Friday, November 2, 2007

The Apple Blog (20 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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  • TAB a Finalist in the 2007 Weblog Awards

    Yesterday it was announced that The Apple Blog is one of the top 10 finalists for Best Technology Blog.

    We have the honor of being included in the list with classic blogs like Engadget, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker.

    If you’ve enjoyed the content The Apple Blog has provided over the past year, we’d love to have your vote.

    You don’t need to register or anything of the sort to place your vote. Just go to this page and click on “The Apple Blog” and your vote will be placed.

    You can cast your vote once every 24 hours, so if you really love The Apple Blog, you can vote for us every day. :)





  • JLab iPhone Case

    I have always been a fan of the Apple iPod case that came with my 3G iPod when I bought it over 4 years (you remember, those cheap fabric cases that you just slide the ipod into). In fact, I still use the iPod and the case. So, when I received the JLab iPhone case, which is basically the same form factor as that classic iPod case, I thought I would have a winner. The case itself is made from “Deluxe MicroSued” which somewhat resembles leather. Sandwiched between the “MicroSued” is a harder material (probably cardboard or a thin plastic sheet). The case is definitely made exactly for the iPhone, as the iPhone slips right in and fits snugly in the case. It also has your standard belt clip on the back, again, covered in pleather “MicroSued” which you can clip to your belt for the ultimate “I’m a geek that works in IT” look right next to your beeper.

    JLab iPhone Case

    Overall, there isn’t much to complain about when it comes to the actual product itself. It seems to be made with decent materials and the construction/manufacturing quality seems high. In my brief usage testing the product, it showed no signs of wear and came clean when I got some food on it (ketchup). However, looks can be deceiving, and when it came to actually using the case, I discovered some major problems (for me personally).

    The first major problem I have with the the case relates to it’s form factor. If you have an iPhone, you know that the speaker that handles all the audio output, including the ringer, is located along the bottom edge of the phone. And if you have ever put your finger over those speaker holes, you know that it’s pretty easy to cover them up, and when they are covered up, there is almost no sound output. Well, what happens when you put your iPhone in the case, and smoosh (remember how tight I said it fit above) those speaker holes up against 2 layers of “MicroSued” and cardboard/plastic? You get an EXTREME decrease in volume. Couple that with having the phone in your pocket and it’s basically impossible to hear your ringer. I “received” 4 calls in the time I was reviewing the product and I missed all 4 because I couldn’t hear them.

    The second, and more minor beef I have with the case is it’s thickness. It feels like it doubles the thickness of the iPhone, and for someone that LOVES the thinness of the iPhone, this increase in thickness just doesn’t cut it for me. However, if you were going to keep this bad boy hanging on your belt, this probably isn’t a problem for you. I, however, am a front pocket guy and I just couldn’t handle it.

    All in all, the JLabs iPhone case is not “bad” per-se, but I certainly can’t recommend it to anyone, because if your buying a phone case, you’ve got to be able to hear your phone ring.


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/02/jlab-iphone-case/#comments



  • LifeShaker

    LifeShaker I am so insanely inundated with work that I was happy to see we had a review for a different approach to task lists and reminders. LifeShaker’s approach is to avoid the list-based approach, in favor of grids and boxes. There are color coded categories, which are assigned to goals. The largest area of the app is a 3×3 grid, what I call the shaker grid, where curent goals are shown. If none of the boxes sound like fun to do, click the shaker icon and 9 different goals are shown.

    Goals have tasks associated with them, though I found that I never needed this amount of granularity for a goal. Perhaps it is just my style of work but I found myself writing tasks to complete as my goals, and even if they required multiple action items I didn’t need need to store them.

    I’ll cut right to the chase, this isn’t a must have application. It does its job well and there isn’t a lot to the application, which in some ways is a strong point. It’s the first version, so I am taking that into consideration for the review.

    The LifeShaker interface doesn’t have the Mac experience at all. The uniqueness of the interface is actually a bit of a throw back right away because it feels more like a Java application than a Cocoa/Mac application. Using a full 1/3 column just for categories seems a bit too much when this space would’ve been better suited for the long list of goals a user would enter. Which is the next point, that the goals list was a bit unintuitive for assigning a category to a goal. There is no interface function for it, and just out of pure curiosity I right-clicked on the category column to set it.

    Doing this however, exposed a bug that caused the interface to look like this:
    Life Shaker Bug
    This made me have to completely close the application in order to get it to look correct once again.

    I gave the application a good solid two week run, and found it had a few issues. On occasion it would freeze when the Macbook Pro was waking up from sleep. I questioned that it might be a problem with Mac OS X, but this occurred on 10.4 and 10.5.

    LifeShaker has some polish and work to do. Without integration into iCal or Mail, the idea of manually entering my tasks and goal information into yet another GTD application is no fun at all. It is another goal on top of a pile of many uncompleted goals. Coupled with the interface bugs and the departure from the Mac interface experience, I have to say it is easy to pass on this application for what is now included with 10.5’s Mail and iCal applications. LifeShaker is $29 and has a free 14 day trial.


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/02/lifeshaker-review/#comments



  • Leopard's Parental Controls a possible source of resource hogging?

    Leopard Parental Controls
    Jon Buys wrote in letting me know of a little issue he’s having with the new Parental Controls feature of Leopard.

    He writes in:

    I enabled the Parental Controls on my new Leopard install, and after letting my kids play Frozen Bubble and browse to Playhouse Disney for an hour or so I found that the daemon named “parentalcontrolsd” was eating 98-100% of one of my cores (Core 2 Duo MacBook).

    Anyone else had this issue with the new Parental Controls? Have certain applications possibly caused the increase in CPU usage?





  • Why I have not installed Leopard (Though I own it)

    Application Enhancer

    I was one of the many loyal enthusiasts that pre-ordered Leopard and couldn’t wait to install it on all my Macs. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t work out that way.

    If you haven’t heard of the installation problems with Leopard yet, there are a few. It seems the very popular third-party application Application Enhancer does not work well (at all) with Mac OS X Leopard.

    I did a quick inventory of my software, and sure enough I had APE installed (along with several APE plugins). After attempting to uninstall APE, I was almost ready to try my Leopard upgrade and noticed a blog post about Logitech Control Center mouse software issues.

    Of course I have two Logitech mice, and have the Logitech Control Center installed. It appears Logitech Control Center uses APE in the background. Logitech has instructions on removing the old software and installing a new version. Unfortunately, their instructions are flawed as they reference downloading and opening a DMG file and running an uninstaller, and upon downloading the zip archive from their software download page I only found an installer application.

    Their online help mentions a manual uninstall, but does not give the instructions. After several unsuccessful attempts to find the instructions via Google, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I have removed most preference panes and locations that APE or Logitech appear in my hard drive (through the shell) but am still not convinced it is completely removed. When I try to run the updated Logitech software installation, it promptly gives me an error and quits.

    So, I’m left to do an Archive and Install which will likely leave me having to reinstall several applications and clean off enough hard drive space to have two concurrent System folders (at least until the installation has completed). With only 10 GB free on my 100 GB hard drive, that will be hard.

    I hope to have my backup complete tonight and will remove most of the files (like my massive iTunes collection) in order to perform the upgrade.





  • Upgraded Laptops

    MacWorld UK is reporting that Apple has quietly released updated MacBook and MacBook Pros. The new versions are available in up to Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6Ghz. The front side bus speed is now 800Mhz, from 667Mhz. MacBooks have an upgraded video card, with up to 144MB of memory shared with the main memory, up from 64MB shared. No formal announcement has been made by Apple (yet), but the new information is on the Apple web site.


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/01/upgraded-laptops/#comments



  • Create a "Sky" and "Wood" Custom Dock

    I learned that the background on the Dock in Leopard is a set of 4 PNG image files, and I got the hamsters running. I made Sky and Wood for you, and here’s what they look like:

    Installation

    showcontents.jpg To ‘install’ them, go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock and click on the gear icon in the Finder window.

    Select “Show Package Contents” and then go to Contents/Resources/ and copy these files in. They will replace the system images, so be sure to backup the originals!

    Download Sky
    Download Wood





  • How to Create/Edit Your Own Mail.app Stationery

    Mail Stationery

    One of the new features in Leopard’s Mail is that it includes a few dozen stationery templates for you to easily choose from to jazz up your emails.

    For the most part these templates are just plain ole’ fashioned HTML with a tiny bit of XML. So really the only requirements for editing or creating your own stationery is that you know a small bit of HTML. Some design skills wouldn’t hurt if you’re creating your own from scratch.

    I’m not a huge fan of getting HTML email, but there are times when it’s nice. I decided to dig in to things a bit to figure out just how all of this works and was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s really quite simple.

    Below is a fairly in-depth walkthrough on just how you can create your own Mail stationery or edit the pre-made stationery.
    (more…)





  • Custom Stacks Icons

    Stacks

    Anyone else tired of a Dock’d Applications folder that seems to be a link to Address Book?

    I’m hearing a lot of complaints in various forums and reviews about the icons of stacks in the dock, and not much in the way of solutions, so I thought I’d suggest the one that’s working for me. (There is a bigger post upcoming with a lot of tricks to Leopard, but I wanted to get this one out first, so that at least some people might be happier.)

    The problem is simple: Stacks in the Dock show a pile of icons, with the topmost one being the one most recently accessed, or first in the alphabet, or whatever. This is frustrating a lot of people who have custom icons for the folders in their docks, as instead of the custom icon, the stack icon is a changeable picture, usually of the object that starts with A. Many are grumbling about bad UI design with this, as we are used to the icons that we had representing the folders that were plainly used so much that we thought they deserved a place in the dock. And yes, in my opinion, it is a design flaw. There’s a reason for distinctive icons in the Dock - they’re a mnemonic toy, and a representation of everything under that icon. (I know I’m not alone in thinking that Address Book, which I hardly ever use, is not a good symbol for my applications folder.)

    The simple fix? First, find that icon that you liked so much before. Now, rename it. Try something like “_ Proper Applications Icon” - anything with a non-alphanumeric character should do.folder When you put that icon in the stacked folder, so long as your stack is set to sort by name (command-click on the stack, and choose ‘Sort by’), that icon will stay on the top of the stack. To illustrate my point, to the left is my Dock, after I added a better icon to the Utilities stack, and to the right is a snip of my Applications stack’s grid view after I put an icon in there. There’s still the slight aberration of the other icons sticking out from behind the folder in the Dock, true, but it’s much better than staring at Address Book.

    Icons from David Lanham’s Agua set.


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/stacks-icons/#comments



  • A Half-Hearted Jab?

    So Leopard finally launched last Friday at 6pm. It’s great, it’s lame - no matter your stance, it’s here. And in case you were unaware, it’s at least a little better (and dare I say, technically advanced?) than Microsoft’s Vista which hasn’t received the warmest of welcomes since it dropped earlier this year.

    In recent weeks there was an article in the New York Times which essentially got after Apple for not capitalizing on the so-called flop of Vista and the cold-shoudler it’s received from the tech industry. So now that Apple’s latest iteration of OS X (that’s ‘10′, for those new to the game) is on shelves, let the comparisons and true winners and losers be determined. (Or do what I do and just use it because you love it and ignore all the hoopla - your choice of course.)

    But as Microsoft ultimately struggles to regain some respect and dedication to their operating system offering(s), it seems they may be taking the ambiguous shot across the bow if you pay attention. Background: Apparently one night long past - most likely hopped-up on Barq’s with caffeine - I signed up for email updates for Microsoft’s Office for Mac progress. Yeah, I know… Anyway, Friday evening came around, and there was an email in my box with the subject-line, “Exploring Windows: Make 6:00PM Your Time Again.”

    Now maybe it was just dumb luck (I’ll leave that to your judgement), but getting an email from Microsoft on the day of Apple’s OS launch, offering to make 6pm my time again?? May I remind you that 6pm was the launch time of Leopard. It’s very likely it’s just the super-nerd in me that’s reading too much into a chance email, but the timing and wording seemed like too much of a reference to an opposing operating system.

    Did you get this email? What’s your take on it - coincidence, or directed marketing?


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/a-half-hearted-jab/#comments



  • Missing emails after installing Leopard?

    This past Friday, after my little FedEx experience, I promptly backed up my hard drive and then did an Erase & Install of Leopard.

    Once Leopard was installed I began moving over necessary files, including my Mail files.

    To get your new version of Mail to recognize your old mail (so you don’t have to recreate all of your accounts), you need to move over the following files and directories:

    • ~/Library/Mail/
    • ~/Library/Mail Downloads/
    • ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

    I did this and about an hour later realized that when I searched for previous emails I was only getting results from the past 10 days or so and emails that were still sitting in my Inbox before the install were now missing.

    So…how did I fix this? It’s actually really simple.

    Mail.app Rebuild

    After moving your Mail files over, you basically need to force Mail to re-index your mail files. To do this, simply select each mailbox and folder, one at a time, and go to Mailbox > Rebuild in the menu. Depending on the number of emails in those accounts/folders, it could take up to a minute or two to rebuild it. After that all of your previous emails should be accounted for!





  • Mail.app Stationery Pack

    Equinux Stationery Pack In the new Mail.app that is packaged with Leopard, there are a few dozen email templates to spice up what you send out.

    Now you can have over 100 of them to choose from.

    Equinux has released their first stationery pack with over 100 new templates to add to your emailing arsenal.

    There are 7 different categories of templates including Business, Sports, Feelings, and others. It’s somewhat a given that in a collection this large of generic templates, not all of them are going to be great. There are certainly quite a few good ones but along with those are some that were obviously a bit of an afterthought just to reach the “100″ mark.

    The entire collection will cost you around $30.





  • Say goodbye to the transparent menu bar

    Leopard Menu Bar
    One of the biggest complaints made by new Leopard users is the semi-transparent menu bar. Depending on what wallpaper you have set on your monitor, it can get pretty funky up there.

    It was bound to happen sooner or later, but barely 3 days after Leopard’s release we now have a simple app that changes the menu bar to solid white.

    OpaqueMenuBar from Eternal Storms seems to just simply put a white bar over the menu bar. The only negative thing I found was that on dual-monitors it puts the white bar across both monitors instead of just the “master” monitor that has the menu bar.

    OpaqueMenuBar is free for the taking.





  • Holidays in iCal

    Since I switched from Firebird to iCal a little while ago as part of an effort to try this ‘integration’ thing Apple’s been proposing for the last ten years, I’ve been frustrated by one thing.

    …Where are my holidays?

    I always look at iCal - or any calendar - in month view, so one of the big things I use it for is holidays. What week, exactly, does Columbus Day fall in again? I could understand, intellectually, why Apple chose not to put holidays in iCal, given regional differences, but it never ceased to annoy. It got to be too much, so I used my ever-formidable google-fu and found two sites offering calendars to which holiday-needing users could subscribe.

    One of them, unfortunately, seems to have been eaten by Apple’s New Features in Leopard page. “www.apple.com/ical” now redirects there, and I can’t find the old page - which was mostly about new iCal features in Tiger, but also had the links to calendars, including various holidays and sports teams. (Just one more reason for me to like Apple - subscribable Red Sox game times.)

    The other, though, is iCalWorld. They have many more calendars, including user-submitted ones. So add holidays to your iCal, just in time for winter holidays!


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/10/30/holidays-in-ical/#comments



  • Time Machine isn't perfect

    One of the most highly touted features new to Leopard is Time Machine, the “always on” backup system that takes the effort and guesswork out of backing up important data. But, to the chagrin of many (or at least myself), Time Machine does not backup to AirDisks. I have not personally tried it, but when I was installing Leopard yesterday, I had the option to migrate data from a Time Machine backup stored on an AirDisk. So if Time Machine supports restore from AirDisk, why is backup to AirDisk unsupported?





  • Community Activity: October 29, 2007





  • How to launch an astronomically successful operating system

    Step 1. Announce a device running a version of said operating system with proper modifications for the device’s interface and applications.

    Apple Announces iPhone, Stock Soars. Jan 9 2007
    There have been very few times in Apple’s history where investors bought on the news. When Jobs started to introduce the phone, before calling it a phone, the numbers were climbing. He tells the crowd the iPhone prices $499 for the 4Gb model and $599 for an 8Gb model, making it one of the most expensive devices on the market. But no one seems to care because it is that cool and that revolutionary. Even if you’ve changed your mind now, I know very few people who saw it and thought it was going to fail.

    Step 2. Build up tension through product delay, mention undisclosed secret features, in order to release the iPhone on schedule.
    Apr 12th, Apple made a big statement that day. Jobs was betting that the iPhone was going to be a cash cow and worth the trade off. Marketing and PR went to town and made the bad news good, and I don’t think too many third party developers were upset. It was pretty clear, in my opinion, that the WWDC disks handed out during the conference were a clue that it might get delayed.

    A few months later, the iPhone goes on sale June 28th just before the end of Q3. "We are very pleased to report strong financial results including cash flow from operations exceeding $1.2 billion for the quarter," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2007, we expect revenue of about $5.7 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.65." I think the growth projections speak for themselves!

    Step 3. Cash in on your hard work for the device and software.
    Oppenheimer Cashes In. July 30
    http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/resea…

    Jobs Cashes In. Aug 17
    On Monday, the iconic leader exercised 120,000 that were set to expire this week. Apple gave Jobs the options, which carried a strike price of $5.75 a share, in August 1997 when he rejoined the company’s board as part of his official return the company.
    http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/58895.html

    Apple announces price cuts for iPhone. Sept 5
    http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/05/apple-cuts-iphone-price-to-399/

    Step 4. Slash the price on a successful product 68 days after release and offer early adopters $100 store credit.

    And as we know, Mac OS X Leopard is $129 which means most of you probably held onto your credit to get Leopard for $30. Which for $30 is a steal, making 10.5 the most successful product launch on the planet. With Apple’s market share literally doubled since 10.4’s release combined with market data showing people buying new Macs regardless of the upcoming release, one can deduce that Apple has put themselves on a short time line to make enough copies to meet demand. As one reader said earlier when he asked the Fedex guy, “I’ve got a ton of these things”.





  • Leopard Launch at Apple Store SoHo

    Apple SoHoTonight, my wife and I went over the Apple Store in SoHo to pick up Leopard. It was a dark and rainy night, but the line still extended around the block. The store had crowd control (they looked like bouncers to me) so everyone would line up orderly and around the block. You could only get in one way through the store’s double doors.

    Someone asked me, “Who is in there?” I explained to him that no one was in there and that these people were standing in the rain for an operating system. He scoffed and went on his way. As my wife and I were standing in line, a car pulled up and a woman yelled, “What’s the line for?” Someone from the line politely explained the line is for the Apple Store and we were waiting for the operating system. The woman in car seemed shocked and moved along. Several others asked the same questions, but responded with an knowing “Oh, yeah!” There was a rather communal feel on the line as someone suggested we just tell everyone that John Mayer is in there. It was a very friendly bunch. Additionally, some people from Parallels were handing out mints (or it could have been some nut handing out who-knows-what — this is New York, after all).

    We stood in the rain for a couple of minutes and eventually were let in by security. Several Apple Store employees were lined up handing out Leopard t-shirts. We were then sent upstairs to pick up Leopard. I also wanted a copy of iWork and an Apple Store employee told us to wait in line while he fetched it. The line moved so quickly, that we were next in line before the employee got back with our copy of iWork. We went over the Genius Bar which was a makeshift cashier counter where Apple Geniuses were acting as cashiers. There was a slight hitch in getting my education discount, but everything worked out. Plus, any time out of the rain was rather nice. It took us about 40 minutes to get through the whole excursion; now, I’ll be installing Leopard on my machines at home.





  • Apple tells FedEx to delay shipments of Leopard

    Well this is interesting. I pre-ordered my copy of Leopard the first day it was available to do so. Apple guaranteed shipment on October 26 (today).

    The package was shipped via FedEx Priority Overnight which has a guaranteed delivery time of 10:30AM (unless you live in a remote area…which last time I checked Denver, CO wasn’t a “remote area”).

    I woke up this morning giddy like a 5 year old boy at Christmas to see that my copy of Leopard was on a truck and out for delivery still, according to FedEx, scheduled to be delivered by 10:30AM.

    Well, at about 10:15AM I checked the packaged status and it had the message “Delivery Exception - Future delivery requested.” I certainly didn’t request a “future delivery.”

    So I gave FedEx a call to see who requested it. I had a hunch that Apple might have done it. Sure enough, the support agent confirmed my hunch with the following message:

    This morning Apple made a request to us that FedEx disregard any guaranteed delivery times and instead deliver them end-of-day today as opposed to by 10:30AM.

    Awesome. I must now wait an additional 6-8 hours for my beloved Leopard because Apple doesn’t want people to get their copies before the 6PM launch parties tonight.

    Yes, I am aware that people have been getting their copies as early as Wednesday. No, I don’t really care that much that I’ve got to wait another few hours.

    I do have to say that this seems to be a bit of a sleazy move on Apple’s part, though. It seems, if anything, the people that pre-ordered it should somehow be rewarded for forking over money for something we haven’t really even seen or used yet as opposed to intentionally delaying things.

    Again, I’m being somewhat facetious about this. I just find it to be an interesting move on Apple’s part to micromanage things this far down the line.





  • Apple ticks off 3rd-party developers (as usual)

    I haven’t agreed with a lot of what John Gruber has been posting lately, but I do agree with this point he makes. He points to Steven Frank’s post about not getting access to the Gold Master (final version) release of OS X Leopard before the general public. It’s pretty bad when developers are contemplating pirating your OS just to get their next release out the door on time.

    What’s really annoying is that they give it to Pogue and Mossberg, but not even their key (award-winning) developers. Pogue could be brutally beaten to within an inch of his life by Steve Jobs personally, and Pogue would still sing the praises (he sure drank the iPhone Kool-aid), but Steven Frank is some true talent that Apple could potentially lose (along with many other developers), and it might be hard to win them back. Sure, marketing for your new flagship OS product is important, but if you don’t have any new/updated 3rd-party software to join in the celebration on launch day (or happy developers to keep creating new products for it), what good will it do you? Apple has been known to stab developers in the back before, but if they don’t stop, it will cause them problems in the future.







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