Macgasm

Business Insider is reporting that “someone” leaked photos of Flipboard’s upcoming desktop application. They’re also assuming that the application will be featured in the Mac App Store. According to their tipster, the application will also feature tight integration with the trackpad.

The screenshot barely shows the dock, but if you look really closely you can see a Flipboard icon. While the possibilities are obviously endless, it’s also difficult to get a feel of how a touch-based application will function on a monitor. I guess we’ll know soon enough.

If Apple has its way, the Magic Trackpad will be ubiquitous in all households rocking Macs during 2011. The problem is that not many applications make full use of the trackpad’s “capabilities.”

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Apple this year, it’s that they make sure developers are featuring the technologies they’re hocking in Keynotes.  If the trackpad is going to catch on like Apple hopes it will, a lot of developers are going to have to figure out a way to creatively make use of the multi-touch capabilities.

Article and Image Via Business Insider

Apple just announced today that they expect sales of the Apple TV to pass 1 million units sometime later this week. A million of anything is always nice to celebrate, but let’s put that into some perspective. Apple has sold 1 million Apple TVs since its introduction in October some 11 weeks ago. By comparison, the iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million units in the first 3 days according to Apple.

Competitor Roku has not reached the 1 million mark yet, despite having been on the market since 2008. Interestingly, Roku reports that since the introduction of the AppleTV, sales have doubled. Roku CEO Anthony Wood told Business Insider that sales are on track for 1 million units by the end of the year, and Apple has helped bring attention and consumer awareness to this category.

Martin Bryant at The Next Web notes that sales of the Apple TV have primarily come from the North American market, where you can get TV show rentals and Netflix in addition to HD Movies and YouTube. Around the world, you are limited to Movies and YouTube, which is not as compelling.

As a part of a Mac home ecosystem, the Apple TV fits in very nicely, allowing easy streaming of all the media in your iTunes libraries on the network. Roku has the advantage when it comes to resolution, offering a 1080p output on its two higher end models, trumping the AppleTV with its 720p output. I’m not sure how much it matters when it comes to streaming; however, since much of the streaming content is very compressed and not always available in 1080p, a purist will really only be satisfied with Blu-Ray, while everyone else won’t even notice the difference. In the end, the question is one of convenience. Does the Apple TV offer enough convenient access to TV, Movies, Netflix and my iTunes media, to outweigh the decrease in resolution? 1 million people seem to think so.

Article Via The Next Web

It doesn’t take much to set geeks off about Net Neutrality these days. Most of us can see what’s at stake in the fight, but very few of us actually have voices loud enough to get the difference makers to pay attention. None of us are Steve Wozniak, but it’s looking like we don’t have to be. The Woz has decided to take up the challenge of pleading with law makers to ‘Think Different’ when it comes to net neutrality.

Steve Wozniak has written a lengthy, humor-filled, open letter to the FCC where he waxes philosophical about the early days of Apple, and how current proposed legislation would have thwarted the personal computing explosion of the early 80s before it even started. Simply put, according to Woz, Apple never would have existed if these types of laws were around back then.

Woz pleads:

Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible. Local ISP’s should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to, as long as you don’t destruct them.

I don’t want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today’s Internet.

Woz sums up the fight nicely. I don’t know many people who think that the open internet is going to be around much longer. Lawmakers have their hands so deep in lobbyists’ pockets that it’s hard to see this fight turning out in any other way. Yet, we fight the good fight, hoping that somewhere along the way a politician might grow
a spine and think about this for a second. All it takes is a second worth of thought and a brief reading of the history of ‘Ma Bell.’

Woz puts the neutrality argument in the best analogy possible for these gas guzzling, sports car driving politicians:

What if we paid for our roads per mile that we drove? It would be fair and understandable to charge more for someone who drives more. But one of the most wonderful things in our current life is getting in the car and driving anywhere we feel like at this moment, and with no accounting for cost. You just get in your car and go.

Hopefully Woz’s letter doesn’t fall on deaf ears. You can read the full letter on the Atlantic’s website.

Article Via The Atlantic

Syncing your calendars and ToDo lists can be trying at the best of times. Until recently. I relied on Google Apps to get the job done, but it just wasn’t cutting it for me. Syncing data is no easy feat it seems.

BusyMac has created a number of products that tackle the problem head on. Their BusyCal and BusySync products make syncing calendars across multiple platforms a breeze.

Today they’ve announced that they’ve also released their first iOS application, titled BusyToDos. The application will sync your ToDo list information with iCal and BusyCal through MobileMe. The syncing is automatic and happens on the fly.

If you’re looking for a simple, lightweight ToDo list application that syncs to your Mac, then you’ll want to check out BusyMac’s BusyToDo on the App Store.  They have a great reputation when it comes to hassle-free syncing of your data.

Since we ran an article yesterday suggesting that OpenDNS and Google DNS could play a part in slowing down iTunes and Netflix traffic, we thought it would only be fair to post an update letting you know that we got an email from Laura Oppenheimer who works for OpenDNS providing additional information on this issue.

Laura contacted us to let us know that David Ulevitch, OpenDNS Founder and CEO, has pointed out that they have arrangements with a number of CDNs, and that using their service shouldn’t be much of an issue for most Apple TV users.

They also pointed out that “with Akamai, especially internationally, it’s still suboptimal. It’s entirely workable, but not as optimal as it could be. ”

Ulevitch also pointed out that they have a sufficiently dense network topology to handle streaming iTunes and Netflix in North America, but that they’re open to working with CDNs to make sure that this isn’t an issues in the future.

So there you have it. OpenDNS shouldn’t be a problem for most, and if you’re noticing slow load times you might want to check with your ISP. Not that your ISP will be helpful. They’re probably just going to blame someone else.

That being said, as with any network problem, it’s best to troubleshoot all potential problem vectors. DNS could be one of those problems.

A trifecta of patents were awarded to Apple Inc today, including a patent that credits Steve Jobs as one of the inventors. Apple’s Mail.app send button, the one depicted by a paper airplane, was apparently invented by Steve Jobs and Bas Ording.

It’s good to see Steve still pulls his weight around Apple’s campus.

In addition to the super-awesome paper airplane icon, Apple was also awarded patents for their Bluetooth headset design, as well as their process for Multi-Touch Input Discrimination.

The last patent award reads like legaleese, but it’s described as follows, according to Patently Apple :

For a hand-held multi-touch touch-surface device that may be put into a pocket, purse, or held against the head (e.g., portable music player, portable video player, personal digital assistant or mobile phone), detecting when the device is being clasped on the way into or out of the pocket, against the body, or against the head is very useful for: input rejection (ensuring that touch-surface input signals generated as a result of these actions are not mistaken for normal finger/stylus touches); operational mode transitions (e.g., dimming the device’s backlight, putting the device to sleep and waking the device from a low-power state); and, for mobile telephones, answering calls (e.g., when the device is brought near, but not necessarily touching the head) and/or terminating calls (e.g., when the unit is placed into a pocket or purse).”

I’m pretty grateful that the fine folks over at Patently Apple keep an eye on these things. I personally wouldn’t have the patience to read through most of these patents.

Huge props to Patently Apple.

Article Via Patently Apple

When Apple announced Ping earlier this year, I — like a lot of users — was a little confused. The social network isn’t web-based, and wasn’t even all that powerful.

Even though Apple has added features since launch, Ping is still underwhelming. While it has Twitter support, Facebook support is nowhere to be found. Following bands is cool, but seeing what your buddy bought on the iTunes Store just… isn’t.

NPR agrees:

The most popular services — the Facebooks, Twitters and MySpaces of the world — allow users to share links, thoughts, ideas, photos and music to connect with each other. Ping, run through iTunes, was supposed to be an evolution in musical connection. But iTunes, being a self-contained fortress requiring endless software upgrades and with more than a few frustrating quirks, isn’t conducive to the type of sharing Web-based networks enjoy across a variety of devices. I can access all three of the aforementioned sites from my Android phone, and I have a variety of apps that allow me to seamlessly integrate these applications into my life. To use Ping, I would have to be tethered to my iMac.

Harsh, but accurate words.

Article Via MacStories

When I finally got my hands on the iPad for the first time, I instantly began wondering how the device would influence our technology usage in the home. It was pretty easy see that iPads could become the dominant couch surfing technology in the house. Anyone who dabbles in consumer electronics could have seen that one coming from a mile away, but I just couldn’t see families paying for multiple iPads.

Most houses already have a desktop, a laptop, and adding one iPad per home would have surely been enough, or so my logic went. I guess I didn’t see the iPad as much of a laptop replacement at the time, but it’s turning into just that, and many families are now buying multiple iPads for the home.

YouGov has put together a survey that clearly illustrates the reasons people are purchasing multiple iPads in a home. The most dominate reason for two iPads in a home is that someone else in the family uses the iPad. I’m still not sold that a family needs more than one iPad and that user accounts on the iPad wouldn’t solve this problem, but it’s an interesting trend.

iPads are cheap enough that buying multiple devices makes more sense than buying multiple laptops at this point, but does the modern family really need two or more iPads? I know my house doesn’t, but then again, I have computers hooked up to everything around here. A Mac Pro sits on the desk, a MacBook Pro in my laptop bag, a Mac mini attached to my TV, and an iPad next to the bed.

Has the iPad replaced any of the traditional “computers” in your home? Could your family get away with using multiple iPads instead of laptops and desktops? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue.

Article Via 9 to 5 Mac