Saturday, January 5, 2008

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (9 сообщений)

 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 >>

  • Transmission shifts into 1st gear

    Filed under: , ,

    Transmission, long available in beta form, is one of my favorite torrent clients. BitTorrent, as you probably know, is a way to transfer or share files over the internet, for free, using a 'swarm' model to speed files along. Transmission makes the downloading of those files quite stunning, with its simplicity and ease of use. Transmission's beautiful user interface goes nicely with Leopard, as it has been redesigned; not to mention, it's 100% Leopard compatible. Some of the new updates in version 1.0 include:
    • Group labeling, filtering, and sorting
    • Leopard: Time Machine will ignore incomplete downloads
    • Display remaining time for seeding transfers
    • Ability to set global and per-torrent number of connections
    Overall, this looks like a very nice release. It is available right now, for free, from the Transmission website.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • Delete iCal duplicate appointments

    Filed under: , ,

    Delete iCal DuplicatesIsn't it wonderful that Address Book has a function built right in that allows you to merge duplicate entries? This becomes particularly valuable if you use a contact synchronization tool such as Plaxo. It's so useful, you'd think that iCal would have something similar. As you know, if you've run into the problem of having multiple duplicate appointments polluting your iCal calendar, there's nothing built in that will help you out of your mess.

    Luckily, John Maisey has created both Leopard and Tiger versions of an AppleScript that will sift through the calendar of your choice and kill off duplicate appointments. Don't be alarmed if it doesn't appear to be doing anything when you first run it. In our brief test, it took about 13 seconds to delete 15 duplicate entries, so this script is no speed demon. But what it lacks in terms of speed, it more than makes up in utility.

    As with any script or utility that deletes data, be smart and back up your iCal data before you try it.

    [Via Lifehacker]
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • Apple stock price dips in January rollercoaster

    Filed under: , , , , ,

    In our last-of-2007 podcast, our resident AAPL-watcher Mike Rose pointed out Apple's exceptional fiscal performance as one of the most important stories of the year. Quite rightly so: Apple had, by all accounts, a phenomenal year. There's even predictions from analysts of AAPL reaching the frankly dizzying heights of $300 - $600 in the next 18 months - we'll see how those fare, folks.

    With the financial analysts talking about Apple stock's seemingly rosy future, it's perhaps surprising news that AAPL has lost 7.5% (dropping nearly $15) just today. That's about $12 billion knocked off Apple's market cap. With Macworld around the corner, Apple stock is the subject of much speculation already - both for us covering the 'Keynote Index Fund' here at TUAW and over at Wired (to mention but a few). Undoubtedly, there's folks looking to partake in a little daytrading or trading over the duration of the entire Macworld week. With that in mind, might the Feds and SEC be more than interested in the interaction between the keynote (including its audience, one might fathom) and the effect it has on Wall Street?

    For ongoing coverage of AAPL, check out our colleagues' posts at Blogging Stocks:AAPL.

    Disclaimer: The points mentioned above come from a personal, and strictly non-professional, opinion, and should not be considered investment advice. For advice on stocks and investments, always seek advice from a regulated financial advice professional.
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • French buy 70,000 iPhones in first month

    Filed under: ,

    After selling 30,000 iPhones in the first five days, Orange reports this week that 70,000 iPhones were purchased in the first month. Nearly half (48%) went to new Orange customers, and 3,500 were sold unlocked.

    I'm a bit surprised that the number of unlocked phones sold isn't higher. Plus, if Orange sold 30,000 in the first five days and an additional 40,000 over the following three weeks, than that's a significant drop in sales. Having gone on sale just before the holidays (November 29th), I thought sales would have been more consistent.

    It will be interesting to hear what numbers Steve shares at Macworld.
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • A (slightly) simpler command-line Spotlight search

    Filed under:

    Erica mentioned mdfind a little while ago. It's not a brand new tool, but there hasn't been a great deal of discussion surrounding it. For shell scripters and Terminal junkies, it's a goldmine of search goodness that can make you never want to key out find . -name "letsgogetcoffeewhilewewait.rb" or even locate didcronupdatethedb.yet again.

    There are two mdfind options mentioned at Mac OS X Hints that are worth a mention, one found only in the man page, and one found only in the usage info. The former being "-interpret", which allows the advanced Spotlight query syntax to be used on the command line as if typed into the Spotlight window, turning mdfind "kMDItemContentType == 'public.jpeg'" into mdfind -interpret "kind:jpeg". Its opposing force would be "-literal", which forces a literal interpretation of the query string. Any qualified Spotlight query should be usable with "-interpret", so go ahead with mdfind -interpret "kind:image flash:1 modified:<=1/1/08 ex-girlfriend" to find those late-night pictures of last year's special someone. That would take a lot of metadata work to pull off without "-interpret".

    The second option mentioned isn't in the man page, but you'll see it in the usage info if you run mdfind with no parameters. It's the "-s" option that loads saved searches. It will look in ~/Library/Saved Searches unless a path is specified. So you can save a search in Spotlight called "PDFs from yesterday" and run mdfind -s "PDFs from yesterday" to launch the same search at the command line. See, I had to throw a "normal" search in there to keep you on your toes.

    Terminal jockeys can mix these up with a few pipes, stir in some perl and sprinkle in a little awk to get some really great Spotlight soufflé. Of course, if you don't like the command line and you're still reading this, you're a downright hardy trooper and I commend you. Go have a cup of coffee, you deserve it.

    [via Mac OS X Hints]
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • Apple hit with antitrust lawsuit

    Filed under: , , ,

    Information Week is reporting that Apple has been accused of monopolizing the online music industry in an antitrust lawsuit. Specifically, the suit states that Apple has placed "...unneeded and unjustifiable technological restrictions on its most popular products in an effort to restrict consumer choice, and to restrain what little remains of its competition in the digital music markets."

    Here we go again with "restricting consumer choice." First of all, no one is being forced to use iTunes or an iPod. But, what if you want to use iTunes with a player other than an iPod? Or, what if you want to use an iPod but not the iTunes Store?

    Mac users can choose from a number of players that work with iTunes, including the Nomad Jukebox, SonicBLUE Rio and Nakamichi SoundSpace 2. It's true that music purchased from iTunes will not play on these devices (unless it's from the growing library of DRM-free songs), but Mp3 files and unprotected AAC files will.

    For iPod users looking beyond the iTunes Store, there's the Amazon Mp3 Store. In some ways, in fact, the Amazon Store is more appealing than iTunes: all of their tracks are DRM-free and many are cheaper.

    Of course these aren't perfect solutions. To get the most out of iTunes and an iPod, one must use them in conjunction. However, this suit feels like sour grapes: punishing Apple for their success. There's a difference between dominating a market and preventing others from succeeding. So far, no one has created a more successful alternative and that's not Apple's fault.

    Thanks, Dave.
    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • Ask TUAW: Announcing Caller ID, Time Machine, iTunes syncing, Bonjour and more

    Filed under: , ,

    In the first Ask TUAW of the new year we'll tackle questions on using a Mac to announce Caller ID information, stopping iTunes from auto syncing an iPod/iPhone, Time Machine, printing from Windows with Bonjour and more.

    As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. And now to the questions!

    Continue reading Ask TUAW: Announcing Caller ID, Time Machine, iTunes syncing, Bonjour and more

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • Things public preview released

    Filed under: ,

    Things, the up-and-coming darling of the über-productive, due-date-defying, thing-doing GTD crowd has released a public preview today. And I, as your hyphen-wielding blogger, am duly excited.

    A few of us here at TUAW have been playing with the private alpha of Things for a while. Things provides a unique and flexible way to handle tasks that can be refreshing for those who didn't quite get the whole GTD thing the first time around. Of course, you can adhere to strict GTD principles with it, but you can also forge a system that works for you using its tagging system and flexible project management tools. It even has some delegation capabilities that other GTD apps are lacking right now. Plus, it's downright pretty.

    What Things is noticeably lacking at this point is a really great means of integrating with Mail and AppleScript support. Of course, if there were AppleScript support, Mail support would be a cinch. You can pop up the quick entry window with a hotkey and drag a Mail 3.1 message onto the notes section to create a link to that email; I'd just like to be able to incorporate Mail-Act-On or any faster means of getting my email-based tasks into my task manager.

    Overall, this release from Cultured Code is very buzzworthy, both in the GTD community and for those on the periphery. If you're feeling like being productive, take it for a spin.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments





  • See your sounds with AudioFinder 4.7

    Filed under: ,

    AudioFinder fits a niche that I admittedly don't have a lot of experience in, but I just gave version 4.7 a test run and I'm impressed. OK, so it got me with its not-bad looks to start with, which gave it a leg up on most of the other prosumer-level audio asset managers I've played with. But it quickly lived up to its moniker with Finder-like ease-of-use and powerful features made simple.

    I loved that it integrated completely with Finder, and that it provided an interface for viewing audio that was as powerful as anything I've seen for graphics previews. I haven't seen any app at any price do this as simply. A keyboard in the main window lets you pitch sounds in realtime, as well as run them through AudioUnits. It essentially has a full editor built into the "Finder" panel that is powerful without being domineering.

    There is a free level (sound browsing only) available if you request an activation code. The list price for full activation is $69.95 and the demo of 4.7 is available for download. At the time of this writing the website still says the download is version 4.6.3, but it's not. I checked, just for you.

    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