Iphone Updates

Earlier today, Nik posted about the new BBC shows on iTunes. For the equivalent of about $3.75 each, you can download and purchase your UK fix — Gene Hunt, Captain Jack, whatever — assuming you have a way to create and fund a UK iTunes account. For now, the best way seems to be eBay. A quick search of iTunes UK produced a half-dozen auctions, most run by the same vendor.

A £15 iTunes card (good for about 7 episodes) seems to be running in the low $20′s but one went recently for $61–I’m guessing the buyer thought he was buying in dollars not pounds because $31 is not an unreasonable price, while £31 is. If buying, make sure you figure out in advance whether you’ll be shipped the card (which can run as high as £5!!) or sent the code by email (should be free).

If you already have an unfunded iTunes UK account (google for it), you might be able to find a friend to send you an email-based gift certificate. These start at £5 and go up to £75. If you can work out a deal via PayPal, you could pay your friend, for example, 110% of the face price to cover time and expenses.

I actually did try buying a card directly from the UK Apple online store (free shipping!) but it balked at my US address. Do you have a better way to fund a foreign account? Let us know in the comments.

I’m sure I’m not alone on this one, but I remember when CoverFlow was basically just a tech demo, and not, you know, the centerpiece of OS X’s UI. But of course when Apple picked up the little app to use it for everything else, we lost it — even if you wanted to use the old simple album-browsing app (and now I’m actually regretting deleting it off of my old PowerBook), you’re out of luck.

Unless you use Cover Stream, an iTunes helper app that recreates the old CoverFlow interface outside of iTunes. It’s even incorporated the “flip-browsing” that you can do on the iPhone, where you just flip the art over to choose a specific track to play. As for how it actually works with iTunes, we can’t say, but at least that CoverFlow interface is still available unofficially.

By the way, I’m planning on doing a roundup (similar to the alarm clock one) of iTunes helper apps like this, so if there are any you want to see included, drop a note here in the comments. I have a few in mind already, but suggestions are welcome.

Shawn Blanc has wrapped up his series of great software reviews, and now dives into the scariest of waters: those of the major minds in Mac journalism. And he goes first after the biggest shark in the ocean (or at least the one with the sharpest teeth), everyone’s favorite Daring Fireball, John Gruber.

The interview is first about interviews, and then goes on to cover Gruber’s past (he worked with Bare Bones and Joyent before going on to write the blog full time). Gruber also gives out some great tips for writers, from things as practical as setting a goal the night before to guide your workday and always drinking coffee black, to ephemeral tips like how to become a better writer without actually writing anything (save about a dozen books’ worth of message boards and blog posts).

Gruber also talks specifically about Daring Fireball, his favorite stuff on the site, and where he wants to take it, and how far. Definitely a great read — as always, Shawn makes sure to hit on all the important notes and leave no stone unturned, and Gruber reveals lots of insight on what it’s like to put his posts and the Linked List together every day.

Ian Baird at Skorpiostech has been hard at work polishing up Changes, the new OS X directory comparison and file differencing utility, for a 1.0 release. We covered the beta at the end of last year and the program received a significant amount of feedback from testers in the months following, producing a high-power app that makes managing the differences between files and folders a breeze.

Changes is Leopard-only and leverages Core Animation and Quick Look for a refined user experience. If you’re a FileMerge user, you’ll probably find the power and ease-of-use of Changes to be a welcome step forward. And it fits into just about any workflow with a CLI utility, a TextMate bundle, BBEdit menu scripts, TextWrangler menu scripts, XCode integration and F-Script support, in addition to Subversion, CVS, Mercurial, git, Perforce and other SCM systems. And its support for MacFUSE mounted volumes is ready for prime time.

Ian also tells us he’s looking for a clever tagline for Changes (think BBEdit’s “It doesn’t suck”). He’s given TUAW 2 free licenses to award to the best contributors, so take a stab at it in the comments! And for those less inclined to witty prose, Ian’s offering $10 off of the $39.95 price tag (25%) with the coupon code TUAW, which is valid for the next 2 weeks.

You can get a fully-functional, 15-day trial and licenses are available for purchase starting today.

The iPhone may definitely have people jealous when it comes to the scrolling and multi-touch gestures — many people may very well want this feature on a Mac. Well, with Smart Scroll X, you can get one step closer to the iPhone’s scrolling feature. The “Super Wheel” gives your Mac’s trackpad an iPhone-like scrolling feature. It allows you to control many different trackpad setting with the simple system preferences plug-in. Another cool feature is the “Grab Scroll,” which allows you to grab a window and “fling” it across the screen.

Smart Scroll X was rated 4/5 by Macworld’s Mac Gems. It was also recently updated to work with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2. Smart Scroll is avaiable for $19 from the developer’s website; a free trial is also available.

While everyone is still getting acclimated to the new Aperture 2, an overview published at Aperture Users Professional Network revealed an interesting tidbit that Apple itself has yet to talk much about. According to David Schloss, “Apple has added the ability to create editing plug-ins for Aperture.”

Aperture has only supported export plugins thus far, so this is particularly interesting. It opens up the possibility of more pixel-level editing in Aperture from third-party plugins, even if Apple itself doesn’t want to crowd Adobe’s Photoshop turf. As Schloss notes, this will quite likely “revolutionize the program” in the long run. Now if only Apple would publish the details and let the developers get to work.

Apparently in China they have gotten fed up with waiting around on Apple to finally release the iPhone to them. After the iPhones leave the Chinese factory and get shipped off smugglers are snagging them and bringing them right back to China.

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While everyone is still getting acclimated to the new Aperture 2, an overview published at Aperture Users Professional Network revealed an interesting tidbit that Apple itself has yet to talk much about. According to David Schloss, “Apple has added the ability to create editing plug-ins for Aperture.”

Aperture has only supported export plugins thus far, so this is particularly interesting. It opens up the possibility of more pixel-level editing in Aperture from third-party plugins, even if Apple itself doesn’t want to crowd Adobe’s Photoshop turf. As Schloss notes, this will quite likely “revolutionize the program” in the long run. Now if only Apple would publish the details and let the developers get to work.

Science Bulletins — high-definition visualizations that play on 12-foot video screens — help visitors to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York understand highly complex processes affecting the earth and its inhabitants, such as the retreat of Arctic Sea Ice, the erosion and recovery of the ozone layer, or the impact of changing seasons on plant growth worldwide. To create the Bulletins, the team at AMNH depend on an all-Mac production pipeline to process raw satellite and other data, transforming it into interactive 3D animations that let people watch the earth change right before their eyes.

According to Jim Dalrymple (macworld.com), one of the goals for Xsan 2 was to make it easier for customers to set up a storage area network (SAN). “One of the ways Apple has accomplished this is with the SAN Setup Assistant, which is integrated into Mac OS X Leopard Server or as an application that can be run on its own.” “The setup assistant, Dalryple explains, does ”all the heavy lifting for you, setting up everything including Open Directory permissions.”

Among the “pretty sweet new features“ that distinguish Xsan 2, Chris Foresman (arstechnica.com) points to the new MultiSAN feature, which “gives simultaneous access to multiple volumes that are hosted by separate controllers.” Xsan 2 “also allows file copies from one SAN volume to another directly over FibreChannel for a significant speed boost.” In addition, Foresman points to the redesigned admin tools that simplify setup and to Xsan 2’s tighter integration with Open Directory, Mac OS X Leopard, and Server Assistant on Leopard server.

Rumours have been a-flying here in the UK that the publicly-funded BBC would be bringing its shows to the iTunes Store in some form ‘this week’. Citing ‘TV Industry Sources’, The Register reported that “BBC Worldwide will on Tuesday detail plans to set up shop at Apple’s online media mall”.

It turns out, perusing the iTunes Store this evening, that the BBC Worldwide content has already appeared. Shows initially showing up include Torchwood, Spooks, The Mighty Boosh, Life on Mars, The Catherine Tate Show, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and finally Little Britain. All the episodes cost the regular UK pricing of £1.89 and currently, there’s just a selection of series available: Spooks (known in the US as MI:5) is showing just Series 6 currently.

At least for now, the shows appear to be UK-only. Updated: shows will be available to download and buy 8 days after broadcast.

It’s the world’s most wearable music player, and the 1GB iPod shuffle — just $49 — is now the most affordable iPod ever. It also has a new 2GB sibling that costs just $69 and allows customers to wear even more music on their sleeves. Or belts. Or lapels. While the 1GB iPod shuffle is available immediately, the 2GB will be available later this month. Both models come in five colors — silver, blue, green, purple and a (PRODUCT) RED special edition) — weigh just half an ounce, and are just half a cubic inch in volume.

Apparently some iPhone owners are having issues with their signal strength which is due to the SIM card not fitting all that well. Which can be catastrophic, at least in our minds, we can’t have any of that weak signal holding us back. No one likes to repeat themselves fifteen times.

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Apple today introduced Xsan 2, the first major upgrade to its easy-to-use, high-performance, enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) file system for Mac OS X. Xsan 2 combines enhanced performance with Apple’s legendary ease of use, allowing even first-time users to set up and quickly deploy a SAN. It introduces MultiSAN, which allows users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time. Fully integrated with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Server Leopard, Xsan is also now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.

AppleInsider has uncovered news of an Apple patent application for a software concept called a “podmap,” which is more or less what it sounds like — a series of maps or driving directions accompanied by an audio version of the same, downloadable into a portable media device. The way I understand it, think of it not just as downloadable directions, but also a kind of real-world tour. There is even mention of episodic content delivered via RSS.

Like many Apple patents, there’s no indication (or even suggestion) that anything like this would ever see the light of day, but it does tell us that Apple is looking at doing more with marrying their hardware with maps software, just like the great improvements we saw in the iPhone’s 1.1.3 update. Hardly a surprise, too, that a company so strongly turning towards portable computing is thinking about the needs of portable users. But a cool idea nevertheless, and it also confirms that Apple sees the iTS’s podcast model as a strong and easy way of quickly distributing content of all kinds.

I have no idea just how big this intersection might be (in terms of sheer numbers, it has to be pretty big, I guess), but if you’re a Yahoo! Mail user and a Safari 3 user, prepare to smile, because Yahoo! says that you can now get in on the “All-New Yahoo! Mail” fun. “All-New Yahoo! Mail” is apparently an AJAX-based, slick piece of webmail software built on the Oddpost engine — I wouldn’t really know all the features because Gmail has wrapped its simple-to-use tendrils completely around my life, from iPhone to all the different browsers I use.

But if you’ve been dedicated to Safari 3 since it came out, and chomping at the bit to use this “All-New Yahoo! Mail,” now’s your chance. Yahoo! does specifically say “Safari 3 on the Mac,” but I’d assume it would work for the Windows version of Safari 3 as well — if you have any problems, they’ll probably fix it, and then they’ll have to call it “The Newer All-New Yahoo! Mail.” God forbid they come up with something newer than that.

Whether you love them or hate them, screencasts made on Macs just got exponentially better. We at TUAW are in awe of the latest contender for your screencasting love: ScreenFlow, from Vara Software (the maker of Wirecast and Videocue). The feature set is, well, unbelievable in comparison to what is currently available on our platform of choice. And it’s an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink solution, with a fantastic editor, amazing effects and simultaneous recording of a video camera (or iSight), your full screen, microphone audio and computer audio without even kicking up my fans. Am I gushing? Definitely.

The fans on my MacBook Pro tend to go nuts after a little while of full-screen recording. Screenium was pretty good with that, but it was only a fraction of the solution that ScreenFlow seems to be. The real magic of ScreenFlow starts after the recording is finished. Once you’re in the editor, you find that it’s tracked all of your movements, foreground windows, keypresses, etc. with precision.

You can cut and fade, zoom and rotate, add callouts for foreground windows or mouse clicks … I’m still in amazement. No longer will I need Mouseposé; not only does it automate the process of highlighting the mouse position and calling out clicks wherever you want them, it relieves any need to be hitting hotkeys to turn it on and off while you record. Is this finally the Mac Camtasia? Quite probably.

ScreenFlow costs $99.99 and is available for purchase. A fully-functional (watermarked) demo is right here along with a screencast that’s seriously worth watching.

Anthropophobic* iPhone users have something to look forward to. You may remember that Apple filed a patent for an iPhone-based payment system back in December. The system would not only allow payment without interaction, but could be used as a full ordering and fulfillment notification system. But even before the patent was publicized, Phil Lu was already figuring out how to minimize any human contact with a system concept called QuickOrder.

Phil’s proposal is designed around Starbucks purchasing, and it would allow ordering and payment from your iPhone. QuickOrder uses Semacode barcode technology to link iPhones to coffee orders; as he told Gizmodo, this would allow payment using your iTunes account and bypass the credit card transaction entirely. You could order from afar, pay with a finger swipe and — if it’s anything like the Starbucks I’m used to — pick up your coffee without saying a word. For those not inclined towards being near other living beings, you’re in and out with your coffee fix and nary a “hello.” I feel palpable levels of anticipation emanating from hermitic sects of iPhone users everywhere.

And yes, despite a certain amount of sarcasm, I do think it’s a very cool idea, even though I actually enjoy my daily chats with baristas. And I do love the mockups Phil created.

In the world of wireless networking, there are big secrets and little secrets. For a great rundown on the obvious and hidden implications of the AT&T/Starbucks WiFi deal, you should check out Glenn Fleishman’s piece at TidBITS. Glenn sussed out the various flavors of AT&T’s offering, mused about the implications of WiFi ubiquity for the anticipated 3G iPhone, and tried to track down the deal for Starbucks card holders; it’s still not clear exactly how the “2 hours of access” arrangement will work, but the expectation is that anyone with a Starbucks card that gets used (to make a purchase) once a month will be able to connect for up to two hours a day during that month.

Things got really interesting, however, when Glenn talked to Starbucks CTO Chris Bruzzo about the AT&T deal. Bruzzo strongly implied that Starbucks retail locations are caching iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store content for sales to iTunes, iPhone and iPod touch users in-store, rather than having to backhaul the content from Apple. Glenn quotes Bruzzo, “Right now in our stores that have the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, you go and buy the song that’s playing directly overhead, and see how fast it transfers.” If Starbucks is populating hundreds of Wi-Fi Store-enabled locations with edge servers to speed content delivery for music, wouldn’t it make sense to do the same for the yet-huger TV show and movie files that are zipping about? At that point, Starbucks becomes a loading zone for both caffeine and content. Fill ‘er up!

Update: Apparently there’s some confusion over ‘edge servers.’ To clarify, I don’t mean EDGE as in AT&T’s 2.5G wireless network, I mean edge as in the edge of a network, a razor, or of night. Apple’s investment in and longtime use of Akamai shows that it understands the value of having content decentralized across the network.

By now, most of you have had a chance to install the new Mac OS X 10.5.2 update for Leopard. Apple has added some minor tweaks to the OS as well as some new features. If you haven’t seen some of the features, you might want to take a look — we’ve look high and low in the update and have a list of the new features below.

Time Machine status
By default after installing the update, Leopard sticks a Time Machine back up status button in the menu bar. This drop-down menu will give you the time of the last back up and a “Back Up Now” option. You can also enter the Time Machine interface right from the menu bar, meaning that you can now remove that semi-pesky icon from your dock.

Continue reading for more Leopard changes.

Continue reading The changing life and times of Leopard

OS X 10.5.2 threw a few curve balls at developers, and many of them are doing an admirable job of catching them with updates so timely you might think they were prescient. 1Password developer Dave Teare ranks high on that list, having put out an update yesterday that rapidly fixed the Safari problem that 10.5.2 introduced.

1Password is a favorite at TUAW, and it’s possibly been mentioned previously for its time-saving, form-filling, credit card-remembering abilities. In addition to the Safari fix, there are several other enhancements to the application, such as user-assignable “restore form” shortcut keys in Firefox that should help keep my Services menu happy by avoiding conflicts, and an improved credit card fill should ease some frustrations with not-quite-filled forms and help speed up the draining of my available cash during the occasional online shopping spree.

So that bleeding-edge surfers aren’t left out, the release also adds support for the latest Firefox nightly builds, as well as Camino 1.6b2. And improvements to the new iPhone Logins bookmark should also be welcome for those surfing on the small but oh-so-touchable screen.

1Password runs $29.95 for new users and the update is free for current users. You can download the new version (free demo) at the 1Password site.

I am sure that everyone has forgotten other peoples birthday’s from time-to-time (*raises hand*). Luckily, with Mac OS X’s built-in Address Book and Automator, you can automate the remembering and sending of greeting cards by e-mail — thus eliminating the awkwardness of forgetting. In this how-to I will show you how to create a birthday field in your Address Book contacts, and how to send an e-mail birthday greeting when the time is right.

To learn how to do this, read on.

Continue reading Mac Automation: Birthday greetings

Challenging customer service folks in retail stores is pretty much shooting fish in a barrel– sure, Apple claims to have a great retail environment, but if those Geniuses are getting paid as little as I was when I worked in retail, there’s no real reason for them to know the difference between the Apple ][ and the Apple //e (that’s what you have TUAW for).

Still, Laptop’s writeup on their trip inside the Apple Store is pretty entertaining anyway. The Genius confirms what we all knew about the Macbook Air (it’s a “supplemental computer, like, if you already have a desktop at home”), and messes up some specifics on HD-DVD and processor speed and size. My own Apple Store experience wasn’t much better– I had to explain what a KVM switch was (to switch between my Mac mini purchase and my gaming PC). But just like Laptop’s experience, my person was helpful and quick, and what more can you really ask from a retail experience?

Long story short, do your research at home, and show up at the Apple Store (or the Best Buy, or the Circuit City, or wherever) only when you know what you really want to buy. The guys and girls with nametags on at the store know a lot about how to sell stuff, but they just don’t get paid enough to make your choices for you.

“As I look at a newly arrived MacBook Air laptop,” writes Dean Takahashi (mercurynews.com), “it occurs to me there has never been a better time to switch to a Mac.” And he points to the new MacBook Air as “a great example of the faster innovation” that Apple offers customers. “The design is attractive and nobody can boast having a thinner notebook computer. It has an innovation dubbed Remote Disc. You install a disk on a desktop’s DVD drive. Then you can use your MacBook Air’s Remote Disc function to take over the DVD drive and install software into the MacBook Air. It’s an innovation that may signal the beginning of the end of disk media.”

We use Skype for the TUAW Talkcast and recently, our host and podcasting guru (OK, not guru, but he is the host and we like him), Michael Rose, has been looking at possibly using Ecamm’s Call Recorder 2 plugin as an option for recording our weekly talkcasts. I actually have used it to record both audio and video chat for the Squadcast and really think that it is a fantastic, fantastic add-on.

For anyone unfamiliar, Call Recorder is a great little tool that adds a recording window to Skype. This makes it easy to record incoming and outgoing calls (audio and video). The files are saved in the QuickTime format and they can be converted to MP3 or split into separate tracks.

With the release of the latest version of Skype for the Mac, Ecamm has updated Call Recorder as well. In addition to the latest Skype compatibility, Call Recorder 2.3 also includes a new two-track video recording option (so that you can have a separate stream from each side of the conversation) and enhanced video recording quality.

Call Recorder 2 is $14.95 (for $7 more, you can also get Conference Recorder, which adds the same functionality to iChat, and unlike the built in iChat recorder, doesn’t require both users to have Leopard) and a free demo is available if you want to try out the tool.

If you want a simple, hassle free way to record Skype conversations, give Call Recorder a shot!

“For a lot of people,” says Ken Mingis (computerworld.com), “smaller and lighter is better when it comes to their laptops.” He considers MacBook Air “one of the coolest-looking laptops to appear in years — both in terms of size and hipness.” It has “a gorgeous display that looks sharper and brighter on the Air than it does on the regular MacBook.” And, he says, “waking it up from sleep mode took about 2 seconds, and the LED backlighting means the screen hit full brightness as soon as it was awake.” As for performance: “The Air feels just about as snappy as my MacBook Pro in day-to-day use doing the kinds of things most users will be doing: surfing the Web, firing off e-mails, text editing and light graphics work.”

If you have a slight addiction to Starbucks coffee as well as an addiction to Apple technology you’re in luck. Thanks to Apple’s deal with Starbucks for free WiFi at their stores you’ll be able to order your favorite coffee without dealing with long lines.

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For the first time, music fans can enjoy all of the contestant performances from Season Seven of American Idol, television’s most popular show, exclusively on iTunes. This week, performances of the “American Idol” Top 24 semifinalists will be the first to appear on iTunes. You also can purchase music performances for 99 cents per song. Starting March 11, you’ll also be able to purchase the full video of Top 12 finalist performances for $1.99. And, beginning today, you can pre-order performances of your favorite contestants from the iTunes Store, which will automatically download the day after the show airs. The exclusive availability comes to you thanks to a partnership of Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Interactive Media, 19 Entertainment, FremantleMedia and Apple.

Skype, which has become my primary means of communicating with anyone not standing directly in front of me, has updated to version 2.7.0.257 with improvements, changes and a very, very long list of bugfixes.

I’m happy, possibly even thrilled, about an alleged improvement in video stability. If you’ve ever used the video features, you’ve probably noticed that, in numerous scenarios, Skype prefers to show up more in your crash logs than on your desktop. I haven’t had a chance to fully test out the video portion of this update and the release notes simply refer to it as “improved stability”, so I’m hoping for the best.

The 20+ bugfixes, by and large, deal mostly with errors I haven’t run into and one grammatical correction to a dialog. Oh, and they fixed the language name for Belarusian, which could potentially appease 9,081,102* people.

Fewer crashes and proper grammar are tantalizing but, as is usually the case, I find the API additions to be the most exciting. The Skype API is AppleScript-able and fairly comprehensive. This update adds more interface access, new voicemail features, and a few intriguing looking options which I’ll just have to play with to understand.

It would be nice if the updater built into Skype actually did what the name implies, but for now you’ll have to head for the web page and get it yourself. Be sure to check out the release notes.

There’s been some controversy about the HD video quality on the Apple TV, which we’ve covered before. Now that Take Two has dropped, iLounge has done the legwork to put together an excellent visual comparison. They compared four versions of Live Free and Die Hard: Blu-ray, Apple TV HD, Cable HD, and DVD.

The results were quite good for the Apple TV; while Blu-ray was the clear and expected winner, the Apple TV version outpaced the Cable HD version on several of the tests, particularly those testing compression artifacts. The upshot: “Because of its cleaner motion and audio, we felt that the Apple experience was better in both overall audio and video quality than the HD cable experience, and for most users, superior to renting a standard DVD as well.” Check out their full article for many more comparison shots.

“Apple has done well with Aperture 2.0, based on my test of ingesting and editing a batch of my own photos on a dual-core iMac,” remarks Stephen Shankland in a recent article on CNET. And, he points out, he’s not the only one to notice the dramatic performance gains: “I feel like someone snuck a new CPU into my machine,” gushed photographer Josh Anon in a Wednesday blog posting.” “On top of a general performance boost,” Shankland continues, Aperture 2 delivers “a new preview mode that specifically emphasizes speed,” an entirely “new raw-processing engine” that delivers significant advantages, and a variety of other new features, as well.

It’s been a busy few days in the iPhone 1.1.3 hackathon. After the Geohot software unlock, yesterday saw the release of the Zibri command-line and unlock.no Windows GUI versions of an all-in-one software jailbreak, activation and unlocking script for 1.1.3 iPhones. Just in the past few minutes, aCujo reminded us of the bootloader downgrade from 4.6 to 3.9, completely in software. Comments below also remind us that iJailbreak, the “bar mitzvah project” of iPhone utilities (both developers are 13 years old), has released both an automated jailbreak mobile tool and a Mac-compatible (Leopard-only for the moment) desktop utility for 1.1.3.

At this point, it seems that third-party application users are good to go on the new firmware, and overseas or non-AT&T iPhone owners are pretty well set for getting unlocked and rolling on native cell networks, noting as always that the hacks are not finished works and even the experienced few sometimes do themselves harm. (Wondering how to tell an unlock from a jailbreak? Check out Erica’s iPhone hack glossary post from a while back.)

For those who consider themselves economically and intellectually distanced from the whole unseemly business of hacking iPhones and unlocking them from AT&T’s network, consider these two BusinessWeek stories on the iPhone gray market. Not only is the iPhone unlock a money-making engine for thousands of opportunity-minded retailers and middlemen all across the globe, but the status of a functional software unlock means feast or famine (both essentially unwanted) for the maker of the TurboSIM adapter that enables a hardware unlock when software is foiled. It’s astonishing that one little device can cause so many ripples in a worldwide chain of commerce and underground innovation.

Thanks to everyone who sent these in.

Reviewing MacBook Air for the Daily Telegraph, Claudine Beaumont notes that most of the staff there “have found this lightweight laptop very impressive.” MacBook Air, she indicates “is a delightfully designed gadget, hewn from aluminum and glass, and draws amazed gasps from almost all who see it. It’s hard to appreciate just how slim it is until you hold it for yourself.” While “there’s no doubt the Air is beautifully designed,” Beaumont points out that it also “ packs all of the powerhouse computing we expect from Apple.”

Once again, TUAW is pleased to present you with a selection of free songs and videos from around the world. Many of these iTMS items won’t be free for long, so grab your copies before the week is up. And don’t forget: If you want to buy these on your iPhone or iPod touch, make sure to sign into your account in iTunes before you sync.

Continue reading iTunes: Free Wednesday

The cellphone industry went to Barcelona to “show off the latest and greatest phones” and, once again, hardware took center stage. But, Victoria Shannon (New York Times) points out, “software is growing in importance as smartphones, capable of accessing the Web, become more popular.” So, Shannon continues, “it was no surprise that many of the phones were iPhone clones — with touch screens, sleek flat shapes and spare software interfaces. Apple was able to make a phone that paid equal attention to the software and the hardware. And the rest of the industry was following suit here.”

If you’re looking for a clear case to keep your iPhone in, these sturdy Titan Clear cases might be worth looking into. Not only does it have a nice look to it and of course protects your precious iPhone, it also has a couple of cool features that not a lot of cases have.

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Once again, TUAW is pleased to present you with a selection of free songs and videos from around the world. Many of these iTMS items won’t be free for long, so grab your copies before the week is up. And don’t forget: If you want to buy these on your iPhone or iPod touch, make sure to sign into your account in iTunes before you sync.

Continue reading iTunes: Free Wednesday

Reviewing MacBook Air for the Daily Telegraph, Claudine Beaumont notes that most of the staff there “have found this lightweight laptop very impressive.” MacBook Air, she indicates “is a delightfully designed gadget, hewn from aluminum and glass, and draws amazed gasps from almost all who see it. It’s hard to appreciate just how slim it is until you hold it for yourself.” While “there’s no doubt the Air is beautifully designed,” Beaumont points out that it also “ packs all of the powerhouse computing we expect from Apple.”

Following up to my recent post, I’m now hearing additional scuttlebutt regarding the iPhone SDK release. The latest:

1. The SDK will ship on time for late February, but many features will be delayed, so this will be at best an alpha or beta release.

2. People who are in Apple’s documentation department are working triple-quadruple-double-secret overtime.

3. Simulator will be there but you can also test applications directly on the hardware, via a docking cable tether.

Looking at the calendar, we should know one way or another within, say, two weeks. As always, many grains of salt, rumors, rumors rumors.

The cellphone industry went to Barcelona to “show off the latest and greatest phones” and, once again, hardware took center stage. But, Victoria Shannon (New York Times) points out, “software is growing in importance as smartphones, capable of accessing the Web, become more popular.” So, Shannon continues, “it was no surprise that many of the phones were iPhone clones — with touch screens, sleek flat shapes and spare software interfaces. Apple was able to make a phone that paid equal attention to the software and the hardware. And the rest of the industry was following suit here.”

Macworld’s Jonny Evans reports that “Google has confirmed it has seen 50 times more searches from the iPhone than from any other mobile handset. ‘We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,’ Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations told the Financial Times at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.” Evans also indicates that O2 “recently confirmed the iPhone to be driving ‘unheard of data traffic’ on the mobile network.”

“The best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. — the iPhone.” That, according to David Benjamin (EE Times) was the conclusion reached by a “blue-ribbon panel of human behavior and technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.” And, Benjamin points out, “Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for Adobe, cited a study showing that 77 percent of iPhone purchasers described themselves as “very satisfied” with their user experience.”

You’ve probably downloaded scores of PDFs from the Web and no doubt created many of your own in Mac OS X. But did you know that Leopard gives you more control of PDFs than ever, even letting you reorder or delete pages, insert or extract pages, or add Spotlight search terms? We show you how to use Preview to manipulate PDFs in the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

Following up to my recent post, I’m now hearing additional scuttlebutt regarding the iPhone SDK release. The latest:

1. The SDK will ship on time for late February, but many features will be delayed, so this will be at best an alpha or beta release.

2. People who are in Apple’s documentation department are working triple-quadruple-double-secret overtime.

3. Simulator will be there but you can also test applications directly on the hardware, via a docking cable tether.

Looking at the calendar, we should know one way or another within, say, two weeks. As always, many grains of salt, rumors, rumors rumors.

If my hunch is correct,” writes Julio Ojeda-Zapata (TwinCities.com), “business-class airliner cabins will be filled with corporate types whipping out their MacBook Airs for work amid admiring glances from seatmates.” MacBook Air, after all, “is one sexy portable,” a laptop that “screams luxury with its extra-bright display (a newfangled light-emitting-diode variant) and a full-size, backlit keyboard that has a great, firm feel.” Ojeda-Zapata suggests that “business types needing ultraportability with style and comfort won’t be able to resist the Air. They can even wedge Windows in there (I did so with no trouble).”

Did you upgrade your iPod touch? I did. But I presumed it was optional. TUAW readers who have chosen not to upgrade report they’re being hounded. By iTunes. They say that every time they connect their iPod to iTunes for syncing, they’re getting hit with a “buy the upgrade” page that only has an OK button. Once clicked, it transports you to the iTunes page for buying the software. Is this happening to you? Are you feeling strong-armed into buying the upgrade? Let us know in the comments.

Apple TV remains “a fantastic way for people to get their iTunes-purchased movies, music and TV shows from their computers onto their living room TVs.” And now “what’s even better” about Apple TV Take Two, concludes Jason Chen (Gizmodo) “is that it doesn’t require a computer to function. People can plop down an Apple TV into their homes and rent movies, listen to iTunes music, sync up with their grandchildren’s Flickr or .Mac streams, or just waste an hour surfing YouTube.”

Go second. Or third. Or last. That’s the lesson on performing hacking upgrades. Let someone else make all the mistakes first and then follow just those footsteps that didn’t lead, say, down the giant crevasse with the big old hungry lions waiting below.

Today, I’m about to upgrade my hacked Apple TV first–so you can see where I go wrong and then don’t, yourself.

Continue reading HackTV Take 2: The AppleTV Hack Upgrade Liveblog

“With its enhanced iTunes video offerings, PC-free operation, and a lower price tag,” John P. Falcone (CNET) concludes that “the updated Apple TV is a compelling Internet-enabled entertainment device for the living room” and awards the product an Excellent 8.0 out of 10 rating.