News - page 2360

The developers behind Boxee, the social media center that distributes video content between your computer and TV, announced Monday a fix for Apple’s recent update of AppleTV.

The fix, outlined on Boxee forums, replaces a manual hack to get the application working after disabled by Apple TV 2.3, which Apple released last week.

In a blog post, the Boxee team provided instructions on how to update the USB Creator application. So far, around 35,000 people have downloaded the fix.

Boxee, which includes CBS, Netflix and Hulu among partners, recently received $4 million in venture funding.

Last week, Apple released update 2.3 for its AppleTV devices. Among the new features introduced: AirTunes streaming and wider iTunes support.

Jesse Grosjean at Hog Bay Software has released Taskpaper 2.0, an impressive update to an already impressive app.

Taskpaper is the simplest sort of task management environment you can think of, and that’s why it’s so useful. It doesn’t try to do everything. But it does one thing – manage lists – extremely well indeed.

The new release has lots of new features, such as a new search system, custom themes (so you can have green-on-black Terminal style lists if you like), and (my favorite new addition) a system-wide keyboard shortcut that calls up a Quick Entry Window for, erm, quickly adding entries.

I’ve seen people criticize Taskpaper because of the features it lacks, but I don’t see it that way. It omits many things that appear in other task management apps, and it does to with purpose. Taskpaper keeps things simple. If you want to put more focus on getting things done than you do on Getting Things Done, Taskpaper is the app for you.

Apple faces new lawsuits over its popular aledgedly, including one asking a court to award $5 million because of advertising claims.

San Diego, Calif. resident Peter Keller named both Apple and AT&T in a lawsuit alleging fraud and deceit. Keller’s lawsuit charges the maker of the iPhone 3G and its exclusive American carrier, created false and misleading advertising claims regarding the speed of the 3G network.

“Apple and AT&T have engaged in a collaborated scheme to deceive plantiff and other consumers, since the iPhone 3G and AT&T 3G Network is faulty and rarely provides 3G connectivity to its customers,” the lawsuit reads.

The week on Wall Street kicked off with a mix of projections for iPhone sales. On Apple desktops, there was consensus: 2009 will be the year of the notebook.

Continuing the revised iPhone outlooks of last week, Openheimer nearly cut in half its expectations for the December quarter, projecting 4.8 million iPhone sales will be reported for the quarter, down from analyst Yair Reiner’s previous 7.5 million. Reiner also cut his forecast of yearly iPhone sales to 21.3 million from 27 million.

At the other end of the spectrum were analysts which announced bullish expectations for iPhone sales. J.P. Morgan expert Mark Moskowitz foresees 26.7 million handsets sold in 2009 while Thomas Weisel’s Doug Reid told clients he felt 24.8 million iPhones would sell next year, upping his previous projection of 22.5 million sold.

While there was little agreement on future iPhone demand, no analyst disputed that desktops sales are headed lower as laptops grow in popularity.

If you liked the red-white-and-blue look of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster designed by street artist gone viral Shepard Fairey, Dubi Kaufmann has made a plug-in for Photo Booth that allows you to “Obamafy” your photos.

With over 4,450 downloads and counting, just about any photo you pop into it will take on iconic status. Still, Obamafying yourself won’t get you elected. As Kaufmann says, the free app is “an exercise in pop culture and is not part of any campaign nor it is an endorsement for either candidate.”

Download zip file here, then expand it. Copy the file Obamafy.qtz to /Library/Compositions, then launch Photo Booth and enjoy the Obamafy plugin.

Via Tech Side Up

Lay-offs have become common as a winter cold as companies from New York to Silicon Valley cope with the ailing economy. But Apple, in its inimitable way, is hoping a bit of employee shuffling will prevent any more pink slips.

Friday, Palm confirmed it would drop employees from the Treo maker, telling CNET the move was made due to “challenges facing our company and the industry.” Although Palm didn’t mention the number of layoffs, Silicon Valley blog Valleyway put the figure at 1,050.

Apple, despite recently eating into Palm’s marketshare, hasn’t escaped worrying about a slowdown in consumer demand for gadgets. However, instead of jobs cuts, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is experimenting with reduced hours for its sales staff and extra duty for Apple Store workers more accustom to answering support questions or tackling creative tasks.

Pirates are back. If you’ve been reading the news you know we mean the bad-ass high-seas kind, not the frilly-shirted guyliner ones from the movies.

It’s likely that aught-age pirates who have been terrorizing ships off the Horn of Africa recently have better tools than the odd rusty compass, at the very least iPhones with Google maps.

With this new breed in mind, Glenn Jones, a graphic designer and illustrator from Auckland, New Zealand designed this Modern Pirate T-shirt, yours for $20.

Those thigh-high boots do look good accessorized by an iPhone, we find.

Via Nerd Approved

If you want to use a racy photo as your iPhone wallpaper it will have to be strictly DIY now that Wallpaper Universe has been pulled from the AppStore.

Some will say this turn of events confirms Steve Jobs’ promise to keep ‘porn’ off the iPhone. Others point out that it highlights the inscrutability of Apple’s review process for selecting what does, and what doesn’t make it into the AppStore catalog.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether Apple should retain exclusive gatekeeper authority over apps that can be legitimately run on the iPhone, many would be satisfied if the process for AppStore certification was more transparent, according to MG Siegler, writing for Venture Beat.

Last weekend’s snafu over the release of Google’s voice search update, the punting of approved apps on a third update, debacles such as the I Am Rich app – all raise legitimate questions over the capriciousness of Apple’s distribution of tickets to the big show.

Via Industry Standard

Have you loaded up so many apps on your iPhone you’re now pushing the nine screen limit? Do you ever want to just get back to your home Home screen and wish you didn’t have to start swiping screens back across the phone face?

The latest update to iPhone software 2.2 has a nice little feature built in that will take you home – just push the “Home” button.

So simple. Surprising, actually it took ’em this many updates to load that one in, but thanks, Apple!

One of the iPhone’s great uses is as a pocket reference. So much information can be stored on it and accessed immediately, with flair and panache, no less.

Now this capability extends to the world of vintage wine, with the Wine Vintage Card app. For $2 you can have up to date information on the past decade’s wine production in every major wine region of the world at your fingertips. And where some impressions of people who know and love wine conjure visions of stuffiness and seriousness, this app uses an easy to read and understand emoticon system to confirm whether that ’03 Cabernet from Napa deserves a premium over the ’03 Bordeaux.

The card doesn’t break information down by individual producers, nor does it go back to vintages prior to 1998, but what do you want for two bucks?

Via MacsimumNews

No one waits until after Thanksgiving any more to start thinking about and marketing Christmas, so why wait to get your iPhone Christmas Advent Calendar?

Available now from developers Gourmet Pixel, the 24 Days app greets the user upon first opening the application with a countdown to December 1st.

Once into December, you’re able to open each relevant window and in return, receive an interactive gift, which culminates to a spectacular interactive finale on Christmas Eve.

“A lot of the standard individual elements built into 24 Christmas Days are actually being sold in a separated form by other developers as single apps,” says Darren Lynch, a Director at Gourmet Pixel. He adds, “our app can also be used year after year, so it really is cost effective. While it ticks all the boxes, in terms of classic Christmas imagery, watch out for some special surprises that our development team has added –œ it’s a real Christmas treat!”

Last week, Jesper at Waffle Software (makers of This Service, among other apps) posted a lengthy critique of his favorite browser, OmniWeb.

Jesper’s been using OmniWeb 5 for years now, but he feels it’s been languishing, unloved and un-updated, for too long. He says:

“Why are you not caring about your product, and if you are, why doesn’t it show? Why are you letting people chatter feature requests on your forums without showing some degree of involvement? What’s with not even letting slip that either something is up for the future or that you’re thinking of letting this go..?”

When I saw Jesper’s comments, I thought he was making a lot of valid points – so I contacted Omni and asked them if they had anything to say about them.

Today, both Jesper and I got a reply when Omni boss Ken Case added a comment to Jesper’s post. In it, he admits:

“OmniWeb has effectively been in maintenance mode for the last few years while we’ve focused the bulk of our attention on other products.”

But during that time, some ideas have been brewing. Omni doesn’t have enough developers to make them happen, so he signs off with an advertisement: “Would any experienced developers like to come work for us? We’re hiring!”

So if you fancy bringing OmniWeb up-to-date, now’s your chance.

An anonymous tipster pointed us to this photo, posted anonymously on the web, of Woz on his Segway at the urinal. There’s just no place left to hide, is there?

Via

What does it cost to hold an employee’s future on ice? IBM reportedly has paid $3 million in exchange for a preliminary injunction stopping Mark Papermaster from joining Apple.

Last week, Federal District Court Judge Kenneth M. Karas determined Papermaster, a 25-year veteran of New York-based IBM cannot join Apple as the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s senior vice president of hardware engineering.

Along with granting the preliminary injunction, the New York judge required IBM to post a $3 million security bond to ensure any losses by Papermaster while the court challenge is underway. Before the injunction, Apple had announced Papermaster’s hiring and set a salary.

Worldwide PC sales will see only a single-digit increase in 2009 with growth next year reaching only 4.3 percent – a nearly 75 percent reduction over prior expectations of a 11.9 percent increase, a research firm announced Thursday.

The picture for Apple sales appears brighter than the glum outlook for overall PC demand. Earlier this week, Piper Jaffray’s Apple watcher Gene Munster said he expects Mac sales to grow 8 percent to 16 percent when Apple reports in December.

Researchers at iSuppli said the drastically lower expectations were due to the embattled economy.

Apple, long viewed as primarily consumer-oriented, now supplies more smartphones to corporations, taking the No. 2 spot from Palm’s Treo and breathing down the neck of RIM, according to a survey released Thursday.

Apple’s iPhone now has 14 percent of the corporate market. Palm’s Treo fell to 11 percent and third place while RIM’s BlackBerry held 76 percent of the market, according to a ChangeWave Research survey of IT spending plans.

Apple’s gains came mostly at the expense of Palm, which lost 4 percent of its marketshare to the iPhone. Meanwhile, RIM saw its lead trimmed by one point.

Although one analyst described the iPhone as often just corporate bling, the shifting numbers indicate an attempt to keep ahead of the curve in terms of the iPhone in a business.

“IT managers don’t want to be caught flat-footed,” Kevin Burden, ABI Research’s chief wireless analyst, told Cult of Mac.

As the holidays loom ever closer and the global economic get worse and worse, Apple’s doing its bit to encourage a little seasonal spending.

The new iPhone Your Life section on apple.com is full of tips and tricks for new iPhone users, encouraging them to dive into the App Store and look around.

There are recommendations and staff picks, and on the Top Apps page there’s limited web-based access to best selling apps in a range of categories – the first time I’ve seen Apple replicating some of the App Store functionality on the web.

The Tips and Tricks page is also a good starting point for Christmas Day iPhone newbies (of whom, I have no doubt, there will be many).

(Via John Gruber)

Travis Hammond is a graphic designer located near Baltimore, Maryland. He works for a private auction firm and a local magazine, and does freelance photography and design work. He’s also a bit of an Apple nut, if these among many other examples of his Mac, iPod and iPhone inspired creativity are any indication.

See more at his website and his Flickr pages

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Now that iPhone Firmware 2.2 is out (all 245.7MB of it), what do we all think of it? Initial reactions around the web seem broadly positive, and my own experience so far matches that. In recent weeks I’ve been seeing quite frequent application crashes on my 2nd gen iPhone, so I’ll be interested to see if they happen less often now. On very first impressions, the phone feels faster and snappier in use post-update.

Most of the changes were published in advance, but there are some hidden extras that are new to me.

The busiest shopping day of the year is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving, known in the Retail Trade as Black Friday. And this year, anticipation appears to be building for some of the best Black Friday deals to be had for netbooks, the super-cheap small laptops from many manufacturers that may get even cheaper for a retail minute.

Here’s a custom Google search for Black Friday deals, and you’d be well advised too, to be on the look out at local hardware retailers for returned notebooks pre-installed with Linux.

We’ve seen rumors of deals to be had on a Dell mini-laptop, and powerful arguments for why netbooks may just dominate the holiday shopping season.

When you get your hands on your mini-deal, see the references below for tips on how to get ’em to run OS X:

Install OS X on an Acer Aspire One – courtesy of reader Javier Canadillas; thanks, Javier!

Guide to installing OS X on Lenovo IdeaPad S10

Run Mac OS X on an Eee PC

Run Mac OS X on an MSI Wind

If you come across ways to get OS X on other netbooks, be sure to let us know about it in comments.

One of my favorite Mac programs is Garage Band. As a musician and songwriter, I am endlessly impressed with how much creativity and flexibility Apple has built into the program, for my money the star of the iLife bundle.

I learned about a new little trick for creating one-touch sound effects using Garage Band‘s Musical Keyboard, as described by writer Christopher Breen in MacWorld.

You can map up to 18 of the program’s built-in sound effects (select Sound Effect from the Software Instrument Info pane), or pre-recorded AIFF files dragged from the Finder, to keys on the Mac keyboard (as shown above) and save the whole set as an “Instrument” to be called for use in creating any new podcast or other recording project.

Be sure to see Breen’s article for the step-by-step instructions for utilizing this handy tip.

Mac userTom Klaver says, “Command-Tab in this case brings me command-slap, because when I invoke the command-tab keystroke to switch to another app, almost every time this weird unidentifiable
thing happens.”

Anyone else experiencing this problem?

Think you’ve got the hands or, in the case of iPhone, the fingers of a surgeon? You’ll soon be able to find out with a new mobile game from developer ngmoco, inc.. Dr. Awesome, Microsurgeon MD is an iPhone game that lets you import friends from your address book and “perform surgery” on them in a Qix meets Trauma Center gamescape environment, according to blogger Brandon Boyer at Boing Boing.

Check out the trailer above and get scrubbed.

Microsoft, a day after slashing prices of its Zune media player, Thursday threw a bone to fans of DRM-free music, offering a $15 per month Zune Pass subscription for essentially $5.

Microsoft said it would allow Zune Pass subscribers to keep 10 songs (worth around $10) per month that they can own, even if the subscription ends. Previously, copy-protection meant songs downloaded from the Zune marketplace would be disabled if the $15 per month subscription service expired.

“People want the freedom to listen to whatever they want across millions of songs, combined with the confidence that they can keep their favorite tracks forever,” Chris Stephenson, Zune’s general manager of global marketing, said in statement.

Apple has filed a patent application to add always-on status indicators to the iPhone. The innovation would address a common task for cell phones but a headache for owners of the touch-screen handset.

In most flip-phones and even other touch-screen devices, users can instantly know when they’ve missed a call or received a voice-mail message. However, for iPhone users, it requires turning on the phone and going into settings to retrieve the information.