Macgasm

I scored a pretty sweet turntable over the holidays, and I’ve been meaning to write about it for some time now. It’s quite the device, and I’m pretty impressed with its audio quality. But what impresses me the most about the Turntable is not the audio that it pumps out. It’s the ability to copy records to my Mac. You read that right, this turntable comes with a sweet USB hookup and an RCA hookup.

It came with a copy of audacity, and some software that lets me records the albums as well as listen to the records without having to connect it to an amplifier. If that’s not the dandiest feature, I just don’t know what is.

I now have the luxury of listening to all those 45s from my childhood, getting them into iTunes, and putting them on my iPod. It makes me wonder just how much the RIAA hates the idea of this little turntable. It also makes me happy to know that it probably pisses them off to no end (I’m such a badass!).

It’s very simple to use, and even simpler to set up. It has a built in preamp and puts out…a warm sound. If you’re the market for a turntable and you don’t own a huge stereo system, if you live in tight quarters and would like to listen to records on your computer, or if you need to get your parents out of the seventies and want to rip that vinyl to an iPod this device is for you.

It’s made me really happy. As happy as a piece of metal and plastic could make someone. With the exception of my Apple gear. ;)

…and then the other foot dropped.

The first foot was a reassuring one, but the second foot that dropped today on the announcement of more health issues for Mr. Jobs was a stark contrast from the previous press release. It took me and I’m sure everyone else in the community by surprise today. Steve Jobs is a little sicker then he originally thought, and has decided to take a leave of absence from Apple until the late spring/early summer so he can focus on his health, and get back to his ole’ wiley self.

It’s a sad day, and hopefully it doesn’t mark the end of the Jobs era. Jobs, like the rest of us, would want to leave the company behind on his terms, and not on health terms, but sometimes life just happens. We all need to move on, and get ready to embrace the facts. A new era is definitely on the horizon, and this management team is very capable. I just hope the management team continues to get the extraordinary insights of the man who reinvented music sales, and the communications market.

I hope the best for Mr. Jobs and a hope that his return to health is expedient.

Well, people have been complaining and Apple has listened. Apple has started to approve 3rd party web browsers for the iPhone. The list is small and not very impressive so far, but we are sure to see many more in the coming weeks. One of the browsers is called Edge Browser and is free. This browser offers very little in usability. You basically set a page in preference and that is it. No navigation after you launch the browser. I haven’t checked out the others. They range in price from $.99 to $1.99. If you are waiting for Firefox or Opera you may not have to wait to much longer. We know that Opera has an iPhone browser waiting so we may see that as early as next week. But how will all these browsers compare to Mobile Safari? I for one am very happy with Safari on my iPhone and will not be using any of the 3rd party solutions.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I know which company every part of my laptop came from, but the fact that LG, the worlds second biggest LCD maker, is going to be in charge of producing every screen available throughout Apple’s product line is a bit of exciting news.  I’ve had quite a few interesting moments and cursing fits with my Cinema display and laptop displays over the last three years.  What’s with the foggy picture on the screen when you’re at a resolution other than the recommended ones (it’s an iBook and the display is 3-4 years old now)?  Anyhow, the project comes with a steep 500 million dollar downpayment.

Hopefully this marks the movement to better and more technologically advanced LCDs throughout the Apple product line.

 

[via Electronista]

 

Apple plans on giving all their stockholders the lowdown on their earnings on Jan. 21, 2009.  It’s open to the public so long as you have quicktime installed, and you can navigate the internet, then it’s available. The word on a Jobs appearance has been mum, but he did make a brief appearance in the last one.  So if you need your Jobs fix after a Job-less keynote at Macworld, this might be your chance.  I wouldn’t hold your breath though.

You can catch all the exciting financial and economics talk by going to Apple’s financial results page.

I know this is being discussed everywhere, even once or twice here already, but I just couldn’t help myself. Apple announced at Macworld ’09 that iTunes would be completely DRM-Free by the end of March. This is huge news. Now I have never really had an issue with DRM on my media. In fact, some time ago I wrote a post on here about DRM which I will link to at the bottom of this post.

People have been upset at Apple for their continued use of DRM on music for a while. This has caused people to use the amazon MP3 store, and of course the torrents. But now that iTunes is opening up, will you use the iTunes store more? I know I already have. I am excited about iTunes going DRM-Free. This is a big step, and it keeps everything in one place.

One complaint that I am noticing comes from people that don’t think they should have to pay to upgrade their already purchased iTunes music to iTunes Plus (DRM-Free). This has been the case since Apple introduced iTunes Plus a few years ago. If you wanted your music to be open, then you would pay a premium for it, or pay an upgrade fee of $0.30 USD a song for what you already had purchased from them. I don’t see that as a bad deal.

The question is, could Apple release a script that could strip out DRM from your already purchased music? I am positive that they could. However, If you were Apple would you want to be responsible if this script ended up corrupting previously purchased music causing it not to play and having to be repurchased? My answer to that is no. I myself am more than willing to pay to upgrade my library. I think if you are not willing to pay, then that is fine. Don’t complain about the DRM!

As a recent college graduate, yours truly is very familiar with the daily drudge of writing papers. The majority of mine were banged out between 11 PM and 5 AM, and most of those were written under the influence of enough caffeine to kill a bull seal. Quite often, I needed to have my paper proofread, but there was nobody to do it. Everyone was either passed out or high as a kite on coffee or energy drinks. My bloodshot eyes were not to be trusted, so I was in a bit of a bind. This is where OS X’s text-to-speech engine steps in to save the day. Though my eyes were shifty, my ears were as trusty as the day is long. I realized that I could use Alex (Or Bruce at the time) to read back my papers, and listen for any glaring mistakes. While not 100% accurate, hearing your words read to you is a great way to stomp out wonky wording or egregious typos.

First, launch System Preferences. Under “System,” you’ll find an icon that looks like a microphone with the label “Speech.” Click that, and then switch to the menus labeled “Text to Speech.”

Next, you’ll want to adjust the speaking rate to fit your liking. Personally, I crank that sucker up to eleven so I can crank through a couple papers a night. You can change to a different voice, but you’ll probably want to stick with Alex. He is by far the best voice as of this release of OS X.

Now you’ll want to check the box labeled “Speak selected text when the key is pressed.” Click the “Set key…” button, and choose what key combination you want to use. I like to use “Control + V” because it doesn’t conflict with any of my other key combos, but your mileage may vary.

All that’s left now is to select the text of your document, and press your text-to-speech key combo. The next sound you’ll hear is Alex’s beautiful speaking voice reading back your prose.

As an iPhone owner since version 1.0, and having an iPhone 3G and loving my apps, I keep the iPhone up to date.  With this, I was looking through the ‘Mobile Application’ folder that houses all of the downloaded applications and noticed that iTunes does not delete the older versions of the application.

I don’t know why this is, and it’s not like I have any apps that are gigantic in size, but they can clutter up your hard drive unnecessarily.

Now, it’s actually gotten a bit easier to identify the newest applications.  Recently, Apple began adding the version numbers to applications that are downloaded.  I’m not sure if this has been a requirement of developers or not, since I do not have any applications in the store, because I don’t have any skills with Objective-C.

So, I don’t know if I meant this to be a PSA or not, but I’d recommend getting rid of your older apps.  Here’s the way that I did it.

1. Obtain a list of all of your downloaded Applications.
A.  Open Terminal
B.  Type in cd ~/Music/iTunes/Mobile\ Applications/
C.  Type in ls .  This will display all of your downloaded applications in this directory.
D.  Highlight the entire outputted section.
E.  Open up TextEdit
F.  Past the entire copied list into TextEdit.

2. Determine which applications are the newest.
A.  Open iTunes
B.  Click on the Applications link in the left sidebar. See the image below.

C.  Highlight the first application
D.  Hit command-I to view the info
E.  Look at the location of the application, as shown below.

3. Go through each App
A.  Look at the the Location line.  Find the corresponding Application name in the TextEdit file.
B.  Delete that line.  Return to iTunes
C.  Hit Next to bring up the next application
D.  Repeat Steps 3A, 3B and 3C until all applications are removed from the TextEdit file.

4. Delete the remaining applications.
A.  Open a Finder Window
B.  Click on the Go Menu.
C.  Select ‘Go To Folder’.
D.  Type in ‘~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/’.
E.  Click on the TextEdit File.
F.  Delete each of the remaining apps in the TextEdit file.  These are the ones that are no longer used.

That’s it. You’ve removed all of the unused / old applications.

If you have any problems or questions about the script, feel free to get a hold of me by leaving a comment, or click on the ‘bloggers’ link on the top of the screen.