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- Keywords Won't Fix App Store Search
AppleInsider reports on Apple’s plodding efforts to fix the biggest problem with the App Store (besides the mercurial and arguably unfair approval process), finding stuff.
Through iTunes Connect, the submission service for the App Store, developers may now use keywords totaling 255 characters.
“It is important to enter keywords for all applications as soon as possible so your application can continue to be successfully located on the App Store,” the update from Apple reads. “Keywords can be updated with the submission of a new binary.”
With the unrivaled success of the App Store and its alleged 65,000 apps, it has become harder and harder for consumers to find what they are looking for. This was noted by Apple COO Tim Cook at the conference call for last quarter.
We are always looking for ways to categorize apps differently, and we do have some ideas in this area. As you know, today we do it by type of app and also show popular apps and top-selling apps, etc. We realize there's opportunity for further improvement and are working on that.
Unfortunately, keywords are probably not the answer. Unless Apple closely regulates the system, unscrupulous developers could abuse keywords in the same way meta tags are abused for web search. Misleading keywords boosts ranking in search results, be it on the web or at the App Store. Of course, keywords are easy to implement for Apple, but if the company is looking for a simple and effective improvement to search, the browse function is a better choice.
Browsing games by popularity
Under Quick Links, in the right sidebar of iTunes Store home screen, Browse allows for quick and easy searching of the App Store via three categories: iTunes Store, Category and Subcategory. Using App Store → Games → All shows a list of 2500 items, which can the be sorted by column. It also includes the ability to add columns, like Popularity. The biggest drawback is that only one column can be used for sorting at a time, so you can’t search for, as an example, most popular paid games.
One could easily imagine greater granularity — a few more categories and sorting by multiple columns. More importantly, Apple would be in control of the search system, rather than developers who might find it hard to resist gaming keywords for fun and profit.
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Переслать - Take Our Survey for a Chance to Win a $50 Gift Certificate From Amazon.com
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Переслать - Exclusive Eye-Fi Geo Card Comes to Apple Stores
I’ve always been tempted to try out an Eye-Fi SD flash memory card, which allows you to wirelessly upload photos directly from your camera to a nearby Mac or PC on the same network. Perhaps a bit anachronistically, since they seem to be far and away the leading digital memory format, but I don’t actually have a camera that uses SD. What with the price of point-and-shoots these days, I may soon rectify that situation, and Apple’s just given me another incentive.
As of today, Apple Stores (online and retail) will be the exclusive distributor of the brand new Eye-Fi Geo 2GB SD card. As its name implies, it will allow you to geotag your photos in addition to transferring them wirelessly to your computer. The new geotagging feature will allow you to use the Places feature in iPhoto ‘09 by including metadata with every picture taken on the card about where it was shot.
Out of the box, the iPhone supports geotagging, but it isn’t yet a feature often included in most consumer digital cameras. The limited availability of the Eye-Fi Geo suggests that the reason why is that Apple is the only consumer photo library application to foreground geotagging capabilities. If you’d rather not pay a premium for the fancy new card, which costs $60 and only offers 2GB of storage, you can always manually enter location information into iPhoto after you’ve uploaded your photos.
In addition to geotagging, the Eye-Fi Geo offers the option to upload directly to MobileMe galleries or to various other social-networking sites, but for an additional $10 fee, which presumably activates a built-in software feature. I’ve yet to really use the geotagging features of iPhoto, but this card, and the added convenience of wireless uploading, has me mighty tempted to give it a try. Anyone picking one up and eager to share their impressions?
Переслать - Snow Leopard, Finely tuned
While PC users sweat, complain and ponder which over-priced version of Windows 7 they'll be forced into buying to fix everything wrong with Vista, most Mac users are likely licking their chops at what Snow Leopard will bring, and how little it will cost.
You've heard it's cheaper, faster and even more stable than ever before. Though Apple has stated that, beyond a few high-profile features like a new version of Quicktime, Snow Leopard is more of a maintenance upgrade for Leopard users, rather than the feature-packed blockbuster we're normally used to with a full version number upgrade. You might call Snow Leopard a comprehensive tune-up.
As is almost always the case with Apple, though, it's those little tune-ups to Mac OS X that can make all the difference in your daily computing experience. If you happened upon the Snow Leopard Enhancements and Refinements page on Apple's Web site, you no doubt found at least a handful of things that brings a smile to your face.
Sure, I'm looking forward to a speedier, fully-Cocoa Finder, a fancy new version of Quicktime, and a faster, much smaller OS X installation just as much as the next guy. But of much more interest to me are all of the minor tweaks that will make more of an impact in my daily routine.
Gamma Update
For starters, and one thing near and dear to my heart; Apple has chosen to change the default Gamma from 1.8 to 2.2. For many users the benefit may not be obvious. If you've ever noticed photos and graphics on the Web that appear much lighter or washed out than the ones you have on your Mac, it's because Windows, the Internet, and most television content standardized on Gamma 2.2 long ago. With Snow Leopard, Mac users will enjoy more consistent color across platforms by default.
Finer Finder
iStat calendar menu feature
The Finder's menu bar clock will soon show the date alongside the time. You can do this now with a finicky hack, but it'll be handy to turn it on and off with the click of a button. One thing I wish Apple would add here is the ability to display a small calendar with clickable dates that launch iCal without using any third-party utilities, such as iStat. Baby steps, I guess.
Another minor Finder annoyance are the window sidebar headers: Search For, Devices and Places. They can be turned off in Snow Leopard. I always found them to be uselessly taking up space, since I don't use the search feature, and rarely require Devices and Places. This leaves room for three more folder shortcuts in my sidebar without resizing the window. Adjusting the size of icons via a small slider in every Finder window, saving a trip to the View options window, will be a small, but welcome addition as well.
Apps and Utilities
iChat will see numerous improvements under Snow Leopard such as a lower bandwidth requirement, as will Preview, which will offer improved image scaling and an annotation toolbar. Preview is one of those apps that most users overlook. But if you take the time to investigate, you'll find it to be quite a powerful and useful little app. For many consumer users, there's no need to download Acrobat Reader because Preview actually offers more features.
File sharing via Airport Express will be improved for local network users. If you have a Mac acting as a file server over an Airport network, it will continue to share those files, even if the host Mac goes into sleep mode. And now your Airport strength meter will display the signal strength of all available networks before you connect to them. Nice!
Internet Improvements
Safari isn’t the only Internet app Apple has been working on. Mail and iCal have received some much-welcomed improvements, too. Mail's ability to reorder mailboxes in the sidebar is enough to quench my thirst alone, but I won't complain about the speedier display of messages, and improved HTML mail composition thrown-in for good measure. iCal will also make it easier to set up your Gmail or Yahoo calendars, and being forced to open a new inspector window for each task will be a thing of the past. While business users will surely love Microsoft Exchange support, most-everyone else could care less; these modest changes will give everyone something to feel warm and fuzzy about.
In Conclusion
While none of these features are game-changing, they're all extremely useful. In my eyes, they're much more sexy than Cocoa Finder, OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch, smaller installation size, and the other big-ticket items. These little features are the ones I'll interact with on a daily basis, along with faster start-up and shut-down times. I liken it to the cup-holder locations in a new car — it doesn't mean a lot on its own, but if done poorly can certainly sway your buying decision whether you realize it or not.
For a $29 upgrade price for Leopard users ($169 for non-Leopard users), you're getting some stunning under-the-hood improvements, and some pretty darn nice refinements that may not be typical Apple front-page news, but are incredibly useful. Finely tuned indeed.
Переслать - Official Apple iDisk App Finally Released
It was announced alongside iPhone OS 3.0, and its absence has been a conspicuous, if minor, cause for analyst concern. Today, though, Apple finally released its official MobileMe iDisk app for download via the App Store. As was announced previously, the app allows iPhone and iPod touch users to wirelessly share and view files from their MobileMe iDisk.
Note that in order to use MobileMe iDisk, you must have a MobileMe account, although people who sign up for the 60-day free trial can get a full taste of what the app provides without paying the full price of admission.
The interface is clean and simple, as you’d expect from a native iPhone app, and there are some nice extras over and above what similar third-party applications, like OneDisk, offer. For example, when loading larger documents for viewing, the iDisk app provides an estimated time remaining in addition to a progress bar representing the file download. It’s horribly inaccurate, of course, but what estimated time remaining dialog isn’t?
The big draw for frequent iDisk users is the ability, from within the iPhone app, to share any files stored in their MobileMe account with others through email. Clicking the “Share” button brings up an email compose dialog, complete with options to set an expiry date and password for added security. Recipients won’t need to be MobileMe users to access the shared file, either. You can also add the Public Folders of other members for browsing, if you know of any. Finally, you can access all your shared documents at any time and stop sharing with only two clicks.
Still not sure what caused the lengthy delay, but as a MobileMe subscriber, I’m glad this free app has finally arrived.
Переслать - Apple Claims Jailbreaking Could Disable Transmission Towers
Apple is constantly fighting a losing battle with jailbreakers on the hardware and software front, issuing updates that are quickly analyzed and broken by the Dev Team and other highly motivated individuals.
Recently, they’ve been trying to cut off the jailbreak community from another angle: by making it illegal to unofficially alter their handsets. In order to get the U.S. Copyright Office to see things their way, they told them recently (PDF) that the act of jailbreaking could actually cause transmission towers to fail.
I’m pretty confident that this is little more than a sensationalist scare tactic on Apple’s part, but the accusations make for pretty heavy reading. Not only could they take out transmission towers, but they also might be able to get around paying for calls (gasp!) and conduct denial-of-service attacks to purposefully crash the tower. As far as I know, none of these things have ever actually happened, but kudos to Apple for giving people ideas.
Apple argues that since jailbreaking gives users access to the OS code, it could be used to allow users to access the baseband process (BBP) and make changes to the device’s unique exclusive chip identifier (ECID). By changing that number, users could then either make calls anonymously, or even assign responsibility for calls to another ECID, the registered user of which would then be responsible for charges.
In their filing with the Copyright Office, Apple even went so far as to suggest what such a hack might be used for: “With access to the BBP via jailbreaking, hackers may be able to change the ECID, which in turn can enable phone calls to be made anonymously (this would be desirable to drug dealers, for example) or charges for the calls to be avoided.” Bringing up the specter of the war on drugs in the U.S. clearly shows that Apple knows what buttons to push to get its way.
As PCWorld rightly points out, network operators rely on SIM information, not the ECID, in order to identify customers for billing and liability purposes. Unlike the BBP, jailbreakers cannot access and change their SIM card information, so in theory all “drug dealers” would still be identifiable via their carrier, even if Apple couldn’t pinpoint exactly which iPhone they were using. Still, the denial-of-service attack threat still does pose a potential threat, in theory.
Apple’s argument is a response to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) claim that the iPhone jailbreak lock is invalid from a copyright perspective, and only serves to stifle the distribution of independent third-party applications. The U.S. Copyright Office is expected to rule either way later this year.
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Переслать - Workaround: iTunes Video and Dual Screens
Like a lot of folks out there, I run dual monitors on my Mac. In my home office where there’s no TV, it’s nice to occasionally dedicate one of the screens to playing movies while I continue working away on the other.
There’s an inherent problem in running iTunes in this kind of setup, though, that has been a thorn in my side for a long time. Specifically, the lack of advanced support for full screen playback.
The Problem
Using iTunes to watch a video in full screen on a second monitor blacks out the first monitor as well, rendering it useless. This is a problem. The primary reason people extend their desktop to a second monitor is to increase productivity by giving them more screen real estate to manage more windows and applications. Some research shows that the boost to productivity can be as much as 42 percent. Not surprisingly, that number drops to zero when you want to use iTunes to watch full screen video on one monitor while you continue to work on the other.
Quicktime addressed this problem a while ago, as did a number of other OS X video players. I’ve no idea why Apple would leave this type of functionality out of iTunes. Perhaps it’s being planned as part of some future update, perhaps they’re worried about people hooking up their HDTV and eating into the AppleTV market. Either way, while we wait for Apple to sort it all out, I threw together a little AppleScript as a workaround.
The Solution
Since Quicktime already gives us some advanced configuration options when it comes to fullscreen playback, lets take advantage of those. Open up Quicktime preferences and deselect the option to show background color on all displays, then choose the default screen you’d like to use for playback.
Download this script and add it into your
~/Library/iTunes/Scriptsfolder. The script simply grabs the currently selected item in iTunes, hands it off to QuickTime, and tells it to start playing the file in fullscreen mode. Once you have the script added to iTunes, open up the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane and create a new shortcut for the script. Choose iTunes as the Application and in Menu Title enter the name of the script (”dualscreen” by default), then choose a shortcut.Once that’s done, you’re all set. Just browse to and select the movie you want to play in iTunes, hit your shortcut key and AppleScript and Quicktime will take care of the rest. You’ll have beautiful full screen video on one display and on the other you’ll have all the space you want to ignore the work you should be doing but aren’t because you’re to busy watching the movie on the other screen.
Переслать - Zii Egg Could Give the iPhone and iPod touch Some Real Competition
It’s the world’s first handheld StemCell Computer. It sports 1080p HD output, X-Fi Audio processing, a ten-point multi-gesture capacitive touchscreen, text-to-speech engine and expandable SDHC memory. It’s got lots more, too.
And it’s running Android.
In short, it’s a mobile device that beats the pants off the iPod touch — in hard, cold specs, at the very least. The Egg is built using the new wave of multimedia hardware and software from ZiiLABS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology. Here’s the blurb from the official website.
“The Zii EGG is an energy efficient handheld StemCell Computer based on the powerful ZiiLABS ZMS-05 media-rich applications processor. Besides its multi-touch 3.5-inch LCD screen, it can also output HD video at up to 1080p. The ZMS-05's 24 floating-point processors deliver up to 8 GFLOPS of raw processing power, while the StemCell Computing's flexible architecture allows stunning display of 3D graphics on a small handheld battery powered device.”
Although the Egg isn’t a mobile phone, it soon could be. ZiiLABS is allowing third parties to develop for and re-brand the device. The only thing stopping this from being a mobile phone is a cellular transceiver, and they’re not so hard to find. And because it already runs Google’s Android operating system, it won’t take a lot of software jiggery-pokery to get the thing making calls.
Even without cellphone functionality, the current specs of the Zii Egg put the iPod touch to shame. And with the Zii Plaszma and Android platforms as a foundation (both of which are open-source and free, therefore very attractive to OEM’s in today’s economic climate) the Egg promises real future innovation and creativity in a market that has, since 2007, only been playing catch-up with Apple. Using the Egg, Apple’s competitors might get their 15 minutes of fame. Remember, this is a first-generation release that already boasts more bells and whistles than any of the top devices already available on the market. OEM’s have a great starting-point, and they didn’t have to do any of that pesky, expensive R&D work to get to it.
Although you can’t buy it in the shops, it is available to developers and OEM’s as part of a pre-order kit for a paltry $399. For a device that truly comes close to the iPhone in size, style, function and development promise, this may be the first to truly deserve the title “iPhone Killer.”
Переслать - Computer Books: How Do You Learn Software In-Depth?
In the analysis of computer book sales, two things seem to be clear:
- People want to learn how to write programs on the Mac
- People don’t want to learn how to use programs on the Mac (or PC, for that matter)
The latter is especially interesting to me. Though my time in support taught me well about RTFM syndrome, there were always certain people interested in learning to use software to its fullest. This group understood that reviewing documentation was likely the best way to do that.
But expectations have changed. Usage should now be obvious or a lot of people won’t bother. I don’t mind the expectation that a manual shouldn’t be required to start using software right away. In fact, I like that attitude because developers must now give more care to their user interfaces. However, even in the best interfaces there are limits.
For my own usage, I bought an iWork 08 book to get a better feel for that suite of programs. Additionally, I downloaded a lengthy third-party Aperture guide to understand the various tools better.
I’m curious, at what point have you crossed the threshold, and either studied the full documentation or bought a supplemental book to learn a program in more depth?
Переслать - Microsoft Retail Store Locations Announced
The locations of the first Microsoft Retail Stores have been announced. Microsoft’s foray into brick-and-mortar retail will begin in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Viejo, Calif., CNET News‘ Ina Fried reported in an article yesterday.
Microsoft confirmed it has signed leases for both locations, where it expects to open its retail stores in the fall. Microsoft spokeswoman Kim Stocks said:
“Over a billion people use our products every day yet we don’t have a way to directly connect with them. We see the physical stores, as well as a consistent online experience, helping that.
“Our customers have told us three things — they want a more simplified buying option for PCs and devices, great technology, and competitive prices and knowledgeable staff.”
Umm, isn’t that four things, Kim?
I’m not surprised she seems confused. If she read the 124-page Retail Store Proposal I reported on this week, she’s probably still a little dazed. I know I was.
I have only two questions: Will the first store be introduced to us by Steve Ballmer, will Microsoft forge ahead with its blatantly Apple-inspired “Guru Bar,” and will you be standing in line hours before the grand opening?
Переслать - SpotInside: A Solid Spotlight Alternative
I have a love-hate relationship with Spotlight, OS X’s convenient and useful, but immensely frustrating search utility. Apple introduced Spotlight with OS X 10.4 Tiger, and tweaked it considerably in OS 10.5 Leopard.
Having a search engine ready and waiting all the time is seductive, and Spotlight is nice to have, but falls short of Apple’s "Find anything, anywhere, fast" claim, and I particularly dislike its find-as-you-type initiating searches from the first keystroke. I was told I wouldn’t mind any more once I got an Intel Mac. Well, I now have a Core 2 Duo and still mind.
“Too Much Information”
Spotlight is also afflicted with a Google-esque “too much information” syndrome, even with a fair bit of my hard drive’s contents excluded from indexing. It also doesn’t do simple file name searches.
No path information is revealed in Spotlight’s results window. You must resort to Get Info or Reveal in Finder. No preview of file contents either, you can’t refine your search within results, and Spotlight doesn’t support phrase searches, at least not conveniently and efficiently. You can muck around using quotation marks in the search field, but I’ve had indifferent success with that.
Some have praised the changes in Leopard Spotlight, but I actually think I preferred Spotlight in Tiger, with its readout of the number of search returns and, in my opinion, more convenient and functional “Show All” panel.
Some Alternatives
In a recent article, MacFixIt cites some of these Spotlight shortcomings and proposes alternatives like Google Desktop, Easy Find, Foxtrot, and even Command-line searching.
I’ve tried Google Desktop and find it just too ponderous, resource-hogging, and overbearing. Devon Technologies’ Easy Find is a nice little app, free like Google Desktop, but more hassle to use than Spotlight, and not being indexed — slower. I can’t comment on CTM Development’s 29 Euro Foxtrot utility as I haven’t used it. The Command-line is largely terra incognita for me — not a place I want to go for quick searches in any case.
Where I do go mostly is to SpotInside, a Spotlight-enhancer that layers several elements on top of the Spotlight engine: results preview in the interface window, decently efficient phrase searching, much more conveniently configurable and sortable results organization, searches within results, and searching doesn’t commence before you bid it to.
Well Worth the Effort
SpotInside is yet another application to run, but it starts up almost instantly, is fast, and adds little system overhead. With such a well-conceived and convenient interface, it’s well worth the extra effort.
Unlike Spotlight and Leopard’s Quick Look, SpotInside can use the Find panel and select text in your search result. It also conveniently highlights your keywords in search results. It doesn’t search as extensive a range of file types as Spotlight (eg: music files and email messages), but I’d argue that’s a good thing. For finding words or phrases within text files, PDFs and the like, it’s the best tool I’ve tried.
SpotInside searches ever major text document format (including Pages). It can display PDF previews as images or as plain text, and will also find the folder the desired document is located in with a click of the “Reveal in Finder” button, and open it with the “Launch” button. There is a Zoom slider for adjusting the size of the preview contents.
I haven’t found another desktop search engine that has the uncanny ability to efficiently and quickly zero in on just what I’m looking for, as SpotInside does. If you’re frustrated with Spotlight, or even if you’re not, SpotInside is worth checking out.
SpotInside requires OS X 10.4 or later, and is free.
Переслать - The iPhoto Backup Dilemma
Recently, David tee’d up a great article about migrating from Aperture to iPhoto. And iPhoto is a great photo management application — it’s easy to use and extremely powerful. But the problem (for me at least) comes when trying to archive photos. I try to keep about 16 months worth of photos at any given time, but unfortunately because iPhoto stores everything in a tidy library file (rather than several individual ones), it doesn’t support this sort of backup.
So what happens when you want to incrementally back-up your iPhoto photographs? Although problems ensue, there are some ways to work around them.
The Problem
On one hand, it’s ideal to have a single mega iPhoto library where everything is stored. The downside of course, is that it quickly grows out of control — I get that. So I’ve taken to naming my iPhoto library files ‘monthyear-monthyear.’ (That way I can go back to that range of time and see how much hair I had. Ah, those were the days!) The problem arises if and when you want to only backup a portion of the current iPhoto library, and retain the rest locally. I’ve used a couple solutions, none of which are anywhere near as user friendly as everything else in iPhoto.
Some Sorta Solutions
One way to manage this scenario, is to select all the photos to backup from your current iPhoto library, and drag them to a temporary folder (say, on your Desktop). Now open the backup iPhoto library and drag all of those photos over to their new backup home. The first, and most obvious, issue is that this is a manual task. (I attempted an Automator workflow, but selecting images by time frame didn’t work.) Regular backup programs do everything on their own, so why would I want to do this by hand? The other issue is that the metadata, like facial recognition, has not always transferred accurately (for me at least).
You could opt to view the package contents of the iPhoto library file (right click the library for this option), and do a stare and compare, again, manually dragging all folders and files from the local library to the backup library. This is both more robust in transferring metadata accurately, and more time consuming. The downside is that you’re messing with some important data structures, and could potentially hose your backup (or local) library if you miss something.
I suppose the most obvious is just to get over my own desires to carry a rolling 16 month libray of photos. If I can get past this, then I could just backup the library each calendar year, and start from scratch each time. My issue with this is then I have no immediate access to my photos from even a few weeks ago, depending on the timing of that transition. So now all those images are unavailable to load to my iPhone, and show off at the drop of a hat. Bummer.
A Disappointing Verdict
There doesn’t seem to be an ideal solution to this dilemma. Worse yet, as you try to view older iPhoto libraries (assuming you keep up to date with the latest iLife updates) you then have to go through upgrading them prior to viewing. It would be great to see iPhoto given the ability to backup to a Vault type solution as Aperture boasts — but perhaps that’s just one of the ‘Pro’ features you’re paying for (unlike Faces and Places).
I’m hopeful that some of our sly readers have some great solutions to share that may solve this annoying problem. If you fit this description, please share!
Переслать - iPhone & Mac Programming Books In Demand
Tech specialist publisher O'Reilly is reporting encouraging growth in iPhone and Mac programming book sales, despite an overall drop in computer book sales.
On the O'Reilly Radar blog, Mike Hendrickson analyzed figures from Nielsen Bookscan retail sales data. This is data collected in the U.S. from bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, or online from Amazon.
The Nielsen figures make for depressing reading, illustrating how the computer book market has seen a steady decline in sales since mid-2008. Hendrickson notes there are "few signs the book-buying slump is going to turn around anytime soon." In total, the market saw more than half a million fewer units sold in the first half of 2009 than were sold in the same period last year (the red line in the graph below.)
O'Reilly Report - Computer Books 2009 First Half Unit Sales
Only eight subjects (from a list of over 100 categories) saw a year-on-year increase in sales by the end of the first half of 2009. "The market performance this year is the worst we've seen since the fall of 2001," Hendrickson said.
Of the eight subjects showing improved year-on-year sales, "Mac Programming" tops the list, followed by "Objective C," "Online Video," "Global Position Device," "Computerized Home" and "Mobile Programming." However, all major categories have seen lower first-half sales for 2009. Interestingly, the biggest “loser” in the list is "Office Suites." Also in that list; "Mac OS," "Spreadsheets," "Digital Photography" and "Windows Consumer." The figures seem to mirror the recent sales decline seen in the computer market in general.
O'reilly Report - Categories
The report also claims that of all programming languages, Objective C has seen the biggest growth in sales, fueled by a feverish interest in iPhone and Mac development.
O'Reilly Report - Programming Languages
Hendrickson refers to the report as "…lots of bad news peppered with small glimmers of hope." He adds that some of those glimmers include improved sales driven by the release of Windows 7 and major new versions of Sharepoint and Visual Studio due for release later this year. Also on the radar is Mac OS X Snow Leopard coming “soonish,” Hendrickson comments, bringing with it a "nice boost for computer book sales."
Переслать - How-To: Change the Default OS X Boot Icon
The OS X boot image epitomizes the simplicity and elegance of the operating system itself, showing a basic Apple logo set against a light grey background. I’m a huge fan of this simple layout, but was very interested to hear about BootXChanger, a tiny application that can alter the boot image to anything you’d like.
BootXChanger comes with an excellent set of PNG images already at a boot-screen-appropriate size and resolution, along with a set of instructions for creating your own. It makes this Mac customization, which would otherwise require some fairly complex digging around, remarkably simple.
Installation
Installing the application follows the standard “Drag to Applications” process and, after double clicking the BootXChanger icon, you are presented with a very straight forward interface.
BootXChanger
You’re able to drag-and-drop any PNG file into the window before clicking “Apply” and entering your administrator username and password. If you’re unhappy with the outcome, reverting to the default image only requires one click.
Available Images
BootXChanger comes bundled with a range of nostalgic Mac icons, bound to recreate a few memories.
Included Boot Images
It also has a range of limitations, put in place deliberately by the developer. The most notable is that BootXChanger will not change the background color of the boot screen (it remains the standard #BFBFBF hex color). This is done so as not to damage the appearance of the loading spinner, displayed as your computer boots. It means that the background of your images must be the same if you’d like them to blend in with the background.
Other limitations center around the number of colors that can be used in the image. The developer suggests that you keep it below 100, and stick to using GIF or PNG-8 image formats.
Intel Macs also have further limitations as images must be compressed to fit inside the boot file. Images that are overly complex may not be suitable for use. BootXChanger checks all these possibilities for you, and will refuse to alter your system if the chosen image is an incorrect format.
Examples
Here are a variety of different examples, showing the outcome of various BootXChanger images:
Backup First!
As with any software that alters system or boot files, I would certainly recommend making a backup of your system prior to experimenting. If anything goes wrong (and your Mac won’t boot), insert your OS X installation CD and select your hard drive as the startup disk for the subsequent restart.
BootXChanger is a fantastic, simple application to make adjusting your boot icon a straight-forward process. It’s likely to automatically prevent you from making any problematic changes, so have fun experimenting!
Переслать - Using Drafts to Easily Get Text To and From Your iPhone
As I mentioned in the My Netbook: The iPhone article, my iPhone is central to my life. But one area that’s been a challenge is getting text to and from it. As I mentioned in the article, most of what I write on the iPhone is blog posts where any formatting is done after the fact. I find myself in situations where I need to be able to modify text from various computers and my iPhone. For instance, yesterday I was heading to the grocery store after work. I had a list going and my wife called and added her list which reminded me of something else, and then she called back and … well you get the idea.
I’ve flipped around between QuickOffice, Documents to Go, and Notes to handle this, but I was never satisfied. Notes and Documents to Go go require me to be on my Mac and sync to it. That’s overkill for a shopping list. I don’t mind the iPhone keyboard, but typing “2 cases of water” with another phone jammed in my ear is awkward; it’s much easier to just type it on my work computer. Plus, syncing often just feels like a bother, doesn’t it? Not to mention lengthy with the “let me me nip off to the pub while this backup runs” issue that’s back with 3.0.
What worked best was QuickOffice writing the file to an iDisk. But iDisk is all I would be using from MobileMe, and I just can’t get my mind around paying $99 a year for that convenience. Not to mention, handling simple text through the .doc format just seemed overkill. I could work off the cloud, but if I’m in a low signal area, I’m out of luck.
So, the solution I’ve found myself going with is using Drafts in the iPhone/Gmail web interface. I can create a draft, give it a title and merrily type away on the iPhone. When I save it, it syncs to my Gmail account where I can edit the draft on any computer that’s connected to the Internet. As long as I don’t put in a recipient, it wont get accidentally sent. I also don’t need to worry about initiating a sync; it all happens in the background.
How about you? What solutions to this problem have you found?
iPhone Mail Drafts
Gmail Drafts Screen
Переслать - Apple Silences Google Voice On the iPhone
First it was just apps that gave users access to Google Voice features, but now it seems as though even an official app from Google, who have traditionally been very close with Apple, will not (for now) see the light of day. GV Mobile and Voice Central, two apps that allowed Google Voice users to access the service on their iPhone have been pulled from the App Store for duplicating functionality, and an official Google Voice app won’t see release at all for the same reason.
According to a Google spokesperson speaking to TechCrunch, Apple received the app submission from the internet search giant six weeks ago, and “did not approve the Google Voice application.” Apple has bandied about the feature duplication defense before, when they rejected Podcaster prior to releasing their own integrated podcast direct search and download section to the iPhone’s iTunes store.
Unless Apple somehow plans to introduce their own built-in Google Voice support in the near future, a scenario which I find highly unlikely, then this particular use of the feature duplication line is completely ridiculous. Google Voice isn’t actually duplicating anything, it’s only reducing AT&T’s ability to make money, which suggests that the wireless provider has much more control over Apple and their approval process than I previously suspected.
Through Google Voice, people can have one number for all of their phones, free long distance calling, and free text messaging. Two of these would obviously cut into AT&T’s bottom line, since users would no longer have to pay AT&T’s exorbitant service charges for messaging and cellular long distance. In fact, Google Voice customers could probably pare down to a bare minimum data plan and still retain all the functionality of their iPhone.
What makes Apple look particularly bad in this instance is that both BlackBerry and Android already have Google Voice apps available in their own app marketplaces, which, if Voice continues to grow, and expands beyond the U.S., could begin to have a serious effect on which device consumers invest in.
GV Mobile apparently received Phil Schiller’s personal seal of approval, so you know someone else is pulling the strings at Apple HQ to get these apps pulled. My question is, what threat does AT&T have that could force Apple to comply? An end to AT&T exclusivity would seem only to harm the company, not benefit it. There’s something to be said for not making your friends angry, sure, but there’s also no way you should let your friends direct internal policy. Maybe Apple should become an MVNO?
Переслать - As Apple Predicted, iPod Sales Sliding
Apple launched the iPod almost eight years ago, and in that time has never seen a quarterly drop in sales of the diminutive pocket music player. It's a product line that has so far generated over $38 billion on sales of 218 million units. None too shabby, eh?
Arik Hesseldahl, in an article in yesterday's BusinessWeek, reports that Apple's sales of 10.2 million iPods in the three months ending July 21 were down from 11 million in the same quarter last year. But it's not an unexpected decline. Even without the economic downturn, Apple knew the day would come when market saturation meant a dip in sales. Hesseldahl says:
“Anticipation of the drop-off is ‘one of the original reasons’ Apple developed the iPhone and the Wi-Fi-enabled iPod touch…Apple is prepared for lower sales of what it calls ‘pocket products’ the iPod shuffle, nano and classic.”
Hesseldahl posits that Apple will shift its focus on to the iPod touch line, as future iterations of the iPod family will derive from that device's advanced features. He suggests Apple will soon drop the iPod Classic's reliance on hard disc drive-based storage, moving instead to Flash storage. Certainly that makes sense, given the functional advantages NAND storage has over spinning magnetic discs — not to mention Apple's frankly gargantuan orders for flash memory chips (orders that seem to get ever higher year over year.)Much of the rest of Hesseldahl's article is a mix between idle conjecture about, and a wish list for, future generations of the touch.
They're decent suggestions, to be sure; a 5- or 6-megapixel camera; built-in microphone for Skype and other VoIP services; Mini-SD expansion port; and a GPS chipset for full, always-available personal navigation. (He makes the point that some products from Garmin and TomTom sell today for $100 below the price of an entry-level iPod touch.)
Will Apple's product roadmap for the iPod see an end to classic click-wheel designs? Probably. Apple's experience and skills acquired from the iPhone, iPod touch, and very likely, upcoming Tablet device make it one of the world's leading developers of touch-based consumer multimedia technology. It's not hard to imagine an iPod Nano with an entirely virtual click-wheel (or better) interface that gets out of the way when it's not needed. Apple can do that now. Perhaps it'll just wait to see if the sales continue to slide before it releases such a device.
Переслать - China Gets the iPhone…Officially
If you're getting into the cellular phone business and want to be a big fish in a very big pond, you need to crack China. Mixed metaphors aside, China is an enormous mobile market. According to eWeek, it boasts more than twice the number of active subscribers than there are people living in the U.S. (630+ million subscribers vs. America's population of 306 million.)
It's a big deal, then, that Shanghai Securities News is reporting that China Unicom, one of the country's largest operators (the second largest after China Mobile), has just signed on the dotted line with Apple and will be selling the iPhone 3G by the end of September.
China Unicom has more than 135 million subscribers. (By comparison, China Mobile has over 470 million.) The company has promised to sell between 1 million and 2 million units per year, with revenue of at least 5 billion yuan ($732 million) in the same period. Reuters reports that the deal gives China Unicom exclusive rights to sell the device for the next three years. According to MacDailyNews, the iTunes Store model will remain unchanged and operate as it does in most other countries, with the usual Apple approval process and 70/30 split.
Apple has been in negotiations with Chinese mobile operators for some time. Sticking points that prevented a deal sooner are rumored to have been focused first on Apple’s proposed revenue-sharing model, and more recently around the wireless radio technology found in the handset. Most mobile devices must remove wireless transceivers before they can be approved for sale in China. There is no word on whether this is the case with the iPhone 3G.
China has had a healthy black market in the sale of imported iPhones for several years. According to The New York Times, by the end of 2007, Apple had reported sales of 3.7 million iPhones. But only 2.3 million were actually registered on the networks of Apple's wireless partners in the U.S. and Europe. Many of the “missing” iPhones found their way to China, where they were sold for as much as 4,000 yuan (almost $600).
This will be the first time the iPhone has been officially sold in the country, but it's not for lack of trying. Those strained negotiations I mentioned earlier? Talks between Apple and China Mobile were reportedly on the rocks as far back as January 2008. So it seems Apple has been trying to break into China since the very first iPhone was released. However you look at it, signing a deal with China Unicom is settling for second best; will that still be enough to capture a significant portion of the mobile market in that country? If the answer is yes, Apple’s global smartphone market share is about to get a lot bigger.
Переслать - MainMenu — Keep Your Mac in Shape
Earlier this month, Dare to be Creative announced MainMenu 2.0, an update to its system maintenance utility for OS X. This lightweight application allows you to clean up your Mac, improve system performance and free up hard disk space — all directly from the system menu.
The new release offers a range of improved functionality, an informative system menu icon, and integration with the Growl notification service. This review will offer an overview of MainMenu’s key features, and explain how the software can assist with running a fast, healthy Mac.
The Interface
The Main Menu
MainMenu resides in the OS X menu bar as a small icon, offering a compact drop-down menu when clicked. This details the various categories of maintenance functions that can be performed, relating to the system, network, user, disk, and applications. It is also possible to run pre-defined batches of tasks together.
The final item in the menu provides access to MainMenu’s preferences, covering options such as whether the application should launch automatically, the appearance of the menu bar icon (several options are available), and whether the application should display a visible log as maintenance runs.
Improve System Performance
A number of options within the menu can help cut back on clutter and speed up your machine. These include the ability to re-build your Spotlight index for faster searching, and repair disk permissions to improve disk access speeds.
None of these are guaranteed to provide a dramatic increase in system performance, but can certainly have a noticeable impact when combined with clearing temporary files and caches (see below).
Re-claiming Disk Space
A variety of operations aim to delete unnecessary temporary files eating up hard drive space. These include the ability to remove Logs, Temporary Files, .DS_Store Files, and various system caches.
Clearing Browser Cache
Usefully, the menu also offers a central point for cleaning up your browser cache — across any (or all) of the web browsers you may have installed on your system.
Regular Maintenance Scripts
OS X has a variety of scripts (cron jobs) built-in for performing system maintenance, set to run automatically at a particular interval. Main Menu offers an easy way to execute these maintenance operations manually.
Time Savers
A degree of the functionality offered centers around quicker access to operations that would otherwise require running commands in the Terminal (or deep within System Preferences). A few of my favorite time-savers are:
- Showing or hiding invisible files in the Finder
- Relaunching various services such as the Dock, Finder, Airport, or Menu Bar
- Disabling Dashboard (a great way to speed up older machines)
You’re also able to Force Quit or Force Restart any application currently running. This is particularly useful if, for some reason, you are unable to Force Quit an app through the Dock.
Batch Mode & Growl Support
Another useful feature allows you to create a batch of several commonly performed tasks. A batch can be executed with one click, not requiring you to select each maintenance operation individually.
Batching Tasks
The limitation apparent here is that only one “batch” can be created. It isn’t possible to create several different sets of actions, each with a different name — a feature that could be particularly useful.
The latest release of MainMenu adds one final feature: Growl integration. This is a useful way to notify you when a maintenance task completes, and can help to streamline all your system notifications through one central system.
Conclusion
After experimenting with MainMenu for a few days, I can see it being an application I continue to use regularly. Although it seems a little unnecessary to run maintenance operations every few days, I certainly appreciate the in-built shortcuts for restarting services and adjusting Finder display preferences.
Whether you’re a seasoned Mac user who understands the need to flush your DNS cache, or a beginner looking for a simple utility for keeping your machine clean and tidy, MainMenu is certainly worth looking into.
MainMenu costs $20, and a trial is available as a free download from the MainMenu website. It runs initially in a 15-day trial mode with all features active — more than long enough to experiment with the utility and determine whether you use it enough to purchase a license.
Переслать - AVG Antivirus Update Targets iTunes
It seems Windows users are not only at risk from software viruses, but also from antivirus software.
Over the weekend antivirus software giant AVG pushed a virus definitions database update to its users that mistakenly identified the library for the Windows version of iTunes as a Trojan and placed its contents in quarantine. AppleInsider reports today that users affected by the blunder lodged complaints on both the Apple Support and AVG Support forums.
The botched update wrongly identified existing iTunes .dll files as infected with the Small.BOG Trojan virus. By placing the files in quarantine, AVG effectively disabled iTunes, preventing it from launching.
A search on the AVG North American site returns no useful information, though the Australian site has posted a technical bulletin that reads:
Saturday, 25th July 2009 – Unfortunately, a recent virus database update resulted in iTunes being detected as a Trojan by AVG security products. We can confirm that it was a false alarm. AVG immediately released a new virus database update (definition file 270.13.29/2260) that corrected this issue.
If you are having problems, please update your AVG and check your iTunes again.
If you find that iTunes is not working after you update AVG, you can restore the deleted iTunes files from the AVG Virus Vault by following the steps below:
- Open the AVG user interface.
- Choose “Virus Vault” option from the “History” menu.
- Locate the iTunes file that was incorrectly removed and select it (one click).
- Click on the “Restore” button.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.
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