Written by Benny Ling | 03 January 2012
Posted in Apple

Fantastic long-form reading from Wired, who go in-depth about Dropbox and how it squares off with Apple's own iCloud. Dropbox has been a great solution for keeping files in sync across different devices, and now iCloud does a very similar job although it's not quite as transparent as the Dropbox solution is. MobileMe was never designed for the cloud — but iCloud is the cloud, all the way.

A handy Apple support article details iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match availability by country. Taking a glance over the list it seems residents of New Zealand can re-download everything bar TV shows again, and iTunes Match also seems to be available in your country — which is more than can be said for a few other countries on that list.

Written by Benny Ling | 02 January 2012
Posted in Apple

The Apple iTV might not be here yet, but as the rumours start to fly people find themselves asking what the Apple TV will have to do to win over the hearts and minds of consumers the world over. GigaOM kick off the show by saying that it's not about the range of content available, but about the overall experience that the iTV offers to consumers. Then again, Apple has always been about the experience — the content just magically follows.

From 9 to 5 Mac: "Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design Jonathan Ive can add a new title to his resume: Sir Jonathan Ive." Sir Jonathan was awarded his knighthood in the United Kingdom in the New Year Honours List, and his response to his new knighthood was "absolutely thrilling".

Written by Benny Ling | 23 December 2011
Posted in Apple

Exactly three days and fifteen years ago, Apple purchased a little software company called NeXT. Later, they would integrate NeXTSTEP into their own operating system, and a few more years later, that operating system would be called OS X — and still contain fragments from an operating system that was the very first stepping stone towards the operating system we all know and love today.

Firefox 9 has been released, and it brings support for gestures for back and forward page navigation under Lion, just like the same features that have been Chrome and Safari for the past few versions. There's also faster javascript performance, and a full-screen view that isn't quite the Lion standard of one app.

OS X Daily take you through the process to do a batch resize of photos with Automator, where you can scale images using a simple Automator workflow. I've been using a similar method (without all the fanciness of the Automator stand-alone app), and it works exactly as described.

Steve Jobs once said "people who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint", and even went as far as implying that any form of projected media on a screen isn't appropriate for any kind of presentation.

Just a short note about NZMac.com and news posts over the Christmas and New Year's holiday period: there won't be any news posts until early January. From yours truly and on behalf of the team at NZ Tech Media, have an excellent holiday period, and we'll hope to see you sometime in the New Year.

Written by Benny Ling | 22 December 2011
Posted in Apple

The New York Times is saying Apple has conceptualised what may eventuate as wearable devices. Spurred on (or, at least otherwise influenced) by the enormous success of what has become the iPod nano watch phenomenon, Apple might even be in the prototype stage of wearable devices that interact with other Apple hardware — perhaps an iPod nano that talks to the iPhone.

Apple has seeded yet another beta of Mac OS X 10.7.3 to developers. Build 11D36 has a build number that's just three builds above the previous seed, comes with no known issues, and the delta update from 10.7.2 weighs in at just under 1GB. Apple just squeezed one more beta just before Christmas.

Written by Benny Ling | 21 December 2011
Posted in Apple

The deal between Apple and Israeli flash manufacturing company Anobit isn't just a rumour anymore, as Apple has reportedly sealed the deal for the princely sum of some $500 million. The acquisition is the second non-software of its kind since the PA Semi acquisition a few years ago, and likely represents what Apple is likely to massively improve on in the future.

Engadget has a great interview with Ronald Wayne, the third founder of Apple who later sold his share of the company for a mere $2300. Wayne recently showed off pictures of original Apple designs, which included diagrams and concepts of Apple products — some of which made it to market, some of which just stayed as concepts.

Written by Benny Ling | 20 December 2011
Posted in Apple

There's a new Apple product doing the rounds on the rumour blogs, and it's called the iTV. We've already heard the name once before, but this time it's for real: the Wall Street Journal thinks they've nailed down exactly what the iTV will be, including facts like how it will be very dependent on the cloud, will integrate with iOS devices, have an upgraded version of AirPlay, and more.

Steve Wozniak has been recorded as saying structured societies can't produce great companies like Apple, as they just don't contain the right ecosystem for innovation like Apple's. Don't get me wrong — it's not about the people, it's about what's seen as the "norm" — where are the crazy ones? The misfits? The square pegs in the round holes?

Written by Benny Ling | 19 December 2011
Posted in Apple

Apple has seeded the third beta of 10.7.3 to developers. The new build (11D33) follows builds 11D16 and 11D24, and most likely means 10.7.3 will hit public machines sooner, rather than later. The release notes for the latest build state that there are no known issues, and the focus areas are Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight, and Safari.

What, exactly, is a telephonic MacBook? Because according to Patently Apple, Apple has won patents for something called a "telephonic MacBook" as well as some other patents related to the Magic Mouse. It seems like some of the patents deal with wireless connectivity on the MacBook side, with the Magic Mouse patents covering the whole optical-sensing surface of the Magic Mouse.

Written by Benny Ling | 16 December 2011
Posted in Apple

Apple are reportedly in talks to purchase Israeli flash memory company for in excess of $400 million, and AppleInsider take a look at why Apple are making the move. Turns out, Apple are just interested in "packing more storage capacity into Mac and iOS devices at lower prices, with the same level of component reliability and longevity". Like the PA Semi acquisition back in 2008, we probably won't see the fruits of this (not-confirmed yet) acquisition for the next few years.

The documents that founded Apple Computer in 1976 have been sold at auction in New York for a staggering $1.6 million, over ten times the pre-sale estimate. Jump forward thirty years, and that 1.6 million is a mere drop in the ocean of Apple's cash reserves — and Apple itself is the most valuable publicly-traded company on the planet. If that doesn't give you an idea of how far we've come, then I'm not sure what does.

Written by Benny Ling | 15 December 2011
Posted in Apple

Apple were bound to take this resolution-doubling retina display business to the Macs eventually, and now DigiTimes says we could see a retina-display MacBook Pro with 2880x1800 resolution sometime in Q2 2012. Note that that's a resolution bigger than any normal 30" display currently in production — which means Apple will be once again pushing the envelope on screen display tech (their first time was with the iPad 3 retina display).

If you're doing any kind of customer support via email, you would be mad not to use a tool like TextExpander to quickly reply with canned responses to the most common queries. However, there's another way — Smoking Apples has reviewed Replies for Mac, an email client that takes the hard work out of responding to support emails by allowing users to re-use previously-sent snippets from emails.

Written by Benny Ling | 14 December 2011
Posted in Apple

The Mac App Store has hit the magical 100 million downloads mark, making Apple the largest software retailer in the US, at least according to The Loop. The Loop arrived at this conclusion based on the fact that NPD reported that sales of boxed software in the US reached 50 million copies — but not only is Apple (probably) the largest software retailer in the US, all of those 100 million downloads don't include Lion, updates to existing apps, nor downloads to other authorised Macs.

TechCrunch are saying Apple might be in talks to purchase an Israeli flash memory company, Anobit. The supposed acquisition will be something to the tune of $400-500 million, and will make Anobit the first non-software company acquisition since PA Semi, and the first acquisition in Israel.