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TheAppleBlog
TheAppleBlog, 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.
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Location Based Job Searching With JobCompass

JobCompass is a new application on the iPhone that allows you to search through millions of jobs, locating and plotting them on a map in relation to your current position. It pulls vacancy information in real time, so new listings appear on a regular basis.

The idea for JobCompass was born when Titus Blair, the developer of the application, discovered that many of his friends and associates were being laid off. He explains that:

Current website solutions are not ideal since they do not pinpoint your location to provide you with job listings in relation to where you are at the moment. I was also traveling regularly and thought it would be interesting to see what jobs were available in my field in the cities and places I was visiting.

After pinpointing your location, JobCompass allows you to search for jobs by keyword, specifying the range from your current location which interests you (5, 10, 25, 50 or 100 mile radius). After finding a position which you seem well suited for, it’s simple to send an email to yourself with a link to the job description or, for those with quick fingers and enough patience, to open the listing in Safari and apply for the job straight away.
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Daily Apple: Snake, Paris, Keynote Concerns, & Business Triggers
Metal Gear Confirmed for iPhone - Snake’s going to be stealthy on your iPhone or iPod touch in the near future, thanks to Konami. They’re also planning on releasing Silent Hill and Dance Dance Revolution games. I want Grey Fox in the Metal Gear game. That’s an order.

Apple Expo Paris Nixed - Yesterday, Apple was announcing its last year at Macworld. Today, there’s more bad news for Apple convention goers, as Apple Expo Paris announced that the trade show will not happen in 2009. C’est la vie!

Jobs Won’t Present Keynote, Health Concerns Crop Up Yet Again - Steve won’t be taking part in the Expo this year at all, with the honor of the keynote going instead to Apple SVP Steve Schiller. Some of the speculation is that he’s staying away for health reasons, adding another link in the seemingly endless chain of rumors about his supposed illness.

Dow Jones Releases Sales Trigger iPhone App - If you’re the business type, as more and more iPhone users are, this app might be useful. It provides up-to-the-minute information on important changes at listed companies, like entering and exiting management personnel, mergers, etc.

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Apple and Orange Lose Their Sweetheart Deal
A French watchdog agency has decided that the exclusive deal between Apple and France Telecom’s Orange is not fair and must be suspended. The suspension of the deal is set to take place no later than Thursday of this week. The reason for the short time frame for implementation is to give a chance to Orange rivals SFR and Bouygues Telecom to capitalize on holiday iPhone sales. An SFR spokesman said they were planning to begin selling the iPhone within a few hours of the decision, if Apple is cooperative.

Orange is not quietly accepting the ruling, and instead will be filing an appeal, on the grounds that exclusivity deals stand in Britain, Germany, and Spain, where the telecom industries are similar to France’s own. Orange’s deal with Apple covered a five year term, the same as AT&T’s in the U.S. The appeal process could take up to 12 months, and in the meantime, if Apple or Orange defy the councel’s ruling, they can be penalized with stiff fines.

The decision is the result of a September 18 complaint by Buoygues Telecom, which is France’s third largest cellular service provider. If it stands, it could influence other exclusivity deals between carriers and Apple, although probably much more so in Europe, where business and telecommunication regulations are similar between countries. It’s not likely that the decision will influence AT&T’s deal in the U.S., since competition regulations are not nearly as strict here as they are in Europe.

The current suspension is a temporary measure while the competition counsel investigates the matter more fully. It’s possible that fines could still be issued if Apple and France Telecom are found to be in serious violation of competition regulations.

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Mac Clones: Where Does Apple Draw the Line?

With all the hoopla surrounding Psystar these days, a few other companies have jumped on board the Mac clone bandwagon. In some cases they're using somewhat, shall we say, unique, methods. Still, the intent is clear: skirt Apple's EULA and sell a solution that allows Mac OS X to run on generic PC hardware. In other words, swipe Apple's IP.

Wired has a piece that discusses the cloning and how Apple may be powerless to stop it.

What bothers me most about cloning is the sheer hutzpah of those doing it. For example:

“We certainly don’t want to get into a legal battle that’s over a couple thousand dollars,” an EFIX USA spokesman said. “Potentially Apple could have a legal issue there. They may not have a legal issue, but with all the money they have they might try to make one.”

Apple could have a legal issue? Oh please.
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14 Ho Ho Holiday iPhone Apps
I’m a holiday junkie. I watch all the Christmas specials (including a copy of PeeWee’ Christmas Special which I have on VHS. It’s the only reason I still have a VCR), I make hot chocolate, I bake, I go absolutely insane. My insanity now extends to my iPhone, which has recently experienced a rash of holiday apps. Here’s a list of fourteen that I feel stand out somewhat from the growing crowd. They go well with eggnog and gingerbread.

North Pole ($2.99)

I’m not really sure why this app is named North Pole. I was expecting a compass type app, but in fact, this one give you Christmas-themed bobble heads. You can choose from Rudolph, Frosty, or Santa Claus, and the motion sensitive head-shifting action is accompanied by popular Christmas tracks, which you can select in the app’s settings screen.

Holiday Mistletoe (Free)

Any excuse to steal some holiday smooches. There’s about a thousand mistletoe apps out there (Don’t believe me? Search for yourself), but this one has the benefit of being free. It also features motion sensitive animation that simulates 3D space, and real jingling sounds, so your kissee will hear you coming and have a chance to escape.
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Targus High-Speed Cable a Solution for FireWire-less File Transfer
Apple’s decision to not equip the new unibody MacBook with a FireWire port has been as popular as the proverbial skunk at a garden party, at least with seasoned Mac users. Aside from the MacBook Air, which suffers from manifold deficiencies in the I/O department, the last Apple portable that shipped without FireWire was the Revision B clamshell iBook in 2000. We’ve kinda gotten used to having it.

So, are you, like many, taken with the new MacBook (and there are plenty of reasons to be), but wondering how you could get along without FireWire? A new product from Targus could be your solution.

That is if your main concern about going FireWire-less is how to handle fast, computer-to-computer file transfers. The Targus USB 2.0 High-Speed File Transfer Cable for Mac can’t help you with connecting to your FireWire video camera or scanner, but it’s a surprisingly slick and satisfactory substitute for the file transfer aspect of FireWire Target Disk Mode, in some respects even more convenient.
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Daily Apple: Final Christmas, Artificial Greening, Mini Buzz, Hodgmanimation, & Sales Slump
Get Your Older Mac Looking Greener - The preference pane icon on the most recently released Macs for the Energy Saver functions is a flourescent bulb, not the power-hungry incandescent one those of us with older machines are stuck with. Check out this handy little tutorial to figure out how to replace your own boring old icon with the new one.

Mac Mini Updates Coming? - The rumor mills are churning out lots of buzz around this one. The source, from what I can tell, is a lone Apple corporate employee, who is keeping his identity secret in order to prevent a vicious firing. I’m really hoping this one turns out to be true.

New Holiday Get a Mac Ads Debut - Done in that classic Rankin/Bass style, the new ads carry on the tradition begun in 2007 of having animated versions of John Hodgman and Justin Long push Apple goods. I’ve only seen the one so far, and it was far more cutesy/heartwarming than hilarious, as is appropriate for the holidays.

Apple Sales Slide - Those ever buoyant Apple sales numbers sunk a little in November, compared to the same period last year. It was bound to happen, with the consumer electronics market in a general slump. They’re still doing far better than most.

Apple Announces Last Year of Christmas - Yep, they cancelled it. It just wasn’t really worth their time, being such a small part of their overall marketing strategy, apparently. Too bad, I’d grown rather fond of the Jobs/Claus annual shared Christmas keynote. There’s always next yea.. oh wait, not anymore.

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Versatile Screen Capturing With Voila

Global Delight has recently announced their release of a public beta for Viola, an image capture and annotating tool for Mac.

Voila features the ability to capture a region from the screen in a variety of different shapes as well as take a full screen, timed or menu capture — significantly broader functionality than that built into OS X by default. After taking a screen capture, Voila includes annotating tools (text, arrows, callouts, sprays, stamps etc) to make editing simple and, after you’ve completed your annotation, a variety of different export options are present.
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Macworld 2009 to Be Apple's Last

Today, Apple announced that the upcoming Macworld Expo (Jan. 5-9, 2009) will be the last Apple attends.

On Tuesday, January 6, Phil Schiller will give the opening keynote and, according to Apple, it will be the last keynote given at a Macworld.

Apple says that trade shows have become a “very minor” part of their marketing efforts and as such they are scaling back on their attendance of such events.

Each year the Macworld Expo is practically the Mecca of Apple users with Steve Jobs giving a keynote that both satisfies and blows rumors out of the water. With Apple no longer attending Macworld events, I would imagine that attendance to the events will dramatically decrease as many users and journalists make the trip primarily to find out what Apple will announce.

On top of that, the fact that Phil Schiller will be the primary person delivering the keynote, as opposed to Jobs, is a new source for rumors in itself. We’ve written about a world without Jobs before, but this seems to solidify the company’s position even more.

What are your thoughts? Would you attend a Macworld without Apple?

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iPhone & OS X DIY: Take Control Of Your Holiday Displays With Griswold
“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could control your Christmas lights from your iPhone?” That simple question, posed in passing eleven days ago by a good friend, set off a flurry of activity which has become Griswold.app (for the iPhone/iPod touch) and Griswold Server (for OS X Leopard, Windows and Linux/BSD). Both are being released here with full source to each and you may just be able to download it from the App Store by the end of the week as well.

If you are one to deck the halls…and the family room…and the kitchen…and the roof then you know how difficult it can be controlling all those displays. Timers are somewhat effective, but are always out of sync with each other. Simple RF remotes provide better control but must be in range or have line-of-sight to work. It really would be cool to be able to control these creations from an iPhone!
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Hack and Slash With Hero of Sparta on the iPhone
I’m a bit of an ancient culture geek, and a big fan of the God of War series of video games. For these reasons I was both excited and wary about the new Hero of Sparta ($9.99) game for the iPhone and iPod touch, the latest Gameloft release. Having recently reviewed Brothers in Arms and found it rather enjoyable, I had every reason to believe Hero of Sparta would be good, too. While the games have some elements in common, Hero of Sparta will definitely appeal to a different kind of gamer, though the Gameloft polish is still there.

Let's start with the familiar parts. Gameloft established a successful blueprint for iPhone/iPod touch game control with Brothers in Arms, and, luckily, they've carried over the core components of the system for Hero of Sparta. The control disc is located in the bottom list, and controls the direction and movement of your character in the game. On the right are the action buttons, which include your Weapon button and your Shield button. The Weapon button controls whatever offensive gear you've got equipped, and the Shield button controls blocking and special abilities.
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MSi Wind Gets More OS X-Friendly, Calls Apple Out
We know that you don't want to release a netbook, Mr. Jobs, and we respect your stance that you don't want to sacrifice quality and besmirch the Apple name with a sub-standard product. That said, it's beginning to look like other companies may not be content to sit by and wait while you come up with an ingenious way of revolutionizing cheapo laptop construction, making it affordable and of high enough quality to bear the Apple logo. One such company is Realtek, who've recently released OS X drivers for their Wi-Fi network cards, which reside not, where you might guess, in Apple laptops, but in the MSi Wind.
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iMuffs Wireless Headphones for iPhone

Wi-Gear recently announced a new revision of their iMuffs Wireless Headphones, with full support for the the iPhone. The new iMuffs support iPhones, iPod nanos, iPod touch, and all iPods with a dock connector, have improved Bluetooth range and improved radio interference rejection. This helps to remove interruptions from microwaves, Wi-Fi, and other stray radio sources (giving an overall clearer sound).

The headphones function up to 40 feet away from your iPhone (in a obstacle free environment), and allow you to keep your music player anywhere within Bluetooth range of your ears.

One major downside is the fact that the in-built Bluetooth capabilities of the iPhone are not accessible to developers. This means that the iMuffs require an additional dock adaptor to send the audio signal. It would have been far more aesthetically pleasing if Wi-Gear were able to utilize the on-board Bluetooth.
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Optimize iPhone Photo Retrieval With Apple's Image Capture Utility
Despite the iPhone having a less-than-stellar camera, I wind up taking more pictures with it than any other device we own. This becomes a painful reality every time I connect my phone up to my MacBook Pro since I am reminded that I have enabled the launching of iPhoto whenever there are new pictures to retrieve. More often than not, these quick snaps do not make it to my iPhoto library (due to image quality) but that does not mean I do not want to do some non-mobile processing with them. Enter Apple’s Image Capture application (which can be found right within your Applications folder).

Connect your iPhone (and quit iPhoto, if it comes up) and fire up Image Capture. You will see that it recognizes your device and is ready to serve.
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