This week's roundup of iOS accessories features not one, but two ways to elegantly convert your iPad into a cash register. But the iPad and iPhone aren't all business, as there's fun to be had, too!

Syncing is a hot topic these days, with plenty of alternatives and lots of angst over their perceived limitations and shortcomings.

If you happen to be a user of the Omni Group’s apps, like OmniGraffle and OmniFocus, you’ll be happy to know that the company is releasing its own sync solution—aptly dubbed OmniPresence—on Wednesday, bringing yet one more option into the fray.

Easy and powerful

From the user’s point of view, OmniPresence is designed to be simple while still offering a powerful feature set. The core of that is compatibility across both OS X and iOS apps, allowing you to effortlessly sync data back and forth.

On the Mac, OmniPresence runs in the background and resides discreetly in the menu bar, where it can be accessed at any time. Once installed, it asks you to connect to an OmniPresence server and designate a directory on your hard drive that will act as the synchronization point between your computer and the server. From there on, documents are automatically synchronized back and forth any time you update them in one of Omni’s apps.

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In most of the world, the asymmetric nature of your average Internet connection means that, unless you are lucky enough to be on a corporate network or fiber reaches your house, sending large files to your friends and colleagues is often an exercise that requires a lot of patience. Most of it is spent waiting for files to upload and dealing with complex workflows that tend to take up more time than they're worth.

This is where the recently-launched Minbox comes into play. Its developers have set their sights on turning file sharing into as frictionless a workflow as possible, while keeping costs down to a rather cool zero dollars.

There is, of course, no shortage of competing products that attempt to reduce the stress of sharing data—Dropbox and Droplr come to mind—but their focus is primarily on providing you with storage in the cloud, rather than on simplifying the process of sharing one or more files with a specific group of people. It’s this latter case that Minbox hopes to streamline.

Sharing with flair

Minbox is made up of two components: a cloud-based backend and a small OS X app that is free, weighs in at a little more than 1MB, and works with Snow Leopard or later. Once installed, and after going through a few set-up steps, the app sits quietly in OS X’s menu bar, awaiting your orders.

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Popular as Apple’s iOS mobile platform is, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There’s also Google’s Android—a widely used mobile OS in its own right. Last week, Google held its I/O developers conference in San Francisco. And more than a few announcements coming out of that event should be of interest to iOS device owners—for how it may or may not influence what Apple does with its own mobile platform, if nothing else.

I’m joined by senior editor Dan Moren and senior writer Lex Friedman to talk Google I/O. Specifically, we look at where Android is playing catch-up to iOS and where Apple is lagging behind what Google has to offer. (Here’s a hint: It rhymes with “maps.”) We also briefly discuss subscription music services, like the one Google just unveiled as well as Google CEO Larry Page’s unusual Q&A session.

Download Episode #356

Show Notes

Lex took a look last week at how Google’s I/O moves measure up to what Apple offers, and that frames much of our discussion. Specifically, the three of us look at new Android APIs that largely match what Apple already offers, changes to Android gaming that will largely feel familiar to anyone who uses iOS’s Game Center, and a redesign of the Google Play store.

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Samsung's Galaxy S4 infringes on 5 Apple patents, according to a court filing by Apple.

Apple wants to add the new Galaxy S4 to an ongoing case involving Apple and Samsung being heard in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Jose Division, according to a filing with that court on Tuesday.

Samsung's newest flagship smartphone was launched in March and went on sale in the U.S. in late April.

"Apple obtained the Galaxy S4 on April 27 and immediately began its infringement analysis, including Samsungs customizations of the Android Jelly Bean platform, covering the eight asserted patents," Apple stated in the filing, adding that it tested S4's sold by AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint. "That analysis revealed that the Galaxy S4 infringes five of Apples asserted patents in the same ways as Samsungs already accused products," it added.

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Reader Ron Sharp has a question that continues to puzzle some Mac users. He writes:

I have an older Mac on a local network that is still using Snow Leopard—so it’s incompatible with iCloud. How can I share calendars between it and my other Mac running Mountain Lion?

This was a popular subject when Mac OS X Lion (10.7) first shipped, as Apple drew a firm line between the new and old ways in regard to data sharing. MobileMe was out and iCloud was in. At that time there were a couple of sneaky ways to make Snow Leopard’s iCal work with iCloud. Allow me to report that I’ve wasted plenty of my time so that you needn’t waste yours. These schemes are broken and it’s very unlikely Apple is going to do anything to make iCloud compatible with Snow Leopard.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t use an alternative—Google Calendar. In order to have such a thing you must sign up for a Gmail account. For the six of you who don’t have one, hightail it on over to Gmail.com and set it up.

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While I often set timers with Siri on my iPhone, doing so means I need another Siri command or series of swipes and taps to check the timer’s progress. When I’m at my desk working, I prefer a simple onscreen timer. Whimsicalifornia's $3 Timebar (Mac App Store link) is a nifty timer app that lives in your menu bar. Actually, lives isn’t quite the right word: Timebar consumes your menu bar—but in a good way.

To use Timebar, you simply click the Timebar icon in your menu bar (it’s the one that looks like a stopwatch, which makes it easy to confuse with the Time Machine icon), and then you drag a slider to set the length of your timer. Click Start, and the background of your Mac’s menu bar turns blue, fading from right to left until the timer hits zero—much like any standard progress bar. When the timer runs out, you’re alerted with a dialog box and, optionally, a sound.

The aforementioned slider is an unusual design choice: You can set a timer for one minute, two minutes, and then in five-minute increments up to four hours, and then in 30-minute increments up to eight hours. I understand the thinking behind this approach, but it limits your flexibility when it comes to choosing a timer length. For example, I brew my tea for four minutes, and I put some foods in the microwave for seven. I’d like to at least have the option to enter the timer duration manually.

That said, you can download a pair of Timebar extras for setting timers of any length using Alfred or Terminal. And the app is scriptable with a custom URL protocol (timebar://), which means you can create your own means to control it—for example, by using LaunchBar.

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Back in ancient times—throughout much of the 1980s and 1990s when just 1000 or so fonts were available for desktop computers—designers had a tongue-in-cheek saying among themselves: The one who dies with the most fonts wins! It made sense at the time because fonts were coveted by every designer as a creative resource of unparallelled importance, and prices were astronomical. While supply has risen and prices have dropped in more recent eras, one thing remains true today: Fonts remain incredibly important and valuable to anyone who puts words on paper or pixels.

Tiny programs

If your budget is low, or if you just want to experiment with a wide variety of type styles, check out the abundance of free and low-cost sources on the Internet. Warning: not all fonts are created equal. A font file that you install on your computer is actually a tiny program, with a variety of capabilities—including the ability to crash your applications.

Fonts come in three main formats: PostScript (Type 1) and TrueType are the oldest, and are fairly simple—but still capable of taking down your operating system. OpenType fonts can be far more complex, offering applications the ability to intelligently combine glyphs (characters) into new forms, add swashes to characters, convert combinations of numbers that look like fractions to true fraction characters, and so forth. OpenType is also capable of containing tens of thousands of glyphs, instead of the 256 limit of previous formats.

Aside from whether a font is programmed properly, quality is another issue. In some ways, crafting a font is similar to building a house. Anyone with a set of tools and some raw materials can put up a shelter that could be called a house. But the best houses are designed and built by people who have spent years studying and practicing the myriad techniques, history, styles, and materials. The same may be said about crafting fonts. Many masters around the world have devoted their lives to the true art of typeface design. Others are masters in crafting those designs into font files that you can use. Companies such as Linotype, Monotype, FontShop, and Adobe employ those masters to create the typefaces used by professional designers.

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Congratulations! You've made the leap from a Windows PC to the Mac. Now that you're here, it's no surprise that you might be feeling a bit lost. We've assembled this chart to make it easy for you to find the feature you're looking for, whether it's your printer settings or audio controls.

Apple’s executives speak before congress, Ireland doesn’t think it has a taxation problem, and iOS 7 looks to share and share alike. The remainders for Tuesday, May 21, 2013 are certain.

Tim Cook’s Opening Statement Before The Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations (Apple)

In case you missed Tuesday’s riveting Senate subcommittee action, you can now read the opening remarks from CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer on Apple’s site. But that does mean you’ll miss out on the full effect of the Tim Cook appearing before the body in a purple velour track suit.

Ireland says not to blame for Apple’s low tax rate (Yahoo Finance)

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Apple pays a fair share of the taxes it owes the U.S. and other nations, its CEO said Tuesday, despite criticism from U.S. senators that the company is ducking taxes by shifting profits to subsidiaries that the company does not consider tax residents of any nation.

Apple CEO Tim Cook defended the company Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee, saying that Apple uses no “tax gimmicks” in assigning about two-thirds of its worldwide profits to three subsidiaries in Ireland, where the company has negotiated a corporate income tax rate of less than 2 percent.

In reality, Apple has paid a far lower rate than the 2 percent negotiated in Ireland, with one subsidiary paying no income taxes in the past five years, and another paying 0.05 percent in Ireland in 2011, according to a report released Monday by the investigations subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

But Cook and two other Apple executives defended their tax decisions before the subcommittee. Apple paid an effective tax rate of 30.5 percent in the U.S. last year and may be the single largest corporate taxpayer in the U.S., Cook said. The company employs 50,000 people in the U.S. and its products support hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, he said.

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If you’ve never heard that noise before, you’re bound to hear it someday: that amazing, dull crunch as your Mac slips out of your hands or off a desk and makes a date with the ground at 9.8 meters per second squared, gravity having played the role of a yenta-like matchmaker bringing together your computer and an admirably dense surface. The crunch registers in your brain, and you have a sudden mental image of the universe collapsing.

julianbl/neowin.net

Here’s how to make the best of a terrible situation, get as much of your data back as possible, and avoid a similar disaster if your Mac decides to smooch the ground again somewhere down the line.

Pick it up, clean it off

After your Mac falls, calm down, pick it up, look over the damage, and clean away whatever dirt and detritus you can. From there, make sure that your Mac is turned off, and then weigh your options.

If you feel comfortable opening the machine, find a wrist strap and tools, touch a metal object to discharge any static that your body may be carrying, and carefully open the Mac to check for case fragments, damaged parts, or debris that may have ended up in the computer. Don’t turn it on; just focus on the parts that survived the fall and anything that might appear damaged, and clean out the interior as best you can.

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If you were wondering if ReadWrite had cleaned up its act since Dan Lyons left, fret not: Its Apple coverage is still as vapidly negative as it’s ever been.

Derek Brown muses: “The Epic Battle Between Apple & Google Is All But Over—Who Won?” (No link is provided, but tip o’ the antlers again to the Jony Ive parody account on Twitter.)

Turns out, it’s not Apple. Surprise!

Oh, you Apple zealots may respond with any number of “facts” pointing out that Apple’s doing quite well, thank you very much. But Brown has a retort that will leave you withering in the iron grip of his logic:

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Sony and Apple are at loggerheads over streaming music, AT&T gets ready to open the floodgates on video chat over its network, and the head of Turkey drops in on Silicon Valley. The remainders for Monday, May 20, 2013 are up a stream without a paddle.

One issue holding up Apple iRadio: The economics of skipping songs (CNet)

If you were expecting Apple’s rumored music streaming service to roll out at next month’s WWDC, you might be disappointed. CNet reports that Sony Music is at odds with Cupertino over what Apple will pay for songs that users skip or rate poorly. Here’s a tip, Sony: Make better music. That one’s free!

AT&T says ‘any’ mobile video chat app will work on its network by the end of 2013 (The Verge)

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Apple has set up three foreign subsidiaries that the company claims are not resident in any nation for taxing purposes, in an effort to avoid paying tens of billions of dollars in taxes to the U.S. and other countries, according to a new report from a U.S. Senate subcommittee.

Apple has set up a “complex web” of offshore entities to avoid paying taxes, with some subsidiaries set up in low-tax Ireland, according to a report released Monday by the investigations subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

One of the subsidiaries set up by Apple has paid no corporate income tax to any nation for the past five years, although it reported $30 billion in net income from 2009 to 2012, the report said. Another subsidiary has paid a tax rate to Ireland of one-tenth of 1 percent or less in 2009, 2010 and 2011, far below the normal Irish corporate income tax rate of 12 percent, according to the subcommittee report.

Apple has negotiated an income tax rate of less than 2 percent with the Irish government, but in some cases, avoids paying even that rate, staffers said.

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Tim Cook’s taking on the tax man. On Tuesday, the Apple CEO will appear before the U.S. Senate’s permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to discuss that body’s look into multinational companies and how they pay taxes. As a special preview to those who really can’t wait to hang on Cook’s every word, Apple on Monday released its head honcho’s testimony.

Those searching for even the merest hint of Apple’s future plans will want to find another tree up which to bark: the 18-page testimony deals almost exclusively the relatively dry subjects of Apple subsidiaries, the company’s corporate structure, and its broad suggestions for overhauling the federal tax system. Given that, it’s no surprise that Cook will be joined by Peter Oppenheimer, the company’s CFO, and Phillip Bullock, Apple’s head of tax operations.

In its testimony, Apple begins by stressing that as one of the largest companies in the U.S., it provides a huge benefit to the economy. Included in the numbers the company tosses around are estimates of how many jobs it supports or has created in the U.S. (approximately 600,000, including 50,000 of its own employees and around 290,000 related to the company’s so-called “App Economy”), the large sums it’s paid out to app developers (more than $9 billion), and the company’s fiscal year 2012 tax bill (almost $6 billion, which it estimates will rise to more than $7 billion for fiscal year 2013). The last, Apple says, likely makes it the largest corporate income tax payer in the U.S.

Apple strenuously asserts that it pays every cent it owes, both to the U.S. government and to the governments of other countries in which it does business. The most significant of those is Ireland, in which Apple has five—count ‘em, five—subsidiaries, each of which the company says adhere to the letter and spirit of the law; Apple says it doesn’t use tax gimmicks, such as offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands or Caribbean nations, and its large foreign holdings are simply due to the fact that the majority of its revenue—61 percent last year—are generated internationally.

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PDF Editor Pro is a PDF editing and annotation tool from Wondershare that aspires to be a replacement for Apple’s built-in Preview app. While the app offers some features that aren’t available in Preview, it also lacks many of the basic features that make Preview so appealing as a PDF editing and annotating tool.

Open a PDF in PDF Editor Pro and it looks and feels pretty much the same way Preview does. There are several buttons in the toolbar that give you quick access to the application’s editing and annotation tools, which include tools for rearranging pages within your document, editing text within the PDF file, adding comments, drawing lines or freehand drawing and highlighting text.

Inline text editing in PDF Editor Pro works mostly as expected. Select the Touchup tool in the PDF Editor Pro toolbar, then double-click the text you want to edit to make changes. As is the case with any PDF editor, the quality of the edits you make using these tools may not be as good as your average word processor as the font used in the original PDF document may no be available on your Mac and you are only able to edit text one line at a time.

PDF Editor Pro has a new form recognition feature that automatically detects and highlights fields in a PDF file that are available for you to enter data into. When the application finds form fields a small blue bar appears across the top of the document stating that the document contains interactive form fields and all the fields are highlighted in blue. While it's possible to edit form fields in most other PDF editing applications, PDF Editor Pro is the only application I've used that makes it obvious a document contains these fields as soon as you open it.

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Reader Jack Sanford is being lied to by the Mac App Store and would like to do something about it. He writes:

When I checked for Mac App Store updates on my MacBook Air, it said there were no updates available. But when I clicked the Purchases tab, the button next to iMovie showed Update. I clicked that and got a dialog telling me “You have updates available for other accounts.” But I have only one Apple ID that I use for purchases. How do I fix it?

Developer and all-around-smart-guy Brett Terpstra has the answer you seek. In his Quick Tip: Fixing the “Other Account” Mac App Store Issue he explains that you can clear up this fib by first repairing disk permissions and then rebuilding OS X’s Spotlight index.

To do the first task, launch Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities), select your startup disk in the window that appears, and click the Repair Disk Permissions button near the bottom of the window. In a couple of minutes your permissions will be set right.

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Thanks to iCloud, syncing an iPhone with a Mac is a piece of cake. But Mac users who don’t buy into the whole “one vendor to rule them all” thing will find that syncing an Android phone with OS X isn’t quite as easy. That said, it isn’t terribly difficult, either, thanks to Google’s own cloud services.

Contacts

First, you must set up your phone to sync with your Google account. To make sure that this syncing is enabled, go to Settings > Accounts > Google, and tap your email address (it will be at the top of the screen, under the Accounts heading). Then confirm that the Sync Contacts box is checked.

Next, open the Address Book app on your Mac, go to Address Book > Preferences > Accounts, and choose On My Mac. You’ll see two boxes: one that says ‘Synchronize to Yahoo’ and another that says ‘Synchronize to Google’. Check the Synchronize to Google box, press Accept in the pop-up box, and enter your Gmail address and password when prompted. You should now see a small sync symbol in your Mac’s menubar. Click this symbol, and choose Sync Now from the dropdown menu.

Calendar

To sync your Android/Google calendar with iCal, open the iCal app on your Mac and navigate to iCal > Preferences > Accounts. Click the plus (+) symbol in the lower left corner to add a calendar to iCal. Leave ‘Account Type’ set to Automatic, fill in your Gmail address and password, and click Create.

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You can almost see the “missed connection” personal ads these pundits would write: “You: gullible reader, looking for more information about the technology industry. Me: technology pundit willfully ignoring implicit costs, pushing really bad ideas, and misrepresenting survey results to generate page views.” Will they get together?! Read on!

No such thing as a free lunch

Writing for The Motley Fool, Steve Heller has some fun with language!

“Apple Has a Siri-ous Problem.”

Ahhhh, the Macalope sees what you did there!

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Summer is practically here, so it's only fitting that one of the cases we cover in this week's roundup of iPad cases is good enough, and protective enough, to take swimming. If taking a dive is not in your immediate future, though, we have plenty of other protective accessories that are great when you're dry.

iOS devices are in the army now, Intel’s former CEO recounts his Apple misstep, and Apple’s got its work cut out for its WWDC keynote. The remainders for Friday, May 17, 2013 lead the way.

Apple Mobile Devices Approved for Use on U.S. Military Networks (Bloomberg)

The Pentagon has given thumbs up to iOS 6 devices on military networks, though the Defense Department is still waiting for Apple’s much anticipated “Find My Enemies” app.

Paul Otellini’s Intel: Can the Company That Built the Future Survive It? (The Atlantic)

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As sturdy as Apple’s MacBooks are, it’s a little depressing to pull your laptop out of your bag and discover a ding or scratch on the aluminum case. If you want some extra protection for your laptop, Handy Candy Cases’ $60 HardShell Case might be the answer.

Hard Candy makes the HardShell Case for the Retina MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. (I tested a version for the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro.) The case consists of four pieces of translucent, rigid plastic. The plastic doesn’t feel brittle or cheap, and it’s available in blue, black, lime, or red.

Snapping the HardShell Case onto your laptop is easy and takes just a few minutes. Before doing so, however, you’ll want to clean the outside of your MacBook and the inside of the HardShell Case’s pieces to prevent any dirt or debris from getting trapped inside.

With the HardShell Case on my MacBook Pro, I was able to connect various cables and several different USB flash drives without a problem. However, if you have a very oddly shaped USB device, there’s a possibility that the bottom shell, which sticks out a bit just below the computer’s ports, could get in the way.

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This week's roundup of new and updated iOS apps includes cool new offerings for music and movies, as well as a new storytelling form designed just for your phone or tablet.

While it may not be a full-fledged HDTV, the Apple TV set-top box continues to expand its portfolio. According to a story first reported by Deadline, the CW is bringing its video content to the Apple TV via a dedicated app.

The CW offering would mimic what the network already has on Microsoft’s Xbox; the network confirmed to MacRumors that the app will feature ad-supported full episodes available for streaming the day after they air. And, in a bonus for cord cutters, the app will not require an existing cable subscription to view content. A specific release date for the app has not yet been announced, though it should be sooner rather than later.

This marks the first foray from one of the major broadcast networks onto the Apple TV, though the box already features content from video middlemen like Hulu and Netflix; sports leagues like MLB, NHL, and NBA; video-sharing sites Vimeo and YouTube; and other video sources, like the Wall Street Journal.

Thus far, video content has only gradually trickled onto the Apple TV: Hulu Plus, for example, just appeared last July. But the appearance of a CW app could signal a shift in the winds. With the recent incursion of Aereo into the broadcast space, the networks are sure to be looking for ways to keep control of their content. ABC recently announced that it would begin offering live streaming in its iOS app—but only in certain markets, and only for cable and satellite subscribers. Meanwhile, many of the studios and networks continue to enforce availability windows and device-specific streaming rights.

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In this week’s edition of our iPhone-case roundup, you’ll find protection inspired by one of history’s darkest and most-loved superhero vigilantes. But if battling crime is not your thing, we also have our usual mix of the fashionable, the practical, and the adventurous.

Previously unknown Mac OS X spyware, signed with a valid Apple Developer ID, has turned up on the laptop of an activist from Angola at a human rights conference in Norway.

Security researcher and privacy activist Jacob Appelbaum found the spyware on the activist’s Mac at the Oslo Freedom Forum earlier this week.

The activist’s computer was compromised as a result of a spear phishing attack, Appelbaum said Thursday on Twitter. The researcher claims that he has copies of the attack emails and two different malware samples.

Security researchers from Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure analyzed one of the malware samples and concluded that it is a previously unknown Mac backdoor program which appears to be signed with a valid Apple Developer ID.

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Panic's $10 Status Board for the iPad is an app that fits a niche so spectacularly, it leaves you kind of breathless. Designed to display and update data from a variety of sources, Status Board offers an amazingly customizable way to display your most important data on almost any screen, from your iPad to an HDTV.

It's important to note that Status Board is a niche tool; it’s not something you're likely to use casually at home or if you only have one iPad. But it is perfectly suited to situations where you want to publicly display specific information that's updated on a regular basis.

Open Status Board for the first time, and the app walks you through a quick setup process to configure and create some of the app's prefabbed status panels. These panels are little rectangles of data you can move, resize, and rearrange in almost any way you choose. By default, the app comes pre-loaded with calendar, clock, and weather panels, and can also display Twitter timelines, RSS news feeds, and the subject line of your latest email messages.

Some of the panels allow you to customize the way your data is displayed. So, for example, your Twitter, email, and news feeds can be displayed as either a list or as a ticker; the ticker shows one message at a time, and it slides across the screen, sits for a couple of seconds so you can read it, then slides the next update into view. I loved the ticker feed, but was disappointed there was no option for adjusting the delay setting to something slower of faster than Status Board's defaults. 

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Google had a lot to say during Wednesday’s Google I/O keynote—so would you, if you had three-and-a-half hours to fill. And while new features in voice-powered search functionality, Google Maps, and other pronouncements from the search giant were certainly eye-catching, just how much of what was said at this week’s developer conference should make iOS device owners sit up and take notice?

Quite a bit, actually, though there was nothing that'll cause a parade of iPhone and iPad users to swap their devices for the Android counterparts. With the understanding that Google will still need to deliver on many of the promises it made this week—and that Apple has a developers conference of its own in a month’s time—more than a few Google I/O announcements deserve your attention, even if the only way you’ll give up your iPhone is when it’s pried out of your grip. After all, it’s a safe bet that more than a few people in Cupertino were keeping a close eye on Google I/O this week.

For developers

I/O is a developers’ confab first and foremost, so it stands to reason that Google would start off its keynote highlighting new tools and features with special appeal for software makers.

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Are you pissed off at Adobe yet? If the answer is yes, then you're not alone.

If you use at least one of the company's professional software packages derived from the late, great Creative Suite, then your life is about to change. Some 14,600 of your compatriots are so unhappy about it that they've officially put their names—often alongside an assortment of scathing comments—to an online petition that seeks to convince Adobe to back off its plan to transform its Creative Suite from traditional licensed software to a cloud service, and go back to the old way of doing business. Knowing that will never happen is at least partially fueling that customer rage.

Adobe used its Max 2013 creativity conference to announce plans to end the sale of its popular creative software—including Photoshop, InDesign, and Premiere Pro—in favor of a cloud-only subscription service.

By itself, the switch was not surprising. Ever since Adobe launched Creative Cloud last year, and outlined an elaborate subscription strategy that covered nearly every segment of the market, it seemed only a matter of time before everything went to the cloud.

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