MacMost: Archives

Learn about Safari 5's new features, including address bar enhancements, Safari Reader, Bing search, performance enhancements and extensions.

Learn about the new iPhone, coming out later this month. Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4 this morning with new features such as video calling, a 5-megapixel camera that does HD video, gyroscope, high density screen and more. The iPhone OS becomes iOS and version 4 will include multitasking. iBooks moves to the iPhone and will support notes and PDFs.

10:00 — Steve Jobs takes the stage and talks about the success of the iPad.
10:10 — iBooks app update, including in-line notes, new controls for bookmark functionality, ability to read PDFs. Out later this month.
10:12 — 225,000 apps currently in the app store.
10:20 — Zynga announces Farmville for the iPhone. Available at the end of June.
10:30 — iPhone has 28% of U.S. market. Android has 9%. iPhone has 58% of mobile browser usage, with Android at 23%.
10:31 — iPhone 4 announced. 100+ new features. 8 to be highlighted in today’s keynote.
10:32 — New design with glass on front and back, and steel on sides. 24% thinner.
10:34 — Front-facing camera. Rear camera with a LED flash. Micro-SIM tray. Second mic for noise cancellation.
10:35 — Steel band around sides is partly an antenna. Part is for Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS. Other part is for wireless.
10:36 — 960×640 pixel screen. 326 points-per-inch.
10:47 — Will feature Apple’s A4 chip.
10:49 — Bigger battery with 5-7 hours talk time, 6 hours of 3G, 10 hours of Wifi or video, 300 hours standby.
10:50 — Uses 802.11n for Wifi. Quadband wireless for higher speed than available now.
10:51 — Gyroscope for better rotation detection.
10:54 — 5 megapixel camera with better sensor for low-light photography. LED flash.
10:55 — Record HD video at 720p and 30fps.
10:57 — iMovie app for iPhone allows editing right on the iPhone. Uses themes, transitions, Ken Burns, titles, etc. Exports to 360, 520 or 720p. $5 app.
11:07 — iPhone OS now officially named iOS. This will be iOS 4.
11:08 — iOS 4 features multitasking, folders for apps.
11:10 — Mail has threaded messages, unified inbox.
11:15 — Bing added to Safari on iPhone as third search option, but Google to remain default.
11:15 — iBooks app to come to the iPhone with iOS 4. Purchase once, get on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Syncs place in book, bookmarks and notes.
11:30 — Apple’s iAds will start showing in apps on July 1.
11:32 — Front-facing camera enables video chat. Called “FaceTime.” Uses Wifi. Works on any call between two iPhone 4s. Can also use main camera.
11:38 — FaceTime uses standards which they hope will in turn be made into a video calling standard as well.
11: 40 — Comes in black and white. With 2-year contract will cost $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB. Any contact that expires in 2010 will be immediately available for upgrade pricing.
11:42 — On sale June 24. Pre-orders start on June 15 for U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan. 88 Countries by September.

Learn how to use apps to connect to your Mac and control it from the iPad. You can also use your iPad as a second monitor.

Ahead of the announcement of a new iPhone and the iPhone 4.0 OS, AT&T has completely overhauled its wireless 3G data plans. In addition, it has announced tethering plans that will be available when the new iPhone OS is released.
The old unlimited data plan, costing $30/month, has been replaced with a $25/month plan that limits data to 2GB. Additional blocks of 1GB will cost $10. A $15/month plan caps data at 200MB, with additional blocks of 200MB for $15. Those with existing $30 unlimited plans can stick with it if they wish.
Tethering, the ability to connect your Mac to an iPhone and use its Internet connection, will cost $20 per month for those on the new $25 plan. You must be on the $25 plan to use tethering.
This also affects iPad 3G users, who will have to choose between the new $25 and $15 plans when signing up for service. They can also stick with the $30/unlimited plan, but it is unclear what happens when iPad users skip a month with this data plan.
On Monday morning Steve Jobs will take the stage at the annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. It is anticipated that he will announce new iPhone hardware as well as release dates for the iPhone OS 4.0 operating system for current iPhone 3GS models.

Mac OS X allows you to declare a file as a Stationery Pad. When you double click a Stationery Pad, instead of editing this file, you will instantly create a new copy. This is handy for making simple document templates.

Take a look at Keynote on the iPad. You can build presentations with text, images, charts, shapes and transitions. You can present them on your iPad's screen, using an external projector or monitor, or export them as PDFs for printing.

It’s the end of an era. The “Get a Mac” ads starring Justin Long and John Hodgman are done. The ad campaign started in 2006 and the lines “I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC,” became well known worldwide. Apple announced the end of the ads last week and also removed its library of videos from the Apple.com Web site. They remain available as an Apple podcast, at least for now.
Signs are certainly pointing to a new iPhone model soon. The old iPhone 3G, available until this week as a low-end sub-$100 model has been removed from the Apple Store. The lowest-end iPhone 3GS has been discounted to less than $100 at Walmart stores. And Steve Jobs has been confirmed as the keynote speaker for the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 7.
This will typically mean the announcement of new or updated products. Rumors are floating around that AT&T employees have been warned of a new iPhone launch for the month of June. It is likely that the new iPhone will be announced on June 7, and then available for sale at the end of the month.
On the other side of the news, Apple is being scrutinized on three new fronts this week. First, the U.S. Department of Justice is looking into allegations that Apple put pressure on music companies to not enter into exclusive early sales deals with Amazon.
Also, reports of more suicides at electronics manufacturer Foxconn has led many to suggest that working conditions there might be a problem. There have been nine suicides and two other attempts so far this year, out of a population of about 400,000 workers. Apple has said it is launching its own investigation. Foxconn also makes products and parts for HP, Dell, Nokia and Sony.
Even U.S. Apple workers are getting in on the act, with a class-action lawsuit filed in California that claims that Apple Store employees were not properly compensated for missed breaks.
These kinds of things can be expected more often now that Apple has surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization, making it the world’s largest technology firm. It is also the second largest U.S. company, just behind Exxon Mobil.

Learn how to view your music collection in different ways in iTunes on the Mac. You can sort in various ways, show album artwork, and search. You can also create your own playlists and organize them any way you want.

There are many ways to organize your photos in iPhoto. But the best method involves using keywords to tag each photo so you can search your collection for anything at any time.

You may be familiar with the store, discussion forums and software lists at Apple's site. But did you know you can locate a repair shop, download PDF manuals, view movie trailers and more?

Apple updated its basic MacBook this week. The look and basic features are the same, as well as the $999 price tag. But the laptop now features a slightly faster processor and video chipset, as well as a new battery that claims to give it 10 hours of runtime.
Early in the week there were rumors that Apple planned to redesign its pro-level video editing tool, Final Cut Studio, to make it more user friendly to non-professionals. Many professionals expressed concern that the application would not meet their needs if this happened. But later in the week Apple responded by saying that any new version of Final Cut Studio would take into account the needs of its existing users.
Apple released updates to all three iWork apps on the iPad: Pages, Keynote and Numbers. All three apps get some bug fixes and support for more languages. Pages now supports more of its features in horizontal orientation that were previously only available in vertical orientation.
An update to MobileMe’s web mail interface is coming, and some users have been invited to beta test. The new interface features multiple display modes, including one that looks much like the iPad’s Mail app. There are also rules that can be applied in the web interface that will also automatically file messages into folders in client software, such as the iPhone and iPad.
In Beatles-on-iTunes news, Paul McCartney said in an interview that it is the record company EMI that is creating the problem. He said there are “all sorts of reasons” why the middlemen at the company don’t want to put the Beatles catalog on iTunes.

The iPad has many apps that can be used to create and view documents. Getting those documents to and from the iPad can be done using several different methods. You can do it using iTunes and special features built into some apps.

You can use iWork Keynote to make video presentations for many uses. You can simply narrate a slideshow, or present a series of points to form an idea. It is a great way to create video without having to appear on camera.

One interesting feature of Numbers on the iPad is the ability to create forms. You can use forms to fill in the rows of a spreadsheet instead of entering data into the spreadsheet grid.

May 28 will be the launch date for the iPad in several countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. Apple has already begun taking pre-orders in those countries. The actual arrival date for pre-orders through the mail is in question, as many in the UK have seen their shipping dates slip into June.
Prices for the iPad outside of the U.S. are slightly higher, leading to criticism by some. Steve Jobs himself has fired back, saying that the higher prices are due to taxes in other countries, though some of the prices are higher even accounting for taxes.
Back in the U.S., the iPad reportedly will be coming to Wal-Mart stores later this year. Apple has also started a new ad campaign for the iPad, claiming the iPad as revolutionary. Interestingly, the ad is remarkably similar to an ad campaign for the Newton in the 90s.
Signs are pointing to a late June release of the next version of the iPhone. These signs include reports of vacation bans for AT&T employees at that time, a second appearance of a new iPhone model prototype found in Vietnam, and changes in the date AT&T will allow subsidized upgrades of iPhones.
The Apple Worldwide Developer Conference will be held earlier in June, and it would make sense that Apple announces the new iPhone model there. The conference, which used to center on the Mac, is now more about the iPhone and iPad. The WWDC is more populae than ever, selling out in only 8 days this year.

Learn interface window basics like resizing, closing and opening new windows. Learn how the red, yellow and green buttons at the upper left of most windows work.

You can use the Mail Merge feature in iWork Pages to print envelopes, letters or any document that uses different names and addresses on each page. You can get the data from your Address Book or from a Numbers spreadsheet.

If you use iBooks on your iPad or iPhone, you can only read books in EPUB format. If you have books in text or PDF format you may want to convert them to EPUB so you can read them in iBooks. You can do this with Calibre, a free open-source e-book library application.

Apple launched the 3G version of the iPad last Friday, selling 300,000 units on that day, many of those pre-ordered. This put total iPad sales past 1 million units in just 28 days of sales. It took the original iPhone 74 days to hit 1 million.
Meanwhile, the landscape for competition to the iPad changed dramatically this week. Microsoft cancelled its plans for the Courier tablet computer. HP’s Slate tablet plans are also in doubt now that they have purchased Palm. The purchase is speculated to be about getting the Palm WebOS operating system to use on the Slate. Integration could push back a release. But other rumors point to a Windows-based Slate this year, and a WebOS version later on.
Several months ago Apple purchased iTunes-competitor Lala, and this week they announced they are shutting down the service, at least in its existing state. Various levels of compensation will be given to those with an existing balance or access to net-based music. Apple may be using the cloud-based technology behind Lala to improve iTunes in the future.
Game maker Valve Software will release Steam for Mac on May 12. This is Valve’s own system for game distribution and communication. This means many formerly Windows-only games will now be available for the Mac, including Portal, Counter-Strike: Source, the Half-Life 2 episodes, the Left 4 Dead series, and more. Better yet, those with Steam accounts that have purchased the games on Windows will be able to download the Mac versions for free.