Fresh Apple: The Apple Blog (5 сообщений)

На что подписаться? | Управление подпиской

The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
рекомендовать друзьям >>

Mac 101: Open Mutiple Files in Preview Simultaneously

When I have a large photo set I would like to look at in OS X the quickest and easiest way is to open them with Preview. Unfortunately, when you click on one picture that is in the same folder as the rest of the pictures, Preview doesn’t automatically recognize the photo is a part of a set and let you scroll through them all at once (you have to open each one individually).

To open photos as a set in Preview all you have to do is:
1. Highlight all of them (click the first picture in the set and while holding shift click the last photo in the set)
2. Right click on them
3. Chose “Open with” > Preview
Переслать
"Let's Rock" Keynote Video Now Available

If you missed seeing Steve-o live in person today (which you did), then you can now watch the entire “Let’s Rock” special event keynote online at Apple’s site.

The full event is a little over an hour long and gives you a few more details than our previous coverage of the event.

Переслать
iPhone/iPod touch 2.1 Update: Fewer Dropped Calls, Faster Sync, Better Battery Life, and More

This Friday Apple will be releasing the 2.1 software update for iPhone users.

This update will be completely free for iPhone users and, according to Jobs, will fix address a lot of issues such as dropped calls, crashes, and painfully slow sync times. Along with the fixes will also be better battery life.

The 2.1 update for iPod touch users is actually available today, though it seems most users have had mixed results actually getting the update to work through iTunes. If you’re feeling antsy, you can try downloading the update package directly here, though your results may vary on actually getting it to work. I downloaded the update via that link and the update installed correctly but throws an “Unknown error occurred” message, though data still seems to sync correctly. So, you’ve been warned.

The 2.1 update is free for iPod touch users who purchased the 2.0 update but will cost $10 to those who are upgrading from 1.x.

Let me know if you have any issues with either update.

Переслать
iPod Updates, New iPod nano and New iPod touch
Today all four iPod models got at least some love ranging from storage upgrades to new designs.

iPod classic

This version of the iPod has seen the fewest model design changes and today is no exception. The iPod classic has been offered in an 80GB version and a 160GB version. Apple has now discontinued the 160GB version and has given the 80GB model a bump up to 120GB at the same price of $249. The new iPod classic is available today.

iPod nano

The nano has only been around 3 short years but as of today’s announcement, Apple is on it’s fourth design revision. It seems like just yesterday that the previous iPod nano model was released (it was about 1 year ago), but here we are with a new design.

As you can tell from the photo above, the new design feels a lot like the old 2G design. Most of Apple’s product design changes usually feel like they’re moving forward while this design actually feels a bit like a step back. But I guess if ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Kind of makes me wonder if the previous, squashed nano didn’t sell as well as they had hoped (it was certainly my least favorite of the designs).

(more…)

Переслать
iTunes 8, Genius, HD Shows, and Welcome Back NBC
At this morning’s special event, Jobs announced quite a few updates in relation to iTunes and the iTunes store including the newest version of iTunes, Genius, HD shows, and the return of NBC.

iTunes 8

Today Apple has released the next major version of iTunes, available view Software Update or the Apple website. The biggest new feature being added is called Genius (presumably named after yours truly). Genius allows you to create playlists at the click of a button. Just select a song, click the Genius button and iTunes creates a playlist of songs from your library that it thinks will go great together.

Where does iTunes get this sort of data? From the bagillion songs that have been purchased through the iTunes Store, of course! When you fire up iTunes 8 for the first time, you can opt-in to sending your data (completely anonymously) to Apple for them to add to their pool of data to help the community at large get better recommendations…the idea being that Genius will just get smarter and smarter as more data is uploaded.

In addition to creating playlists from your own library, Genius can suggest songs (conveniently from the iTunes Store) that you might like to have in your library. I’m afraid this feature will significantly increase the amount of music I buy.

Genius will also work offline as data is sent back to your computer when you create a Genius playlist.

I gave Genius a go and must say the playlists it created for me were pretty spot on as were the song suggestions in the iTunes store. Some of the newer music I’ve got (as in less than a week old) threw a message back saying it didn’t have enough data, but I presume that in the next few days as hundreds of thousands of people start using Genius, those sort of messages will become pretty rare.

Genius playlists, once created, can be saved and then “refreshed” later on to be updated based on new Genius data.

Also new in iTunes 8 is a grid view for your music. During today’s keynote, Jobs said the “old” way of browsing your music wasn’t efficient, so they created a new grid view for browsing your music. The grid view acts a lot like iPhoto in that if you group by something like “Artists”, where an artist might have multiple albums, you can scrub your cursor over the grouping and see all the albums in that group.

This wasn’t mentioned today, but iTunes 8 also has a new visualizer that has some pretty trippy stuff. The visualizer isn’t really my thing (honestly it gives me a headache), but if that’s your bag, you’ll probably love this.

HD TV Shows

Today Jobs also announced that the iTunes store will now start adding HD content for TV Shows. HD shows will be $2.99 while SD shows will stay $1.99. Quite a few of the more popular/newer shows are already available in the store in HD. Viewing the HD content requires an update to QuickTime 7.5.5 (available today as well).

NBC Returns!

Last August, NBC announced they wouldn’t be renewing their contract with Apple due to disagreements over DRM. It seems NBC and Apple are now playing nice again and the NBC lineup has returned with a number of their shows also available in HD.

Have you given any of these iTunes updates a try? What do you think of the new Genius feature?

Переслать