Gary Rosenzweig looks at how to view music, photos and video from your Mac on your Wii using Wii Transfer. You can also use your Wii Remote with your Mac as a wireless mouse.
So we’re fairly sure there are going to be some Apple announcements soon. Some say on September 9th. But what? Rumors hint toward a shake-up of a product line. But which line and how big of a shake-up?
We’ve got the MacBook line, rumored to be ditching the white and black plastic for aluminum. Not much would differentiate the MacBook and the MacBook Pro then, just some larger numbers for the pro. They would essentially become one line, not two.
It does get confusing now with the MacBook Air in the mix. There are a lot of people not sure which one to get. One is cheap, the other is light, and the third is powerful. But if you want cheap and light, or light and powerful, or cheap and powerful, then you are out of luck. A line of smaller, cheap MacBooks and a line of heavier, powerful and more expensive ones would make sense, but I don’t see that happening so soon after the launch of the Air.
The iMac line is in a similar spot. I don’t see that it is time for a redesign, and there aren’t that many people asking for a more powerful iMac at the moment.
We just got the new iPhone, and and iPod Touch redesign to look like the new iPhone isn’t very exciting.
That leaves the iPod. I think this is where it is at, and it seems the rumors are strong here. A new Nano with a larger screen is the most popular rumor right now.
I see something a little more — something that would make more sense anyway. I think Apple will drop the name “Nano” and just call it the iPod. Think about it: there is no “iPod” right now. There are: iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Classic. For the holidays, it would probably be best for Apple if people could just wish for an “iPod” and shoppers could just buy an “iPod.”
So my thinking is that the new Nano will be called the “iPod.” The shuffle will remain, as will the Touch and the Classic. The only purpose of the Classic at this point is the large hard drive, so it will probably stay at the current configuration for a while and then go away after flash-based iPods reach 64/96GB in storage.
Then, of course, there is the Apple TV. Be interesting if they threw a curve ball and surprised everyone with a new Apple TV. But I don’t think that will happen.
So that leaves the idea of a new product, but something that will be close enough to an existing product like to “shake it up.” So everyone is back to the idea of a touch-screen Mac of some sort. iMac Touch? MacBook Touch? Or a new tablet device that is half-way between an iPod Touch and a MacBook?
What do YOU think? Leave a comment!
Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at VoodooPad, the personal wiki software for Mac. He uses it for to-do lists, taking notes and organizing information.
Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at Wallpaper Clocks, arrtistic desktop wallpapers that also include a live clock and changing graphics.
So it looks like putting our MacMost free iPhone ringtones in the iTunes store as a free podcast was a good idea. A lot of people have subscribed. I wanted to do a short blog post about how to get these ringtones on to your iPhone.
1. Go to our iPhone ringtones page at http://macmost.com/iphoneringtones/ and click on the “subscribe to the free iPhone ringtones feed as a podcast” link. This will open iTunes and take you right to the subscription page. Note that iTunes will not show you the ringtones in the list of episodes — a bug in iTunes. But they are there. Click on the Subscribe button.
2. In iTunes, under the Library heading on the left, look for “Podcasts.” Click on that and then look for “MacMost iPhone Ringtones” in the list on the right. Click on the triangle to the left of that to see all of the items under that podcast.
3. Press the Get button next to each of the items you want to add. Or, press the Get All button at the top of the list.
4. Plug your iPhone in to your computer. Let it sync with iTunes.
5. Click on the iPhone in the iTunes list on the left, under Devices. Now you should see your iPhone settings in the main iTunes area. Click on the Ringtones tab.
6. Set your iPhone to sync all ringtones. Or, alternatively, set it to sync only the ones you want.
6a. Some people have reported that you also need to check your iPhone Podcasts tab and make sure that the MacMost iPhone Ringtones podcast is set to sync with your iPhone as well.
7. Re-sync your iPhone to send the ringtones to it.
8. In the Settings app of your iPhone, click on Sounds to set you default ringtone. You can also go into the Contacts app to set a specific ringtone for some of your contacts.
9. Go back to iTunes and write a review!
I don’t mind MacMost being labeled as a “fanboy” site. I am an Apple fan. But it doesn’t mean I think everything the company does it right. Here are five things I think Apple should do differently.
1. The iPhone should be on more carriers. They shouldn’t have an exclusive deal with AT&T. We should have all the major mobile companies in the U.S. and elsewhere competing to give us the best price and service. The bottom line would be more iPhone sales and happier iPhone owners.
2. MobileMe should be free and better. The price of admission for MobileMe should be simply owning a Mac or an iPhone. And MobileMe should have features like Blogger, FaceBook and Flickr. MobileMe as an Apple-only social network would be a huge hit and would drive Mac sales like crazy.
3. The iTunes store should ban DRM. Apple should use its market-leading position to put an end to DRM. I’ve been buying music exclusively on CD and at DRM-free sites like Amazon. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
4. New versions of Mac OS X should have an upgrade price. Paying full ticket price to upgrade isn’t reasonable.
5. Make Apple TV more useful by making rentals good for 36 hours and adding some basic RSS-reading Web-browsing functionality. Add a BluRay/DVD player to it for $100 more. To make it really great, add DVR functions.
Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at some techniques to help you stretch the iPhone battery so it lasts through a long day.
So we’ve had a collection of free iPhone ringtones for a while. The idea is that we think it is ridiculous to have to pay for new and interesting ringtones — they are just ringtones!
We’ve added a feature to that page where you can subscribe to the ringtones as a podcast feed.
There’s a trick to it, though. iTunes doesn’t show .m4r files through its iTunes store listings. So when you look at the subscription page, all you see is the sample .mp3 file. But when you subscribe to the feed in iTunes, you will see all of the .m4r ringtones in your iTunes Library, Podcast, MacMost iPhone Ringtones list.
The great thing there is that you should be able to control which ringtones you download rather easily through your iTunes podcast subscriptions screen. Then, you can automatically get new ringtones when we add them. In addition, if you set up your iTunes/iPhone settings properly, the ringtones will automatically transfer to your iPhone and be available to be used as ringtones.
Gary Rosenzweig looks at using PhotoBooth to send a quick video email using the built-in iSight camera and software included with your Mac.
Gary Rosenzweig shares some of his best tips for creating a video podcast. Advice about green screens, HD, editing, community and motivation.
