Fresh Apple: The Apple Blog (7 сообщений)

На что подписаться? | Управление подпиской

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
рекомендовать друзьям >>

BurnAgain FS – Multi-session CD/DVD Burning
freeridecoding announced the release of version 1.0 of BurnAgain FS, a CD/DVD multisession burning utility for Mac OS X. Their software can re-mount CDs or DVDs as writeable volumes just like a hard disk. This means you can use the Finder to perform all operations on the volume and then burn changes (in ISO 9660 Rock Ridge standard format). BurnAgain FS is a complete re-work of BurnAgain DVD which lacked full Finder integration.

Program features include:
- ability to change the content like on a hard-drive
- ability to change disk title at each burn
- preservation of all OS X resource forks
- burns in a completely platform independent format
- fully usable with CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW
From my very limited testing with a DVD+RW I can say that the product behaves as advertised. I’ll run it through some more paces with some CD-R/RW media will report any quirks. You get 20 free burns and then need to pay $23 USD for a single user license if you want to keep using the product. Users of BurnAgain DVD (since January 1^st, 2008) receive a discount if they choose to upgrade.

Переслать
Boston Apple Store
Hiawatha Bray, a writer for The Boston Globe had an opportunity to tour the new Boston Apple Store set to open this Thursday, at 6:00 pm. Bray got to see a new innovation at this Apple store: a green roof. Not the “green” that means eco-friendly, but rather the green that means they have put grass on top of the roof. This may be Apple’s new ploy to stay on the good side of environmentalists. I have been on a roof that has plants, trees, and flowers, and it is quite a neat experience. Though people won’t be able to go up there, it is only visible from the windows of neighboring hotels, it is a nice touch.

Time and again, Apple serves up features like touch-screen controls that seem unnecessary, irrelevant — until you try them. Apple vice president Ron Johnson says the new store’s “green roof” is that kind of innovation. A rectangle of lush grass surrounds the skylight.

Bray was able to go up there, and Johnson says that even if that grass doesn’t make up “for the megawatts of electricity consumed by over a hundred Mac computers…if other new buildings adopt the same policy, it just might add up.” Regardless of its impact on the environment, it is a nice touch and will probably make those neighbors who see the roof enjoy the sight a little better.

[Via The Boston Globe Reuters Photo, Brian Snyder]

Переслать
We Have A Winner!

Congratulations to Nico Kaiser for correctly identifying the subtle change in the PGP security contest! See, it literally pays to read “stodgy” security articles.

Nico received a $20 iTunes gift certificate (since Apple no longer offers $15 e-mail iTunes gift certificates) for his eagle-eye (or ability to run diff or use Changes).

Переслать
Rumor Machine: The Next iPhone to Be Black Plastic?
This June will mark the one-year anniversary of the original release of the iPhone (though it was announced several months prior). Many Apple fans are chattering that this June’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco will be the time and place to announce a “3G” version of the iPhone, with a new sleek black-colored plastic design.

Among the additional claims: GPS built-in, 3G capability (which can be turned off), slightly thicker form-factor, and better signal strength (as a result of the plastic case, replacing the current model’s metal backing).

Some rumormongers even claim that such a device will appear as early as in the next week or so (due to recent rumored shortages of the current iPhone). It’s normal for product in the sales channels to be nearly or completely depleted before the unveiling of a new replacement model, and can sometimes (but not always) be an indicator of something new on the way. This may also be part of Apple’s plan to have a new model on-hand for developers on or before the conference, as the conference takes a strong turn in the direction of the iPhone this year.

The more conservative rumors peg the iPhone to be released in the same form factor, but with more capacity (32 GB, possibly 64 GB) and possibly a cheaper price tag, sometime this summer.

Переслать
TextMate and Subversion
I’ve used TextMate before, mostly for heavy development with PHP or Ruby on Rails, but it began to fall out of focus for me when I started using Panic’s Coda instead. I loved Coda’s interface more than any other text editor/web development application. But I lamented the ability to easily sync up my web work to my Subversion server, which I’ve fallen in love with. Xcode has the ability to manage versioning with Subversion in your projects, but this only works with the types of projects that Xcode handles.

I’m not a command-line kind of guy, even though I use Subversion. So I’ve tried to find some kind of GUI-based Subversion client. So far, the only one I’ve seen that’s available here and now was svnX. But the UI is irritating and confusing, making it pretty much unusable.

Then, I heard in passing from a friend that TextMate supports SVN. So I launched it up, and looked around. Sure enough, there it is - under the “Bundles” menu, and it’s the “Subversion” group. It has similar functionality to what Xcode has. Of course, you’ll want to import the project and perform the initial checkout via Terminal, but after that, you’ll be ready to go.

For easiest results, select the entire project’s folder from the “Open…” dialog in TextMate, to keep the whole thing at hand in TextMate.

Переслать
iPod Mishap

I updated my iPod Nano (3rd Gen) to software version 1.1.2 this weekend. I was even going to write an article about it, but it never happened. Today, I plugged in my iPod to charge it, and what did I find? iTunes was asking if I wanted to upgrade to software version 1.5.

I thought, “Wow, that was a very fast upgrade in just two days!” It turns out, iTunes was recognizing my iPod Nano as a 1st or 2nd Gen iPod (at least, that is what it looks like to me, correct me if I am wrong).

So, then this is where it gets annoying. I obviously did not install the software, and so I had to restore factory settings. As I look back now, I should have tried resetting the Nano before restoring it to factory settings.

The real bummer about restoring your iPod is that all the settings and everything are also reset (not to mention my high scores in Tetris and Klondike). I didn’t realize how many default settings I had changed since I bought this iPod a few months ago. There is still something missing, but I can’t figure it out.

Has anyone else experienced something like this? Is this unique, or did Apple not get all those bugs fixed in their latest update, and instead introduced a couple?

Переслать
Mac "Cocoa" Native Image Editors Updated
The two newest kids on the block, Pixelmator and Acorn, have both been updated to version 1.2, each carrying increased stability and new features. Ars Technica’s Infinite Loop blog has a post covering some new features - including Curves, Rulers, and more - clearly planned to keep pushing at the market currently dominated by Adobe Photoshop.

From the information I’ve read about Pixelmator’s latest update, some parts seem to have been rewritten to tie more closely into Core Image in Mac OS X, as well as to chase away some of the crashes I experienced.

Acorn adds stability to an otherwise already awesome app - great for the average Joe who doesn’t need all of the crazy complexity of a Photoshop-type app, but wants a slightly better tool than iPhoto provides (including awesome scripting capabilities, Web image tools, vector drawing, and easy manipulation of layers). These both kick Photoshop’s butt when it comes to processing ability - they use the GPU, rather than relying on the processor to perform operations.

I personally still use Photoshop for my day-to-day stuff, but anything to keep some nice competition on Adobe’s case is all right with me. If CS4 ends up being a mere upgrade to 64-bit for Windows only, with no real features, I’ll definitely consider jumping to Pixelmator when the time comes for an upgrade.

Переслать