The curious case of a Mirror app

This is a short story about a general wondering as to how is Apple calculating and displaying app quality ratings. Or, why is an app that has 169 1-star reviews, out of 171 total, having a 4-star rating, using the UK App Store iPhone app (possibly, it’s the same in US Store too).

My Personal Top 10 Free Games for the iPhone

In general, free games for the iPhone and iPod Touch pretty much suck. They are either very stupid, very ugly, very boring or have very bad controls. After using an iPod Touch for almost half a year now, I have pinpointed just a small number of titles worth the place on the dashboard. I really wished for more, but maybe my expectations are too high. One way or another, here is the list of 10 free iPhone games that are not utter rubbish, and should give you more gameplay than the usual start-playonce-remove scheme of most of the free games in the App Store. Enjoy!

Is Safari 5 a game changer?

Yesterday marked the beginning of the Apple WWDC 2010, the release of iPhone 4, the iOS 4 and a general wow effect, mainly over the iPhone’s new Retina display and video talks called FaceTime. Apple didn’t want to steal iPhone’s thunder, so it quietly released Safari 5, but in fact, it’s the biggest leap for this browser since years. But let’s first look on what is new.

Opera Mini is hot in the App Store but is it really a hot app?

Opera Mini hit the App Store a few days ago and became an instant hit in every country. I downloaded it as soon as it was available and tested until today. In short, it’s not a surprise Apple applied it – there actually are plenty of other web browsers in the App Store. And it’s also not a surprise Opera Mini isn’t better than Safari. Why exactly? Continue reading.

TextOne - an SMS replacement for iPhone and iPod touch

I recently started playing with an iPod touch. It a pretty useful device. I chose it over iPhone because I travel a lot and would go broke from data roaming charges. I don’t miss the phone calls, since there is Skype. But I do miss SMS, or rather something similar but cost-free. At just the right time my company, ProcessOne, released a cool and simple app just for that called TextOne.

Using Apple Time Machine with an ordinary USB stick

I was looking for an optimal backup solution for quite a while. By optimal I mean fast, daily, portable and inexpensive. I looked at some online backup solutions, but they all failed at several gigabytes of data, not to mention the monthly payments for premium options and very questionable security – it was hard to find an encrypted online storage, and to make matters worse SSL wasn’t a solid standard but a “marketing feature enhancing security”...

Run Windows apps on the Mac using WineBottler

I recently stumbled upon an interesting application called the WineBottler that emulates Windows apps on the Mac. It’s similar in the behavior to Codeweavers Crossover, but it’s free and open source.

Enabling Speed Tracer on Chrome for Mac

Google released Chrome for Mac, finally, but the extensions don’t work. It’s actually Google’s fault, because the latest Chromium built already supports extensions. And then they release this great-looking Speed Tracer tool, something Yslow and others have not gone before. However, it seems you can’t install it on Mac (although in the example screenshots on Google Code you can actually see Chrome for Mac, oh irony). Well, guess what – you can :)

The Apple Tablet fits in the future

The rumored Apple Table (iTablet, MacTablet or even TabletMac) is on the horizon with more and more stories revolving around a cheap, portable touchscreen. And since the CrunchPad is dead, and the competition take on the market is pretty bad, the upcoming Apple product seems reasonable. Even more with today’s announcement of Time Inc. and their digital magazine concept. Do you know what this means to Apple?

15 Quick Tips for Developers and Designers

I’m a developer and a designer. During my work I stumble upon these small problems that consume the most of our time, in respect to what they are. I try to solve them, and then I post answers to these as Quick Tips on my Twitter. I accumulated enough to post the first batch as an article. Do you have problems with your LAMP after upgrading to Snow Leopard? Do you want to know more about MySQL administration? Want some tips for CSS in Safari? This, and more, after the jump.