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If software doesn’t come in a box, is it still your software? Trick question because it was NEVER your software to begin with. Microsoft and Adobe are keen to remind you of that with a monthly fee for their most sought after programs like Office and Creative Suite. On the lighter side, the GMen get an iTunes review in Morse Code, neither can mange to say Esoterism Tesseract,and apparently it’s too much for Google to do a search.
Links:
Guy’s App Pick: Cute Cut Pro by YU BO $5.99
Gaz’s App Pick: HDR Artist Pro £6.99
People’s Pick: Troy Muller recommends Spectacle by Spectacle FREE!
in:play
Developer: Bigbluecouch, LLC
Version: 1.0
Price: $1.99 (iTunes App Store)
in:play App
in:play is a music player app that accesses your iTunes music library—but the big differentiator between the iOS Music player and in:play is its beautifully designed, typographic interface. The clean, minimalist design is spare but includes all the features you’d expect and some clever extras you wouldn’t.
CL On Ear Headphones
Company: Harman Kardon
Price: $200
User Report Q & A using our The Answer Is Yes — Now WTQ (What’s the Question?) format:
Do they sound good? [ Yes ]
Are they comfortable for extended wearing? [ Yes ]
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With the fifth anniversary of the iPhone fast approaching, Tim and David take a look back at how it all started, the significant milestones, and how this one product changes the world.
Genius Playlists and Genius Mixes in iTunes
Pioneer Elite N-30 Front View
Pioneer Elite N-30 Networked Audio Player
Company: Pioneer Electronics
Price: $499.00 USD
Pioneer, a venerable name in home audio, has come up with a pair of interesting devices to better integrate the audio part of the internet and your own digital music library into your home audio system, the N-30 and N-50 Networked Audio Players. The Networked Audio Players are part of Pioneer’s Elite product line, noted for their excellent construction and superb audio quality. Pioneer foolishly loaned me an N-30 to evaluate. I say foolishly only because I seem to attract products for review that have fundamental flaws that cause me to write far too many negative reviews. Sadly, this is one of them.
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iPad 2: The Missing Manual, Third Edition
Author: J.D. Biersdorfer
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Print ISBN: 978-1-4493-1616-7 | ISBN 10: 1-4493-1616-6
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4493-1676-1 | ISBN 10: 1-4493-1676-X
Price: eBook US$19.99. Print US$24.99
Besides death and taxes, the only other guarantee in life is Apple will never incorporate a printed manual with any release of the iPad.
Experienced users see the benefit of no longer having a manual, while new users to the platform can be left perplexed.
Luckily O’Reilly Media and author J. D. Biersdorfer have collaborated to release iPad 2: The Missing Manual for all those consumers who wish to know more about their iPad 2.
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The future, what do you mean? How can we be in the future?
For decades many of us have been in awe of the possibility of the future. Not that long ago the thought of carrying a single panel computer capable of presenting music, film, books, and games was nothing more than science fiction.
I live by the belief that if man can envisage it, people can create it.
Of course, there is the possibility of going too far, as is famously shown in Planet Of The Apes, circa 1968.
For now we can sit back and relax with a small and hopefully harmless portion of technology that seemingly has the effect of enhancing our lives.
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We wish the iPhone a happy birthday with a non-copyright version of a disjointed birthday song and barely mention it again. A couple of technical problems get mentioned and the MacParrot coffee mug makes a spectacular comeback…if someone buying one to make a grand total of two made can be considered a sales success. We had some feedback concerning last week’s complaints and Tom Schmidt believes he’s taking over for Gaz (Not going to happen unless he changes his name to start with a “G”). We have TWO Skype calls and discuss an unnatural fear of Celine Dion. iTunes gets a working over and with the Macworld Expo right around the corner, Guy talks about gearing up (or down as the case may be) for it.
Some links:
Action Movie FX by Bad Robot Interactive Free
FotoMagico by Boinx Home $29.99
The Music:
Bruce H. McCosar – Evolution
Please visit and check out the artists that supply great music to our podcast!
Contact info: Drop us a line and let us know you want to be on the show. Gaz and Guy on Twitter, guy@mymac.com and gaz@mymac.com, or our Skype direct number 703-436-9501. Also go into iTunes and leave some feedback. Also don’t forget our FaceBook Page!
PhotoPresenter 4
App Developer: Boinx Software Ltd
Version Reviewed: 4.1.6
License: US$9.99 – Requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later
If you like showing off your photo collection to family and friends but want something more entertaining than the traditional slideshow then PhotoPresenter may be for you.
PhotoPresenter takes the idea of a slideshow collation of photographs and changes the way it is conceived, developed, and presented.
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Only about one and a half months togo until Macworld/iWorld! Hope you’ve got your hotel and flights arranged. Paul Kent from IDG comes on to talk about the new stuff this year and chat about his feelings (what?). Gaz hates iTunes or did until Lion seemed to straighten out most of his issues…well that and a new Mac. Twitter gets weird for the GMen and not one, but TWO new iTunes reviews! WOOT!
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iTunes Match is a service from Apple that allows you to put all your non-iTunes purchased music into the cloud for sharing across your Apple devices. This is a great option for people with lots of music that they’ve ripped from CD and put into iTunes, for example.
The following video shows how to purchase iTunes Match and start setting it up, as well as how to see what’s happening with your music as the service attempts to match songs that are available in the iTunes store, or upload copies of your songs that are not in the store.
BassJump 2 USB-Powered Sub Woofer Speaker
TwelveSouth
Price:$70
MacBook Pro, Air, and MacBook built-in speakers are lousy, especially on the low end of the audio spectrum, often called the bass range. TwelveSouth’s new BassJump 2 allows frustrated Mac laptop listeners to boost the bass range with simplicity.
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Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Peachpit Learning Series
Author: Robin Williams with John Tollett
Publisher: Peachpit Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-77701-0, 480 pages
Price: Paperback US$31.99, Book + eBook Bundle US$43.19, eBook Only US$25.59
Robin Williams, author of The Little Mac Book, Lion Edition has teamed up with husband and fellow author John Tollett to release the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: Peachpit Learning Series book.
The book is delivered through 24 easy to follow lessons and is aimed towards new to medium level users. Experienced users will also find a good level of content and clarity on various topics.
Throughout the book readers will be presented with stunning visual examples to assist with understanding the Lion operating system.
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One of the many promises of iOS 5 was that it would lead us out of the wired wilderness and into the modern world of over the air updates, syncing, and backups. Anyone with iPhones and iPads knows the pain of constantly having to tether their devices to their computer just to update things like podcasts, and to make sure apps and settings are backed up. Now those things can be done over Wi-Fi, provided a few conditions are met.
Two of those elements, syncing and backups, do or can involve iTunes running on a Mac or PC. Unfortunately, how this works isn’t immediately clear. I noticed another person in my Twitter stream who was equally confused about the backup portion of the equation, specifically as to when backups would occur when syncing an iDevice over Wi-Fi. I’d also seen some comments that Wi-Fi sync would only happen when the device was connected to power, which I personally knew wasn’t true. So I decided to do some testing to figure out exactly what the requirements for Wi-Fi syncing and backups were.
MemoryCloud
Available For Mac 10.6 or later with 64-bit processor
Mac Desktop Version Reviewed: 1.0.1
Licence Reviewed: US$20.00 per month with 100 GBs of storage
Where do your memories live? MemoryCloud is a new online storage service. Their aim is simple. Assist people with their media storage needs.
The online cloud computing and associated storage industry is full of competition. MemoryCloud is separating itself from other cloud storage suppliers by specialising in storage of your memories: your photos and your videos.
Integration with iPhoto and iTunes assures an easy to use service. The way it works is unique. When in iPhoto users can select an event or series of photos they would like to have stored on the service. iTunes compatibility works in a similar manner but is limited to Movies and TV content.
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SpeakMyTunes available on the Mac App Store
App Developer: Riccardo Ettore
Version Reviewed: 2.0.1
License: Freeware, Compatible on PowerPC and Intel Macs with Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7
SpeakMyTunes is a small companion application for iTunes that will vocally announce the current track name, artist and album. The developer has the user in mind and has allowed customization of not only which song elements can be used but also the associated text you would like spoken around these elements.
You may assume that this application is only suited for users with visual impairments. I beg to differ. There is something about listening to your own music library and having the track and artist announced as if you were listening to a live radio show.
It also allows me to instantly say, no, I don’t wish to listen to that track and hence I will proceed to the next track. You therefore don’t need to have that constant argument in your mind as to who that artist is or what is the name of that song.
By default the application doesn’t burden the user with automatically launching at login, although this is available as an option in the preferences as seen below:
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No Gaz tonight so Owen Rubin joins Guy and they discuss all the latest just announced at Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference. You get their takes on OS X Lion, iOS 5, the wireless syncing for iOS devices to come, the iCloud, and just what the heck is iTunes Match? Lastly, as it turns out, all this SoundBoard silliness is OWEN’S fault!
Links:
The Heist
Contact info: Drop us a line and let us know you want to be on the show. Gaz and Guy on Twitter, guy@mymac.com and gaz@mymac.com, or our Skype direct number 703-436-9501. Also go into iTunes and leave some feedback.
Download & Listen to the show here, and subscribe in iTunes for free.
The MyMac.com Podcast urges all our listeners to please go to iTunes and make a donation to the Red Cross to help with their relief efforts.
JollyJap gives the GMen a couple of weird stories (as our unofficial Twitter Correspondent! Congrats Paul…I think) and Tom Engels from the Explorer’s Podcast has a question or two about iTunes and GarageBand problems that is certain to induce nightmares for Guy. China seems to hate juveniles, and Android beating iOS in web tests goes down in a Blaze! Old timers remember Bungie’s Myth and now it seems to be back! Lastly, Adobe makes a Flash to HTML 5 conversion tool called Wallaby (but apparently doesn’t carry around their employees in a pouch). If Flash is going to win out over Apple’s objections, why do they need it?
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