Tonight Apple will produce its first-ever live event streamed to the iPhone: a concert by the electronica band Underworld. Apple has apparently kept the event quiet as it doesn’t want to overwhelm the AT&T network, but if you have an iPhone you can queue it up yourself at iphone.akamai.com orunderworldlive.com. The show starts at 9 p.m. PT and the stream is free.
Read the full details over at NewTeeVee ?
With support for emerging web standards in HTML 5 and CSS3, topflight built in developer tools, fast performance, and the other 150 new features packed into its Snow Leopard release, Safari is now the only browser left on my dock.
After reading through David’s great tips for supercharging Safari, I was inspired to pimp out my own install and came across two tweaks I thought I’d share. They aren’t plugins, but instead involve some “under the hood” changes to enable full screen browsing and to force new window links to open up as tabs instead.
Both of these tweaks involve editing Safari’s preference files. There are a couple of different ways you could go about doing this, but the best approach, in my opinion, is to use this handy little free PlistEdit Pro application. There are a ton of hidden gems in preference files and this little app makes exploring them dead simple.
When I’m on my laptop, screen real estate matters, so my brother tipped me to this little trick he uses on his Hackintosh Dell Mini 9 to force the menu bar and dock to slide off the screen and fully zoom the window.
Application UI Presentation Mode” and set its value as “All Suppressed.”This will force the dock and menu bar to slide off the screen whenever Safari is the selected application. Mousing up to the edges of the screen will slide them back on so you can still access menu items or the dock as needed.
Now create a bookmark to fully zoom the window to take advantage of all this newly available space on the screen.
javascript:self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);.javascript:self.resizeTo(900,600);window.moveTo(200,200).If these two are the first two bookmarks then you can use ?1 and ?2 respectively to go big and return to normal.
As I tend to use the Spaces feature in Leopard to separate out my work (markup stuff in one space, email and IM in another, twitter and news reader in another, etc.), I like to have a separate browser window to go along with each space. This helps me keep my browsing organized, but when links start making additional windows, things get messy. So, forcing those links to open up as tabs instead is an easy fix.
Now everything stays in its own window and my spaces stay nice and tidy.
With these final tweaks, plus a couple of the plugins mentioned by David in his post I’ve got my Safari almost exactly how I want it. If you have your own favorite “under the hood” tweak for Safari, share it in the comments. I’d love to hear it.
Normally, Apple removes apps from the App Store at a rate we can digest and analyze, but it looks like it’s now adopting a different tactic, maybe to frustrate criticism with sheer volume. This time around, it has given the boot to a stunning 900 apps in one fell swoop. The apps aggregated various web content, and charged $4.99 for the service, despite not being copyright holders of any of it.
The app’s developer, a company called Perfect Acumen owned by one Khalid Shalik, employed 26 Indian and Pakistani programmers who churned out 943 apps last year alone. The purpose of all of the apps was to grab content tailored to a specific target audience and just display it on the iPhone. Even this simple task it didn’t handle very well, according to user reviews, which mainly criticized the app, and worse still, Perfect Acumen held no copyrights for any of the content they republished, including photos of hot celebrities, which tend to catch the attention of fair-use publication enforcers.
According to The iPhone Blog, Apple says it revoked Perfect Acumen’s developer account and removed the apps when Shalik or any company representative failed to respond to any of the 100+ complaints Apple received as a result of the applications. Other developers also criticized Acumen’s shady marketing tactics. All in all, it seems like for once, Apple’s review process actually got something right, albeit belatedly.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Perhaps as a direct result of the kinds of complaints received against Perfect Acumen, Apple seems to be clamping down on all content source provider apps, according to Erica Sadun at TUAW. First to go are e-book applications, which, according to TUAW’s sources, are now being met with a blanket rejection policy because of third-party rights infringement. Like its stance on charitable applications, it just doesn’t want the onus of having to vet each app for the accuracy of its claims.
The policy appears to be a blanket one, though, and covers even apps where the developer is the owner of the content, or has the right to reproduce it and can prove it. It’s bound to be a major door-closing for app store developers, and one that will only continue to sour developer sentiment towards Apple and the way it does business. Finally, the icing on the cake, all e-book readers apparently also now run afoul of Apple’s policies (which might explain the lack of a Stanza update in recent memory).
It’s one thing to make sure you’re covered when it comes to legitimate accusations of enabling copyright infringement, but it’s another altogether to wage war on an entire subcategory (literally, since “Books” is one of the App Store’s categories of apps) of software. I suspect this has something to do with the rumored launch of a tablet-type device in the fall, which is said in some circles to have e-reader capabilities.
If so, this preemptive thinning of competition borders on the sinister, and I’m seriously considering a permanent switch to RIM just to protest these shady business practices. That said, there’s still plenty of opportunity to prove me wrong Apple. Let’s hope you do.
I was just installing the Garage Band update on my Mac mini, when lo and behold, upon checking again at completion for updates, the 10.5.8 cumulative update appeared.
I’ve yet to update my mini to 10.5.7, because of reported issues with outputting to 720p resolution, which is the resolution of the TV I have it connected to. 10.5.8 appears to fix display resolution issues, as stated in the update description itself.
It also claims to bring the usual bug fixes and security enhancements we’ve come to expect from incremental updates, in addition to solutions for AirPort connectivity and reliability issues, Bluetooth connectivity problems, and sluggish startup times. My iMac has had some AirPort hiccups from time to time, which I’ve actually just learned to live with, but hopefully 10.5.8 gets rid of even those minor annoyances.
It’s available now via Software Update, and you can read more about it at this Apple Support article.
With 2009 half way over, we’ve seen a lot of updates from Apple, from new portables to new iPhones and some hot new Pro Apps, but several sections of Apple’s product lineup have not been updated in quite a while.
Products such as the Apple TV, some software titles, and others are getting a bit long in the tooth. We know our mainstream products like iPods will see an update in the next few months, but what about some of the others? What’s the deal and what could be in store?
Apple TV, the little iPod for your television, has not seen a hardware update since 2007 when Apple introduced a larger 160GB model. Though there have been price cuts since then, and the introduction of the “Take 2” Apple TV software, the device itself really has not seen any updates since its introduction.
Originally referred to as the fourth leg on a four-leg stool (according to Jobs, referring to Apple’s product lineup), it has since been relegated to a “hobby” and now something that hasn’t seen much attention at all. The hacking community has provided a number of plugins and add ons to allow additional functionality, but Apple has only offered small software updates for compatibility with the Remote app or other products (new AirPort base stations, etc.). The device itself runs a variation of Mac OS 10.4! With the release of Snow Leopard, will we see any updates? Apple calls it a DVD player for the 21st century. I’m quite sure a DVD player for the 21st century involves Blu-ray, so where’s the love?
The last major version of Aperture (version 2.0) was released in February 2008. Though small updates have been released to provide support for newer camera models, Apple’s own consumer application iPhoto ’09 boosts features that make some Aperture users jealous. Face recognition and geo-tagging support are two such examples that blur the lines between those who might want to use Aperture versus iPhoto. (Aperture of course has a much different market, aiming to compete with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, but still, users do feel a bit left out.)
When Aperture was originally introduced, it was quite a performance hog. To be fair, however, at the time, most Macs were Power PC based. The switch to Intel processors as well as newer versions that included more optimized code allowed for a better experience. No doubt the introduction of Snow Leopard will also bring about further performance improvements to Aperture as well. The question remains though, after Snow Leopard launches will we see new software in October, or will we have to wait until a more appropriate time next year?
As an aside, I do recognize Apple just released new versions of Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio, but in all the fanfare, nothing has been mentioned about anything Snow Leopard specific. With all the “oohs” and “ahhs” of the performance features Snow Leopard is supposed to bring, one would think there could be several areas where these titles could take advantage.
Wow. Where to start with this one? Of all the Apple products that seem to carry an “Apple tax,” the displays rank among the highest. Rightfully they should as they are really high quality products. That being said, Apple has silently discontinued both their 20” and 23” displays, opting to replace them both by a very expensive 24” LCD display. The cream of the crop 30” display is only briefly mentioned on Apple’s website with a link to its online store. Where does the future of its displays lie? The mini DisplayPort can handle the high resolution of the 30” Cinema Display, so providing Apple could actually create an LED equivalent, it should be compatible with all of its latest products.
On the entry level side, $899 is still a hefty price for the smallest display. Looking at the iMacs, these displays are still CCFL based (cold cathode fluorescent lighting). This could explain why the LED Display is pricey compared to an entry level iMac which features a slightly smaller display but also a whole computer inside.
Another consideration for displays is the resolution they support. The 17” MacBook Pro features a high resolution 1920×1200 display that is LED-backlit. That resolution is equivalent to the resolution of the 24” LED display and looks really good, considering it’s packed into a display that is seven inches smaller.
Apple desperately needs a smaller entry-level display to replace the now defunct 20” Cinema Display, and the entire lineup could benefit from supporting a higher resolution all around.
These are just a few examples of products that haven’t really seen great updates lately, but history has taught us that Apple always comes through and woos its fans.
My question to you, the readers, is this: Do you think that Apple has been allocating all of its resources into completing Snow Leopard and the iPhone 3.0 launch? Or, do you think the neglect that some of these other projects have seen is because Apple has been focusing its development efforts on some as-of-yet unannounced new product, like the rumored tablet? We’ve seen some great new products this year, but even the latest versions of Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio aren’t entirely revolutionary. They didn’t even garner a media event.
My personal opinion is that this is the case and Apple has been working to complete Snow Leopard and the iPhone 3.0 OS, but has been focusing a major portion of its team on something we don’t know about yet. Remember what Steve always says: When the economy is rough, Apple’s solution is to innovate its way to success. Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
