The iPod Nation

The great thing about Apple products is how attractive they are and their versatility. MacLife has just introduced four great Apple prototypes that will sure grab the attention of consumers. Although many of these prototypes are too far fetched, some of them may actually sell well on the market. The first to mention is the Mac desktop computer made from Legos. I am pretty sure we won’t see a Lego Mac, or LMac as they call it. Another prototype that MacLife introduced was a Macbook with three screens. A little outrageous, but cool nonetheless. The last two prototypes seem more reasonable and we could possible see these in the near future. The first is a Apple dock for the iPhone or the iPod Touch. With the dock, you could use two wireless gaming controllers to play games on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The last prototype is the iCom, which is just a mix between a music player, a digital picture frame, and a holophone. The iCom is something I would surely look into if they were to develop it.  All these prototypes sound great, but no official word on whether they would continue the development of these prototypes.

- Geoff

[Source: Gizmodo]

Probably the hardest thing about getting a new computer is transferring all your data from your old computer to your new computer. And it gets worse when you switch platforms, such as going from Windows XP or Vista to a Mac. Well Belkin has developed a new Switch-to-Mac cable that will make the process a more smooth one. The Belkin Switch-to-Mac cable is just a USB to USB dongle and it includes software to help the transition for just $50. The Migration Assistant will automatically transfer files such as videos, pictures, music, etc. So just like Barack Obama, when you switch platforms, Belkin makes the transition a smooth one.

- Geoff

[Source: Gizmodo]

As I was searching for Apple news, I came across this great article on how to improve your iTunes experience for Mac users. Check it out:

I love my music and everything else that goes along with it. I love the fact that in my iTunes, every song is properly labelled, is nicely arranged alphabetically by artist and have their particular album artwork attached in high resolution. It is so much easier to search for the songs you want when almost all the fields (i.e. genre, artist, album, year) are completed. Every little bit of information helps Genius to find the songs which match the ones you are listening to, creating a playlist which suits your current musical mood.

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The rumors never cease to stop when it comes to Apple. With the release of Mac OS X 10.5.5 earlier this week, it can be safely assumed that Apple is now working on Mac OS X 10.5.6. There are rumors already spreading concerning OS X 10.5.6. According to rumors, blu-ray support is the next step for Macs. Apparently, Apple will be building Macs to support blu-ray and hopefully in the future, Macs will incorporate blu-ray drives. Although just rumors, it seems reasonable for Apple to step into the blu-ray phase for their products. Apple has always part of the Blu-ray consortium, but yet has to fully implement blu-ray into their products. Stay tuned for more information as they come our way.

- Geoff

[Source: MacRumos]

For all of you who are Blackberry fans and use a Mac, one problem has always been being able to sync your Blackberry phone to your Mac. Well RIM, the company that produces Blackberries, announced that they will be releasing a Blackberry software for Mac users sometime early next year. A release date and details were left out of the announcement. An anonymous source from RIM said the following statement:

In terms of a strategy, we want to do well by our customers. Whether that translates into something that RIM develops or licenses or pays for a third party to build, I can’t say at this point,” the source said. “We’re trying the best that we can to get a better experience out for Mac users.”

Apparently, RIM has always been planning to release a Blackberry software for Mac users. For how long have they been planning this is still up for debate. It is also quite unclear if RIM will develop the software or if they would hire a third-party developer.

- Geoff

[Source: Electronista]

VS

So what is next for Microsoft and their $300 million ad campaign? Well it has been reported that Microsoft has decided to drop Jerry Seinfield in their “phase two” of their ad campaign. Microsoft showcased two advertisements with Seinfeld: the Circus Shoes and New Family. The New York Times reported that Microsoft plans to directly attack the “Get a Mac” ads in which Justin Long plays a “Mac” and John Hodgeman plays a “PC”. The new ads should begin soon, will carry the theme “Windows. Life without walls”. According to NYTimes report…

One new Microsoft commercial even begins with a company engineer who resembles John Hodgman, the comedian portraying the loser PC character in the Apple campaign. “Hello, I’m a PC,” the engineer says, echoing Mr. Hodgman’s recurring line, “and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”

Apparently Bill Gates will still make some cameos in some of the new Microsoft advertisements. Will this ad campaign triumph in getting people away from Apple? How will Apple react to these new advertisements? We shall see.

- Geoff

[Source: MacRumors]

Google has officially released Gears for Safari for Apple Mac OS X users. This download, which is available at http://gears.google.com, will allow Mac users to access Gears-enabled sites such as WordPress, Zoho office, the new Youtube uploader, and Google Docs while using the Safari web browser. The minimum requirements for Gears to be installed are Tiger 10.4.1 or Leopard 10.5.3. Google released the following statement on their official Google Mac Blog:

When you install Gears, you’ll notice that it’s composed of 2 components: an NPAPI plugin which lives in “/Library/Internet Plugins” and an InputManager. Gears needs to load first thing upon browser startup, for cases in which the first page loaded into the browser is from the Gears offline cache. NPAPI provides no mechanism for loading that early (it only provides support for loading plugins the first time a page specifically includes them) so we needed a small InputManager to do the work for us.

For browsers other than Safari that use the WebKit engine, we’ve provided a really simple mechanism to allow them to load Gears into their program without using the InputManager. Fluid is one example of a 3rd party browser that supports Gears this way.

On the Mac, Gears desktop shortcuts are actually small applications that are designed to open the website in the same browser they were originally created from. This means that if you created them from a Fluid app they’ll open in that same place and if you’ve got multiple versions of Firefox installed on your machine the shortcut will open in the right one.

- Geoff

[Source: GoogleMacBlog]

In a report by MacDailyNews, a NPD data report reveals that Apple’s Notebook Marketshare in the United States has increased significantly. A year ago in the second quarter, Apple’s notebook sales were only 6.6% of the market. This year, in the second quarter, their notebook sales increased to 10.6% of the market. When one analyzes the chart (and I know we all do that), one can see that most of the shares were taken away from Toshiba and Acer. Interesting to see how Macs are starting to increase in popularity and therefore there might be more products that will be coming out to further increase their marketshare.

- Geoff

[Source: MacRumors]

I am pretty sure many Mac users have been wanting to try out the new Google Chrome on their Macs. Unfortunately, this report isn’t about how you can PERMANENTLY Google Chrome onto your Mac. But CodeWeavers, the company that created CrossOver for Mac, has just played with the Google Chrome and taken out of it the Chromium, the freely available source of Chrome, and taken the Google Chrome into a Mac. Along with creating a Mac version of Chromium, they also created a Linux version as well. Both are available for download. It is important to remember that this is not a native version and for the most part, Mac users will not use this as their primary internet browser. The program is really just for fun. There are still some bugs with Chromium, such as the slow start up time. But if you’re a Mac user and you want to try Chrome out, Chromium is the way to go!

- Geoff

[Source:Technologizer]

The “Back To School” promo by Apple was originally exclusive to U.S. customers only. But now Apple is starting the “Back to School” promo in the United Kingdom exactly when the same promo ends for U.S. customers. For U.K. customers, when they buy a Mac, with the exception being the Mac Mini, and they purchase an iPod, either a iPod Touch or Nano, they will then receive a rebate of £95, which is about $170. U.K. customers can take advantage of this promo through Apple’s Online Store as well as any participating Apple retail stores. With this deal, now everybody can own what Steve Jobs wants us to own!

- Geoff

[Source: MacRumors]