Fresh Apple: TheAppleBlog (6 сообщений)

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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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How-To: Rediscover Your iTunes Music

If you have hundreds or even thousands of songs in your iTunes library, then it’s more than likely there are some songs which you’ve forgotten you even own — you can’t listen to every single one at the same time, after all.

By using iTunes’ Smart Playlist feature, however, you can create a playlist of songs which you haven’t listened to in a while. You can get iTunes to look through your music collection, work out which songs you haven’t listened to in a while, then present them all in a list for you.
1. Create a new Smart Playlist by going File → New Smart Playlist. Alternatively, if you hold ⌥, the + button at the bottom of the window will change to a gear icon. Click this to create a Smart Playlist a bit quicker.
2. Set up a rule using the Last Played option. Change the second option to ‘is not in the last’, and the text box on the right will change into a smaller text box and another dropdown list.
3. Enter a period of time using the options on the right. The amount of time you use is totally up to you, although I recommend a shorter amount of time for small iTunes libraries. To give you a sense of perspective, I chose 3 months for a 165 song library, and the playlist ended up only containing 8 songs.
4. Make sure to keep the ‘Live updating’ box checked, otherwise your playlist won’t update with other songs that match the search parameter after the playlist is created.
5. When you click OK, the playlist will be created and populated with songs that match you criteria you specified. The name of the playlist will be highlighted, ready for you to type in a custom name for it.
As long as you kept the Live updating option turned on, iTunes will automatically add and remove songs from the playlist as its data changes. This means that you’ll always be able to listen to something you haven’t heard in a while! Just remember to choose a sensible length of time for the playlist; too short, and you’ll end up with a massive playlist that you won’t be able to listen to all of before it changes. Too long and there’ll only be a few songs in there.

There is, however, one thing which will mess up your playlist. iTunes only updates the Last Played field if you listen to the whole song. Therefore if you skip a song you don’t like, it won’t be counted as a play and could ultimately end up in your playlist. To combat this problem, all it takes is one extra rule in your playlist.

If you’ve already created the playlist, you can right-click and choose Edit Smart Playlist to add the rule using the same window from before.
1. Add a new rule by clicking the round + button to the right of the first rule.
2. Change the first option to Skip Count and the middle option to ‘is less than’, then type a small number such as 2 or 3. This accounts for any accidental skips you may have done.
3. Click OK and any songs with a skip count higher than the number you chose will be removed from the playlist, keeping only the ones you like in there.
Of course, you may have changed your mind about songs you didn't like 3 months ago. For this reason, I choose not to implement this extra rule into my playlist.

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The Next iPhone: Are We Ready for 4G?

When the fanfare of the iPad launch begins to diminish, eyes will begin to look to the fast approaching summer and seek an updated iPhone. Though rumors of the iPhone 4.0 OS are circulating, there's been little talk about what could be next for the iPhone hardware. Will it take design cues from the iPad with an aluminum enclosure, though that would feel in some ways to be a step backwards? More importantly, is the time right for the iPhone to take the leap to 4G?

A Bit of History

Three years ago when the handset launched, the iPhone was a 2G device. As a quick bit of history to what all of these G's mean, Wikipedia offers the definition that the naming conventions "generally refer to a change in the fundamental nature of the service." For example, 2G represented the switch from analog phones to digital ones (the iPhone was never analog). 3G brought multimedia support (recall how the iPhone 3.0 OS didn't bring MMS support to original iPhones). True 4G networks represent all IP packet switched networks and as a result, consumers benefit from increases in data speeds.

3G is based on two parallel infrastructures of circuit-switched and packet-switched networks. To get a quick idea of the difference, a circuit switched network involves securing a circuit from the origin to the destination. Packet switching involves segmenting the comment into individual packets that can be routed individually (and even take different paths) to reach the destination where they are then reassembled in order. From a technical perspective, this is a much better utilization of resources as capacity isn't wasted on circuit switching when the circuit may not be in continuous use.

The general idea behind 4G is to provide "a comprehensive and secure all-IP based solution where facilities such as IP telephony, ultra-broadband Internet access, gaming services and streamed multimedia" can be provided to users. Pulling this off, however, involves meeting standards set forth by the International Telecommunication Union. To be in compliance and really be operating at 4G standards, the cellular system must have "target peak data rates of up to approximately 100 megabits per second for high mobility" like mobile access and up to 1 gigabit per second for low mobility, like local wireless access. That's a very high bar compared to current standards, even compared to what most of you probably have for broadband at home.

The Road Ahead

On the road to 4G, you might encounter something called 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE). Though it technically doesn't comply with all of the 4G specs (mostly in terms of speed), you'll still see this branded as 4G. Since last year, that's where most networks have been headed. LTE promises to bring some speed improvements (and hopefully latency improvements too, as that's a big issue that really affects how the true speed is perceived).

With the increase of iPhone users on AT&T's network in the U.S., there are places across the country where strains are felt during heavy usage times. This reality mixed with the expensive cost and rollout of 4G service means that carriers will continue to invest in their 3G networks, which is a win to everyone. In fact, iPhone 3GS users are capable of taking advantage of the HSPA 7.2 megabits per second speeds if in a compatible market. Trials for this began last year and the technology is still being rolled out over this year.

AT&T announced in February that its next-generation 4G network wouldn't be available until 2011, though trials would begin later this year. So will the next iPhone be the iPhone 4G? Most likely. The iPhone 3GS was released before AT&T's networks had upgraded to offer the faster speed and I predict a similar case with this year's iPhone model. Will Apple call it the iPhone 4G? Especially considering there aren't plans for a 5G or 6G network in immediate future? That remains to be seen but if I had any say in the matter, I'd prefer it to just be called the iPhone.

What are your thoughts? Do you have the iPhone 3GS and does the network feel faster in your neighborhood? Are you like me and still have the 3G, hoping that the next iPhone will be a substantial upgrade? Drop us a line and tell us what you think.

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Amazon Previews Kindle App for iPad (and Other Tablets)
It may not be ready in time for the launch of the iPad, but Amazon wants you to know that its Kindle app will be worth the wait. That’s why it’s created a special preview page of the upcoming software, dubbed “Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers” with “Including the iPad” in much smaller font beside that primary title.

So its clear that while Amazon wants to capitalize on the iPad’s hype and pre-release popularity, it also doesn’t want to go as far as helping Apple convey the impression that it’s the only tablet game in town. To me, the “Including the iPad” sounds like a begrudging admission of the “I was wrong and you were right” variety.

Of course, it might just be that Amazon would like to appeal to the widest group of potential customers possible, while at the same time acknowledging that Apple is likely to win the brand recognition fight in that particular category. Whatever the marketing logic, the actual software Amazon is previewing looks to be pretty fantastic, especially for those (like me) who are already hardware Kindle owners.

First, the Kindle tablet app will offer Whispersync services, which means you can pick up where you last left off reading, no matter which device you happened to be using. I can’t count how many times I’ve used this between my Kindle 2 and my iPhone, so I can’t imagine it being any less useful with my iPad when it finally graces these Canadian shores.

The app will also synch your notes and highlights and bookmarks across all compatible devices, including the recently released Kindle for Mac software, which can read notes and bookmarks, but not make new ones of its own as of yet.

Visually, the Kindle app looks like what you’d expect. Page turn animations are included, or you can turn them off if you’re not so crazy about mimicking a paper reading experience on your digital devices, which I most definitely am not. You can also change font size and color, and background color in order to make the reading experience more comfortable.

Kindle for tablets also supports full color images and graphics, which is great news not only for fans of comics and graphic novels, which haven’t really been a great option on the Kindle thus far, but also for textbooks, recipe books, and some more adventurous fiction that uses in text images and font color changes as narrative devices.

Finally, you’ll be able to shop in the Kindle store via a built-in web view, so you can indulge all those buying impulses on the fly instead of having to wait till you have access to a full computer. All-in-all, it sounds like it’ll give my Kindle 2 a run for its money, even with potentially eye-straining backlighting.

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Gatekeeping the iPad: Apple Being Shrewd About What Will Appear at Launch
How do you control what will and won’t appear on your brand new platform on launch day if you’re Apple, without outright banning apps in a way that might invite accusations of attempting to start a monopoly? If it’s the e-book market you’re after, apparently all you have to do is limit pre-release device access.

Amazon was not one of the select few companies that got access to pre-launch hardware with regards to iPad development. Neither was Barnes & Noble. That honor was reserved for others, like Major League Baseball, the New York Time and the Wall Street Journal. None of which, you’ll note, directly compete for dollars with anything Apple will be offering on the platform.

Since Amazon and Barnes & Noble won’t be able to test their e-reader apps on actual iPads prior to its launch, neither will be offering the software for download on launch day. Sure, they could use the virtual iPad development tool now included with the iPad SDK, but a smooth virtual experience doesn’t necessarily guarantee the effectiveness of the real thing. Accordingly, the booksellers will wait until they can check final versions on iPads, which will only happen after the street date, before submitting iPad-specific apps to Apple.

This will give Apple a valuable head-start when it comes to selling books on the iPad. There’s almost no question that its own iBookstore will be ready for the launch, though it will only be available as a download, and not pre-loaded on devices. The B&N and Amazon iPhone apps will be available, of course, and compatible with the iPad, but they probably won’t be that appealing running in the iPad software’s shoehorned compatibility modes.

Apple needs the time it will gain as the sole iPad-specific bookseller thanks to this shrewd move. The e-book market is one of the few where it will actually be playing catch-up. Amazon in particular will have a built-in user base at launch, as owners of its Kindle devices and those who’ve already built up a library on the iPhone and computer versions of its software could well be reluctant to start again with another seller, in the same way that Canon DSLR owners generally won’t switch to Nikon camera bodies since they lose the use of all their lenses.

My guess is that since Apple is launching iBooks in the U.S. only so far, its main concern isn’t really a customer-grab from Amazon and others already in the business. I’d say Cupertino is more interested in the extremely large potential marketshare that remains in the form of people who haven’t yet gotten on the e-book bandwagon. Just like with gaming, Apple will be looking to convert casuals who adopt its platform for other reasons, and I’d be surprised if we didn’t see them become an industry leading force overnight all over again in this new arena.

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TAB Welcomes: Josh Sunshine
I’d like to begin by telling you that there isn’t a single thing I haven’t heard said about my name. So, that said, here’s what you’d find written if I had a Wikipedia page:
- Yes, I do look small in that photo. That’s because I’m only 16 (and the photo has been resized).
- In regard to #1, I know more than you might expect about computing*.
- I write from my house which is tucked away in the South-East corner of England, so expect posts which seem to have been written in the middle of the night.
- This is my first proper move into the world of tech writing, so I dare say you've never heard of me before.
- I first switched in 2007 with the receipt of my 20″ iMac, which I still have today.
- If you visited me, you’d find the iMac, a late-2008 MacBook, two iPhone 3GSs and two iPod touches (2nd generation).
I’m joining TheAppleBlog as the newest How-To and tutorial writer. Look out for my series of ‘Quick Tips’ which will hopefully teach you something useful in a short amount of time. I’m open to feedback, argument, insult etc. in the comments area of my posts, so chatter away.

If you have trouble sleeping at night, try reading my stream of dullness that is @jobbogamer on Twitter.

* Contrary to popular belief, not all teenagers sit on MSN and Facebook all day long.

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10.6.3 is Imminent…Maybe the Malware's Not Far Behind?

It looks like we're getting close to the official release of 10.6.3, the latest update to Mac OS X Snow Leopard — and, from what we're hearing on the developer grapevine, it might prove to be the most extensive Snow Leopard update yet.

TUAW reported on Friday that the latest build of 10.6.3 (known as 10D572, for those of you paying obsessively-close attention) was seeded to developers only two days after a previous build. Typically, ever-shortening intervals between build seeds indicates imminent release to the public. TUAW describes the latest build as focusing on "Graphics Drivers, Quicktime, Images & Photos, Mail, and Security Certificates."

Oh, what's that? Want more details? OK, here's the full rundown of features and fixes we can expect in 10.6.3;
- Compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
- Performance improvements for 64-bit Logic
- Changes to QuickTime X that increase reliability and improve compatibility and security
- Printing reliability and compatibility with third-party printers
- Issues resolved that prevented files from copying to Windows shares
- Issues resolved with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
- Issues resolved that prevented files with the “#” or “&” symbols in their names from opening in Rosetta
- Issues addressed that caused background message colors to display incorrectly in Mail when scrolling
- Issue resolved that caused machines using BTMM and the Bonjour Sleep Proxy to wake unexpectedly
OK, as far as lists go, this one's not not very exciting, I know. But, what if you fired-up Software Update and were offered the latest pre-release version of 10.6.3? Would that excite you?

Update Snafu

According to TUAW's Michael Grothaus, this is exactly what happened to one Mac owner last week. They don't name him, probably to save him the email-avalanche from other Mac owners — not to mention the inevitable Cease & Desist order from Apple (you just know Apple would bully the poor chap into silence, right?) but they do offer up this tantalizing screengrab of the autoupdate snafu:

Image courtesy of TUAW

Grothaus writes that the update "…weighs in at a whopping 1.19GB" and, at that size, I'm happy to wait until Apple has finished tweaking (and trimming) the code!

Security

But the thing I'm most interested in is whether 10.6.3 addresses the alleged boat-load of security exploits identified by hacker extraordinaire and security expert Charlie Miller. At this week's CanSecWest security conference, Miller will discuss how he discovered them (all 20 of them) via a process known as 'fuzzing'. His presentation is subtitled "An analysis of fuzzing 4 products with 5 lines of Python" and, according to security website h-online.com, those 4 products are all made by Apple;

In cracking competitions, it is regularly the Apple systems which are cracked first by attackers. Miller has argued for some time that Mac OS X is among the comparatively insecure operating systems. Apple users are currently “safer, but less secure.

“Mac OS X is like living in a farmhouse in the country with no locks, and Windows is living in a house with bars on the windows in the bad part of town.”

Miller said that the 20 exploits are all contained in closed-source Apple products, but pointed out that exploits could be found throughout Mac OS X due to bugs in many popular applications from different vendors;

OS X has a large attack surface consisting of open source components (i.e. webkit, libz, etc), closed source 3rd party components (Flash), and closed source Apple components (Preview, mdnsresponder, etc). Bugs in any of these types of components can lead to remote compromise.

Sooner, Not Later

It seems not a keynote goes by without Steve Jobs showing us one of his shareholder-and-media-friendly line charts illustrating Macintosh sales. You know the ones, always trending up-and-to-the-right. Apple is clearly proud the Mac is selling better than ever (in a conference call in late 2009, Apple announced that, for 19 out of the previous 20 quarters, the Mac grew faster than the rest of the market!)

Statements from Apple regarding sales are always kinda tricky; they're usually vague enough to allow pretty much any positive interpretation but, for the most part, we can at least agree that the Mac has been enjoying fantastic growth. The old days of 'security by obscurity' are drawing to a close. Sooner, not later, Mac-specific malware will come. (You know, the real malware of Windows-exploit proportions!)

Miller says that "… in their minds, [Mac owners] don’t have a security problem until it affects their bottom line, which hasn’t been the case, yet.” And that 'yet' is the real issue here. Mac OS X 10.6.3 probably addresses some vulnerabilities — we can expect at least that much — but I wonder how obsessively Apple focuses on the security of its venerable OS, and, whatever its actual efforts, is it enough? Can Apple do what Microsoft still struggles to produce; a user-friendly, user-proof OS that isn’t riddled with vulnerabilities?

Every update to Mac OS X reminds me that the days of security-indifference amongst Mac owners are well and truly numbered.

Tell me I'm worried for no good reason, or scream at me and call me a moron for not already using security software, in the comments below.

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