Fresh Apple: The Apple Blog (4 сообщения)

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 >>

The "Brick": Game Changer or Niche Product Without a Market?

The internets are currently abuzz with rumors of a new, genre-bending product due out of Cupertino, possibly at the speculated October Mac event.

Though most agree it likely isn’t a building material to be used with mortar in the construction of buildings, there are a number of different theories about what the “Brick” in fact could be.

iPhone Savior cites the ever-informative “sources” in suggesting the the “Brick” may in fact be the long-awaited Mac Mini redesign. They admit their source is unreliable, and that the supposed near-pro performance upgrades attached to the rumor seem far-fetched at best. While it is true that the Mac Mini has been nearing obsolescence for quite a while now, a mere spec bump does not seem grounds enough for Apple to use the speculation-inspiring term “product transition.”
(more…)

Переслать
Modernizing Mail.app: The Solution

Mail.app is an imperfect beast. Thankfully, with a little modification and some extensibility, you can make Mail.app a more modern email management client.

In my previous post, I criticized Mail.app for not providing modern tools to improve email management. Nevertheless, I was able to find a basic solution to a couple of my gripes.

Tagging and Searching

I decided to purchase MailTags. It did not take a long time to go through my archived email messages, tag them and then create smart mailboxes to display these items grouped by tag. Hats off to Scott Morrison, the developer of this excellent product. I am now able to search by my own tags as well as filter the results accordingly. MailTags also has functionality in terms of task management, as you can assign projects, reminders and more to your existing and new messages.

Here is a screenshot of my left navigation bar (I did remove some items for privacy – sorry):

Here is an example screenshot of a Smart Mailbox I created:

I now only have one real mailbox with my MobileMe account (the Archive mailbox). I didn’t want all of the email in my Inbox, so it made sense to store everything in another mailbox. The rest of the email management is now via the Tag-based Smart Mailboxes.
(more…)

Переслать
Apple TV 2.2 Wish Lists = Fail
Yesterday, Apple released both an iTunes (8.0.1) and Apple TV (2.2) update. The Apple TV update has some great new features:
- Support for the Genius
- Support for HD Television Shows
- Numerous bug fixes
One unmentioned feature change is how Apple TV now handles Wish Lists. In the previous release (2.1), you could click through to the movie you wanted to rent/buy/wish and with one click of the remote, be in the bliss of watching your movie or highly anticipating its eventual release.

Now, with the 2.2 software, the Wish List button has been replaced with an Ellipsis button. The button takes you to a new screen whereby you can see more detailed information about the movie and then select whether you want to add it to your Wish List or not.

What stinks about this is that a formerly discoverable feature that was really easy to use is now buried in another screen. If Apple wanted to provide more information about the movie, they could have added a button to do so and still left the Wish List button alone.

Instead, the users of Apple TV now have to click twice to Wish List their movies. Maybe in the next Apple TV release (2.x), Apple will get it right and move the Wish List functionality back to a single click.

Has the Apple TV 2.2 update made other changes that you’ve noticed?

Переслать
iTunes Store Free to Continue Dominating Digital Music Sales
We reported earlier on the possibility of a 66% raise in royalty fees for digital music distributors. Have no fear readers, the iTunes store will continue offering the generous service of providing somewhere for you to dump all that spare cash. According to CNET News, the Copyright Royalty Board informed interested parties yesterday that they’ve frozen the amount owed music publishers by digital music retailers at 9.1 cents per track.

Apple’s strong statement to Fortune published Monday this week seems to have had some influence on the Royalty Board’s decision. Everyone, however, is claiming to be happy with the deal. Record labels see it as a guarantee that even if they up music prices, the cut they pay out to artist stays the same. Artists themselves are happy that they’re guaranteed the same take away even if physical music sales continue to trend downward. Apple and company are just happy to stave off a potentially devastating cut to their bottom line. The decision today represents the first time a formally set (or “mechanical”) rate has been set for digital downloads.

Nice to see that Apple isn’t afraid to brandish its market strength like a club. As their market share grows, expect to see their influence over industry policy grow. Let’s all hope for responsible musical overlords.

Переслать