Archive for April, 2007
« Previous EntriesApple Splitting ‘ProCare’ into ‘ProCare’ and ‘One-to-One’
Monday, April 30th, 2007
MacRumors has heard that Apple will be relaunching its ProCare product on Wednesday, splitting the $99 service into two separate $99 services.
Apple’s current ProCare package offers a number…
Samsung Begins Production Of 16Gb NAND Flash Memory
Monday, April 30th, 2007Samsung has announced that they are beginning volume production of higher-density flash memory.
Samsung claims to be the first to accomplish the feat of mass-producing 16 gigabit NAND flash memory, which is being manufactured at 51 nm,…
Goozex game trading site adds Mac titles (Macworld.com)
Monday, April 30th, 2007Macworld.com - Goozex, a video game trading Web site, has recently opened its doors to Mac users. Goozex already offers trading services for PC and video game console users, available throughout North America.
Ballmer on iPhone Marketshare
Monday, April 30th, 2007USA Today interviewed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer about his thoughts on the iPhone. While Ballmer gives credit to Apple’s early move into the music arena, he doubts the iPhone will gain any significant marketshare:
Now we’ll get a ch…
Unlimited Online Backup for Mac
Monday, April 30th, 2007Mozy.com announced last week the availability of a public beta for a Mac version of their online backup service.
The services is described as “the first unlimited online backup service for Mac users worldwide.”
Design…
News: Slingbox TV streaming device comes to Mac
Monday, April 30th, 2007Sling Media has released SlingPlayer for Mac, software that lets Mac users operate Slingbox “placeshifting” devices that let you watch your TV or control your home entertainment system from anywhere on the Internet.
Building Custom iQuiz Data
Monday, April 30th, 2007
iQuiz is a brand new, flashy iPod game from Apple that allows users to create custom games and run them using the iQuiz interface. In this tutorial, Erica Sadun shows how to create custom iQuiz files and provides sample code and files.
Whither Logic?
Monday, April 30th, 2007At last month’s Musikmesse, there was good news and not so good news from Apple.
The good news is that this year saw Apple’s most eye-catching Messe booth, yet. Following Apple’s signature black/silver/white design, the booth was bigger than in previous years, featured a larger demo theater, and also boasted a more prominent location on the show floor. A welcome sign that Apple is serious about this industry.
The not so good news: Apple made no announcements whatsoever.
When No News Isn’t Good News
In 2006, some of Apple’s key competitors released major revisions of their music software, e.g., MOTU Digital Performer 5, Steinberg Cubase 4, or Ableton Live 6. The most recent major update of Apple’s flagship music production suite, Logic Pro 7, however, shipped way back in October 2004. Consequently, Logic users had been expecting some news about Logic 8, which is rumored to feature a completely overhauled user interface and possibly even re-branding, for last January’s NAMM show. When that didn’t come about, Musikmesse was the next “natural fit” for scheduling an announcement, but no such luck.
Logic is by far the “oldest” product in Apple’s Pro Software line-up, and even though, in its current state, it still makes for a decent package with one-of-kind tools like the Sculpture software synth and Space Designer convolution reverb, users are anxious to find out what direction Apple will take with the sequencer package, and why it is taking them so long to kick out a new version — especially after the huge Final Cut Studio update.
One possible reason we haven’t seen Logic 8, yet, may very well be that the software will rely on technology only available in the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. E.g., if the rumors about a revised UI are true, that UI could make use of Core Animation. It would be a very bad idea, however, if Logic 8 was linked to non-trivial changes to Core Audio or Apple’s proprietary Audio Units plugin format.
No More Porting Required, Please
Literally all makers of music software for the Mac have invested a serious amount of time and effort into porting their highly optimized code to Universal Binaries — sometimes from legacy Carbon code originally developed for OS 9 — to make it run natively on Intel Macs. In fact, so many companies have only now presented, or announced, MacIntel-savvy versions of their software that 2007 can rightfully be considered the Year of Universal Binaries for audio and music software.
If considerable effort was required yet again to keep this kind of software compatible with Logic 8 and/or OS X 10.5, Apple would do developers a big disservice.
(For some positive news from this year’s Musikmesse, see the Messe Report at the O’Reilly Digital Media Center.)
The Sims 2 Family Fun Stuff ships for Mac
Monday, April 30th, 2007Aspyr Media today announced that the Mac version of The Sims 2 Family Fun Stuff has begun shipping to retail outlets…
Analyst expects further Mac share gains
Monday, April 30th, 2007Apple’s Mac market share rose during the company’s March quarter despite a predicted slump following Microsoft’s launch of Windows Vista, and Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gene Munster suspects the company will see further gains year-over-year. “Strong Mac sales in Apple’s March quarter enabled the company to gain share despite stronger than normal …
Skype, Intel offer free Mother’s Day calls
Monday, April 30th, 2007Skype and Intel today announced a joint effort to advance a “shared vision of establishing the personal computer as a central and reliable platform for voice and video calling over the Internet.”…
Freeverse announces Lineform 1.3.2
Monday, April 30th, 2007Freeverse today announced an update to Lineform, the drawing and illustration program for Mac OS X…
Samsung ships 16Gb flash chips
Monday, April 30th, 2007Samsung on Monday began shipping the world’s first ever 16 gigabit flash memory. Originally sampled in March, the new memory is built on a 51 nanometer process that shrinks the storage enough to allow 16 gigabytes on a typical memory card. The shortened traces combined with processing data in larger chunks also greatly speeds up transfers compare…
Entrance generates Access-like charts
Monday, April 30th, 2007An avid Mac developer has released Entrance, a new MySQL browser that generates Access-like charts based on data in MySQL databases with a “match box” search facility that works like Apple’s Spotlight technology for database tables. Charts are interactive with pan and zoom capability, allowing users to select data or answer important questions by d…
A primer on modifying application icons
Monday, April 30th, 2007Are you tired of boring icons? Well, if you are, all you have to do is edit the icns file yourself. Now someone might say, how do I do that or how can I make an icon myself? But the truth is, you don’t have to! All you have to do is modify the existing one to suit your needs with a picture editing program like Photoshop (and I bet there are others that are free). Here’s how:
- Locate the application whose icon you’d like to change.
- Control-click on the application, pick Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu, and navigate to Contents ยป Resources.
- Locate the icns file in the Resources folder controlling the Dock icon. It will usually be called the application_name.icns
- Hold Option while dragging the file to your local directory and out of the application folder. Holding Option will make a copy instead of moving the file.
- Open the file up in Preview and save the file as a png instead of icns; this allows Photoshop to be able to open it.
One way to watch videos from external drives on AppleTV
Monday, April 30th, 2007I found the following very helpful, as I have too many videos to keep it on my internal hard drive. So what I wanted to accomplish was to keep all my videos on an external drive, but still be able to watch them through my AppleTV.
The problem is that AppleTV can only read files through iTunes (or by making a physical hack to your AppleTV). I came up with a very simple solution. First, I made sure all of my videos were on the external drive. Then, in the Finder, I went to that drive, selected all the videos, held down Command and Option, and drag and dropped them onto iTunes. Even if iTunes doesn’t show you the little arrow indicating that it is going to make a shortcut to those files, it will do so.
After doing this, iTunes and AppleTV will want to sync. Cancel the sync, and then go to your movies in iTunes and uncheck them — this way, you will be sure iTunes won’t try to sync them again.
In your AppleTV, go to Sources and find your computer. (I assume your are…
Run apps at different color depths simultaneously in X11
Monday, April 30th, 2007X11.app preferences allow you to set it to 256 colors for the occasional x-windows programs requiring this setting, but you may then find other x-windows applications don’t function at all, or at least look terrible. There is a simple way to have it both ways, simultaneously. The trick is to create a wrapper shell script that looks something like this:
#!/bin/zsh -fDISPLAY=:$$[3]$$[4]Xquartz $DISPLAY -depth 8 2>/dev/null & quartz-wm &/path/to/program/requiring/256/colorsThis essentially forces a second X11 session to be started on a different (randomly determined) DISPLAY, so it can peacefully coexist with X11.app running in default mode (usually on DISPLAY :0.0, unless multiple users have X11 running with Fast User Switching). By randomly assigning the DISPLAY, multiple instances of the program invoked from the wrapper script can be run simultaneously. This works on Intel powered M…
Enable iTunes and iPhoto sharing on newer Linksys routers
Monday, April 30th, 2007Background: A while back, I had to replace my old Linksys router with a newer one — the old one maxed out well below my FIOS connections 15Mbps limit (Verizon supplied an ActionTEC router, which worked quite well, but whose admin interface I hated). After the switch, iPhoto and iTunes sharing no longer worked between my Macs, or to my AppleTV after it arrived. This bothered me enough to ask about it, but I sort of gave up when I didn’t get any good responses. Our recent move to a new home gave me the chance to set the network up from scratch again, but sharing still didn’t work. So I set out to do some more Googling for a solution.
The answer: To enable sharing with a newer Linksys Cable/DSL Router (I have a BEFSR41 v4.1), you need to modify your router’s setup. Go to the Security page (i.e. http://192.168.1.1/Filte…
SlingPlayer Mac gives Apple TV control
Monday, April 30th, 2007Sling Media today launched the finished 1.0 version of SlingPlayer for Mac, a new version which adds controls unique to any version of the software. Designed to play content on a computer streamed from a Slingbox attached to a TV, the finished Mac version includes not only support for controlling cable boxes, DVRs, and other general media receiver…
News: Turret Wars game released
Monday, April 30th, 2007Sector 3 Games has released a new title called Turret Wars, a 3D real-time combat game that harkens back to the classic “Scorched Earth.”