Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category
I hate it when they change iTunes around.
Take a look at this:
They’ve moved the “close video” button in iTunes. If my memory is working properly, they’ve expanded the video playback controls, but why did they need to move the button so that it is so hard to find? It took me a good two minutes to hunt it down and I only found it when I entered full-screen mode because everything was black and it was easier to see.
Mmm… Automator
I just love using Automator and iCal to schedule the sending of emails or uploading of files (using Transmit).
It’s really easy. Just build your Automator workflow and save it as a plugin. Choose iCal from the drop-down menu and save it. iCal will automatically open and make a new event with your saved iCal plugin as the alarm. Just set the time of the event and you’re done. Emails send when you’re not at the computer and, with Transmit’s Automator actions, files are uploaded to web servers automatically.
Say at 5:00 PM a deadline expired and you needed to update a website to reflect that expiration. Just download the file, make the necessary changes and save the file. Make a workflow and plug it in to iCal and set it to upload at 5:00. Voilà! You’ve updated the file at precisely 5:00 and you didn’t even have to be at the computer.
I love it.
Genius from Apple
A new feature from Leopard:
Find answers fast. Just activate Spotlight and type in a simple or sophisticated equation, and Spotlight will instantly show you the result. Enjoy support for over 40 functions ranging from simple math to logarithms to trigonometry.
I was about 10% of these.
Well, the Gizmodo page views anyway.
For the geeky amoung you, WordPress.com is now using about 260 megabits per second of bandwidth average, with spikes as high as 820 mbits earlier today from the Apple Gizmodo liveblog. (Which did up to 941 requests per second all by itself during the keynote.) So last month we used about 80 terabytes of bandwidth.
This is blue?
The new iPod nanos are pretty nifty, even if I don’t particularly care for their squat appearance. One thing I take exception with, though, is the colors—not all of them, just two.
I’m not really happy with the blue one. Maybe it’s just my eyes being partially color-blind, but it looks more green than blue. The silver one looks like plastic even though it’s anodized aluminum on the front (or “top” as Apple likes to call it) and polished stainless steel on the back.
This next bit isn’t iPod related, but I did see it in an “iTunes Store This Week” box on the bottom of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store page:
Reba, dear, fire your makeup artist and get a new one. kthx
Apple, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!
Apple is being sued in California because its flagship retail store in San Francisco isn’t friendly to two wheelchair-bound customers who tried to get help there. The suit claims that Apple violates the Americans With Disabilities Act and the California Health and Safety Code.
If it turns out to be true, Apple needs to settle this quickly and fix the problems. That’s it. Plain and simple. Do the right thing.
AppleInsider | Apple accused of short-shrifting disabled retail shoppers
The Talk Show with John Gruber and Dan Benjamin
I like Dan Benjamin and John Gruber’s podcast The Talk Show. On the most recent episode (Episode 7) they read some reviews on iTunes of their podcast. The first review had a few negative things to say about it:
That being said, the podcast is undwerwhelming due to it’s subpar production values and planning. It doesn’t follow a coherent structure like some of the more established podcasts and radio shows do. There is a lot of dead air, “uhms” and “uhs,” off-topic remarks that stretch for a long time, and other minor, annoying things which could be hopefully fixed in future episodes.
I like everything he dislikes about the podcasts. I like the unscripted nature. I, being a fan of almost everything off-topic, love the off-topic moments. I like that, like another reviewer said, “Gruber and Benjamin’s casual style emulates regular conversation.”
Wal-Mart DRM-free downloads: Not for me.
Wal-Mart is offering DRM-free music downloads in MP3 format for $.94. They claim that you can “download to any player” and that may be true but I tried to buy a track from Wal-Mart and guess what? It doesn’t work on a Mac.
When I go to the Wal-Mart catalog and click “Check out MP3 music” in their flash thingy I get the following:
Everyone claims that Wal-Mart’s new Windows-only DRM-free MP3 download service is a competitor to iTunes but I don’t see how.
Update:
Wal-Mart also seems to not play well with any browser but Internet Explorer.
Firefox users can still use the “original” store which, apparently, isn’t as feature-rich as their new store. I don’t know what their new store looks like or what sort of features it has because when I tried to open it in Internet Explorer 7, it just showed a blank page with the error icon in the lower-left of the window with “Done” next to it.
I love Audio Hijack Pro
I use it to schedule and record an audio stream from Chicago Public Radio so that I can hear Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Marketplace without having to actually be listening to it at the time.
Audio Hijack will, on a schedule, run an Applescript that plays an audio stream in iTunes. It will then add the resulting file to an iTunes playlist of my choice via a second Applescript file. It’s completely automated. Just set it and forget it.
The Applescripts are really, really simple.
The first, to play the audio stream:
tell application "iTunes"
play track "Chicago Public Radio" of playlist "Chicago Public Radio"
end tell
I could leave out the of playlist part, but I sometimes listen to the stream without Audio Hijack so I don’t want to sort through the entire music library to find it and searching is usually too logical for me to think of.
The second script that adds the result file to iTunes is a modification of one of the stock scripts that comes with Audio Hijack:
(* Audio Hijack Script *** (C) Copyright 2003-2004, Rogue Amoeba Software, LLC *)
on process(theArgs)
--Coerce args to be a list
if class of theArgs is not list then
set theArgs to {theArgs}
end if
--Into iTunes ye files shall go
tell application "iTunes"
repeat with theFile in theArgs
add theFile to playlist "AudioHijack Recordings"
end repeat
end tell
end process
All I did was add to playlist “AudioHijack Recordings”. It’s that simple.
Rogue Amoeba – Audio Hijack Pro: Record any audio on Mac OS X
Quick rant about Safari 3
Just a quickie:
I hate how in Safari 3 the Open Page With sub-menu is at the top of the Debug menu instead of at the bottom like it was in previous versions. Every time I go to open a page in Camino I automatically jump down to the bottom of the menu and then get lost and have a freak-out for about 30 seconds while I hunt for the right item.
