Halloween sales are upon us! Be sure to also check out our Amazon Mac Download below. Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!
#MacStoriesDeals - Thursday
NYT: Siri-Controlled Apple Television “A Guaranteed Product”
According to an article by Nick Bilton on The New York Times, Apple is indeed working on a television product that could be publicly announced in late 2012, and released in early 2013. Rumors of an Apple-made television, not just a TV set like the Apple TV, go back to the original announcement of the iTV, a set-top box that would later become the Apple TV, which made many wonder whether Apple could ever disrupt the television market by offering content deals and a new way to access and interact with television programming. A statement by Steve Jobs in the recently released biography by Walter Isaacson gave new credence to such rumors – Jobs said “he finally cracked it”, leading many to believe Apple had been working on a hardware product set to revolutionize the television market.
According to Bilton however, the revolution isn’t strictly about the hardware design or physical remote controller – rather, the Apple television will heavily rely on Siri – Apple’s voice-based assistant for the iPhone 4S – to let users easily execute tasks such as searching for online content, switch channels, get the news and weather information, or the latest episode of a TV show.
Alternative remote ideas floated by Apple included a wireless keyboard and mouse, or using an iPod, iPhone or iPad as a remote. None of these concepts worked. But there was one “I finally cracked it” moment, when Apple realized you could just talk to your television.
Enter Siri.
It’s the stuff of science fiction. You sit on your couch and rather than fumble with several remotes or use hand gestures, you simply talk: “Put on the last episode of Gossip Girl.” “Play the local news headlines.” “Play some Coldplay music videos.” Siri does the rest.
Bilton claims several people within Apple have confirmed the existence of prototypes and parts floating around, with a source even saying the television is “a guaranteed product” from Apple, with the only question being when the company will decide to unveil it and release it. Bilton says getting components for large displays to drop under a certain price target could be an issue for Apple, and he notes that the user-friendliness of Siri applied to a television could be also hinted by Jobs saying “it will have the simplest user interface you could imagine” when referring to such a device in his authorized biography. Siri was acquired by Apple last year, and it’s currently exclusive to the new iPhone 4S.
In the past year, Apple released the second-generation Apple TV and updated its software multiple times to include a selection of new channels, content deals, iCloud-based functionalities and deeper iTunes integration with streaming and previous purchases. A recent rumor also claimed Jeff Robin, co-creator of iTunes, has been put in charge of the Apple Television project.
[image via]
Adobe Carousel Review: Sync & Edit Photos Anywhere
With the introduction of iOS 5 and iCloud, Apple enhanced the standard photo management experience on iOS devices and Macs with Photo Stream, a new cloud service that makes all your photos available anywhere at any time through iCloud. As I detailed in my iCloud overview, Photo Stream is a new “invisible” part to iCloud that lives inside the iOS’ Photos.app or iPhoto on the Mac, allowing the operating system to instantly push photos – whether they’re actual photos or screenshots taken on iOS – up to the cloud, and back to all your devices configured with Apple’s service. So when you’re taking a new photo on your iPhone, Photo Stream ensures the photo is also pushed to your iPad and Mac, so you won’t have to sync or manually transfer files when you’re home.
Photo Stream is a convenient solution because it’s easy to use and doesn’t require any configuration, but this very lack of options and adjustments has generated quite a debate in the past few weeks among users who would like to be able to control their Photo Stream to exclude certain kinds of images, or at least manually delete the ones that aren’t worth the cloud storage. Because Photo Stream has been built to be invisible and extremely simple, it doesn’t come with any preference to, say, diversify screenshots from regular photos, or delete photos you mistakenly took from your online stream. Photo Stream is simply an on/off switch for all or nothing, and whilst it has turned out to be an indispensable tool in my workflow for photos and iOS screenshots, others would like to have some kind of control over how photos are chosen and pushed to their devices. Read more
ReaddleDocs 3 Review: Powerful Document Viewer & File Manager For The iPad
ReaddleDocs 3, the latest version of the popular document viewer and file manager for the iPad was released a few days ago and it packs a bunch of new features and improvements. The app is a little odd in some ways, because at its core it is trying to recreate the file system on an iPad — something that Apple has tried its very best to stay away from with iOS. But in reality, if you’ve wanted to be productive on an iPad you’re inevitably going to need some sort of file system, because whilst iCloud is beginning to help with document and app sync, it isn’t all that helpful for syncing between apps.
As a result, I use a few other ‘cloud’ services to keep all my documents in sync and available everywhere. The primary one I use is SugarSync, but I also use Dropbox (primarily for collaboration) and occasionally Google Docs. This allows me to use any of the computers I have at home, where I will have all my documents ready and available - I can even edit them and see those edits synced across to the other computers where I could access that same file the next morning with all the edits included.
But how do I deal with documents on the iPad? It’s been a bit of a complicated issue since the iPad was first released, and initially I was just emailing any documents I needed on my iPad to myself and then opening that email up on the iPad - but this was messy, complicated and required advanced ‘knowledge’ to send that file before you could see it on the iPad. Eventually I realised I had to find a better way to solve this, and that’s where SugarSync and Dropbox come in. Both these services (and a multitude of others) slowly began to be supported by various apps for the iPad and iPhone, hooking straight into the services. This was a far better way to open files on the iPad - but the apps felt very rough around the edges.
In recent months I’ve been using iFiles on the iPad and iPhone, it’s been pretty great and it was certainly the best app I had used to date for viewing documents from my Dropbox folder and SugarSync services. Then about a month after I started using iFiles, I came across PDF Expert. Primarily I was using it for PDF annotation, but I noticed it was also a pretty great file viewer, particularly because it would also integrate right into Dropbox and SugarSync. So over the past few months I’ve been using PDF Expert for most of my document viewing needs and occasionally opening iFiles.
When looking at it simply, PDF Expert and ReaddleDocs 3 are nearly identical — they share very similar user interfaces and are close in functionality too. Where they differentiate is mainly in price (PDF Expert is nearly twice as much) and in annotation abilities (it is far better in PDF Expert). So before I go into too much detail, if you want to do a lot of PDF annotation on the iPad, PDF Expert is what you should purchase (even if you want to use it as a document viewer, because it is also good at that). In all other cases my recommendation is for ReaddleDocs 3, particularly if you want to do some file management - it is virtually identical and also has some annotation capabilities.
Jump the break to continue reading my review of ReaddleDocs 3.
Pixelmator 2.0 Now Available On The Mac App Store, Our First Impressions
Pixelmator 2.0, a big new version of the popular image editing application for the Mac, just hit the Mac App Store and is available for just $29.99 (as an introductory price) and is a free upgrade for those who have previously purchased a copy of Pixelmator from the Mac App Store. Pixelmator 2.0 is a significant update, with significant improvements, completely new features, a new look and full support for OS X Lion.
With tons of exciting new features and support for OS X Lion, this new version of Pixelmator is the easiest, most enjoyable way to experience the best of image editing. Pixelmator 2.0 gives everyone the tools they need to unlock their creativity and boost their productivity, all for just $29.99. - Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team
The big new features in Pixelmator 2.0 make it a truly powerful image editor and for most people it should be more than sufficient for all their needs - likely making something like Photoshop overkill for what their requirements are. A big drawcard for many will be Pixelmator’s new drawing tools that make it easy to create, combine and edit vector shapes easily. A new ‘Shape Settings’ palette also makes it simple to adjust the shadow, stroke and fill of a vector shape. A new healing tool in Pixelmator 2.0 features content-aware fill technology so that it is easy to remove ‘objects’ from a photograph and make it appear as though it was never even there.
By choosing either the new Healing Tool or the selection tools, a user can select wrinkles, blemishes, image damage or any other details present in images, and with just one click let Pixelmator seamlessly fill the selected area with similar nearby image content.
Then there are the new retouching tools of smudge, sponge (desaturate), burn (darken), dodge (brighten) and red-eye. These tools are great for retouching and work as one would expect. Finally, there is an improved type tool that not only makes it easier to format your text, but now also features more advanced typography tools for those that want complete control over how their type looks.
Taking advantage of the new features that Apple added to OS X Lion, Pixelmator now supports the native Auto Save and Versioning available in Lion, allowing you to easily save multiple versions of a document you are working on, and compare those versions easily. Lion’s Full Screen feature is also built into Pixelmator so you can easily focus on your work without distraction and also take full advantage of your Mac’s screen real estate. The last thing to note is that Pixelmator 2.0 also follows Lion’s lead and supports a number of gestures, buttons, menus and the new ‘invisible’ scroll bars.
The look of Pixelmator has also been refined in 2.0, with a new ‘Tool Options’ bar and an ‘Info’ bar. Both sit discretely at the top of the window and both bars are contextual, changing depending on what tool you choose, giving you the appropriate information and settings depending on what tool you are using - so you never see useless information. The Tools palette is also more customisable now, allowing you to add, remove and even group any tools you want - letting you create a Tools palette that matches what your workflow requires.
There are a number of other new features, improvements and tweaks that are too numerous to go into. But speaking as an occasional user of Photoshop, Pixelmator 2.0 seems to have almost all the features I require for my image editing and it gives them to me at a fraction of the cost. If you’re like me, you might find Pixelmator a little jarring at first, with various tools and options located in different locations, but this soon disappears when you realise its an incredibly capable piece of software - that from my experience is actually a little more nimble at accomplishing various tasks (particularly when dealing with text).
Pixelmator 2.0 is available on the Mac App Store at an introductory price of $29.99 so be sure to grab a copy of it - at that price it’s an absolute steal. If you have previously purchased Pixelmator from the Mac App Store, its a free upgrade.
#MacStoriesDeals - Wednesday
Be sure to check out our Amazon Mac Download below. Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!
Registrations For Renamed 2012 Macworld | iWorld Expo Begin
IDG, which runs the annual Macworld Expo, yesterday revealed that the event is being renamed to Macworld | iWorld - recognising that the event has grown beyond just Macs and now includes the ever-growing popularity of iOS. IDG also began registration for the renamed Macworld | iWorld expo which will run for three-days betweeen January 26 and 28 next year.
The brand is evolving from Macworld [Expo] to Macworld | iWorld to illustrate that the show is about the whole ecosystem of Apple products.
The event will be similar to previous Macworld expos with exhibits and conference sessions but will also feature what IDG is calling “dynamic culture experience[s]”. One such example is the ‘Music Experience showcase’ which will feature musicians that use Apple technology in the creation of their music in live performances and talks, another such experience will be the Film Event.
The event organisers are quick to point out that despite the name change, the Mac hasn’t been forgotten, in fact if anything it will be bigger than ever next year and according to the event organiser, Paul Kent, they are looking for “a heavy influence of OS X developers on the show floor this year”. Passes for Macworld | iWorld start from $25 and you can find more information from the Macworld | iWorld website.
[Via Macworld]
Report: Apple To Build Large Solar Farm Next To North Carolina Data Center
According to news reports in The Charlotte Observer, Apple has quietly begun to prepare building a massive solar farm right next door to their (also massive) data centre in Maiden, North Carolina. Although building permits have yet to be submitted to Catawba County officials, the County has given Apple permission to reshape the slope in preparation of the solar farm.
The land covered by this solar farm will be around 171 acres and is located just across the road from the data centre. As part of the solar farm, Apple has purchased 3 separate ‘sites’, including one from October last year and is merging them into one large site for the solar farm. As the Hickory Daily Record notes, nearby residents haven’t exactly been thrilled with the land work being done. To help clear the land, fire is being used to help clear the land, but it is causing significant amounts of smoke that is drifting into the houses of those nearby residents.
[Via MacRumors]
Twelve South Introduces “BassJump 2” USB Subwoofer for Macs
Twelve South, makers of beautiful Mac desktop accessories like the BookArc and MagicWand or the iOS-focused BookBook and Compass, have announced earlier today a software update for the BassJump, a portable subwoofer that can be paired via USB with Mac computers and Apple’s Cinema and Thunderbolt displays. The new BassJump features the same hardware of its predecessor, meaning that previous owners of the device will get the software update for free; the new functionalities, in fact, have been included on the software side of the BassJump, which installs as a panel in the Mac’s System Preferences app. Twelve South details in its official FAQ that all BassJump users, regardless of version 1 or 2, will get the BassJump 2 software features.
The BassJump, admittedly one of Twelve South’s most popular gadgets for Mac users, takes advantage of a standalone, proprietary software to enhance a Mac’s default sound output and turn it into an easy-to-use 2.1 audio system with the Mac’s speakers acting as tweeters; the BassJump will thus become a subwoofer, delivering deeper sound for mid and low frequencies. Whereas a portable or desktop Mac would rely on its internal speakers for all frequencies, usually resulting in lower quality for bass-filled songs, the BassJump aims at working in conjunction with a Mac’s built-in audio to offer a richer, fuller audio experience. The BassJump 2 update comes with the following improvements:
- 8 decibels louder.
- BassJump can be paired with external USB speakers and Apple Cinema/Thunderbolt Display speakers.
- Save customized BassJump Settings.
- Several user interface tweaks
With a 77mm subwoofer speaker cone and signal-to-noise ratio set at 80dB, the BassJump comes with settings for default audio, Pop, Rock, R&B, Classical, as well as custom options. Crossover Frequency Range can be adjusted between 100Hz and 300Hz, and the software requires OS X 10.5.8 or later.
Twelve South’s BassJump looks great, and as the company suggests on its website, it “sounds” like a perfect solution for the MacBook Air, which as I detailed in my review produces some good audio but could use warmer, deeper bass when playing songs or your favorite hit from YouTube. The BassJump 2 is available today at $69.99 through Twelve South’s website.