Thursday, November 8, 2007

The Apple Blog (8 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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  • How To: Import RSS Subscriptions into Apple Mail

    I never quite understood Apple’s decision to include RSS support in Safari, but not in Apple Mail. Other mail clients such as Thunderbird have offered this support for years, but I just couldn’t bring myself to use them. They had never offered the power Mail did, with built-in smart folders and the way it had always played so nicely with iCal.

    When I first heard that Mail would be offering RSS support in Leopard my first thought was, “finally”. After installing Leopard I immediately opened up NetNewsWire and exported my subscriptions as an OPML file, only to find out that Mail wouldn’t accept it. Mail isn’t alone in missing this very important feature, Safari doesn’t offer OPML importing either.

    If you have been using Safari as your application of choice for reading RSS feeds you will be fine, it’s a simple mouse click away to bring them into Mail. But Safari for the most part is nowhere near powerful or feature rich enough for most of us.

    So what do I do now? Am I stuck with individually re-subscribing to all of my several hundred feeds all over again? At first this seems to be the case, but the long answer is: no. It involves a little jimmy-rigging and taking the long route but it is possible.
    (more…)





  • Google Search for iPhone

    One annoyance I have with my iPhone is the Google Search feature. I think the Google search results are by far the best results as far as relevancy goes. Unfortunately, however, when I set my iPhone to default to Google’s search engine, I am taken to the normal results pages. The Yahoo search option defaults to iPhone optimized search results.

    Google has a mobile-optimized (and iPhone optimized) search page at www.google.com/m, so why should iPhone take me to the normal (and extremely scaled) search results?

    Hopefully Google or Apple will make this an option soon. For right now, instead of using the built-in search I’m actually going to a bookmarked www.google.com/m and searching from there.





  • Apple's Trojan Horse: Webkit

    Back in the early days of TAB, one of our fellow writers was one, Chris Holland. Chris is a pretty smart guy, knows a little too much about too many super geeky things, many of which revolve around Apple technology. He’s since moved on from TAB, but continues to rant about technology on his own time, and from time to time we’ll exchange some IM’s to discuss these things. (If you’ve ever had the extreme pleasure of chatting with Chris, you’re already fully aware of the toddler-like energy levels and spastic excitement he displays for this stuff!)

    Well Chris is at it again, and recently wrote up his own take on a topic that I took a stab at a few months back. While my guess at Xcode dropping on the Windows platform was received with both favorable and not-so-favorable comments (Chris pu-pu’s my idea toward the end of his article…why am I even linking to him?), Chris offers up his own thoughts on the subject, fingering some of the underlying technology behind iTunes and Safari as the real key to the future of Apple software on the Windows platform.

    Webkit is an open source browser engine that powers Safari, and several other applications found in Apple’s stable of program offerings. Seeing as how it helps run Safari, and iTunes (see comments 1 and 3 below) which is now available to the Windows users of the world, Chris surmises that it wouldn’t take much more to offer up a way for Windows developers to test the waters of the OS X development world without having to make a full jump to the new platform first.

    Admittedly this is a teaser into that world at best. But it could be a nice foot in the door for Apple to bewitch current Windows developers with the great features and power available to them on the Cocoa side of the house. Coupled with the available frameworks within OS X and the accessibility of Apple’s hardware features, a whole new wave of developers could result from a move such as Chris suggests. And of course more third party developer support for a platform can only be a good thing.

    So take a few minutes to read what Chris has to say about “Apple’s Decoy into Microsoft’s World” and see what you think. Does the idea hold water? Or is it as out of left field as my guess of Xcode on Windows was?





  • TAB Writer Openings

    We’re looking to bring on about 5-8 new writers here at The Apple Blog. So if you’re in to writing and, more importantly, in to Apple…I’d like to hear from you.

    A couple of things to note:

    • You must be able to write somewhat regularly (around 3-5 articles per month) - This is a big one. If you can’t commit to this, please don’t bother contacting us.
    • This is initially an unpaid position though there is a possibility for “promotion” to a paid position

    When you contact us, you MUST included a link to previous tech writing. No link = no go.


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/07/tab-writer-openings/#comments



  • Quicksilver Opens its Doors to Coders

    Quicksilver is my hands-down favorite application for OS X. (Seriously, if I were stranded on a desert island, it would be the one thing I brought with me!) However with the exception of becoming Leopard-ized, it hasn’t made many forward strides in recent months. I’d venture a guess that a large reason for that is that Alcor - the brains behind the braun - has taken up a job at Google. Whatever the reason, Quicksilver hasn’t gotten the attention that many of us wish that it would.

    Well now, Alcor has released Quicksilver as an open source project under Google Code repository. This is very exciting news as with many more hands in the bucket, we should soon see a boatload of exciting growth out of the launcher-app that is loved by so many.

    As if it couldn’t do it all already, there are many things that users in the blacktree forums have been asking for, for some time now. From the standpoint of the base application alone, I would love to see a little more stability out of Quicksilver - though it’s generally been pretty reliable for me. My guess is that as coders are able to get their hands dirty in the code, the number of plugins that will become available will skyrocket. This of course may cause some bloat, but with so many brilliant and creative minds out there, I’m excited to see what the future holds for this incredible application.

    So what features are you hoping to see out of a future, open version of Quicksilver? If you’re a coder, I’d love to hear your plans for the newly open source as well.

    And if you’re one of those who aren’t familiar with Quicksilver yet, or have tried it now and again but haven’t gotten the point, you may be interested in viewing some of the screencasts we’ve posted here on The Apple Blog in the past. And as a small teaser - and a kick in the pants for me to deliver on something I’ve been promising for a while - look for a Quicksilver Show-off Screencast of the myriad of things it can do in the not too distant future.





  • Safari 3 multiple feed support

    RSS Multi-Feed Support

    Here’s a quick tidbit on a new feature of Safari 3 in Leopard. The RSS button in the address bar now support multiple feeds for sites that have them.

    Occasionally a site will have separate feeds for different sections of their site and other times they’ll have different formats of the same feed (such as RSS and Atom).

    Firefox has long had this feature so I’m glad to see that Safari finally came around.

    Thanks Luke Martin for the tip.





  • Earbud Showdown

    A couple of months ago, while burning calories on an elliptical machine, I noticed that my trusty Apple earbuds were increasingly sounding horrible. It eventually got to the point where any sound that was even remotely loud was just crackling to the point where it was unbearable. My Apple earbuds had finally bitten the dust.

    I started looking around for a new pair of earbuds and found the selection to be a tad overwhelming but I eventually found a pair I really love. Hopefully this little “showdown” will help you with some comparison shopping when you’re in the market for a new pair of earbuds.
    (more…)


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2007/11/07/earbud-showdown/#comments



  • How To: Access your iPhoto '08 Library from your browser

    Since iPhoto ‘08 came out back in August, I’ve had mixed feelings on its new features.

    I’m not a huge fan of Events and there are lots of little things that just annoy me now. One of which is that the iPhoto library now exists as a “package” instead of a readily accessible set of folders. Even after doing “Show Package Contents” on the library file it can get pretty hairy trying to actually get to the raw photographs.

    Generally the only time I really have a desire to get to said files is when using a browser to upload photos. You can’t just navigate to your library files and grab the picture you want. There is a way to make it possible, though and it’s fairly straight forward.

    1. Access the iPhoto Library Folder

    iPhoto Library

    Control-click (or right-click) on the iPhoto Library file and choose “Show Package Contents.”

    iPhoto Library

    2. Create Folder Aliases

    After doing “Show Package Content” you should now see the folders and files contained in the package.
    iPhoto Library

    You’ll see two folders, “Modified” and “Originals,” which contain the actual photo files that iPhoto uses. These folders contain sub-folders which seem to be, for the most part, identical to the Events you might have set up. These are the folders we want access to when getting single files to upload in a browser.

    What we have to do is create a folder alias to give us access directly to these folders outside of the iPhoto Library package.

    Control-click on the “Modified” folder and choose “Make Alias” from the contextual menu. Leave it named “Modified alias” and then drag the new alias folder to the same directory that your iPhoto Library is in.

    Repeat this for the “Originals” folder.

    You can then rename the aliases to whatever you choose. You should end up with something like this:
    iPhoto Library

    3. Access the Files

    Chances are the aliases still won’t give you access to the files when you are just in the Finder, but they will work when you are using a browser to open them.

    Take a site like Flickr, for example. I’d like to upload a few of the original photo files to my account. I’m presented with the “Choose File” upload buttons and I can now access the files from within the browser:
    iPhoto Library

    And there we have it! It’s definitely a bit of a hack job for what should be a simple task, but until Apple changes this format we seem to be stuck with this solution.







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