software - page 56

Sometimes, the alternate-universe humor mocking Apple is only 3 percent more insane than actual Apple news. The hilarious Crazy Apple Rumors Site just announced the launch of Mac OS 9.3:

According to sources at Apple, the company is entirely at a loss to explain where this seed came from.

“I didn’t do it,” said senior vice president of software engineering Bertrand Serlet. “I can’t even get Leopard done in time. I’m swamped. Stupid iPhone and Apple TV. Nobody asked me whether or not we should make those. I mean, I haven’t gone to the bathroom in three weeks. OS 9? Je pense que non.”

Sign me up!
Image via Answers.com
Via Digg.
Crazy Apple Rumors Site » Blog Archive » Apple Seeds OS 9.3

Technorati Tags: mac, OS 9

Though DVRs are still far from mainstream technology, some folks are already moving from the time-shifting of a DVR to the place-shifting offered by Sling Media, which uses a hardware/software combo to take incoming TV streams and make them available at any time at any place over the Internet. But until yesterday, the software didn’t run on Mac. No more. the new Sling Player for Mac OS X is compatible with a wide variety of sources and viewing hardware:

With this software release, Slingbox owners can now view their television directly on their Macintosh computer screen. With full remote control, they can watch content from their home entertainment system whether from cable, DVR, DVD and even a full range of Apple entertainment products including: Apple TV®, Front Row, iPod® in Apple’s Universal Dock® or iPod in an iPod Hi-Fi.

They did a great job meeting Apple’s own interface standards, judging from the screenshot. Anyone already got it up and running? How’s it going?
Sling Media – Sling Media’s Popular SlingPlayer Now Ready For A Mac Near You

Technorati Tags: slingbox, slingplayer

Though DVRs are still far from mainstream technology, some folks are already moving from the time-shifting of a DVR to the place-shifting offered by Sling Media, which uses a hardware/software combo to take incoming TV streams and make them available at any time at any place over the Internet. But until yesterday, the software didn’t run on Mac. No more. the new Sling Player for Mac OS X is compatible with a wide variety of sources and viewing hardware:

With this software release, Slingbox owners can now view their television directly on their Macintosh computer screen. With full remote control, they can watch content from their home entertainment system whether from cable, DVR, DVD and even a full range of Apple entertainment products including: Apple TV®, Front Row, iPod® in Apple’s Universal Dock® or iPod in an iPod Hi-Fi.

They did a great job meeting Apple’s own interface standards, judging from the screenshot. Anyone already got it up and running? How’s it going?
Sling Media – Sling Media’s Popular SlingPlayer Now Ready For A Mac Near You

Technorati Tags: slingbox, slingplayer

As you might have heard, all hell broke loose today as the code to crack HD-DVD encryption spread all over the Intarwebs, to the chagrin of Digg Founder Kevin Rose. It’s a pretty big day, no matter how you feel about DRM. I’m not going to link directly to the code, because I’m not about that, but a playful OS X developer has created a screensaver that takes the 16 numbers in the code and randomly moves them around, so the actual order isn’t certain. To be clear, the configuration in the image above is not the correct order. Keep it clean, kids, but remember the events of the day in style.
Sixteen_Hexadecimal_Digits_Screensaver_for_Mac_OS_X
[Via Digg]

Technorati Tags: hd-dvd, screensaver, software

The new Coda website development app from the well-regarded software publisher Panic gets a rave review from John Gruber at Daring Fireball. Coda is an all-in-one site creation tool, combining a text editor, CSS editor, FTP, terminal and live preview in one app.
Gruber writes:

It’s about reducing clutter and emphasizing the relationships between the different aspects of web development, making it easier to switch from source code to preview to files. Coda’s advantages are most obvious when you consider working with two or three projects at once. In Coda, each site gets its own window, grouping source code, browser previews, terminals, and file listings together.6 The idea is that all your stuff –œ file listing, source code, browser previews, terminals –œ for site A is here, all your stuff for site B is there. Coda groups and visually organizes these disparate elements by project, rather than by app.

There’s another thorough review here at MacApper.

I’ve got good news and bad. The good news is that Panic software, the makers of such venerated Mac-only shareware apps as Transmit, Unison and the much-mourned Audion, will soon release a new, extremely powerful web-development program, Coda. The bad news is that I shouldn’t already know this: MacApper ran a review a day before the official announcement and even posted screenshots. The cat’s out of the bag now, so the review stays, but Panic had the screenshots taken down shortly after the offending blurb popped up. It’ll all be public in a few hours anyway. The app sounds sweet, by the way:

Which brings me to the built in editor. For me this is really the deal maker. One of the problems I have had switching to a Mac is the editors on OS X. They aren’t bad, but they aren’t great either. Having said that, I think the guys at Panic are off to a really great start with their own editor. All of the usual languages are supported and styled appropriately including: CSS, HTML, Javascript, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, XML, and straight text.

Dig it.
Via digg.

Technorati Tags: coda, macapper, panic

If you’re not too busy detailing ways to make Firefox better, you might want to contemplate a more radical shift. Shiira, the Webkit-based alt-browser put together by a team in Japan, has just made it to version 2.0, and it’s beautiful. I haven’t gotten to use it yet, so I can’t report on its performance, but the interface might just be the best on OS X. Yes, even nicer than OmniWeb. It’s free and open-source. Remember: Together, Everyone Achieves More. Go Joe!
Shiira Project

Technorati Tags: shiira, webkit

Firefox makes me crazy. So much about it is great: Cross-platform functionality, a dedicated community of developers, a massively extensible plug-in system, it’s nice. But it’s also slow, buggy and burdened with a non-standard Mac OS X interface.

Friday, Developer Colin Barrett put out a call to know what Mac users would fix on Firefox if they had the chance. The conversation’s been good, but make sure to make your voice heard! I’ll add my own pet peeve: Drop the XUL garbage and build a real Mac interface. Oh, and learn how to constrain functionality so that you don’t get memory leaks every few hours. Oops, hang on. Am I just describing Camino?
Firefox on the Mac
Image via Kstruct
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: firefox

You might recall that we raised something of a ruckus in these parts about the BBC’s plans to open up its full archive online — and not let Macs in on the game. There was a petition and hand-wringing, and, yes, even overt weeping. But it paid off. Yesterday, the BBC announced its iPlayer will be re-engineered to work with Macs. This was all reported by…the BBC.

The BBC’s plans for the iPlayer were put on hold earlier this year after its regulators, the BBC Trust, asked the corporation to look at whether the iPlayer should be platform agnostic.

Mr Highfield said Apple’s “proprietary and closed framework for digital rights management gives us headaches,” but, “it is one of our top priorities to re-engineer our proposed BBC iPlayer service to work on Macs”.

Unfortunately, you still need to live in the UK to use the service. And the Windows version will still be first. But you win some, you lose some.
(Image comes from the BBC’s glorious “Look Around You” series. This was from the Your Vision of 2000 segment. This gem is the iTrak: “I believe that in the year 2000 people will want to carry their music collection everywhere they go, and the i-Trak is the answer. An 8 Track cassette player that runs off a large square blue 9V torch battery (enough for 30 minutes of continuous playback) with leather carry strap, making this unit truly portable.” Bless.)
BBC NEWS | Technology | BBC to open up archive for trial
Via TUAW

Technorati Tags: bbc, iplayer

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.

Technorati Tags: google, rss, software

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.

Technorati Tags: developers, google

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.

Anyone tried it?

There’s a new version of Final Cut Studio in town.

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.

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).”

More screens after the jump

TVShows is a free, open source application that triggers automatic downloading of TV shows via BitTorrent.
Working in conjunction with a BitTorrent client, the application manages show subscriptions. Favorite shows are automatically downloaded in the background whenever they become available online.

Most BitTorrent video is encoded in DivX or .AVI formats, and will play fine in a media player like VLC, but if you want to stream it to an AppleTV, you will need to convert the shows — or hack the AppleTV to support DivX and other formats.

Another way to get TV shows automatically is to set up Azureus with the RSS Feed Scanner plugin. Full instructions here.

Via TorrentFreak

AppleTV just got one step closer to being a full-fledged replacement for a stand-alone Web-browsing device thanks to AppleTV RSS Plugin from twenty08 software. The fun little app adds a new channel to Apple’s hackable box, and then you can make it display your favorite RSS feed. <cough>US, for example.</cough>
The little application will soon support ATOM feeds and video RSS. Can’t wait. This is all nice, but it still can’t compete with what’s officially supported on the Nintendo Wii, which has a headline news reader, weather and even a complete browser. Isn’t that crazy?
Via Digg.

Technorati Tags: appleTV, software

One of Apple’s greatest feature introductions of the last few years is the use of two fingers to turn a PowerBook or MacBook trackpad into a two-button wonder. It’s an incredibly elegant solution that feels significantly better than awkward multi-button Windows trackpad laptops.
But it also only works on 2005 or later PowerBooks, which left, well, almost everyone out of the party. Until now. iScroll2 is an open-source project that promises to bring the two-finger scroll dance to older PowerBooks. It’s very early in development, so try it at your own risk. My 2003 12″ PowerBook is not supported, so I’m still out in the cold. Anyone got it working? Is it worth our time?

Via Digg.

It’s official – the AppleTV is the company’s most hacked piece of hardware since the Apple II+. Need proof? Less than two weeks after the launch of the living room digital media server, a hacker has loaded the $300 device with the full version of Mac OS X, creating the cheapest Mac ever.

Semthex at Hackint0sh pulled the trick, which involves swapping out Apple’s Mach Kernel for a new one that works on the cheap box. There’s a video which appears to validate the claim. This just feels like a nice novelty, though. For twice the price, you can get a machine with way more power and, most importantly, a much-larger hard drive. Plus, the idea of running Tiger on 256 MB of RAM just made me shudder.

How much longer will it be before someone gets a full install of Parallels Desktop running Vista up on the AppleTV?

Mac OS X Running on AppleTV [AppleTV Hacks]
Via Digg.

As a Brit, tea is mother’s milk to me. I drink it all day, every day. No morning is so bleak as a morning without a wake-up cuppa.

So you’d think Cuppa, a mini software app for timing the perfect cup of tea, would be just my, well, cup of tea.

But I already know how to make the perfect cup of tea. I can do it in my sleep, and often do — well, half asleep.

This software is for clueless Americans, who can’t brew tea to save their lives. Americans never heat the water hot enough to properly steep the brew. (Quick tip: if you want a decent cup of tea in America, head for the nearest Chinese bakery. It’s the only place that actually boils the water).

It’s nice for once not to be utterly alone in my opinions.

Earlier this week I wrote the recent security “threats” to OS X are overblown in a column entitled Mac Attacks a Load of Crap.

Most people disagreed. John Dvorak, for example, says malware is “good news for Mac users because now security holes will be fixed early, and users will learn to become aware of these things. It’s a little bit like getting the mumps. You do not want to get this ailment as an adult.”

But veteran tech reporter Tom Yager at Infoworld, who’s as sober and levelheaded as they come, says the panic is much ado about nothing. He writes:

“… rather than marking the first viruses to infiltrate the Mac OS X fortress, as many press reports claimed, the vulnerabilities are among many potential security risks that Apple continuously and proactively tracks. Furthermore, the “critical” label affixed to the viruses by security vendors are alarmist, inciting a code-red threat level for potential security risks that Mac users can avoid through commonsense precautions.

A media feeding frenzy has erupted over the OS X Leap.A worm and the Safari browser filesystem metadata proof-of-concept exploit. It is a nonstory that has been given legs by virus software vendors that get their names in the papers by branding as extremely critical malware that’s been harmless to date — the very same vendors that then admit that one check box’s worth of tilting the balance between convenience and safety is all that’s required.”

Except for Intel-based hardware, the big thing here at Macworld seems to be syndicating photos over the net — or Photocasting.

Not only did Steve Jobs showcase a new photocasting feature in iPhoto on Tuesday, on Monday ex-Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki introduced the Mac version of a new photocasting application called FilmLoop.

Photocasting isn’t new — several photoblogs offer syndicated snaps via RSS, as do photo-sharing websites like Flickr and Buzznet. But until now, few desktop applications made it easy to download pictures from a camera and push them automatically to friends’ and relatives’ machines.

In his keynote speech, Jobs demonstrated how photos and galleries in a new version of iPhoto can be pushed, or photocast, to subscribers’ computers.

“This is podcasting — for photos,” Jobs said.

Instead of publishing to the web, photos are delivered automatically to subscriber’s computers. In iPhoto, the user creates a photocast album. All the pictures added to, or deleted from, this album are automatically pushed to subscriber’s iPhoto libraries, where they show up in a gallery in the source list.

“It’s like magic,” Jobs said, with typical understatement. “You take away the machinery, and it’s just like magic. It’s amazing.”

Publishing a photocast requires the new version of iPhoto, which has been updated as part of Apple’s $80 iLife 06 suite, and a .Mac membership (TK a year) — but subscribers can be on any platform.

“Anyone can subscribe. You don’t even need a Mac,” Jobs said.

Meanwhile, Kawasaki’s FilmLoop combines iPhoto photocasting with Flickr-like photo groups.

Not only can FilmLoop users subscribe to each other’s galleries, or “loops,” they can add comments and even contribute their own snaps.

The FilmLoop network has public loops dedicated a wide range of topics, from news and sports to pictures of all the Corvettes for sale on eBay.

The FilmLoop system is free — but loops are sprinkled with ads.

Kawaski is a member of the company’s board and a backer through his firm, Garage Technology Ventures.

Beyond Macworld, several tinkerers have hacked together homebrew podcasting systems, including Chris Pirillo using a Sony PSP, and Philip Torrone with Flickr and some scripts.

MACWORLD — It’s 1997 all over again! Microsoft and Apple have renewed their marriage vows for another five years, Microsoft said on Tuesday.

Apple and Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit have signed a formal “commitment agreement” deeming Microsoft to continue developing Office for Mac for at least another five years, Microsoft said.

“We wanted to comfort our customers around the world that we are in this for the long term,” said Scott Erickson, the Mac BU’s director of product management and marketing. “It makes sense to really publicly show our commitment to the platform.”

The blissful marriage between the two companies looked rocky after Steve Jobs announced Apple will be switching to Intel chips, which may or may not also run Windows. Plus, Apple has been developing its own software to compete with applications traditionally developed for the Mac by Microsoft — Safari, Keynote, etc.

“We’ve been in the Mac software business for more than 20 years,” said Erickson. “And it’s been a great business for us.”

Erickson said the deal was signed in November 2005.

The “commitment agreement” is reminiscent of Macworld in 1997, when Bill Gates joined Steve Jobs’ keynote speech via a satellite linkup. Looming large and Big Brother-like, Gates said he was happy to invest $150 million in Apple, which was in trouble at the time, and sign a five-year commitment to continue developing Mac software.

In addition to renewing its vows, Microsoft said it will enhance Entourage in the spring. The Mac email, contact and calendar software will synchronize with iPods, among other devices.

Damian Kulash Jr., lead singer for the band OK Go, argues convincingly that in this day and age, file-sharing is essential for his band’s success.

In the New York Times, He writes:

“To be clear, I certainly don’t encourage people to pirate our music. I have poured my life into my band, and after two major label records, our accountants can tell you that we’re not real rock stars yet. But before a million people can buy our record, a million people have to hear our music and like it enough to go looking for it. That won’t happen without a lot of people playing us for their friends, which, in turn, won’t happen without a fair amount of file sharing.

As it happened, for a variety of reasons, our label didn’t put copy-protection software on our album. What a shame, though, that so many bands aren’t as fortunate.”

CNET:

The Princeton researchers that have done much of the work deconstructing SonyBMG’s recent controversial copy protection software have found an interesting new tidbit. According to their new findings, the Sony software had a hidden component that could convert songs from the CD, or other ordinary MP3s, into a file compatible with Apple’s copy protected FairPlay format.

That would mean that the songs could be played on iPods, which hasn’t been the case with copy protected CDs in the past. It apparently accomplishes this by using open-source, yet copyrighted code, a practice deemed a no-no in programming circles.

It’s not yet clear how this came about. Record labels have hoped to establish compatibility with the iPod for their copy protected CDs for some time, and EMI Music has even said that its CDs are close to reaching that point. Apple, for its part, denied EMI’s contention.

Earlier this week marked 20 years since the premiere of Windows 1.0.

Microsoft has been surprisingly quiet about the anniversary, except for a couple of things in Japan.

Over at Download Squad, there’s a list of 20 things you didn’t know about Windows 1.0.

One of the things on the list is that Bill Gates wanted to call the operating system “Interface Manager,” but was persuaded by marketing exec Rowland Hanson that Windows was the way to go.

(Via Maximac.se)