Saturday, September 8, 2007

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (3 сообщения)

 rss2email.ruНа что подписаться?   |   Управление подпиской 

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)  RSS  The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
http://www.tuaw.com
другие подписчики этой ленты также читают >>

  • iTunes 7.4 obsolete after 48 hours; 7.4.1 breaks homebrew ringtones

    Filed under: ,


    There are apps that age gracefully, staying functional and relevant for months or years with no changes at all (I'm looking at you, TNEF's Enough -- 2005 in the house!)... and then there's iTunes. We had only hours to get used to a new version with support for all the iPods coming down the pike, and then in don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it fashion, 7.4 was gone and 7.4.1 was here. Wheel in the sky, keep on turning.

    Apple hasn't listed specific changes between 7.4 and 7.4.1, but initial reports say that the technique for creating your own ringtones simply by changing file extensions, which MacRumors announced earlier today, is now blocked (anyone surprised? Didn't think so). Despite the patches, we're told that iToner 1.0.1, just revised to work with 7.4, continues to work as advertised with 7.4.1. Reader Joe Mailer suggests that if you change the extension of your ringtone files BACK to '.m4a' from '.m4r' they will sync again and still show up as ringtones, so you might try that.

    You can download the new iTunes for Mac and Windows directly, or hit Software Update for the refresh.

    Thanks Mike B. and St3phen
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • Installer.app locks out PXL package

    Filed under: , ,

    Lots of drama in the iPhone development community since last night, and it all revolves around a decision that "lg," the developer of Installer.app, made to remove PXL from its list of installable applications. PXL is another package manager for iPhone (open source, while Installer.app is still free, but currently closed source), that works with either Breezy, iBrickr (for Windows), or any other PXL manager. A little while back, the PXL guys decided that the easiest way to get their packages onto the iPhone was to actually run through Installer.app, but lg, last night, apparently decided that he didn't want them doing that, and locked them out of the application.

    And that, according to many iPhone developers, is not cool. The creators of NES.app, in response, have pulled their application from Installer.app completely, posting a notice on their site that "NES.app will no longer function from Installer.app or other third-party package installers that we believe are not trustworthy/secure. You will need to remove these tools to use NES.app."

    TUAW spoke with drudge, the developer who originally wrote the package for PXL in Installer.app, and he makes it clear that this is a bad move for the iPhone community. "We need to grow and learn each step of the way," he told me in an email. "Releasing closed sourced apps at this stage in the game doesn't help anyone." But the problem, according to drudge, isn't that Installer.app is a closed source application. "The only problem is it is a centralized management system... meaning "lg" has the final say in what happens with any package." And when lg decides, as he did last night, that someone's out, everyone suffers.

    lg has not commented on what happened yet, as far as we've heard. At this point, it sounds like everyone involved is trying to work towards a solution, and get the PXL package back in Installer.app (the alternative would be for PXL to create their own Installer.app type of program). As drudge also told us, "The community is only 2 months old so for developers to be taking sides... makes it harder on iPhone users and developers."

    Thanks, drudge!

    Update: They've reached a solution-- NullRiver (lg and the folks behind Installer.app) are going to create their own open source library for package management. Since PXL was created because Installer.app was closed source, another open source solution means PXL will likely not exist any longer.

    Update2: Here's the latest.
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • Create your own iTunes-compatible ringtones

    Filed under: , , , ,

    Update 12am 9/8: It appears that iTunes 7.4.1 blocks the transfer of these homemade ringtones. If you haven't updated yet, you may want to load up on song snippets first...

    iTunes 7.4 makes it especially easy to add and sync ringtones with your iPhone--without having to pay for a third-party installer. TUAW reader Arnold Kim passed along a link to this fabulous MacRumors post with a method attributed to "Cleverboy" and Nicholas "Drudge" Penree sent me additional instructions.

    It goes basically like this: iTunes uses the m4r file extension for Ringtones. If you copy an AAC file from your library and rename it from .m4a to .m4r and then add it back to iTunes, the program reads it back in as a ringtone rather than a normal library track. You can then sync it to your iPhone. I've tested this with both an MP3 that I converted to AAC and with a track I purchased from the iTunes store. They both worked.

    The secret lies in making sure the name change happens properly. This isn't a big problem on Windows. On the Mac though there are protections in place to keep you from renaming the file extension--this isn't to keep you from making ringtones. It's to keep you from hurting your files. So either do the rename in Terminal or select the file you want to rename and open the Info window. Scroll down to the Name & Extension field and change the extension to m4r there.

    At this time, the m4r items do not appear in your Library. You can only see them when you select an iPhone in the sources list and then click on the Ringtones tab.

    In other news, the download-free-iTunes-previews trick seems to be dead until further notice.

    Further notice: Okay, I got the preview trick fixed but it's..trickier. You've got to download the iTunes pages as if they were webpages and then extract the URLs from the page source. I'll write this up if there's any interest. Let me know in the comments

    Update: Use this technique only for tracks you've copied from your personal CD collection.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments







rss2email.ru       отписаться: http://www.rss2email.ru/unsubscribe.asp?c=6894&u=24004&r=484673635
управлять всей подпиской: http://www.rss2email.ru/manage.asp
читать наш блог: http://www.olevarty.ru