How we write for iMore: Our workflows from Mac to iPad to iPhone and back!

Most of what we do here at iMore is write. We put words up onto the internet, and millions of them a year. Managing what we write, however, across Mac, iPad, and iPhone, from idea to draft to final, can often be more complicated than we like, involving different sync solutions and different apps, not to mention our web-based content management system. Each of us has our own workflows, and our own toolkits to accomplish them.

Here's what we're using to write, right now...

Leanna Lofte, app and photography editor

I've had enough painful experiences losing work to learn that I need to write "offline" instead of directly in Drupal 7, the content management framework we use for iMore. My text editor of choice, right now, is iA Writer. It offers a clean, distraction-free environment that makes it easy for me to focus on my work. 90% of my writing is done on my iMac, 5% on my Macbook Air, and the other 5% on my iPhone and iPad. iA Writer uses iCloud to keep everything in sync making it easy to jump between devices. I'm also a fan of Byword, but since it doesn't automatically chose iCloud as the place to save, I've opted to use iA Writer -- there has been too many times I couldn't access something I needed on a device when I wasn't home.

One time, I actually used Siri to dictate an entire article while driving to work. It was a time-sensitive piece that I didn't quite have time to finish before leaving, so I grabbed my Macbook Air, dictated on my way, then hopped onto my laptop to paste and publish in the few minutes I had before class started.

Chris Parsons, editor-at-large

I don't really do any writing on my iOS devices. I do however; rely on Evernote for noting things I may need to remember later on and ideas that I come up with for articles. It all syncs up perfectly so when it comes time to refer to those notes and ideas, they're all on my Mac through the Evernote app or through the web login.

When it comes to getting down to business though, I'm really bad at concentrating and getting the task done some days. So, to help with that I cut my internet off and hop into WriteRoom. It's a pretty basic offering compared to a lot of other apps out there but it works for me, especially with the black theme.

Since it's just a blank, black page, you either write or go insane from boredom.

Peter Cohen, managing editor

I have tried, and failed, to use my iPad for writing ever since I bought it. Maybe if I had an external keyboard it would be different, but trying to write anything longer than a quick e-mail or a tweet using the on-screen keyboard is difficult for me. So I do almost all my writing on my Macs - a Mac Pro, MacBook Pro with Retina Display, or MacBook Air, depending on where I am.

I've written for the Web for almost two decades now, and I've used BBEdit for almost that long. No other text editor comes close for me when it comes to the flexibility and power I'm looking for to edit and transform text. At this point I'm pretty hard-wired to need BBEdit to be productive. I admit that I'm only using a small percentage of BBEdit's capabilities, but it's so finely customized for my workflow, I can't imagine using anything else.

I also appreciate that Bare Bones makes available TextWrangler, a free text editor that uses the same core technology as BBEdit. It makes it easier for folks who don't have the coin to buy BBEdit to use some of the same features. And it's a clever gateway drug to BBEdit, to boot.

Richard Devine, senior editor

If I need to just note down some ideas quickly, the stock Notes app on the iPhone or iPad is the go to choice. It syncs back to my Mac so my thoughts are there when I get back to the computer and start to get down to work.

In terms of the actual writing, I've been a fan of iA Writer for some time now. It's a basic text editor with iCloud sync, so like with Notes, all of my stuff is on all of my devices all of the time. I love the simplicity of iA Writer -- it's just text, no toolbars. I'm also a big fan of the focus mode that will highlight only the sentence you're working on and fading out the rest of your text. Really helps me to concentrate.

From there it's into iMore, add all the Markdown links and off to the Internet!

Ally Kazmucha, how-to editor

I do a good majority of my writing on my iMac. It's very seldom I actually write within an actual content management system such as Wordpress or Drupal. There's just been too much heartache when it comes to saving work and getting errors. It's never fun to lose things.

My weapon of choice is Byword. It uses iCloud to keep your documents in sync across all devices and has apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. While I spend most of my time writing on my iMac, there are times I want to get out of the house or the office and write at Starbucks or another local coffee shop. Instead of lugging around my MacBook Pro, I simply take my iPad and a keyboard case. Then when I get home, I just copy and paste everything where it needs to be and embed images. Since Byword supports markdown, I've already gotten all my links done ahead of time.

While Byword may not be the most powerful solution around, it does all I need it to do and it's a great option for students writing papers, editors, or anyone else that wants the flexibility of writing from multiple devices.

Rene Ritchie, editor-in-chief

I use a combination of tools, depending on what I'm doing and where I'm trying to do it. If I'm driving or otherwise occupied, I use Siri to quickly jot stuff down into Notes. That syncs between iOS and Mac, so at the very least I don't forget about or lose ideas (it's become a natural language clipboard of sorts). When attention isn't an issue, I use Drafts for the same purpose. Drafts lets me type or dictate ideas without having to worry about where it'll eventually end up. As I've said many times before, it's time-shift for text.

When I'm sitting down to write, all proper and formal like, it's almost always in BBEdit on the Mac. I don't even use 1% of its potential, but what I do use is so damn powerful I can pretty much accomplish anything text-based that I can imagine. I write in John Gruber's Markdown, so while the text is plain, it's also formatted and highly portable.

When I have to collaborate with Kevin from CrackBerry or Phil from Android Central, I'll have to use Google Docs. (Daniel from Windows Phone Central claims not to know what that is).

If I have my druthers, however, and I'm out and about without my Mac, I write in Elements, which is pointed at the same Dropbox folder I store my BBEdit work in. That lets me keep working no matter where, or on what device I'm on. If I'm on my iPhone and need to make quick changes on the go, I likewise use Elements.

Elements is just light and easy and killer for Markdown, and BBEdit is a beast. I also make heavy use of Text Expander, both on Mac and on iOS. It removes almost all the repetitiveness from writing and lets me get on with the creative work.

Together, I can get pretty much get done everything that needs doing.

How do you write?

Interestingly, none of us use Microsoft Word. Not even Apple's Pages. We're all using lighter, plainer solutions. Now none of our workflows are perfect. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, advantages and drawbacks. And all of them can likely be improved. So, if you work across a wide range of devices, let me know how you do it, and if you can think of any ways any of us could work better and smarter, let us know in the comments!

Apple already pays $1 out of every $40 tax dollars the U.S. collects. How much more does the Senate want?

Tomorrow Tim Cook and the gang head to Washington to have a chat with a Senate committee investigating the possibility of tax avoidance (or evasion, depending on how you look at it) by Apple. Here's what's at stake.

Ahead of the testimony it will be giving before the U.S. Senate tomorrow, Apple (via The Loop) offered up a nicely detailed 17-page PDF document with all sorts of good information inside. The most interesting number is this: Apple pays $1 out of every $40 of income tax collected by the US Treasury. Isn’t it incredible to think that one company is responsible for 2.5% of all US income tax collection?

Despite Apple being the single largest US taxpayer, Senators Carl Levin and John McCain are accusing Apple of establishing “the Holy Grail of tax avoidance”. You can read the entire argument made by the Senate subcommittee on the Financial Times website.

While this stuff is pretty dry reading for most tech people, I find it interesting because I spent over a decade as a stock analyst and I was always fascinated by how some companies managed to achieve very low tax rates ... using perfectly legal structures.

The U.S. Government’s issue with Apple stems from two arguments relating to Apple’s arrangements in Ireland, a well known low cost country. Let’s see if I can break this whole thing down into something easy to understand.

Here’s the first major item as described by Senate:

Apple’s cost sharing agreement (CSA) with its offshore affiliates in Ireland is primarily a conduit for shifting billions of dollars in income from the United States to a low tax jurisdiction. From 2009 to 2012, the CSA facilitated the shift of $74 billion in worldwide sales income away from the United States to Ireland where Apple has negotiated a tax rate of less than 2%.

Plain English? The government doesn’t like the idea that Apple’s Irish subsidiary is treated as a cost center to the US operations, resulting in less US profit and more Irish profit. Apple’s comments regarding this structure are pretty compelling. They’ve had a cost sharing arrangement in place with the Irish subsidiary since 1980. It sounds like the Irish operations are responsible for paying for part of Apple’s US-based R&D efforts, and in return it claims ownership of a certain percentage of the intellectual property that comes out of that R&D. Apple says, “These agreements were sanctioned by the US Congress in 1986 and are expressly authorized by US Treasury regulations.”

Furthermore, Apple points out that these cost sharing arrangements benefit the US because it keeps high-cost R&D jobs in the domestic market. In Apple’s own words, “Some commentators have urged eliminating these types of cost sharing agreements, but doing so would harm American workers and the broader US economy. If cost sharing agreements were no longer available, many US multinational companies would likely move high-paying American R&D jobs overseas.”

I don’t know how other readers will interpret these documents, but I think Apple presented a much stronger argument.

The second major item the Senate is focused on:

Offshore Entities With No Declared Tax Jurisdiction. Apple has established and directed tens of billions of dollars to at least two Irish affiliates, while claiming neither is a tax resident of any jurisdiction, including its primary offshore holding company, Apple Operations International (AOI), and its primary intellectual property rights recipient, Apple Sales International (ASI). AOI, which has no employees, has no physical presence, is managed and controlled in the United States, and received $30 billion of income between 2009 and 2012, has paid no corporate income tax to any national government for the past five years.

What’s this mean? The US government is saying that Apple funnels profits to Irish subsidiaries and then doesn’t pay any tax because the Irish subsidiary isn’t a US resident, based on US tax law, but isn’t an Irish resident either, based on Irish tax law. The suggestion the government is making here is one of, “Well, if you’re not a resident of any particular tax jurisdiction, you must be skipping out on taxes!”

Again, Apple puts forth a very straight-forward argument in explaining its setup. Apple Operations International (AOI) is a holding company incorporated in Ireland. Being incorporated in Ireland, that corporation is not a US taxpayer. End of story. It also just so happens that because of Irish law (which probably requires a certain number of employees or physical presence) it is not an Irish taxpayer either. So AOI doesn’t pay tax. But that’s missing the point. AOI is a holding company. All it does is collect payments from other Apple subsidiaries (payments that have already been taxed) and manage the money from a central location. The money AOI collects in the form of inter-company dividends has already been taxed.

Putting this in simpler terms, let’s say you had 3 separate companies in Ireland. Each company makes a profit and pays required taxes. Wouldn’t it be simpler to dump all of that money into one holding company so you can manage the investment of this money in an efficient manner? Of course. That’s what Apple is doing. Oh, and that money is managed by US people, held in US banks.

The bottom line is the US Senate Subcommittee is bitching about Apple supposedly not paying enough taxes, despite the fact that Apple pays $1 out of every $40 of income tax collected by the US treasury, and despite the fact that the US is responsible for establishing all of the laws that Apple is now abiding by. Furthermore, the Subcommittee is putting its hands where they don’t belong. The Irish subsidiary AOI is clearly not a US resident for tax purposes, since it is incorporated in Ireland. That is where the argument should end. It is irrelevant to the US whether or not the Irish government allows Apple to consider this entity a non-resident of Ireland. Maybe Ireland encourages this practise, making it an ideal place to incorporate holding companies. But regardless, it’s none of the US Treasury’s business so long as it is not a US resident corporation. Newsflash, Senate ... you don’t get to control Irish law. You control your own law and the law is pretty clear. If AOI is incorporated in Ireland, it’s not a US taxpayer. End of story. Whatever the Iaw says about taxation in Ireland are none of your damn business.

Back in 1999 my father encouraged me to read a book called “The Soverign Individual”. As per the Amazon description, “In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries -- the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed "the fourth stage of human society," will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government.”

Today the U.S. government is under pressure to collect more tax revenue. They’re fighting information-based global companies like Apple who have organized themselves, legally, in the best interests of shareholders.

This is a battle the U.S. government will lose, and they better start looking at alternative ways to solve their tax revenue problems. Picking a fight with their biggest taxpayer seems utterly stupid.

The App Store officially reaches 50 billion downloads, did you win the $10,000 gift voucher?

In just under two weeks since first announcing they were approaching the milestone, the Apple App Store has officially ticked over its 50 billionth download. Coincidentally the milestone was reached during the first few hours of Google I/O, where Google themselves were shouting about their own download numbers. In reaching 50 billion, that now means one lucky iOS user is set to receive a $10,000 App Store gift card, with 50 billion and one through to 50 each receiving $500 vouchers.

Apple likes to have fun with these milestone celebrations, and it's just over a year since the last one took place for reaching 25 billion. The first 25 billion took nearly 4 years to reach, with the next 25 billion coming in a remarkable 14 months. That shows amazing growth for the App Store and for the platform as a whole, and long may it continue. At this rate of growth, who knows how quickly the next milestone may come around. Will Apple celebrate 75 billion, or hold off until the magic 100 billion?

The grand prize winner will be announced soon, but the biggest question now is, just who is it that won? Was it you? Do you feel confident? If you downloaded an app in the last 3 or 4 hours you could be in with a shout. Let us know if you're feeling lucky!

Source: Apple

Oggl by Hipstamatic: More than just an Instagram clone?

Beyond having an odd sounding name, Oggl is the latest creation by the long serving team at Hipstamatic. The app just went live in the App Store, but at the moment it requires an invitation code to use -- though you can apply for one in the app. But, what exactly is it? The official tagline reads as: "A community of creative people capturing & curating their Lives through photography." So that'll be a social photo sharing service then, will it?

Anyone who knows Hipstamatic knows that the fundamental principle stands around applying filters to your photos. Pretty common these days, but Hipstamatic has been doing it for a number of years now. When it comes to the social aspect, there's only one clear market leader; Instagram. So, is Oggl just an Instagram clone, or does it offer something more?

The main 'timeline' view is a definite improvement on the way Instagram attacks it. It's much cleaner, much simpler, with no usernames or comments on display it's all about the photos. You can customize what it is you want to see, be that from people you follow, editors choices, global or at the moment there's a special featured selection to see photos from San Francisco. When you see something you like, tapping on the image brings up the user information, and the lens and film combination they used to shoot it.

That then gives you the option to take that combination, and automatically select it to shoot your own images with. I quite like this touch. Quite often I'll see an effect in a photo that I really like the look of, and having the chance to use it myself in a couple of taps is really handy. Of course, it won't make me a better photographer, though.

So, onwards to the shooting side of Oggl, Hipstamatic's bread and butter. The camera app itself is pretty nice, with the different effects being applied during shooting. Below the viewfinder are the selections for film type and lens type, along with some preset effects made up of a specific combination of film and lens. You aren't bound to applying the effects before taking the shot either. If you don't like it, you can change it up using the same effects afterwards.

The camera button remains at the top or bottom of each view throughout the app, so wherever you are it's only a single tap to access shooting mode. To the left of the shutter button is one-tap access to your Oggl gallery, and to the right of it is your exit point back to the global feed. So far then, so good.

It's when we get to the sharing that things become a little, peculiar. With Instagram, you hit the camera button, take your shot, edit it, tag it and upload it to whichever of the available services you desire. With Oggl, you take the photos, and then you have to go get them and decide what to do with them. It isn't difficult, but I have to admit that it took me a few minutes to figure it all out. With a sharing service, you would expect to take a photo, then share it pretty much straight away, not leave it sitting in a gallery.

Perhaps oddly too, Instagram is one of the available sharing services for Oggl. The other usual candidates are there: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare and Tumblr, but being able to share to Instagram also seems like a strange move. The main Hipstamatic app can also share to Instagram, I just can't quite get my head around why you would use something like Oggl, only to then send the photos to Instagram.

This becomes an even stranger thought when you take into account the yearly subscription that Hipstamatic is charging for full access to Oggl. Priced at $2.99 quarterly or $9.99 yearly, paying up serves two purposes. The first is keeping Oggl free of all forms of advertising and keeping the app as a free download. The App Store listing puts it better than I could:

Oggl is an experience designed for capturing and curating beautiful photos, not for showcasing advertising. To support this vision for the community, Oggl will offer two subscription options: Quarterly for $2.99 & Yearly for $9.99. While Oggl itself will always remain free, each subscription comes with access to Hipstamatic’s entire catalog of current lens and film gear, and guarantees new gear each month.

Oh yeah, and that's the other benefit to paying up. While Oggl is free to use for everyone, none-paid members are classed as 'contributors' and only get access to a limited number of the photo effects. Paid members get access to Hipstamatic's full catalog of filter packs.

The Good

• Well designed and good looking UI
• Sharing options a plenty
• Huge selection of effects for paid members
• Easy navigation, lots of one-tap access to various areas of the app

The Bad

• Slightly confusing method to sharing
• Limited effects available to free users
• Invite only at the moment

The Bottom Line

I want to love Oggl, really and truly I do. Instagram has always just felt like an extension of the other social networks to me, and like people tweet about anything and everything, there's a tendency to Instagram anything and everything. And every meal. Oggl feels different though. They're penning it as a way to curate and enjoy beautiful photography, and you do get that impression. The photos are always front and center, with the person who did it, where and how they did it and all that other business tucked out of the way.

Whether it will take off or not is another question. Whichever way you look at it, Instagram is free, and the best experience in Oggl is not. The average eye may see little difference between the two, only the mention of subscription fees, and then decide to stick with Instagram. And I still don't know why you can share your Oggl photos to Instagram. If you want to do that, the main Hipstamatic app will do that for you. I'm going to give it a chance though. I've signed up for a three month subscription. I like what I see so far, lets see what I think three months down the line.

So, is Oggl more than an Instagram clone? In some ways, yes. It takes the same idea and makes it a better experience. But it's going to need people using it to make it worthwhile.

Say the Same Thing for iPhone review: Try to guess the same word as your friends in this hilarious word game

Say the Same Thing is a fun turn-by-turn word game by the band OK Go where you must try to guess the same word as your friend, a random stranger, or a member of the band. It's refreshingly fun and is sure to get those creative juices flowing.

Here's how it works; you are not playing against your friend, but rather with your friend, or as I'll call him/her, your partner (since you can play with strangers). The game begins with you and your partner each saying a word. In round two, you both look at the words from round one, and say a word that is related to both those words. If you say the same word, you win! If you don't, you repeat using the words from round two.

Look at the two most recent words and say another word that relates the two. The ultimate goal is to say the same word as your partner.

If you and your partner say almost the same thing, you can tap the "This counts!" button to claim that the game should be over. If your partner also hits the button, then the game is over. For example, I played a game where I said "Secretary of State" and my partner said "Secretary of the State." You may also run into instances where one player spells the word differently.

During the game, you can chat with your partner and put fun stamps and emoticons on words that have been played. Using a stamp costs a banana.

Oh, yes -- bananas. There are three ways to spend bananas: use a stamp, say two words at once, and start a game. Yes, you read that right -- it costs two bananas to play a game. For more bananas, you must either buy them in increments of 20, 50, 100, or 10,000, ranging from $0.99 t0 $49.99, or watch a 30 second ad in exchange for one banana.

I hate this.

I am more than willing to pay for a great game, but having to pay to continue to play (without new content) is very annoying. It bothers me even more because the tutorial never mentions that each game will cost you 2 bananas. Instead, I burned through my bananas by using stamps with no idea that I was giving up games by doing so. Paying to remove ads ($2.99) doesn't change things either -- you still have to watch ads (or pay) to get more bananas. One 30-second ad only grants half a game, so this further adds to the frustration.

To learn that a game cost 2 bananas, I had to go back to the tutorial, scroll through 13 pages, then tap "more tips." This is simply a bad user experience.

However, despite this greedy business model, Say the Same Thing is an extremely fun game.

The good

• Login with Facebook or Game Center (but not both)
• Turn-by-turn game with notification
• Chat with your partner
• "This counts" for times when answers are basically the same thing
• View past games
• Stamps are fun
• Stylish
• Play against random opponents
• Play against members of the band OK Go (long wait, though)
• Remove ads for $2.99

The bad

• Tutorial is not upfront about the fact that each game you play costs 2 bananas
• Even after buying ad-free version, you have to watch ads to get more bananas or buy more bananas
• Some users find the tutorial to be confusing

The bottom line

I've had a lot of fun and wasted too much time playing Say the Same Thing. It's a refreshing new word game that actually has the potential to be rather hilarious. I had one game with fellow iMore editor, Ally Kazmucha, that was 32 rounds long and ranged from Star Wars, to soda, to Lindsay Lohan, to ice cream, and to some topics that are too inappropriate to mention here -- now that's some good honest fun!

Hopefully the folks behind Say the Same Thing re-think their business model and, at the very least, increase the number of bananas you earn for watching an ad.

Space Ace brings old school arcade gaming to the Mac

One of the breakout video games of the mid-1980s is back on the Mac, in all of its original glory. Space Ace, the game featuring cel animation created by former Disney animator Don Bluth, is now available for download from the Mac App Store. If you're a child of the 80s, it's a fun trip down memory lane.

For the uninitated: Back in the 1980s, we went to arcades to play the latest video games. We'd while away our time playing our favorites, jamming quarters into coin slots for a few brief minutes of fun. We also wore parachute pants and skinny leather ties and listened to music on Walkman cassette players. It was another era. I had hair back then.

Most games of the early to mid 80s varied between blotchy, blocky sprite-based graphics and sharp-lined vector graphics, but computing power was very limited, and thus so was graphics rendering capabilities. Cinematronics introduced Dragon's Lair in 1983, and rewrote the rules. The game used real cel-drawn animation created by Don Bluth, stored on laserdisc. It was quickly succeeded by another Bluth-made game called Space Ace.

Space Ace is the blond, lantern-jawed defender of truth, justice and the planet Earth. The evil blue-skinned alien Borf hits Ace with a weapon called the Infanto-ray, which reduces the strapping Ace to his gawky teenage form, Dexter. Borf then kidnaps Ace's girlfriend Kimberly, and Ace/Dexter has to rescue her and defeat Borf.

To help Ace/Dexter achieve his goals, you need to direct him to move and take action at key moments during animated sequences. Make the wrong move and Ace might fall to his doom, get zapped by a laser beam or crash his spaceship into a wall. Make the right move and be rewarded with a few more seconds of animation before another key sequence appears and you have to do the same all over again.

It's a unique gameplay experience, because you can't arbitrarily move Ace in any direction - you have to follow a rigid set of commands, executed at precisely the right time, in order to win. That requires both good reflexes and good memory skills. There are a few branching choices you can make, but Space Ace isn't the sort of game that lends itself to being replayed a lot.

After each death, you're knocked back to the beginning of a scene or sequence, and that gets irritating fast. Fortunately, you have unlimited continues, so you can pick up where you left off, and a saved game feature lets you continue the game at a later point (but it doesn't let you save multiple game files). The pacing is vicious - you barely have a moment to catch your breath before you have to execute another move.

Just like the coin-op arcade version, Space Ace sports three difficulty settings, which truncate content from the game rather than adjust any inherent gameplay difficulty (kind of difficult to do so when everything is so heavily scripted). The only way to play through the entire unabridged game is to play on Ace mode.

Settings allow you to adjust how much help you'll get in the game - it can guide you with arrows to make the correct move, and cues beeps to let you know when to act - and there's also a full screen setting that doesn't quite work - my menu bar was still visible.

Extras with the game include the "Attract" mode that the original arcade game used to get players to try it out, the ability to watch the game all the way through, a high score table and a tutorial.

The good

• Unique animation created by legendary artist Don Bluth
• Faithful recreation of 80s arcade classic
• Extras to sweeten the pot a little bit

The bad

• Only one saved game
• Limited replay value
• Pacing is too fast

The Bottom Line

Space Ace doesn't hold up to today's games in terms of actual gameplay, but it's a piece of nostalgia bound to tickle the fancy of gamers of a certain age. It's been faithfully recreated on the Mac, but it's probably more of a museum piece than it is something that you'll want to play over and over again.

Keep up with the 2013 FA Cup final on your iPhone, iPad and Mac

The 2013 final of one of the worlds biggest football tournaments is coming up, so here's the apps you need to keep up with the action on your iPhone, iPad and Mac

Saturday May 11 sees the 2013 FA Cup come to a climax, with the final taking place at London's Wembley Stadium. The FA Cup is one of the worlds oldest, and greatest football tournaments -- that's the real football by the way, with the round ball -- and draws huge interest from all around the world. In the UK of course, the FA Cup is a massive occasion. We can't all be at the game, or watching on television, but with our iPhone's, iPad's and even Mac's, we can keep up to the minute with all the action. Read on for a selection of the best, though please do bear in mind that some content could be limited to those of us in the UK.

TVCatchup

Without a doubt, TVCatchup is one of, if not the very best way to enjoy the FA Cup final on your iOS device. Compatible with iPhone and iPad, TVCatchup provides slightly delayed live TV coverage of pretty much all of the UK free-to-air TV channels. Since the match is being played out on ITV, TVCatchup will have it all for you. Better yet, it broadcasts the ITV1+1 channel, so if you miss the first half, you get the chance to catch it an hour later. TVCatchup also operates a website, which is handy if you happen to find yourself in front of your Mac and not the TV.

You need to put up with some ads, and be mindful that it's pretty intensive on data, but you'll be able to watch every single minute. TVCatchup does check on first launch that you're using a UK based ISP, so you will need to be local to use it.

TuneIn Radio

One of the best internet radio streaming apps out there, TuneIn Radio needs little introduction. Stations such as BBC Radio 5 Live and Talksport will be covering the action live, and TuneIn Radio can access them all. In fact, any radio station, anywhere, that is going to cover the match in someway is likely in the vast catalog of choices in TuneIn Radio. You can pay to get the pro version, or take the free one and some ads.

iTunes

While talking about internet radio, it would be foolish not to mention iTunes on the Mac. It could be easy to overlook, but since it's sat there on your Mac, it's worth making use of. The radio tab is little more than a list of radio stations split down by category, but there's plenty of them. If you're going to find yourself in front of your Mac all day and can't tune in to a video stream, iTunes has you covered for all the stations you'll need to listen to the whole thing live.

BBC Sport

If you haven't the time to take in all the action as it happens, then BBC Sport is a great go-to app to keep up with the latest scores. It's a good app to have all round, but for keeping up with football matches BBC Sport offers a 'videprinter' service, with regular text updates on everything happening at the stadium.

Beyond this selection, here's a few apps that deserve an honorable mention in helping provide that FA Cup Final experience:

So, those are my picks. While I'm hoping to be able to tune in and watch the game live on television, any or all of these apps could come to my rescue if I'm torn away. What are your suggestions? Be sure to share them with us in the comments, and enjoy the game!

Apps of the Week: NASA, KitCam, Star Command, and more

Every week, the editors and writers at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This week's selections include an app for Londoners, a couple games, a wiki, a great photography app, and app for those who wish they were astronauts.

Two things in particular came together in finding this application. Firstly, I spend a reasonable amount of time in London throughout the year. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I drink too much coffee. And now, with this app, the two can go together hand-in-hand.

There's nothing complicated about it, as it's basically a directory of non-chain coffee shops throughout London. The app ties into Apple Maps, and wherever you see a dot near you, you can tap on it and get all the details of that particular coffee shop and a quick review. Opening times, the closest tube station, walking distance from your location, even whether or not it has WiFi. Best of all, it's been really nicely designed, and is an app that you will actually want to put to use. So, if you're headed to London anytime soon, give it a try.

Star Command is a great new game for the iPhone and iPad that sees you take command of a customizable starship as you fly across the galaxy doing battle with all manner of hostile alien races. You start with the ability to pick one ship hull, with other being unlocked as you play the game. Your ship has a number of configurable rooms that allow you to build different stations. After selecting and naming your ship and creating your captain, you can hire crew members to occupy rooms, which is required for the rooms to function. Red crew members operate weapons, blue manage scientific and medical equipment, and yellow engineers repair damage to your ship. You can also reassign your crew, so someone in a tactical room can be moved to an engineering room, for example. This way, crew can fill rolls as needed.

Combat is a big part of the game as well, and with a variety of weapons and defensive abilities at your disposal, which charge after each use. Selecting a weapon to fire brings up a mini game in order to determine the number of hits you score against the enemy ship. Since each weapon on your ship takes up a room, you must have at least one crew member staffing it in order for the weapon to charge. This can be difficult when enemy troops start boarding your ship, as only tactical and bridge crew can repel them, possibly leaving weapons unmanned. A fun game that challenges the player to manage their ship well, Star Command is a worth a look, and is available as a universal app for $2.99.

Trauma's what you might call experimental. The game takes a similar format as Myst in that you're navigating a collection of overlapping images in order to solve puzzles, in this case using a smattering of gestures at your disposal. The real kicker here is the premise. Players explore the dreamscape of a woman that's survived a car crash, and her narrative throughout your journey puts together pieces of her story. Though initially it seems like the images assembled are extremely simple, it doesn't take long for things to get a little on the weird side. Trauma is a surreal, ponderous game, and an altogether new kind of experience. If you've got an open mind, give it a shot.

There is a ton of Wiki's out there. If you're interested in something, chances are there is a Wiki for it. Video games, TV shows, movies, food, fashion and more. When you start looking for that much information, it can become a bit daunting. Having all that content in one spot and categorized would be awesome. Wikia Inc., which currently runs over 200,000 wikis, thought so as well and as such, they've created a great app called My Wikia and it offers up the best Wiki browsing experience I've used. Offering such features as the ability to search for and browse all your favorites right from within the app, drill down on only the content you want to see and filter out the rest, keep track of the most recent updates, follow trends and see what others think is popular. Did I mention it's free and beautifully designed? If you spend your time reading through Wiki's, then I suggest giving My Wikia a try.

If you've seen those awesome Instagrams by Safe Solvent then you've seen KitCam in action. It's a fantastic iOS app that not only gives you more advanced control over the camera than the built-in app, but also lets you add lens and film effects, and adjust things like contrast, brightness, color balance, and levels.

There are some spectacular camera apps on iOS, and some equally spectacular photo editing apps, but KitCam includes enough of just exactly the right stuff to make it an excellent, one-stop shop for photographers of all skill levels. And that's true whether you're running and gunning or taking your time and trying to maximize your artistic vision.

The base price includes a good collection of tools, and additional bundles are available via in-app purchase. There's a lot more to say, but I lack Leanna's camera savvy, so I'll save the rest for her inevitable review.

If you like it, grab it now while it's 50% off.

I love science. And space. A childhood dream of mine was to be an astronaut, and I still kick myself in the butt sometimes for not pursuing that dream. Alas, I must live vicariously through apps like NASA, instead. The NASA app for iPhone and iPad lets you explore photos, videos, missions, and more. If you like space, science, and NASA, definitely check it out.

Now that we've chosen our favorites for the week, we want to hear yours! Did you pick up a killer app, accessory, or game this week? Let us know in the comments below!

Samsung releases new Galaxy S4 commercial, targets the iPhone. Well.

Samsung has just released a new commercial for their new flagship phone, the Galaxy S4... and it's pretty good. I'm not a huge fan of this huge phone in general. I find it too big, too plastic, and too incoherent as a product compared to other offerings on the market. But I do appreciate the sheer amount of technology, hardware and software, Samsung is putting behind the GS4, and the all-in way they do it will probably help get the really good ideas to market faster than they might otherwise.

And that's exactly what Samsung is showing off here. The sheer size of the Galaxy S4 is evident in the ad, as are features like Drama Mode, which lets you capture a series of images -- think multi-exposure sports pics, and the gestures that let you navigate without touching the screen with sticky -- in this case tasty rib covered -- fingers. Some of the other features, like Hover, which feels like a terrible violation of Fitts' law, and S Beam, which is like Bump over NFC, are a tad more gimmicky, and more demo-ware than software, but they come off okay in commercials for just that reason.

Samsung's also packing a one-two punch here: not only are they showing off what they consider to be feature differentiation, they're doing their best to make Apple and the iPhone look lame by comparison. It's something they've done effectively before, and it's one of the few weaknesses Apple has in the consumer market. And unlike the nowhere nearly as good Nokia Windows Phone commercial they're doing it without promoting Apple's brand.

So how does Apple counter-program assaults on its brand image? Does it make a similar commercial showing the Galaxy S4 not fitting in skinny hipster jean pockets, not working well one handed, harming eyes with vintage Soviet-era interface utilitarianism, and piquing frustration through seemingly random and unfathomable feature sets?

It'd be fun to see that, but Apple's probably not there yet. Despite their global sales, Samsung is still trailing Apple in the US market. That's why Samsung has to say Apple isn't as cool. Apple just has to work incredibly hard to be cool; to show not tell. When and if the rolls switch, however, the "I'm an iPhone... and I'm an Android phone...." commercials might make for an amazing call-back.

Check out the ad above and let me know what you think of it in the comments below. With Samsung targeting Apple's image, should Apple fight back and how?

Police, media claim carrier, manufacturers aren't doing enough to prevent phone thefts, take all the wrong angles

Today the New York Times published a piece on the explosion of cellphone thefts, the rise of the black market systems that wipe the phones and resell them, and the efforts - or alleged lack thereof - of carriers and manufacturers in not doing enough to prevent the thefts in the first place. The piece approaches the problem from all the wrong angles, and here's why...

Things go south almost immediately with a quote from District of Columbia Chief of Police Cathy L. Lanier, who says "The carriers are not innocent in this whole game. They are making a profit off this." Technically, yes, if a customer has to walk into a carrier store and buy a new phone because their previous one was stolen, then the carrier can take a profit on it. But the same rule applies if somebody steals my laptop or my car or my coffee when I'm not looking. I'm going to have to go buy a new one, and the seller is going to take a profit. That's how business works. Of course, with all of those excepting my unattended cup of coffee I can purchase insurance to cover their replacement cost on the occasion of all sorts of events, event thefts. That includes that smartphone.

I don't want to go down the "blame the victim" route, but let's be honest here: protecting something you hold in your hand and making it less desirable to purloin is not the job of manufacturers or carriers. In fact, they're in the business of making devices more desirable, because they want you to buy them. That a product being more attractive to legitimate buyers also makes it more attractive to thieves is just the way things are.

Once you walk out of the store with that shiny new iPhone or Lumia or Galaxy or BlackBerry, it's no longer the carrier's or manufacturer's responsibility to maintain physical security of the device. It's yours. Chief Lanier's jurisdiction saw a record of 1829 cellphone thefts in 2012, an average of nearly seven per day.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg singled out the theft of Apple iPhones and iPads accounted for 14% of crimes, supposedly making them single-handedly responsible for an uptick in the overall crime level for the city. While there's little doubt that many New Yorkers were robbed specifically for their Apple-branded devices, that 14% involves all crimes where iPhones and iPads were stolen, not just people who were targeted for daring to brandish an iPhone in public.

Continuing to harp on the "iPhone thefts driving rising crime rates" theme, we have to consider that the iPhone and iPad are highly popular devices. They sell incredibly well and report after report have shown that owners use them more heavily than those who have purchased other devices. There are more people who are using iPhones and other smartphones on the streets, and thus more targets of opportunity.

As The New York Times points out, carriers and manufacturers are working to make stealing smartphones they sell more of a pain. The major US carriers have partnered with law enforcement across the country to launch a stolen phone database. It is essentially a list of the unique IMEI numbers (International Mobile station Equipment Identity) from phones that have been reported stolen. Once a phone's on the list, in theory an attempt to activate it on the network should throw up red flags.

Unfortunately for these efforts, if you know what you're doing it's relatively easy to modify a phone's IMEI and circumvent the database. There's no law against it, but that's something that New York Representative Eliot Engel (D) wants to change with the introduction of the Cell Phone Theft Protection Act to the United States Congress. The legislation is intended to discourage the theft of cell phones by "requiring wireless commercial services to cut off service to a stolen phone" by creating a national stole phone database (done - independently by carriers and law enforcement without prompting of the federal government), requiring all phones in the US to have unique ID numbers (done - the IMEI was created by the industry for exactly this reason), mandating that carriers make it possible for customers to remotely wipe their devices (manufacturers are on this), and making it illegal to alter a phone's IMEI.

The last point is really the only "new" item to US law in Engel's legislation. It's already against the law in countries like the UK and Latvia to alter a phone's IMEI, expressly with the goal of suppressing phone theft and resale. There's just one rub, though: the act of stealing is already illegal. Altering an IMEI is trivial compared to actually stealing the phone, making doing so illegal isn't going to cause any crook to second guess what they're doing.

Manufacturers too have been on the track of working to make their phones less desirable to be stolen, or at the very least protect the data of the owner once they are. Apple, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and others offer built-in services for their devices that enable you to remotely track, ring, lock, and wipe devices on your account (BlackBerry and Microsoft also allow you to display a message on the device). These sort of features aren't built into Android by Google, however, unless you're on a Google Apps account. Numerous third-party apps are available to add remote security features to Android devices.

The issue with those services is one of consumer awareness. Most simply aren't aware that they have the option to remotely wipe a device if it's been stolen. Many would probably be pleased by the ability to remotely command their phone make a sound so they can figure out where they left it last night.

Of course, all of these services do no good if the phone's radios are turned off - once it's off the internet, no amount of back-end services are going to enable you to remotely wipe the phone. Criminals have grown saavy enough to know that the first thing you do after stealing somebody's phone is turn it off, if not immediately wipe it yourself. To imply, as Chief Lanier, Mayor Bloomberg, Representative Engel, and others have, that iPhones and Galaxies and Lumias are driving crime rates and that it's the responsibility of carriers and manufacturers to do something about it is absurd.

Carriers and manufacturers have been for some time working to minimize the incentive to steal smartphones. They're operating on market forces; consumers don't like it when the smartphone they've come to rely upon is stolen, so the industry has an incentive of their own to make it less desirable to steal them in the first place. The manufacturers and carriers that build the best systems to protect the data on a smartphone (and that's usually the most distressing part to anybody who has lost possession of their device) and do the best job of marketing that to customers will reap the benefits from customers who opt to buy their product.

The same game played out nearly a century ago as the automobile. As automobiles began to grow in popularity, so did theft of the new horseless carriages. Manufacturers eventually began to include alarms and immobilizers to deter against vehicle theft. Today, cars can be equipped with two-way alarm systems that alert you of exactly what's happening to your in distress automobile. But that hasn't stopped grand theft auto in the slightest sense. There are more cars on the road today than at any time in history, and everything from expensive and security-laden new Cadillac Escalade SUVs to old Honda Accord and Toyota Camry sedans continue to be stolen every day. If something is desirable, thieves will find a way to get their hands on it.

As technology advances, so will the techniques of criminals. No amount of technology is going to make it any less desirable to steal the smartphone I hold in my hand. It's an expensive piece of technology, and while we can do much to safeguard the data it holds, that data isn't what thieves are usually after - it's the hardware itself. Protecting my phone once I've walked away from the sales desk in the carrier store is my responsibility and my responsibility only. I don't hold Starbucks as responsible for the physical security of my coffee nor would I consider Honda complicit if somebody stole by car.

Just because it's a popular target for thieves doesn't mean make my smartphone any different.

Source: The New York Times