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Apple TV Launches In Italy and Switzerland, Coming Soon To Seven More Countries?

This morning we noticed the Apple TV was finally available in Italy and Switzerland. As noted by 9to5mac, though, the device will likely launch soon in seven more countries, maybe even tomorrow, as international Apple Stores are returning the same errors the Italian and Swiss ones were returning when the Apple TV wasn’t available last night:

We checked out all the Apple online stores to replicate what happened in Italy and Switzerland and sure enough Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Portugal, The Netherlands and Belgium are all displaying the same error message. What does this mean? It means that Apple’s second-generation Apple TV will be launching in those countries very soon, probably tomorrow, and maybe some HD movie rentals in iTunes as well.

We don’t know if the Apple Tv is ready just yet to appear in more countries, but surely the Apple online store suggests something’s moving, and fast. The Apple TV is doing great in the US thanks to its aggressive pricing and small form factor, although the promised AirPlay streaming functionality is still nowhere to be seen.

How To Sync Your Entire iTunes Library With Dropbox

Those who follow me on Twitter have probably read that I’ve been struggling in trying to make iTunes play nice with Dropbox. As I wrote many times here on MacStories in the past, I moved all the files and app databases I access on a daily basis into Dropbox, but iTunes was missing. I read in many forums and blog posts that making iTunes work fine with Dropbox sync across multiple computers was quite a mess, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to take the effort and spend hours messing with 80GB of music (and hours of uploads for my connection) and all those apps I have in my library. Fortunately, I don’t store movies in iTunes.

So as I wrote, I was having doubts about going Dropbox all the way with iTunes. The advantages of this method are obvious: you can sync your devices on multiple computers as long as Dropbox is updated to the latest version, you can check for app updates on any of your computers – you can add music to your library no matter the computer you’re using. With Dropbox, iTunes simply thinks it’s running on a single machine, while in fact you’re using it on multiple machines. I have a MacBook Pro and an iMac, but I’m sure the same method works on 2 or more computers.

There are some tricks you must know, however, and some steps you have to follow in order to make it work and avoid errors. iTunes is not exactly the most stable app for the Mac or the easiest to tweak: by default, it stores its database in a directory other than /Library (where most apps usually reside), it relies on a .xml library file that can easily be corrupted and if you go ahead and store app betas in your iTunes Library, you’ll have to deal with additional folders. In my experience, iTunes has turned out to be the hardest application to sync with Dropbox, but I think I’ve nailed it. Here’s how. Read more

Apple’s Ping Gains Twitter Support

Good news, Ping users: Apple’s music discovery service just got official Twitter support, according to the Twitter blog:

Starting today Ping, iTunes’ new social network for music, and Twitter are making it even easier for people to share music discoveries with their friends by putting Ping activity, song previews and links to purchase and download music from the iTunes Store right in their Tweets on Twitter.com.

Read more

Consumer Reports Can Recommend The New MacBook Air

Consumer Reports thinks the MacBook Air 11-inch is a very good computer in terms of ergonomics and display, it’s versatile and has good performances. As The Loop reports, in fact, Consumer Reports gave it a 67 out of 100 rating in its latest “Laptop Ratings & Reliability”, available to subscribers.

As The Loop points out, the highest computer in that category used to be the Toshiba Satellite with a 51 out of 100. Read more

iBooks Gift Cards Now On Sale in Apple Stores

iLounge noticed Apple is now selling iBooks gift cards in its retail stores. The cards were spotted in the Washington D.C. area Apple Store, and it’s an interesting move because regular iTunes Gift Cards worked just fine with the iBookStore.

I guess Apple wanted to make it clear that books can be bought with a gift card, and I assume those cards are going to be huge this holiday season. I still haven’t spotted them here in Italy, though.

Skyfire Makes $1 Million In First Weekend, CNN Interviews CEO

As noted by MobileCrunch, alternative 3rd party iPhone browser Skyfire did great in its first weekend in the App Store. Even though the app wasn’t exactly off to a great start (the developers had to pull the app as they couldn’t keep up with the server demand), it still managed to win the hearts of thousands of iPhone users who apparently needed a browser capable of playing Flash videos:

The company isn’t sharing exact numbers, but they did just tell me that their download numbers for their first weekend on the store were well over 300,000. At $2.99 a pop, that works out to one hell of a bounty. SkyFire isn’t walking away with that whole million, of course; Apple’s going to get their 30% cut, which brings SkyFire’s share down to somewhere between $600-700,000.

Read more

The iPad Protest

You can add this to the “iPad as a…” list. Spotted by 9to5mac, an iPad has been used in Lithuania during a protest against the government:

If the Western World use iPad for business and entertainment, in Lithuania the iPad is used by pensioners in demonstrations against the government.

Magical?

Return AirPrint Sharing To Mac OS X 10.6.5→

Return AirPrint Sharing To Mac OS X 10.6.5

Steven Troughton-Smith found a way to make printer sharing work on 10.6.5, but you’ll need an old developer version of the OS to enable it:

The files you need are:

/usr/libexec/cups/filter/urftopdf
/usr/share/cups/mime/apple.convs
/usr/share/cups/mime/apple.types

The final key thing is you have to remove and re-add your printer in the Print & Fax preferences pane.

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Instapaper 2.3 Available: Faster, OmniFocus Integration - Simply Better

What I consider the best app currently installed on my iPhone and iPad just got a lot better. With the 2.3 update (which is still propagating in iTunes as I’m writing this) developer Marco Arment introduced so many fixes, refinements, optimizations and new features it’s really hard to keep track of them. Instapaper basically got a lot better, both on the iPhone and on the iPad’s larger screen (perfect for reading, if you ask me).

You can now send articles to OmniFocus, QuickReader and all the previous sharing options have been fixed to work properly again. The app now also supports a “ihttp://” URL scheme: every time you find something interesting in Safari you want to send to Instapaper (assuming you can’t get the other options to work, such as the bookmarklet) just add an “i” before the regular URL and tap Go. Instapaper will open. Genius.

On the iPhone, the article list now includes a few lines of text like on the iPad. iPad updates are faster, I can confirm. The iPhone can now toggle the Dark mode from the font panel, and you can set the app to automatically switch to dark mode at night.

Seriously, you gotta take a look at the changelog yourself (embedded below) and go download Instapaper right now if you still haven’t. Highly recommended. Read more