shownotes_20100808

Opening
  Opening Music
    Music is "Say Anything" by Manda and the Marbles
    Band's MySpace page
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News
  Apple sues accessory makers
    Bloomberg reports that Apple has filed suit against 6 accessory makers for making unauthorized products.
      On one example in the filing a customer had an battery charger that drained the iPod instead of charging it.
    Allegedly violating its trademarks and infringing up to 10 patents.
    Apple typically licenses accessory makers under it's "Made for iPhone" and "Made for iPod" program
      Accessories must go through an approval process
      Apple gets a 20 to 25% cut of the sale
    Apple is likely concerned about implied endorsement and the damage to it's brand
      Can be tricky. Apple sells it's own accessories and earns revenue from 3rd party ones
    It's expected that Apple may name up to 20 other makers.
  Apple number 3 in portables if you count iPad
    Philip Elmer-DeWitt in a piece on Fortune.com cited a analysis by Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore.
    For Q2 2010 Apple's Macbook and Macbook Pros saw year over year unit sales growth rate rise while the other top 5 PC makers saw their growth rates decline.
    Apple sold 2.47 million notebooks in the quarter putting it in 7th place for worldwide unit sales in the quarter
    If you add the iPad Apple jumps to 3rd place rising above Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and Dell.
    with the iPad Apple's year of year portable computing unit sales growth rate jumps over 200%.
    Whitmore feels investors will start to count tablets when looking at computing market share trends.
      With price and functionality included the iPad does come close to matching netbooks and low end laptops.
  iPhone web jailbreak exposes larger hole
    There is now a way to jailbreak your iPhone simply by going to a web site
    The jailbreak exploits a PDF security hole in the iOS.
      Some have reported that it is a heap overflow bug in the Acrobat PDF renderer, but Apple has it's own render engine
      Security expert Charlie Miller says it's actually a exploit of a font bug.
    Needless to say you should be very careful about PDFs you open on you iDevices
    Apple reportedly already has a fix, I don't understand why they are waiting to patch it.
  Is the iTunes Cloud just vapor?
    Rumors that Apple doesn't have any deals in place with the record labels yet and hasn't really done much with La La (already lost one executive).
    If the service launches at all it would likely be limited in features.
    Apple may shift focus from Music to TV? Wasn't there rumors of focus there already?
      I think they need all 3 tiers and maybe that's the delay.
    Apple's 1B data center in North Carolina is rumored to be the epicenter of Apple's cloud efforts an is scheduled to be online by the end of the year.
      According to Electronista some apps employees have already nicknamed it "The Orchard".
    The sudo cloud stream with iDisk app
      Computerworld did a piece on this and it's not really new
      If you upload, backup, or sync tracks to your iDisk the latest version of iDisk app (updated in July) added support for background audio
        No playlists, only unprotected audio files, no cover art, and one song at a time.
        Dropbox and other apps will do the same thing.
        Build a simple webpage and use Safari to create your own service.
  iDevice future watch
    AppleInsider reported on an iPad security document for business customers that was on Apple's website and had a listing of restrictions that could be enabled by administrators
      The list included disabling camera access, but may have been a cut and paste error from a similar document for the iPhone.
    iOS 4.1 beta 3 seems to have removed Game Center support for the iPhone 3G and earlier devices.
    New iPods, iPad in September (iLounge)
      iPod nano
      New iPod touch
        FaceTime front facing camera. Connect via email address
        Retina Display, same as iPhone 4
      Possibly a new Shuffle with a small (1.7”) touchscreen
      7" iPad in September (iLounge)
        1500x1920 Retina Display
        Front facing camera.
      Also saying iPhone 5 in January? (not likely)
        Possibly just iPhone 4 in redesigned case.
      New cheaper all silicon bumpers to give away after September.
    Rumors of the iPod iOS Media event in August
      Historically, like the past 5 years, Apple has announced new iPods in 1st week of September
      May coincide with a rumored August update of iLife '11
  Rumor of Apple ordering CDMA chips
    Techcrunch says it once again has "reliable" sources saying Apple is placing orders with Qualcomm for "millions" of CDMA chips
    They speculate with production leads times that it's for a December production and January launch of the iPhone on Verizion.
      Would be a great Macworld announcement for the end of January
    I'm skeptical and here's why
      Verizion is already rolling out it's LTE 4G network and will have several major cities online in January
    So where else would Apple sell a CDMA iPhone? How about China.
      Dan Butterfield of iPhonasia.com has some interesting info.
      iPhone is currently on the China Unicom 3G network. China's second largest carrier
        In the last quarterly results call Tim Cook (Apple COO) was very positive about Apple's growth in China and said the company is "positioned to take advantage of the growth in greater China"
      China Mobile is the largest provider in China and Apple has been in constant ongoing talks with them
        500 million customers
        The have a massive 2G CDMA network and a newer TDSCDMA 3G network
        Butterfiled speculates that Apple might be willing to develop a low cost CDMA 2G phone for China
          Upside for Apple is that it cost little to produce and have a massive market
          They also could produce a special TDSCDMA 3G, but like are more reluctant.
            Big incentives from China Mobile could help here as they have been struggling to get customers to buy devices that support the new network.
  iPad Apps Store gets smart
    Apple added a "genius" tab
    On 1st access need to accept and confirm opting into the feature.
  iPhone 4 customer satisfaction lowers
    Changewave June numbers
      How can they even publish these? Report from survey of 213 iPhone owners?
      Early iPhone 4 satisfaction 72% very satisfied and 21% somewhat satisfied.
        A similar iPhone 3GS study from last year was 82% very satisfied and 17% somewhat satisfied.
      Biggest complains seem to be AT&T
        27% requirement to use AT&T
        24% poor coverage and quality of 3G network
        24% Antenna issues (just the fact they exist?)
        23% Excessive dropped calls
      In a separate question customers were asked how big a problem the antenna issue was for them. Two-thirds said they hadn't experience the problem and another 14% said it wasn't much of an issue.
      Dropping calls
        AT&T customers surveyed 5.8 vs 2% off Verizon customers
        5.2% of iPhone 4 owners vs. 6.3% of iPhone 3GS owners in June.
    Cracked screens are a bigger concern for me.
      I know of at least 3 different reporters who dropped iPhone 4s and cracked the glass. One with a bumper.
        I think my fears of iPhone 4 durability are justified.
        Skin, case, do something.
    Also the proximity sensor issue which I think is skewing the iPhone 4 dropped call numbers.
  Antennagate out. Papergate in.
    The New York Times reports that Apple's Senior Vice President of Device Hardware Engineering, Mark Papermaster, has left Apple after the Antenna fiasco.
    Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Macintosh hardware engineering is talking over his duties.
    John Gruber's sources say Papermaster was let go by Apple
      Gruber point out Papermaster wasn't an the antenna press event which was odd because internally he was reported know as “the guy responsible for the antenna” and the iPhone. (Mansfield was and he's in charge of Mac hardware).
  Barefeats posts new iMac benchmarks
    My favorite Mac site for performance testing
    The tests are preliminary and were processor test only, not GPU.
    More bang for your buck if you spend more bucks

      The 'mid 2010' iMac Core i7, is as much as 45% faster than the Core i5 for 10% more cost.
      The Core i7 is as much as 104% faster (twice as fast) as the Core i3 for 29% more cost.
      The Core i5 is as much as 41% faster than the Core i3 for 18% more cost.

      To put it another way, going by the Cinebench rating,
      you pay $400 for each rating point on the Core i7,
      you pay $526 for each rating point on the Core i5, and
      you pay $629 for each rating point on the Core i3.

    In their testing the new core i7 iMac was 3% to 23% faster than the 2009 Core iMac.
    The arguments for and against
      If I don't have heavy usage should a spend more?
        Future proofing, as requirements get heavier your system wont bog down as quickly.
        The higher end models will have higher resale at end of life. You might make back the cost difference in re-sale. That's if you resell and don't hand down.
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Feedback, Comments and Commentary
  MMS email address correction and other follow-up
    Richard pointed out that it's .net, not .com.
    phonenumber@mms.att.net
    Consider IDentify instead of Meta X
      Randy points out that Meta X relies on Atomicparsley which he says is deprecated and could corrupt your files.
      I've been using the latest Meta X 2.4.6 and haven;t seemed to have an issue
      Randy sys try IDentify
  Force quitting another way
    Chris emailed to tell me of another way to try force quitting iApps
    Might work better to clear apps when they behave badly like in the black thumbnail camera roll situation.
    To force quit the apps do the following:
      1) load up the app you want to quit
      2) press and hold the power button till you see the swipe to turn off screen
      3) now press and hold the home button till you return to the home screen (takes a few seconds).
  Recovering iPhoto data
    Play comment from Tom
    iPhone Extractor
    Base from Menial to look at .sqllite,.sql,.db files and extract data
    SQLite Browser (free)
    Amazing amounts of data when you look around
      Photos and Recordings, not iTunes music or videos
      Home screen wall paper
      Voicemail recordings, notes data, address book data
      3rd party app data (can't restore it).
        Comics had image panels for comic books.
  iTunes update, login, and (5002) errors
    Tell my tale and subsequent fix.
    Clear Safari Apple cookies
      Safari-->Preferences-->Security
      Click the 'Show Cookies' button
      Type 'apple.com' in the search box
      Select all the results
      Click the 'Remove All' button. Should ask you to confirm removing all X cookies.
        If you want to remove selected cookies, just select them from within the result set and click 'Remove'.
  Moving TimeMachine to new drive
    My iTunes music drive is getting full now that I'm archiving more movies.
    Need more space so I decided to get a new TM drive and repurpose the existing drive as my new Media drive
    Seagate 1TB USB Expansion Drive
      Only a 1 year warranty, watch the fine print.
      Also makes a bad "click" noise on spin up. Don't think it's a "click of death".
    Using Disk Utility Restore feature to clone the drive
      Turn off Time Machine by turning switch to Off in the System Preference Pane
      Open Disk Utility. Applications-->Utilities-->Disk Utility
      Partition new drive as 1 partition (under Scheme drop down) from the Partition tab. Make sure to click "Options" and use GUID for Intel and Apple Partition Map for PPC
      Format the drive as Mac OS X Extended Journaled
      With the new drive select go to the 'Restore Tab'
      Drag the old TM drive icon from the drive list on the left to the "Source" text box and drag the new drive from the list to the "Destination" box. Check the "Erase destination" checkbox.
      Click Restore.
      Can take several hours, so plan to do this overnight or when you have time.
      Once it's complete you will have 2 drives with the same name
        In the Finder re-name the old volume.
      In Time Machine preferences use the "Select Disk" button to choose your new drive and turn the Time Machine switch back on.
    Apple has a different method in their Time MAchine 101 TIL article
      Basically you just turn off Time Machine, copy the 'Backups.backupdb' folder to the new drive, re-point, and turn Time Machine back on.
  Clearing iPod Photo Cache
    David Morgenstern over a ZDNet's Apple Core point out an Apple Support article about hoe iPhoto's iPod Photo Cache could be larger than it should
    Basically each time you sync photos to a device via iTunes it creates a cache of those images inside iPhoto's Library
    If you replace a device, sync multiple devices, and change which photos and albums you sync the cache isn't deleted it just keeps getting added to.
    I currently sync 2 devices with photos, my iPhone 4 and iPad. I use the "Last 6 months" album and a small album of favorites.
      On the device that shows about 800MB of images.
      My iPod Photo Cache directory had 6GB of images in it.
      To be fair the support article does note, "The iPod Photo Cache folder can be larger than the actual size of photos being synced."
    After following the procedure to clear the cache and re-syncing the two devices I had 650MB of cache.
    Steps for clearing the iPod Photo Cache
      Backup your iDevices and photos from the device and Mac (I added this step)
      From the Finder, choose Home from the Go menu.
      Once there, open the Pictures folder and locate the iPhoto Library file.
      Control-click the iPhoto Library file and choose Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu.
      In the iPhoto Library window, locate the iPod Photo Cache folder and drag it to the Trash.
      Close the iPhoto Library window.
      Re-sync your device. It will be a long sync since it will re-create the cache.
Closing
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