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Rumor Has It: Apple Sharing Tablet Info With Australian Media?

Written on October 27, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and No one has commented

The tablet rumor mill is heating up, which is in keeping with the early 2010 release date that’s been mentioned in earlier reports. The latest news to hit the web is that Apple has been talking to the Australian media about content provision for the fanboi device of legend.
The news comes via Australian paper The [...]

Apple Planning to Sync Video Across Devices

Written on October 16, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 5 people have commented

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office posted on Thursday a very interesting application from Apple, one which shows that MobileMe could have far more in store than just personal info synchronization. Movie playback position syncing appears to be on the way, so long as this patent sees its way to fruition, which isn’t always the [...]

iTunes Alternative DoubleTwist Offers Amazon.com MP3 Store

Written on October 08, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 10 people have commented

We’ve covered doubleTwist in the past, and for a time I even used it as my primary media management solution on my Mac, until iTunes 9 drew my wondering eye back to familiar territory. Now there’s even reason to go back to the iTunes competitor, as doubleTwist has just introduced Amazon MP3 store compatibility.
doubleTwist already [...]

Future Fodder: Apple TV the Center of Your Media Universe

Written on September 29, 2009 by Alfredo Padilla and 32 people have commented

Looking through Apple’s current lineup of products, there’s one that stands out as the sad little orphan: the Apple TV. Apple itself has gone out of its way to lower expectations for this product, with Steve Jobs calling it a “hobby.”
The problem with the Apple TV is that its feature set just isn’t particularly compelling. [...]

iTunes 9: At Home With Home Sharing

Written on September 11, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 78 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 [...]

Rumor Has It: Apple Working On New Media File Format

Written on August 10, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 28 people have commented

There is very little to get excited about when it comes to new media file formats, for the average person. Sure, they offer better compression, better quality, smaller file sizes, etc., but they also cause headaches, render hardware obsolete, and just generally inconvenience everyday computer users. Apple is reportedly working on its own new format, [...]

Apple Releases New Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio

Written on July 23, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 3 people have commented

Today, Apple released a huge update for its Pro series of audio/video editing applications, including both the Final Cut and Logic Studio suites of applications. People (and businesses) who need the extra muscle of Pro applications (as compared with the iLife suite, for example) will be happy to note that with this latest update, Apple [...]

Microsoft Announces Zune HD: So What?

Written on May 27, 2009 by Liam Cassidy and 23 people have commented

Your first question might be, “Isn’t Zune dead already?” Or you might be wondering, “Why does Microsoft bother?” You might even be asking why there’s a report about Zune on TheAppleBlog.
Well, first the news. CNET’s Ina Fried reported yesterday that Microsoft has confirmed its long-rumored plans to launch an HD version of its portable music [...]

Microsoft Finally Giving iPod Touch a Serious Competitor?

Written on May 18, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 20 people have commented

Apple isn’t the only company enjoying a storm of recent hardware rumors. Its chief competitor, Microsoft, is also under scrutiny due to whispers concerning a new addition to its Zune line of portable media players. Early reports gave the device HD playback capabilities, but little else was known about what it might offer. A new [...]

Simplify Music 2.0 Does What iTunes and iPhone Should Do Natively

Written on April 30, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 2 people have commented

Around when I first got my iPhone, I used to use Simplify Media to really wow anyone who cared to listen to me gloat about my new toy. The app, if you’ve never heard of it, allows you to stream your home iTunes library from any computer with the desktop client installed directly to your [...]

doubleTwist Takes Jab at iTunes Tyranny

Written on February 26, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 7 people have commented

Look out iTunes, there’s a brand new media manager in town, in the form of a public beta just released for OS X. The program is called doubleTwist, and it’s the brainchild of anti-DRM crusader “DVD” Jon Johansen.
Ars Technica had a look at it in length, and it seems to be fairly promising. The idea [...]

iLife ‘09 Shipping, It is Indeed Now Late January

Written on January 26, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 5 people have commented

Looks like Apple’s estimate of a late January ship date for iLife ‘09 is coming true after all, since customers who ordered the application suite have begun to get notices that their copies are now shipping. Those customers will likely receive their copies of the product early this week, with official word from Apple putting [...]

Media Messaging in the UK With iPhoneMMS

Written on January 07, 2009 by David Appleyard and 3 people have commented

The iPhone’s lack of any MMS capabilities was said to be on account of the versatile and full featured email support. If it’s so simple to send photos via email, why pay extra to send them via MMS?
While that is a valid argument to a certain extent, the two services remain predominantly different; e-mail is [...]

OrbLive Media Streamer for iPhone

Written on November 20, 2008 by Josh Pigford and No one has commented

Orb Networks has officially announced the availability of their OrbLive 2.0 app for iPhone/iPod touch.
OrbLive enables users to stream media content from their computer — music, internet radio stations, videos, photos, webcam streams, and even live TV (with a TV Tuner) — to their touch device over Wi-Fi and 2G/3G cellular networks. Working in conjunction [...]

Using Time Capsule as a Media Drive

Written on October 17, 2008 by David Appleyard and 33 people have commented

As someone with a large media collection (around 550GB), I’m always looking for inventive new ways to store, backup and stream all my content.
One of my main annoyances with simply storing media on an external drive is that you obviously need to have the device physically plugged in. My Lacie Drive worked well, but was [...]

Run Quicktime Full Screen on a Secondary Display

Written on July 23, 2008 by Jenny Kortina and 18 people have commented

I have a 32″ Westinghouse HDTV sitting right next to my computer which I often hook up to use as a secondary monitor or an external display. Up until now I had no idea how to make Quicktime full screen on it while using it as a secondary display.
Make Quicktime full screen while on [...]

Stream Music, Movies, and iPhotos to Xbox 360 (from a Mac!)

Written on May 21, 2008 by Jenny Kortina and 18 people have commented

I have a fairly large music and movie collection, and a fairly nice TV/stereo setup in the family room. To watch my movies and listen to my music on the good TV and stereo I could hook my Macbook Air up to the TV each time, but who wants to do that? Fortunately, [...]

More on Accessibility: “Captioning Sucks”

Written on April 28, 2008 by Jason Terhorst and 1 person has commented

Closed captioning is a technology that’s been around for a few decades, but it’s changed very little since then. The techniques and processes behind the scenes are even still roughly the same as they were in the beginning. Some Canadians have been complaining that the quality of their captions are even worse than those in [...]

Reflections on another Tuesday at Macworld

Written on January 17, 2008 by Eddie Hargreaves and 11 people have commented

This is the fifth year I’ve attended Macworld Expo on the day of the keynote, and it definitely wasn’t as exciting as 2007. But after last year’s introduction of the long-rumored iPhone, how could it be?
Of course, another big difference is that I didn’t get into the keynote this year. There’s always a disconnect between [...]

Dudes, It’s AAPL, Not APPL!

Written on October 08, 2007 by Louis Gray and 14 people have commented

I have a major pet peeve with people who constantly refer to Apple’s stock as “APPL” instead of its true stock ticker, “AAPL”. While it just might make more sense for it to be APPL, the truth is that it’s not. So when I see news media, stock promoters and others talk about whether Apple’s [...]