Jan 11, 2010 Jan 13, 2010 Tuesday January 12, 2010
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Air Stash: Wireless Flash Drive For the iPhone
Air Stash – a flash drive that you can access with Wi-Fi enabled gadgets. Interesting. I can actually see flash drives and other external storage follow this suit, as being accessible by Wi-Fi is the next best thing for all gadgets in the very near future. Makes me wonder if USB 3.0 will be short-lived. (thinking aloud) Anyway, the AirStash uses an SD card to determine how big your AirStash storage capacity will be. If you have a 32GB SD card, great. Just insert your SD into the AirStash and you have a 32GB flash drive that you can access wirelessly. You can store most multimedia files on the AirStash such as movies, music, photos and documents and easily access them with Wi-Fi enabled gadgets such as the iPhone. The AirStash has a built-in lithium polymer battery that you can charge via USB. Another great thing about the AirStash is that you can share all its content to multiple users and devices simultaneously. Unlike a typical flash drive, where you can only view it on a single computer. The AirStash uses WPA2 encryption so you won't have to worry about unknown people accessing the contents. I'm looking forward to seeing this product in the market. So far it's not yet available and no official news on its pricing. If you want to know more news about the AirStash, you can follow them on Twitter (@AirStash)or even add them on FaceBook. Visit: Air Stash [ Image courtesy of AirStash ]
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iRecordMusic now ready for Snow Leopard
Posted by Dennis SellersBitcartel has updated iRecordMusic to version 1.6 which adds support for Mac OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”). It also fixes some bugs.
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Apple's 2010 proxy statement now online
Posted by Dennis Sellers Apple has announced that its 2010 proxy materials are now available on the web under the US Securities and Exchange Commission's Notice and Access rules and can be found here. As a result of the Notice and Access rules, Apple is able to significantly reduce the environmental impact of producing and...
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Flickr Find: MacBook Generations
Filed under: Apple, Macbook Pro, MacBook, Retro Mac Oh man. I'm tempted to just sit back and let you marvel at the beauty, history, innovation, and intelligence that is on display in the picture above, taken and posted by Robert Donovan on Flickr (and be sure to check out the alternate view, too -- I actually like the alt view better, given that it shows all of the ports over time). But just in case you're wondering: Unibody 13" 2.53Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro 15" 400Mhz G4 Titanium PowerBook 15" 1.25Ghz G4 Aluminum PowerBook 15" 2.5Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro Amazing stuff -- think of the engineering, manufacturing work, and design arguments that went into those little bands of metal, and all of the good work and art that has since been created with them. Beautiful.TUAWFlickr Find: MacBook Generations originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - MacBook - TUAW - Macintosh - PowerBook
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Fourth-gen iPhone available this April?
Apple and Korea Telecom "have reached a broad consensus to introduce the advance models as early as possible," according to Fast Company via the Korea Times.
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Movies on your iPhone embedded in an app
Filed under: Multimedia, Video, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch, App ReviewI like a good movie as much as the next person, so it was with some interest I took a look at a movie app a reader suggested to us. It is a movie called 'The Invaders' and you purchase the app for U.S. $0.99 [iTunes link] and then play it all you want. For a minute I thought it might be the sixties TV series with Roy Thinnes, but no such luck. In fact, 'The Invaders' is a 1912 public domain silent western about Indians attacking an Army fort. You buy the app, download the 150 MB file to your iPhone or iPod touch, and watch the movie. Then I guess you throw it away, because it is not material that stands up to repeat viewings. The developers have a bunch of other public domain titles in their Cinema Classics series, like 'Night of The Living Dead', but you can download or view most of these titles for free from the web anytime you want. You can also access them from the Internet Archive and watch them on your iPhone or iPod touch with Safari. At last count Night of The Living Dead was available on DVD from 23 firms, and you could view it for free on Google Video or YouTube. It's one of those films that inadvertently slipped into the public domain, leaving the creators with a lot of remorse and no money. The same firm, LOL Software has dozens of iPhone apps, many that just collect news feeds from other sources and put them into an iPhone framework. LOL indeed. Yawn.TUAWMovies on your iPhone embedded in an app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Apple - YouTube - IpodTouch - Google
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Will Microsoft, Yahoo follow Google's lead in China?
With Google saying it will stop censoring its Chinese search results, a key question now is whether its major search rivals will follow suit.
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Rumor: New iPhone by April
Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, Apple, iPhoneYou TUAW readers came up with a long list of features for a possible iPhone 4.0, and now it turns out you might not even have to wait too long for a new revision. A few overseas providers of the iPhone have hinted that a brand new version of the handset could be coming out as soon as April of this year. Possible features this time include a video chat function, a removable battery, dual-core processors, and a better screen and camera (possibly with a flash feature, as we've heard before). That sounds like a lot of wishful thinking to us (I doubt we'll ever see an iPhone with a removable battery -- if Apple wanted to do so, they'd have already done it), but if not, that would be a pretty darn popular smartphone, and it would definitely answer the recent challenge of Google's Nexus One. But of course as always, rumors are rumors, so we won't believe it until we see Steve Jobs holding it on stage, and you shouldn't either. But sources have long said that 2010 will be a year in which we'll see a new iPhone, and while April (or early May) seems earlier than we thought, you never know.TUAWRumor: New iPhone by April originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments IPhone - Steve Jobs - Apple - Smartphone - TUAW
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Podcast #123: Tablet and iPhone Rumors - THEY NEVER STOP!!!
We discuss two of the recent Apple tablet rumors. How did we pick just two? The same way the rumors are created, magic. Actually, we had a hat full of rumors and pulled two of them out of that. We call it, "The Magical Hat of Rumors."We wonder how many red-eye pictures we'll start seeing on Facebook if the iPhone gets an LED flash and we make fun of companies using the name Slate.Plus, we answer your hard-hitting Twitter and Facebook questions! Okay, they weren't that hard-hitting. Got a question, but you're afraid to leave a voice message because of Witness Relocation Dept. rules? Drop us a question via Twitter twitter.com/maclife.This week's Battlestar Applactica picks:Zinio's Magazine Reading App - FreeWords with Friends - $2.99 Things - $9.99 Don't forget, the Mac|Life staff would love to hear your thoughts, comments and ideas for the new podcast. Just leave a message on the Mac|Live question/comment line: (877) 404-1337, extension 622. Please limit the length of your messages to 1 minute max. We'll review these calls each week and feature our favorites, along with responses, on that week's podcast.To subscribe to the Mac|Live podcast series through an RSS feed, click here; if you want to subscribe through the iTunes Store, click here.
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Ski resorts busted by iPhone app
Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, App StoreWant to see past a ski resort's lies? There's an app for that. The iPhone's ability to track snowfall at ski resorts has been well publicized (it even showed up in an official Apple commercial), but apparently there's been an unintended consequence: ski resorts are actually losing money. The UK's Globe and Mail reports that before iPhones existed, people would just call up to the slopes to ask them if there was snow on the trails -- and the ski resorts would more often than not reply that there was, in order to pull in some more weekend customers. It was usually just white lies (no pun intended) -- they'd usually say there was about 20% more snow than actually existed. But now that the iPhone provides a much more objective look at exactly how much powder there is up there, resorts are finding that they can't push that weekend boost any more. And that's cutting into their yearly profits as a whole. Now, you may argue that resorts being held accountable is a good thing, and according to the article, most of the resorts themselves would agree with you: they weren't in it to outright lie to people, because telling people that there was a foot on the ground when you can see grass would have an even worse effect on their business. But hearing from someone on the phone that the slopes are plentiful is a much different experience than seeing a number in an iPhone app, and it's interesting that the difference is directly affecting resort profits in many cases. Not that resorts have too much to worry about, especially the ones who have plenty of snow anyway. It just shows you how much the iPhone is still changing all kinds of industries in strange ways.TUAWSki resorts busted by iPhone app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Apple - App Store - TUAW - Unofficial Apple Weblog
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Pandora's free online radio gets boost from iPhone, Ford
Thanks to the popularity of the iPhone and other smartphones, listenership has quadrupled since 2008 at Pandora, the free online ...
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Google Docs to Gain File Storage
Google will expanded its GDocs service to accept file uploads that were previously not allowed.According to the Official Google Blog, Google Docs will soon be accepting file uploads in varying formats including images, video, zip archives, and more. Google tells us that this service will be rolled out over the next few weeks to users. Google Apps Premier customers will be able to sync and upload many files at once through forthcoming applications. CNET is reporting that the amount of storage given to users to store files on GDocs will be 1GB -- not an extreme amount of storage, but enough that you might not have to carry around your USB drive. CNET also tells us that Google will be charging customers for file storage on Docs. According to them, standard users will be charged $0.25 per gigabyte per year. Enterprise customers will be charged an enormous $3.50 per gigabyte per year. Of course, these customers are also paying largely for the support and level of service agreements.We're not sure how Google will be rolling out this feature, so keep a check on your GDocs account. You can read the full announcement on Google's blog.
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Inklet turns your trackpad into a Wacom-style tablet
Filed under: Hardware, Multimedia, Peripherals, Odds and ends, MacBook, Graphic Design Now here's a fascinating app -- Inklet is a new Mac app by Ten One Design that purports to turn your Macbook's trackpad into a tablet-style input. The program uses the multitouch trackpad interface to sense where and when you're touching the pad, and then translates that into "drawing" marks just like a Wacom pen tablet. Unfortunately, the trackpad doesn't have sensitivity built-in (it can only tell when you're touching, not how hard you're pushing), but with Ten One's Pogo Sketch stylus, which I presume sends pressure information back to your Macbook somehow, you can get that "line thickness" functionality -- press harder for a thicker line, or less for a thinner line. Pretty awesome. It's not as big or probably as sensitive as a commercial Wacom tablet, but just for doodling and messing around, it's a much cheaper solution. Inklet requires Snow Leopard to work, so if you're running anything pre-10.6, you're out of luck. The software is $24.95, and their website has been brought to its knees by recent press, so you can download it from Apple's site if you can't reach it the official way. The Pogo Sketch stylus is only required for pressure sensitivity, but it's a very reasonable $15. Like I said, if you're like me and want a Wacom but haven't had the cash or inclination to spend on it, Inklet could be the stepping stone you're looking for. We'll have a full TUAW review of Inkjet within the next few days.TUAWInklet turns your trackpad into a Wacom-style tablet originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Macbook - Apple - Wacom - TUAW - Graphics tablet
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Logic Pro and MainStage updated, now 64-bit friendly
Filed under: Audio, Software UpdateTwo pieces of Apple's Logic Studio suite for Mac, Logic Pro and MainStage, have been updated today and the new versions are available immediately through Software Update or the links below. The Logic Pro 9.1 update includes support for 64-bit native mode, compatibility with 64-bit Audio Unit plug-ins, and support for file names over 32 characters long. According to the update notes, samples are now mapped correctly when using the "Contiguous Zones" opetion in the EXS editor. The full release notes are available for viewing here. MainStage 2.1 also includes 64-bit native mode and compatibility with the 64-bit Audio Unit plug-ins. Other fixes and improvements include better compatibility with MainStage 1.x documents, improved recording when using the Loopback plug-in, and multiple playback plug-ins in the same group now sync reliably. Full release notes are available here. Enabling 64-bit native mode for both applications requires Mac OS X 10.6.2 or later. [A tip of the studio professional hat to TUAW reader samw for letting us know about the update]TUAWLogic Pro and MainStage updated, now 64-bit friendly originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Mac OS X - TUAW - MainStage - Logic Pro - Apple
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50 Killer Mac Apps For Under $50
Who doesn't need more for less? We present 50 Mac|Life-approved applications--many free, all under $50--that'll guarantee you get the most from your Mac without traumatizing your wallet. The Internet is full of noise--countless different applications for every occasion, with reviews everywhere that love and hate them at the same time. While that’s hardly news, it’s still a hassle that isn’t going away. Say you picked up a spiffy new MacBook Pro, and it’s time to kit it out with the leanest, meanest software. After all, Macs have that rich history of garage-roots development, of a few folks in a basement brewing up quality software that smokes the big-name stuff. So you’ve got a feeling there’s great, affordable software just waiting for you to find it--and you’re right. But how do you sift through the zillion calendar apps and jillion media players to find the gems worthy of your hard drive space? And more importantly, your time and money?We’re here to help with a compendium of essential software. It didn’t come easily--we debated, argued, haggled, and even pleaded to secure a prized position on this list for our favorite, most useful applications. But by limiting the software we’re highlighting to 50, we’ve guaranteed you the best of the best--no Internet spew here. And by capping the cost of the software we’ve selected at $50, we’ve made sure you can reasonably buy what you need. You may love your Mac already, but you’re not gonna believe how much it can do once you load up even a few of these choice applications. Entertainment Sure, iPods and iTunes make music and movies easier to enjoy, but they're not without headaches of their own. That's where these awesome apps come in. They take the pain out of kicking back with your favorite flicks and tunes. Simplify Media Share & stream your iTunes library over the Internet.The iPod has made several portable music formats obsolete, and we sure don’t miss schlepping around fragile cassette tapes or heavy wallets full of CDs. But even the mighty iPod has its limits--namely capacity. That’s where Simplify Media (free, Simplify Media, simplifymedia.com) comes in handy. It guarantees that the size of your music library doesn’t matter by letting you stream music between computers via the Internet. Yup, this app will play your entire library on any computer (as long as the one that has your library is powered up and online).Stream your tunes from home or the next cube.Once installed, a simple login fires up your music. Simplify Media works with iTunes just like the built-in LAN sharing does, and the remote libraries appear under Shared, alongside any local shared libraries. Even better, you can add up to 30 friends’ shared libraries, and an iPhone app ($5.99) lets you pipe your music to your iPhone or iPod touch. SuperSync SuperSync keeps multiple iTunes collections in sync. Speaking of iTunes libraries--streaming is great, but what if you want to sync libraries across multiple Macs? SuperSync ($22, SuperSync, supersync.com) makes it so. Sure, Apple introduced limited music-transfer capabilities with Home Sharing in iTunes 9, but that feature requires computers to be on the same local network. SuperSync one-ups iTunes by syncing iTunes libraries over the Internet. It’s perfect for anyone who uses multiple Macs, and SuperSync also has a bunch of other tricked-out features. In deference to the record companies, Apple makes transferring music from an iPod to a computer unnecessarily difficult. SuperSync handles the task with ease, making it a bacon-saver when the hard drive in your Mac kicks the bucket. SuperSync will even allow you to sync libraries cross-platform.SuperSync's color-coded interface helps you synchronize your iTunes tracks across multiple Macs. VLC Media Player Never worry about video file types again. If most of your Mac video-watching happens in the form of DVDs or QuickTime movies, you probably don’t think too much about player software. But move beyond the most basic video types, and you’re asking for trouble. With the myriad formats, containers, and encoding parameters available, the simple act of playing back a cat video can become incredibly frustrating. VLC Media Player (free, VideoLAN, www.videolan.org) is like a Swiss Army knife for digital media. It’s open source and cross-platform, and the app will play back practically any audio or video file you throw at it. VLC also handles file conversions with ease, so you can use it to convert audio and video for use online or on portable devices.It plays, it converts, it makes toast (okay, maybe not that last one.) RipIt Backup & convert DVDs with RipIt.There are plenty of legit reasons to rip a DVD. Backup copies of kids’ movies for the minivan, watching Glee on your iPod touch while you’re on the bus, or even just saving battery power on your laptop (playing back a file from a hard drive is much more efficient than spinning a DVD).RipIt's simple interface makes ripping DVDs seamless and easy.Once the domain of übernerds, DVD ripping is a one-click affair thanks to RipIt ($19.95, The Little App Factory, ripitapp.com). And since it makes full rips, all of the menus, bonus features, and subtitles remain intact. You can play back the resulting files with DVD Player on your Mac or use a freeware tool like Handbrake to convert your rips into iPod-friendly formats. Delicious Library We love the iTunes Store, but we still end up accumulating books, DVDs, console games, and, yes, even CDs. Delicious Library ($40, Delicious Monster Software, www.delicious-monster.com) helps catalog your collections by--get this--taking snaps of UPCs via your webcam and then automatically organizing your meatspace content onto virtual shelves for easy sorting and browsing. You can track loans to friends, post items for sale on Amazon, and publish Web catalogs formatted for your iPhone. That way, you can avoid buying another copy of John Hodgman’s More Information Than You Require. Connect360 We’re Apple-faithful, but that doesn’t stop us from engaging in a little Modern Warfare 2 on our Xbox 360. And since the 360 is much more than a simple gaming machine, we also use it to stream iTunes tracks to our entertainment center and view pictures from our iPhoto library on our HDTV--with the help of Connect360 ($20, Nullriver Inc, www.nullriver.com), that is. It works over wired or wireless networks, and it even streams H.264 video straight from our MacBook. Sweet! Peel Pack rats, beware: Peel ($14.95, Hjalti Jakobsson, www.getpeel.com) can get really overwhelming, really fast. But if you’re an avid follower of music blogs, Peel can automagically grab new tracks as they’re posted. So forget all that pesky right-clicking and manually adding to iTunes. Just feed Peel a list of your favorite music blogs, and then kick back as tons of new, free tunes get downloaded straight to your Mac. You may never have to buy (or pirate) music again. CoverScout Cover Flow is one of those features that looks great in a demo but doesn’t quite translate at home. iTunes can attempt to find the album art that makes Cover Flow actually useful, but it’s limited in scope and can’t make fuzzy matches. CoverScout ($39.95, equinox USA, www.equinux.com) scours the Internet to find your missing album art and presents you with multiple options to let you choose the best images. Don’t Cover Flow without it. TuneUp For all of those untitled and mistitled tracks in your music library, there’s TuneUp ($19.95/one year, $29.95/lifetime; TuneUp Media; www.tuneupmedia.com). Like CoverScout, TuneUp can find and download missing album art, but its best trick is cleaning up your ID3 tags--the artist, title, and album info displayed in iTunes. A quick search is all it takes to clear up all those Track 1s and Unknown Artists in your library. It sure beats cleaning up metadata by hand. Next Page: Productivity Apps >> Productivity Takin' care of business, every day. Takin' care of business, every way. Workin' on a Mac, it's all right. This productivity software is workin' overtime. WriteRoom Blocks distractions so you can write in peace.Proving the tired adage that “less is more,” WriteRoom ($24.95, Hog Bay Software, www.hogbaysoftware.com) is a light text editor with a full-screen mode. Start a new document, and everything else fades away--your Dock, your menubar, and other windows on your Desktop. You’re left with a black screen and friendly green text for a clutter- and distraction-free experience. The Escape key toggles between full-screen mode and windowed mode, which resembles TextEdit with a live word count.WriteRoom can save your work as plain text, rich text, or Microsoft Word’s .doc format. The preferences offer tons of customization: auto-save, character counts, the appearance of text in full-screen mode, and more. But WriteRoom’s real magic is how it gets out of your way and lets you focus on what you’re doing. BusyCal One calendar application to rule them all.BusyCal ($40, BusyMac, www.busymac.com) is iCal on steroids. It dances circles around iCal, chanting, “Everything you can do, I can do better.” And it’s right. Sharing is a snap: You can set up two-way syncing with your Google Calendar or with other BusyCal calendars on your local network or the wide-open Internet. But even aside from sharing, BusyCal offers tons of calendaring bells and whistles: customizable views, sticky notes, weather forecasts, moon phases, graphical icons, a to-do list, notes, tags, and much more. And since it uses the Sync Services built into Mac OS X, your BusyCal calendars can sync with MobileMe and your iPhone. You can even switch back to iCal anytime without losing any of the events or to-dos you entered in BusyCal.So what if iCal is free? BusyCal is better. Things Flexible to-do list syncs with iCal and the iPhone. For busy people like us, a good to-do list is beyond essential. But some that we’ve tried are so complicated that just managing your tasks becomes a chore in itself. So the light, easy-to-understand Things ($49.95, Cultured Code, www.culturedcode.com) is a breath of fresh air. You can go the full Getting Things Done route, adding contexts, priority levels, a tickler file, and so on. Or you can keep it simple, with one-off and repeating tasks and multistep projects. iCal syncing can get your deadlines on your calendar, and Things on the Mac can sync wirelessly with Things on the iPhone ($9.99 in the App Store). We’ve tried multiple task-managment systems, from Web-based ToodleDo to iPhone apps like ToDo to Mail’s built-in To-Do list to good old paper and pencil. Things is the cream of the crop for its good looks, quick entry, and easy syncing.Things uses tags to organize your projects in a million ways--or you can ignore the tags altogether and just work. Express Scribe Transcriptions made easy... well, easier.Transcribing an interview, lecture, or other recording is hard enough, just with the listening and typing. Toss in the extra arm movement as you frantically click from your text editor to your audio-playback application every time you want to pause the recording or rewind a few seconds, and your transcribing job just got tougher and more frustrating. Express Scribe (free, NCH Software, www.nch.com.au/scribe) lets you set system-wide hotkeys for audio playback so you can stay in your text editor, fully control the audio, and never need to reach for your mouse.Express Scribe can also slow down your audio without changing the pitch, supports video, works with lots of file types, loads recordings from analog or digital audio recorders, and more. Plus, it’s completely free. Wahoo! NoteBook The Mac is silly with note-taking applications (Evernote, Yojimbo, ShoveBox, MacJournal…shall we go on?), but Circus Ponies’ NoteBook ($49.95, Circus Ponies, www.circusponies.com) is a standout. If you subscribe to “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” NoteBook can be the place for notes, Web clippings, bookmarks, documents, voice memos, photos, and more. It struts its flexibility with ready-made templates for planning a trip, writing a research paper, collecting recipes, keeping a journal, and so on, while its fun spiral-notebook interface is a nice touch. TextExpander A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters could produce Hamlet a lot faster if they knew how to use TextExpander ($29.95, SmileOnMyMac, www.smileonmymac.com). This wonder app installs as a System Preferences pane and lets you define shortcuts for your most commonly used words and phrases. Abbreviate long URLs, your email signoff, even your own photo or scanned signature file. Then as you type those shortcuts, they’re automagically expanded to what you really wanted to say. Brilliant. iFinance 3 Sure, Quicken is popular and Mint.com is free, but iFinance 3 ($29, Synium Software GmbH, www.synium.de) was built from the ground up just for Macs, and it shows. The intuitive interface makes it a cinch--dare we say a pleasure?--to track your accounts, keep an eye on your cash flow, set up a budget, and graph your expenses. It can also import from CSV and QIF files for easier data entry. Plus, a companion iPhone app lets you enter transactions on the go. FlexTime This charming timer app ($18.95, Red Sweater Software, www.red-sweater.com) lets you set up multistep routines that run once or repeat ad nauseam. Each step can be marked by a sound, spoken text, or even running a script. Once your routine is perfect, you can export the audio to iTunes--great for following a recipe’s carefully timed steps or taking your favorite yoga routines on the road. DEVONthink Personal Another great catch-all for storing, sorting, organizing, and searching information, DEVONthink ($49.95, DEVONtechnologies, www.devon-technologies.com) can take almost anything you can throw at it. Documents, PDFs, photos, multimedia files, bookmarks, webpages, iChat logs--all of those can be imported, sorted, and read right in DEVONthink. Searching is easy, and you can cobble together a brand-new document from items in your DEVONthink database and export it to your favorite text editor for printing or as HTML for posting. Next Page: Internet Apps >> Internet It's a wild place, that Interweb, so there's nothing like a few primo apps to tame everything from blogging to FTPs to Twitter and Flash banners. Transmit Traveling the two-lane FTP highway.FTP has been around forever. Social networking and cloud computing may come and go, but FTP is in it for the long hall. Fortunately, there are a wealth of great FTP clients for the Mac, and the best of those is Transmit ($29.95, Panic, www.panic.com/transmit). The client utilizes a split directory window that shows the path on your computer and the path on the FTP site. With in-app search and the ability to sync folders on your Mac and on the FTP site, Transmit helps alleviate the search and drag-and-drop blues of other clients. The sync feature is especially helpful for Web developers and designers. You can even create desktop droplets for quick uploads to heavily used sites.Two-window FTP FTW. Mac-Journal Web-based apps suck.Blogging about your life is a faux pas. Blogging about anything else that people actually care about is the proper way of utilizing of the blogging systems available out there. The ongoing problem is that most blogging platforms are bit of a pain to use because they’re Web-based. Plus, if you’re somewhere without Internet access, you can’t start laying out your blog posts for your site. MacJournal ($39.95, Mariner Software, www.marinersoftware.com) solves that problem with an easy-to-use multiplatform blogging client. Lay out your articles offline with images, video, and audio, then save them for later posting. The app includes the ability to both write in full-screen mode so you won’t be interrupted by your Twitter friends, and to record an audio podcast in the client.Create blog posts quickly and without browser issues. Tweetie Multi-account Twitter action.After wowing the world with its iPhone Twitter app, atebits decided to release a desktop version of Tweetie ($19.95, atebits, www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/). The app can handle multiple Twitter accounts, compose tweets in a separate window, allow you to change the account you’re sending a tweet from on the fly, and let you drag and drop pics and videos right into the Compose window. Don’t have the perfect media on your Mac for a tweet? Record a video or shoot a pic from your iSight camera directly in Tweetie. And since Twitter conversations can be difficult to follow, Tweetie displays the conversation you’re having in a timeline if you just double-click one of the pertinent tweets. The Tweetie bookmarklet in Safari also allows you to share links quickly from your browser.Have an actual conversation on Twitter with Tweetie. Dropbox Stop, drop, and roll on home.Transferring large files can be a huge pain. Where the hell did you leave that thumb drive? External hard drives leave an unsightly bulge in your pocket, and all those cables are always getting tangled in your shoes. That’s a safety hazard, son. Dropbox (2GB storage for free, 50GB for $9.99/month; Dropbox; www.dropbox.com) is a cloud-based storage drive that you can access from any computer or iPhone. Just pop files into the Dropbox folder on your Mac, and it automatically syncs up with the online disk (which you can view on Dropbox’s website) and with any other machines you have the application installed on. You can even share folders and files with other Dropbox users. If the free 2GB box doesn’t cut it, you can upgrade to 50GB for $10 a month.Access your files from anywhere in the universe (with an Internet connection). LogMeIn If you need to remotely access a Mac or (gasp) a PC with Windows on it, LogMeIn (free, LogMeIn, logmein.com) allows you to peer into your remote computer from anywhere. You can launch apps, move files, and adjust your preferences via a Web-based interface, as if you were sitting at that computer. For $29.99, you can get your iPhone in on the action too. TweetDeck If you’re a Twitter power user, TweetDeck (free, TweetDeck, www.tweetdeck.com) should be in your arsenal of Twitter apps. The interface is a series of columns that displays info like your friends’ feeds, saved searches, mentions, direct mentions, and Facebook updates. You can also keep up with trending topics with just a quick glance. If there’s something you need to track on Twitter, TweetDeck can make a column for it. Vuze Allegedly, BitTorrent steals medication from senior citizens, but isn’t it time to forget about all the evil things it supposedly does? Instead, focus on the greatness of Vuze (free, Vuze, www.vuze.com) and its ability to download legally available video files. After you’ve done the downloading, Vuze can convert your files for use on the iPhone, Apple TV, iPod, Xbox 360, TiVo, and PlayStation 3. It’ll even stream videos to your set-top boxes. Nice! BannerZest Creating Flash banners is difficult, especially when you don’t know or own Flash. BannerZest ($49, Aquafadas, www.aquafadas.com) takes the pain out the process and gives you a simple way to create quick, beautiful Flash banners. From a standard gallery to an interactive experience, BannerZest comes with a collection of themes for different uses, and it uploads your banners to your FTP or MobileMe disk. FileChute Sending large files over email can result in the dreaded bounced email. FileChute ($17.95, Yellow Mug Software, www.yellowmug.com) works with your MobileMe-, FTP-, or WebDAV-accessible Web server. Drop your file into the app, and it uploads it to your online server of choice and then creates a URL to add to your email. If you drop more than one file, you get an archive uploaded to your server. Adios, bounced emails! Next Page: Content Creation Apps >> Content Creation Sure, Adobe's stuff is the gold standard, but you don't want to have to count on a good night at the poker table to pay for it, right? Cue these killer applications, which let you effectively draw, edit photos, render, animate, and even scratch for a very fair price. djay 3 Budgeted beats to grow on.You want to spin phat beats, but your slim bank keeps you from purchasing the high-end DJ equipment and software. That’s okay, young DJ-in-training, djay 3 ($49.95, algoriddim, www.djay-software.com) gives you everything you need to rock the house without losing your shirt. This surprisingly robust audio-mixing software integrates with your iTunes library and puts all the usual mixing and scratching right on your desktop. The application supports multitouch trackpad scratching and fading between tracks, so it’s especially perfect for the last few generations of MacBooks. And as you grow as a DJ, the application will grow with you thanks to its support for MIDI controllers. That means when you get the cash for those fancy digital mixers and turntables, djay will be right there with you.With your iTunes catalog at your fingertips, you'll find some pretty interesting mashups. Audacity Free audio editor extraordinaire.Audio editing seems simple at first. Then suddenly, you’re knee-deep in samples, frequencies, and bitrates. Sound editing really is part science, part black magic, so we’re thankful that Audacity (free, SourceForge, audacity.sourceforge.net) removes one of the biggest obstacles: choosing a quality application and figuring out how you’re going to pay for it. Audacity is both terrific and free, which is kinda hard to beat. An audio-recording and -editing application, it captures up to 16 channels at once from multiple sources, features noise removal, includes a metadata editor, and supplies unlimited undos. It can handle most of the audio files out there, and it’ll work with multiple files types in the same project. Audacity is also is cross-platform, so if you’re a recent Mac arrival, you may already know about its awesome power.So many features, you'll second-guess the price: free. SketchUp 3D for you and me.Maya, 3D Studio Max, and SketchUp--all of these will let you create magical 3D worlds. Only one will do it for free, and you probably nailed it in one--it’s Google’s SketchUp software (free, Google, sketchup.google.com) that brings the world of 3D to the average Joe. You can create your own items or utilize Google’s 3D warehouse to find models created by other SketchUp users. With all those models at your fingertips, you can create floor plans for your home, build a level for your favorite FPS, or export the files to animation software or Photoshop. The application includes tutorials that’ll get you up and rendering in no time at all… so now nothing stands between you and virtual-world domination!Build a virtual man-cave for you and your stuff. Ringer Wham-bam ringtone, ma'am.We get tons of people asking us, “How do I make a ringtone for my iPhone?” Until recently, we told them to launch GarageBand, cut a ringtone, and export it to iTunes. Now we recommend Ringer ($15, Pixel Research Labs, pixelresearchlabs.com/ringer) as the quickest and easiest way to create ringtones from your favorite songs and audio files. Ringer has access to your entire iTunes library and works with MP3, AAC, MOV, MP4, M4V, and QuickTime files. Yeah, you can make a ringtone from a video file. A super-simple editor with waveform information makes it a snap to select the perfect section of audio, and you can fade in and out of the file and preview the ringtone before cropping it and sending it to iTunes for a sync with your iPhone. Acorn Using an image editor doesn’t have to cost you hundreds of dollars. In fact, with Acorn ($49.95, Flying Meat, www.flyingmeat.com/acorn), you’ll get features like layers, AppleScript support, 64-bit support, drawing, and filters in a package that’s easy on the wallet. This easy-to-use software strips away most of the features most people don’t use and gives you a clean image-editing tool. Inkscape While raster-based image editors like Photoshop are great at pushing pixels around, the vector-based drawing programs are where all the real action happens. The open-source application Inkscape (free, Inkscape, www.inkscape.org) is similar to powerhouses like Illustrator and CorelDraw, but with one important difference--it’s free. The app utilizes the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and includes a nice 3D drawing tool that allows you to set your vanishing points. Screenflick With Snow Leopard, Apple introduced screen-capture into QuickTime, and it’s a nice feature if you’re looking to make a quick full-screen screencast. But if you want something that has features like fixed location output at up to 60 fps, Screenflick ($25, Araelium Group, www.araelium.com/screenflick) is an application you can get behind. It’ll highlight mouse clicks and keyboard events, adding a nifty visual cue into your screencasts that highlights what you’re doing. Bracketeer While your eye can take in an amazing range of light to dark, your camera cannot. In order to help create images that include a tonal range that the average camera can’t capture, HDR applications and plug-ins have appeared on the market. These applications take a series of images that have been bracketed from dark to light and combine them to include the darkest darks to the lightest lights in one HDR image. Bracketeer ($29.95, Pangea Software, pangeasoft.net/pano/bracketeer) is a standalone application that does just that. Adjust the saturation, the contrast, and exposure from within the application. The application will even auto-align your images in case you got the hiccups while taking your pics. iStopMotion 2 Home Most animators’ first animation was probably a stop-motion piece with Star Wars action figures. And whether those childhood lightsaber battles have you hoping to become the next Brad Bird, or you just love the look of stop-motion, iStopMotion ($49, Boinx Software, www.boinx.com/istopmotion/overview) is a quick, easy way to create simple stop-motion animations. Use your iSight or connect a camera to your Mac and start making your own Wallace and Gromit short. You’ll feel the Force, Lu… sorry. Next Page: Utility Apps >> Utilities Slick utilities can add crucial functionality to your Mac, so we've selected the best options for everything from secure password managers and system-troubleshooting tools to an app that will let you play Windows games on your Mac... without Windows! AppZapper Completely trash applications.Unlike using Windoze, installing and uninstalling apps on a Mac is painless. Drag an application’s icon into your Applications folder, and you’re pretty much good to go. Deleting them is just as simple--just grab them and toss them into the Trash. But if you’ve ever dug around Library or System folders on your Mac, you’ll see that even after you Trash an app, many of them leave crumbs in different parts of your machine. For cleaning up those last little bits, AppZapper ($12.95, Austin Sarner and Brian Ball, www.appzapper.com) is a must-have utility that’s also great for troubleshooting problems. Wiping out all of an application’s preferences and other random files can often turn a troublesome app into a perfectly behaved one after a clean reinstall. Completely remove unwanted applications with a simple drag and drop. Hazel Clean and organize your Mac--automatically.Hazel ($21.95, NoodleSoft, www.noodlesoft.com) is kind of like Rosie the Robot for your Mac. Or it’s like OS X’s Folder Actions… if they were super-awesome, easy to use, and perfect for helping you keep your Mac’s folders and files organized. Hazel installs as a pane in System Preferences, monitoring locations that you choose, and performs actions on files based on your criteria. By creating simple rules, you can delegate repetitive and annoying file-management tasks to Hazel--for example, automatically add downloaded MP3s to iTunes or move DMGs to an archive on an external drive. Hazel can delve deep into metadata for complex actions like copying images into subfolders by ISO settings or reorganizing music files according to bitrate. You can even set up simple rules for auto-deleting items that have been in the Trash longer than a certain amount of time. 1Password Keep all your confidential info on lockdown.You’ve heard it before--secure, unique passwords are the way to go. Yet there you are, still using the same password for everything from your maclife.com login to your Gmail and your bank account. Do we even have to tell you again why that’s a colossally bad idea? 1Password ($39.95, Agile Web Solutions, agilewebsolutions.com) can help clean up your online act, creating and managing complex passwords for every online account and then logging you in with a keyboard shortcut. The app can also be used to securely store personal information like credit card numbers and addresses for use in Web forms. And since all of your passwords are unique, you won’t have to worry about your banking info being compromised because of a data breach at that sketchy Russian website you used to download MP3s for a penny.1Password securely stores Web passwords, logins, software licenses, and other important information. iPhone Explorer Store & browse files on your iPhone.Breaking tradition with the iPods of yore, Apple doesn’t provide the ability to use your iPhone as a USB drive. iPhone Explorer (free, myPod Apps, www.mypodapps.com) is a simple app that will let you drag and drop files onto your phone for easy portability. The app itself is lightweight, and all it takes is a USB cable to view your iPhone’s folder structure. In addition to storing files, iPhone Explorer can be used to restore iTunes tracks from your iPod to a Mac or to rescue photographs from the depths of your iPhone’s memory. No jailbreaking is required, but more adventurous users with jailbroken phones can also recover contacts, messages, email, and other data. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s simple to use for the careful novice. AppleJack AppleJack (free, The Apotek, applejack.sourceforge.net) is one of those things you’ll install once and never think about again—if everything goes right. But if, god forbid, your Mac starts acting weird one day--or stops acting, period--it’ll be AppleJack to the rescue. It’s a command-line utility for diagnosing and repairing problems with your computer. Use the menu-driven system to repair permissions, validate preferences files, and remove screwy cache files. SuperDuper With Time Machine built into OS X, there’s really no good reason not to have an automatic backup. But Time Machine has its limits--a big one being the lack of bootable backups. SuperDuper ($27.95, Shirt Pocket, www.shirt-pocket.com) easily handles creating and updating bootable clones of your Mac’s hard drive so you’ll be ready to go when disaster strikes. Just plug in your clone, restart, and you’re up and running again. CrossOver Games PC fanboys like to slag the Mac for having fewer games, but with CrossOver Games ($39.95, CodeWeavers, www.codeweavers.com), Mac users--and Linux fans too--can easily play games coded for Windows machines. The list of officially supported games is hundreds deep, and since CrossOver is based on Wine, you don’t even need a copy of Windows just to play Team Fortress 2. Clean My Mac Hard drives are never big enough. Whether you have a MacBook Air or a Mac Pro, there always comes a point when there’s just not enough space on your internal disks. Clean My Mac ($29.95, MacPaw, macpaw.com) can help with that problem, scouring your Mac’s drive and tossing out all sorts of gunk you don’t need. Use it to toss unneeded language files, scrub extraneous code from universal binaries, and thoroughly clean up after deleted applications. rooSwitch OS X’s Fast User Switching is handy for juggling multiple user accounts and their corresponding settings, but rooSwitch ($19, Rocket, rooswitch.com) allows you to maintain different settings on a per-application basis. Use it to manage Home and Work browser profiles, for example, or to have different profiles in your word processor for writing or editing documents. rooSwitch works with nearly any application, and it supports Automator and AppleScript for the ultimate in customizability. Next Page: Wild Card Apps & Staff Picks >> Wild Cards Not all Mac apps fall into your neat little categories. These five break the mold and completely deserve a place on your hard drive. Bricksmith Virtual bricks you can't lose or step on? Sold!Legos are the official plastic brick of Mac|Life--we’ve had many discussions about the empires we built in our childhood bedrooms and how much we miss “playing Legos” as the soulless adults we are today. Bricksmith (free, donations accepted; Allen Smith; bricksmith.sourceforge.net) lets you recapture the magic in a highly geeky way. It’s a 3D Lego-model creator, offering drag-and-drop construction using thousands of parts in every color of Lego’s rainbow. Tutorials and the one finished model that’s included show you the ropes, and once you’re done with your virtual creation, you can export step-by-step instructions to build it for real. There’s even a mini figure generator where you can design and outfit a matching Lego man and insert him into your model. This software couldn’t be cooler.We can't believe an application this sweet is donationware. CameraBag Desktop Give your photos a new identity or some old-timey charm.We named the iPhone version of CameraBag one of our “101 Essential Apps for 2008,” and now the same fun can be had on your Mac, thanks to CameraBag Desktop ($19, Nevercenter, www.nevercenter.com). You drag in a digital image, and the app re-creates the look of a real film photograph--choose from Helga, Lolo, Mono, 1962, 1974, Instant, Magazine, Cinema, or Colorcross.For more variations, click the Reprocess button, and all the options will change their look and coloring just slightly. Or check the Multi-filter box and experiment with adding multiple filters to a single photo. Of course, you can export your altered images back to your hard drive without affecting the original file. The novelty of taking an everyday digital snapshot and making it look like a Polaroid image or washed-out 1974 photograph never gets old.Your digital photos, plus extra personality. SousChef Recipe database + shopping list + cooking assistant = one kitchen lifesaver.SousChef ($30, Acacia Tree Software, acaciatreesoftware.com) edges out MacGourmet ($49.95, www.marinersoftware.com) in the cooking-assistant category for its cloud database of recipes. Every time a SousChef user enters a recipe (133,000-plus at press time), it’s synced to the cloud, and you can search those and import them into your own library. You can also opt out of sharing your own recipes so Aunt Erma’s secret matzo ball soup stays in the family.Once a recipe’s in your library, you can edit, print, email, or blog it--or even add its ingredients to your grocery list. Click the Cook button for a full-screen view of the instructions that you can read from across the room, keeping your Mac out of the splatter zone. The Mac’s built-in speech recognition lets you advance the recipe’s steps with your own voice, or you can use the Apple Remote or a Keyspan Front Row Remote. Temporis Attractive, drag-and-drop timelines make it easy to "show, don't tell."Everyone loves a good infographic, or at least geeky types like us do. (And the geeks shall inherit the earth, don’cha know?) Temporis ($24.99, Bartas Technologies, www.bartastechnologies.com) makes it easy to create neat-looking timelines on your Mac, which you can then print or export as PDF or TIFF files that are ready for importing into your presentation software, word processor, or page-layout app.Adding new events is just a Command-click away, and it’s a snap to drag the start and end dates around on the timeline. The Arrange button will automatically stagger your timeline’s events into the most logical and easy-to-read order, and the Inspector lets you tweak fonts, colors, titles, labels, and your timeline’s span and intervals. You can even export the event data separately as an XML or CSV file. Manga Studio Debut 4 Create your own comics and manga, and even manga-fy your photos.Manga Studio Debut 4 ($49.99, Smith Micro, my.smithmicro.com) is a must-have for fans of Japanese manga or anyone who wants to make their own comic books. Its ingenious Beginner’s Assistant groups together the tools by processes so you can intuitively wind your way through a typical manga workflow: sketch, panel, draw, tone, and add character dialogue.You can scan or draw your own art (graphics tablets supported, natch), play with the included samples, purchase manga content from www.contentparadise.com, or even import your own digital photos and watch Manga Studio make them all comicky-looking. Draw speed lines, add dialogue bubbles, move your pages around, and then print or export your finished comic book. Manga Studio Debut 4 is the younger brother to professional-level Manga Studio EX 4 ($299.99), but Debut has plenty of advanced features too, including layers, templates, customizable patterns, and more. Mac|Life Staff Picks Bass Tuner I’m a beginning bass player--like, very beginning. So it’s a huge help that I don’t have to worry about staying in key. This terrific, simple, and streamlined little app ($9, www.rustykat.com) lets me quickly get in tune in front of my MacBook using the built-in mic. With that necessity sorted, I can fire up some tracks and tablature and focus on struggling to play along. Multiwinia Multiwinia ($19, www.ambrosiasw.com) offers crazy replayability. You devise a strategy for your stick-figure army, then watch them take on up to four other teams in six game types on 40 vector-graphic maps. Online multiplayer against Mac and Windows players works flawlessly and keeps me coming back for more. No Napoleon complex necessary. MetaX If you need to tag a large amount of MP4 files, you could use iTunes’ painfully slow process. Instead I found MetaX (free, www.kerstetter.net) for all my tagging needs. The app will search the IMDB catalog and plug the information into the appropriate fields, then share that info via tagChimp. You can even scan DVD barcodes via iSight! Bean For a word dork like me, word processors are a big deal. Bean (free, www.bean-osx.com) is a lightweight, open-source word processor. It’s missing many of the blinky lights and thingamajigs of the big boys, and that’s exactly the point. Fewer distractions equals better writing, faster. And for anyone who needs to hit a certain length, the live word count rocks. Fluid I often find that Firefox has the tendency to crash when I have too many Web applications running. But Fluid (free, fluidapp.com) lets me create a site-specific browser out of my most essential websites, like Google Docs and Flickr. Simply plug in the URL, and voilà ! You have a separate application running that won’t go down if something else does. Next Page: More Gaming Bang for 50 Bucks >> More Bang for 50 Bucks Some of the Mac's best games are also its cheapest? Sweet!Fifty bones won’t buy you even one new Xbox 360 or PS3 game, but on the Mac, you can snap up a stack of premier games for less than that. Or at least, that was our theory when we gave Florence, our new associate online editor, 50 whole American dollars and asked her to max out her Mac with the best gaming that short stack of money could buy. Man, did she score--check out the results of her diligent “research.” Plants Vs. Zombies $16, amazon.comLine up perilous peashooters and sun-soaking sunflowers against an abominable horde of zombies in Plants vs. Zombies.This animated tower-defense favorite pits you against a horde of zombies with one thing on their (decaying) minds--invading your home for brains! Pit your arsenal of zombie-fighting plants, each with their own spectacular organic weaponry, against 26 zombies and 50 levels of adventure. Fair warning: Once you start playing this excellent game, it’s incredibly hard to stop. World of Goo $10, amazon.comStack up adorable globs of goo to build structures and watch them band together as you help transport them across various levels.World of Goo is another addictive and totally adorable puzzle game. Created around the idea that circular goo balls make adequate building materials (naturally), the game has you solving puzzles by dragging and dropping goo to create all kinds of crazy structures that enable you to transport your goo across the level. The oh-so-cute googly-eyed blobs pack the game with charm, and you can also connect online and play against other Goo architects around the world. Braid $15, playgreenhouse.comBraid's aesthetically appealing backdrop and profound storyline will keep you engrossed until the very end.Some games defy description, and Braid might be easy to pass over because it appears to be just a mix of platforming and time control set against a gorgeous backdrop. But it subverts and transcends those two well-worn clichés with brilliant design and an absorbing story that packs a twist that you’ll never see coming. Watch the YouTube videos if you need help solving its puzzles, but just make sure you see this masterpiece through to the end. Balcassa $8, openplanetsoftware.comBalcassa has a mountain of exciting brainteasers for the puzzle fiend.Balcassa feeds off those nightmares you still have about attempting to master that archaic, rainbow-colored Rubik’s cube. And while most of you probably never cracked the damn thing (we didn’t!), Balcassa gives you a second chance. The objective of the game is to slide the cubes into a specific sequence, pattern, or orientation. It may sound like a simple task, but much like fiddling with a Rubik’s cube, figuring it all out is the real reward. Freeware Fun If you’re interested in first-person shooters and MMORPGs, Quake Live and Second Life can give you hours of entertainment at our favorite price: $0.00. Both games perform smoothly on Mac OS 10.4 or later. Quake Live doesn’t require beefy hardware because it runs through your Web browser. But that doesn’t stop it from delivering all the fast-paced action of the classic first-person shooter. Second Life, while not as packed with storyline as World of Warcraft, offers a similar massively multiplayer world where you can meet people, customize your character’s look, and participate in a virtual world that’s just like our own. You don’t even have to watch the clock to make sure you’re on time for a player-versus-player raid!You don't need fancy computer hardware to frag your way through this beloved shooter. Vital Statistics on Our 50 Killer Apps Total cost if you bought all 50 apps: $1219.83Number of apps that are free: 13Apps that have an iPhone counterpart: 15Whaddaya waiting for? (apps that have a free demo): 39Number of countries these apps were born in: 7Apps named "iSomething": shockingly... just 3!Apps that require Snow Leopard: 1Apps that require Leopard: 14Apps that promise "iLife integration!": 9
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Infographic: The App Store Economy
Did you know the average cost of an app is $2.70 or that the average iPhone owner spends $10 a month on apps? GigaOm has put together a snazzy infographic breaking down the economy of the App Store with dozens of tasty morsels of data.
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iPhone/iPod apps for Jan. 12
Posted by Dennis SellersHere are the latest iPhone/iPod touch/iPod apps announced. You can find 'em at the Apple App Store.
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PHYX joins FxFactory development partner program
Posted by Dennis SellersNoise Industries, developer of visual effects tools for the postproduction and broadcast markets, announced that new development partner, PHYX Inc., has released PHYX Keyer for the FxFactory platform.
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Slates for Doctors? Where Apple’s Tablet Makes Dollars and Sense
In some interesting tablet news that falls a little off the well-trod rumors path, Apple officials have apparently paid a visit to LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center a few times to talk up the potential of an Apple tablet in terms of the medical field. VentureBeat is reporting that these visits have been confirmed by Jason Wilk, an entrepreneur whose father plays golf with Cedars-Sinai executives. It makes sense for Apple to test the waters in non-consumer markets where tablets have found some purchase in the past. The iPhone is making gains in enterprise, and is even used by many doctors because of the low cost and good design of a variety of medical database apps available on the device's App Store. Combining that kind of knowledge repository with a device that can replace a clipboard and act as a connected link to the hospital's central database would obviously be something that might appeal to doctors. It would reduce the need for extraneous devices and trips back and forth from a central nursing station where information is collected and stored, and could conceivably lower wait times and increase patient turnover, an important concern in privatized health care. Add to that the fact that even at the fairly high price that's been rumored lately, around $1,000, the Apple slate would be a bargain. Currently, the Motion Computing C5 is one of the more successful devices in the medical tablet space, one that isn't yet very crowded either. The C5 costs double the proposed price of the Apple tablet, a full $2,000 per unit. Specialized software for the device can add significantly to the overall cost health organizations end up paying for the tech. If Apple manages to break into the medical market, and other industrial and commercial fields where tablet tech is useful, then the sales projections that have been floating around begin to make sense. One to one and a half million units per quarters seemed like an awful ambitious figure for the consumer market alone, especially for a device that seems to fit a very specific market niche. But imagine interactive exhibits at museums and exhibitions, self-service at retail chains and outlets, and, as we've just been discussing, doctors making rounds. In all of the above, an Apple tablet, at $1,000 or less, becomes a very sensible business proposition, especially if it makes use of the App Store platform for software, which should make it relatively inexpensive to source and develop custom applications to suit any and all needs.
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Logic Pro 9.1 Release Notes
Imagine if more Apple updates came with splendid release notes like this. â…
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Hints found of OpenGL 3.0 support in 10.6.3
Filed under: Gaming, Hardware, OS, Software, Apple, Snow Leopard News is bouncing around today that the current test version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 has OpenGL 3.0 installed in it, and while it's not completely working yet, developers are hopeful that this means Apple is pushing to have full OpenGL 3.0 support in place as soon as possible. What does that mean for us mere users? Better, faster graphics, and the ability to push the hardware we've already paid for to where it's supposed to be. Most of the hardware sold in modern Macs actually has the ability to make use of OpenGL 3.0 (in fact, the current version is actually 3.2, and 3.0 was released back in 2008), but Apple's never included it in the software. It's a strange thing, this hesitance Apple has to really push the graphics ability on these machines to the limit. They've kept things slower than they could be in other ways as well, for reasons we're not entirely sure of. It just doesn't seem like faster 3D is a priority for them -- we'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's good or bad.TUAWHints found of OpenGL 3.0 support in 10.6.3 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple - Mac OS X - Operating system - TUAW - Macintosh
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'Macsimum Recommended Reading' for Jan. 12
Posted by Dennis Sellers“Microsoft frets Google's Nexus One will suffer Zune's failure: Microsoft announced to the press that Google will face a series of Zune-like problems with its Nexus One as it tries to balance its Android platform.”—Roughly Drafted Magazine
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Want a Nexus One? Better Like It.
There is no doubt that the iPhone is expensive to purchase, own and use. I pay $200 a month for the family plan that my wife and I are on, plus there was the expense to begin with. Nevermind the crappy service from AT&T but I digress. The interwebs are abuzz with talk about the Nexus One terms of sale, specifically the part about the fancy equipment subsidy recovery fee. From Google: You agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the “Equipment Recovery Fee”) equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service. For example, if the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan was $529 USD and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device was $179 USD with a service plan, the Equipment Recovery Fee you pay will be $350 USD in the event you cancel within the first 120 days of carrier service. The Equipment Recovery Fee is equal to the line item in your confirmation email setting forth the discount on the full priced Nexus handheld device related to your carrier service plan activiation. You authorize Google to charge the Equipment Recovery Fee directly to your credit card, or other payment method used to purchase the Nexus handheld device, upon cancellation of your wireless plan. You will not be charged the Equipment Recovery Fee if you return your Nexus handheld device to Google within the 14 day Return Policy period as set forth below. So here's the long and short of it all. If you buy the phone, with or without a plan, and you decide to bail on it in the first 120 days of wireless service, you're paying $350. Well, that sucks, but no biggie, right? If you're with T-Mobile, it is. Sign a contract with them and there's an early termination fee as well. How much? Per T-Mobile: AN EARLY TERMINATION FEE WILL APPLY IF YOU CHOOSE TO END YOUR SERVICE BEFORE THE END OF YOUR TERM, OR IF WE TERMINATE IT EARLY. FOR SERVICE ACTIVATED, OR ACCEPTANCE OF A NEW ONE OR TWO YEAR TERM, ON OR AFTER 06/28/08, THE EARLY TERMINATION FEE IS: $200 IF YOU TERMINATE WITH MORE THAN 180 DAYS REMAINING ON YOUR TERM; $100 IF YOU TERMINATE WITH 91 TO 180 DAYS REMAINING ON YOUR TERM; $50 IF YOU TERMINATE WITH 31 TO 91 DAYS REMAINING ON YOUR TERM; AND THE LESSER OF $50 OR YOUR MONTHLY RECURRING CHARGES (including any applicable taxes and fees) IF YOU TERMINATE IN THE LAST 30 DAYS OF YOUR TERM. Tack another $200 onto the process then, bringing the total to $550, $30 more than buying the phone outright or $371 more than buying it from T-Mobile. Hope that Nexus One is working out for you, and if it isn't, better wait 121 days before you change your mind.
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Apple releases Logic Pro 9.1
Posted by Dennis Sellers Apple has released Logic Pro 9.1, an update of the music creation and audio production tool. The new version delivers improved compatibility and numerous fixes.
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Vectorworks Architect software now compliant with GSA BIM Guide Series 02
Posted by Dennis SellersNemetschek North America says its Vectorworks Architect software has been tested by the National 3D-4D-BIM Program with the General Services Administration as complying with the requirements of the BIM Guide Series 02, Spatial Program Validation. Vectorworks Architect software (version 2010, SP2) may now be used on GSA projects that require BIM....
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Apple posts MainStage update
Posted by Dennis SellersApple has released MainStage 2.1, an update of the live performance application that turns the Mac into a streamlined live rig. It's part of the Logic Studio suite.
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Sample Logic updates Morphestra to 160GB hard drives
Posted by Dennis SellersSample Logic has upgraded Morphestra from 80GB hard drives to Glyph 160GB hard drives. This upgrade allows you to fit all of your Sample Logic products onto one portable drive.
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Quirky releases Cable Caps
Posted by Dennis SellersQuirky has released Cable Caps, covers designed to help protect, organize and add flair to your USB cables. Cable Caps are designed to help you protect the male end of any USB cable when not in use. It also keeps them organized and distinguished from one another.
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ATTO’s Celerity Fibre Channel Host Adapters enable Mac connectivity for EMC storage systems
Posted by Dennis SellersATTO Technology, which specializes in storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, announced today that its 4Gb/s Celerity Fibre Channel Host Adapters have been qualified by EMC Corporation as E-Lab tested for use with the EMC CLARiiON and EMC Symmetrix networked storage systems.
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Catching up with Avie Tevanian (q&a)
As the former Apple software chief embarks on a new role with private equity firm Elevation Partners, he talks to CNET's Ina Fried about his old company, which phone is in his pocket, and what brought him out of retirement.
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Apple rumor roundup: improbable removable battery edition
Now that CES is officially over, it's apparently time for the vague Apple rumor factory to start churning out sketchy reports about tablets, next-gen iPhones, and "vanishing" domain names. Yeah, it's getting silly out there, but judging by our tip box you all can't get enough, so let's do this thing rapid-fire style. The rumor: The Korea Times, citing unnamed sources at Korea Telecom, says the carrier is planning for a 4G iPhone featuring an OLED display, a front-facing video camera, a fast new dual-core CPU, and a removable battery. General launch is expected in June, but corporate clients will be doing a "litmus test" in April. Our take: We will eat our hats if Apple puts a removable battery in the iPhone. Plus, Apple doesn't do focus group testing, least of all with enterprise customers. This just seems like wishful thinking -- we could have made up a more convincing rumor while eating a hat. The rumor: 10.1 OLED and LCD display panels are no longer available anywhere, because Apple has "pre-ordered them all" to secure volume discounts and keep the tablet's price down. Our take: We certainly saw plenty of new 10.1-inch netbooks and slates at CES, including some multitouch LCD units, and no one was complaining. Also, we saw several larger OLED displays at CES, but they were all too expensive and impractical for shipping products, so that's gotta be one hell of a discount. The rumor: Apple has mysteriously shut down the FingerWorks website, which means something tablet-related because... well, it must mean something, right? Our take: Apple bought FingerWorks years ago -- we're surprised this hadn't happened sooner. We bet the hosting contract just ran out. Alternatively, Steve Jobs is trying to send us a message by yanking an obscure touch-related domain just weeks before a highly-anticipated product launch, because he is the master of extremely minor hints about nothing. All in all, a pretty lame set of rumors -- there's barely anything here for pundits and the mass media to conflate and distort into something bigger. At least give us a poorly-translated French telecom executive speaking off the cuff, you know? Have some dignity.Continue reading Apple rumor roundup: improbable removable battery editionApple rumor roundup: improbable removable battery edition originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | | Email this | Comments
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The Engadget Show tapes this Saturday, January 16th with Erick Tseng of Google and our CES wrap-up!
If you caught our coverage during CES 2010 (and you better have!), then you probably saw our quick sit-down with Senior Product Manager for Android, Erick Tseng. We had such a good time chatting with him and had so many other questions, we thought having him on the Engadget Show made lots of sense! So, this Saturday, January 16th, Erick will join us live on-stage to answer all of our burning questions (and yours too -- shout them out in comments). We'll also be doing a wrap-up of all the gear we saw at CES during our editors roundtable, and giving away a bunch of stuff to audience members (including CES swag and limited edition Engadget t-shirts)! Oh, and we'll have more chiptune goodness from our friend Glomag. The Show is sponsored by Sprint, and will take place at the Times Center, part of The New York Times Building in the heart of New York City at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues (see map after the break). Tickets are -- as always -- free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served... so get there early! Here's all the info you need: There is no admission fee -- tickets are completely free The event is all ages Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 2PM on Saturday, doors will open for seating at 4:30PM, and the show begins at 5PM You cannot collect tickets for friends or family -- anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we're full, we're full The venue is located at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City (map after the break) The show length is around an hour If you're a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we'll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com. Subscribe to the Show: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V). [Zune] Subscribe to the Show directly in the Zune Marketplace (M4V). [RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.Continue reading The Engadget Show tapes this Saturday, January 16th with Erick Tseng of Google and our CES wrap-up!The Engadget Show tapes this Saturday, January 16th with Erick Tseng of Google and our CES wrap-up! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | | Email this | Comments
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Enough already with the draconian NDAs, Apple
Filed under: Bad Apple, Apple, App Store, SDKYo, Apple. February's coming, and likely with it, the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK. And you know what? We're totally over this infuriating ducking NDA thing when it comes to the iPhone software development kit. NDAs refer to nondisclosure agreements. They are contracts -- in this case, between Apple and would-be developers -- that prevent those who have been granted beta access to early releases of Apple's software development kits from discussing any aspect of the SDK in public forums. Apple has pulled this NDA on us a few times before, for iPhone SDKs that anyone and their brother could download and look at freely. I'll say it for the record: NDAs on new iPhone OS SDKs are a bad, bad thing. These NDAs provide no protection against competitors discovering Apple's proprietary secrets. Apple places no restrictions on who may sign up and access those materials. At the same time, they limit developer discourse outside of Apple's rather minimal members-only developer forums. Under past NDAs, TUAW could not publish how-to articles or code samples, which was frustrating. The fundamental problem is not limited to this site, though. Developers couldn't tweet about their experiences, write about them on developer e-mail lists or otherwise engage in the kind of productive peer support that makes a development community thrive. Limiting discussion to a vendor-approved site where posts can be modded and/or deleted at the vendor's whim does not exactly cultivate open discourse. Of course, we're talking about Apple. As avowed "Gearhead" Aleksandr Milewski puts it, "It's Apple. They'd NDA their customers if they could." So you can take it as likely that once again Apple is going to slam down an NDA on our collective selves. At least unless enough people proactively stand up and say: "We're mad as hell about NDAs and we're not going to take it any more." So what can you do? Add your voice to this post. Leave a comment and express exactly how you would feel about Apple NDA'ing the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 SDK. Tweet it. Status wall it. E-mail it to your friends and to Apple. File a bug report at bugreport.apple.com. Give some unofficial feedback. Post about it on your own blog and leave a link in the comments. It's time to be heard. We're tired of REDACTED and we want change.TUAWEnough already with the draconian NDAs, Apple originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Apple - App Store - Unofficial Apple Weblog - TUAW
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Forrester: IT spending in U.S. to jump 6.6 Percent in 2010
Declaring the tech downturn history, Forrester Research came out with a rather optimistic view of IT spending in the U.S. According to Forrester projections, IT spending in the U.S. will grow 6.6 percent in 2010 to $568 billion. In 2009, IT spending fell 8.2 percent. Projections for IT spending in 2010 have been moving gradually higher.
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Ooma Telo HD, Handset, and iPhone app hands-on
We stopped by Ooma's booth at CES for a quick hands-on with the new HD Telo and some time with the iPhone app. Voice quality on the service was pretty decent, although we did notice a pretty significant bit of lag -- we're assuming things would work better on a quality connection, as opposed to the slammed pipes here on the show floor. The new DECT handset was also quite nice, although it took a second to figure out how to initiate a call. We also played with the iPhone app for a second -- it worked as advertised, although once again we were limited by both the poor network connections on the show floor. It's certainly an interesting concept, though -- we'll have to wait to see how this all works in the home. Gallery: Ooma Telo HD, Handset, and iPhone app hands-onOoma Telo HD, Handset, and iPhone app hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | | Email this | Comments
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News: iPhone bests rivals in touchscreen stress test
Consulting house MOTO Development Group has performed an analysis of smartphone touchscreen sensitivity, putting the iPhone up against three Android-powered rivals: the HTC Droid Eris, the Motorola Droid, and the newly released Google Nexus One. The test used a drawing app to attempt to draw straight lines in a diamond pattern across each screen using both light and medium finger pressure. As the report notes, “on inferior touchscreens, it’s…
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Taco Loco app helps you chase down your favorite taco truck
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touchGourmet food trucks are getting to be "all the rage," particularly in Southern California. Based on the old construction site "roach coaches" that served stale doughnuts, ancient plastic-wrapped sandwiches, and hot, acidic coffee to hungry workers, the taco truck appeared as a way for food vendors to set up shop without the need for expensive real estate. In SoCal, taco trucks have gone mainstream and serve much more than just tacos. You can get not only excellent Mexican cuisine, but barbecue, Asian fusion, and a huge spectrum of other palatable yummies. Since the taco trucks and trailers are truly mobile (although the vendors often find a location that becomes their "home territory"), it's sometimes difficult to find a specific vendor. Fried Rice House has made the hunt a lot easier with their app Taco Loco [on sale for US$0.99, iTunes Link]. Taking advantage of the iPhone's geolocation capabilities, Taco Loco displays a map of local taco trucks and other wheeled bistros, with a pin denoting the current location of each truck or trailer. A tap on a pin shows the name of the truck, a detailed map of the location, a phone number (if one has been entered), and a rating by other hungry folks who have used the app. If a truck moves its location, there's a "move" button to note that and send the information to other people looking for a fish taco at 1:30 AM. Of course, no app is worth its seasoned salt if it doesn't let you share the information with your friends. Taco Loco adds the familiar share button for sending tweets and emails to your cohorts who might be craving a movable feast. Although TUAW was unable to try out the app, it should work anywhere there are hungry iPhone owners who are willing to buy Taco Loco and let others know about the best little taco truck they've found. http://www.flickr.com/photos/josewolff/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 [via New York Times Gadgetwise Blog]TUAWTaco Loco app helps you chase down your favorite taco truck originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments App Store - iPhone - TUAW - IpodTouch - apple
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Euro’s to Dollars with GlobeConvert App
When the rental Lamborghini’s speedometer is in kilometers, how fast is 130 kilometers/hour really? How do does one convert dollars into rupees on the fly? Well just open up the “GlobeConvert” App and see it all instantaneously! The car soaring along on the German highway, with no speed limit, is only doing 81 mph when it shows the red needle pointing to 130 km/hr. This means that a user is free to then put the iPhone down and floor it! Sorry the “GlobeConvert” application cannot make the U.S. currency worth anymore than it actually is. On January 12, 2010 the U.S. Dollar is worth 0.67 Euro. Put in the exact amount of dollars to convert what is in the wallet to what will be used in London, England: the spender’s $1165 U.S. currency is instantly shown to be equal to 781.72 Euro. Take the currency and units of measurement from whatever location you are in and convert them to whatever you need for free. There are hundreds of different types of easily recognizable measurements in an easy to use format. Simply press to change the Currency converter to Energy, or Length, or Speed, or Temperature, or even Time conversion. Just how many seconds are in a year? The answer is 31557600 seconds/year. How many of them have been wasted playing with exceedingly easy, brilliant and intuitive Apps on the iPhone? Quite a lot actually, but the time wasted playing is outweighed by the time saved converting things with “GlobeConvert.” IMPULSIVE Review Grade: A+
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News: Elgato unveils EyeTV One tuner for Mac and PC
Elgato has introduced its new EyeTV One TV tuner for Mac and Windows. The EyeTV One connects to the computer via USB and allows users to watch and record HDTV channels broadcast over-the-air for free. Features include a coaxial plug for connecting an antenna, a flexible USB extender, included EyeTV 3 software, which offers the ability to stream video to the iPhone and iPod touch via the company's EyeTV app or the Live3G web app, and more. The…
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A Week With Chrome for Mac
Nice overview of Chrome for Mac by Rob Friesel: That said, I’ve tried out more than a few browsers over the years and almost always wind up “switching back” after a day or two (or at most: a week or two). With that in mind, I was more than expecting to go “Meh, back to Safari…” by the end of the week. But at the end of that week, I’m beginning to think that Chrome might stick around for quite some time as my day-to-day browsing browser. This seems to be a common experience. Mac users try Chrome, nothing blows them away right out of the gate, but then after a week or so it starts to stick. (Part of the not-blown-away-at-the-start factor is that Safari is a good browser.) â…
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News: JVC rolls out nano-matching SP-A130 portable speaker
JVC has announced its new SP-A130 compact portable speaker system. The SP-A130 will come in four colors—black, silver, pink, and blue—to match the colors of those fifth-generation iPod nano models, and also offers two 30mm speaker drivers, an active/passive switch that allows the speakers to operate on two AAA batteries or on power from the connected device, a built-in storage area for the connecting cord, an integrated stand, and…
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The Macsimum Podcast for January 12th
Posted by Frank PetrieStill having difficulties with the iTunes feed. Until then, please use our RSS feed. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for listening. Today on your Macsimum Podcast: “It's Patent Time Again ,” “AssistiveWare News,” “RadioShift Update” and ”...Story 4.”
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Apple Remote Desktop 3.3.2 update now available
Filed under: Enterprise, Software UpdateFor management of large Mac deployments, one of the more venerable tools for administrators is Apple Remote Desktop. The application not only provides information on the status of every Mac on a network, but allows admins to push software loads, remotely control machines, and do detailed asset management. Yesterday, Apple updated Apple Remote Desktop to version 3.3.2. The new update provides better performance in terms of the remote management tools, as well as better overall stability. There's an update (4.21 MB) to the client software (which is part of the OS and enabled in System Preferences), as well as a much larger update to the administrative software (51.41 MB). The updates require Mac OS X 10.6 or later, Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later, or Mac OS X 10.4.11, or the equivalent Mac OS X Server version. The update requires at least Apple Remote Desktop 3.0 to be installed, although there is some limited compatibility with 2.x client software. So, what's fixed in 3.3.2? Setup is improved, with additional support for clients using Network Address Translation (NAT) and better reliability when new client computers are being authenticated to the admin software. Previous versions had issues with reporting failed software installations, issues with reporting of MacBook Air MAC addresses, and some problems with reliability of reporting systems configured with AirPort. Those issues have been addressed in 3.3.2. The fix also provides improvements with the remote assistance features, particularly with systems with dual graphics processors or two displays. Mouse cursor tracking while controlling remote systems has been improved, and there's more reliable drag-and-drop file copy to remote Macs. You can download the update at Apple's Support Downloads page, and it is also being delivered via Software Update. [via Macworld]TUAWApple Remote Desktop 3.3.2 update now available originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Apple Remote Desktop - Mac OS X - Network Address Translation - TUAW - Operating system
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FireWire vs. USB: Which Is Faster?
Most modern Macs, except for the MacBook Air and some MacBook models (such as my late 2008 unibody, alas), offer both FireWire and USB connections, so when shopping for an external hard drive you have plenty of options for something that will work with your Mac, notes Macworld's James Galbraith. And these days, he adds, USB hard drives are more common and less expensive than FireWire or even FireWire/USB combo drives. True, but even though USB 2.0 has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 480 Mbps, vs. a nominal 400 Mbps for FireWire 400, via real-world experience I can attest that USB 2.0 lags well behind FireWire 400 — to say nothing of the FireWire 800 used on all Macs still sold today with FireWire support. And adding insult to injury, USB 2.0 doesn't support incredibly useful Target Disk Mode. I've also found that while booting a Mac from a USB 2.0 drive is possible, it's not nearly as satisfactory and low-hassle (or speedy) as booting from FireWire drives. My gut-level impressions are borne out by Macworld's lab testing, which found, for instance, that with a Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB Western Digital My Book Studio drive connected to a MacBook Pro, copying a 1GB file took 23 percent less time over FireWire 400 than over USB 2.0, while duplicating that file using FireWire 400 on the WD drive took 10 percent less time than when run over USB 2.0, and that FireWire 800 proved 35-58 percent faster than USB 2.0 in various tests on the MacBook Pro with the My Book Studio. Similar comparative results were noted using a compact Verbatim portable drive with the MacBook Pro. However, the report also notes that the imminent release of USB 3.0 products in early 2010 promises speeds greater than FireWire 800 or even eSATA, but suggests that it may be some time before Apple begins supporting USB 3.0 with compatible ports (which will be backwards-compatible for USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices on Mac systems). In the meantime, even a USB 2.0 only external hard drive is the best choice for a backup medium for most of us, especially using Time Machine in OS X 10.5 and 10.6 But my recommendation is to spend a few more dollars if necessary and get an external drive with multiple I/O interface support. Quad interface drives are becoming quite popular, able to handle USB 2.0 (and hopefully soon USB 3.0) plus FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA interfaces. What's your favorite backup medium and I/O interface?
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EyeTV One: Elgato Unleashes Over-the-Air HDTV for Mac & PC
Further extending their popular EyeTV software for the Mac, Elgato today announced the immediate availability of an easy-to-use TV tuner for DTV antennas, the EyeTV One.EyeTV One is a USB 2.0 dongle that connects to your indoor or outdoor TV antenna via standard full-size coaxial plug and delivers live, stunning-quality digital TV directly to the high-resolution display of your computer. The device promises to make it uncomplicated to setup and easy to use free, over-the-air broadcast signals on your Mac or PC in full HD, where available.Elgato includes the award-winning EyeTV software with EyeTV One for the Mac. EyeTV 3 enables users to watch, pause and rewind live TV on your computer as well as record shows, subscribe to a favorite TV series and even create Smart Playlists. EyeTV 3 software includes one year of free TV Guide data with optional renewal for only $19.95 per year.EyeTV also features a built-in editor to remove unwanted content (such as commercials) and can automatically send recordings to iTunes, where they can be synced with an iPhone, iPod or Apple TV. Your recordings can even be shared over a local network with other Macs, and Elgato offers optional apps to stream live TV and manage recording schedules on an iPhone while away from home.For Windows PC users, EyeTV One is fully compatible with the latest Windows 7 and the hardware works great with Windows Media Center.EyeTV One is available today at a $119.95 retail price from the Elgato online store or through Apple resellers in the U.S. and Canada.
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Elgato releases EyeTV One for the Mac
Posted by Dennis Sellers Elgato has announced EyeTV One, an US$119.95 TV tuner for DTV antennas. It delivers digital TV and HDTV channels straight to a Mac or PC, enabling users to watch and record a variety of TV shows that are broadcast over-the-air for free.
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Former Apple software chief joins Elevation Partners as managing director
Posted by Dennis SellersFormer Apple chief software technology officer, Avadis “Avie” Tevanian, has joined Elevation Partners, an US$1.9 billion private equity firm that makes large-scale investments in market-leading and consumer-related businesses, as a managing director. He'll assist the company in the evaluation of new investment opportunities, advise those companies and help drive the strategy...
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Sony Ericsson 'Faith' shows a lot of faith in demand for WinMo 6.5.3
We'd have guessed that the X2's lukewarm reception would've doomed Sony Ericsson's barely-there WinMo strategy -- especially since they've also got Android and Symbian to worry about -- but here we've got the first images of what's said to be the "Faith" running 6.5.3. Apparently part of the eco-friendly GreenHeart range, the portrait QWERTY set would represent distinctly new territory for the company if it actually makes it to market (a good deal of leaked Sony Ericssons don't) and would seem to suggest a renewed interest in working with Microsoft going forward -- possibly to get in on this WinMo 7 action everyone's talking about these days. The Faith has a 2.4-inch QVGA display, Euro 3G, and an honest-to-goodness touchscreen above the keyboard, giving it access to 6.5.3's headlining feature -- finger-friendly controls. We'd just as soon see these guys hold off for 7 and focus on Android in the meanwhile, but hey, who knows -- maybe there's some massive, untapped interest in a product like this after all. [Thanks, Daniel]Sony Ericsson 'Faith' shows a lot of faith in demand for WinMo 6.5.3 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Daily iPhone Blog | Email this | Comments
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Former Apple exec Tevanian joins Elevation Partners
Avie Tevanian, who helped lead Apple's software efforts for nearly a decade, will join Bono and former Apple CFO Fred Anderson at the Menlo Park-based VC firm.
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â€Does My Company Need an iPhone App?’ Is the New â€Does My Company Need a Web Site?’
The shakeout in the next few years is going to be whether you just need an iPhone app, or whether you need a lineup of mobile apps. â…
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MG Siegler on the Nexus One
MG Siegler: Perhaps the single biggest reason that I like Apple products, and their software, in particular, is the attention to detail the company puts in. In my mind, that’s exactly what still separates the iPhone from all the Android phones. It’s the little things. The things that are almost too small for you to even notice, but which make the experience subtly better. â…
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Keepin' it real fake, part CCXLX: Nokia N93 knocked off, with an added Engadget bonus!
This strange NOKLA knock-off combines the Nokia brand-name, elements of the iPhone's UI, and the admittedly ho-hum specs of your typical KIRF phone (including a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen, 1.3 megapixel camera, and WiFi). If all that isn't enough to warn you off this device there's always that weird fin that extends considerably from one side -- which can't be comfortable when you're trying to use this phone as, you know, a phone. But the most shocking part of this whole mess is the "Nokia" logo itself. Take a closer look: it's really familiar, right? We're glad to know that we've had such a powerful impact on the KIRF industry-at-large! All that said, we're not here to judge -- if your self-hatred extends to your choice in handsets, hit the source link to hunt one of these down for yourself.Keepin' it real fake, part CCXLX: Nokia N93 knocked off, with an added Engadget bonus! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink SlashGear | M8 Cool | Email this | Comments
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Avie Tevanian Joins Elevation Partners as Managing Director
Elevation Partners’s managing director is former Apple CFO Fred Anderson, and they’re a big investor in Palm. It’s a regular club for former Apple executives. â…
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App Store approvals and the tablet: why it matters
Filed under: iPod Family, Odds and ends, Other Events, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK When iTunes Connect returned after its Christmas break, developers noticed that things had changed quite a bit on the App Store approval front. Applications that had formerly taken ten to fourteen days to work through review were now getting processed in a couple of days or less. The upshot? Happier developers, better bug releases for users, and a healthier App Store ecosystem. There's another consequence of the new, speedier approvals: the tablet. With the device due to ship March/April (late Q1, early Q2), and no announced 4.0 SDK, developers were left wondering how they'd have the time to bring their software up to date. Under the old review process even a single procedural rejection, which are quite common for small GUI details, would have exhausted nearly all of February in non-productive "wait mode". With the enhanced review system in place, it's likely that developers will be able to spend those extra weeks refactoring their software, allowing it to ship in a timely fashion once the actual device appears on-scene. Apple is expected to push their SDK to developers within two weeks of their late January product announcement, probably by 15 February. Assuming a 2 April product launch, that leaves nearly six weeks to update and test software. Not that developers are waiting. Many devs are already working on resolution independent versions of their applications. They are tasking their designers to re-imagine screens, to test hand-held cardboard prototypes, and otherwise start the process of scaling their products to new dimensions. It should be noted that some of the App Store heavyweights have suddenly become quite tight-lipped in recent days, refusing to talk in any specifics about how their upgrade process is proceeding. The rest of us will have to get by on guess work, at least until the product announcement at the end of this month. Without specific leaks regarding hardware changes (for example, will there really be a front facing video camera? and if so, will expanded Image Picker/Media Player classes support access?), it's hard to pin down exactly what new features can be leveraged in third party software. But it's a fairly safe bet that nearly all features available on the current iPod touch line will be in play on the new tablet. And that alone is enough to hedge some safe business bets about pushing forward with large screen development. It's still too early for most of us to start playing -- those tight-lipped folk have a bit of the wild "Apple will kill me if I speak" look around their eyes -- but it's not too early to begin planning and working. Even without specifics, there are ways to move forward on the development front. Carpe diem. There's not much time left before the yet-unannounced tablet ships.TUAWApp Store approvals and the tablet: why it matters originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - App Store - Apple - IpodTouch - TUAW
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How-To: Image OS X and Boot Camp to a New Mac
You get a new Mac and even though you know you should, you don't want to start over from scratch and reload the whole system. To make matters worse, you have Boot Camp installed and really don't want to start over on the Windows side. So, here's how you can image both OS's to a new machine using free tools. You need to download the Carbon Copy Cloner and Winclone software packages. CCC was created by Mike Bombich and has been used for years to clone Mac machines. It is the standard tool for this job. Winclone is made by Twocanoes Software and this is what we will use to image the Windows Boot Camp partition. Let's Get Started Lets start off with Winclone first. After you install the app and run it for the first time, it will tell you it needs to download and install NTFSProgs. Click the download button and install NTFSProgs by following the wizard. The NTFSProgs software allows Winclone to properly read NTFS formatted partitions. Now run Winclone again and select your Boot Camp partition in the Source dropdown. You can write some notes in the Item Description field if you'd like. When you're ready, click the Image… button. It will prompt you for a name and location to save the image to. Now we wait for Winclone to do its work. When it's completed, this dialog box will appear. You can now quit Winclone. Carbon Copy Cloner is a little different in that it can image from your old machine to your new one using a Firewire or network connection. For this tutorial we'll use the Firewire method. Setup your new machine and connect a Firewire cable between the two Macs. On the new Mac, hit the power button and hold down the “T” key on the keyboard until you see the Firewire symbol on the screen. This boots it into Target Disk Mode where it will act as if it's just an external Firewire hard drive. On your old Mac we need to launch Carbon Copy Cloner. Your Source Disk drive is your local drive and the Target Disk is the Firewire drive. Click the Clone button and off we go. After CCC is finished, reboot the new Mac and it should be identical to the original. From here on out, we are done with the old machine. When we imaged the Mac partition, we also brought along the Winclone image with it so now we can restore that image on our new Mac. Launch the Boot Camp Assistant in the utilities folder to create a new Windows partition. Launch Winclone and click on the Restore tab. Click the Select Image button and browse to your Windows image. Mine was in the Documents folder. Restore it to your newly created Boot Camp partition. You know have a new Mac that's a complete clone of your old one, Boot Camp and all. Windows will probably complain, as it always does, about drivers. Just insert your OS X DVD while in Windows and let it re-install the Boot Camp drivers for you. Of course, starting over from scratch is cleaner but sometimes you just don't have the time. Proper cloning offers a reasonably quick solution.
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Rumor Has It: Next-Gen iPhone Named, Dated and Described in Korean Newspaper
The rumor mill surrounding the Apple tablet is so intense as to possibly beat out the hype surrounding any other Apple product to date, but that doesn't mean it's the only one being talked about. Today, a Korean source reported details about the upcoming iPhone revision, which many expect to arrive in late June or July. Telecoms Korea reported on a story by South Korean local newspaper ETNews that details the hardware capabilities and some new software features of the upgraded device. The story also maintains that the iPhone will indeed by named the “iPhone 4G,” despite it not looking like it will support 4G network connectivity. The newspaper article cites internal sources at both KT, the exclusive iPhone carrier in South Korea, and Apple Korea as having provided the information. I suppose it's possible that Apple is more willing to authorize product leaks from internal sources in the Asian market, where competition from established veterans like Samsung can be especially fierce. While the list of new features doesn't get into specific detail about things like megapixels or processing power, it still provides a tantalizing glance at the future of Apple's little smartphone that could. According to ETNews, the iPhone 4G will offer up to twice the battery life of the 3GS, something that will come as welcome news to those of us who seem to have their devices plugged into the wall more often than not. Two camera modules will also be used, one of which will be front-facing to make video calling a reality, and not just the one-way kind currently made possible by Fring. Video calling will initially be introduced in the Korean market, according to the paper's sources, probably because the network infrastructure already exists there to use it, so it makes sense as a test market. The phone will also possibly support mobile TV, which is popular in Asia but has yet to truly appear here in North American markets. Hopefully Apple is also working to bring this feature to handsets on our side of the world, as I would really love to have TV access while enduring especially long commutes. Lastly, the article claims that KT will be offering test models of the new device to corporate customers in April or May, prior to the official launch. This is the one detail in this particular rumor report that strikes me as odd. As far as I know, Apple keeps a very tight leash on its pre-release devices, limiting their distribution mostly (if not exclusively) to internal testers and executives. I doubt very highly that it'd authorize one of its carrier partners to go handing out the hardware before it hits the street, whatever the intended reason.
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North Carolina school system buying iPod touches for students
Posted by Dennis Sellers The Pamlico County [North Carolina] Board of Education unanimously approved an informal bid on Saturday to purchase the devices and other Apple technology using part of a US$1.25 million grant that came from Enhancing Education Though Technology and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act program dollars, according to the Sun Journal.
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The Killer App That Busted Ski-Resort Snow Jobs
iPhone app for reporting snow levels at ski resorts busted the resorts’ practice of claiming exaggerated snow levels. â…
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That’s â€Confirmation’? Really, TechCrunch?
I know, I should be slapped for being surprised at a link-bait headline from TechCrunch. But, man, this one is just horrendous. Carriers do not get to see Apple products in advance. Remember Stan Sigman, CEO of Cingular? He admitted it flatly when the iPhone debuted: Cingular agreed to carry the iPhone without having seen it. And, for what it’s worth, I’m hearing there is no camera, webcam or otherwise, on The Tablet. â…
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Apple pulls content of Fingerworks site, fueling yet more iPad/iTablet rumors
Posted by Dennis SellersApple has pulled the content of its Fingerworks.com site, which has sparked yet more rumors of the iPad/iTablet/iSlate's debut, reports Tech Radar.
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By the Numbers: Running Windows-Based MMOs On the Mac
For 90 percent of my daily toil, OS X is the best platform for me. I use it during my day job, freelance writing, school, graphic design, and the usual goofing off everyone does. However, there is one glaring desire missing: I play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs), and the Mac-native offerings are slim. I've had to result to running games in emulators, virtual disks, and Boot Camp partitions, and after running some numbers I thought I'd share my findings with you. The Games I play the following MMOs: World of Warcraft, EverQuest 1 and 2, Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online. Of these, only WoW and Warhammer have native clients. Which means I’m forced to use some sort of emulation to play them. A commenter on Liam’s Windows 7 piece said, “You bought an Apple computer so use the Apple software. If you want it so bad go buy a PC.” For me, Apple and OS X are fantastic for my productivity needs, but when it comes to gaming, sadly, it’s still a Windows world. The Emulators Fortunately, all is not lost. Once Apple went to Intel chips, running Windows in some sort of emulation became possible. For a gamer like myself, it became a saving grace that let me enjoy OS X for my daily usage, but lets me have my games and play them, too. For the purposes of testing, I played games in the following programs: CrossOver Games 8.1.3. CrossOver is a Wine-based emulator, so you’re not actually running any Windows code; it’s all handled via the app. Parallels Desktop 4 version 4.0.3848 with a Windows 7 virtual, Windows 7 running in Boot Camp on OS 10.6.2. Unfortunately, Parallels can only access a Boot Camp partition officially supported by Apple, so I was unable to test Parallels directly accessing Boot Camp. These were all tested on a 2.26 GHz 13″ MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and at native 1280×800 resolution. The Results Costs For Boot Camp, Windows 7 Home Professional is $199.99. CrossOver Games is $39.99. Parallels is easily the most expensive. Windows 7 Home Professional is $199.99 and Parallels is $79.99. Setting Things Up Boot Camp: This is the easy one. Since Boot Coomp runs Windows natively, installing all the games tested was very easy — albeit time consuming since they each had to be downloaded off the net. Parallels: Again, very straight forward. The process takes a little longer since it’s running in a virtual environment, and Parallels needs to install the Parallels Tools after the setup. I had no issues installing the games. Really, for all intents and purposes Parallels is just like running Windows. CrossOver: Well, the install is quick — you just install CrossOver like any OS X program. Getting the games to run…well, that’s a different story. While there’s a decent compatibility listing on Codeweaver’s site, since CrossOver is a Wine emulator results are very mixed. If an app has a Gold rating from Codeweaver, it’ll install and run well. Unfortunately, none of the games I tested received Gold ratings so installation was challenging. With DDO and Lord of the Rings, the actual installer won’t work; you’ll have to download the full client off a third-party site. After that, a program called Pylotro is required to launch the game — it’s a custom front end someone wrote to handle the launcher duties. There's no guarantee an installed game will keep working, either; a previously working EQ2 broke in a patch of CrossOver. Load Times Frankly, the load times were the biggest source of agony during my tests. Not because of the load times, but because the results were hard to sort out because of a lot of variables. Every game is an online-based game, so, to get my character in the game I had to pass an authentication server, several load screens and a character select. Therefore, Internet latency and a whole host of issues come to play. Here's how I got the numbers. I loaded all the games and timed from when I started and stopped when I was able to control my character in-world. With Parallels and Boot Camp I also added the boot times of the required OS to the chart. I did this three times and averaged the results. I did notice an odd thing in Parallels: if I rebooted my Mac, the load times for both the OS and the game were significantly longer. However, after further testing I noticed that if I loaded Parallels/Windows 7 and immediately launched a game, the load results were almost double the value above. If I let the OS “sit” for a few, the load times were normal. Rather than report those numbers, I'll just say this: a watched OS never loads — go get your beverage and snacks while Parallels loads and by the time you're done the game will load faster. In-Game Performance Boot Camp: Unsurprisingly, the performance here was the best. At high I was getting around 40 FPS, and the game just flew. No issues. Parallels: I'm actually amazed gaming performance under Parallels was decent. With graphics settings on High (but shadows turned off) I was getting around 20 FPS average. Turning down options like view distances got the FPS closer to 30. I noticed no major issues outside of a slight stutter when loading a crowded area. Both windowed mode and full-screen worked fine. As an added bonus, you can set Parallels to share your OS X and Windows home directories, so any screenshots I took went right into my OS X Documents folder for easy viewing. CrossOver: The performance was about half-way between Parallels and Boot Camp. I was getting just over 30 FPS in the games. There were, however, some significant trade-offs. Neither DDO or LotRO handle windowed mode well — once the window loses focus, you can't click inside the window when you get back to it. Also, there's a big issue with LotRO where the screen will go black forcing a reboot. I was able to get around both issues by forcing the virtual to run in a window. The game would think it's full screen, but the OS treated it as a window. This way I could have access to Skype and if LotRO crashed it didn't take the entire OS down with it. As I mentioned earlier, a previously working EverQuest 2 install broke with a recent patch release of CrossOver. Conclusions I used to be a huge fan of CrossOver due to its overall speed and low footprint. However, I've had enough and will be deleting the files. The final straw was EverQuest 2 breaking. While it's cheap, getting a lot of games running is a gigantic hassle and there's no guarantee they'll keep working. As an aside, the community on the official forums is very helpful, and just about every issue someone's had is at least addressed, even if there's no solution. For now, I'm running my games in Parallels. While the performance isn't as great as in Boot Camp, the convenience of not needing to reboot is a big bonus for me. Often, I'll game when taking a break from a project and I'd like to not have to reboot. As an added bonus, it's very easy to resize the virtual disk in Parallels. It took less than 5 minutes to add another 32GB to the virtual disk (in Boot Camp, I'd have to repartition and reformat). I'm really surprised at how well these games ran in Parallels. Version 5 claims to add better support for Shader Model 3, so I'm planning on upgrading. I'm not deleting the Boot Camp partition, though. Once Apple releases official support for Windows 7, I plan on re-paritioning it to a 100GB partition and have Parallels access that directly. That'll cover me for the best of both worlds: for every day gaming, I can load Parallels, but if I need it, I can reboot and use the same install files in Boot Camp.
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Walmart may be considering taking on iTunes (again)

Posted by Dennis Sellers Walmart may be eyeing another assault on the iTunes Store. The retail giant is in “meaningful” talks to acquire web video-on-demand company Vudu, according to a MediaMemo report.
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iPhone 4G coming in April?
Posted by Dennis Sellers KT, an exclusive local partner of Apple to sell iPhone, plans to introduce an upgraded version of the device—the “4G iPhone”—to the domestic market in Korea in April at the earliest, according to The Korea Times. 


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Count The beats: Training your ear with RelativePitch
Filed under: Audio, Reviews, MusicRelative pitch, let alone perfect pitch (some people are born with it, everyone else has to learn!) is an invaluable skill required when it comes to playing an instrument and understanding the music you are hearing. Thankfully, Easy Ear Training has developed a nifty little app to help you along with all your pitch training needs. The idea is to learn how to hear the difference between two musical notes in a given key / octave, and be able to identify what that difference is, based on the root note. This is otherwise known as an interval: the space between two notes. For example, a minor 3rd, or a perfect 5th (think the Star Wars theme tune!). For a great description of what an interval is, click here. I also came across this iTunes U video lesson by Shawn "Thunder" Wallace [iTunes Link] describing the difference between perfect pitch, relative pitch and something that Shawn calls true pitch. Very interesting! This may sound rather complicated, but really you don't need to know any of the theory when it comes to using the Relative Pitch app. At its simplest, it will help you to hear with more detail what it is that you're listening too Relative Pitch [iTunes Link] consists of two main modes: training and testing. When you open the app, you kick off with the first lesson (of which there are 14) in the training mode. Once the first lesson is complete, a corresponding test is unlocked to examine what you have learned. On passing that test the next lesson is unlocked, and so forth. Relative Pitch will teach you to distinguish ascending, descending and harmonic intervals across four octaves. With in-app volume control, in-depth customization of the training mode, and even being able to choose the root note of the octave you want to train from, you'll make strides. Whether you are a seasoned musician or a complete beginner, Relative Pitch will have you listening with a sharpened ear and a greater appreciation of the music you love. The Relative Pitch app costs Ł4.99, but there is a lite free version of the app here [iTunes Link] so you can try it out. Also, keep an eye out for the revamped Easy Ear Training website launching in the coming weeks.TUAWCount The beats: Training your ear with RelativePitch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments TUAW - Relative Pitch - Apple - iTunes - Multimedia
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Inklet trackpad tablet app for MacBook is Wacom's worst nightmare
Doodle much? Not us -- we just keep things in our heads which is probably for the best, but Ten One Design -- maker of Pogo Stylus and Pogo Sketch -- has just come up with a new solution for MacBook artists. The Inklet app essentially converts your multitouch trackpad into a drawing tablet by adding pressure sensitivity when using with a Pogo Sketch, as well as "advanced palm rejection" which lets you rest your hand while drawing or writing. As you can see in one of the videos after the break, you can also quickly adjust your canvas area at your convenience. $24.95 and it's yours, Picasso.Continue reading Inklet trackpad tablet app for MacBook is Wacom's worst nightmareInklet trackpad tablet app for MacBook is Wacom's worst nightmare originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink MacWorld | Ten One Design | Email this | Comments
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Ricoh releases software only, Mac OS X compatible digital picture frame
Posted by Dennis SellersRicoh Company has announced a desktop slideshow application for displaying pictures that are stored in its visual online service “quanp.” It's compatible with Mac OS X 10.4.9 or higher.
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Why They Won't Win
There's a great article written by Jason Schwarz at The Street which I recently discovered, which talks about why companies like Google, Samsung and Microsoft just aren't going to beat Apple handedly with any old product. It's a fascinating read, so I'll let you all check it out, but here's a few of my thoughts on the subject. It took me three years to buy an iPod. That's right, three years. I just couldn't justify spending that amount of money on a music player. After all, I had Walkmans and Discmans, and they all played at least one format, no matter who manufactured the player, so it didn't matter. By buying an iPod, I'd be sinking all of my music into one format, then succumbing to that company's whims as to where it goes. Who knows, it could disappear and go away tomorrow, so why invest? But one day, I bit the bullet and bought a shiny new iPod Photo, and I still have it today, sitting in my truck. Contrast that to my wife's story. While I was ripping music to my PC to put on iTunes, she was ripping them to Windows Media Player. She had no way to listen to them other than through the computer, and although that wasn't a big deal for a while, when it came time to put everything onto a portable player, she just couldn't do it. Then Windows changed formatting a few times, the Windows store changed, all sorts of BS happened, so she took all of her CDs and one by one uploaded them to iTunes. And when I moved away from my trusty XP box to buy myself a MacBook, I just copied my iTunes library to a drive and moved it over, which took about 20 minutes to do, with no problems. It was easy. Now let me clarify this a bit. I loved PCs. I knew XP like the back of my hand, and if someone had a problem, I could generally fix it. I was the IT guy at all of the companies I worked at, not by title, but by knowledge because I was the guy who could fix things. As a result, I had no ill will for Apple and iTunes, because it worked on my PC, so why not invest in the product? Everyone I knew had an iPod or were getting one, plus iTunes itself was clean and modern and worked well. I had used Apples in high school, and I knew it was a good company, so I put my faith in them to continue on with the product line so that I wouldn't have to eventually copy over all of my music again, just like my wife did. It worked. It was easy. It was simple. That ease of use pushed me into the Apple world, and developed a trust between me and the company. I don't have to worry about my MacBook Pro dying because if it does, I'm covered. I don't worry about Applecare screwing me on my warranty the way Best Buy does on a regular basis because it's Apple, and if I want to complain I can send a letter to Steve if need be – and it gets answered. Because of the trust, I've bought more computers in the past two years than I've ever bought, and they all function flawlessly. No one really gets that – the trust that a consumer needs to have in a company. For example, I buy Samsung TVs because I like the quality and they've always been reliable for me. But I wouldn't buy a Samsung phone, because everyone I know who has one talks about the issues they have, and the fit and finish sucks. And why? Because the phone division is in one part of the world and the TV part is in another, and they never talk. There's never one guy pulling the strings and setting things in motion. Instead, they have a million products and a few shine out, instead of a small lineup of quality products. I buy Apple products because I trust that it's going to work out. I bought an AppleTV because it was a way for me to get my iTunes library to my television. Although it hasn't been the best product out there, it does do as I expected and works pretty well. Is it perfect? Not in the slightest. But I know that there's no proprietary format that I have to deal with to use it, and I don't get frustrated when I turn it on. Contrast that to my PSP. I loved the PSP when it first came out, and it was a constant in my bag on a long flight or a road trip. But to use it, I had to have a memory disk card, and then run UMD discs which were expensive. When I bought my new Canon camera, I used the same compact flash card that I bought for the camera I had prior, and it was 4 years old. I didn't have to spend that money again, like I was throwing it down the toilet. Palm, Google and BlackBerry all wonder how they can beat Apple with the iPhone, and make their devices better, so they end up producing high-end products with fancy options that they thing everyone wants. But because it's not easy to use and integrate with their lives, it doesn't click. When I bought my iPhone 3G I took it home, plugged it in and a few minutes later my music was on the phone. I couldn't do that with my BlackBerry. I loved my BlackBerry but it meant carrying an iPod and my Curve with my wherever I went – or switch my music to another format to download to my phone. It's not easy, so I didn't do it. Apple uses the tagline “It just works” a lot, but fact is, it's true. I don't get frustrated anymore. The last time I saw a blue screen of death was at Ikea (pictured above) and I laughed because I don't have to worry about my physical memory dumping on me. Even the one time I had an issue with my company's MacBook, Apple took care of me. So why won't they win? Because they don't give a shit about me, they only want my wallet. Sure, Apple wants my money too, but they want to take me into their world, show my how nice everything is, and make it easy for me to pick up new things. Why? Because then I'm going to buy even MORE. Â
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Fresh Cash for Flurry's Mobile Analytics
Flurry, which tracks how people use mobile phone applications, has raised $7 million in new funds from investors.
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TUAW Tip: Veency remote controls your iPhone from your Mac
Filed under: Hacks, Tips and tricks, Odds and ends, iPhone, Jailbreak/pwnageReader Kevin C. sent us a tip the other day -- he recently got a Bose SoundDock II, which is a nice little speaker dock, as a Christmas gift, and he wants to know: with his iPhone sitting all the way across the room, is there any way he can control the iPhone from his Mac? Obviously there are lots of ways to control your Mac with your iPhone, from Apple's official Remote app to multiple VNC programs on the App Store. But in this case, we want to go the other way: control your iPhone's iPod app with a Mac. Turns out there isn't a way to do it -- unless you jailbreak your iPhone. Using Veency, a jailbreak app that Erica covered about a year or so ago, you can head into your iPhone from your Mac and do anything you want, from changing tracks in iTunes to even sending text messages. Here's an older how-to on getting it working. Unfortunately, other than that (according to our research -- commenters feel free to jump in, of course), you're out of luck -- Apple is fine with sending commands from the iPhone to the Mac, but not the other way around. Maybe Bose needs to come up with a way for you to stream music over Bluetooth to their speakers so you can keep your iPhone with you.TUAWTUAW Tip: Veency remote controls your iPhone from your Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Apple - App Store - iTunes - TUAW
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Group Address Book entries without using Groups
I want to quick-sort and find certain Address Book entries, but I don't want to have each and every one of these sorts maintained as a separate Group. Here's my workaround, and it seems to do just fine. Create a new Address Book entry with the name fields blank, and a company name of ' CATEGORIES.' Be sure to press the Space Bar once before typing CATEGORIES in the Company field -- that way, this entry will always be at the top of your list in the Name column (when in All Contacts view). Now create a few abbreviations in the Note portion of the CATEGORIES entry. In my scheme, I use the prefix cat (for "category"). A shout-out to TextExpander for improving my memorable abbreviation skills! Some examples: catchurch = church members catmag = all magazine subscriptions catNC = a group of friends in North Carolina catMac = all Mac or computer-...
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10.6: Run screen savers on top of the login window
As many people may know, Apple made it all but impossible to run any screen savers on top of the login window (i.e. after some time, a screen saver appears over the login window) in Leopard by tightening up security requirements on processes that can run over the login window via launchd. This made workarounds that worked prior to 10.5 impossible to use. (The only screensaver that I know of that can run behind the login window in 10.5 is this one.) I'm happy to report that, as of Snow Leopard, running screen savers behind the login window is finally officially supported. This was brought to my attention by magnusviri in this Apple Discussions thread . Here is how to ...
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Install and configure Tripwire from source
Tripwire is a set of open-source Unix command line utilities, spun off by the company of the same name that sells a more-capable commercial prodct; you can use it to verify the integrity of your system files, detect intrusions, and monitor what files get added or changed by your computer's software processes. For the slightly paranoid, it can have a calming effect. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to run under OS X. Installing it, however, can be another story. Back in 2003, a member named frodo published a hint here on how to install Tripwire with a precompiled package that he had developed. Sadly, his website is no longer operational, so Mac OS X users who wish to use Tripwire have to muddle through the generic installation process for Unix boxes. This can be quite confusing, so I thought that it would be useful to document it in ...
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Apple patents range from power savings technology to product designs
Posted by Dennis SellersApple patents for power savings, content element management and product designs have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office.
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EasyMoney update for Mac OS X adds ledger summary button, more
Posted by Dennis SellersToThePoint Software has released EasyMoney 2.1.1, an update of the Mac OS X tool for managing money. The update adds a ledger summary button.
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MacVoices Group Update – January 12, 2010
In this MacVoices Group update: New web site design The new MacVoices iPhone App MacVoices t-shirts and sweatshirts MacVoices Group on the Macworld 2010 community
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CES Watch: The good, the bad, the ugly
Filed under: Hardware, Other Events, Internet Tools, iPhone, iPod touch CES wrapped up in Las Vegas on Saturday, so here's our third and final wrapup of iPhone and Mac-related accessories from the show. Enjoy! Posimotion introduced a Helix gaming grip for the iPhone -- like the Wii wheel, only for Apple's device. $20, which seems pricey to me. Don't even bother looking at these high-heeled speakers. This actually has nothing to do with iPods or Mac, but I just thought it was awesome: A mechanical autotuning system for your guitar. I want one! Here's a twirling battery concept that could charge your iPhone in a pinch and let you work on that finger strength. Cydle is a South Korean company that's planning to release this digital broadcast TV tuner for the iPhone for $150 in March. Kind of an old-school solution (in 2010, we stream video, not receive it), but it could be cool. The Fingerist is... well, it's a guitar adapter for the iPhone. Go see for yourself. Engadget tried out the Mophie TV adapter, VIZIO's iPhone remote app, and the ION iType keyboard and iDiscover piano adapter. Altec Lansing has some good-looking speaker systems and headphones. And finally, Macworld has an overview of the iLounge pavilion itself and how it reflects the market in general. Whew! We weren't even at CES this year, and I'm still feeling the conference hangover. There were definitely a lot of interesting bits of technology introduced, but we have a feeling that the most interesting gadget of the year will actually be revealed later this month.TUAWCES Watch: The good, the bad, the ugly originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments iPhone - Apple - iLounge - IPod Touch - TUAW
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Zune HD getting Xvid, Smart DJ, ever more appealing
We know you were put off by the whole Twitter censorship debacle last month, but Microsoft and the Zune HD have moved past that (honest) and they want you to come along as well. They're enticing everyone to forget about that bone-headed move by, well, throwing everyone a bone and adding in Xvid support, part of full compatablity with MPEG-4 part 2 Advanced Simple Profile. DivX will not be coming out to play, but Smart DJ will be, a feature that isn't so much new but is newly portable, providing a counterpoint to the iPod's Genius and, since you can use it to stream content from the Zune Marketplace (when connected via WiFi) it begins to approach the functionality of apps like Pandora or Slacker Radio. Tasty, indeed, though at this point we're not sure when Microsoft will be throwing us this juicy firmware update.Zune HD getting Xvid, Smart DJ, ever more appealing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink SlashGear | CNET | Email this | Comments
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Apple Gobbles Up 10.1” LCD, OLED Screens?
In today’s episode of “As The Tablet Turns,” an anonymous designer claims that Apple is hoarding all of the 10.1” multi-touch LCD and OLED display panels from Asian suppliers.AppleInsider is reporting that at least one product designer is having trouble getting 10.1” display panels from Asia because Apple has supposedly ordered so many screens that the parts are unavailable to anyone else. The report comes from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, where TG Daily spoke to the anonymous designer.“We were designing a product for a customer and we needed 10-inch screens,” the source reportedly said. “We’ve been trying for months and can't get one from any of the Asian suppliers.” The designer then goes to claim that Apple “pre-ordered them all.”Just two months ago, a report suggested that an OLED-based Apple tablet would cost between $1,500 and $1,700 just to build, based on current prices. That would put the final cost of such a tablet at about $2,000.OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) are starting to be used frequently by Apple’s competitors, including Microsoft’s Zune HD and Google’s Nexus One “superphone.” OLED consumes less energy and provides a superior picture, but at a steeper price.The current iPhone model uses LTPS LCD technology, which Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner believes is the more likely choice for an Apple tablet over OLED, based on his own checks of Apple’s supply chain.Most analysts put the cost of Apple’s fabled tablet at less than $1,000, with Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster having already predicted that Cupertino will sell 1.4 million devices at an average selling price of $600 each.The January 27 Apple event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco is fast approaching, where the rumored tablet is thought to be announced, with the device believed to go on sale in March.
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Zinio Magazine Reader Hits App Store
Some publishers aren’t waiting for an Apple tablet to surface before they launch their print editions as digital media -- Zinio has just hit the App Store with one such method.Having already taken their content to the desktop, Zinio is now offering Zinio’s Magazine Reading iPhone App as a free download from the App Store. The app enables page sharing, enhanced article reading and beautiful, full-page portrait and landscape images. Best of all, your content is available to you whether you’re online or offline since it’s downloaded to your device.If you’re already a Zinio subscriber, your library is automatically accessible with the company’s “smart-synch” function. Purchase your favorite new magazine issue or subscription right from your iPhone or iPod touch and they’ll be waiting for you when you return to your computer as well, without having to pay twice for them.There are 12 titles currently available, including Automobile, Car & Driver, iPhone Life, Motor Trend, PC Magazine (available as a free sample), Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and Yoga Journal. Zinio promises more titles will be available in the near future.Zinio’s Magazine Reading iPhone App is a free 2.1MB download for the iPhone or iPod touch and requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later.
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Telltale Games may be releasing all games for Mac
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Odds and ends, DeveloperTelltale Games has been rocking the retro lately, doing great things like bringing Secret of Monkey Island and Sam & Max back in new forms, and releasing new episodic classics like Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. Now they might be doing so on the Mac: rumor has it that they'll be releasing their whole catalog on the Mac as soon as next month, just in time for an appearance at Macworld Expo. Apparently there are many Mac fans both on the team and in the customer base, and they're just figuring out a way to do it. Sounds awesome to us -- Telltale's stuff is already available on a few other platforms (both PC and consoles), but they have a history of putting fans first, so we might even expect some goodies to come with a Mac release. We'll have to wait and see what they've got planned. [Via IMG]TUAWTelltale Games may be releasing all games for Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Sam & Max - Telltale Games - Apple - Macintosh - TUAW
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Fingerworks.com Pulled on Eve of Apple Tablet?
Apple acquires a multi-touch company 5 years ago and leaves its website up & running until last week. Sheer coincidence or another sign of the coming “tablet-pocalypse”?MacRumors is reporting that Fingerworks.com has been pulled down, nearly 5 years after Apple acquired the company and left its website live but dormant. Fingerworks, you may recall, released some amazing multi-touch keyboards and gesture pads for the Mac prior to being snapped up by Cupertino. MacRumors believes the website’s disappearing act may be a clue that Fingerworks technology is included in the Apple tablet expected to be unmasked later this month.An old press release from Fingerworks describes the benefits of their multi-touch system in a combination keyboard and touchpad:“The MacNTouch Gesture Keyboard is a complete user interface that serves as mouse, standard keyboard, and powerful multi-finger gesture interpreter. Mouse operations like point, click, drag, scroll, and zoom are combined seamlessly with touch-typing and multi-finger gesture everywhere on the MacNTouch's surface.“People are amazed by all the things a hand gesture user interface provides. We have a large number of easy-to-use gestures that cover just about every common computer operation. Users don't have to reach for hotkeys because gestures are faster and easier to do.”If the sudden departure of Fingerworks.com isn’t enough evidence, the name of one of the company’s founders, Wayne Westerman, appears on numerous Apple multi-touch patents, including one for advanced gesturing implementations for Mac OS X.
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Branex iTamTam iPod docking stool ensures your backside breaks it on day one
Hey, can you feel the vibe? That was actually your iPhone being snapped off by your reclining-inclined back. Anyhow, some genius at Branex Design of France decided that people would totally buy this $570, 11.5-pound speaker stool. Underneath the hood are four 1.5-inch 10W tweeters and a 5.25-inch 80W subwoofer to shudder your pelvis, all of which contribute to an overall power rating of 70W. There are over ten colors to choose from, too. Let's just hope that Philippe Starck doesn't see this and cry.Branex iTamTam iPod docking stool ensures your backside breaks it on day one originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink iPodNN | Branex Design | Email this | Comments
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AssistiveWare showcases educational software for Mac and iPhone at BETT
Posted by Dennis SellersAssistiveWare will showcase it's latest Mac software as well as preview improved and new iPhone software for special needs and education at the BETT trade show in London this week. The preview includes an upcoming version of Proloquo2Go, the iPhone software for people who can't speak, as well as an entirely...
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Could the Wrong Price Flatten Apple's Tablet?
As the Apple tablet rumor frenzy blows way past the level of a fever pitch, I'm starting to reconcile myself with the notion that we may -- within a few weeks -- finally hear from Apple. The company is widely expected to make a public announcement Jan. 27 or so, though again, the expectation isn't due to Apple, it's due to a report stating the company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. What might Apple announce? A tablet, of course, perhaps an "iPod slate."
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Don't Forget Bucky – Flash on the iPhone?
Although I use them every day, I'm not a huge fan of Adobe products. They're buggy, tend to crash a lot and cost so much it's ridiculous. Of course, that doesn't stop the world from using their products, including Flash, on everything they can. The web is particularly heavy with Flash animation, and as such, people have been asking since 2007 why it's not available on the iPhone. Turns out that soon it might be. Ed Oswald has a post over on PC World about Adobe's development of Flash, and how it's been going on for the past few years, without any help from Apple. Long story short, it's a workaround. To quote Oswald: Either way Adobe is not going to wait much longer. It’s Creative Suite 5 product, now going through private beta, is going to include functionality that will automatically convert Flash applications to ones that are compatible with the iPhone. Is this a big deal? I've spent the past two years without Flash on the phone and I can count on one hand how many times that's inconvenienced me. Sure, I can see that certain websites might have a problem with it, and some hardcore iPhone web surfers might get a little touchy about the conversation, but ultimately, it's not that big of a deal to me. At least not on the surface. But here's where it gets tricky: If Adobe releases this workaround and it works correctly, then Flash developers could create their own apps and their own app store, and have it all accessible via a web interface, circumventing the Apple App Store entirely. Sound a little bit paranoid? I've got a buddy who's a Flash developer, and that's exactly how he's going to do it. Saves the hassle of going through the approval process. This should come to a head next year when Creative Suite 5 comes out, so it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.
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Macsimum review: iFlicks a good tool for importing video collections into iTunes
Posted by Dennis SellersIf you want to import your video collection into iTunes, check out developer Jendrik Bertram's iFlicks , a video management utility for Mac OS X. It's easy to use—and useful if you want to put all your multimedia eggs in one basket. You can import video files into iTunes to play...
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Camera showdown: Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
We pit the Nexus One up against the iPhone 3GS to see which one has a more capable camera. The results probably won't surprise you.
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Can the iPad/iTablet fail to disappoint?
Posted by Dennis SellersYou have to both admire and feel sorry for Apple when it comes to the rumored iPad/iTablet/iSlate or whatever the heck the device will be called (honestly, I doubt it will be any of these).
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Mac OS Ken: 01.12.2010
Apple 1QFY2010 Conference Call Set for January 25 / Apple Insider Says Apple Seeking LED Flash Components for Fourth Gen iPhone / Imagination Shows Off SGX545 at CES / Apple Patent Points to Thinner and Less Expensive Touchscreen Technology / France Telecom Says Orange France Sold 200k iPhones in December / France Telecom Exec Seems to Confirm MacTabletNetbookThingy Then Seems to Not / Hitwise Says Searches for Apple Tablet Spike in December / Microsoft to Patch Office for Mac to Comply with Custom XML Injunction / Apple Updates Remote Desktop / IDG Says Macworld 2010 Registration Equal as of Now to 2009 Attendees / T Mobile and Google Investigate 3G Issues with Nexus One / Google Sued Over Nexus One Branding
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MyFord Touch coming to 2011 Ford Focus
The 2010 Detroit Auto Show has just kicked off and Ford's plans for the 2011 Focus have been made official. While others might care more about the 155bhp or new six-speed dual-clutch transmission, we're best pleased by the inclusion of the MyFord touch control system. This setup was designed to drag the car dash into the modern touchscreen era, and our comprehensive hands-on revealed it to be a most impressive bit of tech. Two displays flank the analog speed gauge, but the pičce de résistance is an 8-inch, 800 x 480 optional screen landing in the center of the dash. Endued with a web browser, it'll connect via 3G or 4G modems and concurrently act as a WiFi hotspot. Add in a bunch of forthcoming apps and compatibility with any Bluetooth device, and you've got a tech lover's dream system. The next generation Focus should enter production near the end of 2010, giving us a full year to write a "vroom, vroom" app for our smartphones.MyFord Touch coming to 2011 Ford Focus originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Autoblog | Email this | Comments
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Platform Overload: How Many Content Platforms Can Survive on TVs and Devices?
After all the news that came out of CES last week on the number of companies working on software platforms for TVs and devices, one has to wonder if these platforms are destined to follow the fragmentation we currently have on the hardware side. As an industry, we still haven't figured out what devices can survive and co-exist in the long run. We currently have so many broadband enabled devices in the market including the Roku, TiVo, VUDU, PS3, Xbox 360, TVs, Blu-ray players, Apple TV and soon to be Boxee and Popbox, without having to figure out what platforms they can all run.While it's good to see the industry starting to talk about the platform that will enable us to find and consume the content, as opposed to being so focused on the hardware, the conversation is only going to get more confusing now that so many platforms exist. Here is a list of the platforms that I could think of: