Trapped in Time

my desktop(s) would be a mess without spaces.

roamin:

Apple Downloads/ Daypart 1.0

“A simple yet full-featured application that allows you to schedule iTunes playlists when to play, giving you an easy way to program varied musical content throughout the week in your home or workplace. Program your iTunes music when you want, the way you want.

Smart Playlists, Playlist Folders, and Genius Playlists provide some degree of musical variety in iTunes, but you still have to manually select, start, and stop each playlist one at a time whenever you want to switch from one to another. Daypart does all that for you and lets you program every day of the week with different playlists at different times. You can have Daypart play your Party Shuffle playlist in the morning, Most Recently Added around lunch, dance music in the afternoon, Classical for dinner, and audiobooks in the evening. And on the following day schedule something completely different. Plus, you can create more than one schedule to accommodate your many listening habits…”

Incredibly valuable if you manage a vast library and many playlists through iTunes.

CultureCode’s Things V 1.0

Earlier this week I purchased Things ($50), a task management application for OS X, and its iPhone counterpart ($10).  Together they make a helluva team.  The interface on Things is beautiful and feature rich. You can create projects and to-do lists under those projects, manage your projects by ‘area of responsibility’ and even assign tasks to other individuals.  iCal importing and synchronization works like a charm, which was something I was worried about since I often use iCal to manage meetings, input reminders, and keep track of birthdays.  Over wifi Things can be synced (in a matter of seconds) with your iPhone just by opening the iPhone app.  It couldn’t run any smoother!

Whether you’re trying to get ahold of your business tasks, or organize your personal life, Things has a lot to offer any Mac user.  The Desktop + iPhone combination won best in show at MacWorld last week, and is receiving great reviews.

This is a legitimate, 3rd party MacBook Nano (sitting on a 17” MBP), complete with a case bearing the apple logo.  This “netbook” features a 10” display, 1.86 GHz Intel Atom processor, 320GB HD, 2GB RAM, and weighs only 2.2 lbs.  It is a modified MSI U100 laptop which can be purchased from Amazon for $421.  There is a complete guide for installation available as well, which seems to be fairly easy to follow and quite successful thus far.

Perhaps this will push Apple to get their own to market.  Who knows, if I have some extra cash a few months from now, I may invest in one of these and try it out myself.  View the entire flickr set here.

roamin:

Cult of Mac

“Here’s hoping that Apple’s feverishly-anticipated “Brick” project is the world’s first all-screen laptop — like this mockup of the OLPC version 2 by designer Yves Behar. There’s slim chance, of course, but I for one would love a computing device like this: A hybrid iPhone-meets-Macbook-Air that would put hot netbooks like the EeePC to shame. Apple’s “Brick” would be a hybrid laptop/tablet/ebook that dispenses with a physical keyboard and trackpad in favor of a virtual, adaptive UI that blends multitouch, gestures and its own orientation to switch between different modes:

• Laptop
• Tablet
• eBook
• Tabletop

A little birdie told me this is true (no, really).

A complete list of what fonts are available on the iPhone, by font family.

My current desktop (one of them).  Click through for hi-res.  Background available for download via my flickr.  My other monitor is currently the Marina Towers.

The good people over at FrontLine Systems have done every OS X-loving business student in the country a favor and released Solver for Office 2008.  Hell, maybe this even makes it more feasible for businesses to embrace OS X as a viable option for employees to work from (at least in some instances).

Solver is a business analysis tool that conducts linear programming and provides other useful analytics to solve complex business problems.  I wish I had this at my disposal my last semester of school when I was handling networking and distribution logistics problems.  It would have saved me the hassle of using XP machines in the lab, and working from home instead.

I upgraded my RAM today, and for the first time I own computers with more than a gig of RAM. My iMac absolutely screams with 3GB, and my MacBook is lag-free with double digit applications open. After close to two years with both these machines, it feels like I now have brand new computers!

Fuck you flash installer. I never said you could reboot. What the fuck. (via talby)

This is impossible to occur in OS X, as a system shutdown/reboot requires user confirmation.  A small thing?  Yes, but one that prevents me from losing my temper in situations like talby’s!

Digg.com’s Kevin Rose has posted a new blog entry and YouTube video claiming to have knowledge of upcoming iPod updates with a significant number of details:

- Revamp of entire iPod line.
- Small cosmetic changes to Touch, Nano to see significant redesign (see above)
- iPods to see fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.
- iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.
- iTunes 8.0 (“it’s a big update w/new features”).
- All of this coming in the next 2-3 weeks.
- Blu-Ray support coming in Mac OS X 10.5.6

(via macrumors)

I’m most interested in what features we can expect from iTunes 8.0, and how they’ll relate to the iPhone, Apple TV, and content management.  It’s also exciting to read that Apple may bring Blu-Ray support to the masses, which should help start to bring prices down and make this market a little more mainstream (and competitive).  Oh, and the new nanos sound like what the last generation should have been.  Those little girthy nanos never sat right with me.

Songbird 0.7

An iTunes replacement + music enhanced web browser. Get it.

(via joelaz)

I just downloaded and installed this, and overall it’s a fairly impressive app.  It’s familiar enough that iTunes users might find this a refreshing alternative, especially considering the possibilities that its open source nature provides.  Last.fm integration works great, and browsing with your music right there (as a tab, ala Firefox) is a very innovative idea.  The only glaring issue I found with basic playback was that anything starting with “The” (i.e. The Rolling Stones) was organized under “T” rather than “R.”  I only set it up with my MacBook, but I’m a bit skeptical that it could properly handle a 60,000 song library.

I can’t see myself making the switch, perhaps now more than ever being an iPhone user.  In my apartment I couldn’t part with the ability to stream music to my receivers in my living room and bedroom, nor could I part with the iPhone application that allows me to stream to whatever room I’m in without ever touching my computer.  That kind of simplicty, extendability for a massive library, and overall convenience will be hard to beat.  As of now, Songbird supports iPods, but not the iPhone, another issue for me (personally).  For the average (OS X) user, this application makes a lot of sense over iTunes, especially if you never purchase anything from the iTunes Store.  Check it out!

You know Apple is doing something right when IBM starts to take a look at ditching their own (former) products - Thinkpads - for MacBook Pros.

IBM exited the PC business when it sold its Personal Computing Division and the ThinkPad brand to Lenovo in 2005. The pilot program document outlined a series of reasons for evaluating MacBook Pro laptops as a replacement for the Windows-based ThinkPads currently in use inside the company:

• Alternative to Microsoft Windows
• Less prone to security issues
• Widely used in the academic world with which Research has close ties
• Many new hires are more comfortable with the Mac and lately asking for it
• Growing Mac community in Research and within IBM that finds the development environment on Mac more convenient
• Growing acceptance of the Mac as a consumer and business oriented client platform
• WPLC strategy includes significant investments in achieving the Mac platform parity

(via macrumors)

The tool known as “Pwnage Tool” is currently a Mac OS X application that allows users to modify their iPhone’s bootloader to allow it to boot any software. In its native state, the iPhone bootloader is what prevents it from booting unauthorized (non Apple) firmware.

Once patched with this tool, the “pwned” iPhone will accept any software to boot, including modified iPhone firmware or alternative operating systems such as Linux. The demo video shows how a custom 1.1.4 firmware that already includes Jailbreaking and Unlocking can be easily loaded onto an iPhone. They also believe the modifications will support future firmware, such as iPhone 2.0, which is due for release in late June.

“If Apple’s patents are granted, the company could absolutely stop others from using similar technology,” says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patent applications for Apple. “They’d also be in an especially good position to stop others from including certain features. Apple could stop [their use] not only on mobile devices but also desktops.”

How do you feel about this?  I have mixed feelings.  Using pinches and pulls to interact with a phone or computer wasn’t something most of us had even envisioned before January 9, 2007.  But will this give Apple a monopoly in multitouch technology?  Will it slow the pervasive adoption of multitouch devices, or limit them to only those who trust the Apple brand, have the income to afford them, etc…? Furthemore, how patentable should multitouch technology be?

Touchscreen interfaces are the way of the future, and in many cases are going to replace traditional input methods.  Going back a few years… doesn’t this amount to  being able to patent the keyboard or mouse?  Don’t get me wrong, I love the way Apple has used multitouch with the iPhone and how they are integrating it into their laptops (even prior to the MacBook Air, the two finger scrolling on the Macbook & MB Pro is my favorite feature of ANY laptop available today).  I’m just not sure the end consumer will win here.