Today’s deals lead-off with hardware. Imacs starting at $99. MacBook Air laptops starting at $1,099 and MacBook Pro Core 2s for $1,898 – plus much more.
Details on these and other great deals can be found on the CoM Daily Deals page.
Parallels, regarded by many as the premier virtual Windows solution for the Mac, announced Tuesday a special Switch to Mac Edition, extending a welcome lifeline to computer users who are choosing to embrace the elegance, power and simplicity of Apple’s Mac OS in increasing numbers every day.
Cult of Mac received an extensive tour of the new “Switch to Mac” features recently and it’s a good bet Parallels will deliver on its promise to have former Windows users working comfortably in the Mac UI within hours instead of the more usual learning curve that can often take weeks.
“For years I have worked with switchers coming into Apple stores with questions about how to use their new Mac,” says Saied Ghaffari, Switch to Mac Advocate, who gave us the tutorial demo.
“Parallels Desktop Switch to Mac Edition thoroughly addresses the concerns switchers have,” Ghaffari said, adding, “the product is designed to make moving to Mac as fast and simple as possible, regardless of the level of technical knowledge of the switcher.
Featuring a set of easy-to-use tools and interactive tutorials such as Click to Learn, Watch Saied, and You Try incorporated with Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac, the Switch to Mac edition promises to help “Switchers” understand how to operate Mac OS X, transfer all PC data and applications, and seamlessly run their Windows applications on their new Macs.
“It’s like a friend teaching you the Mac at your own pace,” according to Ghaffari.
Parallels Desktop 4.0 Switch to Mac Edition is available from today at Apple stores, at Apple.com and through other preferred retail partners in English, German and French. The suggested retail price (SRP) of the product is $99.99.
Hit the jump for more information and detailed explanation of the Switch to Mac edition’s features.
It’s easy to take for granted how rapidly Apple upgrades Mac OS X with meaningful new features. After all, with Friday’s Snow Leopard release, the world’s best desktop OS will have seen its fifth major leap forward in the same time it’s taken Microsoft to add only Vista and the promise of Windows 7 (I know it’s coming soon, I’m just impressed Apple’s beaten Microsoft again).
Three days from the next great version of the best great thing, here are 10 reasons why you should upgrade to Snow Leopard.
10. It’s Leopard Done Right
The release of Mac OS X Leopard was fraught with peril. It was late, it ran a bit slow, and it offered amazing new features — some of which weren’t fully ready for prime time. Snow Leopard is all about performance, optimizing features to deliver a great experience. It takes what you know today and makes it perfect.
Here’s a great idea for making tangle-proof earbuds. It’s so simple, I’m surprised no one has thought of it before.
To prevent your earbud wires from tangling when not in use, join them together using a Ziploc-like zipper.
By pinching the two wires together into a single wire, they become tangle-proof, like a piece of thick, rubbery string. The two wires are simply unzipped when you want to use them.
The idea was dreamed up by London design student Lee Washington, who has made a short video to demonstrate them in action — see below.
“The prototype was made very basically with a sandwich bag seal,” says Washington. “It was just designed to demonstrate the concept.”
As yet, Washington doesn’t have a manufacturer. He’s talking to his professors this week about patenting the idea. He now regrets making the video, which is fast becoming popular. He’s afraid his idea will be ripped off.
“This could go either way,” he says. “Either the video will get very popular and someone at Apple will eventually see it or someone will do the idea themselves. That would be a pity.”
Indeed. We wish Washington the best finding someone to market his brilliantly simple idea.
Today’s deals: upgrade to Leopard from your current Mac OS X for just $29; scan the latest App Store freebies for the perfect addition to your iPhone or touch; kick back and listen to some tunes with Logitech’s AudioStation Express iPod speaker system, plus much more.
Details on these bargains and others can be found at CoM’s Daily Deals page.
Boy Genius Report published Wednesday what the blog reports as screenshots of iTunes 9 sent in by a “tipster”. The screenshots, whose “authenticity cannot be confirmed”, purport to show Facebook integration as well as sync capability extended to a Samsumg mp3 player.
For what it’s worth, a source intimately knowledgeable with the production of Apple help and support documentation told Cult of Mac during a recent conversation not to expect social media integration with the release of iTunes 9, which our source described only as “coming soon”. The most interesting and useful upgrade confirmed for the next version of iTunes is going to be the ability to order and organize iPhone and iPod Touch app screens from the iTunes desktop.
With nearly three weeks until the still-rumored, not-yet-officially-announced Apple Media Event thought to be taking place in San Francisco on September 9, the Apple rumor mill will in all likelihood continue to spit and pop all kinds of interesting ideas. And in all likelihood no one will really know what’s coming until the John Mayer music (or whoever…) fades…
Hit the jump for more screeenshots
You have to see this to believe it. Above is a demo video of Paris 3D, a tourist guide to France’s beautiful capital city in photo-realistic 3D.
It looks absolutely stunning. The detail is unbelievable. Here’s a massive virtual city on your iPhone — right down to the gargoyles. There’s even people and vehicles — plus their shadows! — for added realism.
You can zoom in to particular streets or buildings, or zoom out to get a global view of the city’s layout. Tap on a building to get a data sheet on the structure, which includes the building’s history, photos, and where appropriate, phone numbers or opening times (like a museum).
Type a destination, and you zoom across the 3D city to see it.
You can to highlight particular categories of buildings — hotels and restaurants, for example, which show up color coded on the 3D map, making them easy to spot in a global view. The app is GPS-enabled, so you just tap a button to get directions. Street names are overlaid.
Performance looks fantastic. It renders better than Google maps. The demo looks like it was filmed on a iPhone emulator running on a developer computer. But if performance is as good on a real iPhone, it’ll be killer.
The app has just been submitted to the iTunes App store and should be available soon pending Apple’s approval.
The developer, Newscape Technology, claims it took twenty man-years of R&D over a four year period to develop, and is the first in a series of city guides.
Move over Google Maps!
Today’s deals include Apple’s back to school sale on free iPods when buying a MacBook or iMac, classic iPods starting at $180, $49 8GB iPhone 3Gs and much more.
Details on these bargains and many others can be found at CoM’s Daily Deals page.
At this point, it’s hard to get excited by every amazing new iPhone app that comes down the pike. Even augmented reality has started to feel boring, and it isn’t even allowed on locked-down iPhones yet.
But man, does Cadence have me excited. Basically, it figures out the average tempo of your iPod library, then creates playlists by different BPM speeds so you can easily browse your music by pace. Watch the video at their site (not embeddable, unfortunately). It’s amazing, and a totally new experience.
And it’s something I’ve been looking for. I’ve never had my whole 25-gig music library on a single handheld device before, and I’ve found it’s hard to take advantage of so many songs and artists. I’ll inevitably stay in my comfort zone if I don’t discover what I’ve been missing — and Genius doesn’t help, it regurgitates the same 20 songs every time I use it.
This has that potential, if it’s smart enough to pick a random song within each tempo. I’m excited to use this, and I hope Apple has the sense to approve it. This is not duplicate functionality.
Here’s a rumor about Apple’s upcoming tablet that makes a lot of sense: There’s actually two of them: an iPod tablet with a six-inch screen and a bigger tablet that runs full OS X.
And Apple may introduce one or both in September, according to veteran tech analyst Richard Doherty, who spoke to BusinessWeek.
Apple has developed prototypes of two different tablet machines—one that resembles a large-sized iPod and boasts a 6-inch screen, and another that features a larger display. Apple may launch one or both devices as early as September,” Doherty says. “A decision on whether and when Apple takes the tablet plunge lies with Apple CEO Steve Jobs,” Doherty says.
…
One of Apple’s prototype devices is able to run all Mac applications, and allows for video and audio editing and graphic animation, Doherty says. Another, which looks like a larger iPod, lends itself to watching videos, playing games, and reading e-books.
The two devices sound like the best of both worlds. An entertainment-oriented iPod tablet — like an iPod Plus — that runs the iPhone/iPod OS and is great for watching movies around the house; and a bigger Snow Leopard-capable device that can do real work. One for entertainment, another for education, kinda like Gizmodo’s Brian Lam suggested last week.
Doherty also predicts the tablet(s) could start as low as $679. It’ll be a hit because it’s got 65,000 Apps to run on it.
“Apple has a real opportunity to take the magic of the iPhone interface and give that more real estate to do the tasks… It’s an iPhone, but bigger. It’s something that you know, but bigger.” The device may be able to wirelessly access iTunes and Apple’s App Store, which offers more than 65,000 apps such as games, e-books, and calendars.
But what about the inside sources quoted by Jim Dalrymple and others that say the tablet won’t show until 2010? Perhaps the Mac tablet is for next year, and iPod Plus for 2009?
