Today Apple officially announced the iPad, the Apple version of a tablet PC. It’s basically a giant iPod Touch and fits somewhere between the iPhone / iPod Touch and the MacBook. I’m happy to see the device finally become a reality, but there are some things I wasn’t happy about. Will I get one? I don’t know… I do think my wife would really like it, especially with the camera adapter to allow her to import photos to the device. She’s been wanting a computer of some type for a while now… I had considered a Netbook, but with as much as she uses her iPhone, I think she’d like this better. It’ll really depend on our hands on impression once the device actually shows up at the Apple Retail stores. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘iTunes’
iPad: The Apple Tablet Has Arrived
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010Odd iPhone Behavior
Friday, February 6th, 2009I decided that I’d take this weekend off from my 2nd job. While I’ll miss the money, it isn’t something I do often and I needed a break. Today I decided I’d take the wife out for lunch. Everything was good, we ate, I dropped her back off at work, and headed home. While stopped at a light, I was going to check a few things online… With 4 bars, I opened up Safari and got an error I had seen before, “Safari is not connected to the server.” I had seen this error a few times before, and restarting my iPhone always solved the issue. So, upon restart, I was surprised to see my iPhone telling me I needed to connect it to iTunes to activate it. What the heck??
I’ll admit, this kind of ticked me off. What the heck was going on. Well, guess I have to go home now and reactivate my phone. This sucks. As I get closer to home, I decide that I’ll restart my phone again. It shuts down, I turn it on, and everything is working just fine.
I really have no idea what was going on. My only guess is when I restarted the phone the first time, it didn’t have a good enough signal to communicate with the AT&T network.
Oh, and for those wondering why it says “Para Emergencia”. When the iPhone is not active, it still allows users to make an emergency call. The text there in the slider will change between a dozen or so different languages. It just happened to be the language displayed when I took the screen shot.
Mac World Expo Keynote 2009
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009So the Mac World Expo is over with now, and if you haven’t heard yet there are a lot of people that were rather disapointed by the event. Why? Two main reasons, first there were a lot of rumors floating around as to what would be announced. People expected these rumors to be true, and when they weren’t, people felt let down. The other reason, is the event was pretty boring.
If you hadn’t heard, this is the last year that Apple is attending the Mac World Expo. In addition to that, there was also no Steve Jobs to present the keynote, instead it was handled by Senior V.P. Phil Schiller. I don’t know if it was just Phil, or if it was the products he was announcing today but the event was boring. He spent half an hour along talking about iPhoto 09. iPhoto might be nice, and there may be a lot of new things in it, but half an hour? Really?
So what was covered during the keynote? If you fell asleep, or just missed it, here is a recap: (more…)
Apple Media Server
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008It’s no secret to anyone that I recently switched to a Mac, and absolutely love it. While it does just about everything I could want it to do, I still had some issues with the way iTunes is set up… specifically sharing a single library among multiple users (i.e. me and the wife) or among multiple computers (gasp, a Windows system!).
The same holds true for iPhoto, and until I can get the issues worked out with that all of the family digital photos still remain on my Windows XP system under Google’s Picasa software. — Why isn’t this available for OS X yet??
Looks like my problems may be solved, if the latest Apple rumor is true. According to 9to5 Mac Apple may be working on a Apple Media Server similar to current offerings from HP.
Based on 9to5 Mac’s speculations, the device would essentially be an extension of the Time Capsule product line. Heck, if it allows centralized network storage of iTunes, photos, and movies I’d be happy. At that point, it really wouldn’t matter what else it offered for me.
TiVo Update Killed Amazon VoD
Monday, December 1st, 2008I’ve been using TiVo for about 5 years now, and I absolutely love it. It’s a fantastic service that has forever change the way I watch TV. It’s kind of like broadband internet, I cannot imagine going back to the way things were before.
One of the cool things I’ve enjoyed about my TiVo for the last year or so is the ability to rent movies from Amazon Video on Demand (formerly Amazon Unbox) and have the movies downloaded directly to my TiVo. Not only is it a easy to use service, but the cost of most rentals is around $3.99 a whole buck cheaper than what Comcast charges for their extremely slow OnDemand service. And just to throw it in there, renting movies from Apple via iTunes is about the same cost as TiVo-Amazon. 
That Amazon-TiVo service worked great until a few days ago when TiVo issues the Fall 2008 Update. The new update changes some of the menus, adds the ability to order pizza from Domino’s, download video on demand from other providers, and unintentionally bricks the Amazon VoD service.
It took me three days of contacting Amazon (email and phone) before I finally got someone on Sunday that actually identified the problem as the TiVo update. Right now when you rent a video, it’ll start to download, and then just vanish. If you check for an error, you get the extremely vague “an error occurred while downloading the video.”
Yesterday morning when I spoke to a rep, they were estimating it’d be ~20 hours before the service was restored. This afternoon when I spoke to someone, there was “no new information.” So Right now, all I can do is wait.
iTunes 8.0.2 & iPhone/iPod Touch 2.2 Updates
Friday, November 21st, 2008Apple has released iTunes 8.0.2 which in addition to some fixes and enhancements brings along the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.2 update.
With the iPhone / iPod Touch (IPIPT?) 2.2 update comes with a number of enhancements to the Google Maps, including street view, walking locations, and the ability to share locations via email. Safari also gets the goofy update that changes the “search” icon next to the address bar to look more like a search box. Who cares?? Though the update does claim to improve stability and performance in Safari, now that’s what I want to hear!
For a complete list of what’s available in the 2.2 update, check out the Apple Support website.
I Love Delicious Library
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008There are a lot of things that I love about my Mac. It’s a whole new world, full of new software and applications. One of the apps that I absolutely love is Delicious Library. I don’t recall how I came to find out about this, but I’m glad that I did.
Delicious Library does two things, it keeps an inventory of everything you have and helps manage items that have been loaned out to someone. Before this I attempted to keep a list of DVD’s I owned in a spreadsheet. That didn’t exactly work to well. And last December when my home was broken into and most of my video games were stolen, I didn’t have a comprehensive list of what video games I had. That made it incredibly hard to provide a list to insurance or the police.
Another nice thing about DL is that it can even publish your library to an FTP site so you can show it off to your friends, or just have a backup copy in case something happens to your Mac. Check mine out, you know you want to. – I still need to add a number of books that Celtica and I own.
When you buy DL, you have the option to fork over $215 for (what I’m sure is a nice) bar code scanner or you can take a cheaper route and buy one off EBay. I got a USB Scanner for $30 or so, and another $20 for the USB cable. It works great. If you have an iMac or MacBook with a built in iSight, then no worries you can simply use that. Trust me, you’ll want a bar code reader if you have any kind of non-iTunes library. Yes, it’ll even track stuff you have in iTunes.
If you clicked the link earlier and saw my (well, mine and the wife’s) library then you see I’ve got movies (which is really DVD’s), video games, and books. That’s just what I selected to publish, you can also track just about anything else as well. Tools, toys, clothing, guns, gadgets, software, and more.
While the desktop portion of the app works fantastic, the export/publish leaves much to be desired. It’s very basic, and gives you two “themes” to select from when you publish. The published version has no search option, which sucks if you have a large library. It also has some problems from browser to browser, which hopefully will be fixed down the road. Sadly, there is also no method to customize the files, unless you chose to do it externally, which I’ve done a little bit to my published library.
For the desktop app, I’d have to give it a strong 10/10. For the publishing part, it wouldn’t score above a 5. I’d love to see some major work done the external part, maybe even a WordPress plugin. And I’ve already begun listing my ideas and feedback on GetSatisfaction.com.
Movies & Digital Copies
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008This certainly nothing new, but it was “new” to me. Today when I purchased Star Wars: The Clone Wars it had a nice little sticker on it that said it included a digital copy. I don’t know if any of the other movies in my library included this, and if they did and I didn’t get the digital copy, well I’m an idiot.
For those of you that don’t know the digital copies can be downloaded to your PC or Mac, and even transferred to your iPod. And it’s free with the DVD purchase. Not bad, you get two for the price of one.
How painful was the process? That’s the thing, it wasn’t. I simply put the “digital copy / bonus disk” into my Mac, opened up iTunes, and input the redemption code that came with the DVD. iTunes downloaded the movie, and now I have a digital copy… just like that. There is a similar process for PC+iTunes or PC+WMP.
Yes, I’m still one that buys physical media. Usually I’ll go for the Limited Edition or Special Edition copies first. After this, I’ll be looking to buy more movies with digital copies.
What if Apple Created a Gaming Console?
Saturday, October 25th, 2008Everyone refers to the Xbox 360, PS3, and to a lesser extent the Nintendo Wii as a “next gen” gaming console. Does that mean the next round of consoles (Xbox 3602, PS4, Wii2) will be third gen, or will they just be the new “next gen”? I know, who cares, right?
A while back Apple announced to investors that there would be a “product transition”. No one is really sure what this is, or when it would be. Some think it was the new iPod Nano, the change to the iPod Touch, or even the new MacBooks. Others think it may be some kind of NetBook or Apple Tablet. Still others think it could be a new networked type TV. And some people think we have yet to se it.
Well, what if Apple were to venture into the realm of console gaming systems… better yet, what if they already had, and you didn’t know it. Perhaps you already have an Apple console in your living room, office, or bedroom. It may not be as big of a stretch as you think. (more…)
What I Want From iTunes 8
Monday, September 1st, 2008Today is the first of September, and if the Kevin Rose rumor is true, a major update to iTunes could be just over a week away. What could be in store for us with the next version of iTunes? That is a very good question, here are some of the things I would like to see. (more…)