Mike Schramm
- http://www.mikeschramm.com
Mike has worked in the Joystiq Network since 2006, as lead blogger and senior editor on WoW.com and one of the founding editors on Massively.com. Currently, he is a contributing editor on Joystiq, and also writes and podcasts for various outlets, including The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
Filed under: Apple
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 31st, 2010
The Apple Store in the SoHo section of New York City has reportedly been sued for discrimination by a former employee, who claims that she was unlawfully fired after taking a medical leave. Nicole Sullivan started working for Apple in 2008, and then took a leave in 2009 because of a nervous disorder. Despite being told that Apple wouldn't learn of her diagnosis, she claims that when she returned to the store, her coworkers clearly knew what had happened. What happened next sounds even more bizarre -- she was given a desk in the store's basement, and when she tried to apply for positions on the store floor, was told that "there were questions about her mental stability." She's now suing the company for back pay, benefits, and $300,000 in damages for the alleged discrimination.
Interesting story if true. I haven't worked at an Apple Store, but I have worked in retail, and I saw enough bizarre interactions between employees and managers that I can believe something like this may have happened. Then again, I am of course not a lawyer, and so I won't make any predictions on how this will all turn out in court.
Of course, this is likely all the result of some specific manager's decision, not actual Apple policy. Hopefully the matter will be settled justly and as quickly as possible.
Tags: apple, apple store, AppleStore, discrimination, employee, lawsuit, nervous disorder, NervousDisorder, nicole sullivan, NicoleSullivan, retail
Filed under: Software, iPhone, iOS
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 31st, 2010
Here's some more evidence that the App Store had a really amazing holiday weekend last week. OpenFeint has announced that it saw a 184% spike in new users on Christmas Day last week, the largest single day in the service's history for new users. Over the four days around the holiday, OpenFeint reportedly added more than 1.4 million new users to the service.
Downloads were also really high, with five million OpenFeint-enabled games downloaded over the holiday weekend. That includes Android games, which saw 73% growth, and iOS games, which spiked by 187% over the weekend. That's a lot of new games and new players.
We've heard other evidence already that last weekend was really busy for the App Store. Apple hasn't released any stats so far (and we've got a line in to EA to try and find out if it can share any of its download figures from the weekend), but we can tell you with some certainty that last weekend saw plenty of new traffic for the App Store and its apps.
Tags: app store, apple, AppStore, christmas, holiday, iOS 4, Ios4, iPhone, new, openfeint, spike, users
Filed under: Software, iPad
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 31st, 2010
Our friend Macenstein has
a nice tip running over on his blog about how to get more comics on your iPad. The iPad is a device that seems made for comic book reading -- that display is colorful and bright, and the touchscreen lets you examine comic art from any size or angle. The problem, however, is price -- while there are some
good official apps out there, and
some great free comics in them, purchased comics still aren't too cheap, even compared to the real thing.
Enter Amazon, which is selling things like
this DVD of Archie Comics for super cheap. For four bucks, you can get 120 digital comics. That's an amazing deal, and while there aren't a lot of those to go around, there are definitely
other digital collections you can purchase for much cheaper than actually buying them piecemeal.
Turning those comics into PDFs (or just finding them on the disc) is usually not a problem, and then just dragging the PDFs into iTunes and cracking them open in iBooks is even simpler. And voila, you've got tons and tons of comics to read on your iPad. Excellent tip, and a great way to pick up a lot more comic books to read on your next plane trip.
Filed under: iPhone, App Store
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 31st, 2010
Here's another Daily App choice that's a little more practical than a lot of the games we've been covering lately.
Seafood Watch is an app updated with information about fish from all over the world, letting you see at a glance where the fish you're eating probably came from and not only how nutritious it is for you, but how good for the environment as well.
The app is designed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and finding information about the fish on your table or at your supermarket is as easy as pulling up a guide to browse, doing a search for the fish name or even checking around your location.
Plus, as New Year's Eve is tonight, there's even a sushi guide. So when the sushi gets passed around a little before midnight, you can take a look at the guide and know exactly where that sashimi came from. Seafood Watch is
a free download from the App Store for the iPhone. Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve tonight!
Tags: fish, ios, iPhone, new years eve, NewYearsEve, sashimi, seafood watch, SeafoodWatch, sushi, tuaws daily app, tuaws-daily-app, TuawsDailyApp
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iOS
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 30th, 2010
The sales are almost all done this holiday season (EA , you may have noticed, has raised its prices back up from that 99 cent price point that was so strong during Christmas), but here's one more to help you pick up a a few more iOS games to play over New Year's. The third annual New Year's app blowout features a deal put together by a bunch of indie developers, and it's offering sales on some really great iPhone and iPad apps. I can heartily recommend Battle for Wesnoth for just 99 cents, and DisplayPad for just $2.99 is a nice deal as well. Other than those, some of the games on the list look worth a try, and there are some that have dropped all the way to free, so jump on in and download those.
Hopefully, after all of the new games out this holiday season and all of the crazy sales on apps from earlier on this year, you've got more than enough to play on your iOS device. But just in case you don't, feel free to take advantage of this last big "blowout" before we head on into whatever magical apps we'll see in 2011.
Filed under: Apple, Mac, OS X
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 30th, 2010
The iPhone and the iPad both
made eBay's "top-shopped" list for the year, but neither of those devices are sold on Amazon, so they weren't to be found on the big online retailer's
annual list of bestselling items. The Kindle was, of course -- it's Amazon's own e-reader, and it was both the bestselling and most wished-for item on the site in the Electronics category.
But while Apple's iOS devices didn't make the list, there was one major Apple item that did. In the Computers category, the MacBook Pro with the 13.3" screen scored as both the bestselling and most wished-for item. Apple's excellent laptop appears to be the computer of choice for Amazon shoppers. The only other specifically Mac item on the list was the Mac/Windows version of Photoshop, which was the most gifted item in the software category (Microsoft Office was the bestselling item in that category).
One smartphone did make the bestselling list, and it was the Samsung Captivate Android phone (again, probably only because the iPhone isn't for sale on Amazon.com). Some of the other items on the list are funny, too -- who knew so many people needed Donut Shop K-Cups? For work coffee, you think?
[via
Mashable]
Filed under: Apple
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 30th, 2010
A few Securities and Exchange Commission
forms filed this week show that Apple executives gave shares of Apple stock to various charities right around mid-December. The stocks added up to a value of about three million dollars across the four executives that gave. Unfortunately, none of the charities designated to receive the money were listed in the forms.
Millard Drexler,
the CEO of J. Crew and a member of Apple's board, gave away a total of 6,800 shares, as you can see above, and the other givers are also board members or executives. It's good to see the generosity flowing in Cupertino this year.
Filed under: iPhone, iOS
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 30th, 2010
After a few weeks of games, we're going with more practical apps for a little while here, so here's an iOS version of the famous thesaurus reference book.
Roget's Thesaurus is pretty much
the name in finding words that can work in the place of other words, and a company called Mobifusion has worked with the real thing to bring it to the iPhone in a searchable form. The app lets you browse through 30,000 words and all of their synonyms, change text sizes on the fly or just flip through if you want to browse that way. You may argue that there are free thesauri (?) available online, and you'd be right, but it's nice, especially if you use one often, to have it available and ready to go on the iPhone whenever you want. The official Roget's Thesaurus app is
US$2.99 on the App Store.
And if you don't want to pay a few bucks (just consider how much a paper copy of the book would cost -- it's worth it anyway), there's always the
FreeSaurus. That works well, but there are ads in it, and as you should know by now, there's no such thing as a free
banquet dinner luncheon lunch.
Tags: app store, AppStore, ios, iOS 4, Ios4, iPhone, reference, rogets thesaurus, RogetsThesaurus, tuaws daily app, tuaws-daily-app, TuawsDailyApp
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iOS
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 29th, 2010
BMW has released two apps for iOS this week. The first one,
based on the Mini brand, is called
Mini Connected, and it allows you to not only track information about your car, but also access web radio and audio versions of internet feeds, hooked up directly to your car's stereo. And on cars equipped with navigation features, you can even send directions and searches back and forth from your iPhone to the car's systems, and vice-versa.
The BMW Connected app does the same thing, only across the manufacturer's vehicle lineup. Interesting, not only that these apps exist (there are already a few solutions for doing all of these things out there), but that they're created and "sold" (both are free) by the car's manufacturers themselves. In essence, an Apple app is being used to market the functionality of these automobiles.
I expect to see plenty more examples of branded apps like these at CES next week, and we'll be covering as many of them as we can right here on TUAW.
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iOS
by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Dec 29th, 2010
In a recent interview, Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio (the makers, if you haven't heard by now, of
Angry Birds) says that from a developer viewpoint, Apple is the platform to go with. "They have gotten so many things right," says Vesterbacka, "and they know what they are doing and they call the shots." He says that Android's issue isn't so much about device fragmentation as it is "ecosystem fragmentation" -- by spreading itself out so much, Google's smartphone OS has "so many different shops, so many different models" running that it's tough for developers to find their own place in all of the chaos.
Vesterbacka also makes the point that much of the Angry Birds success has come simply from marketing. His two steps to succeeding on the App Store are first to "create a great app," and then to "get the message out." He repeats that a few times -- Angry Birds itself is definitely a solid game, but part of the reason that Rovio enjoys such success is their effective marketing and reaching the people who are interested in buying their game.
You can watch the full video of Vesterbacka's interview with Google after the break. Personally, I think a lot of the success that Angry Birds has had is a "right time, right place" kind of thing. That's not to take anything away from Vesterbacka and Rovio -- his insights are certainly dead-on and he clearly knows what he's doing, and the company deserves all of the success it has earned. But with a platform as big as the iPhone, there was bound to be a killer app at some point, and Angry Birds is definitely one of those.
[via
9to5Mac]
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