Macworld08
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TUAW Interviews Robert Scoble as Scoble interviews TUAW
Leave it to Scoble to livestream us taping him an hour or so after the keynote. Will he be buying a MacBook Air?Also available on: YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv and Crackle
TUAW Interviews Christopher Breen
Christopher Breen knows a thing or two about iPods, iTunes and the Apple digital media ecosystem. We asked him about the limits of the newly-enabled Apple TV purchases, HD content and the fragile-yet-sexy Macbook Air.Also available on: YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv and Crackle
Macworld Best of Show awards
Macworld has announced the Best of Show awards for Macworld San Francisco 2008. Besides the obligatory MacBook Air, they've acknowledged a variety of interesting products from Photoshop Elements 6 to Guitar Hero III. For the full list, check out the announcement over at Macworld. In addition, they have a video of the presentations up as well.
Mahalo Daily's 60 second Keynote
Don't have enough time to watch the whole keynote from the other day? Worry not-- our good friends (including Veronica Belmont) at Mahalo Daily have condensed Steve's whole 90 minute presentation (including the musical stylings of Randy Newman) into this quick sixty second breakdown. Thrill to the announcement of Time Capsule! Gasp at the reveal of the MacBook Air! Wonder idly just who Randy is singing to during that song from Toy Story.I of course read our liveblog as it happened, and was planning to watch the video separately, but after seeing this, I've seen all I have to. Now if only we could make the wait to the next Stevenote (and the reveal of the iPhone SDK?) go as quickly.
Show floor video: Extensis Universal Type Server
We had a quick visit with Kelly from Extensis and a demo of Extensis Universal Type Server, an upcoming workgroup management package for fonts. Administrators can control font sets and lock down user preferences, including for mobile users, and both server and client are cross-platform, Leopard and Vista friendly. Pricing not yet established, but the product should be shipping later this year. Video after the jump.
Joystiq compares XBox Live to Apple TV
The Apple TV isn't the only device in town that offers up movie rentals (in both standard and HD), but it is the one in the headlines this week (I wonder why). Steve noted during his keynote that many companies have tried to get online video in the livingroom and they have all failed, including Apple. Amongst the other companies named was Microsoft. As you may know folks can rent movies via the XBox Marketplace and watch them on their TV. Sounds like the new, improved Apple TV, doesn't it? Our good friends at Joystiq though so as well, and whipped up a chart comparing and contrasting the two offerings.How does the Apple TV fare? Well, clearly the XBox 360 does a much better job at playing video games, but the Apple TV wins on the video front.
MacBook Air hands-on
After the keynote we naturally raced to the gigantic Apple booth to get our grubby hands on the MacBook Air. Watch Scott compare it to his now-beastly MacBook Pro. Also watch the nifty new multi-touch trackpad action.UPDATE: Silly me, I ignored Apple's CamelCase naming scheme. All better.Also available on:YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv and Crackle
Skitch beta now open to the public
Skitch is one of our favorite apps here at TUAW. In case you haven't heard of it, Skitch is a very cool screen capturing app that makes it easy to capture stuff on your Mac's screen, do some basic editing, and then share it with your friends via FTP, Flickr, or Skitch's own service.Skitch has been in private beta since Macworld 2007, but now you can get your hands on a beta version of your very own. My Mac has become ten times more useful to me with Skitch installed, so do yourself a favor and get this app posthaste.
Etymotic hf2 headset for the iPhone
I'm a big fan of Etymotic headphones, and as soon as I got an iPhone I knew I wanted to replace the very cool included headphone/headset with something by Etymotic. Sadly, they didn't make such a product, that is until Macworld. That's right, campers, the hf2 from Etymotic combines the great sound from their ER-4 earphones with a headset so you can get all that great noise isolating action that Etymotic is known for and still be able to answer calls without pulling the headphones out.The hf2's cost $179 and are available now.
Macworld 2008 keynote now available in iTunes
If streaming isn't your thing you can now download Macworld 2008's keynote from the iTunes Store. It is, once again, in the Podcast section and clocks in at 889.8 MB. Surely it is worth it though to see the MacBook Air introduction and rock out with Randy Newman.Thanks, Ben.
Will iTunes rentals play on a 5G iPod? Nope.
The long-rumored iTunes rental service is finally up and running. For many users, the most attractive part of the service (and certainly the only part that really sets it apart from any of the other online rental options) is the ability to transfer your rental to an iPod, iPhone/iPod Touch, or third-generation Nano for playback on the go. Actually, let me rephrase that: your iPod Classic, iPhone/iPod Touch or third-generation Nano. That's right boys and girls -- if you are one of the millions who have 5 and 5.5G iPods with video, no iTunes rentals for you. I suppose that's one way to get people to upgrade. var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/Will_iTunes_rentals_play_on_a_5G_iPod_Nope'; There was an explosion of applause during yesterday's keynote when Steve Jobs announced rental compatibility with every iPod. Something tells me that if it had been understood that it only included every current generation iPod, the response might have been more akin to the boos that erupted when it was announced that the iPod Touch software update is $20. Update: Evidently, Steve did say "current generation iPods" - in any event, it was not made clear that 5/5.5G iPods would not be compatible. I mean, I for one was not expecting the message below when trying to test out this whole Rentals scheme: So, why are previous generation iPods incompatible with iTunes Rentals? Pure speculation leads me to believe that the whole authentication-chip for TV-out "update" to the Classic is at the root of the incompatibility. I guess it would just be too much of a risk for Apple (and the movie studios) to allow 5G customers connect their iPods to a TV via an open TV-out cable so that the SD content could then be captured using the analog hole. Because really, circumventing the iPod rental system using TV-out is how people really want to pirate digital media. Not through BitTorrent or breaking the actual iTunes copy protection. No, individuals are going to capture the analog signal from the TV out on their iPod and then convert that back into digital, all for sub-DVD quality movies. Makes perfect sense. (Not.)Well, at least I now have an actual reason to look at buying an iPod Classic aside from capacity. Still, this and the lack of Front Row rental access is not really doing the best job of convincing me that iTunes rentals have a place in my digital life.Update: As some of the comments have pointed out, the reports about the iPod Classic's only working with certified Apple TV-out cables might be untrue. I don't have an iPod Classic so I can't verify it one way or another. Again, that was just pure speculation on my part for some logical reason for 5/5.5 G incompatibility. Update 2: After looking at iLounge's dissection of the AV cable, I feel confident that an authentication chip is in fact required for the new models. Is this related to the iTunes rentals? That remains a mystery.Other comments have raised the question of the quality of the rentals being too high for the 5G iPod. This I can unequivocally state is NOT true. As a test, I went ahead and bought "Chuck & Buck" from iTMS. Not only was the file size identical (1.06 GB), iTunes itself saw no difference between buying the movie and renting it. I was able to transfer the newly purchased copy of the film to my iPod with absolutely no problem. This is NOT a matter of hardware not being capable, it is a decision for whatever reason, not to update the software on older generation devices to work with the new rental system.
iLounge's Best of Show 2008
Our good friends at iLounge have put together their Best of Show 2008 awards, with a focus on all things iPod and iPhone. They have picked 10 great winners and 13 slightly less great (I kid, I kid) runners up this year. Amongst the winners are products from Griffin, Belkin, and smaller companies like Atlantic and Fastmac.Go one over to iLounge and check out the full list.
TUAW interviews Veronica Belmont
In our continued meanderings around Macworld we found Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont shooting some video of the Apple TV. Once again we asked for a little perspective on the keynote.
Gallery: The whirl-wind tour of the Macworld show floor
After yesterday's keynote we spent the day wandering the show floor of the Moscone South hall. Along the way, we snapped a few snaps to give you a flavour of what's to come: we'll be bringing out more galleries as the week goes on.%Gallery-14014%
Renting a movie in iTunes
Five years ago, my wife and I often rented movies. "I think I'll get a movie on the way home from work," I'd think. It was spontaneous and simple. Then it happened.We had children.To say that parenthood is life-changing is like saying the sun is hot. While we were busily trying to keep a brand new human being alive (incidentally, there's no manual -- not even a supplement from Pogue -- the UI stinks and unexpected core dumps are frequent), anything as trivial as bringing home a copy of Dumb & Dumber fell off the radar completely.I miss the simplicity of watching a movie minutes after realizing I'd like to, and being rid of it when I'm through. Since we abandoned the brick-and-mortar video store, that scenario has eluded us.
MacSpeech releases Dictate, wins Best of Show
For some time now speech recognition on the Mac has lagged behind Windows, particularly Dragon Naturally Speaking. Well, no more, as MacSpeech, developer of iListen for the Mac, has managed to license the Dragon engine from maker Nuance for the new MacSpeech Dictate announced at Macworld.In addition to standard speech recognition and transcription into various applications like Word and Pages, Dictate also allows you to control your Mac by voice including support for Automator and AppleScript. According to our man on the show floor, it's impressive enough that it has won a Best of Show award.MacSpeech Dictate will be available on February 15 for Intel Macs starting at $199, and registered users of iListen will be able to crossgrade for $99 unless purchased in 2008, in which case it will be $29 (iListen has been discontinued).Update: A press release has been issued with more specifics on pricing. The crossgrade price for iListen users is actually $99; the $29 crossgrade is only available until April 15 to people who purchased iListen in 2008.
Jobs on DVR in the Apple TV, the MacBook Air, and the Kindle
TUAW didn't get a chance to sit down with Steve Jobs after yesterday's keynote for some reason, but Mr. Jobs did find time to chat with the New York Times (it is a small paper out of Manhattan) where he talked about what Apple introduced, and gave his thoughts on some other happenings in the tech sphere.Jobs is a big fan of the MacBook Air.He thinks it is the best Mac Apple has produced and he'll be the first in line to buy one (Come on, Steve, didn't you pre-order one after the keynote like the rest of us?). After talking about the MacBook Air Steve said that the Kindle, Amazon's eBook reader, is doomed to fail because no one reads (which explains why all bookstores are closing), and that Bill Gates' retirement is a big deal. He didn't offer up any hints as to when he, himself, will step down from being CEO of Apple.[via Engadget]
ScreenSteps
The best part of Macworld, aside from the various TUAW groupies, is getting exposed to apps that I had no idea even existed. It is an even sweeter experience when the newly discovered app is actually useful to me. That's definitely the case with ScreenSteps. This little gem of an app makes creating documentation a breeze and I can see it soon becoming a very valuable arrow in my blogging quiver.Imagine you need to make a walk-through showing someone how to turn on a feature in Safari. Normally you would need a screen capturing app, a text editor, a image editor, and Safari running to get this done. Lots of switching back and forth, and lots of time later you have what you wanted. Enter ScreenSteps. It is smart enough to watch your clipboard for any screen grabs you make, and it enters them in a document. Just snap away, switch to ScreenSteps when you're done and there are all your shots waiting for you to type in some text. ScreenSteps also has some rudimentary image editing, and a host of graphics you can add to your images (to circle buttons and what have you).Once you have this ScreenSteps document you now need a way to share it with folks. You can export it either as a PDF, as valid HTML (with templates that you can customize), or share it on ScreenStep's hosted service.ScreenSteps comes in two flavors: regular goes for $39.95 while the Pro version that lets you create an index that lets you group together a number of ScreenSteps documents will set you back $59.95 (a full comparison can be found here).
Reader question: Can you use the MBA Superdrive with other Macs?
Several readers have asked about using the MacBook Air's DVD SuperDrive on machines other than the MBA. As Engadget noted yesterday, the power draw on USB for the SuperDrive may be prohibitively high for standard ports to handle, and the MBA is engineered specifically to support the high-demand drive. An Apple support rep at the booth had only one comment: the drive is designed for the MacBook Air and supports the MacBook Air, full stop. If you absolutely have to try out the drive on a different machine, best bet is to bring your laptop to an Apple Store in a couple of weeks, plug in the DVD and see what happens (there aren't drives out on the show floor for me to test with, unfortunately). There are other USB-powered options for disc burning, including the Plextor portable -- it does use 2 USB ports to guarantee adequate wattage for the power-hungry burn process, and it looks pretty awful, but it should get the job done.
Macworld Blast featured Devo
If you ever wondered whatever became of 80s rock fringers Devo, wonder no more; they were here in San Francisco last night, entertaining the faithful at the Macworld Blast party. Mark Mothersbaugh and crew were dressed in identical black t-shirts, shorts and kneepads as they delivered a sonic assault to a crowd partially adorned with classic Devo red plastic hats.The party, sponsored by Microsoft, also featured packs of Office-branded M&M candies. Chocolate and very loud music, always a delightful combo.
