COMPUTERWORLD: Today we’ve learned internal politics have hindered Google in its cloud music plans while Apple isn’t yet ready to make us all go ‘lala’. Meanwhile, as most of us prepare for long drives to visit family and friends: here’s some great apps for drivers.
For those of us who still use a Mac Mini (or other Mac) as a MediaCenter connected to our TVs, today’s hack from Erica Sadun is a blessing. She created a Mac Application that can catch Airplay from iOS devices and output the video on the screen. For all intents, AirPlayer lets your Mac do what an AppleTV does naturally.
The interesting question is: Does Apple want us doing this? They make much more money selling Minis (and other Macs) than they do on AppleTV units. However, it would seem easy enough for Apple to include this type of Application with Mac OSX. So why does Sadun have to build it instead? Are we in for another cat and mouse chase?
(update: it is a .01 release and we did have some trouble getting it to work with a YouTube video over wifi) Expand Expanding Close
Apple will engage in what it is calling ‘scheduled maintenance’ of its MobileMe service beginning at 10pm tonight (PT). The maintenance will affect users attempting to access their accounts, and will also impact against those trying to sync data between devices.
Today we’re liking the BlueSLR gadget, a Bluetooth dongle that lets you control your Nikon SLR from your iPhone, and adds a few other features which justify its $150 price tag.
All you need to do is connect blueSLR to your compatible digital SLR camera and use your phone to adjust your camera’s focus, shutter speed or timer. Expand Expanding Close
Apple has patched a problem which afflicted some MacBook Air displays, in which 11- and 13-inch models would wake to a black screen or become unresponsive.
The company recommends all MacBook Air users should install the update, which addresses that problem of flickering horizontal lines sometimes appearing on the display of the 13-inch model or displays being discoloured when waking from sleep. Expand Expanding Close
Repetitive sync, record-keeping inccuracies and slow performance, for some of us that’s what we think we pay $99/year for when we sign-up for MobileMe, well, that and an over-priced image sharing service and an online storage facility that’s almost as good as Dropbox — but don’t worry, keep paying your subs because Steve Jobs says MobileMe is going to get better (next year).
Many industry watchers had hoped Apple would take a bite on the bullet and make the service free earlier this year. To an extent it did, bowing to public pressure (and potential feedback from lawmakers sick that such a powerful feature wasn’t available to every owner of an iDevice) and making ‘FindMyiPhone’ free for all. Expand Expanding Close
A new iOS tool called iOSFlashVideofound on iSpazio allows you to view Flash embedded movies on iOS devices. The bookmarklet allows videos from Dailymotion, Flickr Video, MegaVideo and Vimeo that are embedded Flash in websites to play using their backend H.264 video. It is basically the same trick that Apple uses to allow embedded YouTube Flash video to be played without Flash.
We hope (expect?) Apple to make this available natively at some point in the future.
What’s this we hear? Apple’s going to open up its Mac App Store for business just on time for Christmas? That’s how it seems with the latest claimed insider gossip suggesting Apple’s gonna open its doors on the new big consumer software online retail outlet on December 13, hurrah! Expand Expanding Close
COMPUTERWORLD: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Nokia — these big name firms are locked into eternal struggle in the ever-changing world of technology, but Apple may hold the central skill in this new world order, as building tomorrow’s dreams demands that old engineering adage, “less is more”, and “better is not necessarily better than best”. Why? Because they can’t get the staff.
Recall the heady days of last week sometime when we told you about AirPrint Hacktivator, software which let you print to OS X shared printers from iDevices? Well, early versions of the software has been removed by the developer at Apple’s request.
“While working on my next project, VPN Hacktivator, I received an email from omm.com on behalf of Apple instructing me to take down the AirPrint Hacktivator pages,” the developer explains. Expand Expanding Close
COMPUTERWORLD: Mac OS X contains many shortcuts, special keyboard combinations you can exercise to make things happen, but unless you make the effort to learn them there’s no guarantee you’ll recall the one you need at the time you most need it. Fear no more: there’s ways to make finding shortcuts easier. Bring out your inner power user!
Lets put this simply. Macs are better than PCs. What? You want actual proof, rather than a simple expression of opinion? PC World has it, with its latest survey showing the company ‘smoked’ the competition in PC World’s 20101 reliability survey. (Via Apple 2).
Parallels has $10 off this weekend only on Parallels 6 download bring it down to $69, and more importantly the update to $39. Amazon has Parallels 6 box for $57 so probably best to head there if you don’t mind waiting.
Apple’s Black Friday deal is on now – but it looks as if a price competition between Apple and Amazon is taking place at the UK store. Don’t believe me? Then do take a look:
The 13-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB RAM, a 250GB Hard Drive and Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics and SD card costs you £897.90 in the UK on Amazon with free delivery. Expand Expanding Close
Hang onto your hats — we already have word of yet one more special event to close out 2010 but Apple’s already plotting to delight and surprise with another update to its MacBook Pro range and that there long-awaited move to ship a new blend of Final Cut Studio — and we only need to wait till April (some say). Expand Expanding Close
The customary series of unexpected fault reports are coming through the wires this am, with iOS 4.2 reportedly munching music on some iPhones and causing hassles with HDMI on the Apple TV. Here’s what we got so far, and we hope, nay, urge readers with further information to use comments below to help each other out on this. Expand Expanding Close
That didn’t take long, the Redsn0w team have jailbroken the final version of iOS 4.2.1 — there’s also a how-to guide, so all you more technically literate iPhone users out there can get out there and partay! Expand Expanding Close
We know it was possible to print to non-HP printers at some point during the iOS 4.2 beta testing process, equally we also know that it was possible to use AirPlay on an iPhone 3G and a second-generation iPod touch. These uses disappeared, but trust to the ever inventive Mac dev community to figure out a workaround — hurrah for them! Expand Expanding Close
NVIDIA has announced a new graphics card for the Mac Pro, the Quadro 4000 — a solution which brings nVidia’s advanced Fermi architecture to the platform.
COMPUTERWORLD: There’s utilities to boost your Mac’s memory handling, make your information easy to find, password management, background notifications and a power tool for repairing your Mac problems in this reader-submitted collection of six more essential utilities for a Mac.
COMPUTERWORLD: Apple makes such beautiful products. Take the iPad for example — it is magical, and with hot new competitor the Samsung Tab receiving destined-for-the-grave reviews, wouldn’t it be nice to run Android on an iPad, rather than spend your cash on Samsung’s not quite as good as an iPad tablet-thing.