Macgasm

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In this episode, we talk about 1Shoot.

[01.5 MB] [00:04:30] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

With every new product and revamped lines, Apple never cease so amaze us. So much so that their announcements attract a huge amount of attention and people flock to their nearest store in order to try out the latest update. I went down to the flagship store on London’s Regent Street to have a play with the new Magic Mouse.

First Impressions

We’ve come to expect nothing less than ‘sleek’ and ‘shiny’ from Apple, and the Magic Mouse is no exception. Clean lines and a crisp shade of white makes the mouse stand out from its counterparts. The weight feels no heavier than the Mighty Mouse yet it manages to make itself feel more robust, proving to feel less plastic-like than its predecessor. Compared to other mice on the market, the Magic Mouse definitely looks to be the flattest, which has its pros and cons. It can make for easy movement, helping your wrist sit without the discomfort of long periods of bending, or it can prove difficult when scrolling without a nice sized curve to take the force of your fingers.

Multi-Touch

I was looking forward to trying out what is now, very basically, a handheld touchpad. Of course, Apple like to make things the easiest they could possibly be so this mouse without the ‘nipple’ should be far simpler to use. One thing though…after being so used to holding the Mighty Mouse so firmly in my hand in order to scroll without budging itself off the desk, I’m tempted many times to use the Magic Mouse much like the trackpad and just rest my hand on it lightly. Because of its light weight and flatter body, budging was at its maximum and I had to keep reminding myself to keep holding on whilst I scrolled! Here the flatness compared to the Mighty Mouse caused some unnecessary problems. It was quite hard to position my hand in the right way in order to keep hold of the sides and scroll whichever way without needing to re-position or without the mouse moving, not a major problem but one that makes my wrist want to lie loyally with the Mighty Mouse.

The two-button click is as normal, and it’s always helpful to have that left-handed assignment if needed. I do like it when companies have all their users in mind. Two-finger swipe is also pretty simple, making it easy enough to pass back to previous history and forward again, though I’m not a huge fan of putting too much into one very sensitive product. 360 scroll seems really handy compared to the stickiness of the Mighty Mouse, which frequently irritated me. The loss of the ‘nipple’ makes for a smoother experience, albeit quite a flat one. If you’ve got big hands, beware!

Overall Rating – 4/5

Whilst I’m all for Apple’s obsession with smooth and shiny, I can’t get fully on board with their insistence on making everything thinner and flatter. It might be the way forward with technology becoming more slimline, and the constant competition on who can make the smallest of whatever, but a satisfactory browsing experience must be at the comfort of your hand. The flatness was almost too much for my wrist to cope with, forcing me to keep re-positioning my hand at every scroll and my fingers to release the mouse instead of holding on. This, to me, was its only con. Overall, browsing Macgasm has never been so easy ;)

Instapaper Pro ($4.99) is the answer to the biggest lacking feature on the iPod touch, as it offers offline viewing for your favorite online documents. Simply register an account with instapaper.com, use the bookmarklet to add items, and once it syncs with the iPhone/iPod touch app, you’re ready to go.

Here’s what I LOVE about this: unlike the iPhone (well, kinda), the iPod touch doesn’t work everywhere. I could easily mark a bunch of items as “Read Later” at the office, for example, and read them on the way home while listening to my music. Instapaper Pro formats the articles for optimal iPhone/iPod touch viewing, which is great.

Additionally, the pro version will also sync your favorite blogs or RSS feeds by default. An example of this is shown in the screenshot, featuring this blog. As you can see, Instapaper displays the articles in an easy-to-read format, and you can then click on the items on the list to see the article in text only (by default, graphics are turned off unless you opt-in).

Other features include the ability to Star items that you’ve read (up to 20 in the app), archive items, the ability to rotate and see the article in landscape view, and “dark” mode, featuring a black background instead of white.

Do I like Instapaper? The better word would be “love.” There are so many articles I want to “Read Later” but never get the chance to right away, so taking them in the palm of my hand is the best possible option. As such, Instapaper delivers a necessity.

For those interested in alternatives to iTunes, you might have heard of an Application called DoubleTwist. It’s being heralded by many as a tool that will eventually allow multiple device users to one application to sync their media. What does that mean? It means if you have an iPod you no longer have to use iTunes, if you have a BlackBerry, you no longer have to use RIMs application to sync your phone. It’s a lofty goal and it’s being supported by some hefty venture capital money.

What is DoubleTwist?

It’s the type of movement I could get behind, if the application is fully featured and ready for primetime. But, in my opinion, it’s just not there yet. We can’t fully blame them just yet, it’s a new concept with a lot of hoops they need to jump through to get your device working right out of the box. For instance, their website lists the iPhone 3G model as being supported, but has the caveat that you need to be running the 3.1.1 firmware. We’re now at 3.1.2. So it looks like this might be another example of the cat and mouse game that’s been going on with Apple and their detractors.

The application itself is both cleaner and more streamlined than Apple’s iTunes, and it offers something that Apple would never let their iTunes users have access too in a million years. Another Music Store. That’s right, DoubleTwist gives you access to the Amazon Music Store, which has been known to have better pricing as well as better quality rips of their music, without the DRM. That’s a pretty big option if you’re an audiophile, or a music lover.

Another thing that sets it apart from iTunes is the social network aspects that the DoubleTwist team has implemented. Apple’s slowly been integrating social media network access to their application (Facebook, iTunes), but at this point in time, you don’t have the ability to do anything but share a link to a song or media file. DoubleTwist actually lets you add friends and share files, photo, video, anything really. It’s really become a media hub that incorporates iTunes, iPhoto, your Address Book, as well as a video catalog from your personal video recording device. They let you send media to anyone from your address book, and if they’re a DoubleTwist user they’ll get the update straight in the application.

3 Things Apple Can Learn from DoubleTwist

Outside of the typical argument that Apple needs to open up their applications to developers so that they can integrate their devices with iTunes, there’s a lot that can be taken from DoubleTwist that would make iTunes a far superior product.

Real Social Networking

Could you imagine an iTunes with the ability to actually form social networks around your favourite artist or podcast series? A way for fans to connect in a place where they can actually purchase the music would be a sure fire way to increase sales. It would take advantage of fans optimism for a franchise and let them evangelize it easily. It would be the perfect mashup of Last.fm, Myspace (shudder!), and Twitter. Let people tie their personal social accounts to their iTunes account, and you’ll Apple would reap the benefits financially, and users will be able to converse with like minded people. Music’s a unifier, let the music unify the people and get the dialog going. Maybe we’ll finally be able to get legitimate ratings out of it, and the pop crap will fall to the way-side (dare to dream, I know)

Blackberry users want their music too

As much as we like to delude ourselves that the iPhone is the most superior phone on the planet, one simple fact remains, not everyone uses an iPhone. I know, it’s borderline treason to even think it, but there currently exists a large number of people out there who want to buy music from iTunes, but can’t easily integrate their phones with iTunes. I thought business was about increasing market share, not alienating markets. Could their be a way to given other smartphone users access to the music store, but only provide other services to iPhone and iPod users? I don’t think it would cannibalize sales, and it might just act like the Mac Mini does in the PC market. A tool to lour people into the iTunes market place, and possible have a bunch of conversions along the way.

Sharing our media with friends is a must

What application on the Mac platform lets you share your media with friends and family? iMovie lets you upload things to YouTube, but I’m pretty sure that were this sharing ends. Well, I lied, they do give us some abilities to upload to our iWeb accounts, or send an email, but that’s not exactly 2009, nor is it immediately gratifying. iTunes has become a media hub, why not make it our social hub so that we can actually share what we’re listening to, what we’re watching, what we’re doing with our families and friends. It wouldn’t take much, just a little code that runs like the Last.Fm application that keeps track of what we’re doing and then letting people see it. Actually, the more I think about it, the more Apple just needs to buy up Last.Fm and integrate it into iTunes. It seems like it would cure 90% of my ideas listed here.

The Wrap Up

DoubleTwist is going to be a major player in this fight. It’s not going to happen immediately, and it’s certainly not going to be an easy road for them, but like everything else, we’re moving to open options for our devices, and companies like DoubleTwist will be challenging Apple Inc. in a way that no one has in a couple of years. Hopefully this means an evolution in iTunes and some revenue for DoubleTwist, because it’s starting to look like consumers need both to exist if anything is going to evolve to its full potential.

You’re not always in your browser when you want to look things up. Luckily there are tools available to fix that problem. Google Quick Search Box is a free app that puts search two key presses away. All you have to do is tap your key combo, and start typing.

But sometimes there are phrases we read that we want to look up. Built-in to Mac OS X’s right click context menu is a Search in Google button. Just highlight the text you want to look up, right click, and press the button. It is that simple.

Photo Credit: Alpha Six

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In this episode, we talk about the societal issues with police service apps.

[02.4 MB] [00:07:00] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

The $1.99 Critter Crunch iPhone application is a great game with cute graphics and solid entertainment. In the game, you’re the big happy orange critter on the bottom of the screen, Biggs, who is tasked with feeding small critters to larger ones so that Biggs himself can be fed with tasty jewel treats. In each level, newer challenges are introduced: more colorful critters, special abilities, and more.

At first, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the game, and the game thus includes a helpful tutorial that replays itself so that you can see what options are afforded to you in each successive level. Then, you get to play that level and familiarize acquaint with a lot of the cool features.

I thought the game was very polished, and the color choices and multitude of features did make it fun to play. As a puzzle aficionado, I can see myself sitting with Critter Crunch for awhile. Even the sound effects are enjoyable.

If anything, the one thing that bothered me was that Biggs is always covered by my thumb, so I never actually get to see him. I know that some other people felt that this was a problem on the iPod touch/iPhone and that they’d prefer arrows to controls that make it hard to see the actual game character. However, this is hardly a big deal — it’s just a small gripe. Having other control options would be a nice touch to the game, though.

Despite this, I’m not done playing Critter Crunch. With so many variable levels, there’s a lot of appeal to this game.

Here’s some more of what you can experience once you get playing Critter Crunch:

Have the new iMacs taken us one step closer to having a full fledged computer in our living room? Hard core geeks have been attaching media PC’s to their home theatres for years, but they’ve ultimately acted as media players and not full fledged computers for most. Sure playing a video game on your LCD television is pretty badass, but television resolutions don’t add up to the same kind of quality you would get out of a monitor. With the release of the new iMac line, and particularly the 27in model, it’s becoming more of a possibility that we’ll start using monitors as televisions, especially when you consider what you can do with a full fledged OS X installation attached to it. Kinda makes the AppleTV look pathetic doesn’t it? A 27in iMac, with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a total resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels sure kicks a 28in, 1080p LCD TV square in the nuts.

Sure an iMac for 1,999.00 is a lot more expensive than a television for 499.00, but when you start to add in a blu-ray player, and a media centre pc you’re starting to get close the cost of an iMac. It makes me wonder a little bit where the iMac line might be headed. Could it be the Apple Television that has been buzzing around the rumour mill? Don’t forget that Apple currently makes a 30in Monitor that’s due for a refresh soon. It’s the only Apple product that hasn’t had a refresh to the new format, and it would certainly make an excellent TV once it does.

I’m not sure just how practical the setup would be currently, and the price is still a little steep for most budgets, but it’s certainly starting to enter the realm of possibilities, and I for one would be ecstatic if we started to see televisions with powerful computers built into them, and who better to start the trend than Apple. If they want us to give up disc players for digital downloads, it would certainly make sense that they’re working on a better way to get the content to the television, without having to stream across a network.

Man, the possibilities. Could you imagine playing Diablo III at full resolution on your television, instead of at your cramped desk? Bliss.