MacBook Pro Software Update 1.0 provides important bug fixes and is recommended for all 2.2/2.4GHz MacBook Pro models. This update requires Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later.
Speaking alongside AT&T's recently promoted CEO Randall Stephenson about the iPhone's release in a joint interview, Jobs delivered a small but significant hint that Apple would quickly address concerns about integrating its phone mail client with business e-mail systems. -- USAToday.
Apple held a somewhat rare, company-wide virtual meeting with Steve Jobs this morning (11am Pacific Time), wherein Steve Jobs discussed the gravity of the iPhone on Apple's business as well as how he perceives the parts played by the rest of the company. The following is a series of notes produced by combining details from several of Ars Technica's internal sources. -- Ars Technica.
If you want to set the volume below the minimum volume control level, but still have it audible, do the following. Turn the volume down to 0 bars (absolutely down) manually, but don't hit the Mute key. Then press the Mute key, which OS X will interpret as "unmute" as the volume is set to zero, and voilà. The sound should still be going, but very quietly. -- Mac OS X Hints.
Apple maintains a channel for reporting software bugs that is separate from normal support lines:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
This method of contacting Apple can help specific issues gain credence and result in faster turnaround on official fixes. If, for example, everyone disturbed by the periodic audio pops that started with the 10.4.10 update were to register their displeasure directly in this way, Apple might be minded to raise the priority for issuing a corrective patch. The same applies to any problems you believe to have been introduced by Apple's software. Numbers count, so we cannot do this for you: only the overwhelming preponderance of reports can have an effect.
Mac and iPod parts dealer iFixit, developer of excellent Mac and iPod take-apart guides, will be providing a live blog of the disassembly of an iPhone immediately after its release today.
We will stream live images and descriptions of the disassembly as we go. Our technicians will also be analyzing the internals and posting component descriptions and design analysis.
The live disassembly will also be posted at that address. "We're excited to see how Apple's engineers have crammed so much functionality into an iPod form factor," commented Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit. "We'll be posting professional images as fast as we can take them, as well as writing disassembly instructions. We're using the same AJAX technology to publish this live guide as we use in our web store."
iFixit will also release a complete Fixit Guide for the iPhone next week.
A wave of iPhone patents have surfaced today just ahead of Apple's planned iPhone launch. The U.S. Patent &; Trademark Office has published a series of iPhone related patent applications which include unlocking the iPhone by performing gestures of an unlock image, a scrolling list with floating adjacent index symbols, a soft key interaction indicator, an acceleration-based theft detection system for portable electronic devices, and account information display for portable communication devices. Apple this past Tuesday also won a network computer (NC) related patent dating back to 1999 which notes the cellular phone NC in the same paragraph as an Apple TV-like device. -- MacNN.
Apple today made one of the final introductions for the iPhone in advance of its 6PM launch, introducing the accessories that will be available in shops and through the online Apple Store later today. Most notable are previously unannounced accessories: the Bluetooth Travel Cable (pictured right, $29) is meant for travelers who need to charge the Apple-made Bluetooth headset and iPhone at the same time, while the now confirmed Dual Dock ($49, left) adds the same headset slot to the company's desktop cradle. A TTY Adapter ($9) lets the deaf attach Teletype into the phone to communicate with others.
Ahead of the iPhone launch this evening, Apple today released iTunes 7.3, an update to its software for managing digital music and video, iPod connectivity, and now iPhone activation/synchronization. The software, available as a 34MB download via the Web or Software Update, allows users to activate iPhone service and sync it with your music, TV shows, movies and more. In addition, Apple said that users can now wirelessly share and enjoy their favorite digital photos from any computer in home with Apple TV.
Steve Jobs concedes a point on the speed of AT&T's EDGE network, the iPhone accessory market may have a slow start, Speck launches its own series of iPhone cases, and Marketcircle updates iPhoney to 1.1. Apple CEO Steve Jobs admits that cellular Internet on the iPhone will be slow. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, he comments that while AT&T's EDGE network is "great for mail, and it works well for maps," it can be disappointing for web browsing. "It's good enough, but you wish it was a little faster." His hope is that most iPhone users will be able to use the automatic Wi-Fi roaming, which connects to unsecured points without prompting. The size and battery drain of current receivers is cited as the main reason for not using 3G broadband.
This week we're offering part one of our two-part series on alarm monitoring software for the Mac. -- Macsimum News.
According to Murphy's law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This holds especially true for mechanical and electronic devices. If you don't change your car's motor oil, your engine will eventually seize up. And if you don't perform regularly scheduled maintenance on your Mac, your computer could be in a world of hurt.
Mac OS X is based on the Darwin operating system, which uses many FreeBSD components. In plain English, this means that your Mac has lot of UNIX-like stuff under the hood - stuff like system logs, cron jobs, system cache, and much more. If it sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, that's because it is. In fact, most Mac users will never need to delve into the UNIX side of their Macs. But there is a very important UNIX aspect of Mac OS X that concerns every Mac user, and that is background maintenance tasks. -- Macinstruct.
An Apple patent (number 20070150686) for accessing data storage systems without waiting for read errors is at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A continuation of a previous patent, it relates generally to data storage systems for use with computing systems and, more particularly, to techniques for accessing data from the data storage systems in a variety of computing devices. -- Macsimum News.
This is a computer, not a phone, says Fortune's David Kirkpatrick. Finally, we'll be able to surf the Web anywhere we want.
Apple could do a lot more with all the sensors in the iPhone. The iPhone functions, while useful and entertaining, are still pretty mundane, says Nathan Eagle, a research scientist at MIT. "These are trivial uses for what has the potential to provide a whole slew of new features and functionality," he says. Separate research taking place at MIT, Intel, and other companies suggests that, with the right software, built-in hardware such as accelerometers, light sensors, a GPS, and the phone's own microphone could provide contextual clues about people's activities and behaviors. A sensor-enabled phone could feasibly help monitor your exercise habits, keep track of an elderly relative's activities, and let your friends and family know if you're available for a call or instant-messaging conversation. It could even provide insight into social networks. -- MIT Technology Review.
Few people standing in line to buy an iPhone when it is launched in the US will be focusing on the security of Apple's new phone. But some influential security researchers already have given the matter lots of thought. -- IDG News Service.
The SuperDrive Update (for MacBooks and MacBook Pros only) improves readability of certain CD media.
Pro Application Update 2007-01 includes fixes to underlying frameworks and shared components for the updated Final Cut Studio 2 applications.
Soundtrack Pro 2.0.1 contains several updates and is recommended for all users of Soundtrack Pro 2.0.
Compressor 3.0.1 contains several updates and is recommended for all Compressor 3.0 users.
Color 1.0.1 contains several updates and is recommended for all users of Color 1.0.
Motion 3.0.1 improves stability and resolves performance issues and is recommended for all users of Motion 3.0.
Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 contains several updates and is recommended for all users of Final Cut Pro 6.0.
AT&T, the exclusive wireless carrier for iPhone in the United States, has posted a frequently asked questions list ahead of Friday's formal roll-out, indicating that it will not offer wireless insurance for the Apple handset, among other things.
A prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers has been developed by researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering. Capable of computing speeds 100 times faster than current desktops, the technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip. -- CCNews.
The iPhone will require iTunes 7.3, which has not yet been released, according to a newly revised specifications page. On the Mac side, the iPhone will require Mac OS X 10.4.10. On the Windows side, the iPhone will require Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later.
Pixar Animation Studios has announced two major releases of its Academy Award winning RenderMan software, RenderMan Studio 1.0 and RenderMan for Maya 2.0, together with a new licensing policy delivering major performance increases on multi-core computers.
A decade after Apple was pushed out of computing's mainstream, it's taking center stage in a host of other industries--with the iPhone. -- BusinessWeek.
With both the iPhone and Apple TV running versions of OS X, rumors of an in-car navigation and infotainment system are not inconceivable. -- BusinessWeek.
How the high-tech maverick became a global trendsetter. -- BusinessWeek.
Tog Tognazzini joined Apple in 1978 and worked at the company for 14 years. He explains why he thinks the iPhone will be a hit--and why Apple is so far ahead of the industry's other 'giant non-innovators.' -- BusinessWeek.
'I do have trepidation about switching from Verizon to AT&T, but I figure Steve Jobs wouldn't have made the deal if he couldn't back it up,' she said. 'Verizon has one of the largest networks, but AT&T has the iPhone.' -- c|net.
Noah Gift shows how to set up a Mac with an NFS home directory using Open Directory, integrate an existing Linux NFS file server for a cross-platform home directory, and authenticate a Linux client into Open Directory. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
It's Christmas in Summer. The iPhone arrives in just a few days, along with Pixar's new film, Ratatouille. The new Canon 1D Mark III is slowly starting to ship out to people and I was lucky enough to get mine late last week. And then, to top it all off, the 1.1 release of Lightroom is now available. There is a long laundry list of things that are new or fixed in Lightroom 1.1, and you can read up all about them in the Lightroom 1.1 Read Me PDF. All of the changes, however, are in the details. From a wide view, Lightroom looks and acts much as before. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
Apple has dropped just enough information at just regular enough intervals to create a level of anticipation for the iPhone that can only be described as off the hook. Amid all the opinions--and the frantic warnings of doom from certain analyst groups--are a few details that have been largely overlooked.
Here's a deconstruction of a few myths that have failed to take these unhidden secrets into consideration, along with the final aspect of why Apple released Safari for Windows, as I promised to reveal in the last article. It has something to do with the iPhone, of course. -- Roughly Drafted.
A new online authentication system called Dynahand could make logging in to websites a little easier. With Dynahand, users simply identify their own handwriting, instead of entering a cryptic password or buying a biometric device to scan their fingerprints. Analyzing script could ease the strain on people's memories. -- MIT Technology Review.
iPhone "does things no phone has ever done before" but also "lacks features found even on the most basic phones," writes the New York Times' David Pogue, who was one of several journalist to publish an official review of the first Apple handset on Tuesday. -- New York Times.
Despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer, writes the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, who on Tuesday published the first official review of the inaugural Apple handset. -- Wall Street Journal.
A video posted Apple's website Tuesday explains that non-AT&T customers will be able to transfer their existing mobile phone numbers to the carrier as part of iPhone's home activation process through iTunes. -- Apple.
Although Apple touts several key features for its latest Mac OS X, numerous minor but welcome changes have already been discovered, AppleInsider has learned.
AT&T Inc. and Apple Tuesday announced three simple, affordable service plans for iPhone which start at just $59.99 per month. All three plans include unlimited data, Visual Voicemail, 200 SMS text messages, roll-over minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling. With everything else already included, iPhone customers can easily choose the plan that's right for them based on the amount of voice minutes they plan to use each month. In addition, iPhone customers can choose from any of AT&T's standard service plans. -- Apple PR.
The 29th edition of the closely watched TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers shows a lot of shuffling among the top-ranked systems and the largest turnover among list entries in the history of the TOP500 project. For the fourth straight time, the BlueGene/L System development by IBM and DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and installed at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., claimed the No. 1 spot.
There were three OS X based computers on the list:
Due to the sensitive nature of security information, Apple provides a method for you to:
Common Criteria is an internationally approved set of security standards that provides a clear and reliable evaluation of the security capabilities of Information Technology products. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
This page contains previous Apple Product Security PGP keys. These are useful in the event that messages signed by Apple Product Security in the past would need to be validated. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Apple has been granted a patent (number 7236528) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a system and method for processing time-based media. It involves processing sequences of images, audio sequences, and the like on a computing device such as a personal computer-things which, of course, have been mainstays of Mac computing for some time. -- Macsimum News.
Monday's iPhone roundup attempts to control some of the madness by condensing small tidbits into one post. Here, we talk about Alaskans and their wrath toward AT&T, people making bets against the iPhone, people listing ads on Craigslist for iPhone line-waiters, a line that's already forming outside of the Apple Store in NYC, and a video interview with those crazy "kids." -- Ars Technica.
The greatest legacy of the iPhone may be the ways in which it changes the mobile phone and media industries. Big changes could happen over the long term. -- New York Times.
Just because Apple doesn't offer native support for either technology doesn't mean there aren't a few clever workarounds available for nerds like us. -- Ars Technica.
Apple has included a read-only version ZFS in Leopard as a future file system option for high-end storage system. Now, according to published reports on the internet, Apple has actually seeded developers with a ZFS Read/Write Beta for Leopard. The new ZFS Read/Write beta enables full read/write capabilities to Apple's Mac OS X (Leopard). -- InformationWeek.
Learn how to troubleshoot printing issues in Mac OS X. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
MacScoop has reportedly got hold of the road map for OS X 10.5 Leopard's release. Apple has been cagey about the final release date, but did distribute the beta at WWDC, some copies of which have found their way onto torrents.
The rumored road map reveals that a new Leopard build will be seeded in early July, although only Select and Premium ADC members will receive the new build.
A full-feature build is expected to be released in August. At present, in beta form, Leopard's feature set is not frozen. However, that will change by August, but there will be new features, that are currently incomplete, that are not in the current beta.
New interface features most are subtle and evolutionary, apparently include the Dock and a new menu bar.
The Leopard FC (Final Candidate) is expected to arrive early September, followed by 4-6 weeks of system testing, before GM (Golden Master) by mid-October latest. That makes a late October retail release possible, although early November is also on the cards, if scheduled deadlines aren't met. This would still give Apple plenty of time to start pre-loading Leopard onto Mac systems for the holiday shopping season.
Murphy's Law states if anything can go wrong, it will and it most likely isn't going to be an opportune time. Because of this, you need to take precautionary methods to ensure that you are not going to be caught in a bad place with no backup of your important files. Imagine losing not only your term paper, but all of your family photos, the iMovie you created of last Christmas at grandma's, or that 10 gigs of files you have buried deep on your Mac's hard drive.
This article is not an in-depth review of a single application, but an overview of several Mac backup solutions. Like most pieces of software, there isn't a single solution that is a perfect fit for everyone. Each backup solution I look at in this article has a unique feature set to help it stand out from the competition. -- MacZealots.
Adding more memory, or RAM, is the least expensive and easiest way to upgrade your Mac. It lets you run more applications and keep more files open simultaneously. Most Macs have more than one slot to install RAM into, but certain laptops and early iMacs have limited slots, so in those cases it helps to purchase the largest memory sticks you can.
This tutorial will focus on upgrading the RAM in the Powermac G4 series computer. Some G4s have a similar RAM slot location on the motherboard, but please check your owner's manual for the exact location on your desktop model. -- Macinstruct.
Hard disk drive maker Seagate on Monday announced plans to ship 1 terabyte (TB) versions of its Barracuda 7200.11 and ES.2 internal hard disk drives in the third calendar quarter of 2007.
The new drives spin at 7,200 RPM and have average seek times of 8.5 milliseconds (ms), and feature up to 32MB of cache. The drives use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) to write data on four platters inside the mechanism. The slim design helps them operate at lower temperatures and consume less power, according to Seagate.
The ES.2 is especially designed for enterprise storage needs; the 7200.11 is aimed at desktop users. Pricing on the ES.2 was not announced, but Seagate said the 7200.11 will cost $399.99.
The USA Today article also contains an interesting sidebar interviewing Balsu Thandu, one of the individuals who has been field testing the iPhone over the past two months.
Approximately 200 field technicians have been secretly testing the iPhone for 10 weeks, logging over 10,000 hours on the phone, including over 5,000 hours of voice calls and 5 gigabytes of data usage. This is reportedly twice as much testing as other phones.
How did it come to this?
I had such good intentions.
And that new widescreen cinema display.
All for nothing.
This is the introduction to a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. -- Kinkless.
In the latest installment in his series on windowing system options for Mac developers, Jeremiah Foster takes a look at using GTK+ on OS X. If you like living on the bleeding edge, this article will show you how to install and get up and running with GTK+ on OS X. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) are systems for providing security to Internet communications, particularly Web browsing. Specifically, they use encryption to provide confidentiality (privacy) and authentication (authorization). -- TidBITS.
Security Update 2007-006, corrects a HTTP injection issue that exists in WebCore's XMLHttpRequest when serializing headers into an HTTP request. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted web page, an attacker could conduct cross-site scripting attacks, Apple said. The security update addresses the issue by performing additional validation of header parameters.
The patch also corrects an invalid type conversion that occurs when WebKit renders frame sets, which could lead to memory corruption. If exploited by a maliciously crafted web page, the vulnerability could lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution, Apple said.
On Friday, Apple issued Safari 3 Beta Update 3.0.2 for both Macs and Windows PCs. The updates includes Security Update 2007-006 and adds two Safari-specific security enhancements.
The first, Apple said, applies to a timing issue in Safari Beta 3.0.1 for Windows that allows a web page to change the contents of the address bar without loading the contents of the corresponding page.
The glitch, which does not apply to Mac OS X systems, could theoretically be used to spoof the contents of a legitimate site, allowing user credentials or other information to be gathered. Safari 3.0.2 addresses the issue by restoring the address bar contents if a request for a new web page is terminated.
The other fix, which applies to both the Mac and Windows version of Safari 3.0.1, targets a race condition in page updating that when combined with HTTP redirection may allow JavaScript from one page to modify a redirected page.
"This could allow cookies and pages to be read or arbitrarily modified," Apple explained.
Apple on Friday posted a video to its website offering prospective iPhone buyers a 25-minute guided tour of the handset.
AT&T has spent $50 million to beef up its relatively slow wireless network in anticipation of next week's well-hyped iPhone debut, but any customer who isn't wowed by the new gadget will find it costly to cancel the service, reports Boston.com.
The quest for a reason behind Microsoft's prohibition continues. We look at the argument that DRM is the cause, and after laying out our objections, we talk about why El Jobso and his fruity products are the culprit. -- Ars Technica.
Ars Technica sat down with a few of the developers who represent "The Delicious Generation" to talk about application development, the perceived rift in the Mac developer community and how that's changing for the better.
A great visual I created to show the evolution of most all Apple products created over the past 30 years. This was created to show the evolution of the form factor and industrial design of the products, not to show every single model or upgrade Apple has launched. -- Tofslie.
We come to rely more and more on server-based applications. They usually work fine, then take a trip to China and....
Which brings us back to last week's column about Apple's decision to release Safari for Windows and how that is at least in part related to the huge sucking sound of Apple removing (or hoping to remove) money from the treasury of AT&T, Apple's U.S. partner on the new iPhone, which is scheduled to ship on June 29th. Remember I described Safari for Windows as a key component for integrating Apple's networked applications, many of which will be tied into the iPhone. -- I, Cringely.
The NPD Group reported that Apple computers, both notebooks and desktops, continued to take market share away from PCs in the consumer market. -- Information Week.
This is an enhancement to this recent hint to get iTunes Plus songs to play on certain AAC-supporting devices, such as Nokia/Symbian-based mobile phones including the Nokia N95. I've tested this using a Nokia E61. -- Mac OS X Hints.
I'm excited to see Google take a bite out of MS Office, but I was bummed to see that Google Apps didn't support Safari. However that all changed with the public beta of Safari 3. Hmmm ... Office-like tools through Safari 3, and perhaps also through my iPhone. Nothing to do but switch to Safari 3, load some Google Apps such as Docs and Spreadsheets, and start working. -- Mac OS X Hints.
With more than 90 percent of the smart phone market already using ARM-based chips, CEO Warren East is loving all the attention being paid to the iPhone. -- c|net.
Apple board member and Google CEO Eric Schmidt says the iPhone will be the perfect mobile platform for Web-based applications. -- c|net.
Looking for a way to see how your web creations will look on iPhone? Look no further. iPhoney gives you a pixel-accurate web browsing environment--powered by Safari--that you can use when developing web sites for iPhone. It's the perfect 320 by 480-pixel canvas for your iPhone development. And it's free.
iPhoney is not an iPhone simulator but instead is designed for web developers who want to create 320 by 480 (or 480 by 320) websites for use with iPhone. It gives you a canvas on which to test the visual quality of your designs.
The original iPod shuffle FAQ.
The iPod shuffle (Second Generation) FAQ.
I enjoy watching the night sky, but I don't always feel like turning to a full fledged astronomy application like Starry Night Pro just to make sure the stars I am looking at are really the ones that I think they are. It seems the fancy coders at Imaginova agree, which is why they came out with the free Starry Night widget.
Mac OS X is a platform that affords development in many languages. However, the most influential branch, and the one Apple focuses on the most, is Objective-C and the Cocoa framework. At the recent WWDC, Apple introduced significant improvements to both Objective-C and their Xcode IDE, according to Tom Yager writing for Computerworld.
A new Apple ad for the YouTube feature of the iPhone was recorded and posted. -- Apple.
Yesterday MacFixIt reported that changes made to Apple's Web site have caused problems with access to .Mac webmail under various Windows browsers and the Mac OS X version of Internet Explorer. Access to .Mac works well, however, under the Windows version of Apple's Safari 3.0 beta.
It now appears that access to .Mac webmail can be achieved through most Windows Web browsers by logging on through the .Mac support page.
Another potential workaround involves right-clicking on the login link and select "Open link in new Tab." -- MacFixIt.
Apple has updated its web page on Unix support in the next version of Mac OS X (Leopard). The new operating system will contain the interfaces and programs specified by Posix 1003.1 and the Single Unix Specification Version 3 (SuSv3). -- Macsimum News.
An Apple patent (number 20070138806) for a magnetic latching mechanism has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It involves the latching mechanism on the Mactel line of Apple laptops. -- Macsimum News.
An Apple patent (number 20070138999) for protecting electronic devices from extended unauthorized use has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Interestingly, the patent offers a way to use power adapters on devices such as laptops, the iPhone, iPods and PDAs for security purposes. -- Macsimum News.
Once the underdog to video-editing applications from the likes of Adobe and Avid, Apple's Final Cut Pro has since become the industry standard for desktop cut-&-correct work. Originally targeting the software at wedding videographers and corporate video producers, Apple now has its sights on all levels of production, from single editors with local clients to those cutting Hollywood movies. -- Digital Arts.
Twenty yeas from now a new generation of computer users will look back on the operating systems of today with the same bemused smile we look back at the cars of the late 1950s and early 60s. They had huge fins, were the size of a small yacht and burned up just about as much gas.
That's right, I'm comparing Apple OS X 10.5, or Leopard, and Microsoft's Windows Vista to those old behemoths -- big and flashy and totally unnecessary. -- InfoWorld.
While Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom both perform the role of image manager and photo editor admirably, each program has plenty of unique features that set it apart. To determine which program is best for you, you'll need to assess your work style and then choose the one whose features best support that process. Rick LePage will lead you through the most significant differences and help you decide which will benefit you most. -- Macworld.
The analyst firm Gartner will tell IT executives to keep Apple's iPhone away from their networks, in a research report to be released within a week.
"We're telling IT executives to not support it because Apple has no intentions of supporting (iPhone use in) the enterprise," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says. "This is basically a cellular iPod with some other capabilities and it's important that it be recognized as such." -- Macworld.
David Pogue takes your comments about the iPhone. What issues would you like settled once and for all? -- New York Times.
According to c|net's news blog, retailer PureMobile looks to be touting unlocked eight gigabyte iPhones on its web site.
If completely kosher, an unlocked iPhone could be used on any GSM carrier as opposed to running exclusively on AT&T's network.
Currently, the web site only declares that the iPhone is "coming soon" and doesn't offer a price, but alerts the user that shipping will either be US$19 or US$29 depending on delivery speed selected.
Though an impressive idea, it's also important to note that an unlocked iPhone will be subject to the same quibbles as all other unlocked phones in that while it will be able to make calls without any problems, data features won't work out of the box. To date, no alternate carriers have come forth with any plans regarding this issue. -- .
Apple has posted a new success story over at the Developer Connection. Checkout offers a Point of Sale system built in Cocoa and Python. Checkout, is a powerful, friendly, and affordable POS system capable of running a small- to medium-size store, and is written exclusively for Mac OS X.
In a kind of strange synergistic occurrence, both Evan DiBiase over at 32584.com and I have been sleuthing (Evan's "Nancy Drew" reference!) for new Yahoo!Sync references in OS X applications, specifically Address Book. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
I just finished reading John Heileman's rather critical profile of Steve Jobs, and I have to say I didn't think it was too bad. It's definitely written for an audience that has barely even heard of Steve Jobs, so the rehashing of young Steve's mean temper and early folly seem a bit over-done to the average Apple observer. -- Cult Of The Mac.
Most of the time, we like to believe our computers have significantly advanced over the last 20 years. But some things remind us little has changed. -- Cult Of The Mac.
The 10.4.10 Update is recommended for PowerPC and Intel-based Mac computers currently running Mac OS X Tiger. This update includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
I have been running the update for some time and have had no problems on any of my Macs. But if you are the Walter Mitty type then I recommend Update Procedure for the Paranoid.
If you have been having ANY problems I recommend that you download and install the COMBO installer.
The 10.4.10 Server Update is recommended for all servers currently running Mac OS X Tiger. This update includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates for the following applications and technologies:
If you have been having ANY problems I recommend that you download and install the COMBO installer.
Apple Wednesday announced that iPhone users will be able to enjoy YouTube's originally-created content on their iPhones when they begin shipping on June 29. A new Apple-designed application on iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube's content to iPhone over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks and play it on iPhone's stunning 3.5 inch display.
In addition, Apple announced that YouTube is now live on Apple TV. Users can download the free software update using Apple TV's built-in software update feature, and then easily navigate through YouTube's familiar video browsing categories or search for specific videos. YouTube members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos. -- Apple PR.
If you ever need to FTP a file to someone PDQ, remember that Mac OS X offers built-in FTP support. If you've never taken advantage of this feature, you're in luck because this week's Mac OS X tip tells you exactly how to FTP from the Finder. -- Mac OS X Tips.
Here's a roundup of the first eight interviews and videos Ars Technica did while at WWDC last week, with a listing of the next 12 that you can expect to see soon. Yes, 12. -- Ars Technica.
Workers beseech employers to add device, but it units cite email incompatibility. -- Wall Street Journal.
They look really stunning... Must have taken many weeks to complete each of them. -- Brick Masterpieces.
iStat menus brings monitoring of your CPU, RAM, drives, network, temperatures, fans, Bluetooth and even world date and time within easy reach. -- MacTalk Forums.
The tradition of excellence promoted by Steve Jobs is legendary. Every book about him or Apple is replete with stories about how he has pushed people beyond their own perceived limits and achieved excellence in every aspect of Apple, both before and since his hiatus. Witness, for example, the expense and the effort of the CBC bound notebook that Mr. Jobs uses during his keynote demos.
It seems to me, however, that WWDC is falling out of that mold. Here are some areas where I think a fanatical attention to excellence needs to be resurrected at WWDC. -- The Mac Observer.
Apple has released an Apple TV 1.1 update that brings YouTube functionality to the device and provides the following security enhancements;
A remote attacker may be able to cause a denial of service or arbitrary code execution
A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the UPnP IGD (Internet Gateway Device Standardized Device Control Protocol) code used to create Port Mappings on home NAT gateways in the Apple TV implementation. By sending a maliciously crafted packet, a remote attacker can trigger the overflow which may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation when processing UPnP protocol packets. Credit to Michael Lynn of Juniper Networks for reporting this issue.
This update is only available directly to the Apple TV, and will not appear in the Mac OS X Software Update application, or in the Apple Downloads site.
You can manually update your Apple TV using the TV interface by selecting Settings > Update Software.
Yesterday, MacGuru Jeff Mellor starting getting the following irritating message from Mail.app on his 12" PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.3.9:
The message from XXXX@YYYY.edu concerning RE: ZZZZ has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it.
He got this for messages he had already read and was rereading, as well as for new ones.
He asks "What is going on?"
It seems that this is a known issue and Apple has posted two KnowledgeBase articles on it. I sent them along to Jeff but as yet I don't know if they helped. If you have additional or better information please share it.
A user contacted me when he was unable to unmount/eject his iDisk. No matter what he tired it stayed on his desktop. After some general troubleshooting he ran Activity Monitor and found that MirrorAgent was running. MirrorAgent facilitates the local iDisk Syncing feature.
It seems that he had forgotten he had setup iDisk to Sync his Mac (i.e., he was backing up or writing to his iDisk all the time) and as long as that was running iDisk could not be dismounted. When he went to
System Preferences > .Mac > iDisk > iDisk Syncing Off
all was better.
Educational video game company Tabula Digit has expanded its DimensionM series of interactive education games with algebra and pre-algebra titles. They're available for Mac OS X and Windows platforms.
Like last year's introductory Dimenxian Algebra game, the newly released Evolver Singleplayer for Pre-Algebra and Evolver Multiplayer for Pre-Algebra and Algebra, offer 3D learning environments where students are transported to a virtual world of action and algebra instruction based on standards set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
The games have multiplayer capability that allows students to compete, individually or in teams, with students from the same classroom, same building, same district, or even from across the country. In the games, students face mathematical obstacles, develop team-based strategies, and navigate through a series of mazes to score the most points.
Apple US has excelled once again in LAPTOP Magazine's annual tech support showdown.
The title ran a similar test last year, when it secretly put tech support desks to the test.
This year the magazine approached the support desks at nine major firms, asking two support questions: "How do I clean up the icons on my desktop" and "how to I defragment my hard drive".
Apple received an 'A' grade in the Web, Phone, and Overall categories to go along with its overall 'A' from last year's test.
The company also won praise because its tech support operators where prepared to assist, even though the notebooks had been in LAPTOP Magazine's possession for longer than the 90-days Apple offers new users free telephone support.
"When LAPTOP went undercover a year ago to assess the quality of notebook tech support, we were pleasantly surprised by the relatively brief hold times and by how quickly first-level technicians grasped and solved our problems," the magazine writes.
The new MacBook Pro 17 of course has a faster processor, but it's the display that will blow you away. -- Computerworld.
A growing cluster of companies in the Northwest are looking to capitalize on educational needs. Learning.com makes computer software programs that help elementary school students learn science, math, languages and social studies. -- New York Times.
TUAW reader Dustin Johnston tipped us off that a new OS X framework is getting installed with the OS X 10.4.10 update, namely Yahoo Sync. Located in
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks
YahooSync.framework contains an embedded Yahoo!Sync application. -- TUAW.
Chris Holland has penned an interesting post over on the Internet Brands Developer Blog, suggesting that Apple may have its sights set on integrating VoIP into the iPhone, making it a truly converged communications device. At first glance, it seems unlikely that Apple would be thinking this away about VoIP (and we KNOW AT&T isn't thinking this way), but Chris makes some excellent points and his predictions are really some food for thought.
A study reported at Ars Technica on how accurate ink-jet printers are when they report that cartridges are empty. Not very, it turns out. Epson came out on top of the study (and Ars rightly questions how objective it was, given that Epson paid for it), but even they waste 20% of the ink if users take the printers' word for when to get a new cartridge. On average, the printers in the study wasted more than half the ink that users bought.
c|net is your one-stop destination for all the latest on the Apple gadget, due in stores June 29.
Tony Chang from the University of Washington's Emerging Technology department has posted notes from the Developing Web Sites for iPhone session at WWDC where Apple told developers they could "learn iPhone best practices for ensuring optimal web development of your existing website, or hosted web application." -- iPhone Atlas.
Want to find out if your iPod will work with your computer? You've come to the right place. The following two charts detail both Windows and Mac software and hardware configurations that Apple supports for each iPod model. Please note that for some iPod models, the system requirements have been changed to enable new features and product enhancements. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
This document will help you determine the model of iPod you have as well as the latest version of iPod software available for your model. To ensure that your Mac or PC is compatible, check the system requirements for your particular iPod. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
MacFixIt's MacBook Pro (15" LED) review from Robert Mohns now has some preliminary benchmark results charts (with more to come later), and we've clarified some confusing details regarding different Fujitsu hard drive models.
Apple has been granted a patent (number 7233832) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a method and apparatus for expanding audio data. Systems implementing the invention allow a user to time stretch an audio track without changing the pitch of the sound, and to produce optimal audible qualities of the output signal. -- Macsimum News.
'It seems Apple is releasing a device with no thought to enterprise security,' says Andrew Storms, director of operations of the computer security firm nCircle. 'It's going to be entering enterprise networks whether we like it or not, and it's a nightmare for security teams.' -- Forbes.
More details have emerged about Mac OS X 10.5, the next major update to the Mac operating system that Apple has dubbed "Leopard." While Leopard won't be let out of its cage until October, two Steve Jobs keynote addresses and Apple's Leopard web site have given us some idea of how this latest cat will behave.
In the following pages, we'll describe what's publicly known about Leopard's new features--and the lingering questions that we're still trying to answer. We'll also take a look at the OS X 10.5 features Apple first unveiled in August 2006, paying special attention to what's changed since then. We'll continue to update this collection of Leopard features as more information becomes publicly available. -- Macworld.
Groupcal 3 the program that lets you use your Microsoft Exchange calendar from iCal has been updated. Version 3.90 includes the following:
Do you do color on your Mac? What tools do you use? Which ones are best? I'm into Color Schemer on my Mac because it lets me do more with less effort, less thought, less experience, and less money. Here's 6 ways to add pro color to your Mac. -- Mac 360.
Have you ever wanted to stream music to all of the computers in your house? Have you ever wanted to be a DJ? Have you ever wanted to create an online radio station full of music licensed under the Creative Commons, or music you create yourself? This tutorial will explain how to create your very own Internet radio station with Rouge Amoeba's Nicecast. -- Macinstruct.
For more than a year, Intel has been touting a new mobile platform, code-named Santa Rosa. Combining the latest Core 2 Duo processors with a package of new support chips, the platform was supposed to deliver the biggest advance in notebook computing in years.
Now Apple's first Santa Rosa-based laptops--the new 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros--have arrived, yet the improvements turn out to be fairly modest. In fact, the most important refinements in the latest models come not from the new chip set, but from separate advances in graphics processing and the display. -- Macworld.
Safari 3 for Windows and Tiger is truly awesome news. Just a feature note: Safari 2 has always supported client-side XSLT. But Safari 3 includes and implementation of the Mozilla-style JavaScript XSLT API... so now you can programmatically execute XSLT transforms on the client via JS in Safari. Great news. -- O'Reilly XML.com.
A new optical device could make high-speed computing and communications possible. -- MIT Technology Review.
Though confident in Apple's iPhone strategy, financial experts at American Technology Research issued a report Monday that highlights some of the more prominent concerns facing early testers of the the multi-functional handset ahead of its release. -- AppleInsider.
Most Mac developers are optimistic to a fault about Apple releasing a "true" iPhone SDK sometime in the future. We'd love to think so too, but some folks within Apple aren't quite so optimistic: "The issue is security." -- Ars Technica.
Apple's Safari could bring richer colors to Windows browsers, but Firefox soon will help expand the gamut, too. -- c|net.
The iPhoneWebDev group has posted an interesting page that begins to lay out some basic standards for developing iPhone applications. Though these specifications will likely change rapidly after the device actually ships, there are some excellent guidelines applicable to current touchscreen interfaces that should also hold true for the iPhone, as well as some keen observations based on current, publicly available information.
It's a stunning box, a wizard object with a passel of amazing features (It's a phone! An iPod! A Web browser!). But for all its marvels, the iPhone inaugurates a dangerous new era for Jobs. Has he peaked? -- New York Magazine.
Adobe on Tuesday released Adobe Digital Editions 1.0, a new software application built for acquiring, managing and reading eBooks, digital newspapers, and other digital publications. Available as a free download for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, the software enables publishers to deliver a new digital reading experience: built as a lightweight, Rich Internet Application (RIA), the software works both online and offline, and supports PDF and XHTML--based content as well as Flash SWF for rich interactivity.
Over the last week, a number of web developers have announced Web 2.0-style applications for the iPhone. There's even a site dedicated to these (although it has been down after all the recent Digg activity.) The idea goes like this: if you've got to connect to the Internet with your iPhone, why not publish your Dashboard-style widgets as actual web pages? After all, you can use them on your Mac, on your iPhone and now in Windows. With a bit of low-cost hosting and some decent "lickable" design, congratulations, you've become an iPhone developer. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Dan Frakes of Macworld was one of the MacNotables lucky enough to actually be in the room at Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote. He talks about what the reaction was in the room, the feel of the WWDC keynote as opposed to Macworld Expo keynotes, and whether the expectations of a Steve Jobs appearance are realistic. Dan also shares his thoughts on the Leopard feature set, including the "candification" of the Finder, which features haven't changed since the initial Leopard announcement last year, and how Apple leverages design to differentiate their products. -- MacNotables.
Windows users, freshly arrived on Mac OS X, always ask the same questions. One of those is "How do I create a new file in this folder?"
It's understandable they ask this, because they're accustomed to right-clicking in any Windows Explorer view, and seeing a list of contextual options which include creating a new file (text or otherwise) at that point.
Whether or not you're a switcher from Windows, if you've been looking for a way of re-creating that behavior on Mac OS X, there are various options available to you. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
The great thing about the MacBook is that it's one of the first Apple notebooks in a long time that includes a user-replaceable hard drive. And it's incredibly easy: remove three screws, pull the drive out, put the new drive in the old drive's caddy, and plug it back in. That part takes about five minutes. The hard part is preserving your old data, especially if you have a Boot Camp partition. -- Hackszine.com.
Macworld has done a huge survey of over 5,000 Macintosh users to see what they liked - and didn't like - about their Macs. The survey's findings on satisfaction and reliability, repair incidents, and quality of customer service are fascinating, and be sure to read Dan Miller's thoughts about what it all means as well.
Federal regulators this week gave Apple Inc. the go-ahead to begin selling its seldom-mentioned Bluetooth headset alongside iPhone later this month. -- AppleInsider.
Apple has reached an out-of-court settlement with little-known intellectual property agency IP Innovation LLC, which earlier this year alleged that the Mac maker's universal use of tabs in its Tiger operating system infringed on a 20-year old interface patent. -- AppleInsider.
A few days ago, Ars reviewed the new 17" MacBook Pro. Most of that review also applies to the new 15-inchers, but there is one aspect to the latest incarnation of the 15" MacBook Pro that warrants another look: the LED-backlit screen. -- Ars Technica.
Apple products tend to be good fodder for fan-based ads, and the iPhone is no exception. Alec Sutherland has put together an ad called iPhone New York that looks as professional as any Apple has produced for the combination iPod and smartphone.
Speaking on Apple's announcement of Safari for Windows and Safari as a platform in general, Mozilla's COO John Lily questions Jobs' view of the way the Internet works. "Gone are the days, he says, where a top-down model drives the flow of information and gone are the days of one or two browsers dominating the Web browser scene. There's plenty of room for Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc. That Apple wants to 'control,' so-to-speak, the Internet vis-à-vis Safari is part of the old way of thinking--the new way is Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Linux, etc. People-drive, in other words. Apple's 'Safari will rule all' mantra is out of date." -- CrunchGear.
We've received several reports indicating that MacBook Pro LED screens flicker when they are not at maximum brightness, generally when three bars lower than maximum brightness through lower settings, though some users have reported flickering at anything but maximum brightness. The flickering (or as some users describe it, "shimmering") is usually more noticeable on dark backgrounds,
MacFixIt reader Andrei Labin writes:
"I have discovered several (in fact all) new LED-macbook pros have a flickering screen if not set to maximum brightness. the flickering is worst at max minus 3 bars and disappears at about the last 4 bars. all those books have been running for at least half an hour."
Note that this case of flickering is not related to adjustment of the ambient light sensor, which caused a somewhat similar issue for older LCD MacBook Pros (a faulty ambient light sensor would rapidly switch the display between brightness levels).
Some users are taking their units back to Apple, and finding that replacement machines do not exhibit the same issue. However, other information indicates that the flickering/shimmering is a problem endemic to all MacBook Pros with LED screens and is simply more noticeable on some units.
There is also some indication that Apple may released a firmware update that will resolve this issue, perhaps through power delivery modification. -- MacFixIt.
Apple today announced that iPhone will deliver significantly longer battery life when it ships on June 29 than was originally estimated when iPhone was unveiled in January. iPhone will feature up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback. In addition, iPhone will feature up to 250 hours--more than 10 days--of standby time. Apple also announced that the entire top surface of iPhone, including its stunning 3.5-inch display, has been upgraded from plastic to optical-quality glass to achieve a superior level of scratch resistance and optical clarity. -- Apple PR.
"Sideloading" rather "downloading" may be the key feature of newer smartphones, such as the iPhone. While much has been made of other iPhone features, Nokia's board member Daniel Hesse says that the iPhone's "sideloading" feature -- downloading music to computer and then syncing it to a smartphone -- may be one of the keys to its success. The much-anticipated consumer device is being criticized because users can't access the iTunes store "over-the-air" and download music directly to their phones, but Nokia's Hesse says that "over-the-air" downloads may not be as desirable to consumers. Hesse told The Browser that, for transferring music and multimedia files to mobile phones, "sideloading will be absolutely crucial and that "no matter how fast the wireless networks get here, the computer is always faster." -- CNN.
Steve showed us a lot during the keynote, but the new redesigned Apple website holds some hidden gems. We dug in the unified web deliciousness of apple.com and brought back these jewels -- HardMac.
There are still Newton units out there and for those of you who still have one, Newton Research's Newton Connection has just been updated to version 1.1.
The new version, a 6.6 megabyte download, still allows users to back up their Newton data onto their desktop, but without needing to enter the Classic environment. The software is still a work in progress with the authors stating the program can't sync yet but asking for bugs and feature requests to be submitted.
Version 1.1 offers the following fixes and changes:
Newton Connection requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run and is available for free.
Democracy 0.9.6 is out. This multiplatform Open Source application plays all kind of video file formats on your local drive and can download and play videos from various sources on the net.
As negative feelings towards the web application system for the iPhone cool down, a few applications are emerging. -- Ars Technica.
Over 10 years ago, during the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X (Rhapsody), Apple promised write-once, deploy everywhere functionality ("Yellow Box") to developers in the then upcoming Mac OS X platform. -- Mac OS Rumors.
This week was Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), the biggest news from which seemed to be the beta version of Safari (Apple's web browser) for Windows. Why the heck would Apple even produce such a product? Readers and pundits alike have been wondering ad nauseam. I know why. -- I, Cringely.
The Windows version of Apple's Safari 3 public beta Web browser received its first update only three days after it was originally released. Security analysts quickly uncovered several potential threats that Apple addressed with this update. -- The Mac Observer.
On numerous occasions we've noted that the "Reset Safari" function can work to solve various troubleshooting issues with the browser. This function is accessed choosing "Reset Safari" from the Safari menu. In previous releases of Safari (2.0.4 and older) choosing this menu item then confirming automatically clears the history, empties the cache, clears the Downloads window, and removes all cookies. It also removes any saved user names and passwords or other AutoFill data and clears Google search entries.
In Safari 3.0 beta, however, the "Reset Safari" command has been substantially improved, how offered users the option to customize the reset, and delete only select items. It also now has the capability to remove all website icons ("favicons"), which can have a surprisingly dramatic performance boosting effect for Safari.
You may want to consider accessing this option as an initial troubleshooting procedure for one or more of the many significant issues being experienced by adopters of Safari 3.0 beta.
NeoOffice 2.1 Patch 6 updates the latest release of this Mac OS X-native version of the OpenOffice.org office suite. According to the release announcement, this patch brings performance improvements.
Wouldn't it be nice to email files directly from your desktop, without having to go to your email client, create a new email message, attach the file, and then send it? With this new interactive tutorial, there's finally a way! We show you how to do it with both AppleScript and Automator. -- Macinstruct.
An Apple patent (number 20070132764) for a system and method for displaying text has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The patent, which relates to a similar Apple patent from 2003, relates generally to the field of fonts and more particularly to displaying text. -- Macsimum News.
Gaming on the Mac got some good news at WWDC 07, but it may be bad news for games native to the Mac. -- Ars Technica.
At last year's WWDC, Steve Jobs announced that Leopard would support 64-bit computing across the board: not only on the Unix command line as in Tiger, but also in Carbon and Cocoa. But... During yesterday's keynote, Jobs only mentioned Cocoa would get the 64-bit treatment, with Carbon missing in action. Carbon is the Application Programmer Interface (API) that made the transition from OS 9 to OS X possible, and although it's not the latest and greatest (that would be Cocoa), Carbon is still holding its own--even Apple uses it to power some of its own applications. Sources tell Ars that not mentioning Carbon was no oversight: apparently, Apple has decided to scrap the intended 64-bit support in Carbon. -- Ars Technica.
Researchers work to mask the intricate functionality of chips that have as many as 80 cores, so PC makers and software developers can more easily adapt to them. -- c|net.
Check out the work of 10 professionals working at the very edges of their disciplines in order to redefine their industries. -- BusinessWeek.
With WWDC in full swing, few first hand reports of Apple's Mac OS X Developer Build of Leopard have been leaked beyond what was shown at the WWDC Keynote. The reason for this is that beyond the keynote, the remainder of Apple's conference is under a strict non disclosure agreement. -- MacRumors.
We've received provisional confirmation from Apple representatives at WWDC that the "robust Web 2.0" iPhone applications Steve Jobs spoke of during his keynote address will only be deliverable through the Web. In other words, it appears that users will have to utilize an active network connection and visit ordinary Web pages to access these "applications."
This is a major point of attention for prospective developers, as it plausibly denies the ability to store Web-standards-based apps locally for easy offline access and display within the normal iPhone interface (essentially Widgets, which Apple has not given any indication can be developed by third parties for the iPhone). So developers presumably will not be able to add icons to the iPhone's primary program list for launching applications, and users will need to be in range of AT&T's EDGE network or in a WiFi hotspot to access any third-party applications.
It looks like the iPhone's third-party applications tray will be the "Favorites" menu in Safari. -- iPhone Atlas.
Our operatives at this week's WWDC have confirmed with Apple representatives that initial software included with the iPhone will not offer the ability to play back Flash content embedded in Web pages; nor will the device initially offer a Java runtime engine. -- iPhone Atlas.
The opening day of WWDC is a crazy overload of body and soul. Day number two brings sanity and the cool realization that there is a lot to be learned.
While the keynote has a lot of high level gee-whiz stuff, day number two typically brings one down to earth with an inspection of the APIs behind those amazing demos in the keynote. The 30K foot view of Steve Jobs is replaced by the tactical details, conceived of and implemented by young engineers.
True wizardry is on display. -- The Mac Observer.
As we continue to report on some serious issues affecting the Safari 3.0 beta, it is important to remember that (as stated yesterday), this package modifies many significant components other than the Safari application itself, perhaps most importantly the WebKit framework (version 522.10.1 is included with Safari 3 beta), relied upon by numerous Mac OS X applications to render HTML and perform other functions. Keep the included uninstaller (Safari3BetaUninstall.pkg) handy. -- MacFixIt.
The British Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has vindicated Apple in contention over the company's "Get a Mac" ads, which unnamed parties complained unfairly portrayed Windows as an insecure operating system. The ASA rejected these complaints, essentially stating that Apple's claims are legitimate, and Macs actually are less virus-prone that counterpart Windows systems. The decision to reject the claims was, in part, based on a letter from a security research firm that indeed noted many fewer security threats for Mac OS X that various flavors of Windows. -- ViewLondon.
According to a patent (number 20070112891) filed by Apple engineers, you can convert millions of computers to a new file system via a handy file system converter that changes the file system without touching the files. The patent could make HFS to ZFS conversions fast and painless should Apple decide to make the move, notes Robin Harris at StorageMojo. -- Macsimum News.
Lok Technology has announced the availability of its IP management and control software "narc" for Mac OS X Server -- an acronym for network admission, reconnaissance and control. Narc costs costs $14,950.
Aimed specifically at large-scale educational institution use, narc is designed to provide IT managers a unified method for managing network traffic, handling authentication, authorization, accounting, auditing and instrumentation. The Apple Xserve used as the narc host acts as a truck interceptor that operates between two network segments.
If the price sounds extreme, Lok Technology contends that often, network administrators working in educational environments need to set up separate systems to manage tasks like traffic shaping, link control, threat management, asset control, persistence and instrumentation. Narc is designed to provide all those services using a single Xserve box.
Narc is a Universal binary designed to run natively on Intel and PowerPC-based Xserves alike.
Jobs tells developers that for them, iPhone is purely a portable browser. Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM rejoice. -- InfoWorld.
Seeing that so many readers misunderstood my blog post from earlier this week about my take on Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote, I'd like to try to clarify what I was trying to say. -- ZDNet.
Safari is at the supreme center of Apple's hub right now. That's the main message I took from Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote. Steve didn't actually say those words, but it didn't take much reading between the lines to figure this out. -- The Mac Observer.
Steve Jobs had a lot of fun at Microsoft's expense over Redmond's difficulties shipping the operating systems that have become Vista and Windows Server 2008. So with Vista shipping by default on new PCs and Windows Server 2008 in a publicly downloadable beta, Apple should be catching hell from the press for making Leopard the last to arrive. -- InfoWorld.
A few weeks ago, Mikkel talked about all the handy contextual (right-click) menus in Lightroom. Yesterday, when we met to do final finishing touches for the book, I showed him how the new MacBook and MacBook Pros have a trackpad setting that allows you to evoke contextual menus easily. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
With Apple sailing on an all-time high stock price and mere weeks from the launch of its absurdly anticipated iPhone, the serious business press is turning even more attention to the little-Cupertino-company-that-could than normal. -- Wired.
Apple Inc. has made one of its first overt attempts to tap into web youth culture, establishing links between its iTunes Store and European social networking site Bebo. -- AppleInsider.
Apple Inc.'s iTunes digital jukebox software is downloaded 1 million times per day and has an active user base of 500 million users, the company said during annual developers conference on Monday -- AppleInsider.
One of the biggest take-aways from Monday's Apple developer conference was the Mac maker's progress in unifying its user interface across multiple product lines, according to American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu. -- AppleInsider.
More certain appears to be the state of ZFS on Mac OS X, or lack thereof. Brian Croll, Apple's senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS X, told InformationWeek that "ZFS is not happening," when asked whether the Sun-developed Zettabyte File System would appear in Leopard.
Instead, Leopard will reportedly use Apple's current hierarchical file system, called HFS+.
Strangely, just five days prior Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz boasted during a company event that Apple would announce at its developers conference a plan to make ZFS the default file system for Leopard.
Update: An Apple spokesperson contacted InformationWeek on Tuesday seeking to clarify Croll's statement. "Croll was apparently supposed to indicate that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."
The publication is reportedly drafting a separate story to note Apple's mis-statement and "hopefully to reveal more about how ZFS would work in Leopard." -- AppleInsider.
We put Apple's browser to the test and discovered that it falls short of Firefox and Internet Explorer 7. Far from being "the world's best browser" as Apple claims, Safari 3 suffers from usability deficiencies, text readability issues, and security flaws. It's not all bad, though. -- Ars Technica.
Intel's Santa Rosa Centrino Duo chipset makes its first appearance in an Apple portable with the latest MacBook Pro. Ars takes Apple's latest for a spin to see how much difference a slightly faster CPU and a new chipset make. -- Ars Technica.
The iPhone won't have Flash or iTunes software, at least not yet, but Apple is still requiring an iTunes Store account for iPhone set-up. -- Ars Technica.
Most of us who are allergic to AT&T/Cingular have been daydreaming about unlocked iPhones ever since Macworld in January. A company called Pure Mobile will try to make that a reality, but probably for a price. -- Ars Technica.
The Apple Design Awards are officially over for 2007. What is the ADA? Simply told, Apple select and reward the developers they see raising the bar the very most in the Mac software world. Winning developers receive prizes 2008 WWDC passes, MacBook Pro's and other great hardware. So who took home the glory at the 2007 ADA's? -- GlennWolsey.
Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed in how to display fonts on computer displays. Today, both companies are using sub-pixel rendering to coax sharper-looking fonts out of typical low resolution screens. Where they differ is in philosophy. -- Joel on Software.
Tuesday, AT&T sent an email to users who signed up for notifications regarding the iPhone. The message, titled "Get ready. iPhone is coming June 29th" reveals that an iTunes account will be required to set up the device and recommends that potential iPhone buyers create an iTunes account now if they don't already have one. -- iPhone Atlas.
Now that Intel has moved their processor line primarily to multicore, most of Apple's shipping Macs have at least 2 cores (and as many as 8). According to Apple's Leopard pages, Apple has introduced significant performance improvements into Leopard to take advantage of all these multicore processors.
The new Leopard scheduler is very efficient at allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. So Leopard spends less time managing tasks and more time performing computations. A new multithreaded network stack speeds up networking by handling network inputs and outputs in parallel.
Apple's applications such as Mail, Address Book and Font Utility have been updated to be multicore ready:
Each of these apps breaks up processor-intensive actions into a series of more manageable steps that execute one by one on single-CPU computers and in parallel on newer, multicore systems. Cocoa uses that same technology to speed up Spotlight searches and Dictionary lookups.
Apple also introduced a new API (NSOperation) which makes it easier for programmers to take advantage of multicore processing: "You simply describe the operations in a program along with their dependencies. Cocoa takes care of the rest."
According to one unverified first hand report, the new finder has also seen improved performance:
The new finder is absolutely the best part. How many years have we wanted a cocoa finder? ... Proper multi-threaded support. ... No more beachball so far. -- Mac OS Rumors.
MacFixIt has posted a Safari 3 Beta Reader Report sharing all kinds of experiences and tips with the new, cross-platform Apple web browser. [Based on my own experience and what I have read I would NOT be installing Safari 3 Beta anywhere. I'll wait for October. -mam]
Steve Jobs made a big deal during his WWDC keynote address this week of an announcement that various Electronic Arts games -- including Need for Speed Carbon, Battlefield 2142 and Command and Conquer 3 -- would be making their way to Mac OS X later this year. What wasn't mentioned, however, was that these games will not be native Mac OS X ports. Instead, they will be made to run under Mac OS X with the aid of Cider from TransGaming (like X3: Reunion, Myst Online and other titles). This means they may not run at full native speed, and may exhibit other issues; they also will only run on Intel-based Macs--leaving many long-time Mac users out in the cold. -- MacNN.
Apple has been granted a patent (number 7231632) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a system for reducing the number of programs necessary to render an image. Among other advances, the invention seeks to reduce memory and computational requirements of graphics operation. -- Macsimum News.
After WWDC '06, when Leopard was first introduced, developers were a little annoyed that Apple took around two months to ship out the beta copies they were promised. This time around, Apple seems to have changed their tune: they allowed developers at WWDC to walk away with a beta copy yesterday - but as Steve Jobs mentioned on stage yesterday, only developers who are in attendance at WWDC can get their hands on the hot new beta. -- The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
he day after a big Apple event like yesterday's WWDC keynote is like the day after Christmas - it leaves you with that letdown, hungover, regretful feeling. Now that Apple's locked down the feature-complete version of the newest iteration of OS X, it's hard not to think about what could have been. -- Lifehacker.
Smart-phone developers learned Monday that they won't be shut out of Apple's iPhone. But they're going to have to wait for the red carpet. -- c|net.
As Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote chugged toward its end with no word of iPhone, I felt a sense of foreboding. Won't we even see a detailed demo? Leopard deserved a re-warming, and Jobs pulled that off brilliantly. So where the hell are the pre-sales fireworks for iPhone? -- Macworld.
If there is a billion-dollar gamble underlying Apple's iPhone, it lies in what this smart cellphone does not have: a mechanical keyboard. -- New York Times.
I can't help but be impressed by the huge crowds and high level of interest in the IT track here, and I don't think I'll be upsetting anyone at the mothership by reporting that yesterday's IT State of the Union session was one of most popular, with standing room only. The Directory Services session today was also packed, and it's clear there are a LOT of people here at this "developer" conference who are looking to learn more about what Apple's doing in the IT realm. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Do you like side-scrolling?
Hmm. Me neither.
I don't expect we're going to make much use of CoverFlow in the new Leopard Finder, then.
The advent of CoverFlow within the Finder takes it even further away from the concept of spatial orientation which made the old classic Finder such a pleasure to use. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Learn about the new features announced in Leopard, Safari for Windows, and the way iPhone development is going to work. Daniel Steinberg reports from this year's WWDC keynote. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Ryan Faas takes a look at nine tools that handle system management tasks in both Mac and Windows environments for both clients and servers. The tools span a range of tasks such as remote installation, license management, and helpdesk functions. The author gives opinions on each tool's strengths and weaknesses and does not pick an overall winner. -- ComputerWorld.
Apple has posted its customary video feed for the WWDC 2007 keynote address, allowing those outside the conference to see Leopard's new features for themselves.
The Wall Street Journal's well-known technology writer Walt Mossberg has already received his iPhone and has weighed in with some early opinions. Also, at least one analyst has called this year's World Wide Developers Conference a mild disappointment for investors, and Apple's Leopard site has revealed more about the new OS than was shown onstage. -- AppleInsider.
At its developers conference Monday, Apple unveiled a near final version of Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major release of what the company calls the "world's most advanced operating system.
Presenting at its annual developers conference on Monday, Apple announced that its forthcoming iPhone device will run applications created with Web 2.0 Internet standards when it begins shipping on June 29. -- Apple PR.
Apple Inc. at its developer conference on Monday announced a plan to release a version of its Safari Web browser for rival Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems -- Apple PR.
[I downloaded and installed the new Safari beta for Windows on my Virtual PC running Windows XP. It crashes every time I try to run it.]
At its developer conference Monday, Apple announced several new features of Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard that aim to make it even easier for users to set up and manage the server software. -- Apple PR.
Apple Inc. took down its website during Steve Jobs WWDC keynote yesterday. When it came back up not only did it have information about the final version of the next version of Mac OS X, it also supported a new look to go along with Leopard. -- Apple.
Need assistance with your AirPort setup and network configuration? Select from the options below, then choose Show Instructions. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Dave's at WWDC, and John takes a few minutes to interview him on his thoughts of the keynote announcements and more. Dave makes sure to explain the things that would likely have been missed if you weren't in the presentation hall, so make sure you catch this one! -- The Mac Observer.
Long missing from the Mac platform, computer game developer Electronic Arts is officially making a comeback, and in a big way. EA CEO Bing Gordon joined the stage during Apple CEO Steve Jobs's keynote to make the announcement on Monday. -- The Mac Observer.
Apple Inc. is in talks with the Hollywood studios to make new movies available for rental for its iTunes service, according to two studio executives familiar with the matter.
The rental service is being pitched aggressively by Apple, with titles to rent for $2.99 for a set number of days before expiring, these people said. It is unclear which studios might participate, with Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures currently in favor and General Electric Co.'s Universal Studios Inc. currently opposed, for example. The service is far from a certainty with several details to iron out, said a person close to the situation. -- Wall Street Journal.
At this week's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, the Parallels team is publicly showing off alpha code of Parallels Server for Mac, the first virtualization solution that will allow users to run Windows and Linux in virtual servers at the same time as Mac OS X Server, all at the same time, on the same Intel-powered XServe.
Well it seems that someone has a VERY nice audio collection. If they actually have over 180 of the top 200, that is very impressive. The rest of us it seems have a more modest collection.
The new poll asks about Apple's announcements at WWDC 2007. We want to know which announcement you found the most interesting.
It has historically been difficult to sync your media files between your Mac and your Nokia phone. The PC world has always had the Nokia PC Suite but the Mac world has been left without an easy solution. Nokia noticed the lack of a good solution and has introduced the Nokia Media Transfer Utility. The utility will sync your digital photos with iPhoto and your music with iTunes.
Hours after the beta of the Safari browser for Windows was released, researcher Aviv Raff posted that he had found a bug -- and that it only took him three minutes to do so. -- InfoWorld.
I agree with Bruce that Jobs did a pretty bad job today selling the Web-only development for the iPhone. Since January, we've all been saying "Well, if there's no third party development, we can always get around it with clever Web design." I never thought that the "getting around it" strategy was an appealing solution. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
We know that making SDKs is not easy, and so it boggles the mind that you were able to create a complete iPhone SDK so quickly! So much access, provided so seamlessly - it is really quite amazing.
With this new SDK, we can create something neither of us could possibly have done alone, and make the iPhone platform the mobile platform to develop for. -- Rogue Amoeba.
I enjoyed the Steve Jobs keynote today at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco. I listened to the 10 new Leopard features with a photographer's ear, and here are three of my favorites, iChat, Time Machine, and Quick Look -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
This morning I got to watch Steve Jobs in person do his thing, complete with reality distortion field. Despite rumors to the contrary, I felt no brainwashing tug on my mind, and felt no involuntary compulsion to buy whatever it was Steve was up there selling. I was watching a charismatic CEO do a presentation on some really cool new stuff coming out from Apple. -- The .NET Addict's Blog.
Apple has announced Safari 3 beta for OS X and Windows. To make room for more important thoughts in my head, here's the associated Brain Dump. -- Jon Hicks.
AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n Firmware 7.1.1 includes all fixes in Firmware 7.1 plus additional compatibility updates for the AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n*.
Mac OS X Leopard is just one of three primary focuses for the 2007 edition of Apple's developer conference, company officials say. This year's gathering will reportedly stress Internet content more than ever while also catering to a rising niche: Windows switchers. -- AppleInsider.
Ars took a moment to chat with indie Mac developers about expectations for tomorrow's keynote at WWDC. These are some of the photos. -- Ars Technica.
The MacTech 25 honors the most influential people in the Macintosh community. How do we know who these people are? You tell us! Once a year, we open up voting to you, the Macintosh community. This is this second time that MacTech Magazine is running the MacTech 25: a version 2.0, if you will. Since we're jumping an entire revision number, you will see differences from last year, the first ever MacTech 25.
As the iPhone's release date approaches, we continue to get more and more information. Yesterday, MacRumors got their hands on the AT&T Sales Training Workbook, and I must say that I am more disappointed than excited. -- Ars Technica.
Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit has a new general manager: Craig Eisler. He's an Apple lover and co-creator of DirectX, and he wants to "rock the house" with the Mac BU. -- Ars Technica.
Adobe Systems on Monday plans to release a beta version of Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a software download formerly called Apollo, that makes Web-native applications operate like desktop programs. -- c|net.
Michael Yurechko has compiled a list of all the tech sites live-blogging the event as it happens.
There are a ton of free cheatsheets, quick references, and downloadable resources for programming languages and related technologies online -- in this post I've tried to organize and list some of the best for web development.
I've focused on HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP, since those are the languages we use most commonly at Ning, but many of these sites point to resources for other languages as well.
As far as I can tell, all of the material assembled here is freely available. I've tried to avoid anything that points to pirated or illegal content. Please let me know if you see anything that isn't supposed to be free and I'll remove it from the list. -- Marc Andreessen.
CSSeasy is a simple site for people who want to start a css-driven website quick or for those people who want to start learning CSS by trial and error.
And if that site interests you, you might also want to check out:
Apple didn't give us an overly obvious way to disable the iSight camera that's built in to the iMac, MacBook, and MacBook Pro, which is a problem for some people that work in sensitive environments. Covering the camera with a piece of tape will do the trick, but in some work places, that isn't enough. -- The Mac Observer.
You just think you know how your computer works. Think it's all silicon and electricity? It's Magic.
People have been arguing online about how much more expensive Macs are than PCs -- or not -- for more than a decade (and in print for years before that). These discussions usually involve some hard facts but also some persistent myths. As a longtime Windows guy who has recently migrated to the Mac, I think I'm in a pretty good position to try and sort out reality from fiction. Let's take a look at what you can really get for your money these days. -- ComputerWorld.
MacInTouch has a thorough MacBook Pro 15" LED review for you today, written by Robert Mohns, who has been spending long hours with Apple's latest laptop. Of course, its new LED-backlit display technology is the big story, but there are some other interesting developments under the hood, too. They turned up one noticeable problem (with the help of a MacInTouch reader) that you'll probably want to know about, but it's a pretty nice computer, all in all.
While most of the developers and Mac devotees in attendance will no doubt be clapping and wailing with glee at every new feature debuted during Monday's keynote address, a handful of people in the room will be quaking in their boots, praying that one thing in particular remains unspoken.
As far as Parallels and VMWare are concerned, those dirty words are "Virtualization in Boot Camp." If they are uttered during the Stevenote, the companies' young products are as good as dead. -- Wired.
Mac expert John Welch takes you through the threats, holes, and exploits swirling around Mac OS X, and offers up some tips and tactics to protect your system. -- InformationWeek.
As always don't forget Mac OS X System Hardening: Guidelines for UT Faculty and Staff Desktops (pdf) 2003.
Sun Microsystems's CEO Jonathan Schwartz said Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard would rely on a file system that his engineers created: ZFS. -- Computerworld.
When Steve Jobs takes the stage Monday at Apple's programmers conference, he's likely to give the world a glimpse of an upgraded Mac operating system that could herald the biggest changes to the machine's interface in 30 years.
At the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Jobs will probably show off Leopard, a Mac OS X update due in October that he has promised contains "top secret" features. But perhaps the most important feature is one that has been overlooked by many Apple fans: a new set of tools for building program interfaces called Core Animation. -- Wired.
Let's say you wanted to convert millions of computers to a new file system. How would you do it? Back up, reformat the disk, and then reinstall everything?
Or run a handy file system converter that changes the file system without touching the files?
According to a patent filed by a couple of smart Apple engineers, yes you can. The hardworking Greg Keizer mentioned it in this Computerworld article. I thought it was worth a deeper look. -- StorageMojo.
Late Friday, VMWare released the fourth beta of Fusion, its virtualization application for Intel-based Macs. The new version, a a 168 megabyte download, includes the following additions and changes:
Fusion requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run.
Our simple tutorial on building an online MP3 player inspired hundreds of you to ask for enhanced features. Now you can grab our latest code and experiment yourself. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
Gulf News has a nice piece exposing the last couple generations of Apple's DRM strategy. The article focuses on how quickly the tactics are worked around, and how nasty the latest one is: purchased iTunes now have your personal data in them. Author suspects that this is to prevent you uploading them to a network.
For the past fifteen plus years, Photoshop has turned into the killer app for graphics designers on the Mac. It was originally written as a support app for a grad student's thesis and struggled to find wide commercial release. Eventually, Adobe licensed the app and has sold millions of copies.
And Achewood's Chris Onstad also offers a different take of how it all went down.
My son's Motorola cell phone was lighting struck in the storm the other night. When I called Verizon I was told that if I extended my current contract I could get a new phone. They would have just replaced the existing phone but that would have just gotten him a refurbished phone. So I extended.
I asked for an iPhone but... The phone they gave me was a Motorola v325i. It is our first bluetooth phone and has the new standard connector.
However, when we got it home weather it was plugged in or via Bluetooth iSync could not access the phone. Apple's iSync Compatible Devices page does not list the Motorola v325i.
After a short Google I found an iSync plugin for the Motorola v325i on Prashant Shenoy web site. He has other plugins as well.
Once the plugin was downloaded and installed iSync saw the new phone and downloaded all the Address book information via Bluetooth. It was very quick. Phone is working fine. I am still amazed how teenagers know how to use any electronic device at a molecular level.
Ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple has released an update to its Boot Camp dual-boot software that adds new graphics drivers among other improvements. -- AppleInsider.
The next major version of the popular virtualization app, Parallels Desktop, is now available for Mac users. Version 3 brings OpenGL and DirectX graphics support to the masses, as well as a way to roll back the virtual machine install and set default Windows apps for Mac files. -- Ars Technica.
VMware Fusion is offering Unity, a feature designed to run Windows apps transparently on the Mac desktop like Coherence in Parallels. It's a tight race between the two. -- Ars Technica.
With the iPhone on deck, it's finally time to see if Apple's vaunted designers have come up with another winner. But first: A pause to focus on developers. -- c|net.
We previously published a series of tips for getting out your current cell phone contract -- without paying exorbitant termination fees -- and migrating to the (apparently) required 2-year contract with AT&T/Cingular required for iPhone purchase These pointers included roaming outside your network's coverage (more on this below), negotiating (good luck), and schlepping the contract off on a friend or family member (ugh). -- iPhone Atlas.
MacBook Pro (15-inch 2.4/2.2GHz) and MacBook Pro (17-inch 2.4GHz) notebooks have two SDRAM slots in the bottom of the computer.
If you want to maximize the amount of SDRAM in your computer, install a 2 GB SO-DIMM in one slot and a 2 GB SO-DIMM in the other.
You can use Small-Outline Dual Inline Memory Modules (SO-DIMMS) that meet all of these criteria:
You can use RAM module sizes of 1 GB or 2 GB in the top or bottom slots.
DIMMs with any of the following features are not supported in the MacBook Pro notebooks: registers or buffers, PLLs, ECC, parity, or EDO RAM.
Always follow the proper instructions when installing memory, -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Many broadband Internet service providers require you to connect via PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet).
Follow these steps if you connect your computer directly to a DSL or cable modem. If you have an AirPort Base Station, follow these steps to set the computer up first, without the base station connected to the network, then see the AirPort section at the end of the document. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
For millions of people, Google is an indispensable search tool that they use every day, in all facets of their lives. From work or school, research, to looking up movies and celebrities to news and gossip, Google is the go-to search engine. There are a number of ways to make your searches more efficient. -- Dumb Little Man.
We thought Edward's case was so well described that it needed no editing. The tale begins with a blue screen on startup, and ends with a successful bootup. So here it is, verbatim. Follow along and see if you can guess the ending beforehand: -- MacFixIt.
One of the most common questions people ask when working with their Mac is: "Where is it?" Not where is the Mac itself (hopefully that is not a mystery!), but where is some apparently hidden file on the Mac. As in: "I want to make a backup of my Safari bookmarks file. Where is the file?" Or: "I am looking at the list of 'Preferred networks' in the AirPort section of the Network System Preferences pane. Where exactly is this list stored?"
To help answer these sorts of queries, I have put together a Location Finder, in a Q & A format, mapping out some of Mac OS X's most frequently sought-after but not especially obvious destinations. These are items that you could not easily find using a tool such as Spotlight (either because Spotlight does not search the relevant locations or it wouldn't be clear what the proper search terms should be). -- MacFixIt.
According to various reports, such as this one at vunet, Apple is selling the Apple TV at little more than cost to gain market share. I'm one of those who doesn't think the device has reached its full potential yet (and even Apple CEO Steve Jobs called the Apple TV a "hobby"), but the long-term potential of the "VCR for the digital age" is solid. -- Macsimum News.
As we reported earlier this week, Sun Microsystems's Jonathan Schwartz said on Wednesday that the ZFS would be "the file system" for Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") succeeding HFS+. So what is ZFS and what does it offer? -- Macsimum News.
Apple has been granted a patent (number 20070129828) by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a portable audio device providing control of audio volume parameters for hearing protection. It concerns the iPod, the iPhone and any similar devices Apple might release. -- Macsimum News.
The new must-have smartphone may be a $10 billion business--and could send Apple shares even higher. Still, Apple will need to execute flawlessly. In units built and shipped, the iPhone launch will dwarf anything Apple has attempted. It plans to have 3 million iPhones ready for sale on June 29, two sources say. (Apple won't comment.) And with its touch-screen keyboard, powerful battery-sapping processors, and a panoply of new applications, the iPhone is far more complex than the iPod. Glitches could lead to costly recalls and returns if buyers find the phone buggy or confusing. -- BusinessWeek.
Whoever coined the phrase "have your cake and eat it too" was probably an Intel Mac user running Parallels Desktop for Mac. All the ease and beauty of Mac OS X with the ability to run Windows programs as needed in an environment that's nearly as fast as the "real" thing. -- Web Worker Daily.
AppleScript automation is one of OS X's most useful features. It lets you automate common, repetitive tasks so you can spend your time on more important things. Some AppleScripts would be even more useful, and their usage more seamless, if you could launch them by just hitting a key combination. And you can. Here are three ways to assign a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
On trips, I literally used to pack two laptops: a Mac for creative stuff, and a Windows machine for the speech-recognition program I use to write books, Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
A year ago, that all changed. Apple started building its Macs around Intel chips. Using Apple's free Boot Camp utility, you can start up the one laptop in either Windows or Mac OS X (Windows not included). -- New York Times.
When you need to clone your drive, or simply do a full backup, someone usually tells you to use Carbon Copy Cloner (Donation Recommended) or SuperDuper! ($27.95). Sure, both of these applications are great programs, but they aren't necessary. You can use Apple's own software that comes free with your Mac!
We're talking about Disk Utility ( User > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.app ) It's free, easy-to-use, and it does the job right. -- Macinstruct.
It's become a bit of tradition in the Mac press to make public your guesses, predictions, and desires for what news will come out of every major Mac conference. Since WWDC is right around the corner, we rounded up some of our MacDevCenter bloggers and asked them what they'd like to see Steve unveil at next week's keynote. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
With a suggested retail price of $300, you'd expect iPod maker Apple Inc. to pocket some hefty change from the sale of each new Apple TV set-top media box. -- AppleInsider.
Apple has already aired another commercial as part of its iPhone advertising blitz. Also, one waiter claims to have had some early unofficial experience with the device. And a US patent may show the way towards trouble-free calls. -- AppleInsider.
It may have been a premeditated outburst or a sudden slip-of-the-lip, but either way Sun Microsystems chief executive Jonathan Schwartz is claiming that Apple next week will announce a plan to replace the default Mac OS X file system with the Sun-developed ZFS. -- AppleInsider.
An Ars forum poster claims to have played with an iPhone with his own two hands yesterday. We are cautiously optimistic about his account of the iPhone's screen smudginess, typing speed, and the packaging. -- Ars Technica.
Something is missing from the latest iPhone commercial--namely the bit about "2 Year Activation Required". And today AT&T launched new pay as you go Feature Packages. Could this be leading up to the pre-paid contract-free iPhone that we all gave up on when the iPhone commercials debuted this week? -- TUAW.
Top 10 OS X programs that only do one thing, but do it well. -- Simplehelp.
When June 29th comes around and the swarms descend upon AT&T/Cingular and Apple retail outlets, many users will be shocked to discover that their current Cingular wireless contracts are not eligible for the standard iPhone pricing (US$499 for the 4GB model or US$599 for the 8GB model), or may not be able to purchase the iPhone at all. -- iPhone Atlas.
Apple will kick off the 2007 World Wide Developer's Conference on June 11th 2007 with a keynote speech from Steve Jobs. News sites across the web will cover every announcement in detail, while Apple's site will be updated with any new products announced.
The keynote takes places on June 11th, 2007 at 10AM Pacific time and will be covered live at MacRumorsLive.com. [I have found their feed to be the best when there is no live video feed.- mam]
MacInTouch is now experimenting with brightness and color on the new MacBook Pro 15" LED (glossy) laptop. In Display preferences, they set brightness at the midpoint and disabled "Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes" then performed an "Advanced" color calibration, which seemed to demand rather drastic adjustments. They also noticed that choosing a "native gamma" checkbox seemed to make the screen quite blue. And to their taste, a color temperature slightly below "native" looked a little better. They've posted the profile [colorcalib2.zip], and they'd be interested in any feedback about it (not being experts on color calibration.)
They've added more benchmark results this morning, comparing the October 2006 MacBook Pro against the brand-new LED-backlit version.
Intel has released two new Mac OS X-compatible compilers -- one for creating C++ software and the other for producing Fortran programs -- designed to create more reliable, high-performance applications that speed up a computer's responsiveness. The Intel C++ Compiler and Fortran Professional Editions are highly optimized with performance libraries and the Intel Threading Building Blocks. Both compilers are already available from $600 to $1600, with upgrades to the professional editions from the prior versions or libraries available through resellers.
It's no surprise Cooper-Hewitt honored the doyen of computer design, but some 2007 National Design Awards did go to lesser-known talents. -- BusinessWeek.
Are cellphone companies using their sway over handset makers to unfairly limit consumers' choices? Skype, a pioneer in PC-to-PC calling, thinks so, and it wants the Federal Communications Commission to do something about it. -- USA Today.
Apple has mounted a sneak attack on the Windows world. Its weapon has been the Windows version of iTunes, the free media organizing, recording and playback program that most people think of as just a companion to Apple's iPod music and video players. I think of iTunes as the most subversive software on the Windows computer, not because it does users any harm or does anything underhanded, but because it is allowing Apple to subvert, from inside, Microsoft's dominant platform position. -- Walter S. Mossberg.
You might think an eight-core Mac Pro would blow away its quad-core counterpart. And it does, at least on tasks involving apps optimized to take advantage of multiple cores. But on routine tasks the performance boost is mild, which leads Macworld Lab director James Galbraith to conclude that this eight-core machine is aimed at a very specific audience. The results: Apple's eight-core desktop thrives with multi-core apps, but not general tasks. -- Macworld.
Even accounting for different eras and styles, you can see some common themes emerging over the decades to how Apple's designers go about their business. -- Macworld.
Well, just when you thought you knew all the Mac writing apps, along comes something new and radically different. Diamond is that thing. It's a rich text editor with much the same capabilities as TextEdit, but with oh so much more style. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter
The technologies behind the battery packs for the GM Volt are being tested and could be ready within a year. -- MIT Technology Review.
A grassroots effort is underway that hopes to hold Apple responsible for what appears to be a systemic flaw in the screens of its last-generation, 17-inch PowerBook G4 computers.
The Free Repair Campaign notes that many of the PowerPC-based systems produced between March and April 2005 develop pixel-wide vertical lines that gradually render the display unusable. Problems with the screens only became clear in recent months as the flaw only tends to appear between 12 to 24 months after the display's manufacture date -- forcing those without AppleCare to pay the full repair price.
A similar issue had crept up in Dell systems during a similar but larger period. The supporting evidence suggests both a wider problem and a potential solution for Apple, the campaigners said: the Windows PC builder has offered to not only replace affected screens free of charge but to compensate those who had already paid for out-of-warranty repairs.
Response from Apple have so far been far from ideal, however, triggering the organized publicity effort. The company has so far deleted whole threads from its support website and doesn't track the common complaints, preventing those who call Apple's technical help from pointing to other examples.
The Free Repair Campaign asks any affected PowerBook owner to contact Apple personally with their complaints.
Apple Inc. and its iPhone are set to ride a growing wave of middle-market Americans who are defining a new market segment through their willingness to pay a premium for "new luxury" goods, says a new report from Credit Suisse. -- AppleInsider.
Wireless provider and exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier AT&T Wireless has launched an internal operation aimed at boosting the data speeds of its 2.5G EDGE network ahead of this month's iPhone launch, according to a published report. -- AppleInsider.
First and foremost, Dreamweaver users can relax. Actually, not just relax, they can celebrate. Dreamweaver has not been "GoLived" at the hands of Adobe. And honestly, to think they would have done that was kind of unfair. Adobe has a pretty good sense of what its users want, and they have a history of turning out solid products. That's what they've done with Dreamweaver. They've taken a fantastic product, and they've made it fantastic. This update of Dreamweaver feels like what it would have been had the name Macromedia still been attached. -- Applelinks.
The new version of Gecko-based browser Camino, version 1.5, is now out for OS X. It boasts lots of new features and a speed boost over Firefox on OS X, too.
Apple's elves gave me more details about the Santa Rosa Macbook Pro. Here's some stuff you don't know about the revision. -- Gizmodo.
Though there are rumors that a 3G-capable iPhone is in the works, all official indications are that the initial iteration of the device will make use of "2.5G" (affectionately known as "EDGE" in ATT&T/Cingular's world). What, in basic terms, does the lack of 3G capability mean for the iPhone? Some salient points of comparison. -- iPhone Atlas.
Although security on a Mac is debated heavily by both sides, I prefer to stay safe and use a standard account for my day-to-day uses, and an extra Administrator account for my, well, administrative uses. The thing that bugs me is that every time I log in, I see a this big login option, Administrator, and that easily tells someone that is physically stealing my notebook that he needs to crack the admin account, and not mine, to hack my system. I prefer to hide the admin account, but I don't really like to use the Terminal.
So, to the hint: from what I've seen, if you create an account named Administrator with a short name of Admin, the computer will automatically hide the account for you. However, this only works when the new Administrator account is the only administrator account in the system. -- Mac OS X Hints.
I was looking at the Wireless Options in the new Airport Utility to configure my Airport Extreme router. I noticed you could reduce the power output of the wireless. Since I have the router in my living room it sounded very appealing, especially since I have a new baby in the flat. I tried reducing it to 25%, but the signal was barely strong enough to work in the kitchen, which affected performance.
I recently followed the tips in this article to see if they would help at all. Changing the channel and implementing MAC filtering means I can now set my AirPort Extreme at 10% power, and I still get full strength signal everywhere in the flat. I also have fewer incidents where I have to manually rejoin my wireless router. -- Mac OS X Hints.
MacInTouch picked up one of Apple's 15" MacBook Pros yesterday, the stock, $1,999 Model A1226 with the new LED-backlit display (a glossy screen on this one), then posted a System Profiler extract with all the hardware details.
How fast is Apple's latest laptop compared to your own computer? Use MacInTouch's brand-new benchmarking results for comparison. (We have also posted several benchmark results for a brand-new 13" MacBook and the original Mac Pro Quad, too.)
If you've just purchased your first Mac or iPod, you're probably hankering for iTunes, Apple's free media software. Like all of Apple's software, iTunes is fun and easy to use. However, beginners still might need a little help. As new features have been added to iTunes over the years, the learning curve has gotten steeper. Even Mac experts can need help with iTunes these days!
In this tutorial, you'll learn two different ways to add music to your iTunes Library:
You will also learn how to manage new songs by adding artwork, changing tags and creating playlists. -- Macinstruct.
I got my hands on the new MacBook Pro first thing this morning and saying everyone around me is gushing and jealous is an understatement. Unlike last year's model, the new MacBook Pro has a mercury-free, power-efficient LED-backlit display. I am a little shocked to report there is a visible difference between the two displays, and it's not just due to the fact that my old laptop is covered in fingerprints and a bit of dust. The screen is much brighter. -- geeksugar.
On Tuesday, Adobe released version 8.1 of its free Reader program. The program, which has long been a staple for viewing and printing Portable Document Format (PDF) files, includes the following changes:
Adobe Reader 8.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later to run and its download file size varies depending on version chosen. The program is coded as a Universal Binary and can run at native speeds on both PowerPC and Intel-based hardware.
"The IFPI, an international recording industry organization, has released a list of Ten "Inconvenient Truths" of file sharing. Though the group has a vested interest, it's still an interesting read as it tears apart some of the most common arguments in favor of file sharing. The author follows up with a more thorough explanation of some of the points. -- Ars Technica.
Cell-phone and laptop batteries could last up to 50 percent longer, thanks to a new type of display technology that's being developed by Clairvoyante, a company based in Cupertino, CA. Clairvoyante announced last month that it was introducing technology that could allow cell-phone, digital-camera, and laptop makers to develop power-saving displays that could dynamically adjust their backlight and color intensity based on the color and brightness of the content. -- MIT Technology Review.
In the battle between Apple and Microsoft, two men are in charge of competing efforts to ensure that the PC's basic software stays relevant in a Web-centered world. -- c|net.
Some Intel-based Macs can become unresponsive while being used in FireWire target disk mode for long periods of time. The FireWire icon will stop moving, and the disk cannot be accessed from another Macintosh computer over FireWire. Products affected:
This behavior can be corrected with a firmware update to the computer that becomes unresponsive while in Target Disk Mode. Startup that computer into Mac OS X, then follow the instructions in this article.
Backup 3 performs incremental backups, backing up only files that have changed since your last backup. This also occurs if you are backing up to a CD-RW or DVD+-RW.
If you performed a backup to a CD-RW or DVD+-RW, and later wish to backup changes that have occurred in your backup set to the same disc, you should do another Full Backup, rather than a normal backup. Doing a normal backup may lead to you inadvertently not having a back up any files in your back up set that have no changed.
To perform a full backup, select Plan > Full Backup. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
If your MacBook shuts down randomly during use, a downloadable firmware update is now available that resolves this issue.
The MacBook SMC Firmware Update v1.1 improves the MacBook's internal monitoring system and addresses issues with unexpected shutdowns. This update is recommended for all MacBook systems, including those that received warranty repair.
You can use the Software Update feature of System Preferences, or download the MacBook SMC Firmware Update v1.1 from Apple Software Downloads.
Note: If your MacBook is running Mac OS X 10.4.6, you won't be able to see the SMC Update until you update to Mac OS X 10.4.8. Once you have updated your system software, the SMC Update will appear as an option in Software Updates.
MacBooks running Mac OS X 10.4.7 will be able to download and install the SMC Update, so it is not essential that you update your system software, although Apple always recommends updating to the latest version of the system software.
If your MacBook is in a state where it will not remain on long enough to install the update, wait for the issue to reproduce itself. Once the MacBook has turned itself off, turn the computer on the by holding the power button down. Keep the button down until you hear a single long tone. Once you hear the tone you can release the button, install the recommended updates, and restart as you would expect.
If you continue to experience trouble with your MacBook after applying both updates please contact AppleCare for further assistance.-- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
In Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, iChat AV lets you audio conference with up to nine additional people and video conference with up to three additional people.
Here are the system requirements you need to initiate or participate in audio and video chats and conferences in iChat AV. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
This article explains how to recover AppleWorks (or ClarisWorks) documents that have become unusable, or "damaged."
Unless specifically stated otherwise, all references to AppleWorks in this article also refer to ClarisWorks.
AppleWorks cannot recover unusable Communications documents. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Learn how to re-create your iTunes library and playlists. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
There are lots of roads leading to Rome, and there a lots of ways to do the Mail backup task on OS X. A really simple and effective way is to let Automator do all the work. Here is how it's done. (You may wish to quit Mail before you start, just so it's not receiving new messages just as you're trying to create a new backup.) -- Mac OS X Hints.
As noted by several readers, tracks purchased from the iTunes Music Store using iTunes 7.2 have personal purchaser data -- specifically names and email addresses -- embedded in them. The data are stored as MPEG-4 Atoms: 'name', containing the user's name 'user' which generally contains an email address.
The obvious concern among some users is that, if indeed this data is being used to track files posted to illegal file-sharing networks, it could be spoofed to maliciously indict an innocent user.
Users have so far experimented with a few removal methods, including opening the files with a Hexadecimal editor (like HexEdit), locating and deleting the personal data. Some users who have tried to do the same with standard text editors have rendered their files unplayable with iTunes, so keep backups if you attempt modification.
It appears that running these iTunes tracks through Rogue Amoeba's Fission will remove the personal data.
Note that by performing any modification you may be violating the iTunes Terms of Service, which dictates:
"x) You agree that you will not attempt to, or encourage or assist any other person to, circumvent or modify any security technology or software that is part of the Service or used to administer the Usage Rules." -- MacFixIt.
Pundits flocked to scrutinize every aspect of the three newly issued iPhone television commercials, which revealed June 29th as the device's official release data. InformationWeek asks "Does it really turn on that quickly?" (yes, based on Steve Jobs' initial keynote presentation, it does wake from sleep that quickly) for instance. -- iPhone Atlas.
Apple has posted the D5 Bill Gates/Steve Jobs interview as a podcast today on the iTunes Store.
Apple has launched its "The Biggest iTunes Albums" promotion, offering some of the biggest selling albums for only $7.99. The company said that "As the iTunes catalog expands daily, we're faced with a massive amount of music that might feel a bit daunting to some. We've decided to shuffle some things around an have a sale -- and you're all invited. We handpicked some of the biggest-selling iTunes albums of all time, and dropped the price to $7.99. Enjoy." The sale includes albums from popular artists such as Justin Timberlake (FutureSex/Love), John Mayer (Continuum), Jack Johnson (In Between Dreams), Snow Patrol (Eyes Open), Dixie Chicks (Taking the Long Way) and more.
Following Sun's commitment to develop a native version of OpenOffice for the Mac, the project has released an early development version of OpenOffice.org Aqua project for Mac OS X. Billed as an alternative to commercial productivity suites such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org is an open-source, multiplatform and multilingual office suite. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. While previous versions required the installation of the X11 windowing system, the new version works natively within Mac OS X.
My husband and I are building a house. We want to design the floor plan and then decorate each room.
Guess what? Add Live Interior 3D to your Mac and you can design a house or office with a few clicks.
OK, it's more than a few clicks but it's also a tremendously gratifying experience to be able to layout a home the way you want, and see a graphic of the home and each room.
Thanks to the Mac's ability to handle 3 dimensional graphics and Live Interior's great Mac interface, you become the designer or architect or both. -- Mac 360.
We've written a lot about TextWrangler, the free text editor from Bare Bones Software. In fact, we like TextWrangler so much that we included it in our list of 20 must-have Mac apps. But if you're a Mac power-user or programmer, there's nothing like BBEdit - TextWrangler's big brother. It has all sorts of cool stuff, like the clipping menu. -- Macinstruct.
Over the past several months, we have been discussing command handlers and subroutine handlers in detail. This month, we will begin discussing a new topic -- AppleScript Studio. As we proceed, you will find that we will be using handlers regularly, especially command handlers, as AppleScript Studio makes heavy use of them. If you'd like to refer back to my previous columns on handlers, you can do so here... (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). -- MacScripter.net.
American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu thinks that Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") may have virtualization features far beyond the "rebooting into Windows" capability of Boot Camp. I'm a bit dubious, but Apple has pulled off shockers before. And this is one I'd love to see.
Wu is one of those hoping for "virtual machine" technology that allows users to run multiple operating systems simultaneously without restarting. "If so, we believe this would serve as a major catalyst for Mac sales," Wu told clients on Friday. "We continue to believe the key reason Leopard was delayed until October was to give developers time to test secret features." -- Macsimum News.
Internet user profiling could help repressive regimes identify dissidents, group warns. -- Computerworld.
Apple today updated its MacBook Pro line of notebooks with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, memory up to 4GB, and high-speed graphics in a stunning, lightweight, aluminum enclosure that is just one-inch thin. The new MacBook Pro is available in 15-inch models with a new mercury-free, power-efficient LED-backlit display and a 17-inch model with an optional high-resolution display. All models include a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing on-the-go, Apple's MagSafe Power Adapter that safely disconnects when under strain, and built-in 802.11n wireless networking for up to five times the performance and twice the range of 802.11g.* -- Apple PR.
Buy a Mac before September 16 and get a free iPod nano by mail-in rebate. -- Apple.
So all of a sudden you can no longer access your iPhoto library and you don't have a backup system. Well, Henrik Dalgaard's $15 File Juicer might help. In addition to converting the iPod's thumbnail files to TIFF it performs a variety of file-extraction jobs, including recovering images from erased flash cards and pulling images and text from PDF files.
I received an email today from a new Cocoa programmer who said he enjoyed the Cocoa Dev Central tutorials, but had a bit of a hard time wrapping his head around the whole thing. He thought this might have something to do with the fact that he's fifteen, but age has nothing to do with it.
There is a Cocoa learning curve, just as in any programming environment. Some parts of Mac programming are easier than others, and sometimes you can end up with code which technically does the job but there's a sense that it's not necessarily the "right way." All of this is normal.
Again, it's not an age thing. Even people who have been writing software for decades encounter some conceptual stumbling blocks when first coming to Cocoa, but it does level out eventually. There are a few things to do to get to that plateau faster: -- Theobroma Cacao.
Would you like to pay less for just the TV and movies you want to watch? That was the question that started Adam down the path to this week's comprehensive overview of all the different ways you can get TV, how much you'll pay, and what gotchas you may encounter. -- TidBITS.
The folks over at Laptop Magazine ran a head-to-head competition with Mac OS X Tiger and Windows Vista. They compared the big tickets like interfaces, performance and security, along with several other interesting also-rans like widgets and search (which, as we approach terabyte hard drives is probably becoming more of a big ticket item every year). We'll cut to the chase here: The Mac wins. Yet it's an interesting side-by-side comparison, especially given the surprising conclusions some of the ballot issues, such as media. It will be interesting to see what Leopard will bring to this matchup.
How long does take for someone to spoof a new Apple ad? Less than 24 hours?
A new AT&T Wireless commercial advertises that Apple's much-anticipated iPhone device will be available beginning June 29th. The spot, which ran on CBS at approximately 7:00 p.m. eastern time, includes a brief demonstration of some iPhone functions. It ends with an Apple-branded splash screen that states: "Coming June 29." You can see all the iPhone commercials at Apple.
Apple this week launched its Apple Outlet -- essentially a branded and remodeled section of its online store reserved for the sale of clearance items and refurbished products.
The update drew particular interest amongst tipsters, who noted that the outlet launched with a Mac section stock-full of refurbished Core Duo and Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. Discounts on the refurbished notebooks ranged from 18 to 41 percent, hinting towards a final inventory clearing ahead of new models.
The Apple Outlet also launches amid reports that Apple has canceled monthly fire sales at some of its brick-and-mortar retail stores. This may imply that a larger majority of returns and open box retail items will now be funneled back through the company's Elk Grove facility in Sacramento for repackaging and sale online.
There was quite a bit of discussion this week on the College Webmasters listserv regarding iTunes U. I thought that readers of this space would benefit from the discussion.
Debra Hannams of the University of Prince Edward Island on the University and College Webmasters listserv asks:
Is anyone out there using iTunes U, and if so, or if not, what are your comments, please?
Bryan Hantman of the University of Maryland School of Nursing:
I was looking over iTunes U yesterday and found a lot of cool stuff. I subscribed to a few podcasts to get more of a feel of what content is out there. Some of the audio levels are low, and the production of some files could be better. But as a whole I think that the idea is great -- especially as a way of branding and marketing to life-long learners. I'm bringing up the idea of putting some podcasts on the iTunes site this summer.
Dave Tindall of Seattle Pacific University:
Seattle Pacific has been part of iTunes U since last fall. We have several hundred items online and have been averaging about 1,000 downloads a month (mostly to current staff/students and alumni). We expect that Apple's recent decision to list the iTunes U"store" at the top level of the main itunes site will significantly increase overall usage. Previously, someone had to know the url to find the content.
Joel Herron of University of Wisconsin - Whitewater:
We've been using iTunes U for the last semester. At first it was just a slow trickle of courses that we've been podcasting using our own service, but we're now starting to ramp up our usage to lecture series' and special events and a considerable number of course offerings. If you have more questions, I'm more than happy to help.
David W. McKelvey of Willamette University:
In their promotional material, Apple makes it sound as though the individual professor can make and upload their podcasts on their own. In reality, how much assistance have you provided? And, if you track the referral links on the podcast pages, how many visitors (rough ballpark fine) to your main/other web sites do you see through the service?
Morgan S. Davis of Warren Wilson College:
Can anyone tell me if there is a cost associated with this service? When I tried to get information from Apple, they wanted to schedule some sort of telephone consultation and then could never get hold of me. We went into it thinking it was free, but, to my mind, anything involving talking on the phone means high cost...
Matt Scafidi-McGuire of St. Lawrence University:
And the show stopper for us - how do you handle copyright infringement? Who on campus vets all podcasts posted to your iTunes U account? When you post to iTunes, it takes a few days for your podcast to become available because Apple checks for infringement. Part of the iTunes U contract commits the university to handle it. Your podcasts are available more quickly (immediately?) but the school is responsible for any infringements.
Emily Rowlands of The Pennsylvania State University:
Penn State has been using iTunes U for almost a year, though it only recently went public. Prior to this week, Penn State podcasts were only open to those associated with the university. We're very anxious to see the change in traffic to our site (Research Unplugged). Does anyone know of a way to track this through iTunes?
As for personal observations, I've found the service to be very easy to use. Of course, we have a lot of support here on campus. However, before Penn State joined iTunes U, I uploaded our content directly to iTunes, and I found that to be user-friendly as well.
Lindsey Wilkerson of the University of Louisiana at Monroe:
ULM signed a contract with iTunes U earlier this year with the intent of using it for podcasting course materials and the like. This initiative has handled by our online learning department and several professors with solid knowledge of iTunes, podcasting, etc.
Unfortunately, several key issues weren't addressed before the contract was signed.
The bottom line is that once we got past the fact we didn't communicate to each other on our campus BEFORE we jumped off the ledge, we'll have iTunes U up this fall when LDAP comes on line.
We view it as just another tool for faculty to push course material to students.
Dave Tindall of Seattle Pacific University:
The Instructional Technology Services unit has been involved in all content posting. While it's possible that a faculty member could do it, that hasn't been the case with us. The ITS group doesn't report to my department so I can't say exactly how much effort is required. Other than the download number quoted earlier, I don't have other web stats.
David W. McKelvey of Willamette University:
In their promotional material, Apple makes it sound as though the individual professor can make and upload their podcasts on their own. In reality, how much assistance have you provided? And, if you track the referral links on the podcast pages, how many visitors (rough ballpark fine) to your main/other web sites do you see through the service?
Dave Tindall of Seattle Pacific University:
Apple doesn't charge for the basic iTunes U service functionality or the disk space associated with the content. However, the campus is responsible for creating/posting the content, managing the IP and copyright issues, creating any type of custom interface, etc...
We've had a pretty robust conversation on our campus about the intellectual property issues. There are clearly differences of opinion, and some content is not online because the authors don't like the notion of free posting. But for the most part, there's been positive acceptance that this is a meaningful way to make some content accessible and available to others and the feeling that this is a good thing. Although, I'm sure your mileage may vary...
Morgan S. Davis of Warren Wilson College:
Can anyone tell me if there is a cost associated with this service? When I tried to get information from Apple, they wanted to schedule some sort of telephone consultation and then could never get hold of me. We went into it thinking it was free, but, to my mind, anything involving talking on the phone means high cost...
In looking through Apple's newly posted iPhone ads on their site, I noticed something interesting.
In every shot we have ever seen of the iPhone's main menu thus far, there are 3 rows of icons for applications (2 rows of 4 icons, and the 3rd row has 3 icons) for a total of 11 icons.
However, there is an odd shot in the newly released "How- To" iPhone ad, where the screen goes from the traditional 11 icon view, to a new 12 icon view. -- Macenstein.
More info from around the proverbial "industry water cooler" has come out today on the iPhone. Some interesting tidbits are starting to put the puzzle pieces together on how the iPhone will operate with the Macintosh OS (and Windows). It appears, at least initially - and this is obviously subject to change - that the iPhone will interact with the Mac OS through iPhoto as well as iTunes but not show up on the desktop as a drive like iPods do. -- 9 to 5 Mac.
Supposedly this polar clock you will be able to use with the new widget feature in Leopard. -- .
Steganos introduced its personal computer VPN solution, Anonym VPN, for Mac OS X on Monday. The application allows Mac users to surf the Web anonymously and encrypt the data coming into or going out of their computer regardless of where they are.
Anonym VPN will be available for download on June 4 at the Steganos Web site. It will be priced at US$14.95 per month for 25GB of data traffic, or $99 annually for 25GB of traffic per month.
Following the discovery that Apple was embedding iTunes account information in iTunes Plus songs, Erica Sadun at O'Reilly MacDevCenter speculates that Apple may be using Steganography within the AAC portion of iTunes Plus tracks.
Apple does not indicate that it uses such technology in its iTunes Terms of Service.
After an independent MacRumors investigation, it does not appear that watermarking is taking place in the AAC data itself, and it may be presumptuous to claim that steganography is taking place.
A MacRumors forum post suggests the differences seen in the files are simply a result of differences in modification dates embedded in the files, rather than any sort of embedded identifying information.
Today TechTracker (the parent company of MacFixIt and VersionTracker), is launching a new resource for the yet-to-ship iPhone, dubbed iPhone Atlas. They have some ideas for types of content the site will deliver, and some plans for how elements will evolve once the iPhone actually lands in users' hands. However, more important than any speculation they can conjure regarding what prospective iPhone owners will want to read is what their current readers actually say they want. As such, they would love to garner your input on the following:
Early this week, Adobe caused a stir by announcing an update to its Camera Raw plugin, version 4.1, for Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements 4.01. The press release was widely reproduced on various Internet news sites. (For those not infected with the "digital hub" bug, the Camera Raw plugin is what allows these applications to open files in the digital camera-native RAW format, which contains the most information and is thus best for semi-serious photography.) The stir wasn't the content of the announcement, but that the announcement itself quickly proved to be a lie: there was no such update. Adobe had gotten a little ahead of itself. -- MacFixIt.
The iPhone fever built by Apple and its much adored chief exec has caused some anxiety in Apple execs ahead of the much-anticipated launch on June 29th. The massive interest and the immense attention may lead some to be disappointed with the first generation of Apple's iPhone, according to the New York Times.
On the heels of its recent Santa Rosa mobile architecture launch, Intel this weekend touted its next-generation quad-core mobile chips, which is expected to be available next year. At the company's Intel's Developer Forum conference in Beijing, the world's largest chip maker said that the new technology will be used in high-level gaming and high-end, performance-oriented. The extra processing power, however, will come at the expense of battery life and likely won't find its way into mainstream business notebooks for sometime, the company said. "You'll see it at the high end, but I don't see it running so fast into the mainstream because I don't believe there will be enough threaded applications that will justify the trade-offs," says Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel's mobile platform group. -- InfoWorld.
Apple was among the top 10 PC vendors in server sales in the first quarter of 2007, according to the latest market research numbers. Market research firm released server sales numbers showing that both Hitachi and Apple displaced Lenovo and Langchao which were among the top-10 worldwide server brands in the fourth quarter of 2006. Hitachi was ranked as the No. 9 in first quarter of 2007, while Apple was No. 10, according to IDC numbers cited by Digitimes. Apple reportedly shipped 8,700 Xserve units in the quarter, growing 73 percent from the previous quarter, the report said. "With Apple launching the fifth generation Xserve server adopting Intel Dual Core Xeon processors (Woodcrest) several enterprises started to adopt the Apple servers, which boosted the company's growth in first quarter 2007."
What's an Apple basher to write about when the company dishes out multiple new products at once? Does one tear into Apple TV as 'not being able to play DVD discs,' as did Fortune's 'Grouchy Geek,' and merely imply that the iPhone will be just as disappointing? -- Roughly Drafted.
The Mac is, in fact, nearly a year behind the Java mainstream, and not for the first time, while Mac Java developers keep waiting for JDK 6, Java.net web site reports.
An Apple patent (number 2007011102) for a method and an apparatus for positioning a first device in relation to a second device has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It involves improving the manufacturing of LCD displays and monitors to ensure consistent displays in terms of sharpness, contrast, color, and/or other features when viewed at various angles. -- Macsimum News.
An Apple patent (number 20070123207) for an accessory detection to minimize interference with wireless communication has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It involves ways to keep the iPhone and other wireless devices free from interference. -- Macsimum News.
An Apple patent (number 20070124680) for a graphical user interface and methods of use therein in a multimedia player has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. A continuation of a 2002 patent, it involves a method, apparatus, and system for providing user supplied configuration data for a portable multimedia player--in, other words, the iPod (though the patent may also relate, in some ways, to the upcoming iPhone and, potentially, other devices). -- Macsimum News.
On June 1st, David Morgenstern wrote an article titled "Why Is the Mac OS More Secure than Windows?" in eWeek. In the article there is a question as to whether the security we enjoy on the Mac is because of the platforms obscurity or because the platform is inherently more secure.
As a developer, I can tell you that not only is the platform inherently more secure, but that Apple actively tries to find holes in the system and patches them up. -- Marketcircle Blog.
As of this posting Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes has 432 (and counting) free user-contributed AppleScripts for Apple's iTunes that will make maintaining your digital music collection easier and more fun!
Many photographers have scores of valuable images stored in iPhoto libraries. As Aperture becomes incorporated into the workflow, what's the best way to move those pictures to the Aperture environment? And what if you want to share your Raw files with both iPhoto and Aperture? In this podcast, Joe Schorr, senior product manager for Aperture, explains all of the inside tricks for working with both iPhoto and Aperture libraries. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
One of the biggest challenges to digitizing your film archive is organization and metadata management. In this article, Micah Walter proposes a sane approach to bringing your analog past into the digital age. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
Open Directory is one of Apple's best-kept secrets. Get the real scoop on Open Directory, and learn how to configure a very basic Open Directory system and set up an OS X Open Directory client. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
The New York Times interview with Amit Singhal, who is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm. They use 200 "signals" and "classifiers," of which PageRank is only one. "Freshness" defines how many recently changed pages appear in a result. They assumed old pages were better, but when they first introduced Google Finance, the algorithm couldn't find it because it was too new. Some topics are "hot". "When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds," said Singhal. Classifiers infer information about the type of search, whether it is a product to buy, a place, company or person. One classifier identifies people who aren't famous. Another identifies brand names. A final check encourages "diversity" in the results, for example, a manufacturer's page, a blog review, and a comparison shopping site."
Xserve Lights-Out Management Firmware Update 1.0 addresses a security issue as well as provides enhanced reliability to the monitoring and management features of Xserve.
Parallels Desktop 3.0 has been officially announced, and it's got lots of cool features like 3D graphics support and the ability to select a Windows or Mac application as the default for any file.
Apple has applied for a patent involving the detection of wireless interference on a handheld device. According to the application, accessories can impact the wireless signal of a device, particularly if the accessories are placed near the antenna or are of the unapproved aftermarket variety. This interference isn't a good thing if you want a strong signal (or any signal in some cases) while using an accessory, so Apple is proposing to let you know if your accessory might be harmful to the signal of the main device. -- Ars Technica.
DRM-free iTunes Plus files have our names and e-mail addresses attached to them. Great. But now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has found that those AAC files carry a lot more than just that. -- Ars Technica.
Success, they say, mellows out even the fiercest of tyrants, making their dictates seem almost benevolent. Steve Jobs, the enfant terrible of yesteryears, whose unrelenting quest for perfection has driven many to Ole Tennessee or an asylum (whichever is closer) is showing signs of a kinder, gentler self, happy to share (within limits) the glory, and espousing the virtues of team work. -- GigaOM.
Pixelmator, a new image editor with breathtaking UI features powerful selection, painting, retouching, navigation, and color correction tools, and layers-based image editing, GPU-powered image processing, color management, automation, and transparent HUD user interface for work with images.
Comparing these two compression rates was tough, even when using a pair of state-of-the-art Ultrasone headphones. In our decidedly unscientific comparison, we listened to all the tunes at both compression rates in A/B comparisons with those phones, with iPod stock earbuds, on our kick-ass car stereo, and on our reference Dolby 5.1 system. -- GIZMODO.
Surface features a touch interface, but it doesn't use a touch screen. Instead, five separate cameras are used to record motion on the table's surface. Ars spoke with Nigel Keam, a member of the Surface team, about the technology in the device, and he explained that five cameras were needed because of field angle issues. -- Ars Technica.
Ten years, 520 columns, three PBS presidents, and 800,000 words ago, this column began. That was, in many ways, a completely different world. Blogs had yet to be invented, for one thing. Most of today's Web 2.0 tycoons were in high school, for another. -- I, Cringely.
If you weren't able to make it to the D: All Things Digital Conference to see the joint interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, you can now watch the interview online. The 90 minute interview is broken into a prologue and seven parts, and a "highlight reel" is available as well.
The two tech industry giants were interviewed by the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, and were the highlight of the conference. Both men shared their insights on where the computer industry has come from and where it is heading to next.
To see all of your purchased iTunes Plus tracks, create a new smart playlist and set the rule to:
Kind - contains - Purchased AAC
The other iTunes Store tracks ar Protected AAC, so you'll be able to segregate them, if you want to create different backups or for any other reason
iLounge spoke with Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Mac Hardware Marketing, David Moody, who provided more details about this upgrade. According to Moody, not all of the Youtube catalog will be available on day one. Instead, "thousands of videos designed for Apple TV" will be available at launch, but that the remainder will become available by the fall. The reason for the delay is that Youtube will be encoding all of their videos into a "H.264 streaming-efficient compression format" specifically for the Apple TV. All of Youtube's videos are currently encoded in Flash Video (FLV) format.
Apple has posted a AppleCare Knowledge Base article (#305563) with some important information about how iTunes Plus purchase preferences work. Among the salient points:
iTunes Plus preferences can be controlled by choosing View My Account from the iTunes Store menu, clicking View Account then clicking the Manage iTunes Plus button.
Mozilla today released Firefox 2.0.04, an update to the popular open-source browser. The free browser brings several security updates, improved Vista support, and new language localizations. The update addresses critical memory corruption issues that the developers believe could be exploited to run arbitrary code as well as a "high" impact security flaw that could allow a malicious user to inject a script into another site in violation of the browser's same-origin policy.
Real Networks today revealed RealPlayer 11, the next major version of its media player software. The jukebox is the first to focus attention on capturing web-based video instead of simply offering tools to play it back. A unique extension to the player's web plugin can automatically detect videos that are recordable from the web and saves multiple clips at one time; this works for both live video events as well as prerecorded shows, Real says. The software is intelligent enough to also recognize copy protection on certain streams and will refuse downloads when DRM appears. Any video can be linked to a friend through a sharing feature to save the trouble of recreating the link.
Although Apple is famous for its media players and desktop systems, it has still largely ignored the enterprise realm according to some involved with the industry. "I definitely say Apple's enterprise support is lacking compared to someone like Sun, which is very good," says LiveWorld's operations director, Andrew Oliver. The company uses 120 Xserve systems, but Oliver notes that Apple's support is "too weak and is frustrating. Once we upgraded to their enterprise support program, that improved, but anytime you want to step out of the box, they almost want to wash their hands of you." -- ComputerWorld.
In a little less than two weeks - what we here call a fortnight - we'll know Leopard's secret sauce, its herbs and spices, the computer equivalent of Coke's secret recipe.
Let's imagine that Steve Jobs wasn't kidding when he said he didn't want to show Leopard's Top Secret stuff at last year's WWDC. He wasn't merely having fun at Microsoft's expense knowing full well how close Vista was coming to the look (but not feel) of OS X. He was quite serious at playing his cards not just close to his vest, but playing a bet-the-house, put-up or shut-up game of poker.
Let's also imagine that a man who can turn Apple around from a basket case to one of the most admired companies (coming #1 innovator in BusinessWeek's estimation three years running), keep OS X-on-Intel secret for years, then adapt Intel's brains and hearts inside his laptops and desktops, really wanted to make the computing world sit up and pay attention. -- Les Posen's CyberPsych Blog.
Steve Jobs announced improvements to the device that are already boosting its appeal, and more are likely on the way. -- BusinessWeek.
An Apple patent (number 20070124680) for a graphical user interface and methods of use therein in a multimedia player has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. A continuation of a 2002 patent, it involves a method, apparatus, and system for providing user supplied configuration data for a portable multimedia player--in, other words, the iPod (though the patent may also relate, in some ways, to the upcoming iPhone and, potentially, other devices). -- Macsimum News.
An Apple patent (number 2007011102) for a method and an apparatus for positioning a first device in relation to a second device has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It involves improving the manufacturing of LCD displays and monitors to ensure consistent displays in terms of sharpness, contrast, color, and/or other features when viewed at various angles. -- Macsimum News.
If you're working on a document and you want to send it to someone as an e-mail attachment, you probably know that you can drag the actual file icon to the Mail icon in the Dock to create a new message containing that file. But to do this, you have to navigate to the Finder and find the file. There is another way. -- Macworld.
A new online feature of Google Maps called Street View is stirring up a debate over privacy concerns on the Web. -- New York Times.
For most Internet users, defending against phishing attacks is a top priority. Typically, phishing attacks involve phony emails and fraudulent web sites that try to lure users into disclosing user names, passwords and other personal information, such as credit card numbers and social security numbers.
The damage caused by phishing attacks ranges from loss of access to your web account to identity theft. Once the personal information is obtained, the phishers may use one's details to steal money, create fake accounts etc.
One popular way to combat phishing attacks is to maintain a list of known phishing sites and to check web sites against the list. This hack highlights 10 anti-phishing Firefox extensions that can be used to mitigate the risk of being a victim of a phishing attack. -- Security Hacks.
