Just a quick update on the Postal Service vs Apple video hoo ha. You probably don't really care but...

I posted a little about the similarity between between Apple's new Intel Mac ad & The Postal Service's (a music band, not a delivery company) 'Such Great Heights' video below (see: Happy New Year!)

Spot the difference?

Since then it's been widely discussed on the net. Ben Gibbard from The Postal Service has published a note on their website.

"01/19/06
A Note from Ben
It has recently come to our attention that Apple Computers' new television commercial for the Intel chip features a shot-for-shot recreation of our video for 'Such Great Heights' made by the same filmmakers responsible for the original. We did not approve this commercialization and are extremely disappointed with both parties that this was executed without our consultation or consent. -Ben Gibbard, The Postal Service"

This follows an earlier statement by Sarah Moody, from their record company Sub Pop (from Cult of Mac)


"... the Apple commercial is indeed very similar, it wasn't licensed in any form, and was made by the same directors as the Postal Service video. We weren't alerted to the fact that it existed until the day it came out."

It's strange Apple didn't try to avoid the same fiasco they had with Lugz. Which also saw comparisons being drawn between an Apple advert, and one previously made by Lugz footwear.

You can look at it two ways, it's either great exposure for the band, and/or a lack of creativity by TBWA Chiat Day (Apple's Ad agency)/Josh & Xander, the directors behind both Ad and video.

I can understand the band being peeved, after-all, they were doing quite well and probably don't want to be know as 'you know, that band Apple nicked the video from'. Still, if it encourages a new album from a band I enjoy, then that's great.

You can watch Apple's ad here, the Such Great Heights video here. Elite Productions, have done a complete comparison, including a side by side video.


Update: A better version of the Such Great Heights video can be seen here, via the Last Minute Blog

Ironically enough, you can now also purchase the video from Apple's iTunes Music Store.

My iTMS UK Review

iPhoto 6, part of iLife '06 has a new full screen mode, with translucent menus and palettes that appear as you mouse over them, then vanish.

iPhoto 6

It's the best new feature, and got me thinking. Would this new full screen mode translate to Safari? So, to give you some idea, I made this mock-up (click to zoom)

iPhoto 6, inspired Safari

The bottom and top menus wouldn't appear at the same time in reality (like iPhoto), it's just for show. They appear on mouse over.

Keeping the navigation buttons at the bottom as iPhoto (they could be customised), having the same interface layout would make switching applications more familiar.

Instead of a list of photos at the top, in Safari it would be thumbs of recently visited web pages/sites (showing the sites name on mouse over) This could be changed to show bookmarks? It would also replace tabbed browsing, a little like OmiWeb.

OmniWeb's Tabs

Dragging them out of the top menu would remove them (Poof, like the Dock).

I wasn't sure what to do with the bookmark bar, but thought having a Bookmark floating palette, might take care of that. I'm sure there could be other palettes for other functions?

What else could get the full screen treatment? How about the Finder?

Watch this space...

Bored? Just fancy spying on your fellow countrymen? Then, google this

inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg"

You'll get a list of webcams, that you can view. (I'm not talking dodgy stuff). It's mostly watching people sitting around their offices, unis or around town

How is this possible you're thinking? Well, they're either open on purpose, or someone has forgotten about security for our amusement.

enjoy!

And again... That didn't take long did it?

According to Bill Thompson (from his blog) on the BBC "Mac users 'too smug' over security"

Seeing that headline you'd think "Oh no, there's some new vulnerability". There isn't, so don't worry

The whole thing could've be summed us like this:

Turn your firewall on.
Don't open mail with attachments from strange places/people (don't forward it)
Turn off automatic log-in
Use a decent password (that's eight characters and over)

Have some common sense and stay informed, I'm bound to tell you if there ever is a new security threat.

I'd not recommend at this time spending money on Anti-Virus software, Instead, read this and this. In summary, as there are no known Mac OS X viruses, having anti virus software won't really do anything, and may possibly cause more problems with your system.


My thoughts. The article does seem slightly patronising. He has made things slightly more clear in a later posting. But then he says:

"and although I’m not their (Mac users) favourite person at the moment since I dared question the absolute security of their godhead, I was still allowed to comment on air."

Just comes across as another sort of smugness. He had many comments, made to his blog (not all by curmudgeons) etc, that prompted his later post, where he admitted making mistakes. So, throwing away people's views because you think they're 'fanatics' could be insulting.

Apple or Mac users may need to be taken to task over a lot of things, this just doesn't seem one of them.

Take a look at the BBC report on the new Intel Macs. Seems all rather reasonable, until you notice the choice of 'have your say' reader feedback slapped on.

I think someone at the BBC has a wicked sense of humour. It's not like Mac and PC users need any extra goading to go at each other.

You can just imagine whoever choose it sitting there thinking "nyayahahahaha, let the fun commence".

Say goodbye to that awful looking Windows Media Player on your Mac, you need it no more!

You can now download for free Flip4Mac, which adds components (codecs) to Quicktime that allow you to play windows media in the QuickTime player, and web browsers.

Update: I've removed Flip4Mac, after discovering it causes the Finder to quit when getting info. on AVI files. I'll let you know if they fix it.

Some other news from MacWorld:

Goggle Earth is now out for Mac.

"Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips."

Can you see Paul's car?

It's a great app!

If you liked the idea of sharing photos more easily, like Photocasting recently announced as part of iPhoto, why not try FilmLoop?

"FilmLoop is free software that lets you broadcast, find, and share photos. It's an instant way to share your photos with your entire social network, and have everyone get involved."

It's available for PC & Mac, I'll try setting up some loops so you can take a look.

Update: Here's a loop I made earlier.


One last thing, I think a certain someone might be interested in Montage. A new screenwriting application available in March. You can read a short review here.

Happy new year to you all, if a little late one. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and new year.

Now, you're expecting a bit on how do backup your Mac aren't you? Well, I'm afraid, it'll have to wait. It's all Mac News this week!

It's MacWorld 2006 in San Francisco, and yesterday was the Keynote speech. Time to find out which rumours were true, and which were just a lot of hot air.

Steve Jobs announced some evolutionary, rather than revolutionary products.

First some updates. iLife has now been updated to iLife '06. iTunes, iMovie etc.

Most notable were iPhoto, which now allows editing in a new full screen mode, and support for 250,000 photos. A new feature PhotoCasting, allows sharing of albums over the web, which you can subscribe to from within iPhoto or any RSS reader. Sadly publishing is hampered by having to be a .Mac subscriber. I suspect they'll be some workarounds for this from third parties. You can also now order calendars and cards as well as books.

Garageband now allows for simple creation of Podcasts. This was demonstrated by Steve, with his 'Super Secret Apple Rumours' podcast, which made me laugh, he has a wry sense of humour.  It can also record your voice conversations from iChat, if you want to use interviews in your Podcast. It links with iWeb.

iWeb is a new addition to iLife. It allows for quick and easy creation of web sites (blogs, photo albums etc), similar to Rapidweaver, which I use to create this site. I'll be interested in trying iWeb out. I believe it's also though will only upload to .Mac

iDVD now has widescreen support, easier drag and drop menu creation. iMovie gets improved themes. iLife sells for £55 and £69 for a family pack.

iWork '06 is also now shipping with the ability to do some simple spreadsheet calculations and charts within both Pages the word processor, and Keynote, the PowerPoint competitor. There was also mail merge support within pages, using the Address Book, and new Keynote transitions.

There was no sign of the widely expected spreadsheet addition to iWork, know as "Numbers". This is probably due to a Microsoft spokeswoman appearing on stage with Steve Jobs to announce their further commitment to make MS Office for the Mac for at least another five years.  Apple no doubt to appease MS dropped their spreadsheet in favour of Excel, for now.  Costs £55 and £69 for family pack.

There were some other minor updates. QuickTime was updated to 7.0.4 and Mac OS X to 10.4.4. The Mac OS fixes multiple bugs and adds some new widgets to Dashboard.  Available from Software Update.

Update: Apple intially removed links to QuickTime 7.0.4. No reason were given and an uninstaller issued. Since then Apple has re-released the update.

I had some problems starting up after the 10.4.4 update, it sat at the Apple logo with the spinning wheel, I had to force it to quit and start again in single-user mode and run a few repairs. Let me know if you have any problems, but I'd advice a backup before hand (You're asking me how to do that now aren't you?) Just remember, repair your permissions!

The iPod and nano gained a wired remote control with a twist, it has a built in FM tuner.  You do the tuning using the iPod. Costs £35

Next, the one people were waiting for. Which Mac gets the Intel chips first? ......... It's the...... Well, before I tell you.

The CEO of Intel Paul Otellini came on stage in a 'bunny suit'. Now, that doesn't mean he was dressed like a bunny girl I'm afraid. A bunny suit is a 'clean room' suit.  Intel used people dressed in various coloured 'bunny' suits in their ads for Pentium chips.

Apple famously burnt one in an advert showing the speed of the PowerPC processor over the Pentium. Thus the appearance of the Intel CEO in the bunny suit was a little in joke, if a cringey one. 

So, the first to get the new chip is, the...... iMac. Surprised? I was.

Yes, though the iMac was only recently updated with an iSight camera built in, and remote control. It's the first to have the new Intel Core Duo (previously known as Yonah). It's at least twice as fast as the old iMac (that'll please Paul) has faster RAM and a mini-DVI to connect an external monitor.  It costs the same, 17" £929, and 20" £1229.

Now, I know some people might be funny about Intel chips in Macs, after-all they've been the enemy right? You've nothing to worry about, having an Intel chip in your Mac doesn't make it a PC, it doesn't make it vulnerable to PC viruses, that's a software issue. It runs all the old Mac software using Rosetta, so you don't need to run out and buy replacements and new software will be Intel native. All you need to care about is that the new Macs run faster, who makes the chip inside isn't that important.

They've created a new advert for the intel in mac, it looks remarkably like the Such Great Heights video by The Postal Service. In this writers opinion, it's cute.

Spot the difference?

Portables. Yes, there's a new Intel based laptop Mac, and it has a new name.  

Say goodbye to PowerBook and hello to MacBook Pro.  I'm sure we'll get used to the new name, and I expect the iBook to become the MacBook when they're updated.   The reason for the name change, Steve said, is they've done with Power, being they no longer use PowerPC chips.  It makes sense, although the first PowerBooks also didn't use a PowerPC chip, so the Power in PowerBook was never an indication of the chip used inside. 

Enough of the history.

The MacBook Pro is a 1" thin, 15.4" aluminium clad laptop. Has a built in iSight camera and comes with a remote like the iMac for FrontRow. It's four times faster than the old PowerBooks.  It also has a thoughtful feature. The power connector is called Magsafe. The power cord no longer fully plugs into the Mac, it magnetically attaches, so if snagged it just pulls off, rather than dragging your Mac to its doom on the ground.  I've often caught the cable on my leg, so this is a welcome feature.

It also has a larger trackpad, brighter screen and improved graphics. The 1.67Ghz model costs £1429, the 1.83Ghz £1779 and available in February.

The design hasn't changed that much, and I'd expect the 17" PowerBook to gain the MacBook Pro treatment in time.  As for the 12", there's been rumours of its demise, who can say?  It would seem a bit daft not to have a smaller lighter laptop. Perhaps this will be passed onto updated iBooks/MacBooks when they arrive. Steve said all Macs would transition to Intel by the end of the year. 

Click here to watch the keynote for yourself.


What wasn't there?

There was no new Intel based Mac Mini. Many were expecting it with built in TV recording capability, tying into FrontRow. Of course there' s nothing to stop you adding these features using products from Miglia or Elgato running EyeTV, for example.

No widescreen 13.3" iBook. There was no talk of Mac OS X 10.5-Leopard, and the iPod shuffle wasn't axed.

I will get around to those back-up tips!