Battery Update 1.2 updates battery firmware and improves battery functionality.
After Battery Update has been installed, each battery you insert into your MacBook or MacBook Pro will be updated automatically. Your computer's power cord must be connected and plugged into a working power source.
Computers and music have been linked since the earliest days of the mainframe, when giant machines controlled primitive synthesizers. Recently, however, a significant advancement has taken place in the field of computer music with the development of software that can not only transcribe polyphonic music in real time, but can also play back complex harmonies alongside human performers. For instance, at the annual Music Information Retrieval Exchange (MIREX) competition, Christopher Raphael of Indiana University demonstrated a system that can understand live music well enough to accompany a musician. -- Science News.
New technologies often have unintended uses. Take the iPod as a case in point. It was developed with the intention of playing music (and later videos), but its applications now go well beyond that. Here are 10 surprising uses, some of which involve fighting crime, saving lives, and throwing meaner curve balls. -- Open Culture.
This article describes how customers with portable computers running Mac OS X 10.4.x or later can determine the number of cycles on a battery. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Samsung Electronics has begun mass producing 16GB NAND flash, the highest capacity memory chip now available. The company said it will fabricate the devices in 51 nanometers (nm). -- Macsimum News.
Apple has been granted a patent (number 20070094302) for a "method and apparatus for mapping objects to multiple tables of a database" by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It concerns the mapping of data to objects in an object-oriented environment. -- Macsimum News.
As hard as Steven P. Jobs has worked to convey the image of an above-the-fray visionary, that's not quite the reality. -- New York Times.
Intel-based Mac OS X users now have yet another virtualization solution to choose from now that Innotek has announced a Mac version of its VirtualBox virtualization software. -- InfoWorld.
Right before she had left, she had just gotten her iBook back from the Apple store geniuses for more out-of-warranty-yet-free repairs to the hinge. Unfortunately, once at home, her iBook shut down and then subsequently would not boot. She called me at work and asked me to take care of it while she was gone, and then made her way to the airport. -- hhoyiis.
Apple Inc, will be on campus next week to demonstrate Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server. This is a free event. Come early to get a good seat.
Monday, May 7
10:30 - 12:30
University Center
Room 226-227
iQuiz is a brand new, flashy iPod game from Apple that allows users to create custom games and run them using the iQuiz interface. In this tutorial, Erica Sadun shows how to create custom iQuiz files and provides sample code and files. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Although Steve Jobs crafted a recent manifesto against DRM, plenty of industry executives are still skeptical of his commitment to DRM-free music, believing that the manifesto was political positioning. How Apple responded has left them between a rock and a hard place. -- Ars Technica.
Parallels has launched a new network today aimed at bringing together developers from the Mac, Windows, and Linux communities in order to write Parallels-compatible Virtual Appliances. -- Ars Technica.
When Fred D. Anderson abruptly left Apple's board last October as questions about the company's stock options practices grew, a former federal regulator said it looked as if the board "threw Fred under the bus." This week Mr. Anderson has been somewhere closer to the driver's seat. -- New York Times.
The recent kerfuffle over the effects of Apple's Security Update 2007-004 raises once again the question of how to deal with system updates. MacFixIt has published some tutorials on this topic (Startup failure, Re-installing components damaged by updates), and whenever an update is published we repeat our standard advice on how to update safely, but readers might like to be reminded explicitly of our position in this regard.
We do not insist upon the full "goat-sacrifice" approach to updates. Some people recommend rather elaborate procedures: back up before updating; both before and after updating, clear caches, repair permissions, and run DiskWarrior; and so forth. None of this is likely to do any harm, but if updating is made overly complicated, users won't do it at all or, even worse, will just be confused.
On the other hand, it is reasonable to accept the premise that Apple's Software Update, as presently implemented, is inherently dangerous. An application is going to download important system components and replace my existing components with them, while I'm actually using the computer? You've got to be kidding! In fact, the goal during system component installation should be just the opposite, namely, to minimize use of the computer during installation.
Based on that premise, here are is a simple, minimalist procedure for performing system updates.
[Note: This procedure cannot guarantee that a system update will not break, or appear to break, some functionality of your computer. System updates can be badly written; and even when they are well written, computers are complicated, and Apple can't predict every possible contingency and configuration.]
As your company brings in more Macintosh computers, you need a bit of advice to integrate the Apple systems into your existing IT infrastructure. Head off the biggest concerns with these hints from leading Mac OS X experts. -- CIO.
Dino Dai Zovi wrote the winning exploit in last week's CanSecWest MacBook Pro hacking contest. I interviewed Dai Zovi via email earlier this week. -- Daring Fireball.
Flip4Mac, the pretty-much-indispensable freeware utility that steps in where Windows Media Player left off years ago and allows QuickTime components to be installed in order to view Windows Media files, has been updated to version 2.1.1.70 in a public beta release.
There are some applications that I just can't live without.
A week or so ago, I performed a complete re-install of my main working computer. Part of the process included going through my Applications folder and trashing every app that I just didn't need, cutting it down to the bare minimum. As it turned out, I only ended up keeping half of all my existing apps in the new set-up.
And another thing was finding out what apps I have to have around, because without them my Mac feels like it's missing something. Here they are. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
If you're an Aperture user, there's a good chance that you haven't taken a look at iPhoto in a while. Why go back to iPhoto when Aperture's tool set is so powerful? Three reasons in particular: books, cards, and calendars. Aperture doesn't allow you to design greeting cards and calendars, but since you can see your Aperture library in iPhoto, you can access all these creation tools. Plus, iPhoto is designed for consumers so its built-in templates are professionally designed and look great. As an example, let's take a look at how to get your Aperture photos into an iPhoto calendar. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
Looking at the photo prints from your Washington, D.C., vacation can prompt memories of being at real, three-dimensional places like the Lincoln Memorial. But what if you could actually walk into your photograph and stand at Lincoln's feet all over again--or at least zoom inside a 3-D version of your image on a computer screen? A new Web service called Fotowoosh promises to deliver such an experience, courtesy of computer-vision researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. -- MIT Technology Review.
Apple said Wednesday it just completed the most profitable March quarter in the company's history, where earnings rose 88 percent, helped by sales of nearly 1.52 million Macs and 10.5 million iPods. -- Apple.
Apple, which on Wednesday announced its most profitable March quarter in history, held a financial conference call with analysts and members of the media. In-depth coverage of the topics discussed during that call follow. -- AppleInsider.
Apple said Wednesday it will leverage its proven capability in the area of software development to gradually add new software features and applications to its iPhone and Apple TV products free of charge, providing its customers with the "greatest possible experience." -- AppleInsider.
The first ever Insomnia Photo Festival challenges you to shoot the perfect picture in just one day. On Friday, April 27 at 5 p.m. Eastern (2 p.m. Pacific), we will post a photography assignment for you to complete. From that time, you will have 24 hours to finish and submit your ideal image.
After the entries are posted to our web gallery, we will make them available for the public to view and rate. The top 25 highest rated photos through May 16, 2007, will then be judged by our panel of experts.
We will designate winners in two categories: the audience's choice and the judges' choice. Grand prize winning photographers will receive a 15" MacBook Pro, a copy of Aperture, and an 80GB iPod for their portable portfolio. -- Apple.
This Test has been used for over 50 years and has pretty much done it with great accuracy. If you don't score high, remember, you can always improve.
Apple is paving the way for free enhancements to the iPhone and Apple TV by making its accounting methods clear from the start. -- c|net.
There are many things in life you can't ever have enough of; money, gadgets and of course hard drive space. In the ever going space race Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 is the next big step in storage capacity last month. With this much storage space you can store 250,000 songs or 1,000 hours of SDTV or 250 hours of HDTV or 333,300 photos or even 520 iTunes music store movies. And if you've got $399 to blow, it can be all yours.
Want to re-index a folder--or even an entire volume--for Spotlight (part of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger)? Just do this:
Spotlight will re-index the contents of the item you initially dragged to the list.
Note: You can only add folders or items to the Privacy tab that you have ownership permissions for. For more information about ownership and permissions, see this article and this one. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
One of the Mac's lesser known and under-utilized features is its ability to respond to your speech. It's called Speakable Items. You may get odd stares as you start issuing commands into your Mac's microphone -- but you'll be impressed by what you can accomplish. -- The Mac Observer.
Yahoo recently announced a deal with Gracenote to offer song lyrics through its online music service, but it looks like the agreement won't be exclusive. Gracenote, formerly known as CDDB, is in discussions with other digital music providers including Apple. -- The iPod Observer.
A little while ago I was asked how to view samples of all the fonts installed on a Mac and I pointed the person a shareware application (FontBook).
Come to find out this was unnecessary. Apple provides and Applescript which does the same thing. And if you need it to do more then you can make a copy and edit it.
Applications/Applescript/Example scripts/Font Book/Create Font Sample.scpt
The script writes the names of the fonts with small examples into TextEdit. Which you can just look at in discard or print. Very cool.
Reuters reports on comments by Apple's Steve Jobs about the possibility of subscription-based music sales for iTunes.
According to Jobs "never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it". The article suggests that he is unlikely to give into pressure from record labels to offer a subscription model for music on iTunes.
Meanwhile, Apple is expected to push for the elimination of digital rights management protections (DRM) on more songs. EMI and Apple first announced that EMI's catalog would become available on iTunes without DRM in May. According to Jobs the other music companies are "thinking very hard about it right now."
When Flash content embedded in Web pages will not play, there are a few generally successful options for dealing with the problem. -- MacFixIt.
Xsilva Systems' LightSpeed 2.0 is a multi-user Point of Sale system that includes storage of product and customer details, quoting and invoicing, iSight integration, service repair booking, integrated purchasing and inventory, and more. This release is a Universal Binary and adds an iTunes-like browser, live document and image previews, a revamped "floating" Point of Sale interface, business and inventory management tools, an optional integrated Web Store module, multi-store inventory lookups, and other improvements. LightSpeed is priced starting at $749 for Mac OS X 10.4.
Apple's stock surged past $100 in post-market trading on Wednesday evening after the company announced record March quarter profits of $770 million. The company's stock was up nearly 8 percent to $102.89 in pre-market trading, according to the latest data with several analysts expected to raise their targets. Setting a $140 price target, analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray noted that Apple reported 38 percent upside to analyst expected earnings-per-share (EPS) based on higher gross margins and that the company shipped 1.52 million Macs, ahead of the 1.45 million estimates. The firm believes that Apple is not at the peak of its EPS upside following the three strongest quarters in the company's history. The upside, Munster said, will be driven by three catalysts: the forthcoming iPhone, new product introductions expected in the June and September quarter -- which could include an video iPod, tablet Mac, or other new consumer product -- and continued Mac market share gains.
I can not even begin to explain the iGrill.
Apple's Boot Camp is software that enables Intel-powered Macs to boot from Windows. It turns Macs into duel-boot machines: You can either boot the Mac from Mac OS X or from Windows. Unlike virtualization products like Parallels Desktop, CrossOver Mac and VMware Fusion, Boot Camp does not give you access to Mac OS X and Windows at the same time. With Boot Camp and Windows installed, you boot Windows by holding the Option key down while restarting. You then select the drive partition that contains Windows.
Boot Camp is still Beta (prerelease) software that is a free download at the Apple web site. Apple plans to include the finished version with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, expected this summer. Apple will make the finished Boot Camp available for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, but there is speculation that Apple will charge for it.
The Boot Camp installer assistant "dynamically creates" a hard drive partition for Windows without erasing the Mac data. Boot Camp provides drivers for Windows to support the Mac keyboard and various hardware and peripherals from within Windows. Apple says that Boot Camp runs Windows "completely natively."
The most common problem with the Boot Camp beta is various types of keyboard issues. Readers report different keyboard issues with different versions of the beta.
MacWindows' Boot Camp Beta: Reports and Tips provides reader information and tips on Boot Camp.
We've used iMovie for a couple of years to make movies (well, short videos). It's a great tool: Easy to use, and inexpensive! Here, in a nutshell, is how you can do it too. We'll show you how to do it without an expensive camcorder -- from start to finish, and on the cheap. We're slanting our tutorial to those of you who have digital cameras (use the movie mode -- you won't regret it!).
If you are looking for detailed instructions, such as how to adjust sound levels or put in transitions or special effects, you better look elsewhere. We're going to give you the bare minimum you need to get into iMovie and make a movie, fast. So let's go! -- Macinstruct.
Handbrake is the multi-purpose DVD converter to formats that we normal humans appreciate and can use. Handbrake converts from the weird DVD protected VOB format to Mp4 which we can view in Quicktime, the iPod, iTunes or Front Row. (Handbrake also does other formats but you're on your own there). -- Two A Day.
David Sobotta spent nearly twenty very successful years at Apple Inc.
I recently read John Martellaro's Leopard's Delay is a Leadership Failure and many of the comments that have been made since he wrote the article. I also just read the Wall Street Journal article, "Ex-Finance Chief Says Jobs Misled Him on Options."
In a rather unique way both articles talk to the real environment at Apple. It is one that churns out the products we all love so much and yet ends up with so few people who have worked at Apple having positive feelings about the company. -- Applepeels.
In an effort to ensure that every student, faculty member and researcher has access to the computer resources they need, Ohio University announced today it will restrict the use of all peer-to-peer, or P2P, file-sharing on the campus computer network. -- Ohio University.
OIT's Innovative Technology Center is co-sponsoring a Digital Media Tournament. The audio podcasting tournament is open to students and faculty at universities throughout Tennessee. Submit your 3- to 5-minute audio podcast by Fri, May 4 2007.
Wasting little time in validating an earlier leak, Apple on Tuesday posted a new game for fifth-generation iPods in the iTunes Store. Though basically a graphically enhanced version of the built-in Music Quiz with trivia sharing features, iQuiz is notable as one of the first games to break Apple's previously unshakable $5 price point for games, available through both the American and Canadian stores for just 99 cents.
While former Apple CFO Fred Anderson early Tuesday went to great expense to avoid facing US government charges, his previous employer won't be forced into the same dilemma, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday afternoon.
The SEC has issued an official statement that effectively wipes the slate clean for Apple and its problematic stock option grants, saying that the company's eagerness to make amends left little reason to consider punishment.
"Apple's cooperation consisted of, among other things, prompt self-reporting, an independent internal investigation, the sharing of the results of that investigation with the government, and the implementation of new controls designed to prevent the recurrence of fraudulent conduct," the release said.
The only outstanding issue appears to be Apple's prior legal counsel Nancy Heinen, who still faces charges from the US federal agency.
Last month, Jonathan M. Gitlin reviewed the science database application, Papers. Back then, it was still in public preview. But last night, the talented duo behind this marvelous app, Mekandtosj, announced that Papers 1.0 was ready for the big time. -- Ars Technica.
Here's the bummer of a problem that busts your high with your new Intel Mac: Virtual PC 7 (VPC7) won't run on Intel Macs, and it won't be updated. But here's the upside: Do not buy a new Windows XP or Windows XP Pro if you already have it in Virtual PC 7. You can use your VPC7 version in Parallels with ease. It's as simple as using Parallels Transporter feature. -- Mac OS X Hints.
Rogue Amoeba, makers of audio applications like Airfoil and Audio Hijack, has released version 1.5 of Fission, its lossless audio editor for MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless and AIFF audio files.
The new version features full audio insertion support, which allows audio to be copied and pasted into both single or multiple files. A new Gain Adjustment feature allows for individual volumes to be manually increased or decreased and the program now supports cue sheet files, auto-complete Inspector fields, a new Album Artist tag for the Inspector component and several minor bug fixes.
In this new MacDC series, Jeremiah Foster presents an overview of graphical toolkits for Apple's OS X. This first article looks at wxPython, including installation instructions and breaking down some sample code. If you've been wanting to use your Python programming skills to develop for OS X, you'll want to learn about wxPython. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
The prototype for a revolutionary new general-purpose computer processor, which has the potential of reaching trillions of calculations per second, has been designed and built by a team of computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.
The new processor, known as TRIPS (Tera-op, Reliable, Intelligently adaptive Processing System), could be used to accelerate industrial, consumer and scientific computing. -- Science Blog.
Hey there, college seniors! Looking for a great first job in beautiful Austin, Texas? Know a lot about phones and iPods? Apple is looking for you! Yes, the signs are out that the iPhone is really almost here: Apple is hiring iPhone tech support representatives, and you could get in on the ground floor. It looks like a typical tech support job for Apple, but I found this quite funny:
Preferred Qualifications:
Now, one interpretation of the bolded line items is that Apple recognizes that many, if not most of its iPhone customers will be Windows users, not Mac people. I prefer to believe that Apple understands that Windows users won't be able to figure out how to troubleshoot their own problems. The Mac folks will be fine. Please note, by the way: It's doubly important to act independently and be self-motivated for this job!
Apple's video editing software, even at the low end in the form of iMovie, has had HD support for some years. DVD Player (mysteriously not updated a week ago along with the rest of the Final Cut Studio suite) will play HD content burned to regular DVD media and DVD Studio Pro will even author HD DVD projects, but no Blu-ray so far, even though Apple is on the board of directors of the Blu-ray Disc Association. In the Spymac article, Michael Simon speculates that the delayed Leopard release could pave the way for Blu-ray compatible Macs by the end of the year.
Everyone's been abuzz about what the super-secret Panic app has been making the rounds is all about. There have been a few leaked screenshots here and there, but now the cat is finally out of the bag. Panic introduced today its new app, called Coda. What does Coda do? In simple terms, it's like Dreamweaver without the WYSIWYG, and cooler. Coda integrates SubEthaEdit's collaborative editing and sharing with Transmit's FTP engine, CSSEdit, and various code tips, with previewing in a WebKit view. -- Ars Technica.
Beta users of Adobe's newest CS3 software will want to run a cleanup script before installing the full versions, the company pointed out last week, lest they be plagued with installation problems. -- Ars Technica.
Students in university's Interactive Telecommunications Program take on challenge of coming up with innovative multimedia designs. [Any guess as to what hardware they are using to do it? Aw, you peeked.] -- c|net.
Instead of debuting Leopard at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA, this June 2007, Apple Inc. (AAPL) will release "a near final version" of Mac OS X 10.5, a sort of preview of the complete feature set at that time. Bad news? Perhaps for the fierce Mac users, but overall? Hmmm. Let me check the facts first. -- Seeking Alpha.
It took me a while, but ever since I've gotten my head around Smart Folders (and Smart Playlists and Smart Groups, etc.), I've started to think about the way I use my Mac a bit differently...So, in the interest of spreading the love, here's four Mail.app Smart Mailboxes that have been rocking my world over the last months. -- 43 Folders.
Because Apple creates the hardware, operating system and many built-in applications, Apple computers are truly integrated systems with vastly superior support. AppleCare offers a range of service and support products to meet your needs. In addition, there are numerous online resources within the AppleCare Support website that provide valuable information and instruction.
For information about all AppleCare Products and Services, please visit www.apple.com/support/products.
For questions related to AppleCare Protection Plan, please visit the AppleCare FAQ page at http://www.apple.com/support/products/faqs.html.
When AirPort Utility 5.1 or later is opened, it automatically checks all accessible AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Stations' firmware. If a newer (later) firmware version is available from Apple, you'll be notified and presented with onscreen instructions to download and install the base station(s) firmware.
AirPort Utility is located in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder on a computer using Mac OS X, and (on a computer using Windows) in Start > All Programs > AirPort. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
A good many mouse problems are directly caused by the accumulation of gunk (definition: dust, dirt, residue of spilt beer, all glued together by skin oils and associated fatty acids, wax esters, etc.). Certain kinds of gunk can actually create small voltage bridges on circuit boards in addition to mechanical problems. Humm, heavy metal music, nah. -- Mac OS X Hints.
Businessweek reports on Intel's upcoming mobile initiative, with a report confirming that the Intel "Santa Rosa" platform will be launching next month (May).
The Intel executive also noted that Intel's Santa Rosa platform will start shipping in notebooks from next month. The mobile platform will comprise an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the mobile Intel 965 Express chipset family, 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity and optional Intel Turbo memory that has been touted to improve application performance.
The Santa Rosa platform was previously detailed in February. It is essentially a mobile platform from Intel which incorporates the Core 2 Duo, 800Mhz front speed bus, improved graphics chipset and Intel's Robson flash-based caching technology.
This technology could correspond with reports of an Apple flash-based laptop have been ongoing for months. The most recent expectations have predicted them coming from Apple in "second half of 2007".
The MacRumours Buyer's Guide points to MacBook and MacBook Pros approaching the end of their product cycles, based on historical update timeframes.
A friend was having problems registering his Mac on UT's wireless network (NOMAD.) I told him to bring it down for me to look at since what I was telling him over the phone wasn't working. I could not register it to via Nomad but I could with a direct ethernet connection.
The major problem turned out to be that the Mac need updates (he was running 10.4.6.) Once ALL the updates had finished (did you know a Mac has to be plugged in to run a firmware update?) then he had to register the Mac ON Nomad and turn AirPort off/on.
He did say that some colorful metaphors were necessary as well until he turned AirPort off/on.
Several Apple patents have appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Most involve iPod and iPod accessories, but one is for a "hybrid ground grid for printed circuit board." -- Macsimum News.
QuickTime can do much more than just bring you the latest Spider-Man 3 teaser. The latest edition of Working Mac finds the key to realizing its power is to fork over $30 and upgrade to QuickTime 7 Pro. -- Macworld.
Panic Software's new Coda app offers a new approach to web site development, claiming to offer everything you need in "one window." -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Apple is once again running the Apple Scholars Program, which offers a nice little haul to "students who use technology to solve problems creatively and learn more intuitively."
The initial application is made up of two essay questions. The real fun is part two, where the 30 finalists will be asked to create a 30-second multimedia presentation that answers the question, "If you had an audience of millions, what would you say?" The finalists can use "words, music, video, photos, podcast, animation, or any combination of those media. It's your way to show us who you are."
The winner will take home a MacBook, an iPod, and $2,000. Applications are due by May 15, 2007.
The UT Chamber Singers and Concert Choir will have their Spring concert Tuesday, April 24 at 8:00 pm in the James R. Cox Auditorium. Be there or be square.
In a four-part series, Enterprise IT Planet looks at IPv6, and its readiness to meet current market demands, noting that Apple is a key proponent. "Apple Computer's OS X operating system has an open source, UNIX-based architecture, which incorporates the advanced BSD networking functions, including advanced sockets and TCP/IP stack. Support for both IPv6 and IPsec is provided in the OS X 10.2 and later releases" More.
One of two "honeypot" MacBook Pros at the CanSecWest security conference has been successfully hacked, according to officials. The Vancouver, British Columbia event had established a contest to try and gain user-level shell access in Mac OS X over a wireless network, which was successfully accomplished after contest hosts eased rules and allowed security experts to attack through code sent through malicious websites instead of directly compromising the OS itself. -- Electronista.
Nancy Gohring, writing for InfoWorld, delivered a misleading report yesterday on a Mac security exploit contest held at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, BC.
In her defense, it appears likely that Gohring did not write the headline for her InfoWorld article, which described the contest winner as being "able to remotely break into a Mac as part of a contest designed to illustrate security flaws in OS X." That part was simply wrong. -- Roughly Drafted.
This concept video from 1987 shows a device that is basically a multi-touch enabled Ultra Portable Mac. The video is set in 2009... and the only thing that we really seem to be missing to make this happen are foldable screens and better voice recognition (oh, and Bill Nye to be our computer's visual buddy...) take a look. -- .
Did you know that your Mac comes with the power to be part of a multiprocessor supercomputer, straight out of the box!
Yes, included as part of OS X (Tiger 10.4) your Mac has access to Xgrid, software developed by Apple's Advanced Computation Group which allows you to group and access a network of Macs and share the under utilized processing power using Distributed Computing technology!
What's even better is it's pretty easy to setup.
But why would you want to do this?
Have you got an Apple TV?
Do you encode or convert lots of video?
Well Xgrid is fully supported by VisualHub, one of the video converters demonstrated in SCO0095 - How to Get Videos Onto Apple TV. So if you have a few spare Macs, you can create your own Xgrid network at no cost and speed up the encoding process significantly.
Even if you don't have multiple Macs but have a single Mac with multi-processors, Xgrid will allow you to make full use of your multiple processors on your single Mac. -- ScreenCastsOnline.
It looks like iChat in Leopard is going to be more scriptable than ever before according to this article from Apple. You'll be able to use Cocoa to access iChat views and write to them from your applications:
IMAVManager *manager = [IMAVManager sharedManager];
[manager setVideoDataSource:myView];
The interesting thing is the enhanced AppleScript access that will allow you to start video chats, send messages, and create iChat event handlers.
The inventor of the World Wide Web explains how the Semantic Web works and how it will transform how we use and understand data. -- MIT Technology Review.
Shiira is a web browser based on Web Kit and written in Cocoa. The goal of the Shiira Project is to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari. All source code used in this software is publicly available.
Apple's insistence on secrecy has many unintended consequences: Mac fans are hard to please, rumor sites do their best to steal information about unannounced products, and, most interestingly, it gets easy to forget that Apple is a company made up of real people with feelings and lives. That's why you should read this this spectacular farewell to Cupertino written by Buzz Andersen, formerly the author of shareware app Podworks and for four years an Apple software engineer.
Security Update 2007-004 is recommended for all servers and users and improves the security of the following components:
As of February, awareness of Apple Inc.'s iPhone device had spread to nearly 50 percent of U.S. consumers, with a significant chunk of those people expressing sincere interest in buying the device without having first seen one in person, a broad market survey has shown -- AppleInsider.
Apple Inc.'s presence at the National Association of Broadcasters conference this week includes a mind-boggling on-site server demonstration comprised of 130 Xserve components and over 3 miles of fiber optic cable. -- AppleInsider.
An enhancement to the Mac OS X operating system under development by Apple looks to pave the way for active desktop pictures, or desktop backgrounds that can include motion graphics and alter themselves based on user actions or the time of the day. -- AppleInsider.
35 professional designers disclose their favorite CSS technique, how they prioritize their designs, their favorite font, their most read design-related book and the design magazine that they read religiously. The results - over 80 CSS-based tips, design ideas, suggestions, fonts, and design-related books and online-magazines. -- Smashing Magazine.
Apple released Aperture 1.5.3 on Thursday. The update to the professional image management and touch up application fixed problems with entering and exiting full screen mode and generating thumbnails for adjusted images.
If you believe that Murphy was an optimist then the following is for you.
I have never gone to these lengths on any update except when I went from 10.3 to 10.4 and I expect to again when I move from 10.4 to 10.5.
Let me say again that this is not a requirement but if you have been having problems (the are never any problems with a Mac are there) or if want to be sure of not loosing anything and being able to restore your old OS then this should give you the best chance.
At a minimum I would have a full backup before any "major" upgrade. (But all of you are backing up all the time already, right? So no problem there.)
Remember that the installer allows you to archive and install. So here goes:
MacNN Forum users are discussing their experiences with Apple Store Genius Bar, with responses ranging from extreme satisfaction to rage. [My experience with the Knoxville's Apple Store Genius Bar have all be positive. And if you do get someone with an IQ of -200 make sure the store manager knows at once if not sooner. --mam]
Apple and Adobe cleaned up in the "Best of Show" awards at the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show. Apple took home five awards, and Adobe captured two. -- Macsimum News.
Apple's patent discusses the iPhone's various uses of Artificial Intelligence, accelerometer and specialized sensors. Interestingly enough, the patent also presents alternative embodiments to the original iPhone design, such as a slick flip top design which may surface at some time in the future. -- MacNN.
Using Skype on the MacBook Pro is a joy thanks to the built in iSight camera and there's a way to boost the resolution for Skype video calls thanks to a simple tweak. I'm not sure what the supported res of the iSight is, although I believe it to be VGA or 640 x 480; someone smarter than me in the ways of the Mac will chime in for sure here. Unfortunately, Skype doesn't natively use the full resolution of the iSight cam; here's how to change that. -- jkOnTheRun.
Anyone who has launched an e-mail client is well aware that spam--the junk mail that fills our inboxes in ever increasing amounts--is a huge problem. So we examined seven utilities, making some general judgments about each ap's comparative effectiveness at eliminating spam. -- Macworld.
I spent a good part of today setting up, playing with and blogging about my new Airport Extreme. Part of the process included using the recently revamped AirPort Utility.app. While well designed overall I really found the way they approached the need to summarize data. -- Clickable Bliss.
Making good on an earlier pact, Cisco Systems and Apple have begun to explore ways in which their respective iPhone devices can work together. -- Ars Technica.
Apple Inc. remains on track to ship the first of its iPhone mobile handsets in the U.S. by the end of June, a high ranking executive for wireless carrier AT&T confirmed Wednesday. -- Ars Technica.
As a followup to our previous article on Mac OS HTPC interfaces, today we're covering the basics of getting your Mac mini hooked up to your TV and how you might go about getting content onto it. -- Ars Technica.
Sling Media CEO said at NAB that the company hopes to be able to stream content to the iPhone, and that they've been talking to Apple about it. -- Ars Technica.
Seems like the Mozilla project just released Thunderbird 2.0. Most notable new features are (amongst many others) message tags, a new visual theme, Microsoft Vista support and advanced folder views. -- Mozilla.
Glenn Wolsey has an interview with Will Friedwald a.k.a the man with the largest iTunes collection in the world. Will currently has over 200,000 tracks. -- Glenn Wolsey.
Video cards that shipped with Power Mac G5 computers are not supported with Mac Pro computers, even if the card has the same product name (such as an Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 card).
Graphics cards shipped with PowerMac G5 computers
Graphic cards shipped with Mac Pro computers
All these cards are only compatible with the family of computers that they shipped with (Mac Pro or Power Mac G5).
Note: To identify Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 cards that are compatible with Mac Pro computers, check the label on the back of the card. Cards for the Mac Pro show a part number of 630-7532 or 630-7895, cards for Power Mac G5 computers have a part number of 631-0110. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Many people here on Mac OS X Hints have posted cool undocumented features based on holding down modifier keys, but I've always wanted a compiled list of all of them, because I will occasionally forget a few. So, I compiled the ones on Mac OS X Hints, and added a lot more that I don't think were here yet. -- Mac OS X Hints.
MacDailyNews republishes numbers from a preliminary report by Gartner on 1st quarter 2007 PC marketshare results. The numbers reveal an 8.9% worldwide increase in PC shipments, and a 2.6% U.S. increase in PC shipments compared to the same period last year.
Apple, however, has seen a 30% increase in shipments for the 1Q07 period compared to 1Q06 period and held a 5% U.S. marketshare for PC shipments in the 1st quarter of 2007. This marketshare number represents the percentage of Macs out of all PCs shipped in the U.S for Q107. Apple's marketshare numbers over the past few quarters have been fluctuating between 4.7-6.1% depending on the source of the data, but year-to-year marketshare growth provides a useful measure and indicates that Apple's sales growth outpaced the PC industry as a whole.
The CIO of Tacoma Washington-based Auto Warehousing is fed up with Windows systems, and has decided to begin testing Mac systems for a potential enterprise-wide switch to Apple technology.
Dale N. Frantz, CIO of Tacoma, Wash.-based Auto Warehousing Co., is working on a proof-of-concept project with his company's home-grown ERP system. The system is built on Microsoft's SQL server technology, but he's testing whether a front-end application would allow Macs to work with the SQL-based system. -- SearchCIO.
How do you get rid of the junk messages? You can, of course, click on every email message and hit the delete button, but that gets old when you receive dozens of spam messages every day. A better solution is to train software to identity, quarantine, and delete spam so you don't even have to look at the stuff. We'll show you how to do it! -- Macinstruct.
In addition you could check out Apple's Mail 101 article which has a section on using Mail.app's junk mail filter.
And if you would like to learn how to return unwanted email and what to do if it can not be "bounced."
Apple has been granted a patent (number 20070085854) for a "system and method for computing a desktop picture" by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Instead of loading a file that contains the desktop image, the invention provides for a system and method for opening and retaining a procedural "recipe" and a small set of instructions that can be executed to compute a desktop picture. -- Macsimum News.
Apple stepped into the server market in 2002 with what it called a "humble" entrance, and the market's reaction to the Xserve thus far may be similarly categorized. Its obstacles include the entrenchment of Windows and Linux, along with the difficulty of uprooting an existing infrastructure. However, it's never easy to tell just what Apple is capable of. -- MacNewsWorld.
At the end of March I attended a seminar at the Landmark Hotel in Bangkok. The main theme was Macs in Science. Although most people have a sense of the Mac as a consumer machine, the high level devices - including servers - have wide applications for the scientific community. -- Extensions.
TextMate is one of the most popular text editors among Mac developers, in part due to how much you can customize the powerful program. James Edward Gray II recently wrote TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac and presents this article on creating an RPN calculator in TextMate as an example of how to do complex TextMate customizations. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Going into extreme detail, Apple has said Apple ProRes 422, its new HD video standard, was designed not just to beat opposing formats but to clear bottlenecks -- some of which are stifling for video editors. -- AppleInsider.
Presenting at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing on Tuesday, executives for the world's largest chip maker disclosed new performance details for its next-generation "Penryn" processor families for desktops and servers. -- AppleInsider.
Marc Zeedar opines that Apple will announce movie rentals via Apple TV. -- Macopinion.
While I may not be the biggest fan of Google Desktop, I'm still quite happy with their other services, including Gmail and Google Calendar. I'm also glad to see Google's continuing efforts to provide integration solutions like the GData API, which is based on the Atom Publishing Protocol and is available in a variety of languages, including Java and C#. Imagine my delight when I found out that Google has now released the Data APIs in Objective-C, just for us Mac users. -- Ars Technica.
As June nears, reports of possible iPhone delays and rebates appear. -- Ars Technica.
Chip maker demonstrates memory chip based on a concept it has been tinkering with for three decades. Code-named Alverston, the chip is a phase change memory device. Intel CTO Justin Rattner demonstrated a 128-bit sample of Alverstone at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing and will start sending samples to customers in the first half of this year. Intel is working on the project with ST Microelectronics. -- c|net.
On August 5th, 2004 at 12:00 Noon GMT, 60 filmmakers in over 40 countries and on all 7 continents captured a single "moment" on earth. This mosaic builds a composite image of Iraq and the Pacific Ocean out of thousands of single frames from the other moments that were filmed around the world at the same exact time. -- Moment on Earth.
This document defines the term "pixel anomaly", explains why such anomalies occur, and describes what to do if you feel your active matrix LCD panel has more than an acceptable number of pixel anomalies.
Many Apple products use active-matrix LCD panels, including the iMac (Flat Panel), MacBook Pro, MacBook, iBook, PowerBook, Apple Cinema displays, and iPod models with a color display. In addition to being slim and light, active-matrix LCD technology provides customers with many visual performance advantages when compared to traditional cathode-ray tube- (CRT) based displays, such as increased brightness, sharpness, and contrast ratio.
Active-matrix LCD technology uses rows and columns of addressable locations (pixels) that render text and images on screen. Each pixel location has three separate subpixels (red, green and blue) that allow the image to be rendered in full color. Each subpixel has a corresponding transistor responsible for turning the subpixel on or off.
There are typically millions of these subpixels on an LCD display. For example, the LCD panel used in the Apple Cinema HD display is made up of 2.3 million pixels and 6.9 million red, green, and blue subpixels. Occasionally, a transistor does not work perfectly, which may result in the affected subpixel being turned on (bright) or turned off (dark). With the millions of subpixels on a display, it is quite possible to have a low number of faulty transistors on an LCD. Therefore, a certain number of subpixel anomalies is considered acceptable. Rejecting all but perfect LCD panels would significantly increase the retail price for products using LCD displays. These factors apply to all manufacturers using LCD technology--not just Apple products.
If you suspect your display contains a high number of pixel anomalies, take your Apple product to an Apple Authorized Service Provider for closer examination. There may be a charge for the evaluation. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
QuickTime supports multiple formats of several types of files. For a complete list, see this QuickTime page.
If you have an issue with connecting your wireless network to Apple TV, there's usually a quick and simple solution you can try. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
A website, Make Internet TV (MITV), funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has been created to make building Internet video easier.
MITV is a resource site full of step-by-step instructions for shooting and creating video. It's tied together with a Wiki so that anyone can share techniques, links and resources.
"The site covers shooting, editing, licensing, publishing and promoting video on the internet; it illustrates these topics with screenshots, photos, screencasts, graphics, text and more. It's essentially a free online book about video creation and publishing," the announcement said.
John Martellaro looks deep inside Apple's organizational structure, history, and current temperament to analyze the root cause of the Leopard delay -- and what can be done to make sure it doesn't happen again. -- The Mac Observer.
Recently I started a new contract, and the new people I work with like to create Microsoft Word tables. They send me these tables in a Word document, so that I can post them on their site as HTML tables in their CMS system. Having not done much work with Word, I set about to find a way to convert the Word table to a clean HTML format without requiring some expensive or large HTML editor. After much asking around, and searching, I accidentally discovered this simple method using just Word and BBEdit. -- Mac OS X Hints.
Digit Magazine has a full review of the 8-core Mac Pro. "Apple's latest Mac bears two brand new, faster Xeon processors that aren't available anywhere else. It also ships at a cost much lower than equivalent Windows workstations -- though it's still too pricey for most designers, illustrators and motion graphics artists. [...] In Cinebench 9.5, the benchmarking suite based on Maxon's Cinema 4D 9.5 3D animation application, the new Mac Pro attained a rendering score of 2,318 -- 4.74 times faster than using a single processor core. This is almost 68 per cent faster than the older dual dual-core Mac Pro."
Publish reports that Adobe has launched "Media player," a desktop application that uses Flash architecture and "provides content publishers with new abilities to distribute, track and build businesses around their media assets while also providing viewers with the ability to download and view content offline." More.
Adobe's Adobe Creative Suite 3 includes an update of Dreamweaver, the high-end web design app Adobe acquired when it bought Macromedia in 2005. In fact, Dreamweaver has ousted GoLive as the web design app of choice in the product suite (though it's still sold as a standalone product).
Though the update does a decent job of making complex web development tools, such as Ajax and CSS, more accessible to Adobe's traditional users, it still has some rough edges. There's no debating that its HTML coding and design tools are powerful. For example, the update sports the Spry framework. With Spry, you create "dynamic regions" in your page by adding special attributes to your existing HTML. Think of these regions as miniature HTML templates that contain placeholders for dynamic data. -- Macsimum News.
An Apple patent (number 7206001) for a "fractal-dithering technique for image display" has been granted by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It relates generally to display of computer graphics. In particular, the present invention is directed towards a dithering technique for quickly displaying images at reduced color depth without significant quality loss. -- Macsimum News.
Adobe's latest version/s of Photoshop comes in two editions: Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended. Photoshop CS3 Extended is designed to simplify the workflows for professionals in architecture, engineering, medicine and science.
The big news about both versions is that Photoshop is now a Universal Binary application that will run natively both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs (as well as Microsoft Windows XP /Windows Vista). That means speed boosts, which will, hopefully, mean sales boosts for Apple's pro systems (the MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro). But even if you don't require the extra oomph, the new versions contain some nifty new features, such as Smart Filters. -- Macsimum News.
When Apple introduced its first Intel-powered Macs in early 2006, the company did more than just launch OS X on a new platform. It also gave Mac users a brand-new way to run Windows apps.
Eighteen months ago, Mac users who had to run Windows software used Virtual PC--and nobody really liked it. Today, we have a bunch of alternatives, with four that really rise to the top: Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMWare Fusion, which both let you install and run a copy of Windows from within OS X; CodeWeavers' CrossOver Mac, which tricks Windows apps into thinking you've got Windows installed when you really don't; and Apple's own Boot Camp, which lets you choose to boot into Windows or OS X when you start your Mac.
But those four choices lead to one big question: which one is right for you? In this week-long series, Christopher Breen and I compare the four, as well as take a critical look at how easy each one is to install and configure, how well each runs Windows software, and how well each supports hardware peripherals. -- Macworld.
Dashboard is one of the coolest Mac applications, isn't it? It's easy-to-use, it's beautiful, and it wows your PC-using friends every time. With the push of a button, all of your widgets zoom into view and you have information at your fingertips!
If you pack your Dashboard with widgets, like we do ours, you're probably looking to trick out your 'board even more. You know -- take things even further to wow your friends again and again. We've got just the tips for you. -- Macinstruct.
Kx Systems, developers of the Kdb+ database, announced Tuesday that they're offering a Mac OS X-compatible version of their relational database software. Kdb+ is used in the financial market; it's designed for high-performance data management and analysis. -- Macworld.
David Pogue of The New York Times tells his horror story behind the installation of four 802.11n wireless routers. And guess which router was fastest? -- New York Times.
Apple posted a list of the new Bug Reporter features, which include an improved look & feel. If your bug is closed as a duplicate, you can now find the id for the original bug report which remains active. The active reference number appears next to "State: Duplicate."
Shortly after completing my article about Google Desktop for Mac, I decided to remove the application from my system. Why? Because... -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
The world's largest chip maker said the initial refresh to Santa Rosa will be based on a mobile Penryn processor, a 45-nanometer shrink of its current chip designs. The first of those chips are slated to hit production later this year and turn up in the Santa Rosa refresh during the first half of next year. -- AppleInsider.
Within the $50 billion inkjet printer industry is a small but very profitable subset of printers designed around the needs of advanced amateur and professional photographers. If your tastes lean towards fine art photo papers, long-lasting prints, and output beyond letter-sized dimensions, count yourself among this demographic. And if you find yourself in the market for a new printer, you've got significantly more options today than were available just a year ago. In this guide we'll go beyond the marketing hype and look at the features and performance issues you need to consider when navigating through this suddenly competitive field. -- Ars Technica.
If you're looking for a cheap, automated online backup solution, a combination of Strongspace's grid storage and a little shell hacking will get you as far as you want to go. -- Ars Technica.
Apple makes this very accessible with Xcode and their other development tools freely available to anyone who wants them. But even if you're not a developer, there are some really cool things buried within the Apple Development Tools. Here are a few of those little gems that I found while poking around the in the Developer directory. -- MacApper.
Directory services are a critical component of any enterprise environment. These services provide a database for central account management for both user and computer, as well as a framework for sharing that information among workstations and servers. Mac OS X's native directory service is called Open Directory. -- ComputerWorld.
The case for disappointment over Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)'s delay lacks a key component -- anticipation fueled by the existence of compelling, publicly announced features beyond those unveiled during Steve Jobs' 2006 WWDC keynote presentation. Fortunately, with regard to the troubleshooting and general stability of Apple's next-generation operating system, there is cause for excitement. Among the improvements that should make for a more problem-free computing experience in Leopard:
The Software Update mechanism in Leopard will force the user to quit all open applications before applying most updates. This change is made in an attempt to obviate problems that can be caused by other processes occurring while new software is being installed. We've recommended that users quit all open applications an avoid performing other operations during major system updates for every iterative Mac OS X release, and Apple is now building this advice into the actual update process.
Activity Monitor in Leopard has a feature called "sample process," which traces every call that is made by a specific application or system process. This can prove invaluable in tracing crashes and other troubleshooting issues, as users can check what files and routines are accessed in the case of a problem.
Spotlight will become a better troubleshooting tool in Leopard. There will be a specialized ability to search within help documentation for various applications. The Leopard version of Spotlight will also be able to search within application menus for difficult-to-locate functions.
Dashboard should be less of a resource hog in Leopard. All widgets will be part of a single process, purportedly offering a speed increase and a reduced resource imprint.
Better behaving third-party applications should be the result of two Apple initiatives with regard to Leopard:
Yesterday MacFixIt published a guide to increasing performance in Safari on several fronts. The piece drew significant reader feedback, with some users offering interesting suggestions. -- MacFixIt.
Apple just updated a bunch of their high level Developer Notes that provide developers with technical descriptions of Apple products and capabilities. The updated items include Audio (both analog and digital capabilities), Bluetooth, Ethernet, FireWire/1394, Mac Pro, PCI, RAM expansion, USB and video.
Apple yesterday showed its willing to lose money to capture the pro-video market. Anyone paying attention to what Apple purchased in the past couple of years, to get the technology in Final Cut Server and the new "Color" software knows Apple is giving that stuff away. In the case of "Color" a piece of software that from Silicon Color (the company Apple purchased) would have cost five figures....yesterday got rolled in the NEW Final Cut Studio for FREE. With 80,000 users of FCP at the professional (paid) level there is no way the company can make it up in volume, which means their aim is pure market share. Apple intends to OWN that market.
This is really quite similar to Apple's early dominance of the education market, which was in the era of Steve 1.0. Apple gave computers to schools and thereby bought to the loyalty of future customers when they entered the workplace or became home computer buyers. Now Apple has targeted media creation in the same way. Apple-end-to-end is the theme and in this case they really DO have both ends covered with products like Apple TV, iPod, iPhone, and their successors. -- Technology Evangelist.
Blue Raven Technology, a leading provider of iPod audio and video personal electronics products, today announced that they have a full line of iPod replacement battery kits for the 1st through 4th generation iPod, Video iPod and iPod Mini, available immediately. The batteries come with detailed instructions and all the tools necessary to make changing the batteries at home a snap. In addition, Blue Raven is the first manufacturer to offer online help, including an instructional video, to ensure consumers can easily change their own batteries. -- MarketWatch.
So anyway, while I can't say the reason I chose to make a MacBook Pro my new DevBox of choice had to do with the die hard defection, I can state that the moment I began to notice the defection was the moment I began to take better notice of what was going on over at Apple. I don't have the time to write my usual 40 page essay, so I won't go into each and every detail as to what brought me to the point of making this decision, but I will point out the final factor... The day Apple announced the EMI deal was the day I knew it was time to make the switch. -- O'Reilly XML.COM.
Jochen Wolters hits the world's biggest musical instrument trade show and finds fresh sounds, fantastic new gear, and phenomenal performers. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
Obtrusive behavior, irritating habits, constant nagging--crummy products have bugged you for years. Here are the ones you say have bothered you most. -- PC World.
The big news this week is that Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard won't make its appearance until October 2007, so that Apple can focus on the iPhone. TidBITS has details and reactions from prominent Mac users.
Presenting at the National Association of Broadcasters conference on Sunday, Apple unveiled Final Cut Studio 2, a significant upgrade to its industry leading video production suite that delivers new creative tools designed expressly for editors. -- Apple.
Apple on Sunday introduced Final Cut Server, a new server application designed to work seamlessly with Final Cut Studio 2 to provide media asset management and workflow automation for post production and broadcast professionals. -- Apple.
The latest iteration of the UTK Web template looks quite a bit different from its predecessor, but the most significant change occurred in the code. The new template is Web Standards compliant, meaning that it is built by Cascading Style Sheets rather than those dreaded nested tables. In this workshop we'll briefly discuss the advantages of designing with CSS, we'll look at how the templates work, and then we'll spend some time building a page with CSS. The workshop will last an hour. Participants are also invited to stick around for another 30 minutes of questions and answers and general discussion.
By popular demand (kind of) I've developed a one-hour workshop on designing with Cascading Style Sheets, generally, and using the new UTK Templates, specifically. For now, we've scheduled two sessions, both of which will be offered in the teaching lab at the Innovative Technology Center.
Wednesday, April 18, 1:00 - 2:30pm
Friday, May 11, 9:30 - 11am
I've reserved the room for 90 minutes to allow for an additional half hour of questions and general discussion. The official workshop description is attached below.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line or give me a call.
Best,
Darren Hughes
Web Developer
Creative Services
107 Communications Building
Knoxville, TN 37996
865-974-8210
In his new feature film, The TV Set, director Jake Kasdan takes a funny but uncompromising look at a genre built on compromise--the television pilot. -- Apple.
A new Apple patent gives insights into the company's possible plans for expanding the Apple TV's capabilities through the use of external modules. -- Ars Technica.
Bare Feats received their eight core Mac Pro early (the new Mac Pro must be the first new Apple product that's out the door on time this year), and, of course, they immediately started benchmarking. The results varied greatly, depending on the characteristics of the application in question. -- Ars Technica.
Mr. Deity Episode 10: Mr. Deity and the Seed.
Video may be black, white, or distorted the first or second time a Power Mac G5 computer is started, but after a few restarts it will appear normally. There are some things to check to prevent this from happening again. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
This article lists TCP and UDP ports used by Apple products, such as Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, AppleShare IP, Network Assistant, Apple Remote Desktop, Macintosh Manager, and .Mac. Many of these are referred to as "well known," industry standard ports. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Your Mac is pretty good at keeping track of which Apple supplied application and operating system updates have been installed, but sometimes it's nice to double-check the list yourself. Mac OS X keeps a log with the date, time, and version number of every Apple update installed on your computer. -- The Mac Observer.
My hotel room only has a modem with Windows drivers, so I got it running under Parallels Desktop Windows XP. However, I wanted to check my email with Apple Mail, so I found this solution. -- Mac OS X Hints.
Apple has released a new "Get A Mac" ad named Stuffed. In the ad, PC appears bloated and explains how he is stuffed with a bunch of trial software that he doesn't need and how it is slowing him down.
Safari is generally one of the fastest browsers for Mac OS X with regard to page rendering. Unfortunately, its also prone to significant slowdown -- including repeated stalls accompanied by the spinning pinwheel progress indicator, slow launch times, and more. There are a few procedures you can use to minimize the occurrence of stalls and eliminate other hindrances, improving the overall speed of Apple's Web browser. -- MacFixIt.
IT Week reports on commentary from around the Web and elsewhere indicating that some developer catch-up will be required before the power of 8-core Mac Pros is exploited. Benchmarking site Bare Feats recently ran a series of tests comparing the latest 8-core systems running on two Quad-core Intel processors to the older 4-core Mac Pro systems that use two duo-core chips. The conclusion, said Bare Feats founder Rob Art Morgan, was that while the 8-core Mac showed a steep increase in such computation-heavy tasks as exporting multiple video files at once, the two systems showed little difference in real-world tests of such professional staples as Photoshop CS3 and Aperture.
Apple jumped 38 spots to No. 121 on Fortune's annual listing of the top 500 US corporations. The company, which saw its revenues increase nearly 40 percent and its and profits surge by almost 50 percent from 2005, has a market value of $80.6 billion. Apple ranks fourth in its industry behind Hewlett-Packard (No. 14), IBM (No. 15), and Dell (NO. 34), but ahead of Xerox (No. 145), Sun (No. 187), and Gateway (No. 529).
Thomas Fitzgerald spent some quality time with his Apple TV and wrote up this thorough and interesting review. His conclusion? It's a great product, well thought out and executed.
The most obvious way for Apple to bring their amazing research on multi-touch from the iPhone to the Mac platform would be a touchscreen iMac or tablet laptop, but a recent patent shows Apple might have something more simple -- and powerful in mind. -- Wired.
I've been thinking a lot about Apple's much-analyzed decision to delay the release of Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, until October. Ultimately, it's not that big a deal. If you read between the lines, the diversion of software development resources to finish the iPhone could have long-term benefits for the platform. -- Wired.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball has an interesting view of just why Apple fell behind on OS X in the first place.
Apple Inc. on Thursday conceded that it will be unable to release its next generation operating system in June as previously planned and now says it anticipates launching the software in October. Its highly anticipated iPhone handset has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. -- AppleInsider.
While Apple's announcement of MGM adding content to the iTunes Store is undeniably good news, the announcement that more than 2 million movies have been sold since September 2006 is not. -- Ars Technica.
Work on Apple's next major operating system continues to plod along with the release of a new build of Leopard to developers this week. According to various rumor sites, build 9A410 doesn't offer that many changes in its official release notes (a revised Terminal application and changes to .Mac sync settings are the highlights), but does include a lengthy list of known glitches that remain in the current build, ranging from QuickTime playback problems to mild graphics corruption on certain models to unspecified issues with FileVault (now there's a reassuring thought). Oh, and those "secret features" everybody's been wondering about? Still not there. -- Ars Technica.
It's a nice collection, may come handy. -- 11amDesign Tutorials and Articles.
Part 3 of our code snippets series takes a look at more handy pieces of html, ajax and css that you can incorporate into your web designs. If you missed them, check out part one and part two as well. -- TutorialBlog.
Learn how to troubleshoot printing issues in Mac OS X. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
David Pogue at the New York Times tested new 802.11n routers from Apple, Belkin and Netgear. The Apple router was the smallest, best-looking, fastest, had the strongest signal, and was the most expensive, according to the review.
A patent application by Apple, released Thursday, indicates that the company is continuing to explore new ways for users to command their Macs.
Patent Application number 20070080945 details a mouse having a button-less pan and scroll switch. Apple details that instead of using a traditional scroll wheel (or scroll ball in the case of the Mighty Mouse), the mouse would sense different hand positions and act in different ways according to how it is being held.
With Apple's announcement of a significant delay for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) today, MacFixIt thought they'd put forth a few questions that are running through the MacFixIt editors' heads:
The Associated Press reports on Jeremy Mehrle's staggering collection of Macs. His bar is made out of 30 Mac Classics arranged next to and on top of each other. Guests can drink at the bar, "but no one ever does,' he noted. (Just imagine how much technology could be destroyed with just one spilled drink.) The basement is wired with 20-amp circuits. He doesn't just display his computers, he runs them when guests come over. Classic screen savers, like flying toasters with wings, flutter across screens. When friends stop by, they can play old-school games like 'StarCraft' on machines networked together.
Apple's new 8-core Mac Pro may be throttled by its memory technology and its older operating system, according to new benchmarks run on the cutting-edge system. Even though the eight total Xeon cores offer a literal doubling of theoretical CPU performance in testing, testing of memory-intensive programs such as Aperture and Photoshop CS3 -- both of which routinely store gigabytes of images in memory -- reveals almost negligible differences between 8-core and 4-core 3GHz systems. -- electronista.
Perhaps the real questions is weather or not Leopard will "fix" this?
Lloyd Chambers thinks there's a memory bus bottleneck for the 8 core, which he discussed back in March on his blog. He wrote:
"Memory bandwidth is inadequate for 8 cores. It's already a limiting factor with the current quad-core 3.0 GHz Mac Pro. Memory copy speed is at best 2.9GB/sec on the Mac Pro, in spite of Apple's highly misleading claims of 21.3 GB/sec ("maximum processor bandwidth of up to 21.3 GB/s"--bandwidth is a bit more than double the memory copy speed). That's a measly 700MB/sec per core on a quad-core machine, and only 350MB/sec per core on an octa-core machine. By comparison, a 6-drive hard disk RAID array can easily perform at over 400MB/sec!"
You can read his revised Apple Mac Pro article along with All About Mac Pro Memory. Well worth reading if you are considering a Mac Pro, or even if you already have one.
MacGuru Phillip Stauder is having trouble with his Logitech 350 Headset on an Intel Mac. He has checked the usual suspects (OS, drivers, etc.):
I am having an issue with using a Logitech 350 headset with 17 inch Intel iMacs. The sound system preferences don't always work when set to the USB headsets. Zapping and restarting does provide a temporary fix, but after restart, computers often lose settings. I have been setting the "sound effects", the sound "input", and the sound "output" to the USB setting. Logitech is checking, I am waiting on comeback from Apple.
The only thing I could find was a work-around.
As soon as you plug in the headset, quickly go to System > Prefs > Sound and check the "mute" option, then uncheck it again.
If you have a fix, or a better work around, please share it.
On April 12, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple's continuation patent application titled Method and Apparatus for Accelerated Scrolling. Apple's patent generally relates to the iPod's Click Wheel. Yet the one twist that stood out most in this patent is Apple's illustration of incorporating their iPod Click Wheel into a keyboard in place of a numeric pad. -- MacNN.
Apple on Thursday released a statement noting that Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" won't be released until October. The cause of the delay? The iPhone. Jim Dalrymple found Mac users frustrated by the delay, but tech-industry analysts say an October release date for the next major OS X update is nothing to get alarmed about--especially if it helps get the high-profile iPhone out the door on time. Regardless, Dan Frakes thinks Tiger is still the best OS out there, no matter what the name the the company that produces it. -- Macworld.
New York Times Magazine has up an article that explores Boss Science and the minds of American corporate leaders. In the real world, bosses are known to suffer from a long list of social pathologies: naked aggression, credit hogging, micromanaging, bullying, you name it.
I picked up an Apple TV on they day they were made available. In short, my family loves it. For me -- the "technically proficient" one in the family -- I understand the limitations and still totally enjoy the Apple TV. Since the addition of the Apple TV, the Mac Mini -- connected to the same TV -- has gone unused for media playback. -- bbum's Blog.
Engineers at Harvard and BBN Technologies are working on a project that will cover the city of Cambridge, MA, with wireless-sensor nodes mounted to telephone poles that could allow researchers to see the specific locations and times of day when pollution peaks. The researchers could also track the city's weather with more precision and help test new wireless technology for better Wi-Fi. The network, called CitySense, will be an open test bed on which anyone can run experiments, says Matt Welsh, a professor of computer science at Harvard. -- MIT Technology Review.
Wilkes University in Philadelphia is about to become one of the first colleges to make a complete switch from Windows PCs to new Intel Macs. Over the next three years, Wilkes will become an all-Mac campus -- a $1.4 million switch involving 1,700 computers. The reason? To save money. The college will buy fewer machines and expects to spend less on support. -- Wired.
TVShows is a free, open source application that triggers automatic downloading of TV shows via BitTorrent. -- Wired.
Apple has released two new TV advertisements in their 'Get A Mac' campaign. They are: "Flashback" and "Computer Cart". -- Apple.
A computer or device may not connect to a AirPort Extreme (802.11n) Base Station's wireless network with a WEP (Transitional Security Network) password. This article does not apply to Macs with built-in AirPort Extreme (802.11g) cards. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Writing for SeekingAlpha, Carl Howe opines that the secret to Apple's customer loyalty is that there is no secret. The truth behind the scenes is not that Apple has a large group of customers that are too dedicated and passionate about their products, or the company as a whole. The reality is far more simple and obvious: Apple simply has a large group of very satisfied customers -- and that's the secret ingredient left out of nearly every analysis or op-ed piece that mentions these 'zealots.'
Appleology lists six changes it thinks Apple needs to make by 2008, including completely revising or scrapping .Mac and a Mac OS X interface refresh. I know many proud .Mac subscribers may disagree, but I just do not understand how the services Apple offers in its .Mac subscription is close to being worth $99. It offers sub-par bandwidth and memory restrictions and packaged with a lot of bloatware that can be substituted for free alternatives.
Users of Apple's Boot Camp beta software could find themselves lacking support and driver updates, once the product ships with the forthcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard this spring. Boot Camp is special software developed by Apple that allows Intel-based Mac owners to create separate partitions on one or more hard drives to support Microsoft's Windows XP and Vista operating systems. The Boot Camp licensing terms however state that the software is only usable until the company releases a commercial version or until the September 30th deadline, whichever comes first. Apple has not revealed whether it will issue a final version of Boot Camp for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger users, according to News.com, but rumors abound that the company will provide standalone copies of Boot Camp for Tiger users when the final product ships. -- c|net.
Apple has filed patents for a method and apparatus for accelerated scrolling, methods and systems for submitting media to a media distribution site, a multi-media center for computing systems, and a method and apparatus for use of rotational user inputs with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. -- Macsimum News.
Apple today published a patent that may point to a more full-fledged media center interface from the company. Dubbed a "Multi-media center for computing systems," the design revolves around a module controller element that would mediate between multiple devices and programs, allowing them to control media playback through plug-in software modules while presenting a consistent front-end to the entire experience. -- Electronista.
Because all new desktop Macs come with a Mighty Mouse, I need to be able to write about it for my upcoming Leopard book. So I bought one from Amazon.com last week and it arrived on my doorstep today. I wasted no time opening the box and setting it up. -- Maria Langer.
I'm probably out of sync with most O'Reilly people on this issue, but I am not a supporter of computers in schools. Despite the apparent political appeal, the case for the high-tech classroom is weak: there is little research supporting the idea that high-tech improves learning, and the empirical counter-argument that after throwing computers at schools for upwards of 20 years, the US education system has little to show for it. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Our organization is getting ready to purchase dozens of new Intel Macs for each campus and we're not sure how to proceed. With Windows XP and Dell, we've simply used Symantec's Enterprise Ghost to deploy our images. Playing with the test Intel Macs we have, we are unable to get Ghost to work with the Mac. I've also played with Bombich's NetRestore product (which is FOSS!) but without much success. I'm curious how my fellow readers have resolved this issue. -- Slashdot.
Yesterday we reported that Apple was running a new advertisement for Apple TV with little fanfare. I saw it last night and today the ad is up on the Apple site.
Switching to a Mac infrastructure may sound like an expensive proposition for a small-business owner. However, some businesses who have made the change say they made the right choice. The cost savings on security and ease-of-use quickly paid off incurred expenses, they said. Relearning some tasks that operate differently on a Mac may be a barrier, but Parallels comes in handy. -- MacNewsWorld.
if you have a soldering iron and a multimeter--and know how to use them--why not build an iPod battery pack yourself? It cost me €4.05, or about $5.50, in parts. It's not very hard as electronics projects go, but you can fry your iPod if you try hard enough, so as always: proceed at your own risk, and take advantage of the experiences of the brave souls that blazed this particular trail. -- Ars Technica.
HTML 4.01 was made a recommendation in 1999, XHTML 1.0--a formulation of HTML 4.01 in XML--became a recommendation in 2000, and was revised in 2002. In other words, at the base of all modern web development is an eight-year-old technology.
HTML 4.01 may be a good, stable ground for developers to stand on, but it could be better. Lots of things have changed in the way the web is used and perceived in the last eight years, but particularly from a developer perspective, we've gained an understanding of what HTML 4.01 failed at, and where it could be improved. The next generation of these technologies is arriving, and they are worth keeping an eye on. These technologies will affect everyone in the business. -- Digital Web.
It may be questionable whether one can actually perceive the difference between a 720p and 1080p display at typical TV viewing distances, according to Audioholics.
Basically I was unable to connect from my PC running Vista to Windows sharing on my Mac -- doing the normal ipaddressusername and supplying username and password failed. Vista seemed convinced that I'd entered an invalid username and/or password, regardless of what I tried. After much searching, I found the solution in this thread on vista64.net's forums. -- Mac OS X Hints.
engadget has instructions for playing DivX and Xvid files on the Apple TV. "The two biggest Apple TV limitations are the lack of codec support (like XviD, DivX, etc.) and not even having the ability to do basic surround sound like Dolby Digital 5.1. These issues were resolved almost immediately after the Apple TV was released, although the hacks were somewhat less than practical. Something as simple as getting your Apple TV to, say, sync and recognize your XviD movies as playable was no simple feat. Thankfully, that's no longer the case."
MacInTouch has its first reader reports about the 8-core Mac Pro plus tips on disk and memory changes and other commentary about the big Macs.
Sling Media is developing support for its Slingbox streaming hubs that would let them support the Apple TV, the company said late on Monday. A future update should give cellphones with SlingPlayer Mobile the ability not only to view an Apple TV's content streamed over the Internet but to control it as well by sending IR codes. -- c|net.
Parallels Desktop for Mac is the best tool on the market for running Windows on any Intel-based Macintosh. Windows users are not going to believe me, but it's true. Parallels runs Windows even faster on Intel MacBook Pros than it does on comparable PC hardware. My two Windows XP Pro on Macintosh installations run great. One is a year old, which is about how long Parallels has been available either in beta or release form -- and both have lots of software installed on them. -- Computerworld.
One of the great dilemmas of Mac admins is how to give users the ability to actually USE their machines, without the monkeys gumming up the works constantly. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using Open Directory. But what if you don't have an Open Directory server?
Create a Power Users group. It gives users the ability to install the applications they want, without letting them modify things like network settings. -- Mac Geekery.
This is a list of hardware, software and information that has been useful to me as I've moved over to Mac OS X. I hope that you find it useful as well. This version is now up to date for Mac OS 10.4 Tiger and Intel Macs. -- Ted Leung on the air.
It was news five years ago today.
Some highlights from the feedback on yesterday's piece on audio file formats. -- Daring Fireball.
A lot of people are gunning for the Apple TV. Not just in the comments section of this blog. Apparently the quality is crap and doesn't do justice to your HD TV - this is kinda strange as Apple hasn't of yet released any Hi-Def content for it - but this doesn't stop tons of critics saying how crappy it looks when you get up close and really examine it! As if that is how all TV is watched. -- ZDNet UK.
Google has just announced work on OCRopus, which it says it hopes will 'advance the state of the art in optical character recognition and related technologies.' OCRopus will be available under the Apache 2.0 License. Obviously, there may be search and image search implications from OCRopus. 'The goal of the project is to advance the state of the art in optical character recognition and related technologies, and to deliver a high quality OCR system suitable for document conversions, electronic libraries, vision impaired users, historical document analysis, and general desktop use. In addition, we are structuring the system in such a way that it will be easy to reuse by other researchers in the field.
So Apple's had one HELL of a first quarter, haven't they? With tax day nearly upon us, I thought it might be a good idea to look back at how well Apple is answering the issues that I thought were important late in December of last year, especially now that the Apple TV is out in the market and the iPhone has set the world on fire with its hype flames. Or something. So click through -- we'll laugh, we'll cry, and we'll learn something about forecasting. -- Wired.
Apple offers a Pre-Assessment Guide to help determine whether you are prepared for Apple's Mac OS X technical training or whether you should attend the one-day preparatory course at all. There are twenty-three questions. See how well you do.
And if think that was too easy take a look at the Skills Assessment Guide for the Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.4 exam. And you can even take the Sample Test.
This was the question put to a web managers listserv I belong to:
All,
Its new computer time and I am pricing a new mac. One of my arguments is going to be that I can get rid of the pc on my desk and rotate it to someone else. But can I? I have always had both platforms so I could see how pages looked on a mac and pc. I know you can now have windows on a mac but is that the same thing? Any thoughts?
Here are the responses:
For what it's worth, i do all my primary work on a big iMac running parallels for windows testing. I often have both os's running and snap back and forth... works great.
Boot camp wasn't really an option since i find having the two OS's running at
the same time saves oodles of time.
I've got 2gb of ram, but would like a bit more. If you decide go Mac/parallels 2gb would be the minimum i'd go with.
And...
If you can swing a Macbook Pro with a 23 inch external and 3GB of RAM you will be silly happy ;) You will need Boot Camp if you want to play games on it though... and the latest parallels will use the BootCamp install so you still get the 'parallel' effect for everyday stuff.
There were no negative responses.
Launching almost without fanfare, a spot for Apple's new media hub has begun making the rounds of TV networks. -- AppleInsider.
AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n Firmware 7.1 includes general fixes, compatibility updates, and security improvements for the AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n.
The first security hole addressed by the 4.6MB patch involves the router's default acceptance of incoming IPv6 connections, which could expose servers and other services connected to the Base Station to an attack by those using the newer Internet protocol.
Apple's fix is to change the standard policy, which automatically blocks inbound IPv6 traffic from all computers but those on the local network.
Less glaring but still important was a correction in the station's approach to USB hard drives shared through the AirPort Disk feature. Computers with access to the local network could previously view the names of files in password-protected volumes without first entering said password, potentially exposing any sensitive information that the file name might hold.
An extra layer of validation now prevents this from happening, authenticating a user before they can see the data in a secured volume. None of the files' contents were accessible before the update, Apple said.
The Mac maker recommends that all owners of the 802.11n device first install AirPort Base Station Update 2007-001 before attempting to update to the latest firmware.
MacGuru Bob Glenn writes:
A problem with the mouse in Windows XP (using a 17" iMac, 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 10 GB partition created with Boot Camp 1.2)....
The installation of XP went smoothly, except that I had to use keyboard commands in the options dialogues. The mouse would move the cursor but clicking wouldn't activate a button.
In Windows itself the same problem occurs, making Windows unusable. Moving the mouse brings popup windows all over the screen, clicking the mouse does nothing. Can open and close windows only by highlighting a choice and using the Enter key, or by a keyboard command. The popup windows seem to take priority, but even when they go away clicking does nothing.
Is there a way to make the one-button mouse that comes with the iMac work in XP?
Thanks for any advice.
Bob might want to look at these Apple Boot Camp docs. Along with being sure to have the latest version of Boot Camp (1.2), Mac OS X (10.4.9) and Firmware.
If you have additional or better information please contact Bob and me.
Firmware updates for Intel-based Macintosh computers may not be displayed automatically using Software Update. If they do not appear in Software Update, they must be manually downloaded from the Apple Support Downloads site.
If you are unsure whether your computer needs a particular update, simply download and open the update installer. The installer will alert you if the firmware update is already installed or not needed. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
So we asked Scott MacGregor, Thunderbird's lead engineer, why anyone needs Thunderbird these days, and he had a pretty good answer. He also talked about Mozilla's open-source development model and told us what new features to expect when Thunderbird 2 becomes available. -- Wired.
Mac OS X applications typically store preference settings in plist files, such as "com.apple.Mail.plist". In Mac OS X 10.3.9 and earlier, plist files were typically in XML format. In Mac OS X 10.4 and later, plist files are often in binary format for faster application performance. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
McFixIt has previously reported that there are differences in quality of QuickTime-exported video on Intel and PowerPC-based Macs. Well today they have screenshots.
An InfoWorld column attempts to counteract the perception that Mac OS X's apparent invulnerability to serious security issues is due to factors other than an inherently secure structure. "If an OS is built on shaky ground, everything layered on top will suffer. This is the position that Microsoft is in now. Apple was in this very position at the end of the last century. They decided to start over, providing a clear upgrade path and supporting legacy applications on the new platform. OS X was developed from BSD and NeXT, built on a foundation that dates back twenty years or more, with the OS base code freely available for download, yet there have been no significant security vulnerabilities in OS X. This isn't due to market share, this isn't due to lack of attention, this is due to proper coding and development."
Primate Labs has a processor performance comparison of almost all the Intel Macs Apple's shipped over the past sixteen months (the only omission being the new Xeon-based Xserve). It's interesting to see just how little processor performance varies across the entire Intel Mac lineup (except for the quad-core Mac Pro, of course).
Apple's latest update to Boot Camp (version 1.2) specifically includes drivers for running Windows Vista on a Mac. So it's time for Macworld's official Windows Vista for Mac review. -- Macworld UK.
Pros: Good for playing games, running the odd program that doesn't come in a Mac version, a lot better looking than Windows XP, screen doesn't break up as much, doesn't crash as often as Windows XP
Cons: Still a bit clumsy under the hood, no really innovative new features, takes up a lot of your hard drive space, costs a lot of money, restrictive EULA, Vista can't access Mac file system
We've noticed that one of the signs that a language is becoming mainstream (and perhaps being abandoned by the cutting edge developers) is that the For Dummies book becomes the top seller. -- O'Reilly Radar.
On Sunday, with a hundred better things to do but no incentive to do them, I put together an Apple TV plug-in that allows you to run any Perl script you place into a folder in your home directory. (/Users/frontrow/perlbin). The idea is this: a lot of people know how to write Perl who don't want to learn to program Cocoa. And you can add new scripts from your normal office work computer (via ssh) but have them all available from Apple TV. You can do date & time, calendars, stock quotes, weather, and so forth. Scrape web pages, subscribe to RSS feeds, whatever. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Google Desktop for Mac has been some time coming, a long way behind its sister app for Windows. But now it's arrived, so let's take a good look around the OS X version and see what's inside. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
I've noticed a slight uptick in misinformation about the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio format. It could be coincidence, but I suspect it's a result of Apple's recent push towards selling DRM-free music on the iTunes Store. There are some people who have long insisted that Apple's grand scheme for the iPod and iTunes hinges on proprietary file format lock-in, and I think what they're doing now is grasping for some way to continue making this argument. -- Daring Fireball.
I've noticed that there's been a little bit of confusion out there about WebKit. As new people come over to check out the WebKit nightly builds, it may not be exactly clear what they're getting. So I wanted to write a quick post to clear a few things up. -- Surfin' Safari.
Like most other Mac users, when I'm traveling, I often need to connect to a Wi-Fi network to access the Internet for email and Web browsing. But what if there are multiple available networks and I don't know which would be best to use? -- TidBITS.
I strongly recommend that you make plans to attend the UT Men's and Women's Chorales Ensemble Concert on Tuesday, April 10 at 8:00 pm in the James R. Cox Auditorium. Be there or be square.
And people can fly. In the movies. -- The Programming Blog.
You can use the Bluetooth File Exchange application to transfer files between Bluetooth-enabled devices.
If there are no devices available, make sure they are in "discoverable" mode. To make your computer discoverable, select Discoverable in the Settings tab of the Bluetooth preferences pane. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
A Mac Pro (8-core) computer looks like a quad-core Mac Pro computer. Here is how you can identify a Mac Pro (8-core) computer. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
With the release of Mac Pro (8-core) computers, Apple has qualified additional memory and hard drive options. Apple memory and hard drive kits designed for Mac Pro (8-core) computers are compatible with all Mac Pro computers (quad-core or 8-core).
Important: Mac Pro memory and hard drive kits designed for quad-core Mac Pro computers only are not qualified for use with a Mac Pro (8-core) computers. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Apple kits compatible with all Mac Pro computers (quad-core and 8-core)
Part Number and description
Apple kits compatible only with quad-core Mac Pro computers
Part Number and description
Safari is compatible with secure websites, such as those that use 128-bit encryption. Learn how to recognize a secure connection, and how to avoid a fake.
Websites that deal in personal or financial information typically offer secure connections. With a secure connection, your data is encrypted so that it cannot be easily read by anyone who might intercept it between your computer and the website. Safari works with websites that use 128-bit "strong" encryption.
Important: You should not enter any sensitive information on a form if you are not sure it is secure. If a legitimate organization requests sensitive information on an insecure form, you should consider contacting them via telephone instead. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
After successfully installing an HP product, the HP Setup Assistant loads each time the computer is started and will not go away.
The HP Setup Assistant is designed to load each time the computer is started until the user successfully completes the Setup Assistant. This issue occurs after the user successfully installs the HP product and completes the HP Setup Assistant.
Follow these steps to resolve the issue. -- HP.
Sharing sensitive documents electronically doesn't necessarily require applications like Adobe Acrobat to encrypt and protect your data. Mac OS X includes its own PDF encryption tool, no extra charge. -- The Mac Observer.
Mozilla released Thunderbird 2.0 RC 1, the first release candidate for Version 2 of the open source mail and news reader. Features of the new version include a Universal Binary for Mac OS X, message tags, updated interface visuals, session history navigation, folder views, improved extension support, improved offline management, folder summary popups, find-as-you-type, and more. Thunderbird is free for Mac OS X 10.2 and up, Linux, and Windows.
VMware released Fusion 1.0B3 Build 43733, a new beta-test version of its virtualization software that enables Intel-based Macs to run other x86 operating systems in virtual machines alongside Mac OS X. This beta release brings support for Boot Camp (with automatic detection of the Boot Camp partition), an option to disable debugging code for greatly improved performance, a Windows Easy Install, virtual machine packages, streamlined creation of virtual machines, Host-Only networking, an improved hardware editor, and more.
Despite Apple's historical tendency to shy away from the enterprise IT market, the company's new Intel-based Macs have begun turning heads at big businesses looking to accommodate a broader spectrum of users. An IT manager of a Fortune 500 company is considering purchasing Macs for mainstream enterprise deployment, according to PC Magazine, as well as for its graphics and advertising departments.
When Apple quietly released the new AirPort Extreme Base Station ($179) at Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, people got excited. And who wouldn't get excited? There's a lot to love about this new local area wireless networking system! The AirPort Base Station now features three LAN ports, the ability to connect a shared USB network hard drive ("AirPort Disk"), the ability to connect a USB hub, and support for 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n wireless standards. Plus, it works with your Apple TV.
If you're lucky enough to have one of these new Base Stations, you're probably going to need some help setting it up. Of course, Apple's made the set up pretty easy. But as any experienced network administrator knows, setting up a wireless network is a black art. -- Macinstruct.
Two Apple patents have appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office that may reflect features in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard"). One (number 20070079255) is for a "graphical user interface for computers having variable size icons." The other (number 20070076254) is for a "centralized queue in network printing systems." -- Macsimum News.
An Apple patent (number 20070079027) for "audio status information for a portable electronic device" has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It obviously regards the iPod, the upcoming iPhone perhaps yet-unseen Apple products. -- Macsimum News.
Apple Inc. has graced the public with another smooth, white, exquisitely designed gadget, this time aiming at making it easier to play iTunes movies and songs on the living-room TV set.
Too bad, then, that where looks really matter -- in the quality of the video on the TV screen -- the $299 Apple TV comes up very short. It's as if Apple had launched an iPod that sounded like a cassette player. -- Associated Press.
With EMI offering higher quality music files for a small extra cost, you have to wonder whether it's worth it. Can you, in fact, tell the difference?
PC World has produced a page with a quick challenge. Eric Dahl has posted very short clips of Mozart and R.E.M.'s Man on the Moon in both 128kbps and 256kbps AAC so you can have a listen.
While attending the Future of Web Apps conference in London I noticed a lot of attendees used Macs. My friend John Topley, who I was attending with, has been trying to get me to buy a Mac for years and had a MacBook with him. As he started showing me the software you get with it I was blown away. It was absolutely clear that a lot of the new GUI (Graphical User Interface) in Vista is directly copied from Mac OS X - except it makes more sense in the Mac as all of the GUI conforms to the same rules. Straight out of the box there's a bunch of useful software to let you create music, video, photo books and a host of other things you have to pay for with Windows. I looked at the Mac vs. PC adverts and they started to make sense - Windows machines are work-orientated and pretty dull on the whole, whereas Macs seemed more fun and creative at heart. And I'd lost count of the number of bloggers out there who've switched from PCs to Mac and never looked back. -- John's Adventures.
There are plenty of useful ways to put an old Mac to work around the house. Macworld has shown us some simple projects that can turn an old PowerPC Mac into a useful member of your household. In previous installments, they have detailed ways to turn your older machine into a family message center, security system, backup server and a digital easel for the kids. Today they help you decide when it's time to say goodbye.
BusinessWeek argues that the Apple/EMI DRM-free tunes deal is a huge boost for AAC as a standard. Is it that simple? -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Mark Hoekstra details how to replace an iPod's HDD with flash memory. It's not an inexpensive procedure, as 16 Gigs of flash memory is still a mite expensive, and the post is not a 'how-to'. Just the same, the project took painstaking work and is well worth recognizing.
While unveiling a version of its professional desktop system that sports 8 cores of processing power on Wednesday, Apple also cut prices on its matching array of Cinema Display flat panel monitors.
The new display pricing offers its steepest discount to the 30-inch Cinema HD model, which has fallen $200 in cost to $1,799.
Apple's other HD display offering, the 23-inch Cinema Display HD, shed $100 off its price tag and now retails for $899. Similarly, the 20-inch non-HD Cinema display pricing dropped down to 599 from $699.
No other changes appear to have affected the Apple display line, which otherwise includes a DVI Display Connector, 2 FireWire 400 ports, and a 2 port USB 2.0 Hub, on each model.
All three of the displays are VESA mount compatible. The 30-inch model requires graphics card with dual-link DVI.
If you're looking for some new videos to watch on your iPod or are a fan of films in general, you'll probably be happy to hear that the finalists for The Flux's 2007 iPod Film Festival have been announced. For those of you not in the know (myself included), The Flux is a web site "designed to bridge the gap between student filmmakers and their potential audience." Their first annual iPod Film Festival was quite a hit last year, apparently, and it's back again this year. -- Ars Technica.
There has been a great deal of fanfare, complaint and uproar over the Apple TV hard drive being only 40GB. Given the size of video content, and that Apple offer an iPod with an 80GB drive, it does seem rather strange.
Well, that's because Apple seem to be planning additional models for the Apple TV. Keen eyed reader, eirikso, noticed that the Apple Store presents the Apple TV in the same manner as products that have multiple versions. -- Apple TV Hacks.
Some good starting points for improving your WYSIWYG-skills can be useful. On the page we tried to cover some of the most useful references, tutorials, ideas and sketches related to Adobe Dreamweaver (initially called Macromedia Dreamweaver). -- Smashing Magazine.
Learn how some versions of Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant (included with Mac OS X 10.4 or later, in the Utilities folder) can easily transfer data from a previous Mac to a new one. This document applies to Mac OS X 10.4 and computers that ship with Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later, such as Power Mac G5 (June 2004) computers. Setup/Migration Assistant on these computers includes a data migration feature. The data copied by the Assistant is not deleted from your previous Mac. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Electronics reports that Intel will begin production of its 45nm Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year. The processors, which will feature enhancements to the Intel Core microarchitecture, will take advantage of Hi-k process technology. The hafnium based high k and metal gate transistor design brings higher performance and more energy efficient operation. First to be announced is the Quad Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series, available in 2 and 2.33GHz versions.
The question lots of you were waiting for has finally been answered. There's now an eight-core option for the Mac Pro, something that's been a long time coming. But there's a good reason why this product took so long to arrive, and it's not because Apple was cooling its heels or developing a major upgrade for Apple's professional desktop line.
I do wonder how much can a pair of quad-core processors boost performance, and how many applications in a content creator's palette can really take advantage of all that power.
In just a few months, that quad-core 3GHz Clovertown will be obsolete. During the second half of 2007, Intel will be introducing a new processor family that'll beat the pants off anything available now. Code-named Penryn, these processors will, according to Intel, "benefit from enhancements to the Intel Core microarchitecture and also Intel's industry-leading 45nm Hi-k process technology with its hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors." -- MacNightOwl.
'I used to think that the Macintosh was something used by free spirits just to be different,' he says. 'Now I realize the Mac has such superior human factor engineering that it's used by people because they can be more productive. If Apple comes up with a 2- or 2.5-pound 12-inch-screen laptop that runs cool, has better integration with Exchange, and if Vista turns out to be the beast it could be, then I probably will move to a Mac.' -- CIO.
Christopher Breen took a first look at Apple TV, remarked on what might be, answered your questions, and, finally, issued judgment. It's now time to wrap up the loose ends with some final thoughts on all that is Apple TV. An after spending a week with the Apple TV, Jason Snell came to a simple conclusion: Apple TV puts the Mac mini and Front Row to shame. -- Macworld.
Today, Google released Google Desktop for Mac, which, in a nutshell, is more or less a competitor to Spotlight. I've only had time to give it a cursory examination, but it's clearly a deep and complex set of software. I say "set" because Google Desktop is not just one piece of software, it's a system with numerous components. A simple drag-and-drop installation wouldn't work. -- Daring Fireball.
Almost two and a half years after the debut of Google Desktop for Windows, the Google team has unveiled a beta version for the Mac. We took it for a drive before the general release. -- Ars Technica.
One potential Apple TV customer wants to see an application that will allow any type of video to be streamed to an Apple TV, and is offering $100 to anyone who writes one. -- Ars Technica.
Elgato is trying hard not to let the Apple TV overshadow what the company has done for the Mac for a while, and that's provide a decent video-encoding and viewing experience on the Mac. So it makes sense that Elgato is readying a new piece of hardware for use with Macs that will encode H.264 video. -- Ars Technica.
Numerous sites have implemented "keyword rollover" advertisements that are inline with content. Generally they appear as underlined or double-underlined text strings that are part of an article or other content, and trigger a bubble-shaped pop-up whenever the mouse scrolls over them.
Unfortunately, routines for blocking these advertisements -- which can interfere with the display of content and significantly slow page load times -- are not built-in to most browsers, as are routines for blocking traditional pop-up or pop-under ads. With the use of a shareware utility called PithHelmet, however, you can eliminate the display of these ads while leaving other advertisements and site features intact. -- MacFixIt.
As noted in MacFixIt's AirPort/wireless troubleshooting tutorial, resetting your Intel-based Mac's SMC (system management controller) or PowerPC-based Mac's PMU (power management unit) can prove highly remedial for a situation where AirPort hardware is suddenly not recognized after restart, wake-from-sleep or system update.
Instructions for resetting the SMC for various Intel-based Mac models are contained in the following Apple Knowledge Base articles:
Instructions for resetting the PMU for various PowerPC-based Mac models are contained in the following Apple Knowledge Base articles:
Resetting NVRAM may also resolve some AirPort-related power issues. In order to perform this process, shut down your Mac, then start it back up while immediately holding the following keys: Command, Option, P and R. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the third time. -- MacFixIt.
Joe Kissel looks at six different spam filters for Mac OS X. Because most of these programs employ Bayesian filters that learn from both good and bad email to become more accurate over time, their accuracy will vary from person to person according to what you feed them. And, because spammers adjust their tactics to continually outsmart filters, results may differ from day to day too. But in general, I've found that filters' effectiveness increase as they bring a greater number of techniques to bear on spam. -- Datamation.
When AirPort Utility 5.1 or later is opened ("launched"), it automatically checks all accessible AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Stations' firmware. If a newer firmware version is available from Apple, you'll be notified and presented with onscreen instructions to download and install the base station(s) firmware and update your base station(s).
Alternatively, you can update Base Station firmware manually:
Four new Mac-compatible architectural applications have been released. Interstudio is shipping Domus.CAD 14, and DigiCAD 3D 8.5. Abvent has release two new CDs containing upwards of 1,600 shaders and 3D objects. -- MacNN.
Pretec has announced what it says is the world's thinnest industrial 2.5-inch SATA Flash Disk. It has a thickness of 5.8mm and capacities from 256MB to 16GB.
Pretec Super-Thin 2.5-inch SATA Flash Disks offers a storage solution for system designs that utilize SATA or IDE interfacing for boot disk and or data storage access. They support PIO mode 6 and UDMA mode 5, providing transfer rates of up to 40MB/sec read and 38MB/sec write with under 1.5 ms access time. The Pretec Super-Thin 2.5-inch SATA Flash Disk also offers low power consumption of 32.2mA (Max) during read operations, 40.3mA (Max) during write operations, and 4mA during stand-by.
Compliant with 2.5-inch IDE form factor (physical specifications) and ATA-5 Specification, Pretec Super-Thin 2.5-inch SATA Flash Disk Super-Thin and 2.5-inch IDE Flash Disk are built as disk drive replacements for rugged notebook computers, tablet PCs or industrial applications requiring resistance to shock and vibration. In addition, extended and high operation temperature rated versions are available allowing for operation in harsh environmental conditions from -20°C to 85°C and -40°C to 85°C. -- Macsimum News.
Meet the latest addition to the Mac Pro family: The world's first 3.0GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro. Consider the bar officially raised. And it's shipping within 3-5 business days. Starts at $3,997 for the default configuration. Dual-cores are still available.
File this one in the "interesting to know and possibly useful" category. TextEdit, at least in 10.4, has the ability to combine multiple multi-page PDFs into one document. How? It's actually amazingly simple: just drag each PDF from the Finder into a blank TextEdit document. Note that for this to work, the document must be in Rich Text mode (Format -> Make Rich Text). It doesn't matter if the PDFs are single- or multi-page; you can mix and match as you wish. -- Macworld.
This shell scripting primer from Apple has been around since May of last year, but in case you missed it. It introduces basic shell concepts and shows you how to create subroutines, use regular expressions, and perform math. A nice find for pointing people to who are just getting started with scripting. -- .
Plagiarism today is heavily invested with morality surrounding intellectual honesty. That is laudable. But truly distinguishing plagiarism is a matter of intent. Did I mean to copy, was it accidental (a trick of memory), was it polygenesis[?] ... Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers. -- Washington Post.
This site has a tutorial on using Google Maps with your photo album. Each album has a latitude and longitude so it shows up as a pin on a map of the world. When you click a pin, up pops the highlight photo for the albums at that location. Clicking again brings up that album. Makes a great front page to a gallery. Includes a demo with 200 albums from the author's travels. He provides all his code for interfacing with Google maps. Seriously awesome feature for people who travel a lot.
European researchers have built prototypes that combine plastic solar cells with ultra thin, flexible batteries. But don't throw away your battery recharger just yet. -- MIT Technology Review.
I recently had a chance to talk with Thom Sawicki, technology strategist for the Intel Communications Technology Lab, about the company's ongoing 80-core "Terascale computing" research initiative. Sawicki brought me up to speed on where Intel is headed with the project, and gave some hints as to the kinds of announcements we can expect to see from the company in the coming year. -- Ars Technica.
MacResearch is looking for the feedback from the scientific community once again. The last time they were looking for feedback was just a hair over a year ago, regarding scientists' concerns and issues over the PPC-to-Intel transition. This time around, they are in need of feedback for the annual Tri-Cameral meeting. The organization is holding the meeting with Apple on April 4-5 (just a few days from now) to discuss the "issues, requests, and needs that scientists using Apple products have on the platform."
The meeting is held in conjunction with sister organizations, MacEnterprise.org and MacLearningEnvironments.org. According to the posting, they're in desperate need for responses as they've only gotten around 30 so far and would like more before determining the discussion's topic list. If you're involved in science-related stuff and use a Mac, make your voice known so that it'll eventually make its way up to the big guys!
Feedback can be made all the way up until 5 PM PST (8 PM EST) tomorrow night.
For writers like me, and for many others, all the software and storage space you really need is now online. All that matters is that you have your browser -- and at the risk of sparking another flame war, I recommend Firefox. -- lifehack.org.
Some people simply can't understand why anyone would want to use an old computer. One person asked me: "Why use a Lisa (or any machine more than three years old) for writing or anything else? I can't believe how naive some people are. I mean, really, just because something is old doesn't mean it's useless. -- LowEndMac.
During a press conference on Monday, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs announced that iTunes will soon begin selling DRM-free music tracks from record label EMI and later fielded questions on the prospect of DRM-free videos, the affect of higher bit-rate tracks on future iPod capacities and more. -- AppleInsider.
iPods are more than this decade's WalkMan -- a fact that keeps Sony execs sucking down Mylanta faster than you can say "Wasabi!!" Still some of you may not realize the full potential of that little jewel you hold in your hands (no, the other jewel). So, here's my list of fifty iPod uses; I picked fifty because it's a nice round number and I was getting tired of writing. -- iPodObserver.
The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro glances at three Office suites for Mac OS X: Office 2008, NeoOffice, and Apple's iWork. "For a long time, the best productivity suite on the Mac was the only productivity suite on the Mac--Microsoft's Office 2004 (still one of my favorite Microsoft releases). Only Windows users had real alternatives to Microsoft, such as OpenOffice and Corel's WordPerfect Office. Now that's changing. With NeoOffice and, eventually, OpenOffice, Mac users have a free option; with a reinvigorated iWork, they may get a better option."
I have been giving some thought to some things coming in our future and I thought I would share. As always I have no knowledge, as I am constantly reminded. This just my opinion based on what I read and hear.
First, since Leopard is in our future (I am betting on June) I hope that you have a second hard disk, or have partitioned your big hard drive or your drive is large enough to run archive and install. The reason I say this is because Leopard (10.5) will be as different from Tiger (10.4) as Tiger (10.4) was from Panther (10.3). You may remember my recommendations for that installation. They are worth reviewing because I believe the extensive changes/improvements to Leopard will require caution in installing it.
To run Mac OS X Leopard, you must have a Macintosh computer with:
Next is hardware. I see three things which will have a major impact on the laptop. They are LED screens, flash memory and flash hard drives.
Each of these technologies offers many advantages to the laptop and desktop but the laptop will be the big winner. That is because these new technologies run cooler, faster, are brighter and all use less energy. A real win for laptop users.
Now as to when these things will be shipping from Apple. The technology already exists. It does not have to be developed. The flash drives have to get bigger, at least 250GB, 500GB would be better. The rest is just integrating it into existing hardware and software (drivers, tools, etc.) So I think we will hear something from Apple by the January 2008 Macworld SF. It could happen sooner (or later) since Steve doesn't check with me as much as he used. to.
Anyway, that's one man's opinion.
The O'Reilly School of Technology has officially opened its virtual doors with educational offerings for students looking to further or launch their IT careers. The school is a partnership between O'Reilly Media and the University of Illinois,
Students at the O'Reilly School of Technology can earn a certificate for Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education upon completion of a selected series of courses. Certificates are currently offered in Client-Side Web Programming, Linux/Unix System Administration, Web Programming, Open Source Programming, and .NET Programming.
Courses are offered at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. Whether students take the courses individually or with a certificate in mind, the completion of each course earns Continuing Education Units from the University of Illinois, and count toward the certificates that include that course.
Apple has has seven entries on the "50 best tech products of all time" list by PC World. Apple products on the list are: the Apple II (2), the iPod (6), Apple Macintosh Plus (14), iTunes 4 (21), Mac OS X (30), AirPort Base Station (34) and HyperCard (41) [Personally I don't know how the Apple LaserWriter didn't make the list.]
Apple has been granted patents for a method for presenting computer-generated characters, a menu authoring for automatically performing low-level DVD configuration functions by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. -- Macsimum News.
Independent UK developer Ben Bird has upgraded his video surveillance system for Mac users, SecuritySpy. The system offers powerful video surveillance features for Mac users aiming to protect their home or business -- motion detection, real-time compression and network video streaming. -- Macworld UK.
We all love the new Get a Mac ads here in the United States but Apple has a presence all over the world and the Get a Mac ads are just as popular elsewhere. These are from Japan and we in the west can appreciate those Japanese ads thanks to Coal an Editor/Translator/Publisher at Restall.org from Ota-ku Japan.
Erica Sadun has been hacking away on the new Apple TV and presents this "State of the Hacks" roundup of what people are doing with their Apple TV boxes. Discover what kinds of mods are out there and whether they're the right fit for your needs and abilities. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Skim is a PDF reading and note-taking app for Mac OS X that is designed to make reading research papers and manuals better. Just like in Preview, you can search, scan, and zoom through PDFs, but you also get some custom features for your workflow. -- Michael McCracken.
I'm a geek, and I've been supporting everyone in my family for most of my life, but enough is enough. When I realized the local big box retailer was on her like a used car salesman on a trust-funder, I knew what I had to do. She needed to switch to a Mac. -- TidBITS.
Apple today announced that EMI Music's entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunesŪ Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today--128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM--at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available. -- Apple PR.
Apple over the weekend announced it will be offering Major League Baseball video highlights for the 2007 season on the iTunes Store, giving baseball fans the ability to catch all the action of their favorite teams anywhere, anytime. MLB video on iTunes will include a daily 25 minute "MLB.com Daily Rewind" highlight show and two weekly "Games of the Week," featuring full versions of the best games from the National and American Leagues. Customers will be able to download individual episodes of "MLB.com Daily Rewind" and each "Game of the Week" for $1.99, or purchase a Multi-Pass for a month of Daily Rewind shows for $7.99 or a Season Pass for every "Game of the Week" at just $19.99. -- Apple PR.
It's been a year and a quarter since my last Mac POP 3 email client roundup article was posted, and it continues to be one of my most often referenced archives in response to reader queries. As with previous guides, I've focused mainly applications that can serve as full, standard POP 3 email client applications that can send, receive, and archive email, but this time have also added a section on other "hybrid and helper" email utilities that do other things like checking mail on your server and deleting spam before downloading or adding POP access to Webmail accounts.
We're approaching the Apple TV from a slightly different perspective than most of Apple's prospective customers. We've had a Mac mini hooked up to our TV ever since the mini's launch in 2005 and acting as an HTPC-like device for all of our non-live-TV needs. Our mini, which we upgraded to a Mac mini core solo last year, is able to stream music and video content through iTunes from other Macs and PCs in the house--just as the Apple TV can--but it can also play a wide variety of other files. The mini acts as a DVD player, and it can function as a DVR with the use of an Elgato eyeTV. It is a full-fledged computer, after all, with the TV as its monitor. -- Ars Technica.
Mac Office 2008 will be the last major application for the Mac to be released as a Universal Binary. With Adobe CS being released next month, Steve Jobs will be able to declare yet another transition as being "over" sometime in the second half of the year. -- Ars Technica.
If you are experiencing frequent kernel panics or random shut downs, perhaps it is time to take a look at the little-known (and free) Apple Hardware Test app that ships with every Mac. -- Macenstein.
Even though the iPod is the most important thing to happen to music since the CD, music from an iPod sounds significantly worse than it does from the CD. And yet music from an iPod seems to be the preferred source. Moreover, iTunes music isn't recorded in any of the advanced surround sound formats. -- iPod Observer.
Clarification of what software can be updated Thanks to Apple's somewhat cryptic release notes, there is confusion over the specific hardware configurations/models that can accept AirPort Base Station Update 2007-001. To clarify, the update will only update the following applications (note the distinction between AirPort Utility and AirPort Admin Utility):
Additionally, it appears that if you do not have AirPort Utility 5.0 already installed, AirPort Base Station Update 2007-001 will inexplicably (and confusingly) block installation of AirPort Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow Base stations 4.2.5. You can, however, force installation of the new AirPort Admin Utility via the following method:
You can also use this method to force installation of AirPort Utility 5.1, which can be used to control older base stations as well as the newer AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Station. Simply follow the same steps for "Contents of AirPortUtility.pkg > Applications > Utilities> AirPort Utility.app" in Pacifist.
It is as of yet unclear why Apple is blocking installation of these updates on systems that do not have AirPort Utility 5.0 already installed.
After installing the update update, you should launch the appropriate application -- either AirPort Utility or AirPort Admin Utility -- from /Applications/Utilities. Upon launching, the application will check any connected AirPort Base stations' firmware, and offer to update the firmware if applicable.
Files modified The AirPort Base Station Update 2007-001 package (AirPortBaseStationUpdate2007001.mpkg) is a metapackage that consists of three smaller packages -- AirPortUtility.pkg, AirPortDisk.pkg, APAdminUtility.pkg. If you have installed the software accompanying the AirPort Extreme 802.11n Base Station, the first two packages will be installed. If you have installed the software accompanying either the Snow or Graphite AirPort Base stations, the third package will be installed.
The full list of files that can be modified by this update is as follows:
The Boston Globe reports that Avid has announced availability Universal Binary editions of Media Composer and Avid Xpress Pro. Avid also said that its version 2.7 of the Media Composer system introduces a script-based editing tool that uses phonetic speech-recognition technology to automatically sync text with media.
InformIT culls the best tools for getting media onto the Apple TV. As wide as the range of video sources and formats is outside of what the Apple TV supports, there is also a range of tools for capturing, converting, and adding that video to the iTunes library in a format that can be viewed on the Apple TV.
REAL Software has released REALbasic 2007 Release 2, bringing 18 new features and over 100 bug fixes, including significant improvements to the incremental compiler and debugger.
Apple TV isn't designed to play DVDs, but users have expressed enormous interest using it for that purpose, simply because DVDs are the most obvious and common source for movies, and many people already have a library of titles. Here's a rather intense look at the complications involved in moving DVDs to the Apple TV, why QuickTime does not play DVDs itself, and the pros and cons related to four different options to getting DVDs on Apple TV. -- Roughly Drafted.
Security pros say the Mac platform isn't a high-risk operating system and is more secure than Microsoft's Windows XP. -- InfoWorld.
Mac OS X is a top-notch operating system, but, like all systems, there are always things it can't do, or could do better. That's where applications come in. What follows are some cool and useful tools for the enterprise. No doubt, we can live without them, but they've made my Mac experience more complete and more fun, too. -- InformationWeek.
Ashlar-Vellum reportedly released the new Graphite v8 on March 25th, meeting their first quarter 2007 deadline. The news comes via a newsletter, however there is no indication of this shipping version on their corporate website as of yet. -- Architosh.
A pair of studies on storage technology reveal some disturbing facts about disk drive performance and reliability. -- Network Computing.
