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Daily Update for December 23, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some of the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
TUAW on YouTube Geek Week: Southern Stars and SkyCube
By now we hope you've watched the first two YouTube Geek Week videos from TUAW -- the Stupid WeMo Tricks. Now we're going to something equally geeky, but much more impressive. In these two videos, TUAW editor-in-chief Victor Agreda Jr. talks with Southern Stars Founder and CEO Tim DeBenedictis not only about the company's products -- astronomy and telescope control apps -- but also a project that DeBenedictis is literally trying to get off the ground. In this first video, you'll see Southern Stars' incredible SkySafari 3 Pro app (US$39.99) in action, not only giving you a view of what it would be like to be in orbit around Saturn, but also controlling a telescope using the company's SkyFi Wireless Telescope Controller. You'll also get an idea of how the company's SkySafari Plus for Mac ($19.99) works. But wait, there's more geekiness. DeBenedictis is working on a project to launch a small "CubeSat" called the SkyCube next year. It was funded through Kickstarter, and you can still buy a sponsorship of the satellite (including tweeting messages from space or having the satellite take a picture for you) on the SkyCube web page. The Southern Stars Satellite Safari app ($4.99) is what sponsors will use to command the satellite. In this video, Victor chats with DeBenedictis about the SkyCube project and you can see a mockup of the tiny satellite in action.
TUAW TV Live: Victor Agreda live from CES 2013
Today we've got a bit of a surprise in store for you -- TUAW editor-in-chief Victor Agreda, Jr. is in Las Vegas this week covering CES, and he'll be joining us for part of the show to talk about what's new, exciting, and different for Apple fans. I'll also have a free Macworld/iWorld iFan pass valued at US$100 to give away to one viewer. You'll just need to be able to make it to San Francisco on your own dime; we're just providing the pass. Still, this is a great opportunity for someone to meet with the TUAW team at Macworld/iWorld, which will take place January 31 - February 2, 2013 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco, CA. Below, you'll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. You'll be watching the show in glorious HD! Prefer using IRC? We're on IRC server chat1.ustream.tv, chat room #tuaw-tv. If you're driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you're stuck in traffic, please don't -- keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It's a universal app and is wonderful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat. In addition, the live stream and chat will be available through our Facebook page. Just point your browser here to watch the show and chat with other viewers while you're on Facebook. We'll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you're seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you'll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.
TUAW TV Live at 5 PM ET: Live from Las Vegas, baby!
The International Consumer Electronics Show is in full swing in Las Vegas this week, and TUAW's Mike Schramm and Victor Agreda Jr. are on hand to catch all of the latest news to pass along to our readers. Victor has volunteered to take some time off from the busy show schedule this afternoon to talk about what's in store for Apple fans in the near future. He'll join me on today's episode of TUAW TV Live. As usual, I'll be starting the show at 5 PM EST (2 PM PST / 10 PM GMT) sharp, and we'll take a few minutes to chat before the demos start. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you're unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in iTunes or any other favorite podcatching app. The past shows are also available on the TUAW YouTube channel. The chat is on IRC: join us on server chat1.ustream.tv, chat room #tuaw-tv.
OS X's MIA features: Out of style or out of time?
One of the things that typifies Mountain Lion is Apple's insistence on removing existing features that users know and love. I suspect some just weren't finished in time, but others seem to simplify interfaces at the cost of user frustration. Here at TUAW Central, we receive regular emails from readers asking for work-arounds for features that no longer appear in OS X. Need a menu-bar display control? There's an app for that. Want to add hyperlink annotations in Preview? You may need to hunt around a bit for a solution, but there's not one in Preview itself. Operating systems are supposed to keep improving -- offering fixes and better features. With Apple, OS upgrades often have users wondering where their favorite tools are and why things they used to be able to easily accomplish are no longer possible. I will spare you the exact phrasing Beloved TUAW Leader Victor Agreda Jr shared to express his displeasure with the the current Airport utility, and turn to TUAW Editor Mike Rose. Rose points out that simplifying the user interface only goes so far. Apple understands that 80 percent of user interactivity applies to just 20 percent of OS features. This encourages Apple to trim down feature sets for better maintainability. "You can only apply the 80/20 rule so many times, however," Rose explained, "Before you're left with an on-off switch and a picture of an Apple." As rumors of OS X 10.9 ramp up under a unified OS team led by Craig Federighi, we wonder: what message would you send Apple? What features do they need to bring back, what features would you battle to the death to save and what features would you be willing to cut? Join in the comments with your thoughts, and let us know what you think. It's the Apple Operating System Battle Royale. May the OS ever be in your favor.
TUAW TV Live: Now with fewer ads, more Steve and Victor
I'm happy to announce that we won't be moving from Ustream to YouTube, at least not for the foreseeable future. Ustream will now show one advertisement at the beginning of the stream and there will be no further interruptions to your viewing pleasure. In addition, the live stream and chat will be available through our Facebook page. Just point your browser here to watch the show and chat with other viewers while you're on Facebook. Victor Agreda, Jr., the editor-in-chief of TUAW, is my guest today on TUAW TV Live. Possible topics for today include AT&T's nasty "be glad that we let you run built-in apps on your iPhone" response to people's concerns about the company's FaceTime over cellular plans, a look at some new items that have popped into the TUAW Labs, and a glance at perhaps the sweetest iPad case ever. Below, you'll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. You'll be watching the show in glorious HD! If you're driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you're stuck in traffic, please don't -- keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It's a universal app and is wonderful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat. We'll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you're seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you'll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.
TUAW TV Live at 5 PM EDT: The Once and Future Editor-In-Chief
This afternoon I'm happy to have the former editor-in-chief of TUAW as well as the new editor-in-chief of TUAW on the show with me. Yes, our very own Victor Agreda, Jr., well-known for his excellent video interviews of developers and his amazing hair, will be on the show today talking to me about whatever we decide are valid topics. I have a feeling that AT&T might be a topic of discussion... Note that the show will still be on Ustream today and I'll have some good news to report to the audience... As usual, I'll be starting the show at 5 PM EDT (2 PM PDT / 10 PM BST) sharp, and we'll take a few minutes to chat before the demos start. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you're unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in iTunes or any other favorite podcatching app. The past shows are also available on the TUAW YouTube channel. The chat is on IRC: join us on server chat1.ustream.tv, chat room #tuaw-tv.
Getting Ready for Mountain Lion: Dictation
Mountain Lion is about to debut one of my favorite features ever: Dictation. With built-in support for speech-to-text, OS X Mountain Lion allows you to talk instead of type in nearly every app on the system. You'll be able to access dictation using a simple keyboard shortcut, a double click on the Function (fn) key. And if your keyboard doesn't have one available, or if you prefer another choice, System Preferences allows you to customize that shortcut. Dictation will be integrated with many system features, including Contacts, so it will more accurately recognize your colleagues' names. You don't have to worry that "Victor Agreda" will transform into "Vic tore a gray dar". (Although, truth be told, I'm still struggling to make my iPhone 4S realize that "call Mike Rose's phone" isn't "call microphone", and it uses the same speech-and-contacts integration as Mountain Lion.) If you're using Mountain Lion on a Mac without a built-in microphone (like my 2009 Mac mini), you'll need to hook up one in order to use the dictation features. You can use headsets as well as stand-alone mics. Mountain Lion dictation follows the same rules as Siri. You can dictate punctuation and capitalization as you talk. For example, you can say "hello world exclamation point" and Mountain Lion will type "Hello world!" Other handy meta-items include new line, period, comma, and question mark. Dictation is smart. Say, "Twenty two dollars and 32 cents" and it's automatically transformed into "$22.32." It handles dates, too. Say, "Thursday July Fourth Seventeen Seventy Six at Three P M" and it types "Thursday, July 4, 1776 at 3 PM." You can even say "smiley" and "frowny face" to add emoticons, namely, :-) and :-(, which may or may not please you as the hyphen noses are not exactly standard. Once you start working with dictation, you'll find that it can solve a problem you didn't know you had. Unfortunately, Mountain Lion offers dictation and only dictation. You can't ask a virtual voice assistant to shoot off an email or send a message ... at least not yet! Dictation supports English (U.S., UK, and Australia), French, German, and Japanese. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and Erica Sadun wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
You're the Pundit: 50 Shades of AppleScript
When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is AppleScript. "AppleScript is a bit like Office Space's Milton Wadams. It's put upon and underappreciated, but then again probably going to be moved to the basement soon." -- Victor Agreda Ah AppleScript. What a curious artifact it is, lingering on as it does into the Mountain Lion age, long after its inception as a natural-language inspired developer automation language. First debuting in System 7, AppleScript allows apps to control one another to script repetitive tasks. Apps declare scriptable actions that they support (for example, you can tell iTunes to create playlists, to rename tracks, and so forth) and AppleScript lets you build short programs to perform these actions as if a user were interacting directly. In today's Sandboxed world, where apps need to schedule playdates, carry ID cards, pass Gatekeepers, and request privileges, AppleScript is something of a living fossil. It harkens back to the Wild West days of "anyone can do anything, so long as it's between consenting apps." It seems to me that AppleScript is due to meet a natural end. It's not as if the language were a joy to use. At best, it was painful. "Nothing exemplifies self-hatred better than AppleScript!" "Beat me, whip me, make me write AppleScript" and so on. There are dozens of ways to do any task in AppleScript and nearly all of them are just a quick typo away from being wrong. It offers a very frustrating development environment. "AppleScript is one of the most interesting word puzzles ever. Nothing like trying to guess the right verbs and nouns each time" -- Richard Goodwin At the same time, it is deeply convenient -- a way to add extra functionality to your Mac and perform complex tasks with a simple entry point. I still have dozens of scripts on my Lion Mac that I use on a near daily basis -- from resizing images for TUAW posts to signing apps for iOS testing. As useful as AppleScript is, I cannot see it moving forward much further. Already, the Mac App Store has ruled out most AppleScript based submissions that control one app from another (Incidentally, this killed my QTSkipper utility, which allows you to perform 30-second TiVo-like jumps in QuickTime). So does AppleScript-based automation continue to have a future on the Mac? Lex Friedman of Macworld wrote up a pretty good summary of the situation a couple of months ago. He discusses the various ways scripts operate and how Mountain Lion will treat each scenario. But this doesn't address the bigger question: in a post-PC world, does AppleScript-style automation really deserve a place on our computers? That's much harder to answer, especially as Apple moves away from scripting, the command line, and other relics of hard core nerdism to a consumer-centric focus that places its emphasis on seamess computing. I'm not sure tomorrow's Macs will have room for that kind or level of customization, and if so, then we're looking at one of the longest lived, powerful, and most convenient aspects of the Apple world reaching a natural end. For all that AppleScript drives me crazy, I would greatly miss it if it were to have to go away. Is AppleScript at its end? You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis. %Poll-74952%
Dear Aunt TUAW: RSS in the clouds
Dear Auntie TUAW, I'll admit it... I'm a news junkie. Podcasts, RSS feeds, the works! RSS feeds are what I am wondering about today. You see, I like to skim my RSS headlines, read the feed items that catch my eye, and not have any items automatically delete or disappear. My current setup is using Mail's RSS functionality and then manually deleting the articles I don't want. I'm fine with that, heck, ... I prefer it that way. But ever since I got my shiny, new iPad, I've been wondering if there is a better way. See, I like to read RSS feeds on my morning and evening commutes. (Don't worry, Auntie, ... I take the train.) Hence, my problem. I read and delete or read and save an article on my iPad, but then I have to manually reconcile my feeds with those on my home computer. Ideally, what I'd like to do is have an RSS client "in the cloud" and then be able to access it from my iPad, my Mac, and maybe even my work computer and my BlackBerry. Basically have it function like an IMAP-push mail server, if you get my drift. I checked out Google Reader, but it seems lacking. Any suggestions? Hugs and snuggles! Erik
