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Rinse: An App for Cleaning Your iTunes Library

As a part of RealNetworks evolution, from a content provider to developer of management and distribution software for digital media, it has released Rinse – a $39 application that offers a promise that it will “seamlessly organize and repair your iTunes music library”.

Like other apps such as TuneUp and Equinux’s Song Genie and CoverScout, Rinse promises to correct any mislabelled (or not labelled) items in your iTunes library, add album artwork and remove those pesky duplicate items. It promises to be smarter than those other apps and that “Rinse’s intelligent database technology will find the matching artwork, remove duplicates and clean things up.”

Peter Kafka from AllThingsD had mixed results trying it out on his library, whilst Ben Brooks found it made quick work of cleaning up those duplicate tracks he had in his library. Rinse is available for OS X as well as Windows XP, Vista and 7 for the rather hefty price of $39.

[Via AllThingsD]

 

A market for iPads, not for tablets→

A market for iPads, not for tablets

Apple seems to have captured something with the iPad that is far more than just a tablet-shaped computer. They hit upon some “X factor” in the combination of the pleasing physical design of the iPad, and the simple, intuitive and pleasing look-and-feel of a user interface.

This X-factor, whatever it is, will be very hard to duplicate by companies that aren’t Apple. Other companies will build products to compete with it, but they’ll never manage to build anything that comes close to what consumers see as the real thing. In fact, I’m not sure that tablets will ever be a space where numerous brands with strong product offerings will constantly fight it out for market share. The “front-runner and also-rans” dynamic will always exist.

I wouldn’t be surprised if many critics would argue (with a fair bit of snark) that the x-factor is the Apple logo alone. However, people who’ve gotten their hands on the iPad and have explored the App Store ecosystem know the iPad is much more than just good looks wrapped around a mediocre OS. Apple gets both hardware and software right: whatever you think of their multitasking solution or lack of openness, the “limited” features critics bash it for work a hundred times better than the “real deal” competitors are supposed to be offering. Everything on the iPad is fluid, simply just works, and for the “lack of features,” no one seems to be complaining about missing anything once they’ve set up their iPad. Apple is smart to know that they’re going to implement features and make that experience perfect before shipping lots of features that are half baked. This is what puts Apple above the competition.

Not to pick on the Xoom as there are other competitors, but I’ll be blunt when I say it’s a joke. Honeycomb is jittery as you scroll and navigate apps, Adobe still can’t get Flash to run buttery smooth on something that’s dual-core (Flash being an advertised feature that’s supposed to just work), and Motorola shipped the Xoom without 4G and an unusable SD card slot. Apple would never ship a product like this, which is why the delay has been so great on the white iPhone (presumably an issue revolving around light sensitivity with the proximity and camera sensors). If Apple does have a software bug in their product, they promptly fix it with an update via iTunes. Aren’t those 3G Honeycomb tablets at the mercy of the carriers? Android feels messy - this is why the masses don’t want to buy these tablets.

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Fox News Charlotte Gives Us a Glimpse of Apple’s Server Farm

If the Apple data center speculation wasn’t enough, Charlotte local news channel WCCB-TV took a news anchor out to cover the Apple datacenter, which they erroneously report was intended strictly for iTunes and will take on Netflix in the video streaming business in part because of the massive scale. “That’s just too big to house only music files,” exclaims Israel Baldares. I don’t disagree that Apple will move into streaming video, however, to state it as fact is whole a different case of the Fox News crazies. Out of the speculation, however, comes a couple glimpses at the scale of Apple’s datacenter (and the outside of the building is probably all we’ll see for the time being). Couple this with Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s accompanying video, and we get a sense of the sheer size the server farm. As far as the inside goes, we do know that Apple has ordered an insane amount of storage, and has specific orders for custom equipment related to cooling and power. Tack this on to the fact they just pulled data center scalability expert Kevin Timmons from Microsoft, and you have yourselves some wild speculation concerning what Apple might do with lots of unused land.

Apple is only using a third of the 180 acres they own, not including the 70 acres they’ve purchased across the street. It’s speculated Apple could build an East Coast Apple campus, and build a data center in parallel to the building that’s constructed now, giving them a million square feet of space to work with. Apple’s data center is readying to launch, and in the meantime you can get a glimpse at the current state of their data center via the video after the break.

[Fortune via TUAW]

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Fast Switching Between Multiple iTunes Accounts→

Fast Switching Between Multiple iTunes Accounts

Redditor TinyLebowski shares an AppleScript that, once configured and run, will allow you to switch to another iTunes account in 2 seconds, without typing anything. This is particularly useful for people like me who own several iTunes accounts (especially for App Store and iTunes movie releases) and think iTunes should have an option to “fast switch” between accounts – even on different international Stores. This AppleScript works as advertised and, if you are switching to an international store, you’ll just have to hit the Ok button. If the Store is the same, you won’t have to hit anything and the login process will be automatic.

Beware, though: your Apple ID and password are stored in plain text inside the script. Of course this is meant to be saved on your local machine, assuming only you have access to that. However, saving the script as an “application” bundle might provide an additional security measure (that is, someone will have to “show package contents” and navigate through folders to see the main script).

I love it. Check out the full AppleScript here.

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Apple Testing iPhone On T-Mobile USA With A5 Processor?

A series of photos posted earlier today by Boy Genius Report show an unreleased white iPhone 4 unit running on T-Mobile USA network. The device looks like an iPhone 4, although, as BGR notes, the proximity sensor looks different than the one shown in the (allegedly) final white iPhone 4 that’s been already sold in the UK. BGR claims the device, just like the Vietnamese videos from last week, is running an old and internal test version of iOS 4, confirmed by the several Apple internal and field-testing applications like Radar and Apple Connect or the preference panels to measure the performances of the device.

That’s right, you’re looking at photos of an iPhone prototype with T-Mobile USA 3G bands. The actual internal model is N94, and if you remember, the Verizon model is N92 while the standard GSM variant is N90. We have verified that the phone itself is running a test version of Apple’s iOS, much like the one we saw in those videos from Vietnam, and it includes internal Apple test apps like Radar and Apple’s employee directory app. Additionally, the front of the white iPhone pictured looks a little different from the photos of the retail white iPhone 4 that surfaced recently — specifically, the proximity sensor has changed on the retail version.

The model number of this white iPhone 4 is N94, the same one that months ago was mentioned in some iOS 4.3 code strings related to the A5 chip – also implemented on the iPad 2. Whilst rumors point to the white iPhone 4 finally being released on April 27th, the N94 model number and A5 processor indicate this might be an updated version of the iPhone 4 coming out later this year – perhaps the “iPhone 4S” select game developers are already testing ahead of the WWDC and the iOS 5 announcement. It’s also worth remembering that AT&T has filed documents in the US to acquire T-Mobile – if the two networks merge, the iPhone will eventually work on the old T-Mobile network (which currently has different radios and frequencies than AT&T). However, the acquisition is rumored to take several months before completion, and Apple could release an iPhone 5 / iPhone 4S this Fall that also runs on the existing T-Mobile network.

Check out the full gallery of leaked shots here.

AppSumo: Circus Ponies NoteBook Giveaway

One of the greatest things about owning a Mac is having access to some really splendid, nay, spectacular software that can really do wonders for your workflow. Students in particular have it incredibly easy, especially if they are utilizing the application I’m going to gawk about today. You may have heard about Circus Ponies NoteBook through one of my favorite podcasts, the Mac Geek Gab, and today AppSumo is giving anyone who signs up with their email one hell of a discount at 50%. This isn’t cheap software: NoteBook 3.0 is some of the most powerful note taking software you can download for your Mac, and what’s regularly $49.95 for a regular license is half off for $25 for the next couple of days.

Now, you could get by with a combination of free applications, burying word documents in Dropbox, or maybe you’re just stuck in plain text. But until you’ve tried NoteBook, let’s wash away these perceptions of what a great notes application really is. Imagine having a table of contents that’s focused on search, organizes your topics, indexes everything you write, dates it, stamps it, you can sticky note it, you can add documents, create to do lists, and organize just about anything on styled paper, and that isn’t even half of it. I’d say it’s kind of like the Mac’s own version of Microsoft OneNote, but organized in such a way that it works more like an outlining tool, and we can combine that with files, graphs, and all of kinds of starting templates to really create the perfect set of notes. This is one information silo you shouldn’t be afraid of, and past the break we’re going hands on to see everything that you can do with NoteBook, and how you could want one of ten copies.

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The Problems with a Retina Display on the Mac→

The Problems with a Retina Display on the Mac

If Apple were to do something like the above, the biggest question I would have is whether or not they’d put something into place for users who genuinely do want much smaller UI elements and much more screen real estate. That is, if Apple were to double their UI, and then use the 2×1080p resolution for the 27-inch iMac, there’s a sense in which current 27-inch iMac users would feel like they were actually losing screen real estate from their current 2560 × 1440 displays. But that’s why Apple’s Apple and I’m a guy writing about them: if and when Retina Displays do come to the Mac, they will have thought that issue through and either solved it, or decided that the set of users who would be upset by it isn’t a large enough group to hold other users back.

Tim Ricchuiti at The Elaborated makes a great case for the issues Apple would have to overcome in implementing higher resolution displays (let’s just call them Retina Displays for the sake of the argument) on Macs: at 3200 x 2000 pixels (that’s the resolution of the default wallpaper image found in the Lion betas, and no Mac or Apple-branded screen currently ships with such pixel density), UI elements on a MacBook Pro 15” would look small, unless Apple comes out with a solution to offer same-size graphics, on a higher-res screen. On the iPhone 4, for example, they allowed developers to create “2x” graphics that, with double the pixels on the iPhone 4, look the same size of iPhone 3GS graphics. But how would you do that on a Mac, where users can decide to install apps both from the web and the Mac App Store, thus preventing Apple from enforcing a 2x standard? Plus, how could Apple offer a way to switch between bigger and smaller UI elements? A desktop ecosystem like OS X with computers featuring much bigger displays than iOS devices raises more questions over the implementation and usage of Retina Display.

Make sure to check out Tim’s full article here. Whilst “HiDPI display modes” were previously rumored to be finding their way to new Mac screens relatively soon, we think Apple will have to find a solution to the problems with a Retina Display on the iPad first. [via Daring Fireball]

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iPhone 5 To Feature 3.7-inch Screen, Larger Home Button, Thinner Design?

A new report posted by Joshua Topolsky at This Is My Next seems to contradict the rumors we’ve been hearing in the past weeks in describing the next-generation iPhone – so far dubbed iPhone 5 – as a complete redesign of the existing iPhone 4 hardware. The report comes with a mockup based on sketches and descriptions the website received by multiple sources over the past weeks, and shows a dramatically thinner device with a “thick to thin” design from top to bottom similar to MacBook Air’s main body, and a larger multitouch display set at approximately 3.7 inches. The change in size would allow Apple to keep the existing Retina Display branding with a drop to 312ppi (iPhone 4 features 326ppi, and Apple claims a “Retina Display” can be called so starting at 300ppi on an iPhone), and it’s something that’s been rumored before and even spotted in allegedly leaked Apple design documents.

Our sources say the new model (or at least one of the new designs in testing) looks “more like the iPod touch than the iPhone 4.” The phone will be thinner than the iPhone 4, and may have a “teardrop” shape which goes from thick to thin (something along the lines of the MacBook Air profile).

This Is My Next also claims the Home button will become larger, doubling as a “gesture area” for a series of multitouch commands likely inspired by the ones introduced in the iOS 4.3 developer betas. Apple was rumored to be considering an early departure for the Home button, but the website claims the company has been playing around with various prototypes and design iterations, and one of them indeed sports a larger, redesigned version of the Home button. With a larger, almost edge-to-edge screen, Apple is apparently also experimenting with the idea of earpieces and sensors hidden directly behind the display’s glass:

Furthermore, we’re hearing that the screen on the device will occupy the entire (or near to it) front of the phone, meaning almost no bezel. Our source says the company is doing very “interesting things” with bonded glass technology, and has been exploring designs where the earpiece and sensors are somehow behind the screen itself, making for a device where the display is actually edge-to-edge.

Other details reported by This Is My Next include a “swipe area” for NFC capabilities, inductive charging and world-phone functionality with a global CDMA-GSM chipset. Again, these features have been in the rumor mill before, but This Is My Next’s report is mostly interesting because of the design speculation included in the article that contradicts several rumors we’ve recently heard. And even if the design may never make it to the final version of the iPhone 5, TIMN says it’s being tested by Apple:

The versions of devices our sources are seeing could be design prototypes and not production-ready phones. Still, there are strong indications that Apple will surprise a public that’s expecting a bump more along the lines of the 3G to 3GS — and this is some insight into where those designs might be headed.