Thursday, Aug 30, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #41- Apple Event time!

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Topics:

German magazine Capital is reporting that talks between Apple and Volkswagen are in an early stage for a so-called "iCar". According to a Volkswagen company spokesperson, the two company heads held talks a few days ago in California on more heavily incorporating Apple products in Volkswagen's compact cars.

Apple over the course of the past 24 hours has released two small software updates -- one targeting that latest version of its iPhoto application and a second aimed at its 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station.

Some guy had his 2G iPod Nano get run over by a 18-wheel semi!

MacRumors Forums that suggests that the new iMacs may have a stealth upgrade. Some people have discovered that (at least running Windows in Boot Camp) their machines appear to be reporting that the GPU is actually an underclocked mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT, which is a more powerful chip.

Cool File of the Week: Librarian Pro: Keep track of your media and more on Mac and PC

MacBook Podcast Contest!!! Send your video of you telling everyone why you switched to Apple, or if you never switched to Apple and have been with them from the beginning, send Jason a video of why you stay with Apple. Try and keep the videos under 5 minutes in length. The winner with the best video will get a custom MacBook Podcast t-shirt in the size of their choice. Send your videos to MacBook Podcast Contest.

Apple confirms "Special Event" on September 5th! Apple Inc. will use a special media event on September 5th to introduce a new array of digital media offerings, according to digital invitations issued to analysts and members of the media Tuesday afternoon. The invites, which arrived by e-mail, depict an enlarged CoverFlow interface with the caption, "The beat goes on." Apple's event is scheduled to take place at the Moscone West in San Francisco on September 5 at 10:00 a.m. Apple is widely expected to use the gathering to usher in a new breed of Mac OS X based iPods. Additional announcements relating to the company's iTunes software and digital media download service are also expected.

Run time: 23.30 minutes

Host: Daniel Brusilovsky

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 1:17 AM |  1 comments  

Sunday, Aug 26, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #40- And the iPhone hacking continues!

(255 downloads)

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Scott Bourne from the Apple Phone Show joins me on Apple Universe to discuss latest iPhone hacking stories. Most notable is a New Jersey teen names George Hotz. Hotz spent over 500 hours hacking the iPhone and unlocked the iPhone to work with other networks! He even posted a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it! Also, latest Leopard and news, and much more!

Hosts: Daniel Brusilovsky and Scott Bourne

Run Time: 29 minutes

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 7:22 PM |  1 comments  

Thursday, Aug 23, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #39- Will you be the next great photographer?

(227 downloads)

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American Photo and Apple are looking for the next great photographer by scouring the web for amateur photographers to feature in a special upcoming edition of their magazine. If you would like to be in the contest, go to Pop Photo. There are new rumors about Apple coming out with a iPod having OS X on it! I can't wait if it actually comes out! Intel announced the Core 2 Extreme X7900 yesterday at Games Convention 2007. The 2.8GHz Merom processor offers a 4MB L2 cache with support for 800MHz Front Side Bus. Readers will recognize this chip as the chip that was announced in the iMac on August 7th as a high end configuration. It appears that Apple is able to get preferential shipments on upcoming Intel processors. Intel had previously provided Apple with a 3.0GHz Xeon (Clovertown) processor with an early limited production. All of this and much more on Apple Universe!

Duration:

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Sunday, Aug 19, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #38- Mac Mini still lives!

(250 downloads)

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After a long day at HP Pavilion yesterday, I am back at it! We have TUAW Best of the Week , Tips, iPod rumors and much more!

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 2:59 PM |  1 comments  

Friday, Aug 17, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #37- David Pogue on iMovie '08!

(249 downloads)

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David Pogue is a pretty famous guy. When millions of dissapointed iMovie 08 users team up, that is bad! MoodSwing has been updates to version 4! Amazing opens up iPhone portal and much more on Apple Universe! This episode is my fifth in a row this week!

My Odeo Channel (odeo/2690b0e99ec43bec)

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 6:11 PM |  1 comments  

Thursday, Aug 16, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #36- Bye, Bye AppleWorks

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Apple Universe is on its 4th episode in a row! Can you believe that! We still talk about the iPhone, AppleWorks, iLife '08, and a very special announcement in the beginning!

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Wednesday, Aug 15, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #35- Should Apple have used Cover Flow in iPhoto '08?

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Apple has released another iPhone ad unofficially titled either "All These Years" or "How?" I say 'unofficially' titled because it hasn't appeared at Apple's iPhone ads page as of this writing yet, but a copy is already on YouTube. This time around, Apple's giving a shout out to the business users, asking how they could have gone all these years without "email like this" or "stock updates like this" in their pocket. Personally, I'm glad they wrote the ad this way, because I would probably have spit out my beer if the voiceover would have said "without email like this... in your pants."

But seriously: I worry about how well this particular ad is going to do. The iPhone is receiving a lot of criticism from the business sector, much of it understandable, for not working with Exchange Servers. While I don't wear a suit to work every day (or pretty much any day), word on the street is that Exchange support is the major hurdle keeping the iPhone from storming corporate purchase receipts. If the iPhone is primarily targeted at consumers, that's great. But if Apple wants to truly go after business users, they need to play by that industry's rules and offer the software support those folks need.

That said, it is a bold ad that certainly highlights the iPhone's gorgeous UI in a business setting. I'll update this post with a link once Apple publishes the official ad.



TUAW reader o!ivier has posted a mockup to his Flickr account of how he believes the iPhoto '08 Events UI should have been designed. Seeing it as a more natural evolution of what Apple is doing with Mac OS X and their apps (iTunes, Finder in Leopard, etc.), o!ivier believes Apple should have built in Cover Flow for browsing events instead of the new 'skimming' UI, where users run their mouse over resizable thumbnails to see all the photos contained in the event scroll by. Instead, this Cover Flow mockup proposes the idea of scrolling left and right through Events just like you scroll through albums in iTunes. Clicking an event produces thumbnails of all the images laid out in the area below, which can then be resized independently from the Cover Flow area.

I rarely prefer design mockups like this over what Apple produces, but I have to admit: I think Apple dropped the ball here. O!ivier's mockup looks far more useful, as you can browse through Events and view resizable thumbnails of all the photos they contain without leaving the Events UI. Don't get me wrong, skimming is cute, but Cover Flow + iPhoto looks like it would look just as slick but provide a far more useful working environment.

Who knows - Maybe Apple just wants to wait for users to get used to Cover Flow in Leopard's Finder. After all, they need to give us at least a few reasons to upgrade to iLife '09, right?

Yet another minor Apple product announcement that made it under our radar was a new Jam Pack for GarageBand: Voices. No, it isn't samples of Britney Spears, John Mayer and Adam Duritz - it's a collection of over 1,500 new instruments that fall under the categories of Drum and Percussion Instruments, Choral Ensembles, and Soloists. The focus, of course, is on filling up your tool belt with samples of professional instrumental soloists and choirs covering a wide variety of genres and styles.

Apple mailed out a survey link for ADC developers asking for feedback on the current Leopard seed (9A499).

The survey is actually asking developers for a comparison between Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and the shipping version of Mac OS X Tiger (10.4):
This survey is intended to allow you to compare your experiences using Mac OS X Leopard Build 9A499 and a shipping version of Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.x). Please rate all the areas that you have used in 9A499.

The survey provides comparison choices of

- Much Worse
- Somewhat worse
- About the same
- Somewhat better
- Much better

on a wide range of Mac OS X tools and features. The described areas of comparison are broken down into Mail & Web, Graphics & Media, Setup & Mobility, Desktop & Interface, Productivity & Communication, and Sharing & Devices.

You must be an ADC developer to participate in the survey (verified by email).

Apple is expected to ship the final version of Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) in October.

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 9:26 PM |  2 comments  

Tuesday, Aug 14, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #34- Mac Mini in a Corvette

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1001 is a very unique Flickr client from Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac version of blogging app ecto (the one with a slick new alpha version) and RSS newsreader endo. In addition to letting you upload your own photos to Flickr, I think 1001's primary appeal lies in its downloading and viewing abilities. It provides rich features for watching the stream of photos from your friends and groups, filtering the public photo stream with tags, blogging (of course) photos you like, displaying a Growl-like popup with certain photos you want to see and even using photo as your desktop wallpaper or screensaver. It's a really interesting way to interact with Flickr, and the only downside is a somewhat unique UI that might make it a little confusing to navigate 1001 your first time through.

After our little scare with the Mac Mini last week, the little boxen that could is quickly becoming my favorite computer (still can't wait to get one with Leopard on it). So seeing cool applications of it like this one thrills me to no end: Andrew sent us his writeup of putting a Mac Mini into a Corvette (complete with touchscreen monitor) as a music player.

The whole process looks pretty complicated to me-- the most I've done with my car stereo is install an old CD player, and by install I mean "watched my friend do it." But Andrew's writeup is really thorough, and he goes through everything from choosing components to creating a layout, to potential problems during installation, and what he plans to do next. Apparently the Mini is almost tailormade for car systems like this-- not only is there a special cable built to power it in the car, but there is even a special version of Front Row designed to be controlled from a touchscreen. Not everything worked well, however-- the Mini had a grounding problem, apparently, and Andrew had an issue with the Mini's volume setting reverting after a restart, but he was able to punch out an Applescript to fix it.

The end product looks great-- Andrew says he's still working on the mounts, but considering he's got a working touchscreen controlling a Mac Mini in his Corvette, that's good enough for me.

John Lennon's music is now available on the iTunes store as of last night. Right around 3AM, reader Ricky (thanks!) saw the graphic above pop onto the store, and noticed that Working Class Hero, among other albums, had arrived, and then disappeared about half an hour later. He speculated that they were working on a full release today.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends -- Patch Tuesday. Microsoft's once-a-month day to caulk and fill security holes and repair product bugs has a special treat for all of us this time around: a patch for Microsoft Office 2004. The vulnerability in question also affects Windows 2000, 2003 and XP along with Visual Basic 6.0, and could theoretically allow the crafter of a malicious web page to get full access to a targeted computer. See the technical details on the "vulnerability in OLE automation" here. Note that this exploit has not been seen in the wild; it was 'responsibly reported.'

The 11.3.7 update to Office is downloadable now and weighs in at 8.7 MB, with no features mentioned except for the security fix. Happy patching!

Hot on the heels of last week's benchmarking of the 2.4 GHz iMac, the folks over at Primate Labs have updated their iMac performance comparison charts to include scores from Apple's top-of-the line 2.8GHz iMac Core 2 Extreme, as well as the new Mac mini.

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 6:40 PM |  MAKE A COMMENT  

Monday, Aug 13, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #33- Interview with Biz Stone of Twitter

(545 downloads)

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Biz Stone is co-founder of Twitter, Inc and also helped make Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious. Biz sometimes writes books about what people are doing on the Internet. Twitter is a social network that you type "What are you doing" in 140 characters or less. This was a great episode and I hope you like it! Please comment and tell me what you think! Thank you Alvin Foo for all your help!

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 9:52 PM |  8 comments  

Monday, Aug 13, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #32- Expand my iDisk!

(219 downloads)

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When Steve Jobs announced a ten-fold leap in .Mac storage space, most of us were generally happy to hear it; I know I was. For those of us, including myself, who have been synching their iDisk to use it more or less as an online backup drive however, this good news had an unfortunate side effect in the form of lost local storage space. Because of the way iDisk synching works (a setting you must enable in the .Mac System Preferences pane), the amount of free space on your local hard drive will diminish according to the size of your iDisk. This is because your Mac keeps a disk image that serves as a constant backup of everything in your iDisk - that's part of the advantage of enabling the synching feature because you can retain a copy of everything in your iDisk even when offline, and sync any changes you make once you get connected again.

Before the upgrade, .Mac offered 1GB of total storage between .Mac email and iDisk storage, so synching one's iDisk like this didn't gobble up too much space. Now that this total storage has been raised to 10GB, the tables have turned a bit for us synchers, and especially for me since about a month ago I paid for the next tier of storage (I know - I've been bit by the Apple update bug again); imagine my surprise when my iDisk instantly went from about 1.5GB in size to 19GB.

Powerful is the plugin that makes me wait until it is ready before I upgrade to Apple's latest and greatest. Connected Flow's FlickrExport is one such plugin. It makes uploading photos from iPhoto to Flickr, Yahoo!'s photo sharing site, a breeze. Tag pics, upload them, add them to groups, create albums; it does it all.

Luckily, it was recently updated to address an with iPhoto '08, that issue being it wouldn't work with the latest version of iPhoto. FlickrExport 2.0.12 adds only one thing to this indispensable plugin: iPhoto '08 compatibility. This update is free for registered users, while a full license costs £12.

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 8:29 PM |  MAKE A COMMENT  

Saturday, Aug 11, 2007

Tech Podcast Network Episode

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The Apple Universe podcast has been honored by being allowed to join the Tech Podcast Network! Only the best podcasts are allowed and I am so pleased that Apple Universe has been elected!

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Saturday, Aug 11, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #31- Mac 101

(225 downloads)

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It is Saturday August 11, 2007 and I am up recording Apple Universe. This episode we have our weekly TUAW Best of the Week, and a new segment Mac 101. Tune in for this new segment. Please email me with comments or questions at appleuniversepodcast@gmail.com!

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 1:37 PM |  MAKE A COMMENT  

Friday, Aug 10, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #30- Why can't we all just be friends!

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As you know, I released an episode today on how I record Apple Universe. Well, I had to record a formal episode too! We talk about the MacBook Pro, the iPhone, iLife 2008 and of course the brand new iMac's! I did make a new Apple Universe promo, and I hope you like it! If you would like to use my promo, please email me at appleuniversepodcast@gmail.com! Do expect an episode tomorrow too!

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 10:12 PM |  1 comments  

Friday, Aug 10, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #29- How I do It!

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My friend Alvin Foo asked me to do an episode of Apple Universe, and so I did. But this episode is no ordinary episode, it is a "How i do It" episode! I go through my mixer, microphone , recording, editing and all the fun stuff on how to do a podcast. If you would like to know links to the products I use, please email me at appleuniversepodcast@gmail.com!

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 1:03 PM |  2 comments  

Thursday, Aug 09, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #28- Apple Media Rap-up

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As you all know, Apple had an exclusive media day. There they announced the new iMac, iLife 2008 and iWork 2008! Douglas Bell joins us on this recap episode.

Posted by Daniel Brusilovsky at 4:09 PM |  MAKE A COMMENT  

Thursday, Aug 09, 2007

Apple Universe Episode #27- Apple Universe Bananza!

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This is the Apple Universe BANANZA! We are doing 3 episodes in a row! Although I don't have much to talk about, I had to do an episode! Enjoy!

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