Sunday, September 9, 2007

The Apple Blog (7 сообщений)

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The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
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  • Apple.com Redesign Emulates OS Functionality

    Apple.com Search
    If you don’t know that Apple thinks-through every minute detail of the things they do, you haven’t been a fan long enough. Take a long look at the hardware, the software, and the retail stores and your appreciation for the level of thought Apple puts into every thing they do should grow immensely. Then just when you think you’ve got Apple figured-out there’s something right in front of your face that makes you go, “Duh!”

    The more I peruse the redesigned Apple.com the more eye candy I discover. Of course being the [unofficial] Mac Evangelist that I am, I should know better than to call anything Apple does, ‘eye candy’ - almost without fail there is function behind the beautiful form in anything that comes out of Cupertino, CA. Apple.com is no exception since its redesign not so long ago.

    Those of us already rocking OS X may have taken notice (although possibly subconsciously) of the website features that tend to mimic our favorite operating system. But the really ingenius point here is that users who are yet to make The Switch are already being introduced to some of the functionality they’ll find in OS X. There may not be anything earth-shattering, but opening up your first Mac and seeing something familiar in an otherwise foreign operating system can be a very welcome feeling. And that’s really what Apple’s all about, isn’t it?

    The coordinated features between the website and the operating system that I’ve noticed thus far can be found in the following two screencasts. (Please note, that there’s not supposed to be audio, it’s just a visual aid.)
    So here are the screencasts of the features on Apple.com, and the similarities in OS X.
    But allow me to list the features here anyway:

    • Search - Spotlight functionality is so similar, even the colors match!
    • Product Page and side bars - Hello CoverFlow!
    • Quicktime Trailers - ‘Save’ your view preferences as in iTunes.
    • Icons & Colors - Even the design elements on the website mimic that of OS X.

    If you’ve found other functionality on Apple.com that mimics something in OS X, let us know in the comments.

    This coordination between Apple’s products is nothing new of course. Case in point, the [now] Classic iPod and the previous generation of iMac had a very similar appearance, the new iMac design and the iPhone, Apple Retail Store aluminum interior design and Apple’s Pro line of hardware. There are so many parallels between Apple’s products and so much more thought than probably any other tech company that it’s no surprise that they stand out such as they do.

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  • iPods being liquidated at Costco

    Apparently today Costco has various iPods at insanely low prices while they try to liquidate their stock of them.

    Here are the supposed deals available:

    • 2GB Nano: $49.97
    • 4GB Pink Nano: $99.97
    • 4GB Silver Nano: $99.97
    • 8GB Black $149.97
    • 30GB White/Black: Unsure
    • 80GB Black/White iPod: $229.97

    Head over to your local Costco and see if there are any still available. I can’t imagine they’ll stay around very long at these prices.

    Props to my lovely wife for spotting this one.

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  • Belkin wastes no time and releases new iPod cases

    Belkin iPod classic Case

    Within a day of Apple releasing their new line of iPods, Belkin has announced the release of 3 new iPod cases/armbands to fit the new styles.

    The new cases start at around $20 and aren’t really anything industry revolutionizing. Though the new iPod classic armband they are releasing does include a nifty little “cable capsule” to give you a convenient place to store your headphones.

    All their new cases/armbands are expected to be released in early October 2007.

    If you’re just aching to get your hands on some accessories for your new iPods, check out Belkin’s line of products that are already compatible with the new iPods.

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  • iPod shuffle vs. Replacement battery

    One of the web sites I write and podcast for involves a fair amount of travel around the Washington DC region. It’s not uncommon to be in the car for eight hours a week traveling to shows. So my wife and I listen to several different podcasts. Unfortunately, my third generation iPod’s battery has finally gotten super weak. We bought a car charger so we can listen while driving, but that is yet another cable to clutter up the front of the car.

    So after yesterday’s iPod announcement, here are my options for my limited budget:

    • Deal with the clutter
    • Order a new battery for my iPod and install it myself ($25-$40 depending on vendor)
    • Get a refurbished iPod shuffle ($49)
    • Get a new iPod shuffle ($79)

    If you’ve ever replaced your iPod’s battery, I’d love to hear how it went. Or if you use a shuffle to only listen to podcasts, are there any downsides? I’d guess I’d only sync a few podcasts at a time to it. And the related question is how well does iTunes handle having two different iPods syncing?

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  • eMusic: Now it's universal

    eMusic The big news this week is undoubtedly Apple’s announcement of the new iPod product line and the lower price of the iPhone. With new iPods comes a new version of iTunes — 7.4 in this case — but despite The Steve’s Thoughts On Music and NBC’s very public departure from the iTunes Store, iTunes purchases are still heavily bolted to the floor with DRM. Even iTunes Plus purchases are watermarked, if not rights-managed.

    Fortunately, there’s eMusic, the next largest online music retailer behind the iTunes Store. All songs at eMusic are available in pure MP3 format, encoded with the LAME variable bitrate (VBR) encoder, completely unrestricted by DRM. If your musical tastes are like mine, you’ll find eMusic to be indie music heaven. Many artists available there are unsigned or self-promoted through IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance, but eMusic’s catalog of popular names is formidable as well, including the only DRM-free online version of Paul McCartney’s Memory Almost Full.

    Until recently, though, the eMusic Download Manager has been available only as a PowerPC application, and ran a bit sluggishly under Rosetta on Intel-based Macs. But that has all changed. Meet the brand spankin’ new eMusic Remote 1.0 — available for Windows, Mac (PPC, Intel, and Universal), and Linux.

    The new eMusic Remote is built atop the Gecko engine from Mozilla and integrates a browser window with the download manager, allowing eMusic customers to browse, preview, and download all from the same application without having to open a new window or tab in Safari, Firefox, Camino, or other browser.

    So for all you readers who are already eMusic subscribers, go download the Technology Preview of the eMusic Remote; I’d like to hear your thoughts on it! Do you like the integrated experience, or would you rather have a slim application that just does the download? Is it just me, or does it actually run faster?

    If you’re not an eMusic member, you can get 25 free downloads when you sign up at the website, or if email me at tab (at) paXoo -dot- com, I’ll send you a link to double that for 50 free downloads when you sign up.

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  • TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac

    It’s been covered here on TAB before, but not enough praise can be given to my text editor of choice, TextMate, which garners much appeal for its built-in extensibility thanks to Ruby. With that flexibility, though, comes a small feeling of overwhelming panic, like being five miles out in the ocean with nothing but a pair of water wings. Trying to wade through all its features without any guidance beyond developer Allan Odgaard’s in-program documentation is meshuga.

    Fortunately for all of us, James Edward Gray II’s book TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac does a bang-up job of making even the most advanced TextMate functions accessible. Gray begins with simple topics like navigating the editing window, creating projects, and easy keystrokes — copy, paste, select all, etc. He wisely instructs his readers early in the book to learn keystrokes for as many commands as possible, but, at the same time, not to fill their memory with the lesser used ones at the expense of the others. Depending on the bundles one has active, TextMate could have as many as several hundred keystroke sequences available at any given time.

    Before long, Gray moves into automation: what TextMate does best. Beginning with an introduction to some of the built-in bundles and how to use them, he soon shows us how to define snippets: blocks of text or programming code or bloggery that are automatically inserted whenever a given trigger is activated, like a built-in version of TextExpander, only more powerful.

    From there, Gray does an excellent job of leading into macros, bundle editing, the built-in support tools, calling UNIX commands and Ruby scripts, and theme customization. TextMate doesn’t have a bundle for groff? Gray will show you how to build one.

    While TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac doesn’t cover every aspect of TextMate, for less than 200 pages it is extremely efficient in providing readers with everything they need to know to accomplish approximately 99 percent of the tasks that TextMate can perform. The other one percent? You’ll just have to ask around on the TextMate community forum.

    The old vi versus emacs text editor holy wars are still alive on the Mac in the form of BBEdit versus TextMate, and while TextMate has been called “emacs meets the Mac,” I was a staunch vim user until I met TextMate. I still keep vim around, but it’s collecting a lot of dust — especially since I read Gray’s excellent book that helped me develop all the snippets and keystroke preferences I needed in TextMate.

    TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac retails for $29.95 USD / $41.95 CDN / £20.99 GBP / €29,00 EUR. , , ,





  • Goodbye iPod Hi-Fi?

    iPod Hi-Fi

    Since the iPod Hi-Fi was announced almost 2 years ago Apple has seemingly thrown it to the side without so much as a single mention after it’s initial public debut.

    It’s always been a rather odd product for Apple to have produced as it plays the role as mainly an expensive accessory to the iPod. Apple is really in the business of creating major products and not so much “accessory” products.

    After the Apple online store re-opened today the Apple Hi-Fi appears to have be removed from the catalog. Clicking on the “Buy Now” buttons on the Hi-Fi product page take you to a simple page with a message that says :

    Sorry. The item you have selected is currently not available from the Apple Store.

    Who knows if this is just a simple glitch. I personally see this product falling by the wayside.

    UPDATE: Within a couple of days of publishing this post Apple also removed the “Buy Now” button. This seems to be the official end of the Hi-Fi.


    Комментарии к сообщению:
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