Appletell

Leopard is an awesome upgrade for consumers. There is a ton of iCandy that makes your computer more beautiful, and usable, as well as some really cool features that I use every day. But the real power of Leopard is when you look under the hood. Developer tools in Leopard make coding and developing applications easier than ever. And it’s free. Just grab your Leopard disk, and install the additional Developer tools onto your Mac, and start playing with them. While all these apps and demos are fun to play with, they are a little hard to get your head around. That is why Apple has just introduced Coding Headstarts.

Coding Headstarts is a section in Apple’s Developer Connection. It provides you with an introductory video, along with step-by-step lesson guides, and even Xcode sample projects for you to follow along with. These Headstarts are good for both the first time coder, and the first-time Leopard coder. most of the videos are online and free, but if you want all the details (and you are probably a full-time coder if you do), you have to have a paid-for ADC Premier or Select member.

[Coding Headstarts] Via [AppleGazette]

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Perian, the “swiss army knife for QuickTime”, is reaching 1.1 through a private beta. Why private you ask? When the last beta of the suite of codes hit, the app was leaked. So, to keep tons of Macs out there from crashing from buggy, unstable apps and codecs, Perian has restricted this beta to donators and development supports. What’s included in the 1.1 beta? In my opinion, Perian doesn’t need any fixing, however, no one knows yet, so if you’ve donated or helped out, you should be finding out pretty soon.

Via [TUAW]
Product Page [Perian]

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As we’ve already seen, 10.5.2 has fixed some things that many users complained of, most notably in the dock. You can now completely turn off Stacks, or show Stacks in a list view, among other things. Unfortunately, the ability to change from 2D to 3D anywhere, of which a screenshot was forged, is not an option, at least in the latest 10.5.2 builds.

Apple needs to continue to move towards bringing spaces back up to where it was originally in the developer builds. Most notably, there needs to be an option for making a random selection into a stack. This means being able to select 5 items from your desktop, one from Applications, and 2 from the Documents folder, dragging them to the dock, and having them form a Stack. This was present and, as far as I know, stable in the developer builds, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why they decided to remove the feature. It was the only real “improvement” that Stacks offered over the old “folder in the dock” from Tiger, besides the arguably easier browsing.

If Apple doesn’t re-instate that feature, then they absolutely must put this one in (though it would be great to have anyway): If there is a folder inside the stack, clicking on it should not open it in the finder, it should fan out, replacing the current stack.

Elsewhere in the System, Leopard needs to get a hold on Airport. I pretty much expect to have to reconnect manually each time I wake from sleep now…

Front Row also needs some attention… It’s crashed a few times.

Luckily, 10.5.2 looks to be very helpful, packing a list of over 30 fixes, including fixes in Data Detectors, Dock, Finder, Grammar Checking, iCal, iChat, Mail, Parental Controls, Quick Look, Rosetta, Safari, Time Machine, AirPort.

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These days, everyone is an iPhone user. But this one is different. Former US President Bill Clinton is an iPhone user. A reader over at TUAW claims to have gotten his very own iPhone autographed by Bill Clinton, while in the process, Bill himself claimed to have his own. And this is not any iPhone. This iPhone came straight from the big Steve himself. I wonder who hooked him up with Steve Jobs. Al Gore maybe? Anyway, I wonder what kind of plan Bill Clinton uses. Does he get the $69 a month plan, or the $219 a month plan?

Via [Engadget]

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EDIT: MacRumors forum posts appear to contradict this. nonetheless, it is something they should add, and hopefully will, in 10.5.2.

In addition to the new stacks abilities in Mac OS X Update 10.5.2, Apple is now making it easier for the end user to choose what type of dock he would like.

As seen in the above picture, a right click on the dock divider now adds an option for making the Dock a 3D “Shelf” or “Flat” Black 2D. It was already possible to do this in previous version of Leopard, but it required running a terminal command, something that many end users may not be comfortable with.

Another thing to note about this feature is that at least judging by the picture, the 2D dock gets a slightly new appearance at least on the bottom in 10.5.2. You’ll notice that in comparison to the picture below of 10.5.0 and 10.5.1, the new 2D dock is slightly more glossy and features luminous dots for the divider. It also appears not to be translucent, but that is likely because of the dark background behind it.

Above: Old 2D dock, only enable-able through the terminal.

10.5.2 has been seeded to developers and will most likely arrive in tandem with MacWorld 2008 in mid-January.

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Déjà vu?

You are probably wondering what’s going on here. Apple just released a Security Update a couple days ago. Why are they rereleasing it as Security Update 2007-009 1.1? On the surface, this update contains apparently no new features or bug fixes. Actually, the list of changes is exactly the same as the original 2007-009 update.

“Core Foundation / CUPS / Flash Player Plug-in / Launch Services / perl / python / Quick Look / ruby / Safari / Samba / Shockwave Plug-in /Spin Tracer”

It’s turns out there is more here than meets the eye. Apple has found that there browser, Safari, was crashing on “certain” web pages, and re-released the update in order to fix that bug. The update is for Leopard and Tiger, and is recommended for all Safari users. If you haven’t installed the original Secuirty Update 2007-009 yet, you only have to install the new one.

Via [Macenstein]

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Lieutenant Colonel C.J. Wallington is hoping the enemy won’t expect this army strategy: switching some of it’s computer base to Macs. The enemy, of course, is hackers.

Wallington, who is a division chief for the Army’s office of enterprise information systems, says that the army is quietly slipping Macs into it’s systems to make the computer base more stable against hackers. He says that adding Macs to the mix makes it harder to destabilize a group of military computers in a single attack, both because of the Mac’s security, and because if there is a mix of Mac and Windows, one virus can’t take them both out easily.

Charlie Miller, who made the news last August for remotely hacking the iPhone, says this wont be enough, and that Macs are behind the curve on security in comparison to Windows. He points, as many have lately, to data compiled by security firm Segunia, showing that Mac OS X was patched nearly 5 times more than Windows this year. Something to note, however, is that no-one has seemed to actually look at the types of patches that were released. It is probable that many of these OS X patches were not fixing anything that made the computer more vulnerable to hackers. In Windows, it is more likely that patches are designed to fix holes in ode which could allow for hacks.

Via [Forbes]

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AppleInsider says sources indicate that Apple will soon be one of the biggest supporter’s of Intel’s new “Menlow” platform for Mobile internet Devices.

Apple specifically has been interested in the upcoming 45-nanometer (nm) “Silverthorne” chip, and apparently has agreed to use it in more than one product on it’s 2008 Roadmap.

Intended for release in early 2008, the “Silverthorne” chip is meant for use in cell phones, ultra-mobile PCs and other smaller mobile internet devices. The chip will sport the same speeds as the first generation Pentium M chips, but use between half a watt and 2 watts of electrical power. A typical notebook chip uses as much as ten times that power.

CEO Paul Otellini has compared the chip to the first generations of Pentium processors.

“The importance of the new Silverthorne chip is only comparable with the 8088 processor or Pentium,” he said in a June interview. Otellini added that the plan to bring out a whole product family of these chips is aimed at capturing the “top 10 to 20 percent of the cellphone market.”

While no one has explicitly stated this, it seems that the most likely candidates for this processor would be the 3G iPhone and a slate-like Tablet Mac.

Via [AppleInsider]

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Product: Phone Fingers
Price: 6,90 Euros (for 5 Packs of 5, Total of 25 Phone Fingers)
Rating: 5/10.0
Pros: Prevents Fingerprints on iPod Touch/iPhone
Cons: Not very durable, hard to put on, very ugly.
Overall: Phone Fingers prevent fingerprints on your iPod or iPhone, but most would not wear in public!

For this review, I have done a video showing off the Product, please check it out, and let us know if you want more Appletell Videos.

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Leopard is out, and Delicious Library 2 is about to be released. I frankly don’t see why they haven’t shipped it already, as Leopard was originally supposed to be done in June. Whatever. After this long wait though, Delicious-Monster, the company behind Delicious Library has leaked some more details on their upcoming release. We already knew about DL2’s iTunes integration and HTML export, as well as some beeeautiful Leopard iCandy. Now Wil Shipley, developer of DL2, is saying that they have decided to cancel the pro version, and include all of the pro features into the One Delicious Library 2 To Rule Them All™ version. I’m all for having a less Windows Vista-like product. Also, pricing has been announced. DL2 will cost $40, the same price as it is going for today. If you bought it before December 1st, you can upgrade for $20. And even better, if you bought it after December 1dt, you get to upgrade for free. Thanks Delicious Monster! DL2 will probably ship around Macworld in January, and they have a private beta going out before Christmas.

Via [Ars Technica]

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