Here is a summary of some recent highlights in the software world of Mac.

Bumpercar 2.0: Bumper has a minor upgrade this week, in itself not worth writing up. However, this reminded me to put a plug in for Bumpercar. I consider it an essential program if you have kids in your house. The way I use it is I have a logon on my iMac for the kids, and when goes into the kids user account Bumpercar launches automatically. You can define settings by your kids ages, I'm still on the "preschool" setting which is wonderful.

BumperCar: the Mac OS X Web browser just for kids. Offering unparalleled content-control and customization features, BumperCar is the most powerful Web browser for concerned educators and parents on the Macintosh.

ffmpegX 0.0.9x: ffmpegX is what I lovingly refer to as my video toolbox. It is a great tool for converting video. The author of ffmpegX, Major, has done a very commendable job in both offering a great deal of controls and settings in the program while keeping it easy to use and navigate through. I do have a short list of suggestions on how to improve and make this an even better video utility, but it's pretty darned useful as is. By the way, this is about the fastest encoder I've run across.


Microsoft Messenger 6: I have a several contacts who use Messenger exclusively, and it's a pretty good IM, especially on Windows. This marks the introduction of Messenger as a Universal Binary on the Mac. While Messenger now has ties to Microsoft Live there doesn't seem to be many changes to the actual GUI. An item of particular interest though, I was scouring a blog post on Microsoft today which talked about this new release of Messenger, and it sounds like AV is likely to be introduced on the Mac version of Messenger sooner than later. It will be really great to be able to have AV chats to Windows Messenger users. Now how about that UB version of Remote Desktop...


Apple's iTunes 7.0.1: While I have had no issue with the recently introduced iTunes 7 myself, I'm particularly troubled that Apple released this new version of iTunes and so many people seem to be having troubles with it. My hopes is that this is not a trend, and that Apple releases more applications without thoroughly debugging them. There is a large software company in Redmond Washington which has already perfected this habit, let's not infringe on them when it comes to releasing software that isn't ready for public consumption.

Apple's Aperture 1.5: Not more than a few months ago the Apple Rumormill was positive that Apple was disbanding the Aperture team and getting ready to abandon the application. Overall it has received very high marks from indepth reviews. As a newcomer to this space it seems to me that Apple has done a fantastic job in a short amount of time. I use and very much enjoy iPhoto, but I would dearly love have the money to buy Aperture, and the training to use it effectively. Most likely I'll wait for iPhoto'ture... aka iPhoto7, or maybe iPhoto8 or 9... etc. Editing images is an area where I think iPhoto needs improvement, and in using the industry standard IPTC tags, both items Aperture does of course.

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I don't currently pay for .Mac, it's a bit too expensive for my perceived benefits. Having said that, the upcoming .Mac webmail looks pretty sweet. That's not enough to make me subscribe, bit it's something in the right direction. Lately all I hear about .Mac is grumbling, hey if Apple can turn around Aperture into something great (Aperture 1.5 looks wonderful) then maybe there is hope for .Mac too.

Your Comments appreciated.
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I use LaunchBar, and love it. However, one function that QuickSilver has which I would like in LaunchBar is the QuickSilver Triggers. This lets you assign a key combination to do things directly. LaunchBar doesn't have a similar function today.

Soulver (really nice calculator) is something that I use most days, and I was looking for even a faster way to launch it than a launcher program like LaunchBar was capable of. My quest led me to a now 3 year old freeware utility called Xkeys. Thankfully it runs great on my Intel Mac with OS X 10.4.7.

Now I can just press my F5 key and in about a second Soulver is up and running. Perfect. There are a few other "Function Key" applets out there, but Xkeys is the only free one that I found.

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Growl is something that has really proved to be a fantastic thing for the Mac, I get frustrated now when applications don't support Growl. Fortunately there are some Growl fans out there who love the Camino browser. This Camino Growl method of notification is much cleaner and less obtrusive than the download manager. Check it out.


Growl is a cool tool for Mac OS X that provides notifications when an application needs your attention. If you start using Growl, you will probably find that you become totally dependent on it...

...and then you will be sad that a few of your favorite apps don't support it.

GrowlCamino is a plugin for the Camino web browser that posts Growl notifications at useful moments. It provides a convenient Growl-based replacement for Camino's Downloads window and popup blocker.

Download the latest version of GrowlCamino here, or see the installation instructions.

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For some unknown reason, every once in a while this glitch in OS X will happen to me. When I right click on a file and select Open With I will see all of the associated programs listed twice! Depending on the file type, it can sometimes be a very long list when duplicated.

You can easily use Onyx, a terrific free utility to correct this problem. Please note that Onyx is a very powerful system utility. Don't play around with features that you aren't sure about, there is the potential to mess things up if you don't know what you're doing.

Click on the images below for larger images.

The first image shows how all the apps are listed twice. The next image shows what to execute in Onyx to fix the problem, and the last image shows the Open With list corrected.

The thumbnail pictures below now link to the full size images.

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I started out in the computing world on a Mac Plus. Wow, that was a world ago. After many PC, mostly DIY I've come full circle and in Feburary 2006 switched from my WinXP system to a new Intel based 20" iMac. (oh how that 24" tempts me - the hardware junkie in my dies hard)

So here's my question I pose: After converting back to the Mac, I left that Apple stock was attractive, and I bought some of it with idle funds. My Apple stock has now appreciated more than the iMac cost me. Does that make my new iMac free?

Tell me what you think.

Cheers,

Randy

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The BBC (Beeb) has a lot of great content, a lot of that content in Radio based. I've recently been using a dashboard widget which has turned out to be the most drop dead simple way to listen to Beeb content. The only improvement I could suggest would be to have a station select button on the font of the widget instead of clicking the "i" and selecting from the back side of the widget.

The BBC Radio Widget by HawkMan at Phantom Gorilla is really nice. Treat him nice and donate a pint of ale for his efforts, as he requests. You can download the widget right here. Full list of available stations through the BBC Radio Widget right here.

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iCal is an application with Mac OS X that works really well. iCal is a simple to use Calendar with some powerful features. With iCal you can subscribe to Calendars over the internet from sites like iCalShare and Apple (Subscribing to calendars is a quick and easy way to bring events into iCal. For example if you follow a sports team you can subscribe to a calendar for them instead of manually setting up all the game days in iCal manually.)

Not only can you easily subscribe to Calendars, now you can publish your iCal to any website (not just to 'dot Mac' or a WebDav site.) The setup to do this could certainly be easier in my opinion, but it should only take about 10 to 15 minutes if you have web space and know how to use an ftp client, the software needed is free.

Here is a step by step guide to publishing your iCal Calendars to a web space.

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Last week MacSeven.com reader Mark from Toronto wrote complaining about Album Art only being available from iTMS with an account, he didn't like that he had to give Apple a credit card when all he wanted was album art.

I did a bit of research on this topic and found a very elegant solution, and one which has a much higher success ratio than iTMS in getting Album Art. It does take longer, but works really well and it doesn't use iTMS.

There are two applications necessary to make this happen, well, really one application and one AppleScript.

GimmeSomeTune is a great application that has the ability to grab album art (cover art). The image below is what GimmeSomeTune shows when a new track plays on iTunes.

You can set the preferences to grab Art if it is missing. Click here to see the setting to make so that it grabs your album art. Whenever you play a song or album without art, GimmeSomeTune will fetch it for you.

Now for the AppleScript to help you grab all your album art. Needle Drop from Doug's Apple Scripts will let you play through your library for X seconds per track.

Step by Step Method for grabbing your missing album art.
1) Install GimmeSomeTune
2) Set GimmeSomeTune to download album art
3) Fire up iTunes and start it playing from the first track in your library.
4) Run Needle Drop and tell it to play each track for 10 seconds, starting at (enter any number you like, 0 is default)

Needle Drop will advance to the next track after 10 seconds, repeat until the end of your library. And for each track played, GimmeSomeTune will try to fetch the correct album art.

The only albums I'm having trouble with it grabbing as a group are those with "Various Artists" as the group name. If you have any suggestions on how to get those to work please let me know.


Your Comments appreciated.
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BusinessWeek Online just reported that RealNetworks and SanDisk are teaming up to bring RealNetwork's subscription based music service, Rhapsody, to the SanDisk Sansa line of MP3 Players.

$15/mo for all you can eat subscription music, streaming from the web, download, or loaded onto your player.

I'm a huge fan of subscription based music services. Why pay $0.99 per track when for $15 per month you can listen to virtually any and everything. Of course the iPod dominates the player market, and since it doesn't support subscription based music, most people don't have that plan, at least for their portables. But it's truly a great thing. I find it similar to a PVR. Once you get used to watching TV with a PVR you can't go back. Subscription music is the same way, once you have it you don't want to do without it.

Due to copyright issues I can't repost the article here, you can read it here.


Your Comments appreciated.
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Video is good, free video over the internet on an Open Source player is even better.

I've played around with Democracy Player a little, and it's pretty good. Now available as a Universal Binary so it runs great on any recent Mac. Click here for a screenshot.

Over 600 Channels Waiting for You - There are more than 600 channels in the Channel Guide that is built-in to Democracy and new ones are added every day. They're as interesting and diverse as the internet itself. Subscribe to any of them for free with a single click. Here are a few examples.

"Want to see the future of Net video? Download the open source Democracy Player" -Wired Magazine, May 2006

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I'm not a big VOIP user, but I really like the technology. Talk about competition, wow. Skype, Gizmo Project, SightSpeed, iChat AV.

It's great to have all of these available VOIP Options.

If you're interested in VOIP, Andy Abramson from www.KenRadio.com is the guru, check out his site VOIP Watch.

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UNO is a theme that brings the sunken unified toolbar/titlebar look&feel to every single window on your system (cocoa or carbon, metal or aqua and already unified windows as well).

I really love UNO, it makes your apps look great, and all with a more similar look and feel to them.

Click the image below for a view of what UNO looks like

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Most of us use a web browser quite a bit over a day, week, month, etc. It's important to have a browser that suits you well since you use it frequently. I've tried Safari and it just doesn't gel with me, though I'm anxious to check out Safari 3 when Leopard ships with it. I've tried OmnWeb and it is extremely fast, and has some unique features. Opera looks great on paper but it doesn't play out. Shiira 2 is interesting, but I haven't spent enough time on it. FireFox 2, what's the fuss about, I would be shocked if there is an uglier browser in existance.

What it comes down to is that every time I check out a browser, I always come back to Camino. Camino is made for Mac, it looks fantastic, works great, it is fast, it just feels and works right. PimpMyCamino has some addon goodies for Camino.

About the only thing that I don't like about Camino is that if you copy a section of a web page from Camino and paste it into say an email, or a word processing document, the formatting doesn't paste - it pastes as plain text. This is with all the mozilla based browsers, not just Camino, but it's a bit of a drag.


Your Comments appreciated.
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Reader Mark from Toronto sent in a rant about Apple. He was very upset that Apple was promising album art, but it hinged on having to sign up for an iTunes Music Store (or whatever they're calling it now) account.

It doesn't bother me having to sign up for the iTMS account. Take into account that Apple gives you iTunes for free, they are giving you the Album Art for free, just just need an account with their online media store to access the album art. Since the album art comes from the online media store - I don't see the problem here...

So far I'd say it got about 60 - 70% of the covers for my cd's - which isn't a very good rate in my opinion. But it's a good start.

I've been super busy and haven't really had time to play with iTunes 7 yet, other than to have it scan all my music for gapless music, and download album art. The new album art cover view is really slick. Great moving buying that technology. I'm a very visual person and I dig that interface.

Unless I'm missing it, I think it's a real shame that Apple didn't give iTunes 7 another album view, which would just fill the screen with album art, and you could scroll around to see stuff, sort of like a Flickr page with a bunch of picture thumbnails.

Your Comments appreciated.
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After the "It's Showtime" press event from Apple today some friends and I had a few emails back and forth to talk about what took place.

You can view the press event straight from Apple here.

I'm sure you've seen this already but just so you know, Apple today introduced a new 5.5G iPod, version 2 of the iPod Nano, a new iPod Shuffle, iTunes 7, updated QuickTime, a Movie download service, and they previewed a new media device the iTV.

As the group was talking about the many items from the event, my brother voiced his dissatisfaction with the pace of development in the iPods. He wants that cool touch control Video iPod that Engadget and all the rumor sites have been predicting for over 6 months now.

My response was that Apple, in the position of the dominant player in the portable music player market, is in no need to rush development of new players. Apple is far and away the main player, and all they need to do is keep a modest pace of new players with decent upgrades. My brother is upset because people like Cowon have had features, and far better sound quality, than the iPod's for over two years now, and some of those features are still not in the new iPod's announced today.

When the Video iPod does come out, it will make a lot of people happy, and maybe forget about their other wishes for a while. And don't forget also that in Apple's position, they have an advantage to things like accessories, most new cars having iPod connectors, etc.. This sort of thing can only come for the big player(s).

This is the market in action. The smaller competitors have to be more innovative and offer higher quality than the dominant player for them to have any hope of gaining share. The other approach of course is to compete solely on price, but this is a tough long term strategy.

Apple will continue to progress the iPod products at a pace to keep them with as much market share as they reasonably can. If you think about it, this isn't so different than the approach Microsoft has taken in markets it dominates like Windows and Office.

I think what bothers us the most is that we know without a doubt that Apple could make an iPod killer themselves. One that would blow away even the most demanding customers. We almost expect Apple to do this and appease us. But when Apple already has around an 80% market share, why would they do that, things are going pretty well already.

Let's look at this line of thinking in relation to desktop computers and the Mac OS. Apple Desktop computers, whether it be the iMac's, Mini, or Mac Pro's (even the Notebook line) all of these computers are at the cutting edge of hardware. Have you seen a Mac Pro in person, wow, it is a masterpiece, such attention and design went into this computer. The iMac is a piece of artwork which you happen to be able to use as a computer. ; ) And the mini pushes the envelope for it's performance in such a tiny package. And all of these wonderful computers now run on Intel. Let me tell you, in case you think this line of computers was easy to develop and put into the market place was a simple task, you are wrong. This was a monumental effort. Why is Apple pushing so hard on the computer hardware front? Of course great industrial design has long been important to Apple, but also because Apple and the Macintosh computers are far far away from being the dominant player, so they have to do things better than the market share leaders in order to help attract more customers. Ditto for OS X compared to Windows.

I have more to say about iTV, but it will have to wait for another day. I'll leave you with a hint... I have bitter sweet feelings about it.


Your Comments appreciated.
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PC Magazine just published the results of their annual Reader's Choice survey. This is the 19th annual reader satisfaction survey by PC Magazine. Yes, I said PC Magazine, not Macworld. Why is this article here on MacSeven? Read on.

To quote the article about the Desktop survey: "Steve & Co. score better than every other desktop vendor in every category - by a wide margin. The most amazing part? The company's repair rate is down to just 8 percent."

PC Magazine says about Notebooks: "Yes, Apple is the king of the notebook world, too. As with desktops, the company's notebook scores are far and away the best of the survey. Its overall score is a 9.1 out of 10. The next highest score? An 8.4."

Here are some links to the article: Desktop Survey, Notebook Survey, Printer Survey

MacSeven: Given Apple's exquisite design and attention to detail I can't say that these results surprise me - except for the fact that they came from PC Magazine readers. I think Apple has a golden opportunity in the near term to really increase their market share in the computer world. Recent hiccups with the notebooks notwithstanding, they have make huge advancements moving to the new Intel line up.

Hey Steve, how about a sub 3.5 pound ultra portable ok? Yes yes, I'll do a review of it for you when it's ready.



COMMENTS
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Barron's, a weekly financial newspaper by the Wall Street Journal folks, is something I subscribe to and read. To my surprise they had a full page article in Barron's talking more or less about Apple Rumors. It wasn't a slow news week in the financial markets and the corporate world of investments, it would seem that Apple'mania is spreading if these straight laced guys are taking the time to talk about it.

I'm not able to link to the URL for the story 1) because it's subscription only, and 2) because it is copyright protected. However, I don't see anything wrong with summarizing the article, I don't think that breaks any copyright issues.


Here is the summary:

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Microsoft in addition to the well publicized 5 year extended firm commitment to support the Mac platform with Office has recently made a few other tasty promises.

1) There is a new Universal Binary version of Remote Desktop en route. Nice! I like this one, I access Quicken for Windows off my MCE machine almost daily, I'm glad to hear some UB activity is in the works here. I'm anxious and ready to try it out if somebody at M$FT would like to through a beta version this way.

2) Microsoft Messenger 6.0 for Mac is in the works. Like many people, I started out in the IM world using ICQ, migrated to MSN Messenger and pretty much stayed there until I switched back to the Apple Macintosh, now I use both Messenger and iChat. While I do prefer iChat, I still use Messenger also, so I'm quite happy to hear that Microsoft is working on an update. It's well past due.

3) Microsoft Business Unit has some Mac Mojo with a new blog, check it out for all the MSFT / Apple developments.

COMMENTS
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I suppose this relates to iPhoto since your digital camera may use SD memory which you ultimately download into iPhoto (or other application.)

Great deal, don't wait, they may sell out.


Outpost.com - 2GB 150x Secure Digital memory card for $18 after rebatePQI 2GB Secure Digital memory card for $38 with free shipping, and a $20 mail-in rebate is available.

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Tetris was a fun game for what it was, I had been hearing a bit about Quinn which is a multiplayer Tetris type of game, but then all of a sudden it was pulled due to legal issues, but hey it's back now with full support and a brand new updated version.

Click on this image of Quinn to check it out.

Quinn is an implementation of a popular falling-blocks game which, according to the Tetris Company, must not be named here. Written specifically for Mac OS X, it features a neat user interface, perfectly integrated with Aqua, and a smooth look and feel for best user enjoyment. The goal was not to reinvent falling-blocks games with yet another modification of the rules, but to preserve the simplicity of the original idea. Still there’s everything you might expect—including a two-player mode, network play with Bonjour support, online server and highscore lists, and five different multiplayer rules.

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The good people over at RealMacSoftware have offered a 10% limited time discount on the new RapidWeaver 3.5

If you have yet to purchase RapidWeaver or our theme pack, make sure you use this coupon:CPN4271628770 It entitles you to receive 10% off your entire order at our online store. This offer is only valid until September 17th 2006.

Click on the RapidWeaver image below to be whisked away to RealMacSoftware.

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Rapidweaver is a terrific program that allows you to easily create and maintain websites. This website is done with RapidWeaver. The approach to building sites in Rapidweaver is quite different than with iWeb, and I find it much faster to use. The support forums are a great asset.

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Not only does it come with a wonderful 24" screen, but it's running the Core 2 Duo at up to 2.33ghz.

WOW, I'd love one of these babies.

The fastest iMac ever, the 24-inch iMac provides professional performance along with the convenience of an all-in-one design. Like its 17-inch and 20-inch siblings, it features the new 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor with speeds ranging from 1.83GHz to 2.33GHz. The new processor delivers up to 50% more performance than the previous 20-inch iMac. It also doubles the amount of L2 cache, the twin cores sharing 4MB between them.(2) The result? Turbocharged performance, making it easier — and more fun — than ever to work with digital photos, movies, music, and the web.

Click on this picture for details at Apple

Is this what you've been waiting for with the new Intel Mac's?

Are you going to upgrade? Talk about it at the forums, link below.

You can discuss this topic here.
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iPhoto only allows you to have a single library of photos on your Mac. With iPhoto Buddy you can easily manage multiple libraries.

I use it myself and it works great. Freeware, donations happily accepted.

Here's the official blurb:

With iPhoto Buddy, you can easily manage an entire list of iPhoto Libraries, enabling you to quickly and easily open the Library of your choice for viewing/editing/printing in iPhoto. You can easily switch between your multiple Libraries, and iPhoto Buddy will automatically quit iPhoto and instantly re-launch it with the newly selected Library. There is no limit to the number of Libraries, and they can be located in various locations--even on removable or network volumes. Each Library can be assigned its own name that differs from its folder name in the Finder; each Library can be assigned a thumbnail image that can help to remind you of its contents; and each Library can be password protected for privacy/security.iPhoto Buddy also displays various details about your Libraries without launching iPhoto. Information like each Library's size and image count as well as a complete listing of the Albums, Smart Albums, Folders, Books, Slide Shows, etc. contained therein.And in keeping with the enhanced integration of the iApps that Apple introduced with the original iLife package, iPhoto Buddy also allows you to open iMovie, iDVD, and iWeb using any of your iPhoto Libraries for importing photos into your Movies, DVDs and websites. In fact with iPhoto Buddy, any application that contains a Media Browser for accessing your iPhoto Library, can used with ANY of your iPhoto Libraries.

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I ran across an article this morning which outlined why they believe Apple to be a very good investment opportunity right now. In fact I recently bought some Apple stock, I'm in agreement with their opinion.
 
Here are a few highlights from the article:

• Apple's stock is volatile
• Analysts are bullish on Apple's growth potential
• New, upcoming, iPod products should keep Apple out in front in this market
• The iPod / iTMS ecosystem is loved by consumers
• Mac sales have been strong with double digit growth rates, fueled by Apple's OS and Applications
• Stock outlook is good, but risky with a PE Ratio of 26
• Analysts surveyed by Thompson First Call expect sales to jump 19% in fiscal 2007

 

MacSeven.com does not offer investment advise, if you decide to buy Apple stock, know that it may perform well but the stock price could just as easily go down. By no means is it a sure thing.

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I had to search pretty hard until I found Dockless. It always bothered me that running applications would show up in my Dock whether I wanted them to or not. I don't mind it so much for things that I run occasionally, but things that I always run, utility based things mainly, I really don't want it hogging space on my Dock - I don't want to see it.

Dockless provides the solution, it is currently a PowerPC application, I hope it is updated to a Universal Binary because I intend to keep using it. Here is the developers description.

Dockless is a little app that does what some people have always wanted - remove certain applications from their dock. Dock real estate can become precious, and some apps don't make a whole lot of sense sitting there. That's where Dockless comes in. With Dockless, any OS X application can be made to show in the Dock or not.

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MacSeven Posts from August 2006