A short unboxing video of Apple’s new Magic Mouse. I also, share some of my early thoughts and impressions on Apple’s latest attempt at this input device.

Some sample video comparing the video quality of the new 5th generation iPod nano against the iPhone 3GS and the Flip Mino.

I’m not the best photographer in the world and I just used my trusty old point and shoot, but these will give you a good idea of the “out of the box” experience you get with the new 5th generation iPod nano.

Can’t view the Flash? View them on Flickr

A quick video, shot on my iPhone 3GS, of unboxing the new 5th generation iPod nano.

I accidentally shot this in portrait mode on the iPhone, so apologies for the strange aspect ratio.

A quick sample video taken with the new 5th generation iPod Nano. Enjoy!

Join us for a live Maccast Skype chat starting at around 9:30 AM PDT. We’ll have the conversation going until the end of Apple’s live “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” event which starts today (09/09) at 10:00 AM PDT. We are using Skype this time because iChat rooms have a 35 person limit. If you have Skype already installed, use the link below to join If you don’t have Skype you can download it and use it for free at Skype.com. The Skype room limit is 150, so it will still be first come first served. See you there.

Me a few other of the Mac geeks got together on Saturday and hung out while I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Turned out to be both fun and educational. hope to do more stuff like this on the Maccast in the future. Thanks to all who stopped by live and for those who couldn’t make it, enjoy the video.

iPhone 3.0 has brought some fantastic new features that are well known like Cut, Copy & Paste. However some smaller tweaks have been made to the operating system that provide a better user experience. To me most of these changes effect Podcasts. For example you now have easy access to the speed controls and a 30 second skip-back button incase you missed something. Fantastic for shows that go in-depth on specific topics like Security Now!

Also seen in the screenshot is the little envelope icon. This button allows you to share current podcast with a friend via an iTunes Link. This does not work on podcasts not featured in the iTunes store, so if you’re subscribed to an RSS feed you are unable to share.

The feature most important to me for daily use isn’t MMS, but the ability to quickly see the remaining battery life. My way around this was a little app called Free Memory, which has the auxiliary feature of telling you the battery life percentage. The app is still worth keeping around if you own an original iPhone or an iPhone 3G and for the ability to free some memory on your device. For iPhone 3GS owners, you now have a nice little option to show the battery life in the top tray of the iPhone.

To access the battery life option, head over to your settings button on the iPhone home screen. From there tap General, then tap Usage, and there will be a slider button on the top. This option is turned off by default and hidden in a screen most people never make there way into.

iPhone OS 3.0 has been great to me so far, but my big excitement is over the speed of the new 3GS which I was reluctant to pick up at first. A full review of my 16 GB 3GS White will be coming up soon. In the meantime, what features of the iPhone 3.0 update have proved useful to you?

Updated: Added text to help clarify that the battery percentage feature is an iPhone 3GS only feature. Thanks to the astute folks in the comments for pointing this out.

So I have only played with the iPhone 3G S for few hours, but one of the cool features I was looking forward to trying was the new Voice Control. Only one problem. I had trouble figuring out exactly how to make it work. In most cases I am usually able to figure out how new iPhone features work. For this feature, I had to get some help from Apple’s support site and the iPhone 3G S User Guide. To save you some time, here is how to get this feature up and running on your new iPhone 3G S along with the command you can use to make it go. If you want to consult the manual yourself, here is the link (PDF) from Apple’s support site.

To activate the Voice Control feature:
Press and hold the Home button on your iPhone or press and hold the center button on the iPhone headset. After a second or two the Voice Control interface should appear and you’ll hear a beep indicating it is ready for your command.

Voice commands you can use:

• Call a contact: Say “call” or “dial” plus the name of a person in your contacts to call that person. If they have multiple numbers the iPhone will prompt you for which number, i.e. “Home” or “mobile”.
• Dial a number: Say “call” or “dial” and then the number
• If you make a mistake: You can say “wrong,” “not that one,” “not that,” “no,” or “nope.”
• Play music: Say “play” or “play music.”
• Pause music: Say “pause”
  or “pause music.”
• Change songs: Say “next song” or
  “previous song.”
• Play an album, artist, or playlist: Say “play,” then say “album,” “artist,” or “playlist” and the name.
• To enable shuffle: Say “shuffle.”
• Get current track info: Say “what’s playing,” “what song is this,” “who sings this song,” or “who is this song by.”
• Use Genius: Say “Genius,” “play more like this,” or “play more songs like this.”
• Cancel Voice Control: Say “cancel.”

That’s it. I have to say the Voice Commands work pretty well right out of the box (at least with my “average” anglo saxon US voice). About my only complaints are that you have to constantly go in and out of Voice Command mode using the hold button technique described above and that the default voice is a bit tricky to understand at times. No OS X “Alex” here. That said it’s nice to have voice control on the iPhone (finally) and I look forward to get getting better in future updates.

Maccast listener Roland just sent me an email to show off his recent Mac Mini mod. Inspired a bit by this article over on iFixit, Roland came up with his own take on the hack. He details the design process in part 1 and walks through completing the project in part 2. The whole thing is pretty sweet. What I like about Roland’s solution is that he seems to give careful thought and consideration to possible heat issues and comes up with an ingenious solution that mimics Apple’s original design for cooling and airflow. I think the solution seems sound and should continue to work without issue (as evidenced by the iStat numbers in his post). It may be obvious that this kind of hack would void your Applecare, but I will say it anyway. This kind of hack will void your warranty.

If you are looking to squeeze some data redundancy into you Mac Mini case this post is worth a look. Interestingly you could probably also run a RAID-0 (scary RAID) if you wanted to squeeze in some extra internal storage. That might make a nice upgrade for your Mac Mini Home Theater.