Macgasm

With the holidays coming up I thought I would give everybody some more ideas for holiday gifts for the Apple users in their lives. This series of articles will help you find some ideas for anybody who happens to be an Apple user, no matter if your budget is under $25 or over $2500. In this article we’ll try and find some gift ideas for those that have a budget between $500 and $1500.

Purchasing Apple products can be a rather expensive process, except with a budget between $500 and $1,000 dollars there are definitely some options within this range.

For those who want to purchase Apple products you can find a few items within the range. The first of them being the Mac Mini. There are some different models, including the base model for $574 over at Amazon, or the faster model for $764.95.

For the geekier Apple users who want to run their own server, but do not currently have a machine capable of running the OS X Server, you can always get them a Mac Mini Server for $993.24 at Amazon.

If your Apple user needs a portable machine for their use, you can always give them a white Macbook for $970.80. There is, of course, the Macbook Pro line. Including the 13″ Macbook Pro for $1149.00 from Amazon.

Some Apple users do not necessarily need a laptop, but instead want a desktop computer. For those users there is the 21.5″ base model iMac for $1,199 at Amazon, or the slightly beefier and better graphics of the upgraded 21.5″ iMac Model for $1,449.00 from Amazon.

If your Apple user is heavily into creating, editing and modifying videos you can always procure them a copy of Final Cut Studio for $868.99 from Amazon.

If you’re Apple user is into photography and printing their high-quality photos you could get them an Epson R2880 large format printer for $694.84 through Amazon.com. If you’re not an Epson fan, there is the Canon Pixma Pro 9500 Mark II for $724.95 from Amazon.

Finally, if you’re Mac User just need a way to have a ton of storage and backup there is the Drobo Pro for $1,348.47, without hard drives, from Amazon.

As always there is the two standards, the iTunes Store gift card, or an Apple Store gift card. Also remember these are just some ideas for Holiday gifts. There are thousands of others great ideas out there.

Over the course of my Apple “career” I’ve gone back and forth between two philosophies of desktop organization. The first was keeping my desktop completely bare, nothing present, not even hard drive icons, the second, a little bit of clutter. I’ve never settled on either of the two philosophies entirely, but seemed to have come to the realization that a mishmash of the two seems to work the best for me.

Here’s some thoughts from both sides of the argument, and how they’ve affected my work flow.

The Case for a clutterless desktop

A state of zen seems to be the common sought after goal when it comes to keeping your desktop clean of clutter. There’s a lot of research that’s been done on the amount of clutter in a workspace, and the level of anxiety and stress that seem to be a direct result of that type of setup.

It’s a lot easier to focus on your work when you’re not focusing at the disjointed work environment that you’re emerged into on your desktop. Given the added benefits of spotlight, and the power that the search has on finding, as well as classifying your documents for you, there’s a highly likely possibility that you would never need to have anything on your desktop ever again. Heck you could almost completely do away with a hierarchical filesystem altogether, instead, you’d rely on boolean search to find what you’re looking for. If spotlight had an automated tagging system built in, you’d be able to pinpoint your files with deadly accuracy. Folders would be dead forever.

The Dock could be put to rest, as the only option you’d ever need is the Command+Spacebar key combination to open your spotlight search dialog. There’s something liberating about never having to spend time organizing your files, and instead having a system find what you need because it knows what your files are, instead of relying on you to remember where you put your files.

The technology isn’t at a level where it’s one hundred percent fault free, but we’re heading down that road, and I’ll gladly adopt the “philosophy” once I’m confident that my search result will always find what I’m looking for.

The Case for a cluttered desktop

I should probably point out that I don’t mean the type of clutter you think I might mean. I cringe when I see hundreds of documents adorning someone’s desktop. There’s nothing beneficial about that approach, and I’m certainly not advocating that type of system. Conversely, I think there is something beneficial about using your desktop as a staging area for the work you’re currently emerged in. I tend to keep my design files, project scope sheets, and other in progress files on my desktop. Doing this lets me really unleash the power of expose, as well as some of the other awesome technology Apple has built into the Finder.

I’m a bit weird though, recently I’ve decided to max out the icon size of the documents on my desktop. I usually get made fun of for that, but once I reveal the power of this particular setup, some people quickly renege on their previous comments. The file preview of any particular filetype, while the icon is fully maximized, gives me quicklook without ever having to really use quicklook at all. I get a full, in depth preview of the documents that I’m working on. I can thumb through a pdf file without ever having to open it, I can watch a video clip without every having to open it, I can see a graphical representation of a document without ever having to open it.

Think I’m crazy? Try it out. Put a multiple page PDF on the desktop, a movie file, and a pages document, then mouse over the file on your desktop. You should see some buttons magically reveal themselves in a couple of seconds. This has increased my productivity immensely, and it’s helped me keep my workflow organized.

I’ve tried going back, but at this point I find it far to beneficial to keep my icons huge. You should give it a try.

Are you a minimalist, a messyist, or a mishmash of the two?  Let us know how you cope with the desktop clutter in the comments.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber (Sorry, Canadians!), you can stream a select group of movies to your computer, Xbox 360, PS3, or other Internet enabled devices. After you install Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in, you can stream movies right in your browser on your Mac. When you click Play on a streamable movie, you’ll see this image:

It will then assess your bandwidth, adjust the video quality accordingly, and then begin buffering. Once you get enough content buffered, it will begin playing. At any point, you can stop, rewind, and fast forward as well. If your connection slows down, it will dynamically adjust, and rebuffer. I would suggest having a pretty fast connection, though. I have a 1.5 Mbps connection, and I end up running out of buffer about every thirty minutes. Slightly annoying.

Streaming in-browser is pretty great, but sometimes you don’t want to sit in front of your keyboard while watching a movie. A lot of us use our computers as our televisions. This is where Boxee comes in. Once you install Boxee on your Mac, you can give it access to your Netflix account. You can then peruse your queue, search for titles, and browse newly available movies.

Boxee works with your keyboard and mouse, but it really shines as a ten-foot interface. You can use your Apple Remote to control the app completely. You never have to get up from your couch to change the movie. This makes it much more enjoyable for family viewing.

There you go: easy ways to stream Netflix content to your Mac at no additional cost. Get the most out of that subscription!

Photo Credit: gitsul.

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In this episode, we talk about Chronosync.

[02.6 MB] [00:08:00] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

Jeff Scott is the founder of 148apps.com, a site that reviews iPhone apps, and provides their opinions on the latest applications to hit the App Store. He was also recently on the jury for the AppsFire contest, so we thought it would be appropriate to get his thoughts no where the iPhone and AppStore are heading in 2010.

Trends in iPhone Apps in 2010

It’s time to pull out the App Store crystal ball, shine it up, and peer into it and see what’s there. What will the App Store look like in 2010? What new trends are we going and what trends are going to continue. Here are some of my thoughts.

Games Continue to Dominate

iPhone games are going to continue to get better and better. Compare what is coming out now to what we had a year ago and you’ll see the amazing increase in quality we’ve seen. Not only will we continue to see the biggest game producers flock to the iPhone, we’ll see them continue to pump out some fantastic games both franchise games and new IP. But don’t expect to see Nintendo on the iPhone anytime soon.

You may wonder from this theory if there is still room for the little guy. Heck yes! The problem we’ve seen from the big guys so far is they have just been pushing their catalog of games to the iPhone. Sometimes it works, usually it doesn’t. There’s plenty of room for the little guy to make a big splash by continuing to make unique, interesting, and compelling games.

Education Apps

Education apps are going to be huge. The iPhone and iPod Touch resonate so well with young kids. If you’ve ever seen a 3-year-old kid grab their parents iPhone, swipe it to unlock, and then navigate to and play their favorite apps, you know what I mean. The touch screen just makes perfect sense to them, and the size is perfect for their small hands.

There are already dozens of really good education apps out there. I think that segment is ready to explode and we’ll see that start next year. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple start to spend some advertising dollars around the iPod Touch as an education device. much the way they have advertised it as a gaming device.

Augmented Reality

So far most of the augmented reality apps we’ve seen have been little more than proof of concept novelties. Next year we’ll really start to see the technology evolve and start to see some apps you will be able to use every day. What form will they take? Heck if I know. All I know is there are a lot of people a lot smarter than me working on it.

Enterprise Business Apps

Large businesses take a long time to change. They have to test, scan for security, test again, and then test some more, then budget, re-test, and then deploy. Well we’re about 70% through that process. Once we get a little further down the line we’ll start to see enterprise quality business apps show up. We’re already starting to see a few, but I expect a whole lot more next year.

All of above are just guesses, it’s true. But I do spend about 12 hours per day looking at apps and the App Store. So I’d like to think they are at the very least well informed guesses.

No matter what we see, one thing we know we’ll see is huge growth. We’ve gone from 500 apps on the App Store launch day to over 100,000 now. If we just continue the growth of nearly 400 new apps per day and not even increase that number we will be at 250,000 apps by the end of next year. That number is staggering.

According to TechCrunch the official “Google Phone” is currently being tested and expected to launch as soon as January 2010. This new phone will be an actual “Google branded” device (even though it’s made by HTC) in which every aspect of the OS will be designed by Google, to create a more solid user experience, unlike their other Android phones which have some input from the manufacturers.

Some of its highlighted features

• Will be sold as an unlocked GSM phone and distributed directly by Google
• Android 2.1 (unreleased at this point)
• Uses Snapdragon chip which is “really, really fast”
• High resolution OLED screen
• Thinner than iPhone (battery life anyone?)
• Two mics, one on the back to reduce background noise
• “Weirdly” large camera
• Touchscreen keyboard
• Voice to text for dictation

Honestly, I don’t see how an official “Google Phone” can be that much different than all the other devices that are currently running the Android OS. Supposedly it’s a big deal that they designed the whole software behind the phone to every last detail, without being limited or influenced by the manufacturer in terms of features and UI like with their other phones, similarly to what Apple does with the iPhone and their other products. But there’s one big flaw with that concept: it’s still one more Android device, different from all the others available now, with slightly different software limitations and capabilities.

Why is that a problem?

One of the things, in my opinion, that truly made the iPhone a big deal was the App Store and the fact that apps run pretty much the same way on each device running the iPhone OS is a big part of that experience. The fact that there’s only one device made by one manufacturer (with slight changes on each generation, of course) with the same native OS means developers don’t have to fix bugs that are particular to one device, they don’t have to modify their apps to work on different handsets and they don’t have to choose to invest their sometimes scarce resources on the device that’s more popular. A “Google Phone” just makes the Android app market ever so slightly more fragmented, makes the developers job a bit more complex with one more device to support (or possibly not support) and it’s one step further from the seamless experience offered by Apple and the iPhone.

I don’t think this will be a bad device, far from it. I just don’t think there’s anything truly remarkable that sets it apart from all the other devices running Android. Actually I think the only true advantage of the “Google Phone” is the fact that it will be carrier-free and unlocked from the start. Am I the only one?

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that the “Google phone” has an official name of “Nexus One”.

The app store is a great place for your iPhone/iPod Touch needs. Be it for games, utilities or entertainment the app store has every thing you need. The best part of the app store is the wonderful amount of free apps!

But this post really isn’t about all the free apps in the app store. This is about developers releasing their app for free, then putting a price on it. I understand needing to make some money, but I have a real problem with a developer thinking that since their app was more popular than they thought it would be, they should start charging. They update their free version to strip down features and put ads in, and they make the new paid version the old free app. This has happened to more than a few apps that I have downloaded and it is really irritating. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem paying for an app. I have paid for most of the apps on my iPhone and iPod Touch. I don’t even have a problem with a developer releasing a 2.0 version of the app that is paid. But don’t strip out features just because you want to make some money on your app. Either keep it free, or release it as a paid app from the get go.

The folks at TomTom are at it again. It seems that since they released their official app back around august that we just can’t get enough of them. From their app, to their car kit, to the iPod Touch TomTom car kit.

But today TomTom has released TomTom USA. TomTom USA includes maps for all 50 states and is available for sale only in the US and Canada. It has also been released at the special introductory price of $49.99. So if you have been waiting to get the TomTom app for your iPhone, Now may be the time to do so.