shownotes_20111230

Opening
  Opening Music
    Music is Say Anything by Manda and the Marbles
    Mandaandthemarbles.com
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  Smile
    Disc Label
    I have to admin that these days I don't do a ton of DVD burning, but this time of year is one time that I do
    Great app to help organize your archives at the end of the year.
      Important documents
      Yearly Photo Archives
      Movie purchases from iTunes (can't re-download yet)
      Podcasts
    Disc Label makes it easy to take the extra few minutes to add labels and tray inserts
    Can put a lot more detail than if you you scribble some cryptic title with a Sharpie
    It supports all kinds of printing options, paper label, direct printing, even Lightscribe if you have one of those.
    Pre-built design templates make it quick and easy (don't have to worry about design) or you can create your own.
    iLife media integration means you can use photos from iPhoto or pull in track data and chapter data from iTunes playlists or iDVD projects.
    Free trials are available and you can get more info on the Smile website
News
  Apple iTV rumors tune in
    Apple’s upcoming television set will be powered by a custom-built chip
    Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), and Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) are all reportedly bidding for the manufacturing
    Apple's upcoming A6 and A7 processors will supposedly be produced by TSMC using the company’s 28nm and 20nm process technologies, according to sources for DigiTimes.
    It's not clear if an Apple TV set will use the same processors or if a new design will be developed.
    Samsung Electronics and Sharp will may also be tapped to manufacture chips and displays.
    Foxconn is already believed to be lined up to do the manufacturing of the first round of hardware.
    Apple will supposedly introduce the TVs near the end of 2012 at sizes of 32 and 37 inches.
    Seems too small and reportedly will also be at premium prices which doesn't make sense to me.
    On the content side, AppleInsider and Forbes both reported that Apple is likely also planning to launch its own à la carte live television programming services.
      Offer the ability to mix and match channel or show packages, but that complicates the licensing
      Studios are worried about disrupting existing cable deals
  New Intel chip to sprout in Spring
    It's predicted that Intel's next gen Ivy Bridge 22nm processors will find their way into Apple hardware this April
    3820QM and 3720QM i7 CPUs are expected to show up in revved MacBook Pros
    New quad-core i5 and i7 desktop processor would juice up the iMac lines and even some new "ultra book" processors would be appropriate for next gen MacBook Airs
    The lineup is expected to bring up to a 199 percent improvement in graphics intensive processes on desktops and an overall 25 percent improvement in CPU.
    The next gen CPUs should also require less power resulting in better battery life.
    In addition there some rumors that at least some of the processors could bring support for 4K video.
  iPhone 5 Fall 2012
    Too early for rumors?
    BGR claims their sources say an aluminum backed version will be out this Fall
    The front will supposedly have a rubberized bezel that hides the antenna
  iPad 3 rumors continue to spill
    A double sized battery coming in at 14,000 mAh vs the 6,500 mAh one in the current generation iPad 2 (DigiTimes).
    They also are claiming 3 models. A mid and high end iPad 3 with a current gen iPad 2 filling the low-end slot.
      The higher end version is reportedly for the higher end iPad only, but could potentally extend the battery life to up to 20 hours
      If the new units offer a quad-core A6 processor I would imagine the extra battery will get sucked up quicker.
      "We believe iPad 2's price drop could drop to the $349 to $399 range with Apple offering a single 16GB model" - Brian Blair with Wedge Partners
      Reports are pointing to the low cost iPad 2 being Apple's response to the Kindle Fire.
        I don't think 1) the price will be low enough and 2) Apple even cares about Kindle Fire sales.
    The iPad3 will reportedly sport an upgraded 2,048 x 1,536-pixel dual-LED backlit display.
      Also word that that display may not be the usual IPS panel, but new IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) panels from Sharp
      IGZO supposedly offers "near" OLED power consumption at a lower cost
      The displays can also be faster and may not require dual bar LED backlighting.
    The DigiTimes rumors fell completely apart though when they claimed that Apple would announce the iPad 3 at Macworld/iWorld, a show that Apple no longer even attends.
    Loop Insight’s Jim Dalrymple quickly reported that "These rumors are completely false."
    There are also rumors of a 5 to 8 MP camera upgrade
      The Verge said an iPad HD was in the works that would run a new Touch version of Final Cut Pro.
    I do believe that Apple is starting to wind down parts orders for the iPad 2 as it preps for the iPad 3, but don't expect to hear an iPad announcement until February or March.
  4S helps Apple gain US marketshare
    Latest ComScore numbers show that Apple and Google gained US smartphone marketshare from August to October
    Apple's share rose 1% from 27.1% to 28.1%. Android gained 4.4% to grab 46.3% of the US market
    While Android gained at a higher rate than Apple the good news is that those gains came mostly at the Expense of RIM and Microsoft both of whom lost marketshare in the same period
    The iPhone 4S also gave Apple their first ever jump up into double-digit overall cell phone market share coming in at 10.8%, up 1.3%.
    On a global level the iPhone also gained smartphone ground in some markets according to piece by Reuters
      Citing numbers from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech they say the iPhone smartphone share rose year over year in Australia and was up 10% year over year in the UK
      In other places Apple didn't fair quite so well though
        Down 9% in France from 29% to 20
        Down from 27% to 22% in Germany
        with similar drops in Italy and Spain.
    Oh well, you can't win them all.
Sponsor
  Circus Ponies
    Notebook
    Example of Clipping, say your doing a research on Steve Jobs
    Create a Steve Jobs Notebook, set up your sections, Early Days, Apple, Next, Pixar, etc.
    On a page in each section go to Page > Add Clipping Service to add a “Clipping Service” to that page.
      A little "scissors" sticker will appear on the page to indicate it has a clipping service attached to it
    Now in Safari, Mail, or almost any other app you can make a selection, go under the App menu > Services > Notebook and see your "Clip to 'Early Days' in "Steve Jobs". options
      Select the page in the notebook you want to send the clipping to
      You will see a scissors icon appear over the Notebook icon in the dock and hear a "snip" sound to know it worked
      Anything in your selection will be clipped including text, images, formatting, and hyperlinks
    Next to your clips in Notebook their will be a little "scissor" icon (sticker). Click and hold that and you'll get other options.
      Clean up wrapping and formatting
      Snapback, for Safari sources, so you can go back to the original source page
      Clipping from Mail
        Copy senders address
        Show the original email or Reply to sender
        Info section with Date of the Email, Sender name and email address, and the source email subject
    If you add a Clipping Service to a Divider Page, NoteBook creates a new note page to hold the clipping and adds that page to the Divider each time you clip.
    And this is just one of a ton of features and options in this versatile app
    Go download the free trial and try it out for yourself.
Feedback, Comments and Commentary
  Anyone with zero paid apps?
    Ran across a link to a 2011 poll of facts about Android owners by blue stacks
    They used data from Nielsen and their 145,000 Facebook fans.
    Most of the facts were like 71% of them wear T-shirts, or 38% use Android for work
    What caught my eye was 33%, a third, have ZERO paid apps on their device.
      I don't think I know a single iOS owner with No paid apps.
    This is a kind of big deal if you are developer and trying to consider which platforms you are going to develop your apps.
    It especially effects your decision on which platform if you only have the resources to develop for one device first.
    It becomes important because I think even more than a PC, it's the available apps that can influence buying decisions for mobile devices and tablets.
    People buy them for fairly specific tasks and if the app you need or the one your buddy showed you isn't on that platform you might look elsewhere.
    What do you think? Do any of you have NO paid apps on your iOS device?
  Didn't know my apps were dirty
    Well at least not all of them.
    TiBb has an article that point out that since iOS 5 occasionally you might see the word "Cleaning" appear under some of your iOS apps
    Similar to the way they might say "Downloading, Installing, etc." when doing an install or update
    I've not personally noticed, but incase you do here is what's going on.
    Because iOS 5 now allows backup to the iCloud and just for speedier backup in general Apple wants to slim down any data before doing backups
    In iOS the system will now purge temp and cache data periodically to save space before backing up.
    You'll likely see it apps that have offline data that doesn't necessarily need to be saved as it could be re-downloaded. Examples include, Facebook, Instapaper, Wikipedia, some podcast apps, etc.
    Now this all sounds fine and good, but when this feature hit Marco Armant, the developer of Instapaper, wrote a great blog post about some potential "gottchas".
      In iOS all apps have their own "home" directory where they can store data.
      Every file in the "home" directory gets backed up except stuff in the 'tmp' or 'Caches' directories
      For persistent data that can't be re-downloaded, like files, there is typically a 'Documents' folder
      Apple has started cracking down on developers who store too much data that could be recreated by the app (i.e. downloads) in the Documents folder.
      So for Apple docs define the two storage option clearly as:
        1) Only documents and other data that is user-generated, or that cannot otherwise be recreated by your application, should be stored in the /Documents directory
        2) Data that can be downloaded again or regenerated should be stored in the /Library/Caches directory.
      Instapaper has always used the appropriate 'Caches' directory for the offline data, but in the past you could count on that data being there since it wasn't purged. Now it is when "cleaning"
      Since cleaning can also apparently be triggered by storage space getting low this could be an issue in cases where offline browsing is needed, but no connectivity is available.
        Getting ready for a flight you download Instapaper articles, some iBooks, some music, and a movie, but the movie needs more space so iOS "purges" your cache Instapaper data.
      The trouble is most users won't realize what happened and think that Instapaper failed to work properly.
      Well now you know what's going on at least.
  Controlling iTunes Match content
    Andrew wanted to know how to manage iTunes Match content downloaded to his iOS devices
    It's confusing and Apple recently posted a FAQ page to help explain things
    How do you control how much music is downloaded to your device?
    When iTunes Match is enabled in the Music app you'll see all your music in the cloud or in the local library
    If there is a "cloud" icon next to the track then it's not on your device and clicking the track will result in the track being downloaded
      By default I think it is only downloaded over wi-fi
      If you want it to also download over 3G you need to go to Settings > Store and turn on the 'Use Cellular Data' option
    If there isn't a "cloud" icon next to the track it is stored locally.
    I believe once your device is full if you try to download new tracks it will automatically purge older tracks that were least recently listened to.
      Couldn't find confirmation on this.
    You can check your storage use in Settings > General > Usage > Music
    To delete a track in the music app you simply swipe over it to get the 'Delete' button and press delete. Then you should see the cloud icon re-appear if you should want to re-download it.
      This also works for whole albums or artists
    What there isn't is a way to define a maximum or a minimum about of space for Music.
  Global iTunes Keyboard Control
    Play question from Mackay (Mack-I)
    I don't know of a built in way of doing this.
    I think some 3rd party keyboards do come with media playback controls that you can map using their drive software.
    So for you I think there are two options
      1) Get global key mapping software like Sizzling Keys. System Preference pane that includes a HUD and allows you to map keys globally (Free with "pro" version)
        Synergy, menubar app with global key controls. (€5.00 EUR)
        CoverSutra, $4.99 available in App Store
      Use a HUD control app like Alfred.
        Allows you to bring up a HUD and type iTunes commands, "PowerPak" (£15)
        Does a lot more than just iTunes Control.
  Current apps and a retina iPad
    Joseph wrote to tell me he got a bunch of iOS apps for his new iPhone 4S for Christmas, but wanted to know if he then gets a new Retina iPad 3 what will happen with his existing apps
    The answer is it mostly depends on Apple and the developers
      Let's assume Apple goes the double res route as is rumored and puts out a 2,048 x 1,536-pixel display
      Assumption is that existing apps world have a 2x option and run in a scaled mode on new HD iPad 3s
      Developers would then need to update their existing apps with new graphics to support the higher resolution screen
      It's at the developers discretion as to if they will push those as free updates to existing apps or make new iPad 3 versions of the apps that require a new purchase
      Also, since you bought iPhone 4S apps, those would need to be "universal" apps that currently support iPads as well as the iPhone. If there are separate iPad versions you would need to re-purchase those versions to get iPad support.
        Remember you can tell "universal" apps in the App store if they have a "+" icon under the buy button. If the requirements simply say "iPad" that isn't always enough.
  Export iTunes metadata
    David called in and wanted to know if there was a way to export the metadata, like play count, track length, etc. from iTunes and something that would work on a Windows machine.
    Well the good news is that this one is fairly easy and universal and requires nothing more than iTunes itself.
    Open iTunes and Control or Right click on any library (except Apps or Tones) or any Playlist and choose the 'Export…' option
    From there you can select a format (Plain Text, Unicode Text, XML, M3U, and M3U8) and give it a name and save it
    If you choose TXT, you get a tab delineated text file that you could then import into Numbers or Excel
    The resulting file contains columns for: Name, Artist, Composer, Album, Grouping, Genre, Size, Time, Disc Number, Disc Count, Track Number, Track Count, Year, Date Modified, Date Added, Bit Rate, Sample Rate, Volume Adjustment, Kind, Equalizer, Comments, Plays, Last Played, Skips, Last Skipped, My Rating, Location
  Fix for Mail/Exchange eating RAM
    Richy sent me a quick fix for those who may be having issue with OS X Mail and Exchange accounts
    According to Richy he was having an issue where he has many Microsoft Exchange accounts attached to Mail and Mail would use all his available memory, exceeding over 2 gig at times, after being open for about 30 mins.
    Some searching yielded others having issues, but no real solutions. One recommendation was to boot into safe mode and delete large messages, but that didn't help
    Richy discovered that if you just select the Mailbox in Mail and choose 'Rebuild' under the Mailboxes menu it resolves the issue.
    Rebuilding a mailbox should be a generally safe operation, but I would recommend making sure you have a full backup of all your mailboxes before trying this, just in case
    What's happening is that Mail keeps an index file responsible for displaying the content of the inbox and that may be becoming corrupt, out of sync, bloated, etc.
    Rebuilding that index can clean things up and restore the index back to new.
    This tip can also be helpful if you are just missing emails, having slow searches, or email messages are displaying slowly.
    For larger mailboxes this might take some time and you can use the Window > Activity window to monitor the rebuild process
Closing
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