| rss2email.ru |
 Благотворительный фонд Чулпан Хаматовой  |  Глум над рекламой и брендами  |  SEO блог Сумасшедшего Русского  |  Блог о жизни и браке в Европе  |
 |  TheAppleBlogNews, reviews, walkthroughs, and real-life application of Apple products http://theappleblog.com рекомендовать друзьям >> |
- Siri Virtual Personal Assistant iPhone App Purchased by Apple
It appears — originally based off a tweet from Robert Scoble, and then confirmed by Business Insider — that Apple has made yet another acquisition: the company who makes the Siri application for iPhone. If you’re not familiar with Siri, it functions as a personal assistant on your mobile device. While we’ve all heard this claim before from other offerings, Siri sure looks to come close.So while Siri makes claims that sound familiar to other apps available for iPhone, its execution sure seems to raise it above the rest of the field. With an interface to type your input, as well as speak it, the user has flexibility to interact easily with Siri while on the go. (Sounds kind of like Google’s mobile app, doesn’t it?) The special sauce that Siri has in its corner is being context aware (location, time, dates, etc) as well as hooking into many web APIs to gather and present information for easy consumption. Truth be told, this mashup of information and resources reminds me of Yahoo Pipes, only with the geeky parts hidden and Voice interaction added. What’s not to like? There are great demos to be found on siri.com, but as a quick example, I could tell Siri, “I want to find a movie to watch this Thursday at midnight” and it returns a list of showtimes near my location, with links to buy tickets. Pretty neat, and super easy to use.
What could this mean for Apple? My immediate assumption is that the Voice Over capability of future iPhone operating systems will implement Siri features — at least that’s my hope. Launching an app to do the work isn’t a big deal, but how great would it be to be driving, hold down my iPhone’s home button for a few seconds, and speak my request to Siri without having to look away from the road? It also seems obvious that with this purchase Apple has decided to roll its own rather than letting market competitors such as Google provide competitive options on their device. Is Apple getting into search, as some believe? I don’t think this is search, so much as service, but who’s to say?
It’s always interesting to see what Apple is doing when it goes on a buying spree. Lately it’s been oriented toward making processors, but snatching up some effective software obviously isn’t out of the question either. Though the trend seems to be strongly along the lines of its mobile product line, which really isn’t all that surprising now, is it? Siri is free in the App Store, but only available within the U.S. currently.
See some other interesting integrations for Siri in Apple’s ecosystem? Share your ideas in the comments!
Переслать - Apple Ups Its Chip-Making Game With Intrinsity Purchase
What do you do when you have $40 billion in cash on hand? If you’re Apple, you go on a shopping spree. The latest acquisition in a string of corporate purchases is Intrinsity, another chip making company (Apple previously acquired PA Semi in 2008).Although Apple has confirmed the purchase with the New York Times, there’s still no official word on its plans for the company or the price paid. At least one estimate places the value of the deal at $121 million. The purchase comes on the heels of a rumor that Apple had approached ARM with an offer to purchase the major chip design licensing company.
Intrinsity isn’t completely out of the ballpark, though it is less of an industry powerhouse by a wide, wide margin. Still, it confirms that Apple is increasingly interested in the chip design side of the computing business, something which the in-house designed iPad A4 is also further proof of.
It’s also possible that we have another situation like that surrounding the Quattro Wireless acquisition on our hands. In that case, Quattro Wireless was clearly second choice to mobile advertising company AdMob, which Apple had apparently bid on before it was acquired by Google. ARM could’ve similarly spurned Apple’s advances, at which point it would’ve turned its attention to more receptive targets, including Intrinsity.
But what about Intrinsity makes it so appealing to Apple specifically? Well, the Texas chip maker in question may be relatively small, but in this case, fast thing comes in small sizes. Intrinsity is known for making very fast versions of mobile device chips. Not only that, but it may actually be the company responsible for the speedy A4 chip found in the iPad, if rumors are true.
The same division of Samsung that developed the A4 for Apple apparently worked with Intrinsity to find a way to ratchet up the speed of chips that normally run at 650 megahertz to a much snappier 1000 megahertz. If it’s true, Apple just secured its speed advantage over the competition for at least a little while, and it did so without putting much of a dent in its massive cash reserves.
The move may also be intended as a means to jump-start Apple’s stalled plans to design its own brand new mobile chip from the ground up. Rumors circulating say that those efforts, which began with Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi, have since gone off the tracks since many former members of that company have left since the company’s purchase. A number of them ended up at Google last month.
Whatever the effect of the purchase, we probably won’t see any changes in the lineup until at least the next iteration of both the iPhone and the iPad. Let’s hope it means faster chips with lower power consumption for even bigger battery life gains.
Related GigaOM Pro Research: As Devices Converge, Chip Vendors Girding For a Fight
Переслать - WWDC 2010 Announced: June 7-11
The “center of the app universe” will be at Moscone West in San Francisco this year, as WWDC10 kicks off on June 7 and runs through the 11th.In a press release, Senior Apple VP Scott Forstall doesn’t even pretend it’s about the Mac anymore. WWDC will provide “in-depth sessions and hands-on working labs to learn more about iPhone OS 4,” helping developers “make their iPhone and iPad apps even better."
And it doesn’t end there, unless we’re talking about information on the next iteration of Mac OS X.
For developers, the $1,599 package gets you in on five technology tracks: Application Frameworks; Internet & Web; Graphics & Media; Developer Tools; and Core OS, but no IT/SysAdmin track. The sessions offer blanket coverage of iPhone OS development, but unless OS X 10.7 sessions will be super secret, there doesn’t appear to be a lot there. It sure seems telling that five design awards will be handed out for the iPhone and the iPad, but not the Mac.
For those who are not developers, expect to see the next generation iPhone, rumored to be named the iPhone HD. If the infamous prototype revealed by Gizmodo is the final version, its hardware features will include: a front-facing video camera, camera flash, micro-SIM card, and two volume buttons. Also, John Gruber has suggested the resolution of the display will jump to 960×640. The launch date for the phone will certainly be announced, probably June or early July.
That phone will be running iPhone OS 4, of course, which has already been previewed. There may be a few new features, along with information about a “unity release” of iPhone OS 4.1 for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad sometime in late summer or early fall.
As for what to expect that is not related to the iPhone, if one can expect anything, probably a quiet update of the MacBook is in order. There’s also the question of the MacBook Air, which was last updated at WWDC09. The iMac will almost certainly not see an update until the fall, same for the Mac mini, if then. The Mac Pro, which shockingly has not seen an update for over a year, is a candidate for the Intel’s Xeon 5600 CPU. That could mean a 12-core Mac Pro with two six-core CPUs running up to 3.33 GHz. That would be pretty amazing, run pretty hot, too.
Or Apple could completely ignore the Mac and OS X for the desktop, but, hey, how about that magical iPad? No matter what is or isn’t at WWDC10, TAB will be covering the Keynote, product introductions, and new developments in development, of course.
Переслать - Quick Tips: 3 Uses for Hazel
Hazel is a preference pane from Noodlesoft that lets you perform actions on your folders based on certain criteria. Here's a list of several things you can do with it and how to set them up.Clean your Downloads folder
At the end of the day, my Downloads folder is always stuffed with disk images, half-completed download files, and everything in between. You can clean out any cruft easily using Hazel. Hazel even includes some example actions for your Downloads folder, like moving all photos to your Pictures folder and labeling them blue. But here we're just going to set it to clear out old disk images.
- Open up Hazel in System Preferences and click on your Downloads folder in the left pane (it should be there already, if not, add it with the + button).
- Click the + button to add a new rule.
- Give the rule a description. I just put "DMG".
- On the first line, set it so it reads Extension is dmg, and set the action line to Move file to folder: Trash like so:
- What you have now will delete any disk image in your Downloads folder. That's not what we want, so we're going to set it so it only deletes disk images that are older than a day. Click the + to create a new condition. Set this one to Date Added is not Today, and your window should look like this:
Of course, you can change the date to anything you want. And you can add any file type to clear out, so if you download a lot of PDFs, just create a new condition referencing PDFs.
Zip/Unzip Folder
The usefulness of this is debatable, however the concept is still neat: just drag any file into this folder, and it's compressed and pushed to the desktop.
- Create a new folder called "Zip" (or whatever you want).
- Add that folder to Hazel by clicking the + on the left side.
- Create a new rule by clicking the + on the right side, and name it anything.
- Set the conditions to Any File.
- Add an action and set it to Archive file.
- Add another action and set it to Move file to folder: Desktop. Your window should look like this when you're done:
You can also make another folder that unzips anything dropped into it. Just change Archive file to Unarchive file.
Torrent Folder
This one's a lot more useful: A folder that automatically opens any torrent files dropped into it.
- Create a new folder and call it "Torrents" (or whatever you want).
- Add that folder to Hazel.
- Create a new rule and name it anything.
- Set the conditions to Extension is torrent.
- Set the action to Open file with application: Default Application. Your window will look like this when you're done:
If you have another Mac with Dropbox and Hazel, you can set this so that you can put a torrent file into a folder on your Dropbox and have it sync over to your other Mac, which will then download that torrent. This is also useful if you have ted, which downloads torrents of all your favorite TV shows. Simply reference ted’s folder, which should be in your Home directory.
Conclusion
My ideas can only go so far. The real potential in Hazel lies in adapting it to your own workflow. Play around with it, see what you can do, and then let us know in the comments what you came up with.
Переслать - Steve Confirms It: No Mac App Store
The desire to have a dedicated app store for the sale of Mac OS X software has been around for some time now. In fact, ever since the iPhone’s application store opened its doors back in 2008, Apple fans have been calling out for something similar for the desktop. However, if a recent email from Steve Jobs himself is anything to go by, OS X users won’t be seeing anything of the sort anytime soon.According to MacStories Fernando Valente, a Mac software developer, emailed the Apple CEO questioning him on whether or not such a service would become a reality. After the email was sent, Valente, like many others, was not expecting a response. But much to his surprise only a few hours after sending it, he received one. The email from Steve Jobs was brief and to the point, simply stating that “nope,” no such service is on the way.
Fernando’s email was sent following last week’s widespread rumor that such a service was on the way. The rumor hinted that the speculated Mac App store would follow the same principles as the current iTunes store, with a strict approval process also in place.
However, Steve’s typically candid response has finally set the record straight, no doubt to the dismay of some, but to the delight of others. There will be no Mac App Store. At least not in the foreseeable future.
Would you like to see a Mac specific app store selling approved OS X software? Let us know in the comments.
Переслать
|
