The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Vimeo user UnBoxedLunch brings us this hilariously botched unboxing of an Apple Remote. Thankfully, no hospital visits were necessary as a result.

As someone who professionally designs packaging, I'll know I've reached the apex of my career when someone destroys a container I've designed, and captures it on video.

Nothing but a bit of levity for your Monday afternoon.

TextGuru is a new iPhone application that promising, useful -- and also really powerful! The application allows you to create and edit a ton of document types. TextGuru also includes the following features that makes it worth every penny you pay for the application:

• Cut/Copy/Paste
• Find and replace text
• Autosaves your documents
  
• Search document collection in entirety
• Web previews for web documents
• Pastebin support (with Pastie and Sprunge)
  
• Email entire documents
• Display documents with different iPhone fonts (22 available)
  
• Ability to view binary documents in either Hex or ASCII representations (all I can say about this is: 61 77 65 73 6f 6d 65)

This application has a built-in sharing feature to get your documents onto/off of your iPhone. Using the sharing feature requires you to download some additional free software, which currently runs on Mac OS X 10.4 and higher. A Windows version of the server software for your computer is in the works.

TextGuru also allows you to use Cut/Copy/Paste throughout the application. To use this feature, just double-tap, then hold and drag your finger across the text you wish to highlight. The application places brackets [ ] around the text that's highlighted. You can then press the Cut/Copy/Paste buttons along the toolbar.

The application is fairly solid, but I have experienced a couple of crashes after editing a document and pressing the "Done" button in firmware 2.1. Be sure to take a look at our gallery of screenshots. TextGuru is available from the iTunes AppStore for $4.99 (US).

A couple of new games from the wider world have hit the App Store, and fans of both should be excited: LineRider brings an online sensation to the touchable side, and X-Plane brings flight simulation street cred to iPhone and iPod touch users.

LineRider (store link) started out as a simple, no-frills sledding Flash game from a Czech Slovenian student and has exploded into an online phenom -- the current version runs in MS Silverlight, and it has spawned over 11,000 videos of courses (including a couple of McDonald's advertisments) and forthcoming versions for the Wii and PC. The iPhone version features the same basic gameplay as the online flavor (build a track, release the sled, crash and burn) along with a course-sharing option to let your friends download your creations. LineRider is $2.99US.

At the other end of the gaming spectrum, Laminar Research's X-Plane flight sim has long been acclaimed for its accuracy and flexibility. Now the experience of X-Plane 9 (store link)has been squeezed into your pants with the iPhone version. The portable X-Plane lets you fly four different aircraft around the game's demo area (the skies above Innsbruck, Austria) using the device accelerometer to control your flight, or onscreen touch controls if you prefer. The quote from Laminar on the iTunes store page is illuminating:

We here at Laminar Research are still a bit shell-shocked at how powerful this little device is, and how much power in flight simulation can be stuffed into it...

That bodes well for future sim development. X-Plane is $9.99US.

Thanks to everyone who sent these in.

When you print something in Mac OS X, the standard print dialog window will pop up. However, if you always use the extended options (such as landscape/portrait orientation, number of copies, etc.) then you might have to click the blue arrow constantly. With this Terminal hack, the print dialog will open with the extended options already shown by default. Just open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/) and type in the following command:

defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE

If changing back to the original settings makes you happy, then replace "TRUE" with "FALSE" in the command above.

Want more quick Mac tips like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.

Just like its Mac counterpart, WriteRoom for iPhone gives you a simple application to create a document in. When you open WriteRoom you are presented with a black screen -- all of your documents are located here. Clicking on a document name will place you in editing mode.

To create a document, just tap on the "+" button at the top right of the screen and a blank document will show up with a subtle blinking cursor against a black background.

WriteRoom's developer has created a neat way to retrieve documents from your iPhone and get them on your computer. You can browse, edit, and even create a new document on your iPhone from Safari. All of this is dynamic, so as soon as you create a document in Safari, it appears on your iPhone and vice versa (a web page reload is necessary in your web browser). The main problem with Bonjour sharing over Safari is that it only works with Safari's Bonjour bookmarks.

Overall, WriteRoom for iPhone is solid, just works, and is completely worth the $5 (US). WriteRoom is simplicity at it's best, and has a very nice user interface without distractions and fancy addons. You can purchase WriteRoom for the iPhone from the iTunes AppStore for $4.99 (US). Be sure to check out our gallery of WriteRoom screenshots.

iPhone Savior believes that they have a picture of Steve Jobs' car. The picture, taken outside of the Yerba Buena Center shortly after the "Let's Rock" event last Tuesday, depicts a Mercedes SL55 AMG without a California license plate.

Why doesn't Steve have a license plate? Well, the old story goes something like this: He convinced the California DMV to allow him a barcode sticker instead of a plate after several incidents of stolen plates. Now, don't take this story to the bank, because there's several versions of it.

iPhone Savior has more pictures posted on their site, along with an in-depth write up about the car in question.

Today, I finally got my hands on a 3G iPhone. It's not mine. I'm borrowing it for a contract for a very short time. But it was my first time to truly confirm that the rumors were true: a completely virgin iPhone 3G works out of the box with AT&T Pay As You Go SIMs.

After unwrapping all the plastic stuff, I popped the 3G SIM holder (it's a lot smaller and more fragile than the sturdy 1st Gen version) and plopped in a fresh PAYG SIM. The SIM had a 30 day/"Unlimited" data (i.e. up to 5GB) feature plan attached to it, which I put on there a few days ago, and otherwise has about 4 dollars and change of credit. (See my previous TUAW discussion about Prepaid Data Packages and the iPhone.)

Read more →

For iPhone owners who want the benefit of the 2.1 firmware, but also want to run their jail-broken applications, the iPhone Dev Team has just released PwnageTool and QuickPwn for 2.1 devices. Please note: this does NOT work with the new iPod Touch 2g and is for iPhones or first generation Touch devices only.

The Dev Team managed to work around iTunes 8 without having to patch the program, so pwners can try the new tool without worrying about altering a core OS X program.

Let us know in the comments how well Pwnage and/or Quick/Pwn is working with your device. As always, pwning is unauthorized, do it at your own risk and make sure you back-up any important information before using the tool.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Some Windows Vista users are having significant problems using iTunes 8, which crashes the operating system with a "blue screen of death" when an iPod or iPhone is connected to the PC.

Apple today released a tech note, suggesting to uninstall Apple Mobile Device Support, restart the computer, and re-download and re-install the iTunes 8 installer. It's unclear what about Apple Mobile Device Support was causing the problem.

According to Macworld and ZDNet, Apple simply replaced the files associated with Apple Mobile Device Support (usbaapl.sys or usbaapl64.sys) with the versions shipped with iTunes 7.7.

Computerworld highlighted several irate comments from an Apple Discussions thread on the subject, including precious gems such as "I love how Apple owns up to problems... IT'S NOT US! IT MUST BE YOU! OR MICROSOFT! OR YOUR MOUSE! OR YOUR CHAIR!"

Adorable.