Those with iPhones or iPod Touch devices might be wondering, “if I buy a program on the App Store, what happens if a new version comes out?”
Well luckily that’s all been worked out. Anyone who has downloaded the free New York Times app and been immediately disappointed by the performance and quality of it have probably noticed the App Store icon on the home screen showing a little number badge on top of it.
If you go to the App Store and follow that notification a similar badge appears in the updates section, allowing you to download the new version of whatever application needs updating. If you are away from your sync computer, it will install and prompt you to copy the new version over to your sync computer when the phone is connected. Very slick.
Nothing like a little som’n som’m to look forward too every now and again.
Well…Friday I waited in line for over 2 hours to finally give ‘ol Steve some of my hard-earned dosh. I’ve bought Apple products before, but unless I’ve given them as gifts, never kept the fucking thing. This is the first Apple product that I bought for MJS exclusively… I’ll recount the experience before I weigh in on my first 72 hours with the product.
The cats in Cupertino decreed that the new 3G iPhone could only be bought in Apple and AT&T stores starting at 8a on Friday. Guaranteed lines of zealots at the Apple stores…prompting me to think that I’d be safe arriving an hour early to an AT&T store mere miles from an Apple store. Not so much. At 7a there were 35 people in front of me…and every single fuck around me had an EDGE iPhone. I’m not exaggerating. Every goddamn person had a 1-year old, perfect-working-condition iPhone.
Now…I’m moving up from a Samsung a900 on Sprint, so the iPhone is whole milk to me. But I’ve spent some time with the EDGE iPhone and don’t find it to be incredibly handicapped compared to the 3G. The web access is faster, but all iPhones will get the 2.0 software…so we’ll be on a nearly-level playing field from what I can see. The most obvious advantage being that my phone was “only” $199, whereas the earliest adopters got horn-fucked last year.
Back to the lines. AT&T had deployed some Zealot Wranglers to keep the natives in czech, trained in the fine art of counter-intel. The agent for our portion of line was particularly vicious…claiming illogically that she was incapable of counting how many iPhones were available for purchase and beckoning everyone to eschew their jobs and stay in line no matter what happened. Luckily I was able to forward the trouble phone to my cell and remain away from the office until I had blown my wad…others were not so lucky. Two seething and sweaty IT pro’s in line behind me couldn’t handle the pressure and rolled out of the firing line mere minutes before I secured my prize.
With regards to the process, Apple screwed the pooch in my opinion. Last year some anti-zealots hacked their phones and whatever…so this year’s plan was to activate at the store on purchase. That plan will probably be fine after a few weeks…no so much on Friday. The entire central time zone was struggling to activate through iTunes starting at 8a. Case in point, it took the first guy in line over 30 minutes to reemerge with his activated phone. Luckily for us, the AT&T order-takers quickly decided to dump the activate procedure and I got my phone activation-free. And thus the activation process took about 3 minutes later on in the day.
So…you’re saying “MJS, how’s the fuckin phone?”
Pretty goddamn swell. I tried to give it a well rounded rinse over the weekend: making some long-distance calls, listening to a podcast (thousand cuts, y’all), watching a trailer, downloading some free apps from the new apps store, using google maps to find a Panera Bread, etc. Good shit. About half of my interweb browsing was done via my home wifi, but I was most impressed by how quickly the phone hopped from wifi to 3G to Edge when the signal strength demanded it. Definitely some quality there.
I’m impressed so far, and I’m certainly finding every reason to use the thing. However, I vow not to become the asshat zealot that will whip out the phone to counter a pilot when he claims our plane is delayed due to weather. Fuck him.
By running Apple Software Update you should see iTunes version 7.7 now available for download. Even though the App Store doesn’t seem to have a direct link on the iTunes storefront. A simple search for Super Monkey Ball will let you get to the App Store tab.
With this single move you can download and purchase a shit tonne of goddamn applications. Free apps include (finally) AIM, Facebook App, MySpace Mobile App, eBay App, IGN Game reviews, NetNewsWire, Evernote, and all sorts of little games and productivity applications.
Pay software includes, Bejeweled, Super Monkey Ball, OmniFocus, Band, and christ there’s too much to name. Seriously, tomorrow is going to kick all forms of ass when the 2.0 software is avaiable.
Or you could just download the 2.0 iPhone update yourself, right now.
Of couse, I can’t guarantee that that update will work properly, and it is known that updating your iPhone or iPod touch with 2.0 software will wipe the phone and attempt to restore from a backup created just before the wipe. The backup checks what is available and authorized in your iTunes library for the restore so make sure (if you do this) to update using your main iTunes library.
This program is an example of why the App store and iPhone combo is going to be awesome.
I’ve installed the update and had no issues booting up so far. I did notice that a few Calendar synchronization windows came up, but I believe this is because they revamped the iCal synch procedure. All the iCal appointments are correct after the sync. VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta is running fine right now. It’s even allowing me to do odd stuff that I haven’t tested yet, like interact with the Sony Reader.
The update is a 400MB+ download that affects iCal, Time Machine, AirPort, Spaces and General OS X features. A full list of changes is available from Apple.
I’ll keep you posted. Obviously this blog post is masturbatory since I’m the only Mac user. Sue me.
The ProjectMix I/O is M-Audio’s answer to the more expensive Digidesign (despite being part of the same company, AVID), Tascam, and Mackie control surfaces. It gives you a flexible audio interface and motorized fader-based control-surface. I’ve debated making the leap in purchasing this thing on several occasions. I don’t have any need for it now, but seeing how M-Audio likes to drop driver support for certain products, I’m glad I didn’t pick it up.
It’s safe to assume that the ProjectMix I/O is one of (if not) the flagship devices M-Audio makes currently. OS X Leopard (10.5 to be exact) was released October of 2007 and M-Audio still has not provided support for the operating system. It seems odd to me that a company that has such a partnership with a software manufacturer could be “caught with it’s pants down” when it’s new, much publicized, operating system is released. No doubt M-Audio was given advance access to the pre-release copies of Leopard as to allow them to release updates to their product lines. Why a company as prolific as M-audio is in the Mac Pro-Audio field would not be able to write a driver update for their flagship hardware devices after over a year is beyond my sphere of understanding.
I’ve already come to grips that I won’t be able to use my much-beloved Omnistudio Pro USB anymore, since they’ve stated they have “no plans” to support it into OS X Leopard. Fine. It’s an older device; gone discontinued since 2005, I believe. Sucks, but I can take it. How the hell is anyone to have any confidence with this company when you can’t be guaranteed to have drivers prepared for your $1500 recording device a YEAR after an operating system is released. For fuck’s sake, point-releases are coming through (already 10.5.2 and 10.5.3 on the way) and nothing. I don’t envy ProjectMix owners.
Currently, I’ve been experiencing problems with my FastTrack Pro USB interface that I purchased to replace the OmniStudio (I believe in second chances). The audio will drop out after functioning normally for an arbitrary amount of time. I don’t know if it’s a problem with the device or with the driver software that M-Audio dutifully provided, several months after OS X Leopard was released. I like to know if there’s a company out their more trust worthy than M-audio to fill the void on reliable audio interfaces. I hear bad stuff about everyone else’s products like Tascam, Lexicon, Focusrite, etc, (minus Pro Tools rigs, but I hear issues regarding the software required to run them, plus I want be able to use software other than ProTools), maybe this is all their is? All I can do is tune in and wait.
Adding true multi-monitor support and “experimental” DX 9, it looks like version 2 of Fusion will fully close any gap that may exist between its rivals over at Parallels.
Anyone using Parallels Desktop 3 knows that their idea of “Multi-Monitor” is really “giant-ass monitor” support. They decide to combine horizontal resolutions of multiple monitors when in Convergence mode, using the root monitor’s vertical resolution as a base. This means that you aren’t able to take advantage of 100% screen realestate if you use monitors of varying resolutions. An invisible cutoff point will exist when you try to drag a Convergence window south of your initial display’s max vertical res. Weak.
Fusion 2 actually passes monitor detection to the guest OS, allowing it to treat each additional display as its own, configurable, and arrangeable output. Check the youtube vid below to see this in action. Their testing proves that it can work with as many as 8 independent displays.
Sure, the 3d performance won’t blow anyone’s socks off, but DX 9 support alone is pretty impressive.
the beta 1 release is available as a free download from VMware via the following link. You can see more videos of Beta 1 in action here.
Even though it probably won’t happen, I would like to see either company develop a utility to allow a user to convert a virtual machine into a Boot Camp partition, in case you wanted to dual boot. I realize that it’s probably infeasible, but we can hope can’t we?
Another great provider of excellent, value-packed, Macintosh software bundles is MacHeist. Usually they kick off their bundles with a “spy/mystery” themed puzzle that you have to solve. As you solve these puzzles, or “cases” you accrue “loot”, which may include free software or credits that you can use towards future bundles. The cases are usually extremely clever in their design, but a helpful community forum may help you along should you need help. It’s really just a fun way to get the word out on new Mac software.
Should you have a Mac, I suggest supporting the site and buying 12 apps for $49 bucks, even though (as Socrates will point out) Bugdom and Nanosaur don’t really count. It’s more like 10 apps for $49 bones, which is still a great deal.
The good folks over at MacUpdate have extended us another wonderful Mac software bundle for a reasonable price. For the price, you are once again getting an assload of software! Check it out, NOW!
Now that I’ve taken the plunge on Fusion after using Parallels for about 1 year I feel that I can give a good review on the ups and downs of both packages. On the surface, it seems that both programs are too similar, in their looks and their feature set, to make a compelling argument for choosing one over the other. Parallels has had a head start in this niche. The options and integration features offered by Parallels Desktop reflect that. Even though VMWare is about 1 year behind, Fusion (despite some graphic flubbiness, which I’ll get to) takes said features and implements them the way they should have been in Parallels.
For those of you Parallels users out there (and I know “many” are reading this, ha) I’ll cut right to the chase. A dynamic disk image in Parallels takes quite a bit of time to compress, and most times doesn’t compress to the smallest size possible. In my experience, it took Parallels’ image tools, sometimes 10+ hours to full reduce the size of my dynamic virtual disk. As you all know, it will have to be compressed again because of Windows’ liberal use of disk geometry. This sucks for users, and is a colossal waste of time.
I just yesterday reduced the size of my Fusion image, converted from a Parallels image, and it took 25 minutes….from start to finish. It went from 28GB (max 30GB, with 13GB actual disk usage) to 13GB. All in a painless Fusion Tools process. I was up and running in no time. This is why you Parallels users should drop what you’re doing right now, and buy Fusion. Plain and simple. VMWare has a beta edition of their image conversion utility and worked flawlessly for me, which removes the concern that one would have when moving to a different application. Plus, Fusion starts and suspends faster, with less beachballing and system hiccups.
The only downside that I’ve noticed is that Fusion has an issue with Windows redraw when running Unity mode (called Convergence within Parallels) so that background Unity windows do not redraw their contents when dragged, until the mouse button is let go. This problem extends to the usage of Expose, so that the overlapped Unity windows have “impressions” of their counterpart windows when Expose is activated. I say, “Big Deal”. This will most likely be fixed in a patch, and besides being a little visually displeasing, it really doesn’t impact productivity to a great degree.
I’m totally happy with my switch to VMWare and I won’t be looking back to Parallels Desktop. I wish VMWare would post the differences in performance and the ease (and more importantly, speed) of virtual disk compression. These are vital metrics when making the leap. Too bad Sinbad didn’t chime in sooner about how much he loves Fusion on his Mac, because I would have taken the dive long before now.
I received the obligatory ad email from VMWare today, having test drove their latest emulation software for Mac (Fusion), and within this advertisement was a this photo and caption:
I’m wondering what Mac software evangelist has been holding on on buying Fusion for lack of Sinbad’s take.
Apple has announced today that not only will 3rd party applications become available as soon as June of this year, but they are working on an enterprise boost for their lovable/loath-able handset.Apparently, Apple has licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft and plans to bring the Push, finally, and for some reason EA felt it necessary to demo Spore on an iPhone…You heard me right. Why the fuck? I have no idea, but what I’m holding onto is the hope that a native multi-IM chat app will soon become available. Now for the rub. It might be a tactic by Apple to weed out potential ruffians but they have stated that any developer that commercially releases iPhone/touch native applications will not only have to pay $100 US for submission of their creations to Apple so the software can be wirelessly purchased and installed via the device, but will also need to relinquish 30% of their profits from the sale of such software to Apple. Obviously, I’m not a developer (and not much of a writer) but it seems a bit unfair to ask this of entrepreneurial iPhone/touch developers. I suppose this is to subsidize the process of creating the SDK, but jesus. Well, here’s to June!
I’ve been noticing a lot of software developers are beginning to tap one of the best and least used workstation resources to fuel their feature-rich and visually stunning applications. Apple have moved a majority of their graphical tasks within OS X to the client’s GPU instead of following the usual design paradigms, whereby the already tasked CPU has to contend with not only program code but also the responsibility of displaying and manipulating the interface elements, etc. It sounds like a great idea, and it has proven pivotal to a great deal of applications that promise us features, even with our greatly streamlined CPU’s, would seem improbable.
A few applications of note, that have called upon GPU power to solve the dilemmas of visually oriented/design applications, include:
A photo editing package that is touted as the first to utilize the GPU for all of its realtime previewing/application of filters, as well as rendering. It has a beautiful interface and since every filter or task you perform is in realtime it allows for a lot of creative expression, since you’re not constantly waiting for a preview to be rendered.
A vector drawing app and combines a great interface with Apple’s CoreImage effects. It allows direct conversion from raster to vector, supports layers, and blends. All previews prior to export are using the GPU in realtime.
A truly stunning application for creating screencasts. It allows multiple video/audio sources and provides the most streamlined and innovative timeline edition work flow I’ve ever seen. All video effects and mixing occurs in realtime thanks to some custom GPU algorithms.
These programs are great examples of GPU-enabled applications and all are a joy to use. It’s exciting to see programs start to look and behave in the much coveted “hollywood futurism” style that we all expect. It’s 2008, goddamn it!
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some downsides to using the GPU. First off, power consumption goes up, and with that comes heat. Also you are somewhat limited in dealing with large content should you not be blessed with a standalone video card. Using the GPU to manipulate high DPI or high megapixel images can really hurt when shoved through an integrated Intel 950 or comparable card. A card that has to peel video memory from physical system RAM. Editing a 12MP photo in Pixelmator on your Macbook is not advisable.
Secondly, driver issues can introduce inconsistencies in a program’s output. Sometimes you may have a image created in a particular piece of software but when exporting you may find scaling issues, artifacts, etc. I was using a modified Geforce 7800 XT that I bought off ebay with a flashed BIOS to work in a G5 (obviously not the best thing to do) and noticed all the applications that used the GPU for exporting images were introducing artifacts into the output. A bit of spline-snot is fine when you’re playing a game but not when you’re producing something for print.
But like I said, I’m not faulting the developers entirely for this, but it is just another nuance for the consumer to be aware of when purchasing and configuring your computer.
Now I would like to make a general recommendation, if I may, to anyone who would like to produce graphics for print or audio recordings professionally.
Buy a MacBook Pro not a regular Macbook.
You can’t run Final Cut Studio on a Macbook, you can’t record audio through the rear USB port due to some sort of hardware glitch that only m-audio seems to want to acknowledge (even though this wasn’t their fault), and without a standalone video card certain visual effects and applications will just be out of your reach. The veritable app-booty you will receive after having a machine with a standalone GPU will far outweigh the monetary costs.
From the great development company TastyApps comes a little gem that really streamlines the process of “online video acquisition” (aka, youtube ripping, aka, “That guy got popped in the balls!! *huh huh* I think I want me a piece of that there Flash video for my digital versatile disc player.”)
Anyway, here’s a little screencast, created for your viewing pleasure, showing off some of the more impressive features of this inexpensive and flexible little app.
I was recently given access to a full installation of Office 2008 for Mac at my job and was interested in checking out what new features and functionality were included in the new version. Since it’s the first in the Office line to be installed as a Universal Binary I was very excited to ditch the Office v.X copy that’s been languishing on my laptop for a few years. After the 30 minute install I was a little disgruntled to find that a new set of Office Aliases were copied into my Dock without an obvious choice to do so during the setup, but, that aside, I started Word to see what new stuff awaited.
I find, to my horror, that the Word 2008 for Mac looks damn near exactly like Pages ‘08 (in fact all versions of Pages). See below:
The screen capture on the left is Word 2008 and the one on the right is Pages ‘08. Apart from some minor differences in the interface, you’d have thought that these two programs were part of the same family or even the same software with a different configuration. Now this isn’t a full review of the software, I really haven’t had a chance to play with Word too much to give a proper assessment of its capabilities. It looks very powerful and from what I’ve attempted it functions very well and uses a lot of OS X features that were ignored for so many years. Of them, Spotlight support in Entourage, realtime options, but no CoreImage rendering. It seems Microsoft is choosing to go with their own engine for visuals over what’s readily available to any OS X developer.
Details aside, it’s very difficult to pay attention to this new application as it has so much in common with a bundle of applications you can buy for 80 bucks! Namely, iWork ‘08. And is it just me or does Entourage 2008 look like shit? For something that you have to look at everyday, it sure needs some work in the usability/visibility area. Messages are clumped together and attachments are either exposed in this bulky pane with vertically stacked buttons that take up nearly all of the reading pane, or are collapsed into a read-only view where the files can’t be right-clicked or interacted with. The folder, to the left, hierarchy looks completely fucked together. Cluttered and confusing, with a series of view options visible by default which add nothing to average user. I know what you’re saying, “Leopard comes with default search views in the finder that I don’t use”. Well, I happen to use a least one of those search views daily, and there’s not fifty of them filling up the screen.
All I’m saying is that if I had to make the choice between buying Office 2008 for Mac and iWork ‘08, I’d go for the $80 package that does 90% of what Office does and maybe a few things that it doesn’t. You can keep Entourage.
It looks like Apple pulled some good news out of their asses today, without much fan fair. iPhone and iPod Touch models are now available in capacities twice what they were offering yesterday. That’s equates to 16GB for the iPhone and 32GB for the iPod Touch. Both units are running for $499. Cool to see that in this short amount of time my hard disk based iPod (gen5) has been eclipsed by a flash memory device….with way more features. Gotta love progress.
Apple has announced today that not only will 3rd party applications become available as soon as June of this year, but they are working on an enterprise boost for their lovable/loath-able handset.Apparently, Apple has licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft and plans to bring the Push, finally, and for some reason EA felt it necessary to demo Spore on an iPhone…You heard me right. Why the fuck? I have no idea, but what I’m holding onto is the hope that a native multi-IM chat app will soon become available. Now for the rub. It might be a tactic by Apple to weed out potential ruffians but they have stated that any developer that commercially releases iPhone/touch native applications will not only have to pay $100 US for submission of their creations to Apple so the software can be wirelessly purchased and installed via the device, but will also need to relinquish 30% of their profits from the sale of such software to Apple. Obviously, I’m not a developer (and not much of a writer) but it seems a bit unfair to ask this of entrepreneurial iPhone/touch developers. I suppose this is to subsidize the process of creating the SDK, but jesus. Well, here’s to June! 
