Well the Wii might allow you to control your video games with motion, but can you use your own breath? With Air Sail you need to blow into the mic to propel a little sailing ship through different levels. You can even race against a friend using two iPhones connected to a wifi network. The only problem with this game is that it takes guts to play it on the subway.
You can change the alert volume on your Mac independently of the master volume using the System Preferences, Sound, Sound Effects pane. But you can also adjust it from the menu bar. Just hold down the Option key when pressing the volume control at the upper right corner of your screen. You can then release the Option key as you adjust the slider.
With the new iPhone 3GS’ ability to record video comes the question: can you use an external mic? The answer is yes. In fact, the earbuds that come with the iPhone 3GS have such a mic on them. But that can be inconvenient to use. A product like the Monster iMicrophone gives you a stand-alone clip-on mic and the ability to then plug in your own headphones. The mic also includes a pause button like the iPhone’s earbuds, but no volume control. So these make a good clip-on mic as well as a way to get the mic and pause button while using your own headphones.
In the past week Apple has introduced a whole new version of the Final Cut Studio suite, including Final Cut Pro 7. New features include an easy export option, posting to MobileMe and YouTube and support for new ProRes codecs. Final Cut Pro is now Intel-only, matching Snow Leopard, and has a number of bug fixes and optimizations. The price for Final Cut Studio has dropped to only $999 and upgrades for $299.
Apple has also released a new version of the Time Capsule base station. You can get the original 1TB Time Capsule for $299 and then new 2TB for $499. 2TB will make Time Capsule useable as a Time Machine backup for those who have a 1TB drive in their Mac, as well as those who have several Macs on their network with total drive space of more then 1TB.
Rumors this week, besides more talk about a Mac tablet or netbook, centered around whether Apple would attend the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next year. In the past, Apple hasn’t attended because it usually conflicts with MacWorld. But as Apple is no longer involved with MacWorld, there are rumors that Apple may attend and that Steve Jobs may even replace Bill Gates as the headline speaker. But no definite word from Apple either way.
It seems that there is always a new controversy surrounding iPhone App Store submissions. This last week several Google Voice-related apps have been removed from the store by Apple. Google Voice is a telephone service run by Google that combines voice mail, a personal phone number and call forwarding, among other features. Apps have allowed iPhone owners to access various features of Google Voice. Developers are upset at their sudden rejection and can only speculate as to Apple’s reasons.
This news this week centers around Apple’s quarterly financial results. Once again, Apple seems to have wowed Wall Street with better-than-expected results.
It recorded a $1.23 billion profit for the quarter, as compared to $1.07 million for the same quarter last year.
Mac sales grew in contrast to the rest of the computer industry. They sold 2.6 million Macs, 4 percent higher than the same quarter last year.
iPhone sales were in fact seven times that of the quarter last year, with 5.24 million sold. Apple also reported 1.5 billion apps were download from the iTunes App Store, though that combines free and paid apps.
This may be cutting into iPod sales, as they only sold 10.2 million iPods, which is 7 percent less than last year.
The stock price went up on the news, as you would expect. In fact, AAPL is up about 80 percent so far this year, compared with 21 percent for the rest of the NASDAQ.
You’ve probably seen this App featured in one of the iPhone TV commercials. Urbanspoon is basically a restaurant finder with reviews, but it stands out in a few ways. It allows you to do much more than just review a restaurant. For instance, you can use your iPhone to take a picture of the menu and upload it to Urbanspoon. This is incredibly useful, as so many restaurants still don’t get the Internet and still don’t provide online menus.
Screen protectors for iPhones aren’t cool or sexy, but they are often necessary. Lord knows how many scratches I’d have on my screen without one. I’ve been using the Power Support Anti-Glare Film for iPhone 3G for a while and like the fact that it works, doesn’t get in the way, and doesn’t have those annoying bubbles that other protectors have.
With the release of the iPhone 3GS, there was a subtle, but important change in the gadget world. It has to do with the iPhone’s camera. The new camera will not only take better pictures, but also video.
The video recording capability is what is so interesting. Many of us have been carrying around little Flip cameras or something similar for a while now. The iPhone 3GS has pretty much the same capability as these cameras, so they can now be retired. More importantly, the iPhone is always with us, whereas the Flip usually one came with in situations where it was anticipated that it would be used. So there opportunities to record video just broadened enormously.
But there are two more important aspects here to consider. The first is network connectivity. You can shoot, trim and upload video right from your iPhone. You can upload to YouTube or MobileMe. Can’t do that with a Flip. Heck, just getting the video from your Flip to your Mac requires putting up with old AVI video codecs.
The second interesting thing about using an iPhone for recording video is that you are not stuck with the built-in microphone for audio. You can actually use the mic on the earbuds that come with the phone for recording, providing an easy way to speak directly into the mic while pointing the camera elsewhere. You can also use any third-party iPhone mic. For a lot of people this is minor, but for video creators like me this is huge. Camcorder makers have ignored the external mic option for a long time.
So now we have a phone, Internet device, compact camera, compact camcorder and mp3 player all in one small gadget. Getting better all the time.
A recent change to iTunes took away the Genre column from the browser (Command+B) while viewing your library in list view. You can add that column back if you like, by going to the Terminal application and typing:
defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool TRUE
It must be the middle of summer because news has slowed to a crawl. What makes headlines these days is Steve Jobs attending a Cold Play concert and Apple doesn’t like the Microsoft ads.
The only hard news is about very minor software updates. We have iTunes 8.2.1, which, along with bug fixes has stopped Palm Pre phones from syncing with iTunes. We’ll never be sure if Apple intentionally disabled Pre syncing, or if Palm is simply taking advantage of loopholes in iTunes software that require them to keep up with new versions of iTunes. But Apple did warn Pre owners that syncing wasn’t supported on the Apple side of things.
The story that Apple doesn’t like the Microsoft “Laptop Hunter” ads seems to exaggerated. The source is Microsoft itself, making fun of Apple during a conference speech. If you read the transcript, it sounds like Apple legal had a problem with Microsoft quoting MacBook prices in the ads that were out-dated. Would Burger King have a problem if McDonalds claimed BK’s burgers were $1.39 when they were in fact $1.19? Probably. Anyway, the whole thing as created headlines like “Apple demanded Microsoft to stop its Laptop Hunters ads” which are a little sensationalist.
Microsoft is also reported as planning to open Microsoft stores near Apple Stores. It is not clear what these stores will be selling, since Microsoft doesn’t make PCs, only the Windows OS and other software.
Little bluetooth headsets are super cool gadgets — reason enough to get one. So I tried to figure out what the most solid unit out there was, without breaking the bank. I came up with the popular Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset. It works with both the iPhone and the Mac, where it provides a decent external microphone for chat or voice recording.
Instead of just being another breakout clone, Radial 50 makes things more interesting with a circular design, allowing your paddle to move all the way around the screen. There’s plenty of complexity here, but at the same time the game play is simply to reflect the ball. The design is interesting enough to keep you playing time and time again.
Manually adding pages to appear on your Safari 4 “Top Sites” page is less-than-intuitive. The + button to the left of the address field at the top of Safari lets you add the current page to your bookmarks bar or menu, and also Top Sites. Just click it and in the pop-up menu that appears inside the drop-down controller, choose Top Sites. The site will be added and automatically “pinned” to stay on your Top Sites page.
