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Smoking Apples

Your premier source of Apple, Mac, and iPhone news, views, and reviews from a distinctly Indian perspective.

Winners of the 2008 Best iPhone App Ever Awards AnnouncedToday

They’re out! They’re out! The people have spoken and the votes have been counted. 

The winners of the 2008 Best App Ever Awards have now been announced in the inaugural competition honoring the best iPhone apps and games released in the iTunes App Store. 

Sponsored by 148Apps, the voting saw an amazing 98,190 votes cast in the week that voting was open. Voters cast their votes for a variety of iPhone apps in 34 different categories covering applications and games. Categories such as Most Innovative App and Best Productivity Killer were extremely popular with voters. - Press Release

Winners in each category

• Best App Ever: Shazam by Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
• Most Innovative App: Shazam by Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
• Most Useful App: Air Sharing by Avatron Software, Inc.
• Best Free or Ad Supported App: Stanza by Lexcycle
• Best 99 Cent App: Ocarina by Smule
• Best iPhone WOW App: Shazam by Shazam Entertainment Ltd.
• Best Productivity Enhancer: Things by Cultured Code
• Best Productivity Killer: Facebook by Facebook
• Best Feel Like A Local App: Now Playing by Cyrus Naj

VMWare Fusion 2.0 Takes on Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Ultimate VirtualizationToday

Originally published in the Smoking Apples Magazine, Issue 2 (December 2008). Free PDF direct download.

In the pre-Intel era, virtualization on the Mac was a disgrace. One had to use Microsoft VirtualPC which was slow and sluggish, like the rest of what comes out of Redmond. 

The virtualization space is currently dominated by two big names, Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. Both have been recently updated, and boast of features and speed improvements. When I started this review, I knew I would have to go through a lot of pain. Installing Windows is not something I particularly enjoy, and having to do it multiple times was going to be a nightmare. Or at least I thought it would be. Keeping the chatter down to a minimum, here’s my story on using both these virtualization apps.

Installation

No, I’m not talking about installing the app, but installing Windows. I’m pleased to report that both these apps did splendidly when it came to installing Windows. Much easier than installing it on a PC. 

Featuring wizard driven installations, you can either choose from your optical drive, or select a disk image. You then enter in your name and serial number,

Things Finally Gets Out of Beta. Reviewed.Today

It’s been like what, a little over a year now? From the day Things was released for public consumption as a beta, I’ve been hooked. Cultured Code set out to make a getting things done platform that actually gets you. A year later, I think they did. Read on for what might be less of a review, and more of an encomium. 

Your Tasks

Things provides a simple structure for getting yourself organised. At the core of this, is events. These are free floating objects that contain the name, tags, notes and a due date of any task at hand. These events can be dragged around to create any structure you want. Of course, Things provides the very structure that will organise these events for you: Projects and Areas. 

Projects are finite, with a distinct end in sight. Projects can be organising everything for your school paper, or designing a client’s website. Once all the tasks in the project are done, it can be considered completed. For instance, while designing the SA magazine, my project involved events for ‘base structure’, ‘colour scheme’, ‘font characteristics’, and so on. O

iWork.Com, Understanding Apple’s Online Office ExtensionYesterday

Along with iWork 09, Apple introduced the much rumoured iWork.com, an online extension to the desktop office suite. At first I was really excited to find Apple had finally managed to convert iWork into a web office suite and was already cooking up dreams of it integrating with iDisk and other such fanboy fantasies. 

When I did come to learn the realities of the situation though, I was brought down to earth. iWork.com merely presents your work online. There is absolutely no editing that can be done via the online interface. The only editing that can be done, is adding comments.

Well that’s all for the bad stuff. After using the online extension for a while, I understood its true purpose. iWork.com excels at what it’s meant to do. 

What is iWork meant to do?

iWork.com is meant to send people a draft or final copy of a document. If you want to send a client, publisher, friend a document, instead of attaching it in an email, you merely invite them to view the document online! The clean user interface of iWork.com lends to viewing documents, so you don’t have any distractions. The formatting is preserved to the T, with colour, graphics and fonts all embedded in the document (

Apple Today: Macworld Coverage RoundupYesterday

The Macworld keynote has come and gone, and what is left are the conversations that follow. I loved MDN’s takedown of Dan Lyons, an interesting read for sure!

Ars Technica does first impressions of the iLife Suite »
Here are some initial impressions of iMovie, Garageband, iWeb, and iPhoto.  They’ve even done first impressions of the MacBook Pro 17”, including shots alongside the 15” MacBook Pro.

Dan Lyons: Apple has run out of gas and has nothing interesting to sell »
“If no news is good news, Apple just hit one out of the ballpark. At the annua