MacMost - frontpage

MacMost.com frontpage

In Defense of Non-Firewire MacBooks

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 by rosenz

   Everyone is in agreement that the new MacBooks look great. But almost everyone is also in agreement that the biggest problem with the new MacBooks is the removal of a Firewire port. The MacBook Pros have one, but not the new MacBooks.
    The primary use of this Firewire port was to import digital video from a camcorder. They can also be used to connect external hard drives and some other devices. But hard drives are usually USB2 nowadays, which are comparable in transfer speed to Firewire. So the main problem with not having Firewire on the new MacBooks is in connecting camcorders.
    But Steve Jobs defended this move, saying that many new camcorders use USB2 anyway. This is surprisingly true. I haven’t bought a new camcorder in about 2 years, and then Firewire was the standard. But looking around now, I see that USB2 has indeed moved into this area. There are still Firewire connectors on some camcorders, but USB2 does seem to have taken over.
    In addition, the home video camcorder market has changed. Nowadays, any decent digital camera has a video mode that captures at least 640×480 video at 30 frames per second. The quality isn’t pro-level, or even Web video level in many cases, but it is definitely family reunion video level. And these videos are transferred to your computer via USB2, or using a card reader. Also, with the popularity of small, cheap video cameras like the Flip, many people are forgetting about consumer-level camcorders all together in favor of this cool little devices.
    So the only problem I see is the situation where someone who has a Firewire-only camcorder buys a new MacBook to replace an old one. Now they find they can no longer connect the two. Their upgrade has turned into a downgrade. And with no expansion slot on a MacBook, and no way to adapt USB2 to Firewire, they really are stuck. There is just no way to use Firewire on their new MacBook.
    So existing MacBook users that use their MacBooks with a Firewire camcorder need to either get a new camcorder or upgrade to a MacBook Pro, not a MacBook.
    Looking at it from Apple’s point of view, I do see this taking care of one problem: how to differentiate the MacBooks from the MacBook Pros. In the past, the case has been different, as well as the video chips. Now that they are the same, we’ve got Firewire, expansion slot, and larger screen, to name the major differences.
    So the good news is it will be easier to choose between MacBooks and MacBook Pros. The bad news is that if you really want Firewire, you’re going to have to pay a lot more for it. But with a difference in price of $700, you can afford to replace that old camcorder with a new one anyway.

Posted in Blog Posts, frontpage | 2 Comments »

MacMost Now 148: Merging Folders

Monday, October 20th, 2008 by rosenz

   Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at three methods of merging files inside of folders. You can use Apple’s FileMerge that comes with XCode, the ‘ditto’ command in Terminal or a variety of downloadable programs including File Synchronization.

Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
    Hi. This is Gary with macmost.com. Today let’s look at different methods for merging folders full of files in Mac OS 10. If there’s one way that Windows has Mac OS 10 beat, it’s in folder merging. This is when you take a folder and drag and drop it onto another folder. In Windows, it’ll merge the two folders. It’ll save the newest copy of files with the same name, and it will put new files into the merged folder, but it won’t delete any old ones. In Mac OS 10, you’re simply replacing one folder’s contents with the other’s, meaning you’re deleting any files that weren’t in the second folder — not a merge at all. But there are many different ways to do merges of folders in Mac OS 10. Let’s take a look at three such ways. Let’s take a look at the test case. I’ve got two folders here, Test1 and Test2. In Test1 I have four files, Test File 1, 2, 3 and 5. In Test2 I’ve got four files also, Test File 1, 2, 4 and 5. So there is a file that is missing from here and vice versa, numbers 3 and 4. In addition, Test1/File2 was modified yesterday at 9:00, but in here, Test File 2 was actually modified today. So it’s been updated. So this Test File 2 is newer than this Test File 2. Now let’s try to merge these together successfully.
    There is an official piece of Apple software that will do this. It’s called FileMerge. But the catch is that it doesn’t come with Mac OS 10. Instead in comes with XCode, which is the developer environment. In order to get the XCode, you have to join the Apple developer community, which is free, and then you have to go over to this part of the Apple site and download XCode, which is a whole gig. Once you’ve got it, though, you’ve got a bunch of useful utilities, including FileMerge.
    With FileMerge, you get two areas you can compare, left and right. You select what you want for the left comparison, and then you select what you want for the right comparison. Then hit “”compare.”" What you’ll get is a comparison of everything in those folders. So you get here that Test File 2 is different, 3 is on the left, and 4 is on the right. You can narrow down your results if you have a long list, for instance excluding anything that’s identical. Then you select all the files if you want to do a merge. You select what kind of merge, Combine Files, Use left as predominant, right as predominant, etc. Once you’ve selected the type of merge that you want to do, you select it. It’ll ask you what you want to do — use the existing directory or create a new one. Let’s create a new directory at the Test level. We’ll call it Test3, and we’ll save. The important thing was that I selected all the files on the left. If I had only selected some, it would only have merged those. It’s important to remember to do that extra step. Now we look in the Test directory and see that there is, indeed, Test 3, and we see that all the different files are there, including the updated version of Test File 2. And we see the rest, merged together in that one directory. So using FileMerge is pretty difficult if you’re not used to programming. There are a lot of different options, and it doesn’t always work completely as you’d expect, so it takes some time getting used to. It’s not a very automated solution, either.
    Now let’s look at how we can use the terminal to merge two folders together. We’re going to use a command called “”ditto.”" This will merge two folders together, and it’s pretty easy to use. The first thing you want to do is navigate in terminal to the current directory. Test1 and Test2 are in a directory called “”Test.”" An easy way to get there without figuring out exactly where that is, is to select it, and copy. Then we go over to the terminal, and we type “”cd”" for change directory, and then we paste the full path in there. Now we are in that test directory. If we do “”ls”" for list, we look and see, there’s Test1 and Test2. Now we’re ready to go. What ditto will do is merge two or more directories together, and put them in a third, if you like. For instance, let’s do Test1 and Test2, and put them in Test3. And instantly we see that, not only did the command complete in the terminal window, but it created that folder. If we look at Test3, we can see all five files in there. Now let’s go and take a look. Of course, 3 and 4 are one from each of the directories, and 2 is actually updated today. And you could see that that’s the current file, if we looked into it, rather than the old file. Now if we delete Test3 and reverse the ditto command, we’ll see something different as a result. Test2 Test1 Test3. We get the five files just as before, but if we look at File 2, we see that it’s the old one. So what ditto is doing is saying, grab the first folder, and then grab the second folder, and this is the one that supersedes the first one. When we do the opposite, Test1 supersedes the second one, so we end up with the old file. This isn’t as useful as determining which ones are exactly the newest, but at least you do have this sort of control over it. You can also merge two folders into one, by simply only having two directories there. For instance, “”ditto Test1 Test2″” will merge the contents and the results will be in Test2. You can also merge a whole bunch of them, and the last one will always be the folder that everything ends up in. If it exists, then the contents of that are also merged. If it doesn’t exist, it creates it and puts the merge in that folder.
    Now there are a bunch of shareware programs out there that allow you to synchronize and merge folders. They have various prices and they have various features. For just simply merging some together, though, one of the simplest seems to be one called File Synchronization. You can download it here. What File Synchronization does is, it allows you to add a pair of folders, and you can do that by dragging and dropping. We can add Test1 and Test2 like that. And then you can determine what you want to do. You can add all sorts of different options, what to do with orphan files, you can set up automatic synchronization between the two of them, and you can set lots of different preferences. Click the synchronize button, and it will synchronize the two folders. This isn’t simply merging two folders into one. This is actually synchronizing both. So if I go back to Test1 and Test2, I find they both have all the files in there now. In addition to that, I find that Test File 2 is now the most recent one in both folders. So it’s a true file folder synchronization program, not just a merge. It’s worth taking a look at, and it costs about $15. There are a lot of other ones there, that cost anywhere between that and upwards of $30 or even more, that do even more advanced file synchronization.
    So there’s a look at three different ways that you can merge folders together on Mac. They all fall far short of the Windows way of doing it, which is just so simple and elegant that it becomes way more useful. Hopefully, in future versions of Mac OS 10, we’ll get the option to either supersedes do it the old way, by replacing a folder, or doing a merge similar to that used in Windows. Until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Show notes: The link to download XCode is http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/. You can read all about the Terminal ditto command at this official help page: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/ditto.1.html. You can get File Synchronization here: http://nemesys2.dyndns.org:8080/.

Posted in MacMost Now, Video Podcast, frontpage | No Comments »

MacMost Now 147: Spotlight on Spotlight

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 by rosenz

   Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at Spotlight, the search functionality built into Leopard. By using the quick keyboard shortcut and the Spotlight menu, you can quickly run applications, search for specific files and even look up dictionary definitions and do complex mathematical calculations.

Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
    Hi this is Gary with macmost. Today, let’s put the Spotlight on Spotlight.
    So Spotlight gets a really bad rap. It’s an extremely useful tool in Leopard. In Tiger it wasn’t so great and then a long time ago its predecessor, Sherlock, was pretty bad. So let’s take a look at Spotlight in Leopard and see how it can make so many tasks that you perform all the time much easier.
    There are basically three ways to bring up Spotlight in the finder. The first is just hitting command F and then you get a Spotlight search window. You can also get here by using any finder window and typing in the little search box on the upper right, that converts the finder window to a Spotlight window and you can search for files here. For instance, search for test and it will give me results that either have test in the name or there’s somehow the word test in the contents of the file.
    But this isn’t the most useful way to use Spotlight I find. Let’s go and look at a completely different way. The third way to access Spotlight which is this little magnifying glass here at the top of the screen. You and you can go ahead and type in the word test and then you get all sorts of results. Or, a better way to do it is hit the keyboard combination command space, and this will bring it up just like you clicked on it. So you don’t have to bring your cursor all the way over to the right side of the screen and then you could start typing. So you type the word test and then you get your results.
    Now Spotlight gives you a lot more than just files results. Some of the most useful things Spotlight does is it gives you a dictionary definition right here. You can go ahead and click on that and it will bring up the dictionary application but of course you’ve also got a summary of that, right there in the Spotlight window. All you have to do is roll over it. You can also go ahead and navigate in this Spotlight window using arrow keys; so you can go ahead between any of one of these. So if you find a file that you want you can actually press return to open that file and its default application or you can have command return and it will open up the window with that file highlighted. When searching for something in Spotlight here’s something really cool you can do. You can go ahead and specify, you only want to look at the name of the file by typing name, colon and then your search term. Now you’re only going to get files that have that term in the name.
    Now you can also add in something additional to that. Go back to searching for test and we only want to go ahead and look at a particular kind of file. We can type kind and then colon and then one of many different keywords, like text, it will only give us text files. Or if we want to find mail documents, we can look in mail and it will only give us results in mail sent or received. There’s a whole list of them and I’m going to include a list of these keywords and some other information in the post for this video for this at macmost.com.
    Now, you can also use the date functionality. Matter of fact you can even use the keyword today so you can find documents that have the word test associated with them that were created or modified today. You can even use created and you can type in date, like that, and it will only show files that were created today that have something to do with the word test.
    One of the other things that you can do is use Boolean searching, in other words words like and, or, not. So for instance I can go ahead and look for test and microphone and I come up with a document called another test that I created today that has both those words in it. I have to capitalize and and you can also use or or not to search for things.
    So here’s a really good example of how to use Spotlight to do something easier than it would using the finder regularly. Say you want to go ahead and look at a font that you’ve got on your machine. Usually you have to go and find that font application go in there and find that specific font. But you don’t have to do that if you Spotlight. So you just do command space to bring up this menu and you type in the name of the font and you’re going to go ahead and get lots of hits including the font. So you just scroll down here to the font that you want, you see there’s a lot of different ones that match Ariel, and if I hit return it will actually know enough to launch font book and bring up Ariel right there. So a much quicker way to get into fonts. And you can do this with lots of other applications as well.
    Okay. Here’s my current favorite use for Spotlight. It’s launching an application. Say I want to launch an application and it’s not in the doc and I’m not sure I’m I just need to type the name. I hit command space, bring up the Spotlight field and I type in the name of the app. Since the app name matches perfectly it is the top hit otherwise I could scroll up and down with the arrow key to get the exact thing I want to open, hit return and there I go. It launches the application. This is a lot faster than finding the app in the finder.
    Here’s another cool use. You can use Spotlight as a calculator. So instead of launching the calculator desktop app I can just type something in there and I actually get a little calculator result. 1 + 1 = 2. But I can do very complex things, like 5 x 5 + 6 and it will calculate that. I can even go ahead and use functions, like the square root of 9 or more complex things like the cosign of .5.

   You can also make Spotlight more useful to you by tagging your files. So here’s how you do that. Here’s my documents folder and I select a file called another test. I do command guide to get information on that file and I get my basic information window which tells me things like the file size and all that. At the top something called Spotlight comments. I can go ahead and type anything I want in there like a tag. So I can create something called my tag and just leave it in there. So I close that now and now when I search in Spotlight for my tag it finds the file so I can add different tags to different files. For instance, if certain files are associated with a project I can add those tags in the comments. I can add more tags if a file’s associated with more than one project and it can make it very easy for me to find these files using Spotlight later on. Of course, you can also adjust Spotlight slightly to your needs. Underneath all of the results in a Spotlight search is a Spotlight preferences which you can also access through your regular system of preferences if you like and it brings up the preferences windows. So you can do things like select which types of files you want represented. For instance you can be sick of seeing lots of music files when you don’t want those you regularly search. You can uncheck that. You can also change the keyboard shortcut from command space to something else. And you can set some privacy restrictions up so if there’s a certain folder you don’t’ want Spotlight returning searches for you can specify that as well.
    So that’s a really quick look at how incredibly useful Spotlight is in Leopard. And the key to making it very really useful is use the keyboard for everything. All the stuff I’ve showed you here can pretty much can be done with the keyboard. Command space, you type in something, you up and down with the arrow keys, you hit return, you do command return, you can do all these things with the keyboard. So if you’re really good at using keyboard shortcuts, Spotlight is definitely for you. I’m going to post a list of some of the common little keywords and modifications that you can use in Spotlight to this post at macmost.com So if you’re not watching this at macmost.com you may want to go there and look for Episode 147 of macmost.com.
    Until next time this is Gary Rosenzweig.

As a companion to this video, here is a Spotlight quick reference list:
    Default keyboard command to bring up Spotlight search field: Command+Space.
    Using the “kind:” modifier, you can specify the kind of files to show. Some common ones are: app, contact, folder, email, event, todo, image, movie, audio, music, pdf, pref, bookmark, font.
    You can also use the “date:”, “created:” and “modified:” modifiers with dates like 10/16/08. The “date:” modifier works with “date:today” as well.
    You can use “name:” to specify that you only want items with those words in the name.
    You can use quotes to exact phrasing, like “my file”.
    You can use AND, OR or NOT in searches, but they must be captialized.
    When you get a list of times, you can use the arrow keys to move down the list. Then use Return to open the file or application. Use Command+Return to open a Finder window with that file selected instead.
    Here are some of the math functions you can use when using Spotlight as a calculator: sqrt, pow, ceil, floor, rint, exp, log, sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan.

Posted in MacMost Now, Video Podcast, frontpage | 8 Comments »

MacMost Now 146: New Line of MacBooks

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 by rosenz

   Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at today’s announcements of new MacBooks, MacBook Pros, MacBook Air and new Cinema Display.

Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
    Hi this is Gary of MacMost Now. Let’s take a look at today’s announcements and the entire new line of MacBooks.
    Today at Apple headquarters Steve Jobs and his team made a whole set of announcements including new MacBook Pros, new MacBooks, new MacBook Air and a new display. Let’s take a look.
    So basically there are four new features to the MacBook line. The first is an entire new manufacturing process. Apple says they’re going to be making their MacBooks, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros out of a single piece of aluminum which they carve out and so create a stronger and lighter MacBook. In addition, there’s also a new graphic chip set. Something new from Invidea in two different flavors is going to be in all of these laptops and it’s going to be up to five times faster than the integrated Intel chip set that had been in there previously although probably only slightly faster than some of the Invidea chip sets that have been in previous versions of the MacBook.
    In addition to that, we’ve also got a new trackpad. So this new trackpad is going to be made out of glass and it’s going to support multi-touch; up to four fingers can be used for different gestures and even simulating multiple buttons. In addition to that the entire thing’s actually going to be a button itself. You can press it down and that acts as the single button that we’re used to finding above or below current trackpads.
    In addition to that we’ve also got a new thing called a mini display port. So instead of having DVI ports on some Macs and a miniport on some others we’re going to have this mini display port which will support just about any kind of video display up to 30 inches, depending upon the internal video memory that you have in your machine.
    So for the MacBook Pros we’re going to have two different flavors. One is a $2000 machine that’s going to feature a 2.4 GHz processor, 250-gig hard drive and also comes with two gigs of ram. In addition, there’ll be a $2499 version of the machine which will have a 2.53 gig processor, a bigger hard drive at 320 gigs and 4 gigs of ram. These machines are going to come with a nice, glass, glossy screen as well and they’re going to come in just under an inch thick. In addition, you’re going to have an option for a solid-state drive and also for a 2.8 GHz in the Pros.
    So the new MacBooks are also going to come in two flavors. There’s going to be a $1299 version that comes with a 2.0 GHz processor and a 160 gig hard drive also a more expensive $1599 version that comes with a 2.4 GHz processor and a 250 gig hard drive. Now these new MacBooks are made of aluminum just like the MacBook Pros so there’ll be less of a visual difference between the MacBooks and the MacBook Pros. Another difference between the MacBooks Pros and the MacBooks will have a fire wire port on the side which also could be used as fire wire 400 with an adaptor. Won’t be any such thing on the MacBook. It was also announced that the MacBook Airs are going to be updated. They’re going to include the new mini display, the new trackpad and also the new Invidea graphics chip set.
    The announcement today actually will leave two older MacBooks around. The white plastic MacBook will be on sale for $999 and also the 17 inch MacBook Pros will still be available in their old configurations, although in a question and answer session after the press conference today Jobs said that those will be updated soon.
    A somewhat separate announcement is for a new cinema display. This is going to be a 24-inch cinema display which will display 1920 by 1200 pixels and it will feature speakers, isight and a microphone and it’s actually being touted on the website by right now as the perfect additional display if you have a MacBook.
    So that just about wraps it up. A lot of these things are shipping right now or tomorrow. Some, like the display and the MacBook Airs, won’t be shipping until November so check Apple.com for release dates.
    Until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Posted in MacMost Now, Video Podcast, frontpage | 1 Comment »

Apple Special Notebook Announcement Live

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 by rosenz

Summary: Jobs announced new MacBook Pros, a new 24-inch display, and new MacBooks. He also announced an update for the MacBook Air. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros feature a new style of construction where the the aluminum body is carved from a single block. They include new Nvidia graphics chips for better video performance, and a new mini display port. There is also a new glass trackpad that supports multi-touch for gestures and the entire trackpad is a the button.

   Here was the play-by-play:
    10:05 Steve Jobs comes on stage and introduces Tim Cook, the Apple COO.
    10:08 Cook talking about the success of Mac taking more market share over the last few years.
    10:10 Cook says Mac actually has 31% market share when you measure in revenue.
    10:12 Jobs introduces Jonathan Ive, Apple VP and lead designer to talk about MacBook design.
    10:15 Ive talking about building notebooks by taking a single piece of aluminum and carving parts out of it.
    10:17 Start with a 2.5 pound piece of aluminum and end up with a single .25 pound piece.
    10:20 Jobs now talking about the Nvidia 9400M chipset, which will provide video and a GPU, 5 times faster than the current MacBook integrated video.
    10:22 New MacBooks will feature a multi-touch glass trackpad, where the entire trackpad is the button.
    10:23 New trackpad will include multi-touch gestures and multiple button support through software.
    10:24 New MacBook Pro: Glass LED-backlit screen, connectors on one side only, mini display connector, new trackpad, new graphics chips, new rigid aluminum body built with new technique.
    10:25 Also: Backlit keyboard, iSight and mic, magnetic latch, motion sensor.
    10:26 New mini port connector will be on all new Macs?
    10:29 NVIDIA GeForce 9400M or the NVIDIA GeForce 9600M.
    10:31 Will include Firewire 800, two USB, mini display port, audio in and out, ExpressCard 34, and a battery indicator. No Firewire 400 (But you can use an adapter). Have slot-loading superdrive.
    10:33 Option for Solid State Drive. Can access the drive and battery through lid at bottom.
    10:34 .95 inches thick.
    10:35 Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11n.
    10:36 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3MB L2 Cache, 2GB Memory, 250GB hard drive and SuperDrive for $1999.
    10:36 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 6MB L2 Cache, 4GB Memory, larger hard drive and SuperDrive for $2499. Also better video chips.
    10:38 Shipping today!
    10:39 Upgrading MacBook Air: Nvidia 9400M, 120GB drive, mini display port (November)
    10:40 New 24-inch display with 1920×1200, iSight, mic, stereo speakers, 3-port USB, $899 (November)
    10:41 New MacBooks: Nvidia 9400M, mini display port, glass screen, multi-touch trackpad, new construction technique like the MacBook Pro, better battery life.
    10:44 2.0 GHz processor model with 160GB drive for $1299 and 2.4 GHz for with 250GB drive for $1599.
    10:45 Old white plastic MacBook still on sale for $999. MacBooks on sale today, in stores tomorrow.
    10:46 Video shown about new MacBook and manufacturing process.
    10:52 Jobs jokes about health, shows current blood pressure on screen (110/70).
    10:53 Q&A session.
    10:54 Display Port used instead of HDMI because HDMI can’t drive 30-inch monitor.
    10:56 Blu-ray left out because it is too hard to license it.
    10:58 17-inch MacBook Pro will also be refreshed, but later.
    11:00 Only glass screens, no more matte ones in the future.
    11:02 Jobs says touch screens don’t make sense yet.
    11:03 No Mac “netBook” yet as market is too new.

Posted in Blog Posts, frontpage | No Comments »

MacMost Now 145: Microsoft Sync Connects iPod and Car

Monday, October 13th, 2008 by rosenz

   Gary Rosenzweig talks to Dan Gray from MPGomatic.com about the Microsoft Sync system put into many Ford cars. It allows you to connect your iPod or iPhone to your car through the dock and play your music through the car as well as control it with your dash, steering wheel or voice commands.

Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
    Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. Today let’s take a look at how to connect you iPod or iPhone to a car using the Microsoft Sync System. So I’m always interested in how people connect their iPods and iPhones to their car. I have to do mine through an old fashioned headphone jack but there is some more advance systems out there like the Microsoft Sync System, which allows you to attach your iPhone or iPod through a USB port to your car and then you can get data on the screen in your car and also control it through your steering wheel. So my friend Dan Gray runs a site http://mpgomatic.com. Now its kind of like car reviews for geeks. He talks about gas mileage and technology in cars, so Dan knows all about this sort of stuff. So Dan, whats the deal, why does Microsoft supply the way for iPods to connect to cars, why Microsoft? you think it would be Apple or some other company?”
    Dan - “It sounds kind of odd that Microsoft would be the link pen that would make Ford successful by allowing iPods and other mp3 players to hook to their cars, but Microsoft sees a pretty good market there and it is a good one. Basically the Microsoft sync system allows you to plug an iPod or other mp3 player into the dash through a USB connection. So it blows away any of the simple jacks, you know and an audio input jack is one thing your gonna get your music off your iPod into your system but your still gonna have to control it through the iPod. So Ford rolled this out slowly in 2008-2009 it’s in most models, it’s in the Escape, the Escape Hybrid, the Mustang, the Flex, the Fusion, the Focus, it’s in Lincolns, its in Mercury’s, it’s in just about every Ford right now”
    Gary- “So when you plug your iPhone or iPod or whatever into the car you’ll actually see like the display of like what song is playing, or what songs are available”
    Dan- “Depending on whether you have a nav system or not, you’ll see the name, you’ll always see the name of the song or the playlist or the album, if you have the nav system you’ll see everything, I mean it will get just like the front of the iPod, you’ll have full control over your playlist through that screen but, the great part is you have control through the steering wheel, so you don’t need to take your hands off the wheel and you can do things strictly by voice commands which is wickedly cool. once you learn how to speak sync-esque”
    Gary- “Give me an example of a voice command”
    Dan- “Play, The Clash, and boom it will start playing the Clash, if you say Neil Young it will play Neil Young”
    Gary- “So if you have the Clash on you iPod, it’ll find it, figue it out and start playing it” Dan- “Yea it’ll look through artists, it’ll look through albums, it’ll look through playlists”
    Gary- “So does this work with an iPhone and iPod Touch also?”
    Dan- “Now I haven’t tested it with anything other than an iPod, but if you look at Syncmyride.com there’s a long list of the players that it works with” Gary- “Awesome, does it also work with non-iPod devices like other mp3 players?”
    Dan- “Zen’s and Zunes and Creative thingamigiggers, yea it works with most of them, with the higher end ones its gonna provide that USB input but with the low end stuff its just gonna be through the audio jack and youre not gonna have that high end control”
    Gary- “Ok thats great! well thanks for filling us in Dan!”
    Dan- “Its my pleasure, I’ll bring more of them in as I go, theres more advance iPod integration in the VW’s and the BMW’s and the Mini’s and other manufacturers are working to include this stuff pretty quickly, the input jacks are one thing, but once you can take real of your audio player from the dash or from the steering wheel, it changes the game, thanks for having me on Gary- “Thanks for all the great info Dan! You can find Dan’s insight at http://mpgomatic.com, until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig MacMost Now.

Posted in MacMost Now, Video Podcast, frontpage | No Comments »

iPhone App Store Needs Improvements

Sunday, October 12th, 2008 by rosenz

   The Apps in the Apps Store are a huge success. There has been just the outpouring of creativity and innovation that everyone expected. But the App Store itself is very inadequate.
    First of all, try navigating around in it. Slow and sometimes just unresponsive. But that is par for the course when you consider the music store has always been that way. The iTunes store works as an online store, but it could work a lot better, especially considering it is a specialized piece of software communicating with a specialized server.
    Second, it clearly does not meet the needs of the developers or the users. Consider how many developers right now are communicating with their audience through updating the description of the app. Notes are sometimes changed daily with little messages about updates and such. Clearly the description area is not where this should be. Perhaps a notes, messages or developer mini-blog are needed. Perhaps the store just needs to make it clearer to users that they should visit the developer’s Web site for information like this.
    Two-way communication also seems to be a problem. Users are using reviews as a way to talk to the developer. Maybe this is because developers are being unresponsive? Or maybe it is because there is no clear line of communication between the developer and the users. Or maybe it is because the barrier to entry for a developer is so low that a single person can soon find themselves with tens or hundreds of thousands of paying customers, but no system in place to respond to requests.
    What is clear is that reviews should be reviews. That needs to be fixed. Apple already fixed it somewhat by requiring that you purchase the product in order to leave a review.
    Perhaps the App store should be taken out of iTunes altogether and put on the Web where it can be faster, presumably. We’ve done it at MacMost, sort of, by creating our own iPhone Apps directory. I enjoy using it myself just because I can quickly and clearly see what apps are new each day.

Posted in Blog Posts, frontpage | 1 Comment »

MacMost Now 144: The Flip Mino Video Camera

Friday, October 10th, 2008 by rosenz

   Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at the Flip Mino compact video camera. This tiny little inexpensive video camera works well with Macs and iMovie.

Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
    Today’s episode of MacMost Now, let’s take a look at the Flip Mino.
    So you’ve probably seen or heard about the little flip cameras. These cameras came out pretty recently but there’s already been a few models. The thing about them is they’re tiny, they’re inexpensive, and they only really do one thing, which is take video. They’re pretty popular among Apple users because they’re kind of similar in user experience. There’s really not much to them, just one big button that you press to start taking video, and press the same button to stop. It’s got a few more controls, but it’s basically very simple, and just does one thing, and does it very well, which is take quick little videos.
    See, you just stick it in your pocket and take it with you. And it’s very easy to get the video from the device to your computer. Matter of fact, that’s why it’s called the Flip, it’s got a little USB port that plugs right into the top. This is not a professional level camera. The microphone’s built in, doesn’t really have any professional features, but, given that, it’s a pretty neat little camera. I mean it’s pretty easy to pull it out, press record, and you actually get decent video, even in pretty low light.
    There are several different models out now, but the Mino’s the newest and the smallest. It has a rechargable battery, has a tripod mount on the bottom, it even has TV output so you can play your video directly on TV, without plugging it into a computer first.
    The Mino has sixty minutes of capacity on it, which is perfect, for say, a family trip or event, where if you’re taping sixty minutes, you’re probably taking too much video. It’s also great in that it’s so tiny it’s effortless to remember to carry it with you at all times. In fact, I took it with me to the BlogWorld expo this last weekend and it’s how I filmed the video on the showroom floor that I used in Episode 136.
    “And here’s me using it on myself in the studio! It’s kind of hard to point it at yourself because the screen’s on the back, but it still works pretty well.”
    So how does it work with Macs? Well, there’s some software that comes with it, but the software doesn’t really do anything special, so I recommend not even using it, just actually downloading the video codec which will add itself to Quicktime when you install. This means that you can take the videos and use them in things like iMovie without converting them to anything. Just drag-and-drop when you plug in the Mino.
    The software does have some neat features to be able to go ahead and manage the videos on the device, and also share the videos. For instance, you can go ahead and share with some online services, such as AOL video, YouTube and MySpace.
    The Flip Mino costs about $180. You can find out more at TheFlip.com. You can also find older version, such as the Original and Ultra series, at online stores.
    Until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Posted in MacMost Now, Video Podcast, frontpage | 3 Comments »

Free iPhone Ringtones

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 by rosenz

   You can get free iPhone ringtones from MacMost.com. Just go to http://macmost.com/iphoneringtones/ and subscribe to the free iPhone ringtones podcast. You can then download the 100+ free iPhone ringtones to your iTunes library, and then set up your iPhone to make them all available to be used as ringtones.

Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
    Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. Today i want to show you how to get free ringtones for your iPhone.
    So a while back we made available a whole bunch of ringtones for the iPhone that you can get totally for free. All you need to do is go to MacMost.com/iphoneringtones. Once you’re there you can go ahead and browse through all the different categories of iPhone ringtones that we have. When you click on a set it’ll take you to a list of all the ringtones and you can go ahead and preview them as an .mp3 file or download as an .m4r, or ringtone file for the iPhone. To download it all you need to do is control-click on the link and “download linked file” or “download linked file as” save the file.
    At the main page, MacMost.com/iphoneringtones/, you can also subscribe to the ringtone feed by clicking on this link. It will then launch iTunes and take you to the MacMost iPhone ringtones page at iTunes. From here you can go ahead and subscribe. Now the first thing you’ll notice is that at the bottom there is only two actual items in the podcast. This is because iTunes doesn’t show you ringtones as podcast episodes, but they are there. So if you hit subscribe it will access the iTunes store and subscribe you to the podcast. Once you’re subscribed you can go to your podcast section here and go ahead and take a look at the MacMost iPhone ringtones and see that there are in fact a ton of episodes, or ringtones. You can go ahead and click on the “get all” to get them all; they’re pretty small so you might as well. Or for a specific one that you want, you can click the “get” buttons here to get those specific episodes, or ringtones, of the MacMost free iPhone ringtones podcast.
    So, to get these to your iPhone what you do is you plug in your iPhone and have it sync then you can select it on the left and select the podcast section. Now by default it’s set to sync only the 3 most recent episodes of our podcast, which isn’t going to work. We want it to sync everything. We also want to make sure that we set it to sync either the selected podcast and include the MacMost iPhones ringtones podcast, or we can select all podcasts and then we set it to sync all episodes. Now you get every single ringtone on your iPhone.
    So here’s an alternatieve method. Instead of syncing all the podcasts you can create a new smart playlist “File” “new smart playlist” and set it to be kind contains ringtones. Leave live updating turned on and now you’re going to get this smart playlist that contains all the MacMost ringtones that were downloaded as a podcast; you can change its name to MacMost ringtones if you like. Now, go ahead and go back to your iPhone and select music. Now you can select sync selected podcast and then you can go ahead and find the MacMost iPhone ringtone set that you just created, which we’ve named “MacMost ringtones” and you can set that to sync. Or you can simply set all songs and playlists to sync, either way you get all the ringtones to your iPhone.
    Now if it all works out ok, when you sync your iPhone and then go ahead and look at the settings and sound portion of the settings you’ll see all the custom ringtones at the top and the default 25 set of ringtones at the bottom. You can go ahead and select any one you want. You can also go into your contacts and set a custom ringtone for a specific person so that ringtone plays when they call you.
    I’m going to go ahead and put this all as text and as high resolution screen captures and you can find it at MacMost.com/iphoneringtones, which will link to the MacMost.com page for this episode. So check that out and check out our free iPhone ringtones.
    Until next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

To use the MacMost free iPhone ringtones, you must first subscribe to the podcast, or download the ringtones manually from the free iPhone ringtones page. You can download them manually by pressing the Ctrl key on your keyboard and clicking on the M4R link for the ringtone you want to download.
To subscribe to the Podcast, click on this link to launch iTunes and go to the MacMost iPhone Ringtones podcast. You will only see two episodes of the podcast, because iTunes won’t show the 100+ episodes are are simply ringtones. Then click on the Subscribe button.

Then look in your iTunes Podcast section to view all of the podcasts you currently subscribe to. Select the MacMost iPhone Ringtones podcast and expand it to show all of the ringtones. You can press the Get button next to ringtones you want, or click on the Get All button to download them all.

The hardest part is to get the ringtones to transfer to your iPhone. Method #1 is to sync all episodes of the MacMost iPhone Ringtones podcast to your iPhone. With your iPhone plugged in, select it on the left side of iTunes. Then select the Podcasts tab. Next, change your options to have all episodes of all podcasts sync. Alternatively, you can have all episodes sync, but select which podcasts you want, making sure you include the MacMost iPhone Ringtones podcast.

Method #2 is to create a smart playlist with all of your ringtones. In iTunes, select the File menu, Create Smart Playlist. Now, create a smart playlist with the options of “Kind” containing “Ringtone.” Make sure “Live Updating” is selected as well.

   Check the new smart playlist and rename it if you like to “MacMost Ringtones.” You should see all of the ringtone “episodes” you downloaded in the podcast. Since Live Updating is selected for the smart playlist, new rintones will be added to the list as they are added to the podcast.
    Now go back to your iPhone settings and select the Music tab instead of the Podcasts tab. Make sure you are either syncing all Playlists, or at least the MacMost Ringtones smart playlist is set to sync.
    Once you use either method #1 or #2, you should see your ringtones appear on your iPhone under Settings, Sounds.

Posted in MacMost Now, Video Podcast, frontpage | 2 Comments »

MacMost Now 142: Common Mistakes Windows Users Make on Mac

Monday, October 6th, 2008 by rosenz

   Gary Rosenzweig looks at the seven most common user interface mistakes that Windows users make when first switching to Mac.

Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
    Hi, this is Gary with Mac Most now. Today lets take a look at the seven most common user interface mistakes that Windows users make when switching to Mac.
    Understanding the major differences between Windows Mac is actually usually pretty easy. It’s the tiny little things that give people trouble. Like, for instance, number one on the list is Windows users always end up accidentally renaming files in the finder. This is because that in Windows, you can select a file and then hit the enter key which then launches the program, but it doesn’t work that way on Mac. So on Mac, if you select an application then hit enter, you’re in a mode to rename that application. A confused Windows user may accidentally do that and change the name of the app.
    So, number two is the maximize button. In Windows, this will expand the window to the full size of the screen, but on Mac it only expands the maximum ammount of size needed to view all of the content. So here, in Safari, we’ve got the Apple homepage. If we hit the green maximize button, we typically get a window that’s large enough to contain all the content inside of the webpage. We don’t expand to full screen. In order to expand to full screen you have to grab the bottom right hand corner and expand it manually.
    Which brings us to number three, resizing windows. In Windows, you grab the edge of a window, and drag them to resize. On Mac, you grab the lower right-hand corner and use that to resize.
    Another common mistake used is minimizing a window rather than hiding it. Minimizing a window actually minimizes just that one window the application. The application is still running and it puts that document in the dock. It’s still using a lot of processing power to update what’s shown in the dock and the app is actually still there. Other windows may be open. Hiding it is probably what most people want to do in this case, which actually takes the entire application and moves it away. It’s still running in the background but it’s not using as much system resources as minimizing does.
    So to minimize, you press the yellow button and that would simply hide that single window and put it down here in the dock. Other windows are still there and you can minimize those as well, having several minimized windows from a single application. But hiding, which can be done by going up here to the main menu for the application or by pressing command h in which the applications will instantly and quickly remove the applications completely and it’s easy to bring it back by using command tab for intance or just clicking on the application again in the dock.
    So related to all this is the fact that Windows users are used to clicking on the top of a window to quickly maximize it. Well, in the Mac, it doesn’t work that way. Instead, when you go to the top of an application and double click on the window it simply minimizes that window. It wont actually maximize it like the maximize button.
    Windows user will often also close a window for an application thinking the application is closed. That’s cause that’s true on windows. If you’ve got one document application open and you close it, the application quits. But not so on Mac. You close the last document window or say word processor or your browser, the application’s actually still running and ready for you to open a new window to begin something new.
    And last, but certainly not least, is the difference in the keyboards between Mac and Windows. The main difference is the command key, or the Apple key as it is sometimes called on the Mac. This is used just like the control key on Windows, but, to confuse things further, there is a control, a ctrl key, on Mac. This is used like the right mouse button on Windows. So when you want to do something like issue a menu shortcut command, you, on Mac, would press the command or the Apple key and type the key for that command. The control key you use, you press control and you click somewhere to bring up a right menu. Of course, different programs will use both these keys in lots of different ways but for the most part, command is used to do keyboard shortcuts and control is used as a way to bring up a contextual menu.
    Now, these are by all means no the only mistakes Windows users make when switching to Mac, and if you’ve got one you would like to list, please leave it as a comment to this post at Mac Most dot com. Thanks and until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with Mac Most Now

Posted in MacMost Now, Video Podcast, frontpage | 4 Comments »

MacMost: Making the most of your Mac, iPod, Apple TV and iPhone.

MacMost.com frontpage