For those using tabs in Safari, there’s a quick and easy way to create a new tab rather than head to the file menu or control click on the tabs bar to access the contextual menu.
Simply double clicking the tabs bar will perform the same task in a fraction of the time. Very simple but supremely effective.Try it today!
Fresh from appearing in the new Microsoft “I’m a PC” adverts, Pharrell Williams and his band of hippity hoppers known as N.E.R.D have released a new album entitled Seeing Sounds.
While I was quick to judge the man for his ludicrous “I’m a PC, just like BG (Bill Gates)” comment in the new ads, I must admit I have checked out the new album and was shocked by one particular line in a song called “Anti Matter“. It goes a little something like this:
Kay, what’s this on your iPod
Tell me what you listening to
Why you jumping bout his money
I ain’t hear him mention you
iPod eh, Mr Williams? I guess “jumping bout his money” actually refers to Pharrell’s new friend “BG” when he hears this little Apple endorsement and thinks about his recent marketing spend.
Then again, “Kay, what’s this on your Zune Player” probably wouldn’t have worked…
Check out “Anti Matter” on iTunes here
There’s a serious rift in the iCreate office.
Jimmy and I are being embarassed, laughed at and made to feel second rate.
Why? Helen is beating us at Wurdle.
Wurdle is an iPhone app based on the principals of the board game Boggle which requires players to create words from a jumble of letters. Being the top-notch journalists we are, Jimmy and I pride ourselves on our vocab and overall mastery of the King’s English. Until now that is…
Helen, a designer by trade, is beating us severely. Racking up scores in excess of 3000 points by comparison to Jimmy and I with paltry 1500-2000 point efforts.
So we ask you, readers of iCreate, join us in attempting to defeat Helen and set a new high score to silence her mocking.
The app costs just over a pound from the App Store and I will personally refund the first high scorer with a £5 iTunes Gift Voucher.
Firstly, download the app here
Then send us a screengrab of your high score (you need to beat 4,620) to iCreate@imagine-publishing.co.uk today!
We need your help!
How do you counter an advertising campaign that mocks your company?
If you’re Microsoft responding to the Get A Mac ads from Apple, you throw enough money to solve third-world poverty into a single advertising campaign in direct response to those of your rival.
How do you respond to that kind of marketing firepower?
You keep on doing what you’re already doing and laugh if you’re Apple.
There’s no flashiness or celebrity endorsement in Apple’s adverts (aside from the fame the campaign has brought to John Hodgman and better film roles offered up to Justin Long).
The budget must be tiny. Two actors, a white background, music and sound effects. Who needs Pharel Williams (N.E.R.D clearly means just that) and Eva Longoria (quite the desperate housewife if she’s using Vista) prancing about? Jerry Seinfeld, ha!
Bean Counter is the funniest of the new Apple adverts and so remarkably true. Hodgman counts his piles of money allocating a huge amount to advertising and minute pile to fixing Vista, ultimately pushing all the money into the advertising pile.
As I’ve said previously (before the ad aired) the cost of this marketing campaing, a reported $300, could have gone a long way to plug holes, fix code and patch mistakes in Windows Vista.
Apple, albeit smugly, is making a justified point. Why is Microsoft marketing its brand when its main product is still so flawed? If, God forbid, I was a Vista user I’d be gutted that the company has seen fit to try to lure more users or at least reinforce the belief of existing users while ignoring the broken OS I paid good money for.
Check out the ads at www.apple.com/getamac/ads
It’s been eight long months since Apple upgraded its laptop range and today saw a major redesign of both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro models. The changes look impressive: the machines are carved out of a single sheet of aluminium and all now feature a glossy glass display. They also have powerful graphics card from NVIDIA rather than the integrated chips from Intel. If you’re curious about all the specs, you can check them out here for the MacBook, and here for the MacBook Pro.
However, it’s not all good news. For one thing, the 17” MacBook Pro only received the marginal upgrade of a bigger hard drive and more memory, but its design remains as it was before. The same goes for the MacBook Air, but this was to be expected as it’s such a new product and wouldn’t have been ready for a major overhaul just yet.
My biggest concern is with what was left out of the MacBook: the FireWire port is gone. It is true that most modern camcorders, especially the HD ones connect via USB, the iPod lost FireWire connectivity years ago and most modern peripherals only support USB, but what about legacy products? Many hard drives have been sold with FireWire ports, owners of such devices won’t be able to purchase a MacBook but be forced to upgrade to a MacBook Pro, which may not be within their budget.
The beauty of FireWire is that you can daisy chain devices so there is no need for a hub, as is required with USB. Also, copying data to a FireWire drive is often faster than to a USB drive. It’s an excellent connection and even though it lost the war to Intel’s USB2, there is still a lot of life in it and it shouldn’t be discarded so easily - especially since Apple designed it in the first place.
Also, even though the MacBook wasn’t aimed at professionals, there is a strong market for a small lightweight computer in fields like music and video. In fact, a lot of high-end music equipment only connects via FireWire. The original low-end MacBook is still for sale (with some upgraded internals like a built-n SuperDrive for instance), but it’s obvious that the writing is on the wall: as far as Apple are concerned, FireWire is now considered a professional connection and has no place in a consumer product.
Saying that these customers can afford to purchase a MacBook pro isn’t the point: portability is the key, which is why many of these users still lament the loss of the full-featured 12” PowerBook G4. The previous MacBook was a poor but acceptable substitute to that machine, but the new version isn’t in the same league.
There is a market for a professional full-featured compact design and I can only hope that a 13” MacBook Pro will be introduced with the redesigned 17” model, to cater for the needs of the small but important creative fields in music and video who need a small, light but powerful machine with all the modern ports built-in.
I believe this is a serious mistake on Apple’s part and I pray they rectify it soon with a new model. We’ll just have to see what happens if and when the 17” model gets upgraded.
I was seven the first time I went on a long-haul flight. I had many more opportunities to experience this mode of transportation for years after that, until the end of the millennium. In all that time, the entertainment system never changed: we were all given the choice of one film which we all had to watch on the same screen, at the same time.
Recently, this all changed and each passenger got their own personal screen and had the opportunity to choose what type of entertainment to enjoy, be it a film, TV show or even games, at any time during the flight. I got introduced to this new system shortly after I got hold of an iPod touch and this caused a problem: the idea of having a screen within arm’s reach was very exciting, having already interacted with my iPod for a few weeks and loving it.
Unfortunately, the plane’s system was nowhere near as high tech as that consumer device. For one thing, it wasn’t equipped with a touch screen. This device begged to be touched, but could only be controlled with a remote. On top of which it was incredibly easy to crash it and be faced with familiar Windows error messages, something my eldest daughter did numerous times during the flight with increasing frustration.
A few months later, my family and I were on another flight and faced with another entertainment system. This time, it could be controlled by touch… Actually, it was more like ‘press as hard as you can for the sensor to recognise the command’. The touch screen was also an obvious new addition as the cursor was still present on the display and the interface, again, left a lot to be desired.
Apple has nailed the entertainment system on the very small screen with the iPod touch and iPhone so why is it that airlines keep using Microsoft technology to power their machines? I wouldn’t mind if it worked as advertised, but sadly, most of the time it’s just an exercise in frustration.
This got me thinking: are the other travellers - or most of them anyway - tolerant of these unfriendly devices because they have grown used to struggling with badly designed devices? What would happen if Apple got a contract to fit an entertainment system on an airline built around iPhone/Apple TV technology? How would it affect the passengers? Would a glimpse of a better design make them realise how frustrating interacting with PCs can be? Could it join the iPod and iPhone and act as a catalyst to bring more people to a better computing platform?
Since the majority of new cars in the United States come fitted with iPod connectors as standard, it’s obvious that Apple aren’t averse to partnering with big companies. Maybe going for the airline market could be the next logical step. It would certainly make those flights a lot more pleasant and stress-free.
From 18:00 GMT (10:00 PST) iCreate will be hosting a live iChat Chat Room to discuss the events unfolding in Cupertino at Apple’s special notebook event.
If you fancy chatting with fellow Mac users and the iCreate team, you can log in easily via iChat on your Mac:
1. Login to iChat
2. Select Go To Chat Room… from the iChat file menu (or hit Apple+R).
3. Type the room name “icreate” when prompted and click Go.
Since the “All iPhone Apps” link was dropped from the iPhone App Store it’s getting trickier to find the newest apps or price changes within iTunes.
AppShopper.com aims to end all this with a useful site to help track Apps and updates as well as price changes on the App Store.
The main page shows all updates on the App Store including new releases and price changes and you can filter the results to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The site is currently in its infancy, but new features including a search function will be available soon.
Apple has finally decided to drop the NDA.
The NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) was set up by Apple when the SDK (software Development kit) was released. The idea being that stopping developers talking about the iPhone code would prevent malicious Apps from appearing, making Apple’s vetting of the apps a little easier.
The NDA seemingly caused more problems than it solved. It prevented legitimate developers from conversing and learning from each other about the iPhone software - the result of which, according to developers, is a lot of applictions that aren’t as good as they could have been had discussions about coding been allowed.
The NDA also restricted the sale of books on developing for the iPhone that would not just have been lucrative to the writers, but also instrumental in creating better functioning apps and increasing interest in the platform.
So, the big question. Why has Apple decided to do this now?
In terms of timing it could quite easily be argued that Apple is a tiny bit worried about the new Android development market which is completley open and has just been released into the wild in the form of a new Android based phone.
Although the market place has not been tested thoroughly and Apps are only just starting to trickle onto the platform, the fact that Android completely open could have big reprecussions on the iPhone developemnt community which is being continually hushed by the NDA.
Why would developers put up with being silenced when they could make better apps in a more open environment?
If this is the case, then Apple is at least willing to concede that the new market in mobile applictions isn’t sewn up by the iPhone and that they are going to have to make changes to keep the development community interested in the platform.
The upshot for the rest of us is that, no matter what the reason, the fall of the NDA should result in much better Apps appearing on the App Store and the iPhone becoming an even more useful/fun device to use.
Again, this signals exciting times for iPhone owners and it ups the ante in the mobile platform wars…
When we’re not waxing lyrical about the iLife apps or extolling the joy of OS X, we’re partial to a little bit of Photoshop. Whether it’s getting serious with a Wacom tablet or sticking Jimmy Hayes’ head on Eva Longoria’s body, it forms part of our extra-iCreate enjoyment.
Our friends over at Photoshop Creative magazine have put together a brilliant new element to their website allowing you to pit pieces of Photoshop art against one another. It’s called Photoshop Face-Off.
The premise is simple. You’re presented with two images and you decide which should win the Face-Off. You’ll also find out how other people voted, for a little validation on your decision.
The art on display is exceptional and the competitive nature incredibly addictive. So addicitive, in fact, that this post took twice as long to write as it should.
Like the creative’s equivalent of a gambling habit, you’ll find yourself heading back to the site again and again to feed your Face-Off cravings.
Check it out here and don’t forget to comment on the pictures you pick.
www.photoshopcreative.co.uk/photoshopfaceoff/
