In this episode of the Apple Universe Podcast, Sam Levin (@samlevin) from the Cool Mac Picks show joins us to talk about some Apple news!

News:

• Apple Announces New iPod shuffle
• Apple to Preview iPhone OS 3.0 on March 17th
• Apple Netbook Touchscreen Rumors Continue
• ‘Premium’ App Store Rumors Revived
• iTunes 8.1 Now Available
• Final Cut Studio Update Due in Late April?

Sam’s Cool Mac/App Pick of the week:

• LaCie iamaKey USB Flash Drive
• AirPhones (iTunes Link)

Review: MiMo Displays
A single USB connection from your computer gets you an instant secondary (tertiary, quaternary, quinary…) display. This awesome display is perfect for your IM client, your email, a spreadsheet, or your Photoshop tools. Not only do these displays enhance productivity, but they look great. The single USB connection combined with a weight of 1.3 pounds means these displays are ultra-portable. Overall, for the size and power, the MiMo is great for a IM window, or Twitter, but with a 24″ monitor at home in my case, I found it not very useful after the different compared to the 24″ monitor.

Don’t forget about Speck’s MacBook Air SeeThru discount!

Host/Executive Producer: Daniel Brusilovsky (@danielbru)
Associate Producer: Sam Levin (@samlevin)
Length: 30:09

Sponsors:

• shinywhitebox – Great software for Mac. The makers of iShowU, Stomp and now Chatter!

If you would like to sponsor Apple Universe, contact the Sales team at .

Theme Music is provided by Daphna Kalfon. Apple Universe is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network and the Teen Podcasters Network.

We recently sat down with Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous. Tapulous recently revealed Tap Tap Revenge 2 (iTunes link). We talked with Bart about the iPhone, and Tapulous. These questions were asked by the community at Twitter. Follow me!

Justin Morley @danielbru How is he getting music to license? Are artists sending it to him?
BD: Justin: Music is what makes the game fun, so we spend a TON of time working with artists, manager, labels and publishers getting all the necessary permissions to feature great music in the game. Sometimes artists come to us. In other cases, we have ongoing discussions with music labels and identify music that would be a good fit for the game. We also have a full-time head of business development who’s worked in the music industry for the last decade and does nothing but this. But yes, almost every day someone approaches us to feature there music in the game.

Nick Austad @danielbru Oh and ask them when we are going to get more modern rock over pop songs. Multiple genres means more fans of the game.
BD: Nick: I think we’ve done a pretty good job already having a broad range of music in the game. As you may have noticed, Tap Tap Revenge 2 has more than 150 songs, include Rock, Alternative, Hard Rock, Hip Hop, Pop, Electronic… we even have a couple of country songs. One of the fun things about the game, compared to other music games, is that it works for such a broad range of music, so everyone can enjoy it. Expect us to keep broadening the selection of music and genres!

Jake Mates @danielbru How did he (or his team) learn Cocoa and Objective-C? #tapulous
BD: Jake: I’ll confess: I don’t code. I’m the resident non-coder! Some of our team have a long track record developing on the Mac platform. Jessica Kahn and Riley Howard (PLEASE WELCOME HIM TO OUR TEAM! he just joined) each have worked at Apple for close to 10 years. Guy English, who plays a really key role on Tap Tap Revenge, has also been doing Mac development for many years. Others got intrigued by the Mac platform when the iPhone came out – such as Nate True, the creator of Tap Tap Revenge. Nate got started back in the Jailbreak days, just hacking on “Tap Tap Revolution” as it was then called. Sean Fannan, who runs our entire backend, has been building his own iPhone app on the side (you know, those 4 hours a day when he’s not keeping our servers up). The great thing is, with XCode and the iPhone platform, it’s not that hard to learn how to build cool apps, especially since the iPhone and the iPod touch kind of invite simple apps that do just one thing (but do it really well).

Nick Austad @danielbru What made them decide to create a sequel so soon? I’ve been wondering this all week. Thanks
BD: Nick, there’s no time to rest on your laurel on the App Store. There are now 25,000 apps, and every day great new apps come on. As you may have noticed, many apps lose popularity after just a week or two. Tap Tap Revenge has never left the Top 50, partly because it’s a great game, partly because tapping and shaking to great music can be addictive. But in any case, the original Tap Tap Revenge was a very simple game, and we wanted to do something that was as professional and slick as any paid game on the App Store. There are more than 6 million users playing Tap Tap Revenge, and we really want to make the experience richer, more fun, and even more addictive for our users – so we have to keep innovating!

Carl Hancock @danielbru good for them for cashing out, I love my minohd. Let’s hope Cisco doesn’t ruin a good thing
BD: We sold to Cisco? WOW! Nobody told me! Seriously, we’re an independent little company – and we don’t plan to ever ruin a good thing.

Jon Victorino @danielbru Tell him to give our founder a call. We want him to come by our office and talk iPhone apps
BD: Stop by The Shop in downtown Palo Alto – we’re at 240 Hamilton. I’m traveling for the next week, but will be happy to buy your founder a crepe next door. In fact, if i’m not mistaken I’ve been rudely ignoring his email – please apologize on my behalf!