Earlier today Apple seeded the seventh beta of OS X 10.6.7 (a Snow Leopard update, not Lion) and is available for developers at the Mac Dev Center. The build number is 10J868.
There are no known issues with the build and as has been a similar case with previous betas, Apple is asking developers to focus on Safari, Mac App Store, AirPort, Bonjour, SMB, and Graphics Drivers.
[Via 9to5 Mac]
Capo is one of the brilliant Mac apps that often gets overlooked because of its niche value for musicians that have the will to not just follow tabs on a reading sheet, but to actually tear apart songs and learn them by ear. Capo intrinsically is an odd product in this respect – if you’re learning music by ear, why do you need an aid? I’ll tell ya: there’s nothing like being able to scribble all over a song, create your own tabs, and actually study what’s in front of you. You might want to fondle iTunes as you replay parts and study tracks, but you can ditch the pen and paper as you mark an important bridge, analyze the song’s chord progression, and figure out new riffs.
Last week I decided it was about time for me to subscribe to some podcasts I had been keeping an eye on, but never really considered as an option for my free time. Podcasts are so 2001, I know, but I’ve never subscribed regularly to any of them. Plus, I have noticed a dramatic increase in the quality of tech podcasts lately, mainly thanks to the empire built by 5by5’s Dan Benjamin and a few other gems like Minimal Mac’s Enough or Shawn Blanc’s Today. I have to admit, though, that it was the B&B Podcast (also by Shawn Blanc and Benjamin Brooks) to convince me to go ahead and finally enter the podcasting scene as an active listener. Read more
If you’re anything like me, you’re browsing through iTunes or Spotify all day searching for some music in your collection to send to your room’s speakers. Sometimes you spend so much time browsing albums and singles you own you even forget about the songs you wanted to play. Next, a $2.99 utility available in the Mac App Store, aims at solving this issue by providing a way to create a queue for your iTunes library so you’ll never forget about songs you want to listen to again. At the same time, it offers a neat solution to build a queue for artists and songs you’d like to check out in a specific orders.
The app plugs into your iTunes library with no setup required. It also looks very simple (perhaps a little too much) with only a list view being provided and that’s it. You can pick a song from iTunes and hit the Queue button to play it “next”. Another button lets you clear the queue entirely and Next can run in the menubar as well. The menubar icon has a shortcut to the song you’ve selected to play next, and if no song was picked the menu will display a “Random” button.
Next is a very easy way to manage songs in your iTunes queue, but I wish there was more attention to detail and UI design to make the app look better next to beautiful software like Ecoute or Spotify. Anyway, it does exactly what it’s supposed to, so you should give it a try.
If you wanted to use Rdio without the Adobe Air component (which I thought was pretty good), there is now an official Rdio player built for the OS X desktop. The custom Rdio interface takes on a life of its own by disobeying Aqua’s color scheme for the dark blue seen in Rdio’s online playback controls, and we’d be dipped if it didn’t look a little like iTunes. Similar to something like Songbird, Rdio enables users to browse the site through the music interface, and can scan your music collection just like the Air app did. If you can purchase individual songs, they’ll be added to your iTunes library.
Rdio isn’t available in the Mac App Store - the download is only available to Rdio subscribers through www.rdio.com. You can sign up for a free trial, then navigate to the Rdio for Mac page for a free download.
[via The Next Web, Read Write Web]
Not so popular over here in Italy but apparently widely recognized in the States, pay-as-you-go networks allow you to get a phone from shady stores / individuals with pre-paid credit to consume at your own needs. Personally I prefer to keep my iPhone in safe waters with a proper subscription and data usage, but there’s some people who really prefer the pre-paid option over a more “secure” carrier offer. As noted by Engadget, it is possible to make the CDMA Verizon iPhone run on Cricket’s pay-as-you-go network, but you’ll have to jailbreak your phone, install some utility to set up the process and let a Cricket guy flash the device’s memory for you. Hmm. Would you trust that?
Still, it’s possible. Check out the video proof below. Read more
According to The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, Apple is in the process of removing a series of boxed games and third-party Mac products from its retail stores to make room for other services that require space and additional employees. Namely, Apple has apparently decided to cut 32 games off the shelves and products like printers, hard drives and scanners to leave plenty of room for employees to work on the “personalized setups”, a service launched in January that allows customers to go through a friendly Mac setup process together with an Apple Store employee that will guide them through the first OS X installation, iTunes account creation and Mail setup.
Due to the popularity of the personalized service, Apple is expanding it and will need to make more room for employees to work with customers.
Among the products that will no longer be displayed in the retail stores are printers, scanners and possible some hard drives. These peripherals will still be stocked in the store and available if a customer requests them.
At the point of sale, the Apple salesperson will still recommend the customer purchase one of those peripherals if they feel it fits in with the customer’s purchase.
With the removal of 32 games from the Apple Store, the number of games being displayed on the shelves will go down to around 8 per store, according to The Loop. It also appears that employees will being suggesting customers to go look for games in the Mac App Store – again, a very easy way to promote the new digital online store in the heavily trafficked retail locations. Apple has also recently stopped selling boxed copies of MobileMe, which is now exclusively available online and it’s rumored to be revamped soon with a free version for iOS and Mac users.
A few weeks ago we talked about Socialcam, a new iOS and Android app from the creators of Justin.tv that’s aimed at revolutionizing the mobile video sharing space by offering a friendly user-experience heavily inspired by the current winner of mobile photo sharing apps, Instagram. Socialcam is finally available for free in the App Store and, after some quick tests, I can say this new app / service has a lot of potentialities to become the “Instagram for video”, but it needs a series of refinements in the settings to allow users to upload videos at the quality they want.
The strongest selling point of Instagram, in fact, is that it’s easy to use and, while images get compressed to enable faster uploading times on WiFi and 3G, users won’t notice the decrease in quality thanks to the filters provided by the app. Filters in Instagram are both a nice photographic addition and a way to “hide” the fact that photos are compressed at lower quality. Socialcam, however, doesn’t come with filters and videos are heavily compressed even when uploaded through WiFi. From what I’ve seen so far, this will make most videos look crappy on the iPhone 4 which, by the way, can actually do HD video recording. Socialcam should definitely offer some settings to allow users to upload and wait for the quality they want, as this could be great for videographers willing to share their creations on the go. Read more
We typically don’t do audio recordings in replacement or in conjunction with our written reviews, but I’ll make an exception. TinyVox is a very cool social tape deck for your iPhone or iPod touch that enables you to record audio in high or low quality, then publish those audio bits to social networking sites like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
