Appletell

Apple has been granted four new patents today by the US Patent & Trademark Office. The patents cover four inventions that relate to Apple’s multipurpose dock, QuickTime’s transmission of differently formatted media, measuring network bandwidth between two computers, and a communication between media servers and media clients.

Stand invention (US Patent D567800) does not offer a detailed explanation as to why this dock is much different than other docks on the market. Apple only provided a one sentence explanation in the patent filing: “The stand, which can be utilized as a dock, is used to support an electronic device, such as a media player, media storage device, cellular phone, PDA and/or the like.”

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Leopard’s been out for a while now and if you updated when it came out, you’re probably at a stage where you are a little sick of the system’s icons. Here are some free sets of icons that are fresh and can easily spice up your desktop. I come across a lot of icons, as I not only write for Appletell, but manage MacintoshGUI. We feature a design related goodie everyday, and here are some of the favorites for the past 30 days.

I find that Coda is one of the best tools for web development on the Mac, and the green leaf icon looks really good. After a while, as most things do, it gets a little old, and this set of Coda leaves will hopefully spice up your dock. These are made by Louie Mantia (pictured above), who has some CandyBar replacement icons, so check them out too. (CandyBar is an application that lets you change your system’s icons, dock, and mange a collection of icons.)

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Apple today released Mac OS X 10.5.2 into Software Update. As of this writing, the website has not been updated with a download. The update is only 180 MB, about half the size of developer builds. Here are some of the most important features, from the release notes, linked at the bottom of the article.

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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.

If you DJ a lot of small events and can carry most of the music on your iPod, the Alesis iMultiMix 9R may be for you. The 9R is essentially a rack-mountable iPod dock with a professional mixer thrown in there. The 9R is designed for studios and live venues.

Alesis Product Manager Jim Norman said, “Our research showed that most of our customers own iPods, and wanted a way to utilize them for various installation situations such as churches, clubs and conference rooms. The iMultiMix 9R is the perfect way to integrate iPod playback and pro-quality mixing in a studio environment.”

The 9R includes two stereo line inputs, five high-gain mic preamps, auxiliary sends and returns, 48V phantom power, 3-band per channel EQ, as well as a composite video output. The iMultiMix 9R will be available for sale later this year for $399.

Product Page [Alesis] Via [iLounge]