Posted on May. 13, ’08, 10:05 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar
Not to be outdone by
sneaky Boston Red Sox fans
, staff from the longtime indie Boston Mac store, Tech Superpowers, have buried a jersey celebrating their own store in the cement behind the
new Apple Store
in that same city.
Boston Globe
:
“We just walked in and started digging a hole and taking snaps. When approached, we explained what we were doing,” [Tech Superpowers founder and president Michael Oh] said of encounters with the Apple construction workers. “Luckily, that was the morning that the guy had bought the Ortiz shirt on eBay for $175K, so everyone just thought it was humorous.”
Let’s just hope that Apple appreciates the joke.
Posted on May. 13, ’08, 10:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category |
Video
Arranging icons on the desktop to convey a message
is passe—behold the new hotness in the field of desktop art: digital filmmaker
Dennis Liu’s
swanky music video staged entirely on the OS X desktop. Featuring the song “
Again & Again
” (iTunes link) from The Bird and the Bee’s eponymous album, this fast-paced video is a joy to watch.
Like Joshua Ellis writes on TUAW
, it’s a little difficult to describe the concept in words, so just go ahead and hit the play button on the embedded
YouTube video
above. Dennis even goes so far as to show you how to buy the song from the iTunes Store towards the end—sneaky, eh?
Posted on May. 13, ’08, 9:33 AM PT by Dan Moren
For those using their Mac as an entertainment center, Front Row is often the logical choice for a television-based interface. It comes with every computer using Leopard, and you can run it simply with the Apple Remote that most Macs include. But that doesn’t necessarily means it’s the only or best choice.
Over at Lifhacker Editor and
Macworld
contributor Gina Trapani has
written up an in-depth piece
on using
Xbox Media Center
(XBMC) to replace Front Row on your Mac. XBMC was originally designed for use on modded Xboxes, but intrepid developers ported it over to OS X, so now you can enjoy it on your Mac too.
I haven’t tried it out, but from the screenshots, it looks like a slick piece of software, allowing you to browse and play not only your music and photos, but also TV shows and movies ripped from DVDs, complete with box art. The
most recent beta version of XBMC
finally includes support for the Apple Remote, fitting the last block into the Tetris line of media center functionality.
If you’re looking for a change, check out Gina’s article, which walks you through installing and configuring XBMC on your Mac, and for more on the project, you can always follow up with the
XBMC on OS X Wiki
.
[Hat tip: the other Dan M.]
Posted on May. 13, ’08, 8:49 AM PT by Dan Moren
Millennia of human evolution, thousands of years of civilized culture, and it’s all come to this: you can now upload stupid videos about yourself onto the Internet. Great leaders in thought and progress are rolling in their graves all across the world, enough so that it may actually
change the world’s rotation
.
And to make this important procedure even simpler, Google Mac software engineer David Phillip Oster has put together
Vidnik
, a simple application that lets you record video from your Mac’s iSight and upload it to YouTube. While you could do this with Photo Booth or iMovie, Vidnik automatically records in the format that YouTube likes, meaning that you don’t have to worry about lengthy processor-intensive transcoding.
The app itself is still a little rough around the edges (to be expected; it’s only at 0.13), but it works pretty well. I
recorded a short video
and uploaded it to YouTube for the entire world to enjoy, and the whole process took probably about a minute or so.
Thank goodness that we’ve finally simplified the process of making YouTube videos. Now we can at last move on to the final stages of human evolution.
Posted on May. 13, ’08, 8:04 AM PT by Dan Moren
Hold onto your hats, folks: here comes the first update for Microsoft Office 2008. The folks in Redmond have shipped out Service Pack 1, featuring bug fixes and performance improvements for all the apps in the suite. The update will be
available for download from Microsoft’s site
later today.
Here’s just a taste of the kind of sexiness you can expect from SP1: “Microsoft says the service pack will improve performance when you type text into a text box, shape, or chart element.” That’s right, baby. After almost twenty years of Microsoft Office, they’ve finally got that typing thing
licked
.
Microsoft also fixed an issue with removing copies of Office from Time Machine backups, a layer bug with inserted PSD files, and a crashing issue when you tried to copy data from Office 2008 into Office 2004. And there was also a veritable encyclopedia of fixes for all the individual apps: fixing problems with Notebook view in Word, improved support for secondary displays in Excel, speed and stability fixes for printing in PowerPoint, and better junk filtering for Entourage. For a more in-depth list of changes, check out
the mothership
.
But that’s not the only big news to come out of MS today. The company also announced that they’ve changed their corporate hive mind and decided to
restore support for Visual Basic in Office
. Well, the next major version anyway. Which probably won’t be until 2010 or 2011. If you’re looking to cope in the meantime, our colleague Rob Griffiths has
some tips on how to get by
.
Posted on May. 13, ’08, 6:56 AM PT by Derik DeLong
After sticking hard and fast to its $1.99 common TV show price point for so long, HBO and the power of its high quality shows
have made Apple crumble
, allowing $2.99 per episode. Apple got served. And now they’re
serving up HBO shows
.
Really though, if you’re interested in just a show or two, buying through the iTunes Store is a great way to get your HBO fix. I’m an addict of HBO programming but I can’t justify the monthly cost associated. The movies aren’t a real draw as I have Netflix, but the Sopranos, Rome, and the Wire I just can’t get enough of.
I’m not sure if I’ll be buying any of the current offerings (The Wire, Flight of Conchords, Rome, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Deadwood) because I’ve already watched all of three of them, watching one on DVD, one doesn’t appeal to me, and finally one I’m on the fence about watching (you may now commence guessing which is which). Now, if Entourage were offered, that would change my mind. I would buy weekly if the episodes were released as shown on HBO. Somehow I don’t see that happening.
Posted on May. 13, ’08, 5:24 AM PT by Derik DeLong
We’ve been watching the construction of the new Boston Apple Store on Boylston Street very carefully, particularly because at one point, our little blog was written by Boston residents (ok, I live in the ‘burbs, close enough). It’s now complete and the store has been set for a May 15th opening.
At 6 PM (Eastern time natch) this Thursday, the store will open its doors. While supplies last, commemorative T-shirts and special giveaways (aka schwag) can be had. Dan’s been threatening a meetup, but I really think it’s an excuse to camp out in the largest Apple Store yet (in terms of square footage, it has three floors). He was telling me that he bought a new tent and sleeping bag just to do so. Apple, consider yourself warned.
The green monster themed opening is appreciated, but what about some Red Sox players? They have Thursday off. Get Youk to go! I guess a new store is good enough.
Posted on May. 12, ’08, 3:00 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Okay, not so much
3D things
, per se, but rather the shape and form of the iPod.
Protecting brand is hugely important in the business world — why do you think Google gets so miffed when the term “google” is used as a generic verb? — and Apple’s done a bang-up job fighting for its “i” nouns and shutting down flagrant knock-offs (
Meizu
, anyone?). As the Wall Street Journal
points out
, this trademark is one more step in Apple’s quest for image dominance.
The iPod shape trademark gives Apple a new weapon in the fiercely competitive market for media players. While competitors may eventually appropriate the iPod’s inner workings, as utility patents expire, they will risk litigation if their products come too close to the trademarked shape of the iPod, including its popular circular-touchpad interface.
The
WSJ piece
examines the importance of trademark in building and protecting a powerful brand, and how that can protect a business’s place in the market and the exclusivity and unique appeal of their products. Some companies fail to adequately enforce their band, and as a result lose sales and dominance to copycats — they may build a better product, but if the consumer can’t visually and perceptually distinguish it from the others, it doesn’t really matter.
It lists five strategical steps, inspired by Apple’s branding prowess, to build and protect a strong brand that include tips on naming, trademarking, advertising, and trademarking some more.
I’m already taking steps to protect
my
brand, trademarking “Dan” and patenting “a super awesome person who is just really, really awesome.” And I will use all legal options at my disposal to deter infringement. So watch yourself.
Posted on May. 12, ’08, 2:20 PM PT by David Dahlquist
Transmission has always been my favorite Mac BitTorrent client. Its simple, minimal interface and low resource use is its main appeal. Now you can pirate, err, download legal applications and music with
the latest Transmission version 1.2
.
Transmission now requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 with Security Update 2008-002, but Mac OS X 10.5 or greater is recommended.
Core Changes include:
* Support of https tracker connections
* IP blocking using the Bluetack Level1 blocklist
* Better support of multitracker torrents
* Ability to reset global statistics
And of course…
* Various bugfixes
Where would we be without those “various bugfixes”?
Posted on May. 12, ’08, 1:30 PM PT by David Dahlquist
Steve Jobs is famous for stubbornly sticking to his ideals. Such has been the case with his idea of iTunes pricing flexibility, or lack thereof. Basically, while a lot of studios have wanted the option to charge varying amounts for different shows or movies, Steve has always held the idea that people would not be willing to pay more than $1.99 for an episode of a TV show, and has refused to budge…Until now.
It seems like Apple and Time Warner’s pay channel HBO are ready to hug it out. HBO has managed to “persuade” (to use an ambiguous Sopranos term) Jobs into being a bit more flexible with show pricing.
Sources from HBO have told Portfolio
that Time Warner is close to announcing a deal to sell popular programs like
The Sopranos
and
Entourage
on iTunes with flexible pricing. This will be a first time for Apple, but probably not the last, as they may have opened a Pandora’s box with this deal. Next thing you know, artists will want to charge more for hit songs, and NBC will be running back to Apple shouting “Me too me too!”.
And no, James Gandolfini didn’t have to
smack anyone around
to get this deal to go through—at least not to our knowledge.
Posted on May. 12, ’08, 12:54 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Category |
iPod
The quality of iPod batteries has always been an area of much contention amongst the ‘Podding public, and a group in O Canada! got so peeved they sued Apple, claiming the fruit company misinformed customers about the capacity and performance of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gen iPod batteries.
Apple, being the intrepid consumer advocate that is(n’t), has agreed to
settle the suit
, offering a 45 CAD Apple Store coupon to Canuck customers affected by the poor battery performance who request compensation. Via
the AP
:
To be eligible, the battery life of their iPods ? while continuously playing music ? needs to have dropped to five hours or less for the first and second generation of the device and four hours or less for the third generation.
Apple Canada’s website
has a page
for details regarding the settlement ? specifically, the legalese-laden
settlement document
(PDF) itself ? as well as a placeholder for claim forms and instructions. If you’re a resident of
The Dominion
(I’m sorry), keep checking the site for the info you need to collect your dough.
The coupon thing seems to be working in Apple’s favor. Like the $100 iPhone rebate, customers get some moolah, but not enough to really buy anything
good
from the Apple Store. The money then goes to buying, say, another iPod, and voila: more cash in the bank for Cupertino.
This also sets something of a precendence: Don’t be surprised if Apple’s slammed with a bunch more class-action battery suits by users who can only play five songs before their iPods croak. If that happens…well,
blame Canada
.
Posted on May. 12, ’08, 11:00 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Parallels Desktop was updated to v3.0.5600 this past Friday, bringing (much needed) support for the latest
and greatest
service packs of Windows Vista (SP1) and XP (SP3) installed on a Boot Camp partition.
Apart from that, it also addresses several issues with SmartSelect and Shared Folders, and some specific problems with the MacBook Air, which have been reported to cause kernel panics (and
severe trauma
) in the past.
It’s an 88MB download and a free update for all registered users of v3.x. Have fun
downloading
!
[Via
Macworld
]