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If you ask any of the Apple “fanboys” why they are so devoted to Apple, at least one of the reasons you will hear is that Apple “sweats the small stuff,” which really proves their dedication to user experience and attention to detail.

Here’s a few of my favorites, covering Apple’s attention, not just to their hardware and software, but even the product packaging. See how many you may have noticed before, and feel free to add your own that I might have missed in the comments below.

Serial Numbers

In the world of computers, serial numbers are important for a variety of reasons, including verifying warranty status and determining the correct specifications to name a few. Many Apple products feature, in addition to their standard serial number, a barcode that makes reading this serial number much easier for Geniuses or other technicians.

Though some newer models have forgone barcodes, such as the 2009 model MacBook Pros and MacBook Air, barcodes can still be found on many other Apple products. In addition to serial numbers represented as barcodes, some Macs, like the Mac Pro, also include a barcode for the system’s MAC address. Though it changes from model to model, Apple has often put these barcodes and serial numbers in easily accessible places.

On the Power Mac G5, the serial number was located on the inside of the tower, behind the aluminum side panel. On iMac G4s and eMacs, the serial number was located on the inside of the optical drive cover. This really made it easy to quickly locate a serial number if you couldn’t access it through the OS.

Fiat Lux a la Mac

As many people leave their Macs running non-stop throughout the day, they have likely stumbled upon the infamous sleep light. Much like a heartbeat (or “snoring”), the little light pulses while your Mac sleeps. When the iMac G5 originally shipped, its sleep light indicator was bright! It didn’t bother people during the day, but for those who kept their iMac in an office or bedroom, it could light up the whole room at night. Apple issued a firmware update that reduced the sleep light’s brightness during evening hours, giving a much more relaxing pulse than before.

Beyond sleep lights, other indicators on newer Macs are typically hidden until needed. Take for instance the iSight indicator light, built into displays, which is seemingly non-existent until the camera is activated. Similar to the sleep light on the unibody MacBook Pros, the power light on the new aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard blends in seamlessly until its activated. The thin aluminum that has been perforated with tiny holes for the light to shine through, but when there is no light, the keyboard looks seamless.

Indicator lights on power adapters are also worthy of mention. With once quick glance, you can easily see what is going on. If the light is amber, the battery is charging. If the light is green, the battery is fully charged and ready to go.

Another interesting use of light is the Apple logo on the rear of the portables. The light that illuminates this logo is simply excess ambient light from your display. Go ahead and take a look. Lower the brightness on your display and watch the apple dim.

Product Shots

The next time you see a promotional shot for an Apple product, take notice of the time. For many years, whenever a Mac has been shown displaying the OS X desktop, the clock indicates the system version that the Mac ships pre-installed. This trend even carries forth to Apple’s retail stores, where display signage and wall banners that showcase Leopard prominently feature the system clock at 10:50. Due to only having 60 minutes in an hour, showing a clock at 10:60 for Snow Leopard would not make much sense. Pre-release screenshots from Apple still display 10:50, so this trend will likely end soon.

In the iPhone arena, all of the promotional images of the iPhone and iPod touch all display 9:42 (except one preliminary image which displayed 9:41). What’s the significance of this? Some think it may relate to the time the iPhone was originally introduced, others see it as a somewhat disjointed homage to Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Most of my research seems to confirm that 9:42 was the actual time of the iPhone announcement during Steve’s keynote in 2007.

Hidden OS X Easter Eggs

Apple’s attention to detail moves beyond the hardware and into their software as well. Take for example the Clock widget in the Dashboard. Look closely at the second hand and notice how it vibrates much like a real clock does.

For those that use Mail, as you drag the divider between the date column to expand or make the column smaller, the formatting of the date dynamically adjusts to fit. If there’s room to display the time, it shows up. As you make the column smaller, the formatting reduces to fit. Most email applications would just truncate whatever did not fit in the column.

This is just a small list of a huge number of little details found on a lot of Apple products that really make them a joy to use. The tipping point, so to speak, is that Apple doesn’t market any of these as “features,” it’s just the fact that they took the time to integrate them subtly into the Apple experience that makes it all worthwhile.

If you’ve found other examples of Apple’s attention to detail, let us know in the comments!

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AdMob, the ad serving firm, has released its Mobile Metrics (PDF) report for May, and once again the iPhone and iPod touch are seeing increases, both in the U.S. and worldwide.

Measuring “mobile Web and application usage from our network of more than 7,000 publishers and 2,500 applications worldwide,” the report calculates market share “by the percentage of requests received from a particular handset.” This should not be confused with smartphone market share. Having said that, the numbers are looking good for Apple.

Drawing from some 8 billion ad requests worldwide, Apple now accounts for just under half the smartphone traffic. In terms of device manufacturers, Apple accounts for 31.4 percent, up 5.2 percent. Of that number, the iPhone is responsible for 18.6 percent and the iPod touch 12.8 percent. Impressive as the worldwide numbers are, U.S. data is more so.

From 3.8 billion ad requests, Apple accounts for just under 70 percent of the market share. As a percentage of handset models, Apple is now at 45.1 percent, up 10.1 percent. This is especially surprising, in that sales of the iPhone almost certainly slowed for May in anticipation of the new model. In the U.S., the iPhone was at 25.7 percent with the iPod touch at 19.4 percent. Other manufacturer numbers include: Samsung, 16.0; Motorola, 11.9; and RIM, 4.8 percent. Palm barely registered at 1.2 percent. It will be interesting to see how the Pre changes the U.S. results next month.

If there is any bad news for Apple, it may relate to the adoption of iPhone OS 3.0. While Apple reported on Monday some 6M downloads, AdMob data shows iPod touch upgrades lag far behind that of the iPhone. On the iPhone, 44 percent of ad requests were from version 3.0 of the OS, contrasting that with only 1 percent for iPod touch users. This is no doubt a result of the $10 upgrade fee for iPod touch users. Still, this is a small issue, with the larger being device usage. As smartphones continue to make up a larger share of all handsets, Apple appears to be in an excellent position to leverage its already impressive advantage.

Mixing neon visuals and techno music with top-down shooting action and inertia-based movement, circuit_strike.one pushes the limits of Apple hardware, and possibly the patience of the casual gamer.

Setting

The player is pilot of a virtual ship that hacks network nodes, in a stylized metaphor for a computer network. A mission is completed by destroying a shield generator protecting the data core, then by destroying the data core itself. Against the player are enemies rendered as wireframe polyhedrons, attacking by ramming and/or shooting the player’s ship.

An animation sequence follows loading, complete with an ancient modem sounding over a phone line, which is a nice touch. There’s a lot of that in circuit_strike.one. Die, and you are mocked in l33t speak. Attacking enemies pulse to the bass of the background music. The graphics are lavish: transparent overlays, trailing, lens flares, a visual experience designed as much to impress as to kill with distraction, as if the game wasn’t good at that already.

Controls

Everything about circuit_strike.one is deceptively easy to understand. The zoomed playing field is a wraparound with the shielded data core located in the center. You rotate the ship using the thumb-control on the left. Fire button is on the right. Tapping accelerates the ship, while swiping downward brakes. Braking is crucial because movement is inertia-based, though a ship in motion will not remain in motion forever. It feels not so much like flying through space, as sliding across ice, but the learning curve is steep. Here are a few tips.

• Don’t move. Seriously, that’s the most important advice for beginners. New players should practice turning the ship and firing at enemies before ever using thrusters.
• Tap, then swipe. That’s the way to learn moving and stopping the ship.
• Chasing powerups is a good way to learn basic movement.
• Intermediate movement begins with thrusting forward, spinning the ship and shooting back along the flight path.
• Learning to circle enemies by rotating the ship and thrusting, while strafing, too, is an advanced technique (at least for me).

Gameplay

The main form of enemy attack is ramming the player’s ship. Enemies differ in that some are fast, some slow, some take multiple shots to kill, some split into more enemies or swarm, and at least one shoots back. One other common characteristic is that destroyed enemies leave behind Ghost Data, and Ghost Data means Bullet Time.

By shaking the device, the player can induce a kind of slow-motion mode of play. While the player’s ship speed remains constant, enemies are perceptibly slow. In addition, the player’s ship becomes temporarily invulnerable, and that’s an invaluable feature for completing the level.

Shield generators are defended by stationary turrets which track the player’s ship and shoot projectiles. While taking out the turret is not required to destroy the shield generator, it’s a good idea. However, it’s also a good idea to do so without using Bullet Time.

Once all the shield generators are destroyed, the data core, which is located in the center of the playing field, is vulnerable. It will take several seconds of constant fire before the data core is destroyed and the level completed. This is the best use of Bullet Time, as it also slows the self-destruct timer. Advancing to the next level means more enemies, more shield generators, and less time to destroy the Data Core. That’s circuit_strike.one, and that’s why I hate it.

Summing Up: Silver Rating

I hate circuit_strike.one, and that’s the highest compliment that I can pay any game. It’s the kind of hate that brings me back again and again to try to beat it — not play it. That is the difference between “hardcore” and “casual” gaming for me, and that’s why circuit_strike.one may not be for everyone. There’s also the occasional freezing glitch during play, most likely from my iPhone 3G receiving a beat down rendering the visuals. I contacted the developer, and an update will be forthcoming. It addresses memory overhead and allows the player to reduce visuals and other CPU-intensive settings.

At 99 cents, it’s not about the money, but your time. Whether or not you want to make the kind of investment required to play circuit_strike.one comes down to how much of a challenge you are looking for. I strongly recommend finding out.

All the goodness of iPhone OS 3.0 aside, the one thing you’ve probably noticed after updating your iPhone or iPod touch is how quickly its battery is draining.

I certainly did, along with many other users. The battery life of my iPhone 3G is now barely six hours, a huge departure from the 12+ hours or so I would get with 2.2.1. And even though I’d experienced a decrease in battery life with the beta builds of 3.0 back in May, the battery never drained at a rate as alarming as this. Now, it depletes 10 percent every hour even while the phone is left doing absolutely nothing.

My first thought was that push notification must be the cause of this. But even after turning off push notification, the battery continued to drain at an alarming rate. After some investigation, it would seem that the culprit is, instead, iPhone’s push mail setting.

To turn off push for all mail accounts, follow these steps:

1. On the Home screen, tap the “Settings” icon.
   
2. Tap “Mail, Contacts, Calendars.”
   
3. Tap “Fetch New Data.”
   
4. Turn off “Push.” This turns off push, in one step, for all email accounts that are enabled for it, while preserving the “Fetch” settings you may have already set for every account.
   
5. Reboot your iPhone. To do that, hold down the Sleep/Wake button (the one at the top) until you see the red slider appear, then drag the slider.
   

After your iPhone has restarted, you should see an improvement in its battery life. Leave a comment, and tell us if this works for you!