FaceTime for Mac beta was announced at Apple’s Back to the Mac event yesterday and released shortly after. It didn’t take long before a security flaw was found.

Once you've logged into FaceTime you can have a look at all the account settings of the used Apple ID. Username, ID, place and birth date are shown as well as the security question and the answer to it – in plain text, without another password request.

Also, when logging out of FaceTime, the password field will still be filled in. Moral of the story: do not use FaceTime on any Mac that is not your personal, password-protected machine. Keep in mind that FaceTime for Mac is technically in beta, so bugs (yes, even security ones) are likely to exist in the software. Apple will probably release an update that fixes this in the near future.

[9To5Mac]

FaceTime for Mac has security flaw is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Farmville by Zynga was first made popular on Facebook. We saw Farmville for iPhone a while back and now it’s finally available to iPad owners, in all its HD farming goodness. It’s a free download and as usual, all your normal stuff from your Facebook profile should come down just like it does on the iPhone version. I’m personally not a Farmville user, but I’m sure Leanna is jumping up and down right about now.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

[iTunes Link]

Farmville HD for iPad Released! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

If you are looking for a simple text editor with a clean, professional interface, PlainText might just be for you. Hog Bay Software has created a quaint little document app that goes out of it’s way to do simple editing. The main benefit this app has over the built-in Notes app is that you can define and create folders; the level of editing is the same.

The first thing you will notice about PlainText is its icon. It is the shape of a formatting mark on a typical word processor. Once you open Plain Text you see a list of documents on the left and the first available document open on the right. To begin typing, tap anywhere in the document to begin. If you want a full screen typing experience, there is a full screen icon in the lower right. Tap to make full screen, tap again to bring back the document list.

There are no formatting options in PlainText… it is just that, plain text. What does separate this app from say, the Notes app on iPad is the ability to add documents to folders. Tap the new folder icon and you can create as many folders as you would like. However, you should be aware that you can’t move a document from to a folder after the document it created; you must create the file in the folder you want. I am sure this will be an enhancement in an upcoming release.

The next question you are asking yourself is how do I get these notes to my iPhone, after all it’s a universal app. The easiest way to use Dropbox. You can set this up directly from Settings in the app and you are ready to rock. However, if you want to use another tool, try PadSync.

Overall I like the simple and great aesthetic nature of the application. There are just a couple of quibbles that are preventing it form stardom. One of the big ones for me is the inability to move files between folders. Perhaps it’s there and I am missing it, but I sure couldn’t find it. Additional features are planned (here is a list from the next beta as of this writing) and it has been submitted to the App Store. I would check the blog regularly for updates and suggestions.

[Free- iTunes Link]

Pros

• Free!
• Create folders
• Universal App

Cons

• Only syncs with DropBox (where is MobileMe?)
• Can use app PadSync http://ecamm.com/mac/padsync/ to get data from Mac to iPad
• Can’t move a document to an existing folder

PlainText for iPad- app review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Will Apple’s just-announced 11-inch MacBook Air cut into sales of iPad? Many people own a Windows or Mac PC and a smartphone (iPhone if you’re on TiPb, right?) and it was a tough job for Apple to convince anyone but frequent flyer execs to plunk down the cash needed for a secondary computer like the original MacBook Air. Arguably, they failed and it remained a niche if premium product. Apple tried again with iPad. Instead of trimming down the Mac they went IMAX on the iPhone. While it remains to be seen how successful they’ll be in the long term, inarguably they’ve achieved a good level of success with it so far.

With the new MacBook Air, however, especially with the 11-inch model, Apple is putting their Mac OS X line into fairly close competition with their iOS line and iPad. Where before the gap between a $500 iPad and a $1500 MacBook Air came down mostly to cost vs. keyboard, iOS vs. Mac OS X, now for twice the starting price of the iPad you can get a Mac that’s almost as portable and a lot more functional.

iPad still has the edge in ease of use (though Mac OS X 10.7 Lion starts to change that) and battery life, the new MacBook Air matches its instant on. Now some thought iPad could never compete in a netbook world and it’s doing very well. But iPad is a fantastic value, with incredible build quality and premium materials that really does a few things well. By contrast most netbooks are cramped, underpowered, cheaply constructed, and aren’t really optimized for anything. MacBook Air is a Core 2 Duo with unibody aluminum chassis, a full sized keyboard, and an almost full sized, multi-touch trackpad. And it can run Adobe CS5. Well.

(Also, Apple aficionados wouldn’t have gone near a netbook but they’ll jump all over the newer, cheaper MacBook Air.)

Apple now has two contenders between smartphone and main machine, one more like the iPhone, the other a Mac. Price is still a factor as is priorities, but it feels like now there’s a choice for that spot in the lineup where before it was iPad’s alone.

Anyone think iPad should be worried?

Will the 11-inch MacBook Air cut into iPad sales? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

AT&T released some pretty impressive numbers today with 5.2 million iPhone activations in Q3 2010. The iPhone obviously contributes a significant portion of AT&T’s smartphone sales, or what they are referring to as “integrated devices”. AT&T also claims that over 80% of postpaid activations (contract lines) were integrated devices. Around 8 million integrated devices were sold in total. Since the iPhone can only be sold with a contract, it’s safe to assume those 5.2 million iPhones were a portion of that 8 million. That means that around 65% of AT&T’s smartphone activations were iPhones. That’s tremendous. It also tops AT&T’s previous record for iPhones activated in a quarter, which was 3.2 million.

AT&T relies heavily on iPhone sales to boost their margins and bottom line when it comes to smartphone sales and data plan sales. If another carrier in the US should start carrying the iPhone, that could hit AT&T where it hurts. A lot of people that are tied into family plans and business accounts (which is a good majority), are probably less likely to migrate due to the cost of ETFs and migrating. Users that are out of contract or on single line plans may be more prone to jump ship. I’m personally one who thinks not as many people will leave when they realize how much it’ll cost them. AT&T’s got them for a year or two. What do you guys think?

[via AT&T]

AT&T Q3 2010 financial results – 5.2 million iPhone activations is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Super Twario for iPhone turns your twitter account into a retro inspired game. In it, you navigate your character, Twario, by tilting your iPhone or iPod touch, swipe to move faster, and tap to jump. During the course of your game you will run into tweets where you can choose to read them or even reply to them.

But wait…there’s more! Not only can you now interact with your tweets via Twario, but this app even has Game Center integration so you can keep track of achievements and see how your Twitter skills rank among your friends and in the world! You get all this and many hours of fun and excitement for $1.99.

Check out the video after the break!

[iTunes Link via Engadget]

by Brian Tufo

Super Twario turns Twitter into an old-school platform game is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

For those of you who were either unavailable to watch Apple’s Back to the Mac event live, or are a Windows user who couldn’t, or simply want to watch it again, the keynote is now available for download via iTunes. However, be warned that at 868.9 MB, the video download is not small.

I was unable to watch the entire event, so I’m downloading for my viewing pleasure at a later time. What about you? You planning to download this one?

Back to the Mac event now available via iTunes is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Steve Jobs said they named today’s event Back to the Mac because they were taking innovations they’d made with iOS — iPhone and iPad — and bringing the full circle to OS X. That says a lot about the importance of iOS to Apple but it says even more about Steve Jobs’ beliefs on the future of computing.

iPad, it’s been said, represented the beginning of the truly personal computer, beyond the command-line Apple II and the graphical interface of the Mac. Simple but powerful, it was a computing appliance anyone could use without getting lost in programming languages or buried in windowing environments.

Years ago, upon his return to Apple, Steve Jobs rebooted the Mac with OS X. A NeXT-generation, gorgeous Aqua UI built on top of the rock solid BSD UNIX system. That gave it two layers. Power users could open Terminal and type away and seldom, if ever, bother with Aqua while more mainstream users could point and click around a far easier paradigm.

Easier but not easy. And that’s where today’s event was so important.

Even a task as simple as sending some pictures via email required opening iPhoto, group selecting the pictures, dragging and dropping (or cutting and pasting them) into Mail, then finding your way back to the iPhoto window when the email finished sending. Sounds easy, but if you’ve ever had to help your mom, dad or any non-computer friend do it you know it can be beyond frustrating for the both of you. (“My internet is gone! What? What’s a ‘browser window’? Click what where?”)

That’s why I joked when iPad was announced that, if all it did was make it so I never had to do tech support for my mom again, it would be a hit. It did and it is. Why? With iOS you launch the full screen Photo app, hit the Share button, tap on some pictures, they pop up in an embedded email ready to send, and you’re right back in Photo when you’re done.

Well that’s exactly what Phil Schiller showed off for the Mac with iPhoto ‘11. Full screen. Embedded email. It wasn’t alone either. Other apps got the full screen treatment as well along with a variety of iPhone and iPad-like UI elements to make them much clearer, easier experiences. (We even got some 3D-like environments with the carousel view in Projects).

And that was just the beginning. Mac got an App Store as well. Today the process to get an app involves 1) Searching the web for it or buying it off a shelf, 2) downloading a file and mounting a disk image or inserting a CD/DVD, 3) running an installer, 4) watching a lot of confusing words flash on the screen, maybe being asked to pick drives or quit other apps or otherwise jump through hoops, 5) remembering to unmount the image or eject the disk so you don’t run it from there by accident, 5) Finding the app, 6) Launching it.

Contrast that with how it will work 90 days from now — how it already works on iOS today. Night and day. A version of home screens called LaunchPad even makes it easier to find apps, and folders to keep them better organized. The same way they are — and we’re used to using them — on iOS.

In some ways its as bold a re-imagining of the mainstream computer as iPad, only not as limited. Just as in the past where the UNIX gurus could launch Terminal and the rest of us could live in the GUI, now there’s a third layer — people for whom even the GUI is confusing and impenetrable can live in the LaunchPad and App Store.

If the Mac was a truck and the iPad a car, Steve Jobs has just shown off the crossover, the minivan, the SUV.

iPad 2 will likely raise the bar again on the mobile, iOS device side and come WWDC 2011 when OS X 10.7 Lion likely goes Gold Master, we may see even more mainstream features, and again in OS 11 whenever that happens — maybe as part of a grand unification. But that’s clearly the future now. Not if — when.

Microsoft might have wanted a PC on every desk and in every home but Steve Jobs wants one in everyone’s hands and in everybody’s comfort zone.

Today, like the iPad, the Mac personal computer got more personal, and for Apple and Steve Jobs, I think it’s only the beginning.

Why Apple took iOS back to the Mac is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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