submitted to Apple on hour 48 of development.

Just the Basics

Stepping up to the challenge, the Ustwo team produced three simple sketches. Their hastily drawn plan outlined the game’s control system, look and feel, and gameplay mechanic.

The sketches only cover the essentials, but that’s really all that the team needed to get coding. The first image covers the game’s accelerometer-based control method, and main character — a dot — alongside succinctly stating that the app will have a, “minimal aesthetic.”

The second sketch contains an ultra-refined executive summary of the game: control dot to select smaller dots. The gameplay mechanic is revealed in the third sketch. Your dot is shrinking, he needs to eat dots to stay alive, triangles will kill him.

In just three images we’ve got a clear idea of how a typical game will play out. You’ll be tilting and twisting the iPhone, sliding a shrinking dot around the screen and trying to collect other dots while avoiding an onslaught of death-dealing triangles.

From Paper To Flash

After sketching out the game concept, the team took the concept to the computers. Their first step was to flesh out a quick playable prototype of the game concept using Flash. Focusing on look and feel, they tested a variety of different visual designs alongside taking a closer look at the controls too.

With the prototype working as expected and with the sketches for reference, the app was hastily coded up. After a quick round of QA — searching for bugs, design and gameplay issues — the team submitted the app for App Store approval. For Ustwo, the 48 hour app concept worked. It made development fun, it reduced costs and it challenged the coders and designers to think quickly and creatively.

It’s possible that we’ll be seeing more studios take on the 48 hour app challenge. Adobe recently announced that the forthcoming update of Flash, version CS5, will render files in the iTunes App Store format. This is a serious boon for Flash-based artists and designers everywhere, putting the tools for app development into the hands of even more creatives. In the case of Ustwo, they even created a fully-functional web version of .™, using Flash.

Our own 48 hour app still needs a few final tweaks before being submitted to the App Store. Ustwo’s successful 48 hour development, .™, is currently available from the App Store for 99 cents.

The one thing many people did not expect with a new version of iTunes was that Apple would use the opportunity to cause dissent among its fanbase by introducing another new user interface. Some classify the new styling as “needed” and “elegant and refined” while others have resorted to a variety of hacks to return to the UI of yesteryear.

We’ve gone through every corner of iTunes we could find and dug up all of the major changes in the interface. Here’s what we found.

Welcome to iTunes 9

The first thing many noticed is that iTunes 9 now launches with a Welcome to iTunes screen, offering quick links to videos showcasing some of iTunes features. Similar to apps like iPhoto and iWeb, users can disable this by ticking a checkbox.

iTunes Preferences

iTunes Preferences also featured a few notable changes, specifically adding support for grouping iTunes U content.

iTunes 9 General Preferences

iTunes 8 General Preferences

Parental Control also received a new icon (matching the icon in Snow Leopard) as well as some slight rewording.

iTunes 9 Parental Controls

iTunes 8 Parental Controls

Removed from iTunes 9 are references in the Store section to “adding to shopping cart” versus buying with Amazon’s licensed 1-Click technology. Added is an option to use the full window when browsing the iTunes Store.

iTunes 9 Store Preferences

iTunes 8 Store Preferences

Browsing Content

Browsing content within iTunes has also received a refresh. While browsing music in List Mode, the artists have been grouped along the left, making it easier to narrow down your selection rather quickly.

iTunes 9 Music List Mode

When browsing in Grid View, the first thing you will notice is that the dark black background is gone and now albums are scattered amongst an off white background. Badged content, such as Podcasts, TV Shows, iTunes U and Movies feature blue badges instead of the original red. Gone from this view are the tabs to sort content within an area (such as Music) by Albums, Artists, Genres and Composers. This can be re-enabled via the View menu.

ITunes 9 Podcasts

Cover Flow view is pretty much the same, with the refining of the “full screen” icon.

iTunes 9 CoverFlow

The iTunes 9 Equalizer also received a refresh, styling the control knobs with blue accents.

iTunes 9 Equalizer

iTunes 8 Equalizer

Icons & Buttons

Buttons and displays in iTunes 9 have been overhauled to give them a more glossy, shiny three dimensional look. The toolbar has also been realigned, removing the ‘View’ label and moving the ‘Search’ label instead the Search field. The information area has also been updated, providing more useful information during syncing and downloading of content from the iTunes Store (such as time remaining).

iTunes 9 also brings about many refreshed icons, including many of the icons in the sidebar. Specifically, playlist icons have gotten the most attention, while TVs, Movies, Audiobooks, and Applications have seen slight refreshes as well.

Syncing

Syncing is by far the area that received the most attention in this revision. Specifically, users now have the ability to sync content more selectively. When choosing a TV show, for instance, they can sync specific seasons or specific episodes. When syncing a podcast, they can choose to sync specific episodes. When syncing photos, users can take advantage of the iPhoto ‘09 Faces and Places aspect to sync photos of particular people or a particular place. Many of these areas also provide a search field, making it easier to quickly narrow down and select the specific content you’re looking for.

Syncing TV Shows

Syncing Ringtones

Syncing iTunes U

Syncing Music

Syncing Photos

The biggest feature in the redesigned sync options is the ability to organize your iPhone and iPod touch apps directly within iTunes. Check the ones you wish to add, highlight to select them and drag them to whichever home screen you desire. Selecting multiple apps is a cinch and moving them between home screens is equally easy.

Syncing Apps

Everything Else

Upon a user’s first visit to a section, such as creating a new Playlist, or visiting the Podcast area, they are greeted with a new UI that discusses how that particular concept works.

iTunes 9 New Playlist

While this overview is fairly exhaustive, there are likely many other features that users will continue to discover. If there’s one we’ve missed, please use the comments to let us know!

]]> http://theappleblog.com/2009/09/16/itunes-ui-deconstructing-8-to-9/feed/ 45 limeology iTunes Icon Welcome to iTunes 9 iTunes 9 General Preferences iTunes 8 General Preferences iTunes 9 Parental Controls iTunes 8 Parental Controls iTunes 9 Store Preferences iTunes 8 Store Preferences iTunes 9 Music List Mode ITunes 9 Podcasts iTunes 9 CoverFlow iTunes 9 Equalizer iTunes 8 Equalizer iTunes 9 vs iTunes 8 Sidebar Icons TV Shows Syncing Ringtones Sync iTunes U Syncing Music Syncing Photos Syncing Apps iTunes 9 New Playlist http://theappleblog.com/2009/08/31/your-favorite-snow-leopard-ui-changes/ http://theappleblog.com/2009/08/31/your-favorite-snow-leopard-ui-changes/#comments Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:00:15 +0000 David Klein http://theappleblog.com/?p=31712 ]]>

Now that many of us have upgraded to Snow Leopard, I would like to start a forum where you can share your favorite UI changes. Use Command + Shift + 3, Command + Shift + 4, a third party screenshot capture tool, or links to your favorite photo sharing site. I’ll start it off with my favorites.

Expose

Below is a screenshot of a new Expose feature in Snow Leopard. I opened six Safari windows and simply clicked on the Safari dock icon for a second. The dock icon lights up while the rest of the dock darkens. Very fast. Very slick.

Airport

Next is the new Airport menu. We finally have signal strength next to the network name. Before, a third-party tool was required for this.

Services

Honestly, I have never used the Services feature in the Finder. It’s cluttered and confusing. Now, it’s smart enough to know what I want to do and provide the correct options. A more thorough write up of the new Services feature is coming to TheAppleBlog shortly.

Leave a comment with links to screenshots of your favorite UI changes in Snow Leopard!

Going behind-the-scenes of a real iPhone app’s development, in this installment I investigate several methods for cutting development costs and adding value to the game.

I have to admit that I’m still working on the Game Design Document. Something which I thought would take only a few days has grown to incorporate minute details alongside gargantuan fundamental gameplay concepts. This document is essentially Tetris in written form: piling on concept after concept, attempting to make it fit together before the whole thing becomes too unwieldy to manage.

While work on the GDD should finish this week – Matias has stated that this Friday is the absolute deadline – I’m finding the time to explore other related areas of app development. In my last entry I spoke to Mills, one of the founders of ustwo, a growing independent mobile content studio.

Mills provided me with some revealing data in terms of development costs and sales. Looking at ustwo’s costs for app development relative to the revenue that they generated led me to think about how I could lower our own development costs while increasing the app’s desirability.

I’ve managed to find three different solutions that add value to our app and cost either very little or absolutely nothing.

Recycle That Code

Recycling and reusing code is a tried and tested convention in software development, particularly in the game industry. When you write a piece of code once – for example a game engine for a first person shooter – why spend time and money writing it again for the sequel? It’s far simpler to copy, paste, modify and deploy.

Working for a game developer a few years back, there were times when I noted that code recycling wasn’t necessarily in the customer’s best interests. In particular, I remember a top-down shooter – in the style of Grand Theft Auto – recycled as two different titles. The artwork was redrawn, the in-game dialogue was chopped and changed, but it was quite clearly the same game.

We plan to be a little smarter in choosing how and where we redeploy certain pieces of code. The PearComp coders, Matias, Markus and Ben, are currently working on Facebook and Twitter integration for the game. The plan is that, from within the game, players will be able to post their high scores to the two social networking services.

Facebook and Twitter posting is the value-adding feature du jour. Being able to link an app to these services provides a seamless connection between a user’s social life and the app in question. For games in particular, it’s a great way of enabling players to shout about their achievements while generating publicity for the title among their social connections.

In effect, the code that the PearComp team have created for the game can be re-used for future iPhone app developments. It’ll benefit some of PearComp’s clients, plus it’ll cut costs, and save time and resources.

Find Your Voice

John J. Dick is a voice actor and DJ who happens to be pretty badly in debt. His biggest gig was working on Serious Sam, an explosive shooter for hardcore gamers. John’s husky vocals helped flesh out Sam, the game’s main man: an alien destroying, gun toting, time traveling mercenary.

Back in the real world though, John’s debt has become such a problem that he’s come up with a cunning way to bail himself out. John has decided to offer his voice acting talent at an incredibly competitive rate: $1 per word.

Commissioning John to record a few words for the game was an easy decision – it cuts costs for sound recording and should save us some time later in the project. Having John’s name, and by extension Serious Sam, attached to the project could also make for some fun PR when we launch.

Collaborate & Communicate

In the previous installment of the App Developer Diary, I found out a little more about ustwo’s MouthOff app for iPhone. After speaking to Mills. I realized that there was potential for a really exciting collaboration.

I called Mills back the next day and pitched my idea: ustwo would create a special version of MouthOff featuring one of the characters from our game. We’d take the MouthOff code from ustwo and put it into our app, essentially this exclusive MouthOff would be accessed from within our game.

Featuring an exclusive MouthOff mode within our app adds some serious fun and replay value to the game. It would also garner some added exposure for ustwo’s app. Of course, we’ll ensure that there’s a link to the App Store for players to purchase the full version of MouthOff.

By recycling code, finding a great deal on audio assets and collaborating with an awesome dev studio, we’ve made our game even better without breaking the bank.

Next time: I finally submit the Game Design Document to the coders at PearComp.

The infamous color picker is present among many of the built-in OS X applications and is quite a powerful tool once you dig into it. With the ability to store your favorite colors in “wells” and use them between applications, the color picker can quickly become an indispensable tool in your daily workflow. Here’s some tips and plugins to supercharge the color picker.

Color Picker Basics

Not all applications support the OS X color picker, but to see if one does, look in Format, View, or Window menus for an entry called “Show Colors.” The color picker is not just limited to the Apple-developed applications, as third-party apps such as Coda, Billings, Daylite and others also include support.

The color picker features “tabs” across the top dividing it into the standard color wheel, color sliders (allowing to you fine tune a color by RGB, HSB, CMYK, or Grayscale sliders), color palettes, image palettes and crayons.

You can pick custom colors by tweaking them in the color picker, or by using the magnifying glass to “pluck” a color from anywhere in the system.

To apply a color, simply highlight text and click the color you want. Or drag the color onto an object.

As mentioned earlier, you can organize your favorite colors by dragging them into one of the wells at the bottom of the picker. If the default amount is not enough, simply click the dot and drag down to allow for a total of 250 places to store your color swatches.

Add Some Kuler

Users of Adobe’s Kuler service are quick to tote how great it is to be exposed to a wide array of beautiful color schemes shared among the Adobe community.

Using a free plugin called Mondrianum by Lithoglyph, users can now add Kuler integration to the standard OS X color picker. With quick access to search color schemes by keyword, browse them via Cover Flow, or quickly set them as your desktop background, Mondrianum is a great tool to add to your color picker.

Want a True Artist’s Approach?

With Painter’s Picker ($19.95, with a demo version here), you can add an artist’s color wheel to the color picker, giving you the ability to quickly choose complementary colors, analogous colors, and the like. More advanced options allow for precision modification of the brightness, saturation and more. As someone who moves between different types of media (web to print), I enjoy the ability to see the nearest CYMK colors and nearest web safe colors when working on projects.

What the Hex?

Developers out there will love the “Developer Color Picker,” a free plugin from Panic that quickly allows users to convert selected colors to NSColor, UIColor, CGColorRef, HTML or CSS declarations. The plugin itself is very barebones in style, but is priceless in terms of functionality.

Shades, Schemes and More

Shades ($18 from Chromatic Bytes) is another great plugin for the standard color picker, allowing users to quickly see related color shades. In the words of Chromatic Bytes, “you choose a center color, a step size and a color coordinate to hold constant. Shades then draws a grid of related colors.” This gives you something more akin to traditional paint chips and is useful for finding similar colors.

Another great application for creating and managing color schemes is Color Schemer Studio. While it does not run as a plugin to the OS X color picker, it is a very powerful standalone tool and a great compliment to some of these other plugins. A great feature of this application that really stands out is its ability to extract a simplified color palette from a photo. That’s just the tip of the iceberg and for more details, read our review of Color Schemer Studio here. This application is $49 and more information (including a demo version) is available from its website.

Color Pickers Everywhere

Most modern OS X applications support the color picker, but for those applications who are in the dark, you can use a little AppleScript trick to run the Color Picker as its own application.

Open up the AppleScript Editor (inside the Applications → Utilities folder) and type in the following code:

choose color

Then save this as an application. Now when you run it, your traditional OS X color picker will appear. Drag and drop colors around to your heart’s content!

If you have any other tips or tricks to share about the color picker, I’d love to hear them!

Jonathan Ive wasn’t always the Grand Overlord designer and demi-God at Apple. Before Ive re-imagined the Macintosh, other talented souls attempted to shape the next generation of Apple products with the clean industrial design for which the company is famous.

In the 1980s, Frog Design was charged with producing design prototypes for Apple — specifically the Apple IIc and some early models of the Macintosh. 9to5Mac reports that the founder of Frog Design, Harmut Esslinger, has published a book which features many of those early designs.

“A Fine Line: How Design Strategies are Shaping the Future of Business” is all about the role “smart” product design plays in the success of a business. As well as gorgeous pictures, the book includes background stories from Esslinger detailing the design and prototype process.

“We worked closely with Steve Jobs and Apple’s developers to innovate computer usability and appearance, resulting in iconic products with no historic precedent.”

My personal favorite is that funky laptop. Can you see elements in these prototypes that have influenced the Apple products we use today? Share your thoughts in the comments, and tell me if you agree those earbuds are just short of being classified as a torture device!

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

Hidden Detail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fun Goes On

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

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

As a follow-up to my article on the hidden gems of Apple’s design, and inspired by the comments that you, the readers, left, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the icons of OS X. In a follow-up article I will check out some of the hidden messages and “easter eggs” that Apple has hidden in its icons, but first, I felt it was important to revisit the history of some of these icons that we see on a daily basis.

Icon Garden

Any discussion of Apple’s icon design should begin with a discussion of some of Apple’s most infamous 8-bit icons from its original GUI. Apple used to feature large versions of these in its icon garden at 1 Infinite Loop, however at some point around 1998, Apple removed the icons. Featured amongst the garden were classic icons, such as the eraser, hand, stopwatch, and even Clarus the Dogcow. (Moof!)

Check out how the paint bucket is "filling" the grass with green and the paint brush and pencil have just finished "creating" the flowers.

Whoa! The eraser is erasing the flowers!

Similar Colors

Depending on how cluttered your Dock is, you may or may not have noticed that the most prominent colors chosen by Apple for its icons is from the blue family. This trend was originally favored in Apple’s hardware (the original Bondi blue iMac, for instance). Associated with the sky or the ocean (a la OS X’s original UI codename Aqua), the blue also evokes a sense of stability, trust and calmness. (It really does make the infamous Blue Screen of Death a lot less harsh than if it were red.) It wasn’t until the release of Leopard that Apple shipped with a default desktop background that wasn’t blue.

Evolution of Icons

Some icons in OS X have evolved over time. Occasionally there may be some rhyme and reason to changing icons, such as the inclusion of the video camera for when iChat AV was originally launched, or the major redesign of iMovie between iMovie HD and iMovie ’08.

Other times, icons are seemingly changed sporadically, like the evolution of the iTunes icons. Originally every new version came with a new icon, but even that trend has wavered.

Other applications have also seen different icons with new versions, such as Backup, iDVD, iPhoto and Keynote. Though the Keynote icon has not seen a drastic change since Keynote ’08, the version that ships with iWork ’09 updates the date of the fourth-quarter report on the icon to Q4 2009.

Alternative Uses

Some icons depict their contents, such as the icon for a photo or a typeface. Other icons present users with dynamically updating information, such as the iCal icon which changes to reflect the current date. Other icons “change” by badges that indicate various information (unread emails, download speeds, etc.).

Another example are icons for exported vCards. If you have set them up in Address Book, they will export with their photo in the icon.

With the introduction of Snow Leopard this fall, users will once again begin to find new uses for icons, as the operating system allows users to preview media directly on the icon itself.

Bonus iPhone Icon

If you haven’t had a chance yet to take your iPhone or iPod touch into Starbucks, when you do, you’ll notice a new icon in your iTunes Store app. Specifically the Starbucks icon, and it is the only navbar icon on the device that exists in full color and not the usual masked blue color as typically seen.

Have you noticed any other unique or interesting icon changes or features?

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

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

Serial Numbers

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

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

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

Fiat Lux a la Mac

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

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

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

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

Product Shots

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

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

Hidden OS X Easter Eggs

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

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

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

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

This is the first installment of one journalist’s diary designing a game. It is a genuine, behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to develop an app, from conception to release, for Apple’s iPhone.

This isn’t your regular developer diary. There’ll be no talk of code and classes, no discussion of the intricacy of integers or vileness of variables. In fact, before we begin my journey into game design, I’ll take a moment to set the scene.

Late last year, I hit the 3-year mark working at a big name mobile game publisher. My grand scheme, after graduating from college — studying for a degree in “Computer & Video Games” — was to take a job at an established game studio, learn my trade, garner some valuable industry experience and then go solo. Deep down, I wanted to make the kind of games that weren’t being made enough: Katamari Damacy, Rez, Jet Set Radio Future and Vib Ribbon.

I wasn’t exactly sure what going solo entailed, but I knew it involved me ploughing my own creative furrow. More importantly, after doing the full-time thing, I also knew that my solo endeavors wouldn’t involve a regular 9-to-5: I work best during night hours, while the city sleeps, like Batman, but with less scowling and cape swishing.

Fresh from college, when many of my peers were jobless, or asking their ‘clients’ if they wanted to supersize, or, worse still, working in QA for a game developer, I landed myself a producer role at a big-name mobile publisher. In just my first year as producer, I found myself working on projects for hit Hollywood movies and my favorite comic book characters.

A New Beginning

For three years I rolled around the company, shifting job titles and launching products, hoarding experience like a demented katamari. When the time came, though, I packed up my Mac mini — the only Apple device in the office — and moved on.

And here I am now, a freelancer, doing what I love — being a creative consultant, journalist, musician. Except that in the process of working for that game publisher, disillusionment set in. I still love playing and talking about games, but those three years sitting behind the wizard’s curtain utterly dissolved my passion for creating games.

Until last week, that is, when I was approached by an iPhone development studio to get involved with their latest project. The three-man team, located in Barcelona, the UK and Finland, had developed a game engine prototype for iPhone.

Breaking Out From the Mold

The dev team’s prototype takes a traditional bat-and-ball game and injects it with physics. They need me to introduce some depth to the game’s design, though, working on everything from the gameplay mechanic and fundamental rules to artwork and sound effects.

As a game concept, though, bat and ball is a dead donkey that has been flogged, with the bat, until only dust remains and then the dust has been flogged some more, just to be sure. And then somebody set fire to the dust. A quick search for Breakout on the App Store reveals a torrent of bat-and-ball games, all reiterating the same concept.

There are some exceptions, however. Paper Breaker takes the breakout concept back to the drawing board, literally. It’s got a hand-drawn aesthetic that, although it doesn’t introduce any notable new twists on the genre, still feels good to play.

Most of the clones aren’t as imaginative as Paper Breaker, though. They seem more like thinly veiled attempts to quickly cash in at the App Store before the bubble bursts. But I’ve got an idea, something that’s going to take the traditional bat-and-ball genre and twist it into something utterly new. Now I just need to convince those clever coders to make it.

Next time: Olly pitches the concept to the coders. Is it really a new twist to an old genre? And do the coders even like his idea? Find out in the next thrilling installment of TheAppleBlog’s App Developer Diary.

Your head might be spinning from the torrent of Apple happenings at WWDC this week, but fear not, I’ve got the cure: fresh picks from the App Store.

It’s been an exciting week for TheAppleBlog, with our correspondents posting live from WWDC in San Jose; we’ve been covering the event from all angles. Before we look at this week’s apps, let’s take a moment to summarize the latest Apple news.

We kicked off the week in style with Apple’s official keynote at WWDC. Behind the scenes we had Henry Balanon and David Koff with live reportage from the event. Streamed live to our WWDC coverage page, we hosted over 74,000 readers. If you missed it first time round, replay it here.

In an entirely unexpected turn of events, the 13″ MacBook has now gone professional. Indeed, the new 13″ MacBook Pro includes an SD card slot, up to 8GB of RAM, and a backlit keyboard as standard. Early adaptors of the 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro can join me in irking 13″ MacBook Pro owners by collectively running our greasy fingers down their glossy 13″ screens.

And, as if that wasn’t enough for us early adopters, the 15″ MacBook Pro has also been updated. In a nutshell, the update means more storage and improved battery life. Plus, the pretty much redundant ExpressCard slot has been replaced with a more useful SD card slot. Readers looking for an overview of the updated MacBook Pro line should head on over to Tom Reestman’s article.

Apple has also announced that Snow Leopard, the latest upgrade to their desktop OS, will be released this September. It’s fully 64-bit, features Exchange support, and is basically pretty wonderful, but the best thing about it isn’t the feature set, it’s the price: Current Leopard users will be able to upgrade for just $29. In the meantime, those looking for a quick software update hit should download the official release of Safari 4.

Then there’s the big news, the product announcement that I’ve been waiting months for: the iPhone 3G S. It’s exactly the same form factor except there’s more RAM, greater storage and — this is a big deal for me — a better camera. The iPhone 3G isn’t going anywhere yet, though; it’ll still be available, at least for a limited time, at the new price point of $99.

Just like the MacBook Pro family, it’s not only the iPhone hardware that has been updated, it’s the software, too. Apple is officially releasing iPhone OS 3.0 on June 17. There are tons of new features, more than I can mention here. Rest assured, though, that crowd-pleasers such as cut/copy/paste, MMS and shake to undo have been included in the update.

To celebrate the launch of the iPhone 3G S and OS 3.0, the folks at Polar Bear Farm have given us two promo codes for their latest app. The app is called Face Match; for a chance to win, simply leave a comment telling me why you’d like to use this face recognition tool for the iPhone.

Moving on to the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Photo Zen, Tumblr Gear, Swiss Maker and Spinal Tap.

PhotoZen (Free)
Until I bag myself a new iPhone 3G S, containing upgraded camera and integrated video-editing, my iPhone photography lineup consists of Quadcamera and Flickit. The idea is that since the camera on the iPhone 3G isn’t so hot, I want to take quick, fun shots and upload them efficiently, without having to sync and manage via iPhoto. PhotoZen captures this quick and fun photo-sharing ethos, allowing you to post your own images to a social bonsai tree, receiving images from strangers in return. Sweet, simple and free.

Tumblr Gear (Free)
I’m particularly interested in Tumblr Gear because it’s an alternative to Tumblr’s official iPhone app. That’s not to say I have a problem with the official app, quite the contrary; it’s great for posting new content whilst on the move. Rather than for creating new posts, Tumblr Gear was devised for browsing your dashboard and seeing what your friends have been posting. It’s optimized for the iPhone and efficient to use. For the avid user, this could be an essential app.

Swiss Maker (Free)
In reaction to the Swiss design style — stark typographic imagery featuring Helvetica — the Boston-based marketing agency Dirk+Weiss started a site: anyonecanswiss.com. Their clever site, now available as an iPhone app, lets you design a Swiss-style poster in seconds — just enter a few words and it does the tough job of changing the font to Helvetica and printing the text on a black background. Creative folk will appreciate the app for sure, those who don’t get the joke should download the app regardless — show it to your friends, they’ll think you’re erudite, topical and witty.

Spinal Tap (Free)
Around the release of their 1982 album, “Smell the Glove,” their music was described by one journalist as such, “This pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, ‘What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?’” It doesn’t matter what the critics said though because Spinal Tap is back and they’re ready to rock. Alongside finally releasing “Saucy Jack,” the band has put out its very own iPhone app. The app is a hub of Tap-related information, there are new tracks to listen to, a Fan Wall for chatting with other listeners, brand-new videos, and even tweets. It’s good to have Spinal Tap back, both fans and those unfamiliar with the band should download the app immediately.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

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

While they may not reveal revolutionary changes, some graphic elements found deep in the iPhone SDK beta 5 do add to the mounting pile of evidence indicating Apple is indeed planning an iPhone hardware update in the near future. The images in question are icons associated with “iPhone2,1″, which is internal Apple code for the next significant revision of the device.

The icons in question show three-quarter views of the new hardware, though if you compare them with the icons for the existing iPhone 3G, it becomes immediately apparent that little to no difference exists between the two. This could mean one of two things: Either the new iPhone will be the same, superficially, as its predecessor, or Apple is merely using placeholder icons in order to mislead inquisitive souls or just hasn’t had the graphics department create new icons yet.

Since Apple is fond of design refreshes, I’m betting these icons are just placeholders and not accurate representations of what the next-generation device will look like. If rumors prove to be true, the upcoming iPhone will have a rubberized backing and lose the mirrored frame for the faceplate, which would call for quite a different icon indeed.

Alternatively, the new icons could also accurately reflect changes that are upcoming, since they are very small, and subtle detail changes are hard to identify. As MacRumors rightly points out, the iPhone 3G’s icon was outed prior to the device’s release in a similar manner last year. I guess we’ll just have to squint really hard between now and June 8 and try to attach significance to minor differences in the icon images, as is standard among Apple-watchers.

OS X has long been labeled the platform for “creatives,” though in recent years it’s finally becoming known for more than that. Adobe’s Creative Suite is generally regarded as the crown-jewel of digital design, and they’re priced to match.

So what if you’re a cash-strapped creative who wants to find some alternatives to Adobe’s popular suite of applications? Here’s a look at several great options that run at a mere fraction of the cost of a Creative Suite package.

Before we begin, we should identify the core applications of the Adobe Creative Suite.

• InDesign – Page and print layout
• Photoshop – Image retouching and alterations
• Illustrator – Vector graphics
• Dreamweaver – Web development editor
• Fireworks – Graphics drawing and web optimization
• Flash – Animated and programmable graphics
• Premiere – Video editing and creation
• After Effects – Motion graphics and modeling

First, the bad news. Adobe Flash is unique and proprietary enough in nature that in my hunt, no Mac alternatives were found. (Microsoft’s Silverlight may be an option, but then again, it’s an entirely different beast.) So I’m sorry to say, this post can’t help if you’ve been looking for a way to skirt the world of Adobe’s Flash editor. Also, for our purposes here, I’ve lumped Photoshop and Fireworks together, as the alternatives generally blur the lines between the two offerings.

Photoshop

I’m more of the Photoshop persuasion, so I’ll begin with viable alternatives for that application.

• Acorn
  With a minimalist interface, Acorn handles (as far as I can tell) all of the core functionality that Photoshop provides. Of course, if you’re a regular PS user, you’ll likely run into some limitations. But at only $49 it’s definitely a cheap alternative. (And if you were one of the nearly 90,000 — at the time of this writing — that took part in the Macheist bundle, you snagged it for only $39.)
• Pixelmator
  If you’re looking for a straight-up Mac-like user interface and experience, Pixelmator is the one for you. Shiny and beautiful, it too is a full-featured alternative to Photoshop, who’s layout is very similar too. Again, there are probably some short-comings for Photoshop users, but as I’ve used Pixelmator for a while, they seem to be holding their own quite well. $59 will get you a gorgeous Photoshop alternative.
• GIMP
  Standing for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, GIMP is a longtime offering that originated on Linux. It’s been ported to OS X, and runs wonderfully. The interface is different enough from Photoshop that it may take a bit of getting used to if you’re well-versed in the latter, but it’s still quite powerful and feature rich. Best of all, GIMP is free!

Illustrator

Vector based art is wicked cool, and those who are good with the tools can create incredible work with Adobe Illustrator. Happily, there are several options which are much more feasible from a cost perspective.

• Intaglio by Purgatory Design
  I haven’t used Intaglio, but the feature list looks impressive. The user interface appears to be on par with our high Mac standards as well. Priced at $89, it may seem a bit steep, but there’s a free trial to try before you buy.
• DrawIt by Bohemian Coding
  This is the first I heard about DrawIt, and I’m really impressed. Very full-featured, and a lovely UI to boot. And at only $38, this app looks to be a real steal if you’re looking to get into Vector graphics.
• Vector Designer by Tweakersoft
  I’ve used Vector Designer for a while now, and like it a lot. It’s got a very familiar interface, integrating the OS X media browser and iSight camera as well. At $69.95 it’s not the cheapest, but a great tool with a free trial.
• Lineform by Freeverse
  The Freeverse folks put out some great software, and Lineform is no departure from that tradition. I love Lineform. It’s simple yet powerful at the same time…much like yours truly… Anyway. It’s typically $79.95, but for a limited time only, use lineform30 at checkout and get it for only $49.95!
• Inkscape
  An open-source project, Inkscape can hang with the rest. It is a Unix-based application, so it will require X11 to run in the Mac environment. That’s not a deal breaker, but it’s also not a typically fun to use interface, if you’re into that sort of thing. But it is free, if you’re into that sort of thing.

InDesign

If page layout is your thing, and InDesign’s price point is out of your range, there’s not a ton of alternatives.

• Scribus
  I won’t sugarcoat it. Scribus ain’t all that pretty. And if you’re new to desktop publishing/page layout, it’s not too user-friendly. But it is in fact free, so quit your whining!
• Pages from Apple (part of the iWork suite)
  If you’ve bought a new Mac in the last year or so, chances are there was a trial of iWork already loaded, of which Pages is one of the apps. It’s Apple to the core (yeah, that pun was intended), and about as easy as it gets for great page layout work, and comes with several templates to get you started. $79 gets you the entire suite, which includes Numbers (spreadsheets) and Keynote (presentations).

Dreamweaver

It’s been over a decade since I used Dreamweaver regularly, so I realize it probably does everything including the dishes now. But there’s a plethora (and a half) of options as far as Mac-based WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors are concerned. I’m only covering some of the more popular ones here, but Google it, and you’ll be busy for sometime.

• Rapidweaver by Realmac Software
  I tried Rapidweaver a while back and it was a nice app. Lots of features, and very Mac-like is design. There are plenty of themes to get you started, and development truly is rapid whether you’re new or old to HTML design. It will cost you $79 to get this rapid with your designs, though.
• iWeb by Apple (part of the iLife Suite)
  If your Mac came with iLife already installed (meaning, you bought it new), you’ve already got iWeb on your system. And it’s free — until the next upgrade comes out, at which point it’ll be $79 for the whole iLife suite. It’s typical Apple, and is super easy to use, with great results and many themes to choose from.
• NVU
  I hadn’t heard of NVU until poking around in preparation for this article. It doesn’t sport a typical Mac user interface, but it is free. Worth a try if you don’t have iLife already, I suppose.
• Coda (by Panic, $99) and Espresso (by MacRabbit, $78)
  Neither are WYSIWYG editors, but are so slick they deserve mention. You’ll need to know your way around HTML and other web coding to get the most out of them, but they can make web development a real pleasure, and are awesome-looking to boot.

Premiere

Movie editing is becoming more and more available to the masses, and I’ll argue, that it’s mostly due to Apple’s consumer-level offerings.

• iMovie by Apple (part of the iLife Suite)
  Again, part of iLife, it should already be on your Mac. As with iWeb, the upgraded suite is $79 for all five applications. iMovie is a tremendous tool, and should get any budding video editor’s creative juices flowing.
• Final Cut Express by Apple
  Upping the price point a bit, we have a serious mid-level video editor. Final Cut Express brings an interface from its big brother, Final Cut Pro, as well as many of the features. It’s a great solution if you’ve outgrown the likes of iMovie. Final Cut Express runs $199.
• Jahshaka
  This one’s an open-source offering, which means it’s free. The last software release is a few years old, so it’s hard to say how reliable and feature rich it will be in comparison to the likes of Apple’s offerings. But with a $0 price tag you may find it to your liking.

After Effects

• Blender
  I don’t have any experience with the 3D rendering world, so I can’t speak to the legitimacy of Blender as a 1-for-1 replacement of After Effects. But from what I’ve read, the features seem to cover the core functionality. Better yet, it’s free.

So there you go. Several great alternatives to paying for Adobe’s Creative Suite of applications. Ranging from free to around $100, you can pick and choose what may be most important to you. And with free trials almost across the board, you should easily find the best fit for your needs. Of course, even choosing the most expensive of the options out there, you’ll still fall well under the $1,800 price tag that Adobe asks!

And as always, if there are other alternatives that we’ve missed here, and you think they’re contenders, we’re always glad to hear from you, so please share in the comments.

Get your spoon and prepare to swallow a whole tub of awesome because we’ve got the freshest picks from the App Store to stuff in your mouth.

Before we get in to the latest releases, I’ve got a couple of interesting picks from the week’s Apple news.

First big thing, file sharing has been activated for MobileMe. Great news for users of the service, although when it comes to sharing files I’m a big fan of Dropbox – it’s packed with features, more so than MobileMe’s option, and integrates with OS X seamlessly.

Next up, Microsoft is joining the high street retail fray. Fresh from Wal Mart, David Porter is now onboard as Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Retail Stores.

A potentially profitable suggestion came from JB in TheAppleBlog’s comments: “They could put a McDonald’s inside to attract customers!” If that does happen, I’ll take my Windows Vista with a large cola and a side-serving of disappointment. Only joking, I don’t drink cola.

In this week’s roundup I’ll be looking at Harvest Time Tracker, Room, Kern and Flickit.

Harvest Time Tracker (free)
Being a freelancer I’ve got to keep track of my time, particularly which of my clients are making use of it — Harvest is a fantastic tool that keeps the brain-ache out of this task. The iPhone Web App does the job for me, but now there’s a streamlined native iPhone app dedicated to keeping track of time and tasks. Plus it’s totally free, so users of Harvest and those looking for such a tool should grab it now.

Room (free)
I’ve stayed in an array of hotels this year, tweeting my adventures across Europe, and yet for all the comforts that come from being a globe-trotting freelancing journo, I’ve hit on a major problem: there comes a point when the ever-changing rooms become a bit of a blur. This aptly-named app solves that problem, allowing you to enter a room number which — and here’s the excellent feature — is displayed as a badge on the app icon. A clever solution to a recurring problem.

Kern (99 cents)
I instantly fell head over heels for this game, created by U.S. design-studio FORMation, the folks behind color-matching iPhone dueler EYE vs. Eye. Kern is kind of a typographical take on Tetris as you slot individual letters in to different words while the leading rapidly shrinks. A super smart concept for a game which fellow designers in particular will adore.

Flickit (free)
This is the iPhone Flickr uploader to beat all others. The app has all the essential features — shoot within the app, batch upload, tagging and more — plus it really does look like it could have come straight out of Cupertino: designed purely with the user in mind. It’s totally free and I don’t know why — this is the sort of app that most Flickr users would certainly shell out a few bucks for.

That’s all for this week, I’ll see you next Saturday for more apps and more chat. In the meantime, drop by the comments and let me know which apps you recommend.

Maybe it is because I am a recent switcher that I notice details long-time Mac owners may take for granted, details that are so minute yet so useful and so quintessentially ‘human’. The level of attention painstakingly paid to the many small details found on every Apple product is a testament to Apple’s design philosophy, and is what sets the experience of using an Apple product a head above its competitors. Here are some thoughts I have about The Apple Experience.

Apple’s One-Two Punch

To take at face value alone Apple’s own statement, that it is first and foremost a software company, is to be merely skimming the surface. The Apple experience, be it with a Mac, iPod or iPhone, has no equal only because of the way Apple marries software seamlessly to the hardware that serves it. In an Apple product, software and hardware are inseparable: the success of that product weighs equally heavy on the shoulders of both its software and hardware components.

Take, for example, the iPod. The two main factors that make the iPod the success story it is are the Wheel (hardware) and the user interface (software). Would the iPod have reigned if it had sported a four-way D-pad instead, as was the norm for devices of that era, with the UI probably taking an entirely different direction as a result? Probably not. Would the Wheel have worked if it served an alternate user interface? Again, probably not. Another software factor that can be considered as equally important is iTunes and its ease of use.

On the Mac side of things, a good example is the keyboard backlight on the MacBook Pro. You may not have noticed this, but when you fire up your MacBook Pro in a dimly-lit environment, the keyboard lights up when OS X boots into the login screen.

Now, this is not some technical feat. But, clearly, in the process of designing the MacBook Pro, Apple designers thought far enough to consider the various scenarios a user might be in and included this nice little engineering touch. Maybe the idea began in the development of OS X. Maybe it was added to OS X at the request of the hardware folks. Regardless, the result is elegant, understated and unobstrusive, the way good design should be. This is what absolute control over both software and hardware gets you. The iPhone is another showcase of this combination.

When You’re Not In Control…

In stark contrast, the Windows-PC software/hardware relationship, where the hardware is often nothing more that a shell for the software, makes it difficult for Microsoft and its partners to achieve the seamlessness and elegance of Apple’s software/hardware implementations.

I suspect life must be difficult for the PC designer who has great ideas to enhance user experience but is hampered simply because the OS was never designed to support those ideas. Sony, Fujitsu and Lenovo are, in my opinion, the three manufacturers who consistently produce remarkable design, whose industrial design I admire as much as that of Apple’s. Yet, the only way they can enhance software/hardware user experience is through the custom applications that serve their respective hardware.

Sony, for example, has a complete suite of custom applications from media management to custom control panels to complement its hardware features. While these applications add value to what a user can get out of the computer, and succeed in adding to what the OS lacks, the fact that these applications have a custom user interface so different to that of Windows is where the irony lies. A few snatches of brilliance ultimately defeated by the very thing they strive to enhance…parts that do not add up to the final sum.

This trend is apparent not only in PCs; HTC, Sony Ericsson, HP, Nokia and Samsung are doing the same with smartphones powered by Windows Mobile, Palm OS or UIQ. But how much can front-end applications mask the shortcomings of an underlying host OS that already has its own user interface? The first manufacturer who has an answer to that question will change the landscape forever.

Some manufacturers — Google, HP, Gigabyte and ASUS, to name a few — are thinking exactly that: Google already has an alternative smartphone OS in place, HP is toying with the idea of developing its own Linux-based OS, and ASUS is developing its own front-end to Windows Mobile, close on the heels of HTC and Samsung, both of whom have touchscreen front-ends for their Windows Mobile smartphones.

The Apple Way

Short of reading the minds of the powers-that-be at the helms of Apple, and not mentioning how Mac clones in the ’90s were eating away at Apple’s own sales, I suspect the lack of unity mentioned above is, to some extent, why Steve Jobs will never license OS X to other manufacturers. Sure, it would increase marketshare and sales. But Apple products were never meant to be mere commodity items, at least not under Job’s stewardship.

The Apple experience is a combination of form, function and intangible user emotional responses earned from its masterful blend of software and hardware (though not necessarily in that order; Apple does get naughty once in a while). This positive user experience further leads to strong emotional branding. The risk of disparities arising from the separation of software and hardware, with user experience as the casualty, is a risk neither he nor any one else at Apple will take, now and in the foreseeable future.

Yesterday it was announced that Adobe will be announcing (gotta love announcements announcing announcements) Creative Suite 4 on September 23rd.

Adobe will be holding a special little event online showing all of the upcoming features of CS4 (which is rumored to be released as early as this Fall).

For those hip to trying out beta products, you can already checkout CS4 versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth. Though, be warned, downloading and installing these could cause some conflicts should you need to re-install any CS3 software (I know it gave me some issues).

The current version of Creative Suite (CS3) was released on April 20, 2007.

It is that time of year again. Time to drool over the best designed apps for Macs and iPhones. Absent from this year’s list, Delicious Library 2, which won Best Leopard App last year. Let us know if you use any of these apps. My favorite thing about these awards is that you get introduced to some amazing apps that you may have never heard of before.

Best Leopard Application Winner: ScreenFlow – Again, a sweet screencasting app!
Best Leopard Application Runner Up: TimeLine 3D – Timeline making software. Great for schools and presentations.

Best iPhone Game: Enigmo – Puzzle Game
Best iPhone Entertainment App: AOL Radio – Self-explanatory
Best iPhone Social Networking: Twitterrific – Twitter Client
Best iPhone Productivity App: OmniFocus – GTD app
Best iPhone Health App: MIM – Imaging software for doctors.

Best iPhone Web App Runner Up: Associated Press
Best iPhone Web App Winner: Remember the Milk – GTD mobile App

Best Student Winner: Squirrel – Manage your finances (from a student?)
Best Student Runner Up: Flow – FTP Client

Graphics and Media Winner: ScreenFlow – A very slick-looking screencasting application
Graphics and Media Runner Up: Fotomagico – Pro photo presentation software

Leopard User Experience Winner: Macnification – Ease of use in working with scientific images
Leopard User Experience Runner Up: CheckOut – Point of sale application

Leopard Game Winner: Guitar Hero 3 – Um, if you don’t know about this already, you need to get out more.
Leopard Game Runner Up: Command and Conquer 3 – Real-time strategy game

Add your thoughts on who should have won (or at least runners up) in the comments.