Archive for June, 2007

As a prequel to a full-on review of the iPhone, me and a friend in San Francisco put together this quick segment of an unboxing and activation of everyone’s favorite new phone. In the video you can see the dock, all of the accessories, and the activation process. Soon to follow will be a full review of the iPhone with first impressions, usability, and some real world examples of this beauty in actual use.

Watch for the first video right after the jump and don’t forget to subscribe to MacApper’s full page feeds so you don’t miss any of our premium free content.

With all the iPhone hype I nearly forgot about the other portions of video I put together from the first ever Delicious Generation Party held June 13th in San Francisco. As I mentioned in the first segment the other offerings would have more interviews with developers. In today’s installment hear blurbs from Andrew Stone of Stone Design, Juan Alvarez of Cha Ching, one of the guys at Boinx Software, and more from Austin Sarner and John Casasanta. Some interesting comments and hints are dropped in this one and it’s really nice to see the people behind the apps and hear they’re take on things.

Well I suppose this post can serve as my obligatory iPhone release day links free-for-all. Since I am in Canada, I was not able to stand in line today but I did manage to talk managing editor Jordan Golson to grab me one when he got his in Boston. When I get back home to Bangkok in 2 weeks I should be one of the few guys in Asia to actually have one of these bad boys. Mind you it will be just a beautiful brick until someone back engineers the iPhone so it can be unlocked from Cingular. My money is on this being accomplished in under 2 weeks but I guess we’ll see!

In the mean time you can bet I will be watching the post-iPhone hype machine pretty damn closely. For now here are the most compelling iPhone related articles I found today. I will add to these if I find some more worthy meat and potatoes, but here’s how the iPhone’s US release is looking so far…

Since Mac OS X 10.3 we have had Fast User Switching, the feature which allows more than one use to be logged in to their accounts on a Mac at the same time. In case you’re unfamiliar with the idea, imagine the following: you are busy writing something on your iMac and your wife comes in to the room to check her email. Instead of saving your work and logging out so she can log in to her account to check her email, you just step aside and let her log in without killing your work session. OS X gives you a neat-o cube animation as you switch users and, lickity-split, everyone gets what they need.

If you’re like me, you’re frequently bored, have obnoxious siblings, have a never-ending to-do list, and have more Mac Applications than the stars in the sky. My applications folder is an unorganized mess. This folder does not resemble my personality, as I like everything up to date and orderly. MacFreeware Update helps me keep my applications as updated as possible.

MacFreeware Update waits in your menubar for the chance to be used. There are two ways of updating with this program. 1) You can activate a daemon to check for updates every hour, day, week, or month. 2) You can select the “check for updates” button located on the main window.

So for the past year or two I’ve been using a Griffin RoadTrip to send songs from my iPod to the car radio. I bought the RoadTrip after having a bad experience with an iTrip, one of the early models that hooked into the top of my 3G iPod. The iTrip had a weak signal, tons of interference, and always ended up playing my music with static mixed in. After a few years, I’ve decided to revisit the iTrip, using one of the latest and greatest versions, the iTrip Auto from Griffin Technology.

How many times have you looked in finder and scoured your hard drive for a little more storage space? Everyone at one time or another has run out of storage space or for that matter needed extra USB/1394 ports to plug in peripherals. That’s where NewerTechnology’s miniStack V2 External Hard Drive Enclosure and Hub come in. As referenced on NewerTech’s website the miniStack V2 will:

“Expand the abilities and storage capacity of your computer without cluttering your desk. The Newer Technology miniStack V2 is just the accessory you need to do it all for your computer.

In the midst of the excitement surrounding arguably one of Apple’s very largest product roll-outs, the iPhone, we still are left to wonder if and when we will see third parties able to develop native Cocoa apps for the hot little device. During one of the many evening parties which took place during WWDC I overheard something very interesting from a key member of the iPhone development team that answers at least part of our question.

Starting just before WWDC the entire Mac world was abuzz with talk of the iPhone. Would there be an iPhone SDK? Would there be demo units for developers to test on? Questions and curiosity permeated almost every Mac user. Developers attending WWDC and even San Francisco locals wondered if they’d see iPhones popping out of the pockets of proud Apple Engineers lucky enough to be using the pre-release units. At the peak of this fervor, on June 13, an image was posted to Flickr of a young man riding the Caltrain and using an iPhone. Seeing the man’s short, dark hair and characteristic five o’clock shadow many concluded this was Mike Matas, former Delicious Monster UI designer and current Apple UI guru, using the pre-release iPhone on his commute. Well, the “unofficial” details on the iPhone-Caltrain photo situation, from sources at Apple are as follows…

Whenever I’m expecting a package, I always get tired of loading various web sites just to check the status of my delivery. The Delivery Status widget by Mike Piontek is designed to solve this problem by doing all the work for you. The widget keeps the updated tracking information for any trackable package on your dashboard for easy access. All you have to do is fill out the information on the back of the widget (which includes an option as to how often you want updates) and the rest is taken care of for you (including Growl notifications). You can even open a second copy, allowing you to track multiple packages.

Gedeon Maheux, Co-Founder of the Icon Factory, has sent out a plea for your help. The Icon Factory wants to see their hit Mac puzzle game, Frenzic, be available for play on the iPhone. Unfortunately, as you’ve probably heard, Apple is not letting third party developers like the Icon Factory create Cocoa based software for the iPhone. I met Craig Hockenberry also of Icon Factory at WWDC this year and we discussed how awesome Frenzic would be on the iPhone. Think about it! It’s a viciously addictive casual puzzle game—great for killing a few minutes before class or on the bus. Frenzic’s user interface would work perfectly with the iPhone’s beautiful multi-touch screen. Finally, Frenzic has an awesome web-based leaderboard where iPhone toting folks everywhere could battle it out with each other and with Mac users for the title of best Frenzic player in the world. To me this sounds like a wicked combination… “A Match Made In Geek Heaven“.

Many Mac users are aware of Bonjour, Apple’s networking technology. Bonjour is a simple utility integrated into OS X which allows for “zero-configuration” networking; very useful for sharing files over a network. Picnic is a utility which simplifies, encapsulates and even enhances this feature into a very polished interface. The app allows you to create shared folders which are then synced between both yourself, and the specified folder on another Mac.

Quick, what is the best way to find great software for your Mac?

MacApper, of course. But if you’ve read every article we’ve got and your insane thirst for insanely great software has not yet been quenched, where do you turn? The answer lies in your menu bar, thanks to a great little piece of software called MUMenu.

I’ve been horribly addicted to my RSS feeds and news feeds for years. As far as RSS readers are concerned, I’ve tried a lot of them - I’ve used NetNewsWire, NewsFire, Vienna and a bunch of other obscure ones that I can’t even remember. Most recently though, I’ve been using Google Reader, a web-based service.

Google Reader is a free RSS aggregator web app that integrates with your personalized iGoogle home page, and can be accessed from essentially any computer or phone with an internet connection and a web browser. This makes it pretty handy, though it can be annoying to have to open a browser window to check your feeds - it’s an obtrusive step away from the Mac desktop-app experience.

I hinted at this during our recent MacApper podcast, and I am super stoked we are able to share this with everyone. This was put together on short notice in collaboration with some of the staff here at MacApper. The following video was recorded during the first ever Delicious Generation Party which was held June 13th in San Francisco. Attending the party were most of the developers from WWDC, and there is lots of impromptu and casual chats with the clever people who bring us all of our favorite apps and programs. This video is part I and during the week we will reveal two more.