Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (14 сообщений)

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  • DVD Jon breaks free of iTunes DRM

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    Today's Times Online reports that DVD Jon has introduced new software that allows you to break iTunes DRM and play back your iTunes purchases on any device. Apparently this new anti-DRM software works with an unsual analog-hole. It replays songs in fast-forward and copies the audio track. The Times articles says that this tool can convert about two hundred tracks per hour. More info is at the DoubleTwist site.

    At the moment the software is Windows only, but an OS X version is promised soon. Cool and possibly illegal stuff.
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  • A MacBook Air and an XO walk into my office...

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    It may sound like the intro to a joke that would only be funny at WWDC, but for a few minutes this afternoon I had both a shiny new MacBook Air 1.8 SSD and a not-so-new but still cute as a button XO laptop hanging out at my desk. If they were high school kids in a '50s movie musical, one would be nicknamed "Peewee" and the other one would have to be called "Slim."

    The MBA is moving on to its permanent home soon (the owner will be getting it next week, once we've -- ahem -- done our due diligence in testing), and the XO is on loan from iTransmogrify developer Joe Maller. It seemed like the thing to do in the presence of these two pieces of 21st century tech, each desirable in their own way, was to take a few snapshots for posterity.

    Gallery: Compare the Air to the XO

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  • LiveSpeakR to give your iPhone a boost

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    The speaker on the iPhone isn't too shabby, but that's not to say that users don't want to blast their music, right? Well, you can always buy some iPod/iPhone friendly external spears to plug your iPhone into, but some of us want portability! Erik Groset, the 23 year-old creator of the LiveSpeakR, thinks he has the device that will have iPhone users raving.

    The LiveSpeakR is unlike most iPhone speakers in that it clips onto the iPhone and plugs into the USB connector on the bottom. The speakers can then rotate to work with landscape and portrait view, and can also expand to fit nicely into your pocket. LiveSpeakR's are also shielded from RF interference, so you won't get the nasty GSM-speaker interference that you get with regular speakers.

    On the LiveSpeakR website, they say that the product will be available in "Summer 2008," as they are currently looking for manufacturing partners. Currently, there's no word on pricing.

    Thanks, Erik.
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  • Handbrake 0.9.2 now out & Leopard-only

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    If you're a fan of Handbrake -- the tool that allows you to extract your DVDs* into more portable formats (such as your iPod / iPhone / Apple TV) -- listen up. Handbrake has hit version 0.9.2!

    So what's changed from the last version, released back in October last year? Well, first-off the application is Leopard-only which may well irk some readers (debate away in the comments, folks). Throw in improved queueing, Sparkle updating for keeping Handbrake up-to-date, iPhone Anamorphic video, 'multi-track audio on Apple devices' and Elgato .eyetv file support. Of course, there's many, many, more enhancements that we're not mentioning, and the changelist shows there's plenty of new goodness in this release.

    All for the very excellent price of free, the new version is available from the Handbrake site for Mac, WIndows and Linux citizens.

    *It goes without saying that you should only use Handbrake for DVDs which you are licensed to do so. TUAW does not condone piracy.

    Thanks, Rouven!
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  • iPhoneDrive becomes MegaPhone, gets R/W Notes access

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    After getting C&D'd by Apple (a special moment in any Apple Developer's life), Ecamm changed the name of their iPhoneDrive product to MegaPhone. Today, I had an early peek at their new product and was delighted to find that it supports the creation of new notes and editing of existing notes on the Macintosh end.

    This is great news. Megaphone takes a feature (Notes) that was utterly and completely useless and turns it into a pretty cool way to carry around to-do lists and other text files with you.

    And there's even a way to get around the hideous Marker Felt issue: When editing a note, use the Edit > Fonts menu to pick a less eye-bending choice. You're still limited to the standard iPhone choices (Helvetica, Courier, Arial, etc) but you no longer have to deal with the M.F. font.

    The new version also adds batch delete for SMS and phone call logs so you can free up some memory if you're running against the iPhone's log limits.

    Power user tip: Drag an HTML file into the window with the other notes, and MegaPhone adds it as a new note. The iPhone interprets and displays the HTML properly. I tried it out with one of my 3000-word O'Reilly articles with lots of code and headers and it worked fine (no way to click a link though -- but it will load images and online div sections from the web, according to Ecamm).

    There is a demo of MegaPhone available, while a full version will cost you $19.95.


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  • MacBook and MacBookPro get keyboard update

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    Today Apple released a keyboard update for both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro notebooks. In regular Apple style, their release notes are not extremely profuse, "This MacBook and MacBook Pro firmware update addresses an issue where the first key press may be ignored if the computer has been sitting idle. It also addresses some other issues."

    Please note, this is a firmware upgrade that will install an application in the utilities folder that you will then, in turn, need to open and follow the on-screen instructions. For a list of MacBooks that may need the update, you can look at the Apple support note.

    If you computer has been affect by these issues, or if you are just inclined to installing all Apple updates, you can get this update by opening Software Update (Apple Menu > Software Update) or by downloading the installer package from the Apple Support downloads site.


    Thanks to everyone that sent this in!
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  • Torchwood, Ashes to Ashes: Getting your goodies more legally

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    Earlier today, Nik posted about the new BBC shows on iTunes. For the equivalent of about $3.75 each, you can download and purchase your UK fix -- Gene Hunt, Captain Jack, whatever -- assuming you have a way to create and fund a UK iTunes account. For now, the best way seems to be eBay. A quick search of iTunes UK produced a half-dozen auctions, most run by the same vendor.

    A £15 iTunes card (good for about 7 episodes) seems to be running in the low $20's but one went recently for $61--I'm guessing the buyer thought he was buying in dollars not pounds because $31 is not an unreasonable price, while £31 is. If buying, make sure you figure out in advance whether you'll be shipped the card (which can run as high as £5!!) or sent the code by email (should be free).

    If you already have an unfunded iTunes UK account (google for it), you might be able to find a friend to send you an email-based gift certificate. These start at £5 and go up to £75. If you can work out a deal via PayPal, you could pay your friend, for example, 110% of the face price to cover time and expenses.

    I actually did try buying a card directly from the UK Apple online store (free shipping!) but it balked at my US address. Do you have a better way to fund a foreign account? Let us know in the comments.

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  • Cover Stream brings the old CoverFlow back

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    I'm sure I'm not alone on this one, but I remember when CoverFlow was basically just a tech demo, and not, you know, the centerpiece of OS X's UI. But of course when Apple picked up the little app to use it for everything else, we lost it -- even if you wanted to use the old simple album-browsing app (and now I'm actually regretting deleting it off of my old PowerBook), you're out of luck.

    Unless you use Cover Stream, an iTunes helper app that recreates the old CoverFlow interface outside of iTunes. It's even incorporated the "flip-browsing" that you can do on the iPhone, where you just flip the art over to choose a specific track to play. As for how it actually works with iTunes, we can't say, but at least that CoverFlow interface is still available unofficially.

    By the way, I'm planning on doing a roundup (similar to the alarm clock one) of iTunes helper apps like this, so if there are any you want to see included, drop a note here in the comments. I have a few in mind already, but suggestions are welcome.

    [Via MacMinute]
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  • Blanc interviews Gruber

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    Shawn Blanc has wrapped up his series of great software reviews, and now dives into the scariest of waters: those of the major minds in Mac journalism. And he goes first after the biggest shark in the ocean (or at least the one with the sharpest teeth), everyone's favorite Daring Fireball, John Gruber.

    The interview is first about interviews, and then goes on to cover Gruber's past (he worked with Bare Bones and Joyent before going on to write the blog full time). Gruber also gives out some great tips for writers, from things as practical as setting a goal the night before to guide your workday and always drinking coffee black, to ephemeral tips like how to become a better writer without actually writing anything (save about a dozen books' worth of message boards and blog posts).

    Gruber also talks specifically about Daring Fireball, his favorite stuff on the site, and where he wants to take it, and how far. Definitely a great read -- as always, Shawn makes sure to hit on all the important notes and leave no stone unturned, and Gruber reveals lots of insight on what it's like to put his posts and the Linked List together every day.
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  • Changes hits 1.0

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    Ian Baird at Skorpiostech has been hard at work polishing up Changes, the new OS X directory comparison and file differencing utility, for a 1.0 release. We covered the beta at the end of last year and the program received a significant amount of feedback from testers in the months following, producing a high-power app that makes managing the differences between files and folders a breeze.

    Changes is Leopard-only and leverages Core Animation and Quick Look for a refined user experience. If you're a FileMerge user, you'll probably find the power and ease-of-use of Changes to be a welcome step forward. And it fits into just about any workflow with a CLI utility, a TextMate bundle, BBEdit menu scripts, TextWrangler menu scripts, XCode integration and F-Script support, in addition to Subversion, CVS, Mercurial, git, Perforce and other SCM systems. And its support for MacFUSE mounted volumes is ready for prime time.

    Ian also tells us he's looking for a clever tagline for Changes (think BBEdit's "It doesn't suck"). He's given TUAW 2 free licenses to award to the best contributors, so take a stab at it in the comments! And for those less inclined to witty prose, Ian's offering $10 off of the $39.95 price tag (25%) with the coupon code TUAW, which is valid for the next 2 weeks.

    You can get a fully-functional, 15-day trial and licenses are available for purchase starting today.

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  • Smart Scroll X updated for Leopard

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    The iPhone may definitely have people jealous when it comes to the scrolling and multi-touch gestures -- many people may very well want this feature on a Mac. Well, with Smart Scroll X, you can get one step closer to the iPhone's scrolling feature. The "Super Wheel" gives your Mac's trackpad an iPhone-like scrolling feature. It allows you to control many different trackpad setting with the simple system preferences plug-in. Another cool feature is the "Grab Scroll," which allows you to grab a window and "fling" it across the screen.

    Smart Scroll X was rated 4/5 by Macworld's Mac Gems. It was also recently updated to work with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.2. Smart Scroll is avaiable for $19 from the developer's website; a free trial is also available.
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  • Aperture to include plugin support?

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    While everyone is still getting acclimated to the new Aperture 2, an overview published at Aperture Users Professional Network revealed an interesting tidbit that Apple itself has yet to talk much about. According to David Schloss, "Apple has added the ability to create editing plug-ins for Aperture."

    Aperture has only supported export plugins thus far, so this is particularly interesting. It opens up the possibility of more pixel-level editing in Aperture from third-party plugins, even if Apple itself doesn't want to crowd Adobe's Photoshop turf. As Schloss notes, this will quite likely "revolutionize the program" in the long run. Now if only Apple would publish the details and let the developers get to work.

    [via NSLog();]
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  • iTunes: Free Tuesday

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    Once again, TUAW is pleased to present you with a selection of free songs and videos from around the world. Many of these iTMS items won't be free for long, so grab your copies before the week is up. And don't forget: If you want to buy these on your iPhone or iPod touch, make sure to sign into your account in iTunes before you sync.

    Continue reading iTunes: Free Tuesday

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  • American Idol comes to iTunes

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    OK, guilty pleasure alert -- I kind of love American Idol. In fact, I have previously referred to it as, "my crack." I even named my MacBook, "Simon" because it was purchased with money I made writing about the show last season (and because I am a GIGANTIC dork). And even though I'm not professionally covering the show this year, I remain a huge fan. Hey, we're all allowed to have our vices, and looking at the TV ratings, millions of other people are just as lame as me.

    Last year, performances and "singles" from the #1 show on television didn't come to iTunes until AFTER the season had ended. I don't know if it was because Apple and Fox couldn't work out an agreement early enough (iTunes did feature the Idol Gives Back charity singles/videos), or what, but I have a feeling a lot of potential money was lost by not having performances available on iTunes earlier. This year, iTunes is in on the action from the very beginning.

    Starting this week, the audio performances from the Top 24 contestants will be available on iTunes for $.99 a piece. Starting March 11, the full video performances from the the Top 12 finalists will be available for $1.99 a piece. Fans can even "pre-order" performances from their favorite contestants from within iTunes, and those songs or videos will be automatically downloaded the day after the show airs.

    iTunes is also providing, in their words, "exclusive direct links from the free streaming performance videos on americanidol.com".

    If they follow last year's trend, the contestant's will record their chosen song each week in a studio BEFORE performing live on the show, and that audio file will be available the next day. The video footage will be from the live performance and from slightly different angles than what is used for the television broadcast.

    The Top 24 starts tonight, meaning the first batch of downloads will be available tomorrow.
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