Tuesday Morning News

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5882" title="83297449" src="http://www.mactalk.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/83297449.jpg" alt="83297449" width="450" height="292" />
Apple have started an <a href="http://www.facebook.com/AppStore">App Store</a> fan page on Facebook. <em>"Hello Hell, yes, I'd like to check if you guys have frozen over? You have? I thought so. Ballmer? Yeah, he's still alive - you can take him soon."</em> Via the fan page, Apple will put up links to apps they recommend. It has over 28,000 fans already, so if you're a developer, this is a good thing.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000490441">Amazon are planning to release a Kindle iPad app.</a> Hopefully Apple allow it on to the App Store - competition is a good thing. Plus then all that content I purchased for my Kindle won't be thrown down the toilet when I sell my Kindle once the iPad comes out.

Jean-Louis Gassée, former Apple executive, co-founder of of Be (who were supposed to be purchased by Apple, but Apple nabbed NeXT instead), is writing about how <a href="http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/03/21/who-will-buy-palm/">Palm stuffed it all up</a> and should just go away and die as they're not even worth buying.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Miller_(security_researcher)">Charlie Miller</a>, who you may know from other security exploits as gaining remote access to a MacBook Air to win $10,000 and hacking an iPhone via SMS - is going to present at CanSecWest, a security conference in Vancouver. <a href="http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/03/16/researcher-will-expose-20-hackable-apple-flaws/">He plans to to expose 20 new Mac OS X exploits which revolve around Preview and PDFs.</a> Batten down the hatches lads.

A bunch of Germans have made a prototype iPad app called <a href="http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/03/22/ipad-gets-networked-midi-touch-controller-midipad-for-ipad-iphone/">midipad</a> - basically, it's a multi-touch MIDI controller, much like the Lemur, but cheaper and running on an iPad. If you're into music, you probably want to check this bad boy out.

<a href="http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/22/the-magic-of-285-apple-stores/">Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty wrote up a report on Apple's China efforts for investors</a> and part of this included some enlightening research as to Apple's retail success. It seems that there is a positive correlation between Apple opening retail stores and the growth of Mac sales. So basically - more official Apple stores = more people buying Macs. Where as in the past, more Apple resellers/retailers hasn't always equalled more Mac sales. Also mentioned in that article is that Apple plans to open 25 stores in China.

<a href="http://www.makemkv.com/">MakeMKV</a> looks very interesting - it's a Mac app (and Windows too, but we'll ignore that) which can rip DVD and BluRay discs to the superior MKV format with one button. You can include subtitles, chapters and multiple audio tracks as well. Is it a contender for the Handbrake throne?

If you ever ran Windows 3.1, you are probably familiar with a little game called <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/skifree/id361950787?mt=8">SkiFree</a> - it's now available for iPhone. Enjoy.

<a href="http://smokingapples.com/software/reviews/the-mac-web-developers-toolkit/">Smoking Apples</a> has a write-up of some classy web development tools for the Mac.

Here's a buttload of <a href="http://emilychang.com/2010/03/ipad-templates-and-stencils/">iPad graphics and stencils</a> you can use to make UI or other iPad-related mockups.