The worst thing about using a PC at work is that I don’t get to enjoy Vienna, my favorite RSS reader, to keep up with all of my feeds. I miss the interface and I miss the note-perfect feel of a great Mac application. Well, Hicks Design has an answer: gReader, a beautiful skin for Google Reader, the search giant’s RSS tool. It takes Google’s highly adequate, inoffensive cross-platform interface and swaps it out for the latest version of Aqua, right down to the transparent overlays.
And, hell, I’m actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow!
Via Digg.
You know what’s great about Google? When it does something for Mac, it does it right. Its support comes in late, but it comes in right. This is why I was delighted to see that when Google finally made its data APIs available to Mac developers today, they did it the right way: An Objective-C Cocoa framework allowing direct access to Google Base, GCal, Blogger and others for any Cocoa-developed apps. Engineer Greg Robbins explains:
The native language for Mac OS X applications is Objective-C, and it’s our preferred language for Mac application development. To make it simpler for us to write Mac software that interacts with Google services, I created a framework to use Google data APIs directly in Objective-C programs. We are using the framework for our application development, and today we are making the framework available to all developers. The Google Data APIs Objective-C Library joins MacFUSE and Breakpad as open-source development efforts of Google’s Mac software team, hosted at code.google.com.
The APIs have been available via Javascript and Java since last year, but it’s reassuring to see Google go the extra mile for Mac developers. It all brings the dream of truly pervasive information that much closer. Google is winning, and we’re all playing along. But they’re just so darned nice about it, you know? Official Google Mac Blog: Google data APIs connect Cocoa developers to Google
Via Digg.
As ever, Ars Technica has the best technical coverage of Intel’s Developer Forum. For those of us who care less about the details of things like systems-on-a-chip and pinball grid arrays, they always manage to cut to what really matters. Here’s what you need to know: The upcoming Penryn chip, the mooted successor to the Intel Core2 Extreme line, is going to absolutely scream at video encoding.
The developmental iron came through with a 221 percent speed improvement on DiVX encoding. That’s unheard of in this era. Most of the performance improvements are more linear, but this chip is coming to rock. I’ll take four quads, please. Intel details Penryn performance, new SSE4 extensions:
Sara Blask, staff writer at the Iceland Review, lost her iPod in the parking lot of Iceland’s maximum security prison in a town called Litla Hraun. It was found and returned her. The story’s a little convoluted, and it doesn’t explain how a white iPod was found in the snow, but basically:
“Turns out his mom works at Litla Hraun and found the iPod amidst snow and garbage in the prison’s parking lot. After a couple weeks no one claimed it, so she gave it to her son (the one who emailed me), who charged it up and saw that it was called “Sara Blask.” He plugged my name into Google, found my website, and emailed me.”
Actually, more interesting is the Iceland Review site, which is nicely designed and full of great photography. I love how the site is so white. Very Icelandic.
(Via TUAW)
Accessory makers must be predicting a bonanza of iPod proportions for the iPhone — Japanese case makers are already rolling out protective cases for the iPhone, due in late June.
On show at a Japanese electronics and components fair; a rubbery prophylactic, a see-through hard case and a faux-sneaker design.
There are 4,000 accessories for the iPod, a market worth at least $1 billion a year.
Owners of a shiny new AppleTV who are also fans of obscure foreign TV shows like Life on Mars or Doctor Who Series 3 might be interested in VisualHub.
VisualHub is a $23 video converter that transforms popular BitTorrent formats (DivX, XviD, AVI, all forms of MPEG) to MP4 format — which play nice on the AppleTV or video iPods.
VisualHub can batch process files and automatically add them to iTunes. It offers encoding up to 720p and claims to be much faster than QuickTime Pro.
For Windows users, there’s Videora AppleTV Converter, a free video converter designed especially for the AppleTV.
When combined with Videora, a file search and download program, video can be automatically found, downloaded and converted for the AppleTV using BitTorrent and RSS, according to the site. This must be the killer app for AppleTV — if it works. I’m downloading it right now to find out.
Apple’s executives raked it in last year, and Steve Jobs took his customary $1 in salary.
According to an SEC filing reported by Marketwatch:
“¢ Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer realized $56 million in value from the exercise of options during 2006. Oppenheimer also received a $615,000 salary, a $450,000 bonus and restricted stock valued at $14 million.
“¢ Chief Operating Officer Timothy D. Cook received restricted stock valued at $22 million, a salary of $697,000 and a $525,000 bonus for 2006.
“¢ Jobs has received the majority of his compensation through an equity grant and isn’t eligible for a bonus, according to Monday’s filing. He doesn’t receive any other compensation, the company said.
Thomas Fitzgerald spent some quality time with his AppleTV and wrote up this thorough and interesting review. His conclusion? It’s a great product, well thought out and executed.
It is the Apple TV’s integration with iTunes that makes it a truly fantastic product. Again it’s the little things. When you watch something on your iPod, and then sync it, it knows your playback position. When you watch a podcast, (if you set it to sync only recent episodes) it removes it and sends the next episode (but cleverly it waits till you have watched it to the end before it does so) Synching seems to happen often and as soon as you change something it will sync. It’s pretty impressive and seamless. Another cool thing is that if you have slideshows set up in iPhoto when you sync your photos it remembers the music you had set with that slide show. I know it’s simple little thing, but it just struck me as being indicative of the seamless integration across all Apple’s products, that competitors just can’t or don’t want to achieve.
…Even if you live outside the US and don’t have access to movies and TV shows on iTunes there are plenty of ways to get content onto the Apple TV. Two must have pieces of software are mediafork (aka handbrake) and visual hub. Visual hub does an excellent job of transcoding all those divx movies you may have acquired through whatever method you may have acquired them (and I’ll make no comment or suggestions on that topic) with no significant loss in quality, which is a pretty impressive feat. Media fork does a similar job with DVDs.
The record companies are selling more and more music online, but they’re paying scant attention to digital packaging: there’s no good album covers for online music.
That’s the conclusion of Adrian Shaughnessy at Design Observer, who’s spent the last few months researching online alternatives to album art. And unfortunately, there aren’t any.
As downloading threatens to become the main distribution method for recorded music, it is widely believed that the album cover will be replaced by some new online format perhaps animated that will make CD packaging redundant. Well, I might be missing something, but I’ve found nothing in the digital arena that offers a viable alternative to a well-designed CD or vinyl album cover. Instead, I’ve discovered a grim-faced resistance movement amongst dozens of tiny record labels determined to hang onto physical packaging and expressive cover art, no matter what.
CoverFlow in iTunes — which displays a JPEG of the album when a song is playing — is a start. The artwork is static and there’s no lyrics or band bios, but the artwork certainly helps navigate the music collection. It also makes the music feel like a collection, rather than just a bunch of files.
There are signs that the record companies are looking at iTunes and the iPod as a platform for designers to play with.
George White, Warner Music Group’s senior VP of strategy and product development, put together a digital packaging demo for Apple to re-imagine album artwork as more than a JPEG on an iPod.
“We’ve been looking at a few technologies (for digital album art), and have been trying to bring these to Apple, to encourage them to bring that level of experience to the iPod,” says White. “A very simple demonstration that we’ve done takes the Gnarls Barkley liner notes and does a fly-through (using Adobe Flash Lite). You’re actually moving through the lyrics and artwork. It’s sort of like a theme park ride through the album. It’s really, really cool-looking on an iPod.”
(Apple did not respond to questions about whether it’s considering any of Warner Music Group’s suggestions.)
White also pointed to Warner’s Wamo pack, which gave Japanese cell phone users digital albums with ringtones, video, full tracks and artist interviews. Wamo packs aren’t new — they launched overseas a year ago. But White says Warner plans to produce more of these bundles. He also mentioned that while Wamo packs use Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, or SMIL, for their interactive menus, Adobe’s Flash Lite would be a better candidate for “the level of sophistication people expect from Warner Music Group’s artists.”
(Adobe confirmed that Warner’s iPod/Flash Lite demonstrations had taken place, but said that the company “has not announced any joint plans for Flash or Flash Lite to be used in next-generation digital albums.”)
On the off chance that the Coen Bros. talking up the virtues of Final Cut Studio 2 doesn’t have you reaching for your charge card yet, you could try out this testimonial from director Miranda July, who made the truly wonderful “Me and You and Everyone We Know” last year.
If nothing else, this NAB keynote is bringing us plenty of insight into the creative process for a wide range of directors.
Despite rumors of its demise, Apple’s Get a Mac ad campaign rolls on. Introduced this week are Stuffed (above) Computer Cart and Flashback, both after the jump. Of the three, the journey back to the childhood of Mac and PC is my favorite, but this series is really starting to feel tired. There’s only so much more that Apple can do here, and I’m ready to see them, you know, actually show the goods with OS X instead of just going abstract.
Just my 2 cents. Click through to see the others.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple’s much-analyzed decision to delay the release of Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5, until October. Ultimately, it’s not that big a deal. If you read between the lines, the diversion of software development resources to finish the iPhone could have long-term benefits for the platform.
As a refresher, here’s what Apple had to say for themselves:
iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones.
I have to agree. After all, many of the best innovations — or at least great new products, are created by mixing the DNA of one successful platform with another. OS X and the iPhone OS share a hell of a lot of code. Apple should have no trouble at all adding multi-touch support to Macs. I’m hoping to see the world’s greatest tablet laptop — and the first one worth owning — emerge from this delay in the first place.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball has an interesting view of just why Apple fell behind in the first place, too. Check it out.
Don’t you just love when mainstream business media try to use technology code names? For the future record, guys, Apple is working on Leopard. Jaguar came out almost five years, under the unsexy name “Mac OS X v10.2.” But hey, it’s all big cats, right?
I had thought, by now, that Apple would have sued everyone using the word pod in the name of their products. Not so. Shopping at Whole Foods this afternoon, I spotted the Airpod, a high-tech air filter system that goes out of its way to look like an iPod, right down to placing the circular wheel filter at the bottom of the rectangular form.
It’s shameless appropriation of the form. Maybe it’s just bombastic enough for Apple to leave them alone? Click through for a picture of the packaging. It’s like a nano gone wrong.
Apple persuaded the Coen Brothers — creators of some of my favorite flicks — to talk it up. The shilling is a bit tiresome though. The Final Cut show reel is better fun.
After pricing everything out, I decided to build a single mono channel to see how it sounded. $100 for the amp, $100 for the speaker parts, $100 for wood (real oak, just couldn’t use that compressed saw dust stuff). I ordered the parts and went to work. After about two weeks of working in the evenings this is what I came up with.
… Even though it is monaural, the sound is unbelievable. I thought about building the second channel, but so far I’m happy with this.
The Dayton III is a 2-way, dual woofer loudspeaker using the Dayton 6-1/2″ paper cone woofer and 1-1/8″ silk dome tweeter. These drivers have been the subject of a lot of discussion on the Parts Express Tech Talk board because they are among the “best bang for the buck” in low price loudspeaker drivers. This woofer is able to produce exceptionally low bass for a given box size and the tweeter produces clean, clear highs. When you hear these speakers you won’t believe that the total cost for drivers and crossover components is under $150/PAIR!
The New York Times has a roundup of three vacuum tube amplifiers for the iPod:
BOTH the Cocoon and the Fatman come with a pair of white cotton gloves, to be worn to protect the high-gloss metal surfaces from fingerprints during handling. To assemble and try out both machines, I donned a set of the gloves, as did a friend who helped me.
There’s several new screenshots lighting up the internet that are purportedly taken from a new Leopard build (9A410).
Posted to Hackintosh, MacRumors, Flickr and elsewhere, the screenshots show a new, simple UI that’s darker and sharper than the current — note the corners of windows are no longer rounded. There’s less brushed metal, more soothing grey.
The screenshots on Flickr look much more like the current UI (Tiger) ,except Mail now has a metallic look.
But there’s something fishy about them. The interface is too plain and stripped back.
Many on the MacRumors’ forums think the screens are fake, and one poster on Flickr is sure about it.:
“Fake! Fake! Fake!
I write themes for OSX. And, I can tell you how this was most probably done:
The file Extras.rsrc still kinda works in the betas for 10.5 although, I hope that it will be removed before release.
Anyway, Installer based themes (though out of favor in 10.4) still work by replacing Extras.rsrc among other files.
Someone swapped out the normal Extras.rsrc and took some screen shots. Since most of the guts of 10.5 do not depend upon Extras.rsrc anymore, I am confident that 10.5 would run with a 10.4 Extras file for now.
Note that you do not see any signs of resolution independence! That is what would break this fake theme (since res independence calls to images not stored in Extras.rsrc).”
Apple faithful, I sense a disturbance in the force. I feel … fear. Worry. Anger. Faithful, put aside these negative feelings. The OS is fine. The iPhone is fine. Everything is fine. We are taking a little extra time, that’s all. I’m sure you’re receiving taunts from your Windows-loving friends talking about “OS X Leper.” I’ve been taunted too. Bill Gates just called and offered to send over a team to help us port Vista features into Leopard.
Faithful, do not lose heart. I’ve chosen the photo above to help you re-hypnotize yourselves. Look directly into my eyes, not around the eyes, but into the eyes. Now think of products. Glossy white products that cost too much money and make you feel superior to other people. Feel better? Good. Me too.
Wilkes University Wilkes-Barre, PA, is about to become one of the first colleges to make a complete switch from Windows PCs to new Intel Macs. Over the next three years, Wilkes will become an all-Mac campus — a $1.4 million switch involving 1,700 computers. The reason? To save money. The college will buy fewer machines and expects to spend less on support.
Scott Byers, vice president for finance and general counsel at Wilkes, answered a few questions by email, explaining the reason for the switch and the reaction from students and staff.
“Students seem to like the change and recognize Apple as an innovator in technology,” he said. “This generation of students has a great affinity for the Apple brand.”
Whose idea was it to switch to Macs?“¨The idea was generated as we solicited bids for our annual technology refresh program. Every three years we replenish all 1,700 computers on campus. Apple introduced us to their Intel-based Macs and we saw it as an opportunity to provide Apple and Windows operating systems in one machine for the campus community. The benefits to the end user were obvious. Students and faculty could choose the platform they needed and wanted based on their individual computing needs. We also saw an opportunity to reduce the number of machines on campus and therefore create more efficient use of computer labs. We soon realized the question wasn’t ‘why make the switch,’ but ‘why not?’
Was there any resistance?ҬWe are an institution whose mission is to establish personal relationships so we worked closely with our faculty and staff to make sure we had a general consensus in moving forward with Apple.
Your stated reason was to save money. Were there any other advantages or disadvantages?ҬBeing more efficient was a desire but we felt it had many other advantages;
1) Allowed the user to choose the desired operating system
2) offered the potential to enhance teaching and learning using Apple’s iLife software
3) created a standard base that our IT department could work with consistently rather than Dells, Gateways, HP and Apples
4) reduced the number of units necessary for campus and the number of units requiring potential service and replacement.
What was the reaction to the news like from staff and students?ӬStudents seem to like the change and recognize Apple as an innovator in technology. This generation of students has a great affinity for the Apple brand. Staff have embraced the change as well. We anticipate additional support from the campus community by providing training on the educational benefits of Apple software.
A couple of years ago, universities and schools were switching away from Macs. Do you think we’ll see more switch back?“¨I think so. Apple has made inroads in the personal computer market with an operating system that one could argue is superior to Windows. The switcher approach allows campuses to access both platforms from one unit. Again, I would pose the question why wouldn’t a campus make the switch? The visual, user-friendly nature of Apple-based programs, along with iTunes and other lifestyle programs, has aligned well with the current and incoming generation of college students.
Any additional comments?
I’d like to add that Wilkes has long been a leading provider of graduate education for teachers. We offer master’s degree and certificate programs in classroom technology and instructional technology. At the core of those programs is an emphasis on computer skills and also leadership skills so teachers can implement crucial technology upgrades in their respective schools.
Our partnership with Apple will be a vital part of providing cutting-edge, quality education in the way of instructional technology for today’s teachers.
Filings discovered today by AppleInsider and noted on April 5th at the US Patent and Trademark Office show that Apple Corps has given up more of the trademarks associated with The Beatles’ own company than was expected as part of the landmark settlement in February… (Steve Jobs’ Apple Inc.) received the rights to use imagery virtually inseparable from Apple Corps’ music business, including the centerpiece green apple and two variants with the fruit cut in half.
I love these cameras (I’ve bought three more since January as gifts, with great results). They shoot stunning pictures (here’s Flickr’s collection of FX07 shots) and have totally kick-ass image stabilization that works great in low-light, getting me incredible shots without using a tripod or leaning the camera against a table. They also shoot wicked-fast, making it easy to shoot a continuous stream of photos of something exciting as it’s happening. The presets are also really smart — the aerial photography setting got great shots when I was in a helicopter last month over the Grand Canyon. The camera also shoots crisp, 640×480 Quicktime video.
The world’s biggest music companies are expected to ask Apple to introduce a music subscription service to its iTunes digital media store as part of negotiations to renew their agreements with the computer company.
There are at least five problems the Apple TV alone cannot solve for the iTunes Store:
3. Access: At present, there is no option to rent movies on the iTunes Store, and, unlike music purchases versus subscription services, renting movies is a preferred method of consuming content. Further, purchasing movies through the iTunes Store still requires a computer, rather than direct shopping using the touted Apple TV.
If Apple is even remotely thinking about offering iTunes Store subscriptions for its music, I really hope they don’t – and instead apply the subscription model to iTunes Movies instead.
