Since people still seem to want to leave their houses and go to the movies (despite Apple’s best efforts to keep them firmly on their couches), the iTunes Movie Trailers site now features a sophisticated Showtimes view. This HTML5-savvy offering uses location awareness in your browser to show the movies playing nearest you, along with the upcoming screening schedule and links to the theater sites for ticket purchases.

The site works great in Safari, Firefox 3 or Chrome on your Mac; it also works perfectly on the iPad, although on the iPhone it’s a little bit compact.

Check it out for yourself, or see our gallery of screenshots below.

[via Ars Technica]

TUAWApple trailers page adds showtimes and theater maps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crokinole is a beautiful, simple game with a long history. In the tradition of pool and Carrom, Crokinole is a dexterity game that pits two (or four) people against each other around a circular wooden board. Players try to flick little wooden discs towards the center, knocking out opponent’s discs if they’re in the target area. It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to get frustrated at because you’re just not good enough.

The trouble is, if you want a decent Crokinole board at home, it’ll set you back a few hundred dollars; $130 or so is the minimum, and you can always pay more if you really want to go all out. It’s not hard to find boards costing $400 or more (don’t ask how much the Death Star board costs) and you need someplace to store it when it’s not in use. These things are about a meter across, and made of heavy wood, so this isn’t a trivial issue.

With the Croke iPhone app, you can have a somewhat similar experience on a touchscreen. It’s not the same thing, but it’s also only $1.99, so you’re getting to play without paying through the nose. Read on to see if this flick’s for you.

TUAWFlick this! Croke puts Crokinole on the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ping is designed to let you follow artists and friends, share what music you’re buying and are into, and discover what others enjoy. So is it worth the Apple-generated hype?

A critical bug in QuickTime was reported to Apple two months before a second researcher independently revealed the vulnerability this week, according to the director of a bug bounty program who argues that companies must patch their bugs faster.

Nikon president Makoto Kimura in a new interview has dropped hints again at an in-between camera. He told Reuters the company wanted a camera “different from SLRs and compacts” and hoped to create a new category. It wouldn’t be like typical mirrorless models, although Kimura wasn’t clear on whether it would still be mirrored or occupy a pro point-and-shoot space like the Canon G11….

Nikon – Camera – Photography – Arts – Equipment and Services

Facebook’s desktop Website doesn’t work quite right on the iPad, and the company has yet to announce an official client for the device. Social is the latest third-party attempt at filling this gap, offering a native Facebook experience and a number of perks.

Normally known for its computer cases and power supplies, Antec has announced a new 2.1-channel speaker system which it says will deliver realistic 3D soundscapes for movies and games. The Soundscience’s anodized aluminum satellite speakers accept either digital or analog input. An external toggle switches the speakers between stereo and Antec’s proprietary 3D sound mode….

Public Speaking – Business and Economy – Power supply – Asus – Antec

Mobee’s Magic Charger is an inductive charging mini-USB base station and battery pack that lets you keep your Magic Mouse charged without ever needing to remove its batteries.

When Apple released the third-generation iPod shuffle in 2009, I saw it as a perfect example of the design hubris that many Apple detractors point to. From a usability perspective, there really wasn’t anything wrong with the second-generation iPod shuffle — it had a minimal number of buttons, true, but their functions were fairly obvious. In a textbook example of the emphasis of form over function, Apple’s third-generation iPod shuffle removed all of the controls from the device itself and moved them to the headphones’ inline remote. Not only was the remote far more complex to use than the old shuffle’s simple buttons, it also meant that, if you wanted to use third-party headphones, you’d either have to give up all control over the iPod or shell out more money for an inline remote adapter. The third-gen iPod shuffle got savaged in reviews, and it deserved it.

Apple’s fourth-generation iPod shuffle mercifully brought the buttons back. Apple even lists “buttons” as a feature on its page for the iPod shuffle. In a rare departure from typical Apple design, the fourth-generation iPod shuffle is much larger than the third-gen; it’s not that Apple can’t make a music player the size of your thumbnail, but it seems like Apple realized that it shouldn’t. So, the return of buttons to the iPod shuffle proves that Apple doesn’t always emphasize form over function. Right?

Unfortunately, although the iPod shuffle proves that Apple is perfectly capable of learning from its design missteps, the new iPod nano and iPod touch both feature design compromises that are almost as boneheaded as the buttonless third-gen iPod shuffle. Click “Read More” to see the way these new iPods, nice as they are in some respects, are in other ways an example of a “one step forward, two steps back” design.

TUAWHow Apple’s newest iPods prove (and disprove) that it learns from design mistakes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Consumer Watchdog, a group that has been a sharp critic of Google’s privacy practices in the past, is at it once again.

The El Paseo Apple Store — scheduled to launch in Palm Desert, California this Saturday at 10AM — will be doing an unusual promotion related to the company’s One to One program, reports say. Subscribers to the program can get a new Mac configured by Apple technicians, and then sign up for personal training courses on topics like iWork, Bento and the iPad. The option costs $99, and is typically available only to new Mac buyers….

Apple – Macintosh – Articles – Shopping – IPhone

Despite some minor inconveniences, Looptastic HD is well worth your musical while for creating and mixing loop-based tracks on the go. It’s easy to use, includes lots of loops and depth, and offers enough fun to eat up hours of your time.

Samsung hopes to break through the 10 percent mark in smartphone share by the end of 2010, the company’ mobile group head JK Shin said at the IFA show today [sub. required]. He was optimistic about Samsung’s success in light of the Galaxy S and explained that Samsung now expects to ship 25 million smartphones this year, up from an earlier prediction of 18 million. It may ship as many as 50 million smartphones in 2011….

Smartphone – Android – Video Games – Games – Recreation and Sports

Epic Games, creator of the Unreal 3 game engine, has been working on getting Unreal Engine 3 running in iOS for a while now. They showed off some of their efforts with a demo of “Project Sword” at Apple’s iPod event, and Mike Capps of Epic Games talked about the direction he saw gaming on iOS devices taking in the future.

The fact that the Unreal 3 engine now runs seamlessly on iOS devices is a huge deal. This is the same game engine that’s responsible for many high-quality titles on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, so having it run games on a device that fits in the palm of your hand is pretty mind-blowing. You can get a taste of Epic Games’ Unreal 3 in iOS efforts with Epic Citadel, available on the App Store — but because of the demanding graphical requirements, it’s only compatible with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, and 3rd and 4th generation iPod touches. If you don’t have one of those devices, the demo likely won’t run at all.

A demo is really all Epic Citadel is; it’s not a game as such, since there’s really nothing for you to do except wander around and gape at the environment. And gape you will, because this is console-quality graphics on a 3.5 inch screen. While wandering through the castle grounds, I exclaimed several times, “I can’t believe this is running on a freaking cell phone.” The graphics in Epic Citadel easily surpass anything I’ve seen on the iPhone before, and they put the Nintendo DS to shame. Even the Wii doesn’t put out graphics with this level of detail. To my eyes, only the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC games are competitive with the graphical richness I’m seeing in Epic Citadel on the iPhone.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Either download the demo yourself ,or if you can’t run it on your device, check out our coverage in the video above. The game engine is truly amazing on the iPhone 4, especially with the Retina Display. And if this is the future of gaming in iOS, … Nintendo and Sony had better step up their game.

TUAWEpic Citadel shows the bright promise of iOS gaming’s future originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While Livecage offers a range of online broadcasting and conferencing tools, the service lacks cohesion and polish. If you’re looking to sell videos, you might persevere though the slap-dash interface. But for media sharing and online conferencing, most users will want to look elsewhere.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will be getting a Lifetime Achievement in Technology award from the Vision Awards come September 23rd, says the Beverly Hills Courier. The Awards were founded in 1972, and grant recognition to “pioneering visionaries” in the fields of music, movies, TV, technology, medical research and leadership. The group is primarily concerned with fighting blindness, and has a number of celebrity supporters such as Barbara Walters and Colin Farrell….

Steve Job – Pioneers – History – Employment – Protocols

iHome finished the week by teasing the first speaker system designed for the AirPlay feature in iOS 4.2. The single-piece design shown is designed solely to take audio over Wi-Fi from an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch and doesn’t have a visible dock or display. It’s promised to be truly portable and would have a built-in battery, likely lithium-ion, to go completely cable-free when necessary….

IPhone – MacNN – Apple – Project management – IPad

This past week, Apple had a host of new patents officially approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. From streamlining the way images are rendered to preventing the accidental opening of applications, a large chunk of the patents seem to relate to the ways that a user interacts with a device. Macsimum News has a synopsis of all the patents awarded.

A few of the patents that stick out are for operations that we take for granted on a daily basis.

One of them relates to scrolling through a list on a touch input device (say your iPhone contacts list), with the acceleration of the scrolling of that list being determined by the input of your finger. That’s pretty nifty!

Another is for immediate search feedback on a Web browser application, like the Safari search bar. So, for instance, when you start typing in the first few letters of a search query and a list pops up of the potential items that you’re searching for – that’s immediate search feedback.

I think I would be lost without this feature. Often times, I can’t remember the title of a song, but if I can remember the first couple lyrics, I can type them in, and a link to the song title will appear in the list. Or when I can’t quite remember how to spell a word (embarrassing, I know), I go to the Safari search bar instead of going to the dictionary. Somehow, it’s always the easier place to turn to.

These are some pretty simple features, but they make such a profound difference in the ways that we use and interact with the computer devices around us on a daily basis. There’s some solid innovation going on over there in Cupertino.

TUAWApple awarded new patents originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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