Just a quick note to say that I apologise for the lack of posts in the last few days. I’ve just been super-busy with TAFE since it started back up again this week. Things are going to get pretty hectic, but I’ll do my best to post at least a few times a week in the future.

In other news, the date is nearing the 26th for the rumoured date of the OSX Leopard release. We’ll see if Apple release anything else around that date, perhaps the (also rumoured) ultra-portable notebooks. Or perhaps something to do with the iPhone?

Speaking of iPhones, the leaked photos of the 16GB capacity iPhone turned out to be fake. Figures. However, I still think a 16GB iPhone isn’t too far away.

There will be an official Apple retail store built in Sydney, Australia. It will be the first one in the southern hemisphere, which is about time considering the number of them in the USA! It’s good to know that Steve Jobs is aware of Australia’s existence - he really has me wondering sometimes. Now, if only they’d build an Apple Store in Perth, and release the iPhone over here…

Yes, enough with the iPhone. I’m done :)

Every little detail about the iPhone is littering the headlines in news sites all over the web. My feed reader is probably sick of the word ‘iPhone’. I know a lot of people are, too. I suppose a lot of it has to do with iPhone unlocking and hacking, but that’s half the point. It’s such a hot item at the moment. All the cool kids have one.

If you had asked me six months ago whether I’ll be getting an iPhone, the answer would have been “probably not”. I was always interested in the device, but iffy with the touch screen. See, I have this thing about touch screens. It’s absolutely awesome technology…. BUT, only practical in instances where you’re constantly looking at the touch screen to interact with it. If you have to rely on a touch screen to change a music track, for example, its practicality goes downhill. What happens if its in your pocket, and you just want to feel for the buttons to change the track? No can do, you have to take the device out of your pocket, do the touch screen thing, and put it back again. Sure, over time you can learn where to touch the screen without looking, but this isn’t the most practical solution.

Anyway, regardless of my feelings about touch screen technology, my interest in the iPhone sort of crept up on me over time until I found myself - just a couple weeks ago - saying “Y’know, I really want one of those”, and then going wide-eyed, having surprised myself with my sudden outburst of consumerism. I’m not sure why I want one now and I didn’t then - perhaps it’s Apple’s always-clever marketing, perhaps the sheer amount of popularity that the iPhone seems to attract. Or perhaps it’s just that the iPhone is really, really nice.

I need to say here that whilst I love Apple products, I don’t view Apple as God, or Steve Jobs as my saviour, and I definitely do not think that Apple products are without their faults, as this person seems to think of the majority of Apple fans (I know more Apple haters than lovers, so I realise that these loud and obnoxious fanatics aren’t just relevant to Apple). But I do know a quality product when I see one, and Apple seem to have a lot of those.

So now with the release of the iPod Touch not too long ago, I face a dilemma, as many other people outside of the USA also do. Import the iPhone and risk it becoming a brick, purchase the iPod Touch while awaiting the iPhone’s release in Australia, or just wait until the iPhone is released in Australia and do without in the mean time (which requires a certain level of patience I’m unsure that I possess). Now is probably not the best time to import an iPhone, risk-wise. But it could also be argued that now is the time to import an iPhone due to the current exchange rate. There’s actually more Aussies importing iPhones than I first realised, and most of them are doing okay at avoiding any problems by being careful.

There’s also 3G to consider - future iPhones, perhaps even by the time they’re released in Australia, will be 3G capable. And then there’s the 16GB in the higher capacity iPod Touch vs the 8GB iPhones.

As for all this freakin’ iPhone hype - It just goes to show that Apple are doing something right. Love it or hate it, it’s better than having a ‘don’t care’ attitude. Any kind of passionate response is good for keeping the iPhone in the news headlines. And I don’t see it disappearing any time soon.

Moviehole recently did an interview with Alan Tudyk from Firefly/Serenity.

“They had to put [the new DVD] out because they’ve been selling out of the other one [the DVD that isn’t the ‘Collectors Edition’] and so Universal’s like ‘So, let’s do another one’”, he says, adding “And now… there’s now a chance there’s going to be another movie”

I hope he’s not kidding! But I don’t want to get my hopes up… Although, it’s the closest we’ve come to hearing about a Serenity 2. No doubt that browncoats everywhere will be going wild. We wait in hope.

Lately, whilst prowling the forums I regularly visit and getting into a few heated discussions about Macs vs PCs, I’ve come to realise that a lot of Mac OSX users (especially switchers) aren’t happy with the way the dock functions and are frustrated with the lack of information about which windows they have open at any one tme (often becoming swamped with open windows behind windows behind windows… without them even knowing). So here’s a tip using a couple of apps to maximise the dock’s usage and provide a different way of navigating inside OSX.

The first app you need is the legendary……

Quicksilver

Quicksilver catalogues your applications, folders and documents, so that you can perform specific actions on them, making repetitive tasks less mundane and allowing you to perform these actions with just a few keystrokes. It can launch applications, open, email, copy and compress files, perform a number of actions on text, and many, many other things. Quicksilver is able to ‘learn’ what you want it to do through repeated actions, and you can select actions from a list. This is only scratching the surface of the power behind Quicksilver, and it’s actually a very loved and widely recognised app amongst Mac users. To find out more, and to download, go here

The second app I’m going to cover is…

TigerLaunch

TigerLaunch sits in the top menu bar, awaiting a mouse click for any application you wish to open. In a nutshell, it’s a list of applications, configured by the user, that are available without having to access the Finder. You can download TigerLaunch from here

Using Tigerlaunch with Quicksilver will allow you to browse the list of apps for when you’ve forgotten the name of a particular app (it happens!) or when using the keyboard to launch apps just isn’t convenient (that happens, too… especially when eating at the computer).

Working Together…

So, using both of these programs together will allow you to launch applications using the keyboard or the mouse without having to touch the Finder. Pretty nifty, eh?

Now, here’s the best part…

In doing this, you no longer have to rely on the dock to launch applications, or decide which applications you need to keep in the dock, or even cram all your most-used apps into the dock. The dock can be used strictly for open applications and files, so you can easily see what apps you have running with a quick glance, just like this:

For open windows that group together (ie: multiple browser windows) you need only click-and-hold on the app’s icon in the dock to view a list of open windows. For modern widescreen Macs, it also makes more sense to place the dock towards the side of the screen rather than the bottom, as this will maximise your screen real estate for most applications, particularly web browsing where window height is more beneficial than width.

On my iMac and PowerBook, I use both Quicksilver and Tigerlaunch for all my app launching, and place my dock on the left side of the screen at the start position (closest to the Apple). You can change the start position of the dock using a few different apps. The one I and many others use is TinkerTool.

‘Team-Up Apps!’ is a section I’ll be running every once in a while. In it I’ll briefly discuss two pieces of software that I think work really well together. Generally, it will be for OSX, but I may do a few for Windows apps every now and then (for all your Windows lovers out there!)

So… This week’s Team-Up Apps are:

iWannaSleep

This is a nifty little app that works like a timer for when you want your Mac to perform a particular task after a specified amount of time. You have a choice of putting the computer to sleep, shutting it down, stopping iTunes, or performing an AppleScript to make it do whatever you like. On the right of the screen is the timer; you can rotate the button to specify the amount of time before the action takes place. The best part is this: when you use it with iTunes, instead of just stopping the music suddenly, it will softly fade out, making this the perfect app to use as a sleep timer for when you’re listening to music while falling asleep. I use it every night and it works perfectly. It’s also freeware! Get it from here.

This app works well with…

Alarm Clock 2

It is what the name says; an alarm clock. But it’s an alarm clock with so much more! I will say, I tried a couple of different apps before finally deciding on this one. I chose it for a few reasons. Firstly, I needed an alarm clock that was reliable and that would allow me to wake up how I wanted to wake up - not how it decided I should wake up! It has an ‘easy wake’ feature which slowly increases the volume of the alarm instead of suddenly blasting sound into your eardrums. A feature that I decided was really important was its ability to play music (including playlists) from iTunes, but not playing them IN iTunes. It has its own player. This is because, in the case that iTunes should fail (think deleted song or renamed playlist, etc) the alarm won’t go off, and then you’re pretty much screwed for the day. In other words, it isn’t reliable. So, having its own player means that it doesn’t rely on other apps. Good thinking! You can set a number of different alarms, and can also make them repeat for certain days of the week. The app can wake your Mac up from sleep, and is also compatible with the iTunes remote. It’s freeware! Get it here.