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Is It An Xbox or Mac?

Cory Bohon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:38:15 -0600

A new hackintosh might make some Mac users--and Xbox users--jealous.

Engadget reports on a hackintosh system built by Will Urbina that has an interesting case design. It is the power of a $4,500 Mac Pro in an Xbox case.

This hackintosh features a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550s, NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT card, 8GB of RAM, an 16GB SSD, and four traditional hard drives and was built for only $1,500 plus the many hours required for achieving this awesome mod.

Check out Will's website where you can find more information about this mod. You can also see a video below of the building magic happening.

Apple Offers Concert Downloads via iTunes

Cory Bohon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:02:33 -0600

Live Nation and Apple have teamed up to offer exclusive downloads of concerts via iTunes.

Live Nation is one of the largest live convert recording companies around and their recordings are now available on iTunes for download.

According to the press release [PDF link], "Live Nation Studios will now offer exclusive recorded and filmed concerts from its network of “wired” venues for purchase and download only on iTunes. Exclusive live recordings from OK Go, Jesse McCartney, Saving Abel, A Fine Frenzy, Duffy, Plain White T's and Ziggy Marley, to name a few, have been released this week, with many more to follow."

Apple has added a new area in iTunes called Live Music that allows you to search for and purchase your favorite concerts. You can view the area by clicking here.

Apple has been involved in the music and movie distribution business for a few years now, so live music seems to be a logical step in the right direction for the Cupertino-based company.

via MacRumors

Apple, Android Make Up 75 Percent of U.S. Smartphone Web Traffic

Andrew Villa — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:28:24 -0600

According to AdMob's October mobile metrics report, the iPhone and Android phones made up 75 percent of web traffic for mobile phones in the United States, up 10 percent from the previous month.

The iPhone sits ahead of Android based phones at 55 percent, though Android phones are quickly catching up. iPhone gained a 7 percent increase in traffic in October to 55 percent. Globally, iPhone's operating system now accounts for 50 percent of all mobile traffic, up from 43 percent in September.

Apple Motion 4

Helmut Kobler — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:51:00 -0600

Motion 4 isn’t a standalone product--it ships with latest version of Final Cut Studio. Yes, this video effects program might be a mere “component” of a larger software suite, but because it competes with standalone applications, we decided to distinguish it with its own review. And we went all “deep focus” on it, because Motion 4 has come a long way since the days when Apple was selling it as solo software.

Motion came into the world as a rather immature competitor to Adobe After Effects, the respected and feature-rich standard-bearer. Since that time, Apple has steadily improved Motion to the point where it’s a credible alternative to the Adobe stalwart. The fact that you get Motion in Final Cut Studio 3 (along with a number of other fantastic, pro-level apps) makes it pretty hard to ignore Apple’s stake in the video-editing game.

The software helps you create slick motion graphics for everything from commercials to DVD menus to film and video title sequences. When Apple released the previous version (about two and a half years ago), it was the first time we thought Motion was really ready for a wide variety of projects, thanks to new features letting you set up cameras, lights, and objects in 3D space. But those 3D features only went so far, because Motion still couldn’t cast realistic shadows or reflections. Sure, you could fake those effects by creating duplicate objects and morphing and blurring them until they looked like shadows or reflections, but it was a painstaking process.

Motion 4 offers precise control over light sources and shadows.

Motion 4 fixes all this. For starters, light sources can now cast realistic shadows on everything in your 3D world. You can toggle lights to cast shadows or not and toggle objects to receive shadows or not. You can also tweak other parameters, such as a shadow’s edge softness and its color. Similarly, Motion 4 now lets an object--say, a video layer, shape, or paint stroke--cast reflections on its neighbors, giving you precise control over how reflections fall off.

Apple also adds more 3D realism by way of realistic depth-of-field effects, which enable you to control the relative sharpness and softness of foreground and background elements in a scene. Keeping some elements in focus and others out of focus helps direct the viewer’s attention to what’s important and imbues a scene with true filmlike qualities. Motion 3 had no way of knowing what should be in focus and what should be blurry; again, you had to manually blur elements to simulate depth-of-field effects. But now Motion 4 lets you easily set a point in 3D space where the camera will focus--anything closer or farther away will automatically fall off into fuzziness, depending on the characteristics you’ve given your camera. And speaking of the camera, Motion 4 has added Camera Framing, which enables you to pick an object on which to keep the camera pointed, no matter where you move the camera or objects in your scene.

Rolling credits are a staple of film editing, but it’s never been easy to actually animate a basic credit sequence. Motion 4 makes the process a piece of cake. You can import a text file containing your credits, set type properties, and use a custom navigation tool to quickly jump to any part of the credits to perform last-minute edits. Finally, just apply a Scroll Text behavior to your credits, and then adjust scroll speed, direction, and other useful attributes. Voilà! Instant and professional scrolling credits.

New Apple Products--as Imagined by the Elite Gadget Press

Jon Phillips — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:19:59 -0600

What will be Apple's next super-product--its next spectacular, game-changing "one more thing"? We asked five Apple experts to brainstorm with abandon and then brought their ideas to life.

3D Illustrations by Adam Benton.

Apple doesn’t develop category-creating products. Instead, it enters categories that already exist, deconstructs the competition, burrows deep into R&D mode, and returns with gear so dominant, you’d think Apple invented the category in the first place. This approach doesn’t require rocket science. It only requires a commitment to push the boundaries of what’s possible--and not release a product until it offers enough innovative new features and clever design to make people switch away from the competition.

Consider: The iPod has become a synonym for any portable music player. The iPhone has redefined what a smartphone can be. The MacBook enjoys near complete control of the $1,000-plus notebook market. And iTunes? It’s the world’s largest music retailer.

Apple watchers are well aware that the company is planning to release some sort of tablet computer, and given Apple’s recent history of making surprise announcements, that could very well happen between the day we put this issue to bed and the day you read this article. But what if the tablet rumors are bunkum? And even if the tablet is announced, what comes next? Jaw-dropping products can take years to develop, and Apple surely has tablet-eclipsing wonders brewing in its labs.

For answers, we turned to five tech journalists, people who follow Apple every day and are straight-A students of its products. Each expert was asked to fill out the same worksheet, wherein we requested details on the features, specs, wow elements, and essential “Appleness” of the gear they envision Apple making. We then took their worksheets and turned their ideas into the fully rendered fauxtotypes you see on the following pages. We did our best to stay faithful to our experts’ visions, but sometimes we did add elements of our own. But, of course, this entire little game is an exercise in interpretation: We asked our experts to interpret Apple’s magic mojo, and then we interpreted what our experts gave us. We hope we served our experts well.

Want to play too? You can enter our "Apple Fauxtotype Challenge" in January. But for now, please begin your tour of Apple’s future vision.

The Fauxtotypes

iRead

The Internet's everywhere-at-once tech reporter envisions the first mainstream application of full-color electronic paper.

Veronica Belmont

Omnipresent Video Host & Blogger

Bona Fides: Belmont was a producer/reporter for CNET and now hosts Sony's Qore video magazine and cohosts the Tekzilla video podcast. She is also a columnist for MaximumPC.com, regularly updates her own tech blog (veronicabelmont.com), and has 1,442,554 Twitter followers as of this writing--making her Twitter's most-followed tech journalist.

With its Kindle device, Amazon proved that e-readers aren’t lame pieces of junk. You just have to use eye-soothing “electronic paper” (aka e-paper) instead of not-so-reading-friendly LCD displays. And just this October, Barnes & Noble released the nook, an e-reader with two screens: a grayscale e-paper screen for reading and a smaller color LCD screen for navigation.

Yes, e-books are hot, and its against this backdrop that Belmont conceived the iRead--because you didn’t think Apple would pin all its e-book aspirations on the upcoming tablet, did you?

Click to embiggen for more details.

Belmont’s iRead concept uses two screens, but they’re nearly identical in their generous specs: 8 inches high, multitouch-enabled, and full-color-capable. That’s right: full color. The left-side reading screen uses e-paper, but it’s color e-paper--the first available in a consumer device. The right-hand screen, meanwhile, uses a regular LCD to display movies, games, and other traditional digital content. Belmont explains: “You can hold it open like a book to view rich media alongside corresponding text, or you can place it like an easel on your table top to watch videos or read hands-free.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

E-reader on one side, full-featured media player on the other. Sounds like the iRead could boost sales on iTunes, right? Indeed, Belmont envisions downloadable e-books that complement text with video snippets, author interviews, and other treats that only digital technology can provide. For example, “premium edition” e-books could have an audiobook component that syncs automatically to your text--so you could segue from reading a novel in a café to listening to that same novel in your car, all without missing a word.

Click to embiggen for more details.

Think your iTunes bills are getting expensive? Just wait until the iRead arrives, and you begin downloading e-books with abandon. It’s a pricey proposition, but if it reverses our descent into illiteracy, it’s a price worth paying.

The Fauxtotypes

iTenna

Gizmodo's top gadget expert posits a cynical response to the AT&T clusterfrick.

Brian Lam

Editorial Director, Gizmodo.com

Bona Fides: As the editorial boss of the gadget site Gizmodo, Lam enjoys unparalleled hands-on access to the product developments of Apple, a company that makes early looks of new gear as rare and valuable as Wonka’s golden tickets. Lam is often awarded “first seat” at Apple press events and has established Gizmodo.com as the world’s fastest live-blogging source of breaking Apple news.

The year is 2011. Apple is still locked in its suicide pact with AT&T. The reliability of voice and text-messaging service over the iPhone is as reliable as electricity service in Pyongyang. Anti-Apple protest rallies are a weekly occurrence, complete with cries of “No more telecom totalitarianism!” and placards of Steve Jobs bedecked in Kim Jong-il’s pompadour and glasses. Apple can no longer wait for AT&T to fix its network crisis, so it does an end-run around the iPhone’s greatest threat--it releases the iTenna, an add-on that allows users to tap into any cell network other than AT&T’s.

Click to embiggen for more details.

Or at least that’s the vision we saw when Brian Lam provided a bare-bones overview of his concept. Here’s Lam in his own words: “It’s a repeater. Perhaps an antenna, or a set of mini bunny ears. The thing could be attached. Or not. It connects to Sprint, Verizon, or T-Mobile, and routes everything over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or perhaps a dock connector.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

From this product brief, we extracted two features that really caught our fancy. First, we decided that connectivity over the dock connector made the most sense, so our fauxtotype integrates iTenna technology into a slide-on case. Second, we were smitten by the allusion to VHF rabbit ears, and thus begat the twin nubbins at the top of the device. The whimsy of the design matches the whimsy of the entire iTenna concept. As Lam himself states, “I’m perfectly aware that this product makes no sense, given the way Apple works. But, hey, neither does an iPhone that gets no reception in a major metropolitan city like San Francisco. Hello, I live four blocks from Haight Street--why do I have a zero percent call success rate for anything even resembling a human voice?”

The Fauxtotypes

iVision

The internationally focused gadget guru sees augmented reality making a quantum leap forward.

Michael Brook

Editor, T3

Bona Fides: One of Mac|Life’s sister magazines from across the pond, T3 (“Tomorrow’s Technology Today”) not only publishes in the UK, but also has 21 country-specific international editions, making it one of the world’s premier sources for gadget news and reviews. With 10 years experience reporting on technology, Michael Brook leads this formidable charge.

Augmented reality apps bring science-fictiony data overlays to the iPhone--which isn’t a terribly ideal place for them, as the iPhone keeps reality (augmented or otherwise) at arm’s length from our eyes. Brook’s iVision concept fixes all that by placing augmented reality mere millimeters from our corneas, letting it integrate perfectly with our natural vision. Viewing life through iVision--with digital data served directly on top of all that we see--completes the promise of everything augmented reality technology has to offer.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“Each lens will have a built-in HUD,” Brook says, “so you’ll be able to view the output of your augmented reality apps directly on your glasses. No need to hold up the iPhone. It will use Bluetooth, or a more advanced wireless standard, for connectivity. Low power, no need for constant charging. GPS positioning, etcetera, will be done on the iPhone with info relayed to the glasses for processing within the unit. Features like caller ID will naturally be viewed on the glasses, and when listening to music, track data will also appear on the head-up display.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

And then there’s the curious Oakley/Apple logo on the iVision frames. We told our experts that it’s common for Mac|Life fauxtotypes to imagine a marriage between Apple and some equally iconographic megabrand. In years past, we conjectured Apple synergizing with LEGO and Audi, and we were thrilled when Brook followed our lead, and used Oakley in his product brief.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“Apple has most areas of tech covered with the iPhone and computing products,” Brook says. “The glasses idea brings them squarely into the world of fashion, which, let’s face it, they’re already knee deep in from a tech point of view. Teaming up with a forward-thinking brand like Oakley allows them to be first to market with a groundbreaking product that makes more of existing tech.”

The Fauxtotypes

exerPod

The maven of mobility wants his exercise data completely bespoke.

Mark McClusky

Products Editor, WIRED

Bona Fides: As the senior editor in charge of products at Wired, McClusky is the magazine’s gear and gadget gatekeeper, leading the charge in covering technology that’s actually shipping today. He was also an editor on Mobile (a former sister magazine of Mac|Life), where he honed his expertise in handheld technology.

There once was a day when just a single iPod ruled the portable audio universe. It had everything we needed in a music player--or so we thought. Now there are four iPods, with each version offering a form factor, feature set, and price point skewed to specific consumer needs. Could this same type of fragmentation and specialization be applied to the iPhone line? After reading McClusky’s exerPod brief, we’re excited by the possibilities.

Click to embiggen for more details.

The exerPod is an Apple handheld devoted wholly to physical fitness. As McClusky says, “It makes the act of tracking your exercise and health totally transparent--it’s a thing you throw in your pocket, and it just does it, if you’ll pardon the Nike reference.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

Actually, we like the Nike reference, because with the exerPod, we see more companies teaming up with Apple to create highly integrated telemetry systems that marry real-world gear (shoes, bikes, home gyms, and so on) with custom apps--much like the existing Nike+ system. But let’s let McClusky explain how this works:

“It’s the ultimate tracking device for athletes, and other folks looking to monitor their health and performance. For example, using built-in accelerometers and GPS, it tracks speed and distance for runners. There’s also ANT+ wireless support to hook up to heart-rate monitors, bike-speed sensors and power meters, and gym equipment like treadmills. Any time you’re doing anything active, it’s tracking and capturing the associated data. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi let it beam information to your computer, as well as the ecosystem of sites that will spring up to let you slice and dice the data.”

Click to embiggen for more details.

Some might scoff that the iPhone can already do much of what McClusky envisions. Well, it can but at a hefty price--and not nearly as well. The exerPod is an inexpensive device (we see it costing $99) for folks who don’t want an Apple cell phone and simply need a small, rugged gadget that includes a battery of special features dedicated to a fitness lifestyle.

The Fauxtotypes

iMake

The mischievous master of DIY sees us making our own Apple gear in the future.

Mark Frauenfelder

Editor-in-Chief, MAKE

Bona Fides: As the founder of BoingBoing.net, one of the world’s first tech-culture websites, Frauenfelder has the longest career in tech journalism of all our five experts. He was also the founding editor of Wired Online, and today he’s the top editor of MAKE, a quarterly devoted to creating DIY tech projects.

Good googamaloo, what has Frauenfelder asked us to imagine here?! His iMake concept came to us exceedingly well fleshed out, so we’ll turn the podium over to him:

“iMake is a desktop manufacturing system based on the RepRap (reprap.org), an open-source 3D rapid prototyping technology. Apple led the way in the desktop publishing revolution, and now it’s leading the way in the desktop manufacturing revolution. With iMake, you can make your own small products at home, such as Bluetooth headsets, iPods with unique form factors, wristwatches, eyeglasses, door knobs, and more.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“To create a product, you visit the iTunes Store to choose from among tens of thousands of product designs--prices range from free to $9.99--purchasing one just as you would a song, video, or app. The 3D data is sent to the iMake, which builds the parts, layer by layer, out of high-quality plastic. The iMake will also make the circuit boards. Then, all you do is snap the pieces together! After purchasing a 3D model from the iTunes Store, it takes about 15 minutes to print a 3D part.

Click to embiggen for more details.

“It seems counter-intuitive that Apple would allow its customers to have a hand in designing its products, but after witnessing the runaway success of its iTunes App Store--which has thousands of apps created by third parties--Apple realized that quality rises to the top and that enabling people to design and create their things is even cooler than giving them the tools to design and create their own media, as Apple did when it put the power of publishing in the hands of everyone.”

Thank you for this fascinating glimpse at the future, Herr Frauenfelder. And thank you for not spec’ing the iMake to have the ability to make its own parts, a feature of the RepRap.

Uh, hello?! Skynet?! Anyone?!

The Fauxtotypes

Apple Patent Application a Tablet Hint?

Brian Proffit — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:44:24 -0600

Unwiredview.com added more fuel to the Apple tablet rumor mill today with their report that Apple has filed a patent application for improved digital ink recognition techniques. The patent covers techniques for improving the recognition and interpretation of digital ink phrases. You know, the kind that are longer and more meaningful than the digital ink recognition needed for small, handheld devices. In the application, Apple themselves referred to it as a “pen-based input tablet.”

Obviously Apple tablet rumors are proliferating, but it’s certain that Apple doesn’t need better digital ink recognition for the Nano. ZDNet says the patent application was filed on July 17, 2009, and published today in the US Patent & Trademark Office.

The application lends credence to the suspicion that the upcoming product will have more in common with a MacBook Air than an overgrown iPod Touch. Still, when announcing the iPhone in January 2007, Steve Jobs went out of his way to say nobody needed a stylus when we had ten of the best pointing devices in the world on our hands. That’s the same time that Apple’s Inkwell handwriting technology disappeared from Apple’s website. Still, Ink Services is actually still available in Mac OS if you connect an external graphics tablet.

Jason D. O’Grady thinks that Apple is patent-spamming to throw us off the scent. One thing’s for sure; all this speculation gives them free buzz.

Build a Bootable Rescue SD Card For Your Mac

David W. Martin — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:24:32 -0600

The latest MacBook Pros and iMacs sport a new port, a Secure Digital (SD) memory card reader. The immediate assumption is that you will use the SD card slot for transferring videos and photos from a camera to the Mac. That's what a majority of users will use it for.

For the hardcore users out there, Apple decided to give the SD port super powers -- you can use it to build a bootable SD card. That bootable card can then become an awesome tool for performing emergency hard drive repairs, data recovery, recovering deleted files, and much more. This how-to will get you started on building your SD card offering you a few ideas along the way, but potential uses for this SD card are practically unlimited.

Difficulty level:
Medium

What you need:
> MacBook Pro or iMac 2009 model with built-in SD card slot

> Mac OS X installation DVD that shipped with your Mac.

> Recommended high speed 16GB or 32GB SanDisk Extreme III SD card; Minimum 8GB SanDisk Extreme III. Note: Other SD cards may work, but will be considerably slower. See this Apple support document for more information on compatible SD cards.

> Installation Disks for your favorite Mac OS X recovery utilities, applications or other tools.

> 90 minutes or more of free time.

Note: This how-to focuses on creating a personalized bootable rescue drive. You can use the retail Snow Leopard to create a bootable drive for any compatible Mac with an SD card port. Check with your OS X utility of choice to make sure it will work on a variety of machines after installation.

Create a Bootable SD Card

1. Insert the SD card you want to use into the built-in card slot on your MacBook Pro or iMac.

2. Launch Disk Utility from Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities

3. Select the SD card inside of the left pane in Disk Utility.

4. Click on Partition; then under Volume Scheme change it to one partition

5. Under Volume information type the following:
Name: MPB13_SD_BOOT (13 represents the model MacBook Pro)
    Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    Size: 15.59 GB for 16GB SD Card (accept maximum the default)

6. Click the Options button and select GUID Partition Table and click Ok.

7. Click Apply and then click Partition.

Disk Utility will prepare and format the SD card. Afterwards, you are ready to install Mac OS X onto the card.

Installing Mac OS X onto the SD Card

1. Insert the Mac OS X installation DVD that came with your MacBook Pro or iMac.

2. Double click the Mac OS X installation icon.

Note: The installation screen, for Mac OS X Leopard, will tell you that the installation will take approximately 11.6GB of space. This exceeds the space on an 8GB SD card by a wide margin. We'll resolve that problem shortly.

3. Select a Destination in this case that will be the SD card you prepared above.

4. Click Continue.

5. At the installation summary screen click Customize.

6. You will be presented with check list of items that will be installed. Uncheck all of the following: Printer Drivers, Additional Fonts, Language Translations, and X11. This will reduce a Mac OS X Leopard installation down to approximately 6.2GB. Click Done.

7. Click Install and Mac OS X will start to install onto the SD card. The installation will take an hour or more. Once it has completed click through any other screens that appear accepting the defaults on each one.

You are now ready to boot your Mac from the SD card. Restart your Mac while pressing and holding down the Option key. You will eventually be presented with the Startup Manager -- select your SD card and your Mac will boot from it as shown below.

Installing Your Favorite Disk Utilities, Tools and Other Applications

Once you've verified that your SD card is bootable you'll have to decide what applications you want to install and how you might need to customize Mac OS X on your new tiny postage sized Mac hard drive. Yes, believe it or not, your SD card is now a full fledged bootable Mac hard drive and it will act just like one. In fact, you can take it with you and boot any Mac of the same model as it was built on, which in this case was a 13-inch MacBook Pro.

We went to my software library and installed the following applications on our emergency SD rescue card: DiskWarrior, Drive Genius 2, FileSalvage, and TechTool Pro 5. They all installed just as they would normally, updated automatically, and accepted serial numbers as needed for activation. We then dragged their icons to the Dock for easy access after booting off of the SD card. In addition to that, we added icons for commonly used tools for trouble shooting: Activity Monitor, Console, Terminal, Disk Utility, and System Profiler.

Apple Soundtrack Pro 3

David Biedny — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:37:56 -0600

Soundtrack Pro is a multitrack audio editor intended to be used as part of a video workflow, though it’s equally adept at standalone audio projects. It was once sold separately, but for the last few years, it’s been available exclusively as part of the Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio bundles. The latest incarnation, version 3, offers a wide range of fine-tuned interface tweaks and a few new tricks that will make anyone who produces pro audio take notice.

The most significant new feature is audio-level matching, which allows you to raise the overall volume levels of one track and match them to another, a boon for podcasters and anyone who works with multisource audio. The big caveat with this new feature is that it only works with isolated voices on separate tracks. Anyone recording an interview with a single recording device, or via Skype, won’t be able to use the feature.

Audio-level matching equalizes the sound of two different tracks.

Field recording enthusiasts are often stymied by ambient noise in anything but the most isolated environments. Soundtrack Pro 2 had some noise-removal filtering and version 3 significantly improves upon it. The software allows you to select multiple harmonics of the base frequency--audio-geek speak for “it catches all the hum.” Previously, users often turned to third-party noise reduction plug-ins to handle these problems, but the new built-in stuff does a great job. And if you still need specialized third-party add-ons, advanced users will be pleased to see that their plug-ins show up in the same pane as Apple’s built-in tools--a great practical touch.

Time-stretching is a key aspect of creative audio editing, and you’ll be thrilled to find some new time-remapping mojo in Soundtrack Pro 3. There are three different remapping options, making us think it’s based on the tools in the new Logic 9 software, which we totally dig, because it produces some very nice, transparent results. Another feature ostensibly lifted from Logic is the ability to edit audio directly in the Multitake editor, a seemingly minor improvement that will make folks using this feature very, very happy.