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Finally! 50GB Blu-ray movies are here!
Some may say that 50GB of space for a single movie is way too much and is completely useless. Some may be right, but that doesn't make such things cease to exist. Face it -- 50GB Blu-ray movies have arrived. Which can you expect to be bundled with your PS3 upon launch (hypothetically)? Well, Click comes out on October 10th. A more likely contender (although a little more violent... just a little) is Black Hawk Down, releasing on November 14th. Then the fan favorite, Talledega Nights, arrives on December 12th. The movies boast high interactivity, using the new Sony "Blu-Wizard" authoring environment. It should have been called Blu-Mage, then it could learn other movies' abilities (anyone? anyone? Ah, it's so lonely being an RPG nutcase). Anyway, cool on the Blu-ray movies. If the interactivity and added features really enhance the experience of owning the movie compared to a "lowly" DVD version, perhaps we will find more people welcoming the format.
Sony Pictures first three 50GB titles officially announced
Sony Pictures has made it official, they will be the first studio to release a movie on dual-layer 50GB Blu-ray disc, as Click hits shelves October 10th, followed by Black Hawk Down on November 14th, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby hits December 12th. As we mentioned yesterday, all will include HD special features; for Click the extras are the same as the standard DVD, but in HD. Black Hawk Down includes Blu-wizard, described as a "unique playlist technology which lets consumers customize the way they watch special features". That doesn't sound quite as interesting as the BD-J powered experience we were hoping for, can it match with Fast and the Furious 3's U-control? HD DVD has been well received by reviewers while Blu-ray has struggled at times, some of which was attributed to the lack of 50GB discs. Whether you believe the PS3 is crucial to the success of Blu-ray or not, Sony is providing the biggest push for the format on many levels, next week we'll start to see whether if it pays off. Continue on for a list of the special features on each disc.
Sony Pictures' first 50GB Blu-ray releases coming soon
Blu-ray supporters will be getting a shot in the arm next week when Click becomes the first Sony Pictures Home Entertainment movie released on 50GB dual-layer Blu-ray discs. We got tipped by an inside source at Sony to expect announcements tomorrow regarding Click's release on October 10th -- with all the features of the standard DVD plus bonus HD features -- followed by Black Hawk Down November 14th and Talladega Nights on December 12th. Black Hawk Down is said to include "Blu-wizard" technology that will allow viewers to customize how they see special scenes. The high-def DVD war really begins in November, between the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, Black Hawk Down & Fox's Blu-ray Java releases plus a little something called the Playstation 3, that magnetic strip on your credit card may be the first casualty.
Possible fix for the iPod 'click of death'
JC at Mac Geekery has come across a potential solution to the iPod hard drive's 'click of death' that many owners will likely experience at some point or another (After all it's a hard drive and you walk/run/snowboard around with it all day. It has to throw in the towel some day).After hurling a dead 4G iPod off a 3rd story balcony to test an iPod case, JC discovered that his iPod was suddenly working again - but only for an hour at a time or so. This odd turn of events prompted him to investigate by opening up his iPod, in which case he discovered that his click of death (not necessarily everyone's) was a result of nothing more than an unseated hard drive cable. After putting everything back in its place, JC's 4G iPod is back on top and jamming again.Check out JC's post for more details, but just in case you're in a similar boat, remember: I'm pretty sure opening your iPod is like tossing your warranty out the window and then running it over repeatedly with an SUV, so attempt this stuff at your own risk. If your warranty has already r-u-n-n-o-f-t, however, then you don't have much to lose.[thanks William!]
Enable two-finger right-click on 15" MacBook Pros
Rejoice, fellow 15" MacBook Pro owners, for the enterprising hackers over in the OSx86 Project forum have put together an installer package that enables the fancy two-finger right-click for 15" MacBook Pros. This is a standard feature of the MacBook and 17" MacBook Pro, but the early-adopting 15" MacBook Pro owners were left out in the cold with this most essential and highly-requested of features.The installer is linked in a forum thread here. An uninstaller is included, and you might want to peruse the rest of the thread for experiences and tips in case you run into issues. After all, this is a hack, so remember to cross your t's, dot your i's and post in their thread if you run into any speedbumps.[via macosxhints]
Dear Apple: stop leaving your early adopters out in the cold
Dan Lurie from The Apple Blog pointed me towards an early MacBook review at Macworld in which Jason Snell points out the new MacBook's ability to right-click when you have two fingers on the trackpad. It's a setting you can toggle in the MacBook's System Preferences, and it apparently also exists on the 17" MacBook Pro (and possibly on the revamped 15" models; reports pending).But not on the 15" MacBook Pro that I bought three weeks ago.Dear Apple: please stop leaving your early adopters out in the cold. I realize you're a company whose purpose is to make money. That's fine, in fact: I can't think of many other companies I'm happier to give my money to. That said, tiny new features like this which you aren't even bragging about on your product sites obviously aren't crucial selling points designed to sell X many more MacBooks and 17" MacBook Pros. They're small but important innovations that all MacBooks to date should have, especially when you consider the fact that right-clicking on a Mac has been a topic of geek controversy since someone first took a side on the Mac vs. PC debate.Apple, if you're listening (of course, you aren't), please give your early-adopting MacBook Pro buyers (what I'm hoping is) a simple software update so they can right-click with the rest of their MacBook brethren.
TUAW Tip: easily open a file or folder location
Here's an easy tip for quickly opening the Finder location of a file you currently have open in almost any app.Let say, for example, that you're working in Photoshop on an image that's buried a few folders deep within your Home folder. You'd like to get to that file's location, but unless you've used Dave Caolo's tip for taking control of your sidebar (or you have another trick up your sleeve), it requires clicking on the Finder icon in the dock, then digging deep into the folder system. Well to bypass all that clicking, all you have to do is command click on the small icon at the top of the image window in Photoshop to open a popup list (pictured) of the full directory structure leading to your file. As you can see, my hard drive is named Stewie (yes, I use Family Guy character names for my drives), and my Home folder is named dcharti. I could then click on any of the folders in that list to immediately open it in the Finder, making it a lot easier to boogie around in the file system.The beauty of this trick is that it *should* work in any OS X app that has a file icon (like Photoshop) in the window's title bar (not the white menu bar which sits at the very top of OS X's desktop), and even in some apps that don't necessarily display that icon. Try it in Word and Illustrator. Then try command clicking on Safari's title bar, as it will give you a list of URLs the frontmost tab has visited (like a tab-specific history). You can even open something like a local PDF file in Safari and it will give you the directory list. I bet this works in all sorts of other apps I haven't even tried yet, but it doesn't seem to work in database-driven apps like Mail.app and NetNewsWire. If you find some handy extras with this trick, feel free to add them to the pile in the comments.
