SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here at Macworld, people are raving about the iStreamer, a small metal box that turns your iPhone or iPad into a high-fidelity audio source by connecting it to your home stereo.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Macworld 2011 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces and interesting products on the show floor.
Above: Three-year-old Hope Malabed takes a break with an iPad. There’s lots of kids with iDevices at Macworld.
If you want something more capable than an AppleTV to hook up to your television (most notably the ability to play local content), the Mac mini has the perfect form factor for a working HTPC… and now Mac accessory maker OWC is ready to supercharge it for you for that express purpose.
Called the Media Center Solution, the service works by just shipping any new Mac mini to OWC, who then go about upgrading the RAM to 4GB, installing a bundle of open source media center software like (Plex, Handbreak, MakeMKV) and then linking the Mac mini with either a 4, 8 or 12TB RAID, which will allow you to store up to 6,000 hours of DVD-quality video.
That’s not all. Not only will OWC send it to you back with an optional external Blu-Ray drive, you can also pick between two Elgato HDTV interfaces allowing you to use your Mac Mini as a DVR. They’ll even throw in a $15 iTunes gift card and an Apple Remote.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Macworld 2011 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces and interesting products on the show floor.
Above: Cute girls in short tube dresses. Good thing are weather here is unseasonably warm! They are promoting MacKeeper and boy did they get a lot of attention!
If a device works on a movie audience, it’ll also work as a real-world product. That’s the “meta lesson” from Chris Noessel and Nathan Shedroff who study how sci-fi interfaces in movies make it off the silver screen and vice versa. (Is that the coolest job ever, or what?)
Despite the unfortunate late-afternoon slot – the tide of Macworld attendees was on its way outside – about a hundred people showed up to listen to findings on their forthcoming book, “Make It So – Learning from SciFi interfaces.”
Noessel, an interaction designer and Shedroff, program chair of the MBA in Design Strategy at the California College of the arts, believes that Steve Jobs may have used the 2004 Pixar movie “The Incredibles” to test whether audiences would accept the idea of a tablet computer.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Dolly Drive, a new cloud-based storage solution specially tailored to Mac specifications, launched Thursday from the Indie Spotlight at Macworld in San Francisco and looks to be one of the smartest plays — and best values — to come out of this year’s show.
Remote storage accessible from anywhere, any time, Dolly Drive is designed to work exclusively and specifically with Apple’s Time Machine, giving Mac users an inexpensive, seamless method for creating secure, redundant (in some cases, perhaps, primary) backups that can be accessed to restore digital files from any location with an Internet connection.
With tri-level security including authentication encryption, data transmission over secure tunnel and multi-leveled, complex authentication protocols for third-party access to data at Dolly data centers, a Mac user can feel confident in the security of data stored for as little as $10 per month for 250GB. Other pricing plans prove Dolly Drive is serious about delivering value for a service that should be attractive to computer users of any sophistication level.
No other remote storage solution we’re aware of is engineered to work directly through Time Machine, nor is any so dedicated to serving Mac users.
This is definitely one of the nicest finds we’ve seen at Macworld 2011 and well worth further exploration.
Yeah, I said Sinbad! Apparently it’s an old joke that everyone has a “I-met-Sinbad-at-Macworld” story, after all, he’s been coming to Macworld since 1985. Well since he was going to be here anyway, they asked him to get on stage and give a keynote, and I’m glad they did because it was fantastic.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Five minutes on the show floor at Moscone West and the florescent lights, flashing cameras and jostling crowd have got me wanting to bolt.
So I put on some headphones for a demo of Naturespace, an app that billed as “holographic audio” that promises to help users “relax, meditate, escape and sleep.”
Gary Goldstein tells me the “aha” moment that started the company came by accident. A group of sound engineers left a high-end mic recording in a forest by accident and came across the recording months later.
Transported back to the idyllic scene, they realized there was a huge difference in sound quality between studio recorded nature sounds and those captured outdoors with optimal equipment.
There are currently six free tracks for your iPad, iPhone and iPod and another 80 available ranging from $0.99 to $3.99.First timers at Macworld, they came to show off an iPad version of the app launched late 2010.
Although some of the tracks (“Peyote” and “Loki” ) might do a little more for you than soothe, as will the incredibly powerful lightning storms. As a fan of computer assisted meditation, I liked the app — especially since the sound has been optimized for Apple earbuds — great if you are an insomniac (like me) who never goes to bed without an iPod loaded up with some droning audio books handy.
Goldstein says he doesn’t have a favorite, but frequently uses the app for a quick mental escape. His current winter favorite is the soothing sounds of warm Hawaii.
Back at CES last month, when Scosche unveiled its new line of gear, I was particularly taken by the flipSYNC II, the successor to their first gen key fob that transformed, in a pinch, to an iPod cable. I’ve been eager to have one ever since, and today, I get my wish, as they are now available for sale.
The flipSYNC II is a transforming key chain accessory that makes sure you’re never without an iPod cable when you need to charge or sync your device, even in a truly rare pinch. When not in use, the flipSYNC folds up into a black dongle similar to the one you might have on your car keys to turn off the alarm when the neighborhood brats start jumping on the hood. Yank the ends, though, and out comes an iPod Dock Connector and a USB appendage.
I’m not quite sure I’d hold your breath just yet, but a new MacBook Pro refresh might be due soon, if reports of near-empty stocks of both the 15-inch and 17-inch unibody models are anything to go by. If that refresh happens, it’s likely to be a long-overdue update from the Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs that Apple currently uses to the newest Sandy Bridge processors.
Multiple sources in both Apple Stores and third-party resellers are reporting that they are running low on supplies of Cupertino’s premium notebooks, with even Amazon listing a one to two month delay on shipping the 17-inch MBP.