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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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Setting Up Xcode & Beanstalk Hosted Subversion
If you are planning on getting started in developing for the Mac, one of the first things I recommend setting up is a version control system. Beanstalk is a hosted Subversion system, so you can access your code from anywhere you have an Internet connection, team up with partners across the world, and keep a safe copy of your code off site, just in case. It’s tempting to rely on Time Machine for the ability to roll back changes, but Subversion has some key differences that make it a clear winner in ease of use and features.

For one, you can host a Subversion repository anywhere, either locally on your own Mac, or on the Internet, or on your local private network. Second, Subversion is built to work with multiple users, and can handle conflicting commits to the repository. Finally, Subversion can integrated directly into Xcode, which is what we are going to look at here.
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Weekly App Store Roundup: Dec. 6, 2008
As we speed down the information superhighway, we’re left with a few moments to glance in to our rear-view mirror and see the week that was fade in the distance.

And what a week it has been, with TAB pointing out AT&T’s 12,000 redundancies and apparent defiance of the economic slump, iPhone devs finally getting the tools they need to promote their apps properly, Tapulous presenting their iPhone offering for the holiday season and our very own ultimate roundup of Twitter apps.

So now it’s time to slide our brains in to fifth gear and cruise through the weekend, and to aid your journey I’ve picked several of the latest apps especially for your iPhone.

This week I’m looking at The Spirit, Buddha Machine and iTie.

The Spirit (free)
Frank Miller, the creative mind behind gritty comic-noir Sin City, has directed a forthcoming movie called The Spirit. This app is a free promo for the movie, allowing you to take a photo of yourself and then view a short clip from the movie, starring you! Just like The Dark Knight: HaHaHa, this is gimmicky fun, when it works.
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Channel Your Inner Ancient Riverboat Gambler with MotionX Poker Quest

My attention span when it comes to gaming, and especially mobile gaming, is not very long. Most titles on my iPhone never get a second play, in fact. Hence my surprise when I spent many hours over the past few days on MotionX’s newest title, Poker Quest.

MotionX is the developer behind MotionX Poker, one of the most talked about and impressive early titles for the iPhone and iPod touch. The dice poker game features an incredibly well-rendered virtual dice simulator, with realistic physics. MotionX has since released Dice, a free version of the dice simulation without the Poker game features, and GPS Lite, a tracking and navigation app.
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The Dark Knight: Batmobile Game for iPhone

This week, Glu Mobile's latest game The Dark Knight: Batmobile Game for iPhone went live on the App Store. In the game, players get to direct the Batmobile through a difficult street path filled with twists and turns as well as jump sequences with the goal of getting Batman to Gotham City as quickly as possible. The game uses the iPhone accelerometer to further excite playability as well as 3D graphics for an enhanced visual experience.

The Dark Knight: Batmobile Game

Players experience the power behind the 2.5 ton Batmobile as they drive it through a series of high-powered jump sequences to get Batman through the streets of Gotham City as quickly as possible. Unlike a typical racing game, you don’t actually ’steer’ the vehicle, but use the iPhone to apply speed boosts, fire the weapon (on a limited basis), and align the Batmobile correctly when performing a jump. This does make it very easy to pick up and play, but after a few plays you may find the gameplay a little limited.

There are some impressive graphics, and the game re-creates the eerie feel of Gotham City well. Likewise, the Batmobile bears an excellent resemblance to the model featured in the film.
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Marry Address Book With Google Maps

Apple’s Address Book is a clean and concise way to manage all of your contacts. It does what it needs without a bunch of frills, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. My use of Address Book is fairly infrequent — and by infrequent I mean that it’s pretty much only utilized around this time of year when I have to send out the annual newsletter or photo card of the kids.

Recently when my younger sister moved into the Big City and sent her ritzy new Manhattan address around to all of us, I entered it into Address Book like a good boy, and promptly forgot about it. It wasn’t long after that my lovely wife wanted to know about the new City digs, but I didn’t know a whole lot. So being a good nerd, I copied the address from Address Book and then copied it into a Google Maps session in Firefox to see what the area looked like. That’s when it hit me — why should I have to go through such a process?!
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The iPhone: A Marketer's Fantasy
There’s a trusted maxim in the marketing game: cheap razor, expensive blades. It comes from the practice of selling razors like the Mach3 or Fusion for next to nothing, and then selling the disposable blades for said razors at a rather more expensive price. Consumers tend to overlook the long-term price of purchase, and instead see the initial price as a bargain. The iPhone may not be cheap, but apps generally are, and they seem to be provoking a lot of pricey ‘blade’ purchases, so to speak.

A recent post on the Sonos forums emphasizes my point. In it, the poster provides an anecdote about how, despite prior resistance, the Sonos remote app for the iPhone convinced him to drop a considerable chunk of change on a Sonos system. The poster’s argument is this: the mere potential the iPhone offered in terms of perceived future added value actually motivated the purchase. When contacted, a Sonos PR rep confirmed that sales of Sonos systems have definitely benefitted from the release of the Sonos CR for iPhone. The company has even produced a video for people who may have the app, but no Sonos system to control, demonstrating how the controller will work.

It may sound ridiculous, but I can’t claim to be immune. Apple’s own Remote app has me contemplating an Apple TV purchase, despite the limited content library iTunes offers here in Canada, and our inability to access Hulu. The appeal is in how easy it would be to use Apple TV with the iPhone, not in what I would do with the media hub itself.
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Wirelessly Sync Google Calendar With Your iPhone

I live and die by my Google calendar and have always hated the fact that I could not wirelessly sync it with my iPhone. I’ve tried every method in the book, and finally have found two methods to wirelessly sync your Google calendar to your iPhone.

NuevaSync

The first method is free and uses a service called NuevaSync. NuevaSync allows over the air synchronization to the built in iPhone calendar. It seems like a great service, but I could never get it to work because it requires the iPhone Exchange account to work (you are only allowed to have one Exchange account per phone and mine is used for work email). My roomate has successfully set it up on his phone and he reports that it works well. NuevaSync does not require the user to install any third party software, but does require the user to create an account on the NuevaSync website (security risks?). Instructions for configuring NuevaSync can be found here.
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One of These Headlines Does Not Go With The Other
Below is a partial snapshot of MacDailyNews’ home page as of 18:00 PT on December 4. These two AT&T headlines, one immediately after the other, struck me as kind of funny:

Not sure if we should consider AT&T as “defying an economic slump” when it’s laying off 12K of its workforce and reducing capital expenditures.

I’m not criticizing MDN, the headlines actually link to two different sources (the former is Bloomberg; the latter is MarketWatch), so it’s not a case of the same source contradicting itself. MDN is a news aggregator, so the juxtaposition of different headlines is common, but it’s usually without such a seeming conflict.

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Shazam Expands Music Database by 30 Percent
Just the other day, I was using Shazam to tag music while watching a movie. Every time I use it, I’m still vaguely amazed, like I’m watching a mini-magic show. Well, now the magician has even more tricks up his sleeve thanks to a 30 percent increase in the size of its song database. I’ve yet to run into a hole in their current one, and now I’m even less likely to.

The increase, which bumps the overall number of tracks Shazam has access to from six to eight million, follows the establishment of new partnerships and direct sourcing, and includes artists from Asia, Europe, and North America. It includes a number of hard-to-find and pre-release songs, which is what I find myself using it for most often, since those are the tunes I’m less likely to recognize on my own.

Shazam now dominates the song recognition niche for mobile devices, although Midomi is still a strong competitor because of their support for humming, singing, and reciting lyrics. Both companies offer a lot to record labels and recording artists alike, and represent the future of direct marketing to consumers. It’s in the interest of labels and music publishers to back these ventures as much as possible, since you can’t buy music if you don’t know what it is.

There are a few things I’m still missing from this app, despite its obvious utility. I like the iTunes and YouTube integration, and the ability to share tags, but the lack of My Shazam integration, so that I can store and view my song Tags anywhere is a definite must. Apparently that’s being worked on, but it can’t come fast enough.

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Developers Get Promotional Codes to Give Free Copies of Apps
According to this MacRumors report, Apple has started to dispense promotional codes to App Store developers. With them, developers will now be able to grant free access to their app for up to 50 users. Previously, developers would have had to resort to the ad-hoc distribution method or iTunes gift cards to give promotional copies of their applications. While the 50 user limit might seem paltry compared to the ad-hoc’s 100, the promotional code limit is reset with version updates. Additionally, and probably most welcoming to both developers and recipients alike, is no longer having to deal with the hassles of the mobile provisioning that the ad hoc method is reliant on.

Via mobile provisioning, for promotional copies to be granted, developers would have to get the UDID of the touch device from each person receiving a copy and from there generate a .mobileprovision file to send with the actual application file that would bind that app to each specified device. Once both files were received, the end user would drag and drop them into iTunes to sync it. With the promo code method, all that is eschewed for a system that as easy as redeeming an iTunes gift card.

In the future, we can see this opening the door for more than just a developer/reviewer relationship, and extended to contests and giveaways. With complexity removed and the fact that the codes are linked to a specific app, developers would be able to invite people to win copies of their app without relying on gift cards, which is a hockey method since there value of the gift-card may not match the price of the app thus costing the developer additional money and there’s no guarantee that the recipient will actually use it to buy the app.

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Finish Your Holiday Shopping With Amazon Mobile for iPhone
Just in time for last minute Christmas shopping, Amazon.com has released their mobile app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It offers searching, Wish List and account access, and purchasing directly from the app. If you’re already an impulsive internet shopper, then this may just be your worst nightmare. If you dread the mall and don’t have time to spend hours finding the right gift at your computer, than it could be your new best friend.

Amazon isn’t just porting their website’s functionality to the iPhone platform, either, although all of the central features of the site are there. They’ve wisely taken advantage of the iPhone’s specific abilities to add a new feature called “Amazon Remembers,” which is similar to the standalone SnapTell Explorer app. It’s kind of like Shazam but with pictures instead of sound.You take a picture with your iPhone’s camera, and the images are instantly uploaded to Amazon.com’s servers. Amazon tries to match products in its database to the ones taken by your camera, and then returns the results to the user to either purchase or save for later.

iPod Touch users can join in the fun, too, since Amazon Remembers also allows you to use images stored in your device’s photo album. Testing out the feature produced good results. A photo of the Iron Man DVD saved from Google Images returned the Two-Disc Special Collectors’ Edition, as did a photo of the actual DVD from my collection. Oddly, results seemed to only be returned if I exited and reentered the app.

It’s a good beginning, and the Amazon Remembers feature is surprisingly accurate for an experimental first release. A colleague pointed out that the app lacks support for special deals, like Gold Box, Deal of the Day, and Lightnight Deals. Maybe those will come in future updates, or maybe Amazon doesn’t want me to spend as much money as I possibly can at their site. Ball’s in your court, Amazon.

Amazon Mobile is a free download from the App Store.

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First Look: Tap Tap Dance & Christmas With Weezer
Tapulous, maker of the popular Tap Tap Revenge (now with 3 million users), has today announced two new applications for the holiday period. Tap Tap Revenge has attracted game and music lovers alike with tracks by Katy Perry, Kaiser Chiefs, Weezer and The Offspring all being fans of the software. The new applications build further on this acclaim, featuring original music from Weezer and a series of remixed dance tracks.

Tap Tap Dance

Built on the 2.0 engine of Tap Tap Revenge, Tap Tap Dance is an all new version of Tap Tap Revenge featuring top hits from the biggest DJs in the world like Moby, Daft Punk, Tiesto and many more. The application offers a far richer gaming experience than previous releases from Tapulous, starting to feel almost like an interactive music video.

At the most basic level, you tap to the beat as the balls cross the line. When you see an arrow, you give a ﬁrm shake to the left, right or forward (as you would hit a pingpong ball) as the arrows cross the line. Levels are unlocked as the game progresses, and there are ‘boss tracks’ at the end of each difficulty level: Daft Punk’s Technologic (Easy), Moby’s Disco Lies (Medium) and an epic 7-minute version of Justice’s Phantom Pt.II (Hard).
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iGifting 101: 10 Great Gifts for Mac Addicts

Whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, or Kwanza, there is one undeniable fact. The holiday season is around the corner, and it is time to find the perfect gift for the Mac Addict in your family.

As good as an iTunes gift card or iPod case may be this season, “Think Different” and get that special Mac Addict in your life something that matters. Get them something they will remember, and something they will use. This will add some personality, and practicality under their tree this season. So what do you get for the computer geek that already has everything?
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Boxee Adds Netflix Support

Today, boxee is releasing their latest alpha build for the flexible media player. The big news for this release is the tantalizing Netflix support and new custom interfaces for various channels like Hulu, CNN, Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube. There are a few new content sources as well.

Netflix takes center stage for this release at the request of users. The boxee team ran a survey just two weeks ago and the results put Netflix out in front as the most requested new addition to the media center app. The initial implementation for the desktop seems to be pretty complete even at this early stage. You can browse content available in Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” category, add items to your Instant Queue, and play the streaming content. Here’s a couple shots to tide you over until you can download and install for yourself.
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Funtastic Photos Offers User-Friendly Photo Editing & Sharing
Funtastic Photos is an amazingly powerful, feature-packed, easy to use little photo editor application. The user interface is clean and uncluttered in homage to iLife conventions, but a vast array of photo correction and enhancement tools are included.

Funtastic Photos taps into OS X technologies like the Quartz graphics engine, Spotlight, and ImageIO Kit, and offers advanced photo enhancement technologies like non-destructive editing with unlimited “rewind” undos, shadows and highlights, blurring, digital flash, contrast, saturation and more.

The app opens with a browser window that displays photo archives stored in iPhoto, folders, or even on other connected volumes. A tool bar at the top of the window taps into Apple’s OS X Leopard Quick Look feature, with buttons for other basic navigation and organization tasks.
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Quick Bit: Stanza & eReader Become Friends

When it comes to eBook reading on the iPhone, Stanza is our app of choice. Best of all? It’s free.

With access to 10’s of thousands of books, it has a ridiculous selection of reading material and now that selection just got bigger. A lot bigger.

Fellow GigaOm site, jkOnTheRun, broke the news this morning about eBook mammoth, eReader now licensing their eBook technology for use on Stanza. This pushes Stanza’s selection of books up in the 40,000 range.

With that sort of selection of books, you really should give Stanza a try.

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iPod touch Gets VoIP Thanks to Truphone

The iPhone no longer gets to have all the VoIP fun among Apple handhelds, thanks to the just released Truphone for iPod touch. The release comes hard on the heels of the official release of the new In-Ear premium headset compatible with the 2G iPod touch, and the timing is probably not coincidental.

Truphone Touch allows users with Truphone accounts to make VoIP calls to each other using either iPod/iPhone, Nokia, or Blackberry smartphones. Google Talk and other open VoIP networks are also supported. The app comes from an established pedigree, since the original Truphone app is one of the most downloaded and highest rated VoIP apps available.

The app is significant because it ushers in an entirely new level of functionality for iPod touch owners. Truphone turns Apple’s portable media player into a true communication device, although with the iPod touch version you’re limited to calling other VoIP users, and not able to dial out to actual numbers, as you can with the original iPhone app. It’s likely that the app could also support dialing out, but Apple might be preventing the company from offering this feature, as it could potentially affect iPhone sales. As it stands, the app could potentially replace home phones, many of which are barely used as more and more consumers move to cellular-only setups.

Truphone stands to gain the most from the app, so long as no other VoIP services receive iPod touch compatibility updates. Truphone-to-Truphone is, after all, the only way for iPod Touch users to call each other, so they’ll likely see a significant spike in subscribers. It probably won’t be too long before other VoIP clients follow suit, though, so expect Skype-capable iPod Touches just around the corner.

Get Truphone for iPod touch free in the App Store.

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5 Things You Never Knew About Spotlight

Many people use Quicksilver as a replacement for Spotlight, but if you’re happy with the native file search and app launcher in Mac OS X, then why change? You probably know that you can access Spotlight quickly with the Command-spacebar keyboard shortcut, but here are a few more tricks you might not know exist.
- Spotlight makes a great calculator and dictionary. Just open the search box, type an equation, and watch the answer appear as you type. It works on long equations with several steps (623+191*87-4), as well as mathematical terms like square root or power. Type a word in the search box and its meaning appears in the results — so you can search for the definition of pi or the numerical value of pi, your choice.
- By default, Spotlight shows the first 20 results of a search. While you can’t change the number of returns, you can eliminate some of the categories the app checks so the results you get are more pertinent. Select Spotlight in the System Preferences, and click on Search Results. If you typically use Spotlight to search documents and email then uncheck categories like Webpages and Music so they’re ignored in the future.
- Do you tag your pictures with keywords in iPhoto? Use Spotlight to snag images and drop them right into an email without even opening iPhoto. If your photos contain metadata on what type of camera was used, start your search with the keyword make to get a list of all pictures taken with that camera (for example, make:Nikon).
- Spotlight can search inside the public files of other Macs on your network, if they’re running Leopard. If they’re running an older version of OS X, or another operating system entirely, it can only search for specific file names.
- Many popular third-party apps, like OmniOutliner and Intaglio, have plugins for Spotlight to make their files searchable too. Check here for a full list of what’s available, and to find out if your favorite app has a plugin you didn’t know about.
What’s your favorite Spotlight trick? Let me know in the comments.

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Reforest the Planet With Your iPhone

The iPhone is a lot of things to a lot of people. You can control your home, buy movie tickets, track projects, play games, and more. Now, you can also use it to help the environment. A Real Tree, a recent addition to the App Store, offers users a chance to use their iPhone or iPod touch to give back, in what could be the first in a wave of charitable apps.

Mokugift, the developers of A Real Tree, designed their application to stand in stark contrast to the much-publicized I Am Rich application, a vanity app which offered no utility and carried a very high price tag. A Real Tree also offers limited utility, in terms of adding functions to your iPhone, but that’s where the similarities end. The app is inexpensive, costing only $0.99, and it is designed not to show your wealth or massive ego, but instead your generosity. Using revenue generated by app sales, A Real Tree plants real trees in areas significantly threatened by deforestation, making it possibly the most appropriately named application available in the App Store. There is a one-to-one ratio of app purchases and trees planted, so the idea is simple…you buy the app, they plant a tree.
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November OS Share Numbers: Should Microsoft Be Scared?

The latest numbers from Net Applications’ Operating System stats are available, and they provide a nice epilogue to last month’s numbers. In October the Mac’s share was down, and Vista’s was up, prompting some to write about the apparent anomaly.

I countered that notion with my own writeup that showed both Windows and Mac have ups and downs in their numbers, so any single month isn’t particularly relevant. This is also true because Net Applications’ numbers themselves are really just a measure of OS usage hitting their network of web sites worldwide (~40,000 sites). It may be as accurate an OS measure as any, but one would still have to say it’s not conclusive. If anything, since some of those sites could be IE-only, it might even be skewed against any non-Microsoft OS.

But the data is sure fun to play with.
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12 Twitter Apps for the iPhone
When our desire to connect and communicate with one another crashed headlong in to the digital behemoth that is the Internet, we ended up with Twitter: a true 21st Century social phenomenon.

Like a chimerical parrot, each head squawking a different one-liner, Twitter can seem odd to the casual observer. Allowing users to post ultra-short updates, a quick tour ’round Twitter will find normal folk, celebrities and even politicians rubbing shoulders and swapping verbs (even TAB is tweeting away).

As a frequent tweeter, I decided it was time to identify the ultimate Twitter app for the iPhone. Diving headlong in to the App Store, I emerged from its murky depths with 12 different apps.

Read on for the definitive roundup of iPhone Twitter apps available from the iTunes App Store including a comparison table and screenshot gallery.
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FastCall Enables Quick Dialing On the iPhone
Last week, the folks from EdgeRift released an update to their iPhone app, FastCall. Now, there are many apps for the iPhone that enable a faster form of dialing, but FastCall takes a different approach. For those who are used to how the Palm OS and Windows Mobile quick dialing works, then having FastCall at your fingertips will make you quite happy.

Here is what their main application window looks like (from their site - sorry - don’t want to show all of my contacts).

As you can see, you can quickly find contacts by pressing the keypad to filter through the results. One thing I can say is that for those of us with a lot of contacts (500+), FastCall is very fast at rendering the results. Also, once you have found the contact you want to interact with, you can then either quickly call, email or SMS them.
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MacBook and Apple's Black Friday Sale: "Almost," But Not Quite Enough

The 13″ aluminum MacBook is an “almost” machine. It appeals to me in many aspects, being a roughly three-quarter-sized unibody MacBook Pro at a substantially lower price. But it falls just short of the slam-dunk it might have been.

For me, probably the biggest negative is the lack of a FireWire port. I think I could live quite happily with the glossy display that some object to, and while I’ve gotten comfortably used to the 1440 x 900 screen resolution in my PowerBook G4’s 17″ display (I knew that would spoil me), I don’t think downsizing to a 13.3″, 1280 x 800 screen would be a deal breaker for me. I’m still working fairly happily on the 1024 x 768 screens in my two old Pismo PowerBooks.

Consequently, I spent a lot of the day on Friday ruminating over whether or not to take advantage of Apple’s one-day $101 price cut on the aluminum MacBook at the expense of other things I should have been doing. In the “just do it” column were the arguments that Apple rarely has sales of any sort, and while a hundred bucks off wasn’t especially exciting, it would at least pay most of the sales tax, and with the Canadian dollar having dropped by more than 25 percent in relation to the U.S. greenback over the past year, I’m skeptical that Apple Canada will hold its current price points for much longer. It’s also the time of year that one starts thinking about income tax expense deductions.
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Top App Store Downloads for 2008 Paint a Picture of Buying Habits
It may not be a list with many surprises, but the official top App Store downloads of 2008 still makes for interesting reading. Posted by Apple early this morning and available to view in iTunes, the list of chart-toppers is divided into most downloaded overall, and features top ten lists for five of the App Store’s categories: Games, Entertainment, Utilities, Social Networking and Music.

The lists appear as part of the iTunes Store 2008 year-in-review mini-site, which also features the most popular movies, songs, TV shows, and podcasts. Of course, the items on each list differ according to which region you’re in. The list discussed here is that found in the U.S. version.
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Customizing Your Mac: The Sacred Dock
The Dock has become an iconic feature on the OS X operating system, present from the very earliest versions. It provides a unique way to open applications and monitor what is running on your system, while also offering a space to minimize application windows to.
While I’m sure many of you are quite happy with the default appearance of your Dock, you may be interested to know that there are ways to alter the look and feel of the oft used menu.

This post will explore the different possibilities open to you, outline a variety of relevant websites and applications, along with providing a walkthrough of how to alter the style of your Dock.

Brief history of the Dock

As mentioned above, the Dock has been present since the very early days of OS X. Through the years, it has undergone a few major design changes.

OS X Puma and Cheetah

OS X Tiger and Panther

OS X Leopard

These changes haven’t always been met favorably, particularly the reflections and gloss featured in the new Leopard dock (personally, I’ve never been a major fan). Ars Technica, along with others, have raised interesting critical points.
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Apple Premium In-Ear Headphones Soon to Be in Your Ears
It seems like only yesterday that articles were popping up around the web talking about the unavailability of Apple’s new Premium In-Ear Headphones with Mic and Remote due to the product being redesigned. Wait, it was only yesterday. Well, that was then, and this is now, and the headphones are now available at the Apple Store website, albeit with a shipping time of 7-10 days.

Originally announced at the “Let’s Rock” iPod even in September, and slated for an October ship date, the in-ear headphones are priced at $79. They’re meant to compete with high-end, audiophile-targeted devices from industry leaders like Bose and Shure, but according to some sources, they weren’t achieving that lofty standard, which lead to the extended delay.
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Apple Providing Free DisplayPort Licenses
Ars Technica are reporting that Apple has taken the decision to offer no-fee licenses to companies that develop products utilizing the DisplayPort connection, with the aim of accelerating the port’s ascension to a ‘de facto’ standard. Having recently announced that they will be transitioning their entire hardware lineup to DisplayPort, Apple is firmly backing the new standard.

DisplayPort does have several advantages over older standards such as DVI, based on more open protocols and reducing the need for control circuits built in to displays. It’s easier to use as a plug (not requiring thumbscrews), offers the possibility of connecting multiple monitors and also works well in computers where space is an important factor (the slimline MacBook Air for instance).
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Calaboration Syncs Google Calendars With iCal

Syncing Google Calendar with iCal just got a whole lot easier thanks to a new setup tool released by Google called Calaboration. Calaboration is a Google Code project that allows you to add calendars to iCal with a simple point and click interface, a process that used to take quite a bit more digging.

Before this tool was released, adding a calendar involved copying and pasting the private xml address from your primary calendar to iCal. Adding more than one calendar required you to modify a long URL, adding your email address at the right spot, a step most users were probably not likely to do.

In my tests, new calendar entries from iCal to Google appeared online almost instantly, with iCal syncing the changes as soon as they were made. Updates made from Google were synced down to iCal on the next refresh. The default refresh rate for the calendars is every five minutes, customizable in the iCal preferences under “Accounts.”

One annoyance that I’ve found with the setup is that when clicking on the calendar to create a new event, you must have the calendar that you want the event to be a part of highlighted in the left column. Normally, I’d expect to be able to customize the calendar using the drop down menu in the event creation dialog. A small annoyance, and one that I expect will be fixed in future updates.

Google shows again that they are serious about their Mac development, and make it that much easier to switch to their services. Now… where’s that Chrome for Mac?

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Yazsoft Monster Holiday Giveaway
Yazsoft today announced an extensive Christmas giveaway — their “biggest one yet.” From December 1 to December 24, 2008, everyone has a chance to win 1 of 4 grand packages. No purchase is required to enter, and winners will be drawn randomly during the first week of January 2009. Entering is simple, just email Yazsoft with the subject line ‘Yazsoft Holiday Giveaway.’

Each Grand package will consist of:
- 1 MacBook computer (MB467LL/A: 2.4GHz)
- 1 LED Cinema Display 24 inch
- 1 Apple iPhone (8GB)
It’s a fairly comprehensive set of prizes and, with entering as simple as sending an email, it’s definitely worth a shot. Obviously, the odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received. As you’d expect, you can only enter once.
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Ecardlets: Greeting Cards for Your iPhone

If you’re like me, sending holiday cards is one of those “necessary evils” of the holidays. A new service, Ecardlets.com, hopes to make the process a little easier — at least for your friends with iPhones.

Ecardlets.com is a San Francisco, CA startup founded by ex-Microsoft and ex-Googlers, and has just launched its initial public beta of the first-ever ecard platform designed specifically for the iPhone. The unique three-dimensional greeting cards take advantage of the iPhone touch screen by allowing recipients to open and flip the cards with just a flick of the finger.

I tried out the service today by sending myself a few cards. The service couldn’t be any easier to use. Simply design your card and hit “send.” The service sends a text message to your AT&T iPhone recipient which includes a link to your card. Then simply swipe your finger to open the card and read the enclosed message.

There are plenty of stock cards ready to send (there’s even a “Congratulations on your new iPhone” card), but the service will become a lot more interesting as more people begin uploading their own card designs. The site offers a Photoshop (PSD) template that you can download to make your own ecardlet that others can then send. Right now you have to email your designs to ecardlets.com but the site is working on a system to enable user-generated ecardlets.

So spice up your greeting cards this holiday season and send your iPhone-toting friends something different.

Ecardlets.com is, at least for now, completely free to use…so send to your hearts content.

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Joost iPhone App: A Bit Disappointing
Personally, I can’t get enough of the new podcast features rolled out in the iPhone/iPod touch 2.2 firmware update. They’re now an indispensable part of my daily commuting. That’s why I was looking forward to Joost for the iPhone (free). It seemed to have the potential to provide the same kind of time-killing power and more, because of its library of content, which includes popular film and television shows. The app comes with some caveats, however, and it remains to be seen whether those limitations will prevent the app from reaching its full potential.

First strike, although it doesn’t affect users in the U.S., international iPhone owners may be disappointed in the library of available content. Unless you’re a huge fan of Naruto, which seems to make up all of the Anime video section. Many services encounter problems when trying to pick up international distribution rights for all types of media. Pandora is one high profile example, as is Hulu for video. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more content available in future. The Xbox Live Marketplace has brought video to Canada and other markets, albeit behind their American launch.
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Keep Your Mac Clean and Tidy With Sponge
Dare to be Creative has released Sponge, a system cleaning and optimization tool for Mac OS X. The tagline for the product, summing up the aim of Sponge well, is:

You’re running out of disk space? You want to clean your disk to free up some space and get rid of the clutter? Sponge is a tool to keep your Mac clean and tidy.

Features

Sponge combines three different techniques to clean up your Mac: removing applications, locating the large files on your drive and finding duplicates.
- Removing applications: Sponge generates a list of all the applications installed on your system, how much space these applications occupy, and their associated files and folders. Sponge then provides the facility to remove applications safely from the system.
- Sweeping disk hogs: Sponge will show which files and directories take up the most space, giving you a starting point for cleaning some of the clutter from your Mac. Once you’ve tracked them down, Sponge can conveniently swipe them off your disk.
- Finding duplicates: With all the attachments, memos, letters and other documents with which we are flooded in today’s world, it’s easy to lose track and accidentally save duplicates of files. Sponge makes finding these multiple copies easy.
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"Mapple" Lampoons the Cupertino Faithful on The Simpsons
Apple fans found their beloved company satirized Simpsons-style last night. The latest installment of the Fox cartoon featured a “Mapple” store in the beginning of the episode, a tech store where hip, young t-shirted employees take brand loyalty very seriously and display an inordinate amount of devotion to their bespectacled leader. Sound familiar?

The Mapple Store bears an uncanny resemblance to the 5th Avenue Apple Store, with the exception of being in Springfield’s Mall and not New York City. Lisa is amazed at the MyPods, MyPhones, and the Braniac Bar, where smug customer service representatives deal with Comic Book Guy’s complaints about the latest Mapple OS. Homer is intrigued by the dream-fueled, imagination-powered MyCube, whose function isn’t entirely clear, and which glows to show you that it’s not on.
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VMware Fusion Sale: Get It for as Little as $10

Much has been written about VMware in recent months, with the release of Fusion 2.0. The software provides operating system virtualization, allowing you to run your favorite Windows applications and devices on any Intel-based Mac.

Today, until 11:59 PM Pacific Time, the VMware e-store is running a deal for 50% off of VMware Fusion. We recently covered a 25% discount promotion, which pales in comparison to the huge offer today.

To take advantage of the promotion, you need to enter the coupon code "CyberMondayDeal" (without the quotes!), at checkout. The 50% discount is available worldwide, but is a one day only offer — you’ll need to act quickly to take advantage of the deal.

The main two competitors to VMware Fusion are Parallels and Virtual PC, both offering similar functionality. An aggressive push is being made from VMware at present, and for Mac users in the U.S. and Canada, it is interesting to note that this 50% discount can be used in conjunction with a concurrent offer of a $30 rebate for those switching from Parallels or Virtual PC. If you own either of these packages, you’re able to pick up VMware Fusion for a mere $10 (unfortunately, this offer isn’t available for international users).

If you are in the market for a virtualization package, now would be an excellent time to make a purchase. If you’re undecided upon which company to go with, our comparison of VMware Fusion 2 and Parallels Desktop 4 will provide an interesting read.

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Helvetireader Puts a New Face on Google Reader
Jon Hicks from Hicks Design has released the Helvetireader skin for Google Reader. Helvetireader takes a minimalist approach, masking many of Google Readers abilities, creating a simple and very easy to read interface to Google’s excellent RSS feed reader.

Google Reader has been my RSS reader of choice since I made the switch from Bloglines last year. This new skin makes the site seem brand new, and makes it even easier for Reader to stand alone as desktop app with Fluid or Prism. To set up Helvetireader with Fluid, create a new Site Specific Browser for Google Reader, then launch the newly created app. Next, click on the script menu item, and select “New Userscript”. If you have the Developer Tools installed, this will launch Dashcode and allow you to edit the userscript. Just paste in this:
```
// ==UserScript== // @name        Helvetireader // @description Helvetireader style for Google Reader // @include     https://*.google.com/reader/view/* // @include     http://*.google.com/reader/view/* // @include     htt*://*.google.*/reader/view* // @author      Helvetireader by Jon Hicks (http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk) // ==/UserScript==  var cssNode = document.createElement('link'); cssNode.type = 'text/css'; cssNode.rel = 'stylesheet'; cssNode.href = 'http://www.helvetireader.com/css/helvetireader.css'; cssNode.media = 'screen'; cssNode.title = 'dynamicLoadedSheet'; document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(cssNode);
```
Save your script, and relaunch the Fluid Google Reader App. After a second, the CSS from Helvetireader will kick in, and you’ll have a brand new look and feel to Google Reader. The CSS is actually hosted on the helvetireader.com web site, so you won’t have to modify your settings as the code is updated. This script is just as easy to set up on Firefox or Opera, and can be used with Safari or Camino with a little tweaking. Hicks expects this theme to be used by 10 people at the most, I expect it will be much more popular than that.

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