Apple User Podcast

From TUAW:

The most useful tips are sometimes the easiest to pull off, and this one from ryerye at Mac OS X Hints definitely falls into that camp. It turns out that iTunes’ Album column can also sort with “Album by Artist” and “Album by Year.” That second option is especially nice, since it’s actually a ‘Sort by Artist by Album Year.’ All you need to do is keep clicking on the Album column to get whichever option you prefer; no extra modifier keys and no obscure tricks, though no documentation either, as far as I can tell.

Thinksecret is showing up 25 screenshots from the newest build of Leopard.

Click Here for the shots

Remember these shots might be mocked up but they seem real to me.

I can buy this, the 13.3 models are beautiful and I love mine, but according to reports, we’ll be seeing 15inch macbooks by second quarter 2006, at first I didn’t see how they’d fit into the price structure, MacBooks run from $1099 to $1499 and MacBook Pro 15 inchers’s run from $1999 to $2499, putting a 15inch Macbook in the mix for $1749 would be silliness.

After rereading the report I see that the 13 incher’s will probably drop to a $799 to $1199 range and the 15inch MacBooks can comfortably sell for $1299 to $1699 without adversely affecting the MacBook or MacBook Pro sales.

MacBooks for $799 will FLY out the door and cause Michael Dell to collapse, $1299 15inch MacBooks will go well to those with a desire for the bigger screen and a little extra cash. And the $1999 MacBook Pro’s will continue to sell to Pros.

This seems like Perfect Marketing.

“Steve Jobs is mercurial. He’s not the guy you want with you in a foxhole. But he is in search of EXCELLENCE!”

The Apple Comment by Denny Grabowski

One of my duties as freelancer is the web searching and I found one funny story and I don’t let you wait to read this story!

Carl Kruger, New Yorker Senator, was thinking about the dangerousness to wear an iPod in New York. He advised the public to stop the using of iPods in New York’s street because those things are the reasons for so many accidents. The pedestrians are walking without any intention and ignoring the traffic especially by crossing the street. His idea is already a legislative proposal and just in case this bill gets reality would mean that you can use your iPod only in parks and on benches.

It is a mystery why he is angry only about the iPod and not about other mp3 player. The suggestion is, he owns maybe few Microsoft stocks?

Wow, we are in 2007, Macs can be bought for $599 dollars, and even more impressive, Mac Mini g4’s that were bought for $499 over a year ago are fetching $450 dollars (according to this and Adam from the Maccast). What other computer bought a year ago could fetch 90% of its RRP after 12 months?

But despite these facts, the Myth that “Feature for feature, you still get more for your money with a windows pc” is still being perpetuated. The messenger today? David Einstein, Computing Q&A guy for the San Francisco Chronicle.

I’m pasting a comment I left on engadget a few months ago here to remind us of the value feature for feature of the modern Mac.

Engadget reviewed a laptop that is a clone of a Macbook today, its priced at $1047 if you include xp home.

The lenient writeup prompted me to do a breakdown of the incredible value inherent in the Macbook.
A few years ago you needed $2,000 to look at a mac, in fact you heard $4,000 as a starting price when you spoke to a mac sales person, for that high price you got features and build quality not seen in other computers.
As with all high priced items, copies and emulations were there for half the price to grab the buyer who just wanted the expensive look of the product and it seems that this DosPara laptop is aiming for these customers, the problem is that Apples computers are now extremely affordable. I�ll continue.

Nowadays, Apples prices are the lowest of ANY computer maker, feature for feature, lower than Dell, lower than Compaq and lower than DosPara (wtf!).
The first commenter on Engadget correctly pointed out the poorer firewire port on the Dospara copycat, lack of dvi out and the power hungry (but slower) amd chip.
But lets look at what else we get in our macbook:
Bluetooth
Wireless 802.11N !!!
Magsafe connector
Six Hour Battery Life
Stunning Screen (Everyone knows what Pc users feel when they see the bright screen of a mac)
Popular New keypad
Two Finger to scroll touchpad !!!
The Best Operating System in the World !!!
OPTICAL Audio In and Out !!!
Gigabit Ethernet !!!
Small Bezel
Allure
Attractiveness
Ability to run Windows & OSX !!!
Incredible power efficiency (17watts idle and 53watts at 100% on both cores with bluetooth and wireless-n blazing)

Give each of those a $50 value (which is a bargain for completely integrated optical audio, 802.11n, gigabit ethernet, core duo chip, etc) and its plain to see that any of the Macbooks is a far greater V.A.L.U.E. than this laptop, In fact I�m going out to stock up on Macbooks before they raise the prices!

Onion Reports
“Microsoft released its new operating system, Vista, on Jan. 30. Here are some of its features:

Microsoft Word’s helpful paper-clip icon now blinks at rate of normal humans

Enhanced graphics on “System Is Not Responding” pop-up window

Five new card-back designs for Solitaire

Something that Apple would never, ever dream up in a billion years

4,391 security flaws to be patched over next 15 years

Promise of broad, open-minded future or some bullshit

Lists blocked wireless connections with greater speed and accuracy

New operating system, same old Microsoft Paint”

Spotlight has given us all the abilty to file in any method we choose, using smart searches (which can be saved), spotlight does a greater job of minding our files than we could ever do ourselves.

Spotlight pulls words, patterns from file names, metadata and even inside the file. This means that if you entitle your word documents with “written by brendan” at the top of each file, spotlight will locate these with a search for “written by brendan”, ever dragged a file into the wrong folder by accident? with spotlight it doesn’t matter if your pieces of your novel are spread between 1000 folders and the trash, the “written by brendan” search will reveal them all.

Too much? then adjust the almost infinite parameters in spotlight, ‘created in the last week’, ‘created in 2005′, you can assign colors to your files. There’s infinite choices, and this article hightlighted by digg goes into detail about how you can effectively use Metadata (small descriptive information attached to a file (think track information on an mp3) but for all kinds of files) to organize your files and put an end to looking through your folders for that elusive chapter of your memoirs.

Fake Steve is back blogging at fakestevejobs.blogspot.com, and at his absolute funniest, take this quote:

“So Gates just called all in a rage. He’d heard about us telling iTunes users not to upgrade to Vista just yet because if they do they may lose all their songs and blow up their house or whatever. He’s like, Steve, you know that’s utter bullshit. There’s no danger at all and you’re just making this all up. Jesus!”

Welcome Back Steve!