Appletell

Is this what the iTablet looks like? Cause if it is, I’m getting one.

Looprumors has some exclusive sources, saying that the iTablet will be a totally new device, that “co-exists” with current Mac offerings, In other words, it’s not going to be a laptop as well as a tablet. It’s going to be just a small tablet that can be used as a portable Mac Communicator. The fact that this thing will only be a communicator leads me to also think that it won’t be priced more than $1000. This device is for the consumer, not the pro market. The rumors continue with talk of multi-touch 2.0.

This device is going to be geared to people who already have macs, so no, this is not going to be a full-fledged computer. The iTablet will be running a specially designed version of Mac OS X Leopard, and will work perfectly with Leopard Macs. People will able to control their computers over the internet from a remote location (no word on whether that’s for .Mac members only), video conference over the internet, and will also be able to beam (or squirt) files to other Macs or iTablets wirelessly.

Even more interesting, they are suggesting that the iTablet will have a mini-disc optical drive. This goes along with the thinking that Apple will start to offer software packages in much smaller form, by shipping them with mini-discs, and use adapters to get the min-disc in other slot-loading Macs. Interestingly, you will also be able to plug in a mouse, demonstrating that you can use many different input methods. Wireless keyboard, mouse, stylus, and finger. For the physical design of the iTablet, Looprumors is suggesting that it will be big, black, and shiny. Pretty much a big iPhone. But it won’t be that big, it is only about half the size of a Macbook’s screen.

Now for the insides, they are suggesting that it is considerably faster and more robust than the iPhone (anyone say Intel Inside?). It also includes an accelerometer, and I assume, a sudden motion sensor and ambient light detector. Finally, the rumor totally out of left field. The iTablet will use both sides to input information. What? So, there is going to be like a click-wheel on the back. I don’t know. Doesn’t sound like Apple to me. But if this device does come out at Macworld, for a reasonable amount of money, and delivers all of these features, I will be buying one. Macworld just can’t come quick enough.

Via [LoopRumors]

Leopard is good. Very good. Super very good when compared to Vista. But it’s not without it’s flaws. It seems that Leopard is the main cause for Macbook and Macbook Pro keyboard problems. Appleinsider is reporting that many users are having problems with their Intel portable’s keyboard shutting down. This seems to happen at random times, and can only be solved by restarting the computer, or putting it to sleep, and waking it up again.

I for one have experienced this problem once on my new MacBook Pro. I was using 10.5.1, which is the latest current version of Leopard, and the keyboard randomly stopped working. Everything I typed had no effect. Keyboard shortcuts, volume control, everything. The rest of the computer though functioned fine. After a quick reboot however, I have never experienced it again. “I took my MacBook into the Apple Store today,” notes one MacBook owner. “I told [Apple’s Geniuses] about this thread and they basically dismissed the idea that it could have something to do with Leopard. [...] I think it’s strange that they don’t even want to listen to any ideas.” I hope Apple is working on addressing this internally, and will be released as a bug update via firmware, or part of 10.5.2.

Read [Appleinsider]

Apple has traditionally had Black Friday sales across all of their Apples Stores. This year, it is rumored, they are preparing something extra special. It is being kept under tight wraps, but Looprumors seems to have gotten some leaks out of a source that is probably fired now. Apple is preparing to open it’s retail stores early, and has been telling employees to arrive ready to work at 4:00 AM. Also, beginning today, employees are expected to be wearing three different red holiday t-shirts this year advertising it’s three main product lines - iPod, iPhone, and iMac (no AppleTV, surprise surprise). Apple Stores are also expected to put up new Nutcracker displays. Apple is very quiet of specific pricing and discounts, however, it seems that they will be offering one-day discounts on select items.

Via [Looprumors]

It’s been almost a month since Leopard was officially released, and in that month we’ve had some time to play with the OS and get to know it. Here are the Top 15 Leopard Hints we’ve come across this past month (in no particular order).

Collect all windows in one Space When you are in the birds-eye view of Spaces (F8 by default) press the ‘C’ button to collect all open windows into a single space with a nice effect. And if you hold down shift when you hit the ‘C’ key, it will happen in slow motion.

Zoom PDFs and Images in Quick Look If you are browsing PDFs or images in Quick look mode, there is a fast and easy way to zoom in. Simply option-click the window and it will zoom in, and shift-option click and it will zoom out. Alternatively, you can hit Cmd = to zoom in, or Cmd - to zoom out.

Enable the Path Bar in the Finder Go to the view menu in the Finder and click View Path Bar to see the hierarchy of where your file is. You can also control-click or right-click on any of the folders in the path bar, and perform actions on them.

Quickly send a window to a Space Leopard supports “bumping” your windows to other Spaces. Simply drag your window to the edge of your screen, and wait a second. The window will fly over to the adjacent space.

Address Book Effects Now Address Book has the ability to add effects much like Photobooth. Simply click the edit button for one of your contacts, click the pictures, and then click the little “swirl” style button. This allows you to apply many different effects to your photos.

Quickly access System Profiler When diagnosing someone’s mac, you want to get to System Profiler as fast as you can. A little shortcut is to hold down the “option” key on the keyboard while pressing the Apple in the menu bar. The ‘About This Mac’ will turn to ‘System Profiler...”.

Add a ‘recent things’ stack to the Dock You can add a recent applications or documents stack to your dock very easily. Just pop open terminal and enter:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

Then simply do a KillAll Dock command to reset your Dock, and your new stack will be there. Right-click it to set what you want it to have recent-things of.

Auto Remove Printer after Print One of my pet peeves with Leopard is that the Printer will not automatically quit after it prints. Well, all you have to do is right click on the printer icon in the dock, and hit the “Auto-Quit” option. This will automatically quit the printer after a print job is complete.

Disable Spotlight from the menu bar If you want to get rid of Spotlight from the menu bar, simply open terminal and run:

sudo chmod 0 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

To re-enable it you just have to run:

sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app

Permanently Delete files from Time Machine Backups While navigating Time Machine, go to the present view, and click the little gear icon in the toolbar of the Finder while you have the file you want to delete selected. Simply click the option to Delete all Time Machine backups of this file, and the file will be gone forever.

Quickly enable or disable sharing for a folder If you want to quickly share a particular folder with someone on your local network, click the folder, and hit Cmd-I to bring up the “Get Info” window. From there, simply checkmark the “Share Folder” button, and others will be able to access it over the network.

Unlearn words from the Dictionary Words that you have added to the system dictionary such as “Yurechko” can be unlearned easily in Leopard. All you have to do is right-click on the word that you want to unlearn, and click the unlearn button. This only works in some applications.

Use Expanded print Dialog by default Leopard comes with a very handy expanded Print View which allows you to see previews of what you are printing (very handy for printing websites), however, you always have to click the little arrow button to view it. It you want this expanded view to be the default, simply open Terminal and run:

defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE

If you want to set it for all users, run:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool TRUE

Switch to lowercase labels in the Finder’s sidebar Many people don’t like the capital letters in the Finder sidebar. In order to change these to lowercase, navigate to

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/

Duplicate the LocalizableCore.strings file for backup, and then edit lines 50 to 53 to make them lowercase.

“SD5” = “Devices”; “SD6” = “Shared”; “SD7” = “Search for”; “SD8” = “Places”;

Save the file and the open the Terminal and type: ‘killall Finder’

See detailed Airport information Leopard’s wifi capabilities have been dramatically improved. Now, it is even easier to get more information about the access point you are connected to. By option-clicking on the wifi menu bar item, you can see the MAC address, channel, signal strength (RSSI), and even the transmit rate. very handy for mobile users.

If you like what you see, be sure to subscribe to the Appletell RSS Feed

I recently bought an iPod Touch and decided to Jailbreak it using iJailbreak. This included Installer.app, a great app that has hundreds of applications from community sources that can be downloaded onto your iPhone/iPod Touch. I was amazed at what the community of developers had created, but there were some consequences in doing this.

1. Apple is releasing an official SDK in February
So, unless you really can’t wait, don’t hack it yet. Steve Jobs wrote an open letter explaining that an SDK for applications on the iPhone and iPod Touch is on its way and will be here by February 2008. This means that 3rd party applications will be available after this date without “hacking” your iPhone/iPod Touch.

2. Risk of getting it “bricked”
It basically is what it says, your iPhone becomes a brick. You can’t do anything about it, and Apple won’t support you (as seen in this video).

3. It’s slow
When I jailbroke my iPod Touch, there was one major disadvantage from the start: It was slow. Even before I had played around with Installer.app and all the great community apps there, the performance was much more sluggish than you would expect from an iPod Touch or iPhone.

4. Storage
You will lose storage on your iPhone/iPod Touch. But this will be the same when Apple releases their SDK for official 3rd party applications. So, if you’re limited on storage (which I was), then either don’t do the hacks or just don’t install too many things.

5. Security
Security is often a minor issue with Apple & the Mac. There are very rarely any viruses for the Mac and most have little effect on your data. But there is a security risk of installing all of these apps onto your iPhone/iPod Touch. Because they are coming from developers all over the world, your device doesn’t know whether to trust that developer or whether they are known as one that produces viruses. This is the main reason Steve Jobs didn’t include 3rd party apps into the iPhone or iPod Touch. Steve said that their official SDK will be more secure. It is unknown what form of security they are going to use - most likely it will be digital certificates.

Overall, the jailbreaking of iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s is a good thing. But these 5 things are just some of the disadvantages you get. So unless you really can’t wait until February, don’t hack it. Or if you’re feeling adventurous, do the Jailbreak and then if you like it, keep it. You can always restore your iPhone or iPod Touch through iTunes to factory settings. 

A fellow Appletell writer, Michael Mistretta, came across a great little find today. It seems Apple Canada may’ve made a slight mistake when they were updating their workshop list and happened to leave in an iPhone workshop to help you get it set up. Oops.

Our bet is the phone will launch on the 9th, but this could always be a typo or a hype generator. Only time will tell. The one thing we are sure of is that when it does launch, it will launch with the Rogers network in Canada.

Read [Apple.ca]