Apple Releases the Mighty Mouse

This day will go down in history alongside the most impressive technical achievements of the last century. Yes, Apple has released the Mighty Mouse -- a multi-button, 360-degree scrollable mouse. You can assign different buttons to different functions, such as showing the dashboard or using expose. It's such a brilliant idea, I can't imagine how nobody's thought of something like this before. Oh -- what's that? Never mind.

Sarcasm aside, this is delivered in typical Apple style, with a scroll ball and various clickable and squeezable areas, as opposed to buttons. It looks pretty slick, though my 800-button Logitech is working just fine at the moment.

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by frank on Aug 2, 05 08:53 AM | TrackBack (0)

iKitchen: the Built-in Mac Mini

Here's a pretty amazing project at Caffeine Junkies by "Lilmuckers", who built a Mac Mini into the wall of his father's kitchen. There are photos for every step of the hacking and subsequent installation, including adding in a USB hub and extending the LED and power button wit a bit of ethernet cable so that everything's on the same side. It's all hooked up to a TV for output and looks very slick. It's one of the more creative (though involved) projects I've seen for the Mini.

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by frank on Jul 31, 05 08:04 PM | TrackBack (0)

Credible Reports of the iTunes Phone

Finally, some credible evidence that the super-hyped iTunes phone is more than just vapor. TheStreet.com reports an announcement from Motorola CEO Ed Zander during an analyst presentation:

"We're not going to launch the iTunes phone today. Steve Jobs is not going to jump out of a cake. And we're not going to launch it tomorrow," Zander said.

"But on one of the 66 days left in the quarter, we're not saying which one yet ... Apple, Motorola and our biggest operator partners around the world will announce -- and ship -- the first iTunes phone," Zander said.

There still appears to be some question, though, over exactly where and when this announcement will happen, with claims from one analyst that the iTunes phone will be unveiled at the Virgin Mobile U.K.-sponsored "V Festival" concert next month, but directly conflicting information from an unnamed Virgin Mobile representative stating that it will not be announced at the V Festival. I suppose it would ruin all the fun for Apple if there wasn't some misinformation.

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by frank on Jul 28, 05 07:50 AM | TrackBack (0)

Apple Releases New iBook and Mac Mini

Apple announced new updates today to the iBook and the Mac Mini.

Updates to the iBook include efficient scrolling and panning with the trackpad, Bluetooth now standard in addition to the already standard 802.11g Airport Extreme, and 512 MB RAM. There's also a new "sudden motion sensor" that will help protect your hard drive if you drop the iBook. Apparently rumors to the effect of a new widescreen iBook were nothing more than vapor.

The new Mac Mini also comes with 512 MB RAM standard, and new options for built-in wireless (Airport Extreme and Bluetooth) and the DVD-burning SuperDrive on the medium- ($599) and high-end ($699) models, respectively.

Read more in the press releases for the new iBook and Mac Mini.

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by frank on Jul 26, 05 06:58 AM | TrackBack (0)

Create Gapless Audio from CDs with iTunes

Here's a tutorial from wanderingFocus (via Command-Tab) that shows how to preserve gapless tracks when importing a CD into iTunes, for burning to another CD or for listening on an iPod. The key is to import them all into a single file and make chapters using ChapterTool (Apple's utility to add chapter markers to podcasts). This will allow you to preserve the seamless audio from the original CD, which is great for live music or any other continuous audio.

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by frank on Jul 23, 05 09:32 AM | TrackBack (0)

Tutorial: Install Apache 2.0 on Tiger, part 2 of 2

ApacheIn part one of this tutorial we installed Apache 2 using a pre-built installer package graciously provided by Server Logistics. But if you need the latest version, some more Apache modules, or a little more customization in your installation, you'll have to build and install from source. That always sounds scarier than it actually is, so if you're not uncomfortable with some tinkering in Terminal, you'll have Apache 2 built and installed before you know it -- it really is quite easy!

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by frank on Jul 21, 05 09:23 PM | TrackBack (0)

Use Preview More Effectively

Another great article at MacDevCenter by Giles Turnbull delves into the wealth of lesser-known features of OS X's Preview application. Preview is generally known as Apple's PDF viewer that loads about a thousand times faster than Adobe's own version. But Preview can do a lot more that you probably didn't know:

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by frank on Jul 21, 05 09:33 AM | TrackBack (0)

How to Write a Spotlight Plugin

Here's a good and in-depth tutorial from Matthew Russell at MacDevCenter.com on creating Spotlight plugins. Matthew walks through creating a plugin for Spotlight from scratch that indexes the content database of the Stickies application. He starts with the somewhat arbitrary steps required to give the Stickies database an extension as required by Spotlight, but quickly moves on to the step-by-step instructions using XCode that get the job done. A must-read if you find yourself doing any Spotlight plugin development.

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by frank on Jul 17, 05 07:38 PM | TrackBack (0)

Tutorial: Install Apache 2.0 on Tiger, part 1 of 2

ApacheMac OS X's Darwin foundation means that many of the services longtime Unix users have come to know work just like we would expect, and the Apache web server is no exception. But OS X 10.4 comes installed with Apache 1.3.33, and Apache 2.0 has been out for quite a long time now.

Fortunately, if you need to upgrade, it's quite easy, and in fact you have two options. For a basic install of Apache 2.0.52, you can use a third party installer and you won't even have to touch the terminal. It comes with only a minimal set of modules, however, so if you need extras (like php or fastcgi), or if you want the very latest version (right now, it's 2.0.54), your best bet is to build from source -- but don't worry, that's almost as easy if you're not afraid to open up the terminal app.

In this mini-tutorial I'm going to show you how to install Apache using an installer from Server Logistics. In part 2, we'll build Apache from source, and you can choose which suits your needs. Either one will allow you to continue using Apache 1.3.33 on your Mac if you want, though you can't use them simultaneously.

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by frank on Jul 16, 05 09:58 AM | TrackBack (0)

Apple Reports Third Quarter Results

I'm slightly behind the times on this one, but Apple yesterday reported their third quarter results with record revenue and earnings, and they were some pretty good numbers.

Apple shipped 1,182,000 Macintosh® units and 6,155,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 35 percent growth in Macs and 616 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

"We are delighted to report Apple’s best quarter ever in both revenue and earnings," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "The launch of Mac OS X Tiger has been a tremendous success, and we have more amazing new products in the pipeline."

You can listen to the financial results conference call yourself with Quicktime, if you're so inclined.

by frank on Jul 14, 05 06:32 PM | TrackBack (0)