Buying the iPhone 4 with a two year commitment agreement from Verizon is the same cost as AT&T’s, but Verizon’s option to pay the full price, presumably without contract, costs $50 more. Here is the pricing information from Verizon:

Verizon iPhone 4 Price with Contract

If you sign a 2-year contract, the price of the Verizon iPhone 4 is the same as AT&T’s offer:

• iPhone 4 16GB: $199.99
• iPhone 4 32GB: $299.99

Verizon iPhone 4 Price without Contract

Verizon is charging $50 more for the iPhone 4 than AT&T’s contract-free price:

• iPhone 4 16GB: $649.99
• iPhone 4 32GB: $749.99

These prices come directly from the Verizon iPhone 4 FAQ page. There may be a reason for the cost increase, but the only known difference thus far is the Verizon iPhone has CDMA network compatibility. As usual in the USA smartphone market, the CDMA iPhone will almost certainly be carrier locked to the Verizon network.

Is there really an advantage to paying more to buy the iPhone outright when it is carrier locked anyway? This depends, but in my view the only reason to buy an off-contract iPhone is to unlock it for use on other network carriers. With no CDMA compatible iPhone in the wild yet, it is unknown if there will be a carrier unlock that works with the device, so if you are hoping for an unlocked CDMA device you may need to shop outside of the USA.

If you’re thinking about releasing an iOS app, you probably already know that iOS development costs are quite high, so you want to be sure you get the most bang for your buck.

With that in mind there’s a detailed and extremely helpful iOS development and marketing checklist from the experienced developer MindJuice. It’s focused heavily on marketing and touches on the five major phases of the development and release process that is relevant to any app developer. These are:

• Design Phase – things that you need to include in your app from the start, including social media features, ability to get direct feedback, etc
• Implementation Phase – keep a development blog and organize beta testers
• Testing and Pre-Launch Phase – setup Ad Hoc installations for easy beta testing, contact review sites for early access to your app, etc
• Launch Phase – choosing an app category, creating a good icon, refining the app description and picking good screenshots, having an app webpage, engage user forums and app review sites, sending out press releases, and creating video demos
• Post Launch Phase – keeping an eye on how things are going, this one is a work in progress

You can read the full extensive list at MindJuice’s blog.

If you notice there’s one key element that underlines each phase, and that is engagement with users from initial design to product launch. Some of the more successful apps (Angry Birds, Instapaper, etc) also have some of the more active developers in social media, and this is not a coincidence – developers must cultivate their userbase and respond to user feedback.

While this list is specifically geared towards iOS and the iTunes App Store, there’s no reason you couldn’t apply the same principles to Mac software and the Mac App Store. Whether you’re an active developer or just inspiring to be, it’s worth a look.

Using a Terminal command, you can turn any screensaver into your background wallpaper. In the screenshot above I have the iTunes Album Art screensaver running as the Mac OS X desktop, but you can choose any screensaver you want. Here’s how to do this:

• Launch System Preferences
• Click on Desktop & Screen Saver and choose the screensaver you want to set as the background
• Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and paste in the following command:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

The above command needs to be on a single line in order to execute properly. If you’re having issues copying and pasting the above text, you can split it into two commands.

First change the directory:

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources

Then execute the screensaver command:

./ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

If you split the command into two, there is a period before the second part, so don’t miss that. Stopping the screensaver is just a matter of hitting Control+Z, although you can set the process to run on it’s own by adding an ampersand (&) to the end of the last command too.

The screensaver will take a few seconds and load as the desktop wallpaper. This ends up giving your Mac an effect similar to Android OS’s living wallpapers (you can get living wallpapers on iPhone too but you have to jailbreak).

Most screensavers won’t use too much CPU, in testing they generally run between 4-12% although Arabesque spiked as high as 40% at times. Regardless, running a screensaver in the background isn’t a good idea if you’re trying to preserve battery life or you need CPU power for something else.

This trick is a bit of an oldie but goodie, but I still use it from time to time for the eyecandy. One of the more pleasantly subtle backgrounds to use this with are the image based screensavers like Beach or Forest, or you can create one with your own pictures, the effect is a moving background that pans and uses the “Ken Burns” effect over the images.

This awesome Mac setup from features a 27″ iMac, Apple Cinema Display, a MacBook Pro, and on the far right a Wacom Cintik 21″ tablet screen that lets you draw directly on the display. I guess that tablet is about as close as you can get to a touchscreen Mac at the moment.

Picture from Flickr.

The excellent media center software XBMC has finally come to Apple TV 2, but beyond being a great media center, if you’re wondering why else you should care I’ll sum it up in one word: 1080p. Yes, using XBMC, you can unleash 1080p video playback on the $99 Apple TV2… the playback suffers from occasional choppiness on uncompressed bluray video, but hey it’s the first release, and could make the ATV2 the cheapest 1080p video playback device on the market.

You’ll need the following to get started:

• Apple TV 2 (Amazon link) running iOS 4.1, iOS 4.2.1, or later
• Seas0npass to jailbreak the Apple TV 2 (Instructions to jailbreak are below)
• A micro-USB cable (this is used for the jailbreak and tethered boot)
• The IP address of your AppleTV

We’ll now walk through the process of both jailbreaking the AppleTV2 and installing XBMC:
Read more »

There are several steps to password protect a Mac, we’ll cover the essentials so that if someone is to turn on your Mac, wake it from a screensaver, or wake from sleep, they will be required to enter a password in order to use the computer.

Password protect system boot

This will require a password on system boot before anyone can use the Mac

• Open “System Preferences”
• Click on “Accounts”
• Click on “Login Options” in the left corner of the Accounts window
• You may need to enter the administrator password to make changes here, in that case click on the lock icon in the lower left corner
• Under Login Options, set “Automatic login” to “Off”
• Optional security measure: set “Display login window as” to “Name and password” – this will require someone to enter a name and a password into a blank field, providing no hints for usernames
• Click the lock icon again to prevent any further changes

Now anytime your Mac boots, a user login screen will appear before anyone can access the desktop or your files. If you’re into tweaking things, this login screen can be customized rather easily with a unique background, message, and logo.

Now this password protects your Mac on boot, but let’s also password protect your Mac when waking from sleep and waking from a screensaver.
Read more »

The first Verizon iPhone commercial has been released. The commercial is intriguing and features several clocks ticking before the message “To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come… Thank you” before finally flashing the Apple iPhone 4 logo, the Verizon swoosh, and the release date of February 10th.

It might not have the excitement of some of the other Apple commercials but I like it overall.

Two new patents have surfaced that may provide a look into the future of Mac input devices.

The first is for a Magic Mouse that has an integrated touch screen, which could adjust to display things like virtual buttons, keys, menus, text, and video. The patent application shows a diagram of the Magic Mouse displaying a virtual numeric keypad, but when you consider the Magic Mouse is nearly the size of an iPhone or iPod touch, the possibilities are wide open.

The second patent shows a Virtual Keyboard that includes a haptic feedback system, which would give a user the perception that the virtual keyboard is a regular keyboard by providing a vibratory response to touch. As PatentlyApple notes, a virtual keyboard has the potential to morph into another input device entirely, such as a game pad or musical keyboard.

Apple is clearly interested in further developing touch input across the Mac product line. Previous patents have shown a touch screen MacBook, a convertible touchscreen iMac that runs both iOS and Mac OS X, and a convertible MacBook tablet that may function in a similar manner as the aforementioned iMac.

Both of the new patents were discovered by PatentlyApple, you can read more about the Magic Mouse and the Virtual Keyboard over there.

You can check your entire print history in Mac OS X by accessing the browser based CUPS utility. Here’s how:

• Launch your favorite web browser (I like Safari and Chrome)
• In the address bar type in: http://localhost:631
• Click on “Jobs” in the menu
• Now click “Show Completed Jobs” to display your Macs print history

You’ll now see the printer, name of the file that was printed, the user who completed the print job, size of the printed document, the number of pages, and the date of the printed file completion or attempt.

If you are looking for a specific event, you can use the “Search in Jobs” search engine to find a file. You can also select “Show All Jobs” to see everything you’ve printed or attempted to print, even if it failed.

CUPS stands for Common UNIX Printing System and is an open source printing system developed by Apple for Mac OS X and other UNIX based operating systems. The web based CUPS tool is a great way to troubleshoot misbehaving printers.

While we’re on the topic of printers, if you haven’t yet, you can make any printer AirPrint compatible by using a third party tool. Without this tool, AirPrint wireless printing is limited to a select few printers.

Thanks for sending in the tip Marcin!

iOS 4.3 Beta 2 has just been made available for download as build 8F5153d. Just as the previous release of the iOS 4.3 beta, this release supports iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3G and 4G. Older iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2G models are left behind and not supported for the update.

On the developer download site, Apple reminds users that once a device has been updated to iOS 4.3 beta, the OS can not be restored to a previous iOS version, but they will be able to upgrade to future versions of the beta and the final version of iOS 4.3.

You can download iOS 4.3 beta 2 right now if you’re a developer from the iOS Dev Center