Macgasm

We’re not sure about what to expect today with the 3.0 preview.  If it’s anything like the last major preview, it’s probably just a giant bit of hype.  I mean they were all up and in our faces about push notifications and here we are without it.

Everything about the event has been pretty quiet, and only a “select” few media outlets hae been extended invitations.  The world will be following along, and much like Steve and Philnotes of the past, small games seem to pop up to amuse ourselves during the event.  Mobile Crunch seems to have a scorecard that you can use while you track the news as it’s sent out on the web.  If you wanna play along, just print it out and fill in the boxes.  I’m not holding my breath for anything on the list, but I would LOVE an official tethering app–on the cheap.

[Download] [01.3 MB] [0:02:40]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Grant talks about syncing your VoodooPad documents to your iPhone or iPod Touch with VP Reader.

I have always upgraded my old iTunes music to iTunes plus when the album was available. With iTunes going DRM free, I thought this would be great! Get all my iTunes purchased music upgraded, and I don’t have to worry about anything. In the past, this has been a natural thing for me to do. I see I have songs or albums that can be upgraded and not even thinking, I click upgrade. Well, this week I was caught off guard by the update. I went in to look at what needed to be done since there were only 2. To my surprise the two songs that were upgradable are not songs that I purchased on iTunes. In fact, one is from a CD that I own and the second is from the Napster days! This really got me thinking too. How many songs, especially recently, have I upgraded that weren’t originally purchased from Apple? This is not a good thing, because there are probably a lot of people that still haven’t caught this yet. I am perfectly fine paying to upgrade what I bought from Apple, but not something that I downloaded from Napster a decade ago or purchased on CD and ripped to my Mac. Apple, Get your act together!

Apple released a new iPod Shuffle on Tuesday. The new version 3 iPod Shuffle’s form factor has significantly changed. It is not more like a little stick of gum instead of a cube. This change mirrors the change seen in the iPod Nano line that occurred last September.

There are only two colors: silver and black. The rainbow of colors has disappeared from the line. The weight of the new shuffles are 30% lighter, coming in at only 0.38 ounces.

The last change is the price. The new Shuffle costs $74 (US) to purchase. This is a $5 increase, although you do get 4GB of storage.

There is a new feature with the iPod Shuffle, VoiceOver. VoiceOver provides voices for navigation with the iPod shuffle. It will allow you to determine what the name of the song and artist with the press of a button. With the addition of VoiceOver you can now also have multiple playlists on the iPod Shuffle, since you will know which playlist is going on. This will be much better than having a single playlist.

The VoiceOver features is available in 14 different languages, which is a smart move on Apple’s part. This will allow you to hear everything under a different language. It will be a robotic voice, but it will still allow access.

If you want to give it a try, go for it. It might work quite well as an iPod for working out, however, it is small and more easily prone to being lost.

[Download] [02.7 MB] [0:05:50]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Josh talks about the giveaways that we have here on Macgasm.

[Download] [02.3 MB] [0:04:50]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Josh talks about how to make Safari 4 look the way Safari 3 looked.

Cydia might be creating a new iPhone store, but unless my jailbroken iPhone stops acting like crap every time I jailbreak it, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.  Sure Apple’s draconian laws that govern the rules of creation for developers are lame, but at least the don’t severely mess up my phone when I install the applications they offer in the app store.  Can Cydia say the same thing?  I highly doubt that they will be making sure these applications don’t severely retard our phones.  The last thing I need is to be told a Starbucks is just around the corner, only to find out that it’s a dead end street and the address on the map is actually in another town–oh wait, that’s already happened.

Or how about having my phone fail to actually access wifi connections. Oh, that’s happening already too.  I could list a whole damn slew of really shitty things that have happened to my iPhone since my last jailbreak, but I honestly don’t feel like rehashing the emotions that I felt over the weekend while stranded in a foreign city desperately trying to find myself a Starbucks.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that I need stability first and foremost.  Once the fine haking crew that gives us our jailbreaking apps can get that all straightened out for me, then I’ll consider paying for applications from an alternative source, but until then, I won’t be jailbreaking my phone any time in the near future.  Tethering my phone to my Macbook Pro isn’t enough incentive considering the giant piece of crap my phone turned into after jailbreaking it.

Sure, Apple’s pissed at Cydia, and will likely badger the hell out of them legally to shut the whole thing down, but in my opinion not too many people will jump ship like that, and if they do, it’s only a matter of time before the return themselves to jail, without passing go as soon as possible.  The incentive to jailbreak is great in theory, but just like experimenting in college, it’s only a matter of time before we return to  our boring middle-middle class lifestyles.

The competition for the App Store is excellent, but there’s way too many questions that need answering before I jump on the Cydia bandwagon.  Don’t do it, I’m begging you.

It’s been a couple of busy weeks for Apple, and frankly, I’m loving them for it.

Between iPod Shuffle releases, System Updates, and potential netbooks, I don’t even know where to begin.  I was surprised to see the Shuffle released on a Wednesday, considering the massive amount of releases that have occurred on Tuesdays over the last year, but I’m not gonna complain, are you?

I’ve been tracking some trends on the internet the last couple of days about the Mac Mini and it seems like there are a lot of people leaning towards picking them up, but they’re a little skeptical about them. Therefore, I thought I would write up a quick post about how I use my Mini, and what exactly it can handle.  The best way to describe my Mini is by what it can’t do.

The Mac Mini can’t do the following–well!

It can’t really handle video edits.  I mean it can slice and dice and export, but the amount of time it takes to do them doesn’t really flatter the machine in any way.  If you’re planning on spending a great deal of time editing a videocast or footage of any kind, I’d recommend just jumping into an iMac–at least. By the time you start figuring out the addons and additional costs for the Mac Mini, you may as well get an iMac.  Editing audio is another story all together.  While you probably won’t be recording your debut EP on the Mini, you could surely use it to clean up and make quick edits so long as you keep the tracks to an absolute minimum.  Again, I’m sure you could use a Mini in studio, but the cost benefit doesn’t nearly compensate for the massive migraine you’re going to have when you realize all your audio is choppy.  Unless you’re a musical savant, telling people you planned the audio that way isn’t going to fly.  Get an iMac at least!  You heard it here first, if you want a multimedia producing machine you’re looking at the wrong device entirely. Not worth it, and don’t even consider it.

What the Mac Mini can do–prothetically!

The first thing you should do is think about the Mac Mini as a netbook equivalent on the desktop.  Surf the net, check! Watch and listen to media, check!  It’s design ed for none labour intensive processes such as checking the occasional email, and writing essays.  Now that I think about it it’s a great double bladed sword of a gift for a student.  You can wow your kid with a new Mac before he goes to college, but also find solace in the fact that he won’t be playing many video games on the machine.  If you’re thinking about editing that one home movie every year then you can probably handle working on this machine.  It’s for you.  If it takes you a year to get around to your video edit, then you can probably handle the extra hour it takes for iMovie to push out the video you need.

Now I hear all you sighing and thinking that Josh is on crack and doesn’t know what he’s talking about! So let me fill you in on how I use mine.  I use it in tandem with my Mac Pro and my Macbook Pro–as a media hub, content sharing, video playing box.  If you’ve got yourself a shiny LCD or plasma TV then you’re gonna love this box.  We’ve talked about the Mini as a media centre machine in the past, so I won’t bore you with the details, but I will reaffirm that it works really well in this regard.  For a while before its new life hooked up to my TV, it has a life as a web development server.  It did its job with flying colors, albeit with a version of OS X server.  If you want something to develop on locally before you push your sites out to the internet then you might want to consider this machine–it won’t disappoint.

If you’re an internet loving, essay typing type of person then you’ll suffice on a Mac Mini, but if you have any aspirations of an internet media takeover, then you should just bite the bullet and go for an iMac at the very least.  Don’t let the specification upgrade fool you, you’re going to be running Final Cut or playing a game of WoW anytime soon.