Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Apple Blog (7 сообщений)

 rss2email.ruНа что подписаться?   |   Управление подпиской 

  RSS  The Apple Blog
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
другие подписчики этой ленты также читают >>

  • Spore for Mac releasing simultaneously with PC version

    Spore for Mac

    Spore, the game of origin, evolution, and life, is now officially slated to released simultaneously with its PC counterpart.

    Spore has had a number of release date delays and its future with the Mac platform was initially uncertain. It being one of the most anticipated games of the decade makes this a huge announcement for Mac users who are interested in the game.

    Used in previous EA Mac games, TransGaming’s Cider Portability Engine will also be used in the Mac version of Spore.

    No word yet on an actual date…just “later this year”.

    Hat tip: TUAW





  • Create Snazzy WebClip Icons

    mobile_safari2.jpgThe iPhone 1.1.3 firmware update added some great stuff, including Safari WebClips. I’ve literally added a dozen or more to my home screen in the last 12 hours or so. But the icons for the clips leave something to be desired. Even though I’ve done my best to zoom in as tightly as I can on any logo on any site (like Flickr for example), it can still be difficult to decipher one icon from the other. And some sites just look bad at 57×57. Of course you could read the names of each icon, but what’s the fun in that? I want nice, clean, simple icons on my home screen to help keep it, well, pretty.

    Thankfully, Apple has given web developers a way to create custom home screen icons. Basically all you have to do is create a custom 57×57 PNG, name it “apple-touch-icon.png”, drop it into the root of your web content on your server, and link to it in the head of your content. The iPhone (or iPod Touch) will automatically add the “glassy” overlay to your icon, and pop will pop up when someone adds your site to their home screen.

    You can check it out more in depth on the iPhone Dev Center (look at “Create a WebClip Bookmark Icon”) or Dan Dickinson’s site. A little thanks goes to Daring Fireball for the initial point to Dan’s site.

    Check ‘em out and help keep our home screens looking sexy!





  • CoverSutra

    coversutra-logo.png

    I love iTunes (and my massive music library); if my MBP is open, there’s a 98% chance that it’s got music coming out. Using it all day long like this, I wanted some hot keys for it.

    Man oh man, did I find some. After trying a host of options - including Quicksilver - a friend recommended CoverSutra, from Sophiestication. I was a little hesitant, mostly because I was looking for freeware. (What can I say, I’m a poor grad student.) They swore it was the best thing going, however, so I gave it a try.

    By the end of the ten-day trial period, I was sold. Now, though, I have a problem again. There’s eight days left on the MacHeist bundle, and only four on the demo of the new CoverSutra 2. Since CoverSutra 2 isn’t available outside of the bundle until the offer ends, I’m going to need something to tide me over while I wait: and hence, a review.

    CoverSutra - both 1 and 2 - revolves around a nice set of features, with the upgrade to 2 having a few changes. I’ll do my best to note which features differ between the two, but this is mostly a review of version 2. At the heart of things, it’s an iTunes controller, with a customizable set of hotkeys (+up, left, and right in my setup) and a menu-bar accessible preference editor. It’s the nice little tweaks, however, that got me so hooked.

    album-cover.png For starters, you’ve got all that nice album art that iTunes so carefully gathered from the iTunes Music Store for you, right? But if you’re controlling iTunes from hotkeys, you probably never see it. If you want it to, CoverSutra puts a nice album cover on your desktop. In CS1, this was a black-spined CD case; CS2 adds the ability to choose between three provided ’skins’ - the old one, a clear, round-edged jewel case, and a vinyl sleeve. To the right, you can see which one I chose. You can also choose to have it display the track name, artist, and album title underneath. If you don’t have album art, it will instead display a ‘handwritten’ cover.

    You can also hide this if you don’t want to clutter your desktop, or substitute a floating window that shows most of the same options and information as iTunes’ mini player, with the addition of the album art and a more attractive interface.

    searchbar.png

    Head on up to the menubar and there’s some more goodies. The menubar icon got a redesign in CS2 from the old frisbee-like image to that heart; clicking on it now pulls up a Spotlight-like search box. This in turn has a clean HUD-type interface that lets you select not just the album but also the song to play.

    CoverSutra can also handle your Last.fm submissions, if you use that website. While I had some problems with this in CS1 - and by ’some problems’ I mean ‘it never worked at all’ - CS2 actually does this. (And I’d rather it did - while I like iScrobbler, one less thing running in my crowded menubar is always a bonus. Remember that screenshot of my Desktop Manager pager? All those boxes?)

    In other nice features, it talks to Growl - you can have a popup notification each time the track changes - and works with the Apple remote. The memory footprint is tiny, even with the album art on the desktop option on.

    All in all, this is an excellent little piece of shareware, well worth the $22USD price tag. CoverSutra 2 is Leopard-only, although CoverSutra 1 is still available for Tiger users.


    Комментарии к сообщению:
    http://theappleblog.com/2008/01/16/coversutra/#comments



  • MacSweeper: Keep This Rogue Mac Application In The Broom Closet

    F-Secure is reporting on the first, widespread rogue Mac application that comes in the guise of security software: MacSweeper. It is hosted at www.macsweeper.com, but I do not recommend visiting that site. I’m not convinced this is the first rogue Mac application ever to hit the internets, but the F-Secure folks are top-notch researchers who keep better tabs on such minutiae than I.

    The software purports to be an Ad Aware-type application (that’s a Windows product) and manages to always find a problem on each scan. Freeing your system from those evil discoveries will cost you, though, and the software is almost impossible to remove. While long-time OS X users will probably not be enticed to run such software (since they “know Macs are so secure”…right), recent Windows converts are used to having to run these types of programs on almost a daily basis and are much more likely to fall prey to this attack vector.

    Perhaps the saddest part of this discovery is what the F-Secure researcher heard when talking with a journalist:

    “I visited the macsweeper.com website. I know I probably shouldn’t have but I used a Windows PC so I knew I wouldn’t get infected.”

    Ouch.

    Remember to always double-check the reputation of a company and a piece of software before downloading/installing and make sure you are running with some type of anti-virus program since we can expect more reports of these types of rogue Mac applications as the year progresses.





  • iPhone 1.1.3 Update First Impressions

    Apple posted the 1.1.3 iPhone update shortly after the keynote (as promised) and I managed to slowly grab it via AT&T’s 3G ExpressCard (~161MB…full firmware load). The upgrade behaves like a standard iPhone firmware update and upon restart, you are greeted with a dialog explaining how to move icons around.

    NOTE: This is the first time I have ever seen a company use the term “wiggle” in official documentation or dialogs, but Apple clearly states that to move icons, you press and hold till they “wiggle”, after which you can then happily re-arrange to your heart’s content.

    It’s a bit like playing one of those games where you need to put numbered squares in the right order (I see a game coming once the API is official). It is very nice being able to put things where *you* want them and it would be even nicer if you had the ability to delete - not just move - some of the default apps/icons (I never use the YouTube one). The addition of multiple screens shows (to me at least) that Apple is serious about the upcoming API since you would not need the extra real estate just for Safari links. You can even move the four standard icons - Phone, Mail, Safari, iPod - at the bottom of the main display (the horrible, built-in Mail has been relegated to screen number four, along with YouTube)!

    Google Maps

    Google Maps has had very clean visual update and the keynote video no doubt shows off the features very well (I haven’t seen it yet). The cryptic direction/location search icon has been replaced with more intelligent named buttons at the bottom. If you’re lost, just press the locator icon in the lower-left corner and you get an approximation of where you are. AT&T/Google seemed to know I was within the city proper [Seattle] but that was about it. I’ll test it in other areas and provide updates if it seems to be any more accurate somewhere else in the greater Seattle area. If you want to toggle the visual display features (traffic, satellite view, etc) just hit the eye button in the lower-right. Apple has added a very slick, semi-transparent page-curl visual candy that really works well for this feature, although I can see it getting very old if it is callable from the API, since many developers will be tempted to use it [incorrectly].

    Safari

    Mobile Safari has a new “+” icon on the bottom toolbar and you use it to either make a bookmark, mail a link to someone or add the current page/viewport to your home screen. This option has made it very easy to add “application” icons for hosted Google Mail (their recent update is slick), Google Reader, mobile Twitter and Meebo. If you already have a URL open in a Mobile Safari “tab”, the home screen icon will switch you to it instead of creating a new one (nice). The bookmark icon used to be near the location text field and a search icon has replaced it which takes you directly to the search text field. Again, very subtle-yet-welcome change.

    SMS Messaging

    While I do not have much need to send SMS messages to multiple recipients, that feature seems to work as advertised (I annoyed a few folks just to test it). It will be interesting to see if the recently developed iPhone SMS backup applications account for what is probably a change in the underlying schema.

    While I would have liked Mobile iChat, an early API release and some other wish-list features, this 1.1.3 upgrade adds some very nice capabilities, tweaks some visual elements in the right way and sets the stage for the February API release. While I haven’t trolled the iPhone hack blogs yet, I’m sure we’ll be seeing the reports confirming that this does, in fact, cause some consternation in that group.

    The Google Mail folks are reporting on enhancements to IMAP mail integration with Mobile Mail and GMail. I’ll take a look at that once I get on Wi-Fi. It may be worth switching back to Mobile Mail, but the Mobile Safari interface is way too feature rich to toss aside. Similarly, I’ll take a look at the new lyrics feature of the iPod portion of the iPhone once I get back to my full music library.

    If you’ve found any additional features I’ve missed, have some suggestions for good Mobile Safari home screen additions or want to sound off on your 1.1.3 update experience, definitely drop a note in the comments.





  • MacBook 13-inch Toffee leather sleeve

    Toffee Leather Slipcover I recently got the red leather sleeve for the 13″ MacBook from Toffee. Toffee is an Australian company whom I hadn’t heard of until I saw this product. They make a whole array of sleeves like this one, even for the larger MacBook Pro.

    Material/Build quality

    There’s only so much you can say about leather - it’s a great material, and obviously has a level of class to it (and adds to the price). If you love the luxurious “feel” to leather (though it’s hard to describe), then you’ll love this case. It has the “rough” texture in the leather, and feels very thick and durable, like a very strong piece of material.

    The “toffee” name is embossed into the back, bottom left corner of the case. The inside stitches with white thread hold the entire thing together, and seem to be fairly strong. Now, I don’t know much about fabrics or sewing, but it seems to be built like the Jansport backpack that I’ve had since my high school days. We’re talking a good 8 years. I’d imagine, under fair day-to-day gentle use, this case will outlast the MacBook it’s meant for.

    Protection

    The durable leather feels thick enough, and from my light tests, seems that it could hold up to what I would imagine would be normal use. For instance, I stick my MacBook Pro into an Incase slipcover, which then goes into a bag with the power supply and a whole array of pens, pencils, and other things which could be pointy enough to damage the case. The Incase slipcover, however, allows for sharp objects to cause damage to the computer - I have a couple dings on my MacBook Pro to attest to that fact. However, it’s good at softening minor bumps, drops, and blunt hits.

    The Toffee leather slipcover is the other way around, it seems. My mechanical pencil wouldn’t be able to affect the computer (although the MacBook’s plastic is also better at avoiding that damage). However, the inside of the case isn’t as soft and “spongy” - which means it may not protect the computer from those bumps and bruises. This is just my guess… what, you thought I was going to test this theory out on my perfectly working computer?

    Where to buy

    I found my way over to the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue here in Chicago, but they only had the Incase and a couple other versions in stock - not the Toffee.

    Fortunately, you can find them on Toffee’s site. I got the red one for the MacBook, but they have numerous colors - even for the old iBook and Powerbook models. Not-so-fortunately, the price is a bit more than I’d like - $85. Now, this is a leather case, so the price makes sense. The 17″ cover costs $7 more.

    If you like the leather look (it’s pretty stylish), then the Toffee leather slipcovers will be a great fit for you. If you’re looking something cheaper, one of the other neoprene cases out there would probably be better, and are quite a bit cheaper.





  • VMware Virtualizing No-hack Leopard Server

    The guys at VMware are supremely dedicated to bringing the best support for Virtualization that they can to the Apple platform. I’ve played with both Parallels and Fusion and the choice of the latter was an easy one for me. But the one sticking point tends to be Apple’s licensing of their operating system: They don’t like it running on non-Apple hardware.

    But a change in licensing for the Server version of OS X has opened the door for virtualization. VMware is kicking it at Macworld San Francisco as I type this, and demoing their newly installed virtual machine, running OS X 10.5 Server all day long. They’re certain to clear that this is no hacked version of our beloved operating system, but a straight install from an Apple-licensed DVD, running within VMware’s Fusion Virtualization software. And Fusion supports 64 bit operating systems too, so Leopard Server is purring in all its glory.

    This is big news, as it effectively enables users to run multiple instances of Leopard Server on a single machine. For Mac-based businesses, the environmental savings of this alone are huge! (Think, reduced power requirements and reduced cooling costs, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.)

    If you’re at the Expo, check out the VMware booth and all the cool stuff they’ve got going on.







rss2email.ru       отписаться: http://www.rss2email.ru/unsubscribe.asp?c=6893&u=24004&r=311667163
управлять всей подпиской: http://www.rss2email.ru/manage.asp