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Blu-Ray App for iPhone Arrives Courtesy of Universal

Written on November 11, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 8 people have commented

Universal Media announced awhile ago that it would be introducing iPhone control into some of its Blu-ray titles, starting with “Fast & Furious,” the Vin Diesel/Paul Walker romp that saw the lucrative car racing series return to its humble origins. Now, Universal is extending the iPhone/Blu-ray connection to a much wider swath of its library [...]

iTunes 9: At Home With Home Sharing

Written on September 11, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 79 people have commented

For me, the Home Sharing feature introduced in iTunes 9 has been a long time coming. I’ve always run at least two Macs, one desktop and one notebook, and over the years I’ve tried various solutions for sharing media between multiple machines.
Of course, there was always the option of sharing your library on your home [...]

iTunes 9 Genius: It’s in the Mix

Written on September 10, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 62 people have commented

Having spent a day with iTunes 9 and OS 3.1 on an iPhone and iPod touch, I find that I am completely smitten with a feature I pretty much completely ignored before yesterday. I’m referring to Genius, which hadn’t lived up to its name until this latest retooling.
Since upgrading to iTunes 9, I’ve used Genius [...]

iPod Nano Gains Camera, Microphone and Speaker, Larger Screen

Written on September 09, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 17 people have commented

So it seems like case manufacturers were only half right when it came to their designs for new iPods. The iPod touch didn’t get a camera at today’s special “Rock and Roll” Apple event, but the iPod nano did.
Not only that, but it also got a built-in mic and speaker, which makes sense when you [...]

Snow Leopard Features Suggest It’s a Touchscreen OS

Written on September 01, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 8 people have commented

If you’ve got one of Axiotron’s awesome Modbooks, and you’re running Snow Leopard, you may have already stumbled across a few features that make your Mac so much easier to use. It’s unlikely Apple had Axiotron in mind when it included these features, though, so what’s the real story here?
Cult of Mac believes the features [...]

Snow Leopard: A Brief Introduction to the New Big Cat

Written on August 28, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 35 people have commented

I’m now running OS X 10.5.6 on two of my three eligible Macs (the fourth is a 12-inch PowerBook G4), and so far, I couldn’t be happier. I haven’t run into any nasty compatibility issues or really disastrous bugs (although Finder once auto-quit and restarted when I was fiddling with the menu bar), and general [...]

Twitterrific Update Brings Bags of New Stuff

Written on August 24, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 5 people have commented

I’m fickle, always switching allegiances to Twitter apps. I’ve been jumping between Tweetie and SimplyTweet for months. Between them, they meet all my tweeting needs. But, long before they existed, there was Twitterrific. It’s been installed on every one of my iPhones, but rarely used. That’s about to change.
Made by Mac stalwart Iconfactory, Twitterrific is [...]

Crystal Ball: What’s Coming in the Next iPhone?

Written on July 09, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 59 people have commented

Yes, the iPhone 3GS is still hot out of the oven (too hot, perhaps?), but if you’re a true gadget addict, then you probably can’t help but think ahead to what Apple could possibly cram into the next iteration to ensure consumer mouths continue to drool. Of course, if you’re like me and you were [...]

iPhone OS 3.0: Some Things You Knew, and Some You Didn’t

Written on June 08, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 49 people have commented

A lot of this will not be news to those of you who’ve either experienced the iPhone OS 3.0 beta first-hand, or who’ve read about it here on TheAppleBlog or elsewhere, but the official announcement of what features will be coming via the final release version of 3.0 (dropping June 17) came today via the [...]

Apple Freezes Snow Leopard APIs, Makes Mac Drives Accessible Under Boot Camp

Written on May 12, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 1 person has commented

Snow Leopard is starting to settle down into a relatively stable piece of software that will likely resemble the final release version, according to Engadget. Some speculate that it could receive retail release alongside iPhone OS 3.0 as soon as WWDC, which takes place in early June.
Like iPhone OS 3.0, Apple is now giving developers [...]

Apple Introduces New Features in iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 3

Written on April 27, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 8 people have commented

Running a new beta on the iPhone is a little like being a kid with very loving but forgetful parents during Easter. You can bet that there are lots of eggs hidden around, but you’ll probably still be finding some long after the actual hunt is over. Since Apple doesn’t come right out and tell [...]

iMovie 8.0.1 Update Brings Unadvertised Feature Changes

Written on March 30, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 7 people have commented

Over the weekend, Apple hit us Mac owners with a slew of updates for their iLife ‘09 suite of applications, all of which were described by Software Update as providing little more than stability improvements and minor issue resolution. It would seem that Apple was being modest with its descriptions, however, especially regarding iMovie 8.0.1, [...]

Genius Extended to Movies and TV in iTunes 8.1

Written on March 25, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 3 people have commented

I still have a lot of music-savvy friends who deny the validity of the the name Genius for Apple’s recently implemented iTunes music recommendation engine, but regardless of how appropriate the name may be, the service has now been turned on for movies and TV, too. That means selecting any movie or TV show in [...]

First Look: iPhone OS 3.0 Beta

Written on March 19, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 23 people have commented

Being enrolled in the iPhone Developer Program, I was lucky enough to have access to the iPhone 3.0 pre-release beta, which I installed on my iPod touch as soon as Apple’s servers recovered from the initial shock. I was a little hesitant to put it on my iPhone 3G right away, since it is my [...]

Apple’s iPhone 3.0 Designed to Defend Against Palm Pre

Written on March 16, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 17 people have commented

With trademark confidence, Kevin Rose was pretty vocal about what we could expect to see from the new iPhone 3.0 software this Tuesday, and he claims to have it on good authority from a source who’s “been right before.” The basic purpose of the update, according to Rose, is to anticipate and match features that [...]

A Look at Snow Leopard: New Features From the Latest Build

Written on February 25, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 36 people have commented

World of Apple this week has been kind enough to post a series of screenshots taken from the latest build of Snow Leopard that show off some of the new features coming in Apple’s latest OS revision. While Snow Leopard is being billed more as a streamlined and smoothed-out version of OS X 10.5, there [...]

Skype 2.8 Beta Goes Live, Introduces Mac Exclusive Features

Written on January 06, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 3 people have commented

One of the early treats of Macworld this year is the release of a new Skype beta which boasts some big improvements over the existing stable release. The beta was demoed during ShowStoppers yesterday at the Macworld trade show, and released today for public download. Among the improvements it brings are a few entirely new [...]

MMS for iPhone? It’s Already Here, Says Mobispine

Written on November 19, 2008 by Darrell Etherington and 58 people have commented

Multimedia messaging (MMS) is within reach for iPhone users, or at least that’s what Mobispine AB is saying via press release today.
The Stockholm-based mobile services company currently provides white lable RSS reader and Desktop SMS and MMS solutions to companies looking to get their own branded mobile service. Today they announced that they are now [...]

iPhone Shortcuts & Feature Requests

Written on October 20, 2008 by Arvin Dang and 8 people have commented

I love discovering things by accident. It makes me feel much more in tune with the device or operating system. So with any product I get my hands on, I immediately get to know it as well as I can. What can it do? What can’t it do? Are there any cool hidden features or [...]