MacMost: Archives

The new iTunes U app for iPad lets you subscribe to entire college courses. The courses can include video, audio, reading materials, apps, web links and other items. You can follow along with the course and take notes.

It seems that almost every quarter Apple breaks new records. With $46 billion in revenue and $13 billion in net profit the 20122 holiday quarter was more than twice as profitable as 2010.
More than half of Apple’s revenue comes from the iPhone which sold 37 million units. iPad sales totaled more than 15 million. Also more than 5 million Macs were sold, a new record for a quarter. The Mac sales broke down into 3.7 million MacBooks and 1.5 million desktops.

“Yes, I know that iPhone is way too big. So was the wish-list of new features you wanted added to it.”

The new version of iBooks for iPad allows you to read advanced textbooks. These can include interactive images, 3D objects and even review quizzes. You can add your own notes and then review them as Flash cards.

The release of iBooks Author by Apple last Thursday has created a flurry of mixed reactions among writers in the computer industry. While the iBooks 2 reading app adds some great features for reading books, such as highlighting text, flash card creation, and high quality interactive books, the authoring program seems to have some issues. It’s a no brainer that iBooks 2 will reduce the long-term cost of textbooks for students, yet the initial investment may be a problem for those that cannot afford an iPad.
What seems to irk potential authors though, is the licensing agreement for those who want to create books in iBook author. The supported ePub format book may only be published in the iBookstore if you charge for your creation, there’s a 2GB limit, Apple gets a 30% cut of the sales, and you must make a sample available. Some of the restrictions do not apply if your book is free.

Take a quick look at iBooks Author, the new tool from Apple that lets you create textbooks for the iPad. You can design and layout pages like in iWork Pages. You can also add special elements like photo galleries, quizzes, 3D objects and interactive images.

Two transitions in Keynote allow you to animate between similar slides. The Magic Move transition will animate the positions between objects from one slide to the next. This give you infinite variation and also allows you to create simple motion graphics for use in videos. The Anagram transition allows you to create an interesting build between two pieces of text.

This morning Apple announced a new iBooks app, and a content creation tool to match. The announcement came at a special presentation in New York featuring top Apple brass.
iBooks 2 for the iPad is available right now in the iOS app store and improves on the original by adding support for more graphics and animation, and even interactive widgets. Note-taking has also been improved. To get iBooks 2, simply go to the App Store on your iPad and update your apps. The new version of iBooks should replace the old one.

“I charge twenty bucks. Forty if you are a Wall Street analyst asking about Apple rumors.”

Sometimes you need to place a watermark, like the word DRAFT or CONFIDENTIAL, behind text in a document. You can do this using text boxes that are made into background items and then set them to appear across all pages in the document.

You can use the COUNTIF function to count the number of times an item appears in a column. You can also use COUNTIFS to total the number of rows based on several conditions in several columns. The SUMIF and SUMIFS functions will give you the total of the rows in another column based on the same criteria.

Lion allows you to merge the contents of two folders as long as you choose to copy those files, and not move them. You can also place files of the same name in the same folder as long as you let the Finder automatically rename the new files.

The non-Apple tech world is focused on the Consumer Electronics Show this week, leaving Apple news outlets to reminisce on fourth quarter and holiday sales and look forward to Apple’s next move. A Piper Jaffray analyst estimates that Apple sold 30 million iPhones last quarter, higher than expectations and up from last year. He said that the iPhone now accounts for nearly half of Apple’s revenue, and the iPad for 21 percent.
The MacBook Air line showed an increase in sales of 20 percent according to some reports. This contrasts with sales in the rest of the laptop industry which were down.
Apple confirmed this week that it purchased Anobit, a maker of high performance flash memory. Apple is the largest buy of flash memory in the world, using the chips in all iOS devices.
There are rumors of a special Apple event coming on Jan. 19 in New York. This could be an announcement of a new textbook service for the iPad. The Steve Jobs biography mentions that Apple is interested in changing how textbooks are distributed.

“I ‘liked’ your restaurant. I also gave it a thumbs up, five stars, +1 and added it to my favorites.”
“I’d rather just get a decent tip for once.”

Evernote is a third-party program that allows you to create notes on your Mac or iOS device. These notes will sync across your devices. You can create audio and photo notes as well. There are many ways to use Evernote and anyone with multiple computers or devices should check it out.

When you sign up with an ISP like a cable modem, DSL or mobile provider you are often given a free email address using the domain name of the ISP. Many people use these as their primary email address. Here are five reasons why that is a bad idea and you should instead use a portable free email service like iCloud or Gmail, or get your own domain name.

Automation curves are what let you control volume over time for an individual track or an entire song in GarageBand. In addition to volume, you can also control panning and sound effects. Master Track automation curves let you control pitch and tempo as well.

Apple has started going after web sites that allow people to obtain iOS apps without paying for them. This week Apple started issuing take-down notices to sites that help people with jailbroken iOS devices get App Store apps for free. Apple faces many difficulties in helping app developers, since these sites are mostly outside of the U.S. and can move and change easily.
Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, was knighted this week by the Queen of England. Ive is the talent behind many of Apple’s recent designs, including many iMacs and MacBooks, the iPhone and iPad.

“I want to get that new novel, but I can’t decide on the format.”
“You mean hard cover or paperback?”
“What is this 2010? I mean iPad, Kindle, Nook or audio book.”

If you own multiple iOS devices you may want each one to be able to receive its own messages and FaceTime video calls. This is handy if you have kids with their own iPods or iPads, but they are too young to have their own Apple ID. You need to specify special email accounts to be used by the Messages and FaceTime apps so you can contact that specific iOS device without all of your devices getting the message.