Category Archives: Apple

Cover Flow + Remote App + iTunes DJ= Awesome wireless listening experience

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Sometimes I like to do nothing but listen to music. My computer on my desk playing music, me sitting on the other side of the room on a pile of stuffed animals. But what do I look at when I listen to my music???? And how do I change the music, request a song in iTunes DJ (itunes 8.1 only), or change the volume??

Well, all of that is now solved.
I always use iTunes DJ for my needs now. It plays my higher rated ones more often, I can request songs, and I can remove songs from the DJ playlist. I have a great set of speakers, and I can turn them up to a very high volume. I must say, the iTunes DJ is very good at thinking what music you want to listen to. And the request feature makes it a very realistic “DJ”. Too bad it doesn’t have a voice… but Apple could definitely put that in there. I mean, they put it in that ipod.. Hey, where is it?, aka, the iPod shuffle.
Question 1: What do I look at when I’m listening to my music?
Answer 1: The awesome cover flow look. I can see what song just played, and what song is coming up. I can put it fullscreen, so that’s all I see- My album artwork of what song is playing, and a few before and after the song that is currently playing.
Question 2: How do I change the music, request a song in iTunes DJ, and control the volume from across the room?
Answer 2: Simple. I have an iPod touch as you may know, and I have a cool app that is made by apple and is called remote. You can hook it up to your iTunes library, and over wifi, you are able to control the music. It also puts your iTunes library as the Music app’s interface, but sadly you can’t rotate to view cover flow. but I can do all that: request a song in iTunes DJ, go to the next song, and even control the iTunes volume.
VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!

Another reason why Apple rules….

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Ah, another day. Standard. I have my iPod touch in my lunchbox, even though we are not aloud to have any electronics at school at all. my lunch is a peach cup, a sunny-D, and a PBJ. Standard. I also have some cheese curls for a snack. Well, it is all normal, when I go to have snack. I eat my cheese curls, Drink some Sunny-D, and put it all away, covering up my iPod touch. Then, 45 mins later, it is lunch. UHOH. I open my lunch box, and what do I see? Sunny-D leaked out of the bottle. ALOT OF IT. so much, that my iPod touch is almost submerged in Sunny-D. So, Secretly from rules, I go off sprinting to the bathroom, and there I take it out and #1- turn it on, make sure it still works. it does, but the contrast is all white, and it is pretty insensitive to touch. So I go off cleaning everything I can, wiping it off with paper towels, and in the end I decide; this is never going to be okay unless I get a sympathetic understanding and knowledgeable adult to help me with my problem…. Ryan to the rescue! ryan is %100 the best teacher known to man, and he is everything I stated before: sympathetic, understanding, and knowledgeable. so he helps me with cleaning it off with rubbing alcohol and putting it upright on the heater vent, and it slowly starts to recover… But when I get picked up I route straight for the apple store, so they can check it out because it is still failing. I bring it in, get an appointment 10 mins after we arrive, and talk to a guy I know there from a previous problem

( I know about everyone at this retail store!). my words: my ipod had a little accident involving liquid… and before I can say anything else he takes it and uses a special tool that was like what doctors use to look in your ears and looks in the bottom ports. Apparently, there are liquid submersion sensors inside that turn pink when submerged. Now they would have been pink if Ryan hadn’t put them over the heater, which I think disabled them. But of course I didn’t tell them that, because right after they give me the news about the Liquid Submersion Sensors not going off, he says they will replace it for free. So, here I go, with a brand spanking new iPod touch for free, replacing the old one, too bad I couldn’t keep the old one I would have dissected it and put it on the will next to the old iPod mini! Look at the picture below of the new one before I take it out of it’s packaging. too bad they don’t give it to me in the box.

GO SAFARI!

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Well, I take back my fact about flock being the best! Well lookie here, Safari 4 beta is here! I have no idea how long I have been missing this, but I found out about it last night on the awesome blog Life Hacker. The new Safari is free, and works on PC and mac (unlike google chrome). Here are some new features and screenshots:

Top sites page
New Tabs
And the capability of importing from the previous install of Safari.
I mean, this browser is just plain awesome! It is also very quick, and has a wicked post-install video.
GO GET IT!

Dashboard developer mode

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The developer mode of the apple application is very convenient, and easy to use. As you can see in the screenshot above, I can put dashboard widgets straight on to my desktop. They run there as if applications, but it really has one annoying problem- they always are on top of your apps.
To click something that is under a widget in developer mode, you have to move it first.
Also, it can be convenient for those with Mac OS X server who need to always be monitoring their stats while working. You can download the iStat Pro widget and put it on your desktop, and it will then look like this.


You may also notice that my Desktop picture is changing on every screenshot, and that is bcause have it set to rotate my desktop wallpaper every 1 minute.
You can also download many, many more widgets from apple.com, which you can also put on your desktop.
Of course with everything else on this site, to do this is easy and free. First, you have to download Deeper, which is an app where you can go into Deeper system preferences, including the dashboard. There, you will find a checkbox that says “Enable the Developer Mode of Dashboard”, as shown in the screenshot below.

Then, all you have to do to get a widget onto your desktop is click and drag a widget at the same time you are closing the Dashboard, and the idget you were dragging will not dissapear with the rest of the dashboard. you can then safely drop it on your desktop. you can click and drag it on your desktop to change its place, and you can click the i to change the preferences and do everything you could do with it as if it was in the dashboard.

iChat

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I recently started to use Adium, which was yahoo, google, and everything else known to man. But I am always interested in all of Apple’s computer products, And iChat I had tried and was not satisfied. I have a yahoo, google, and facebook IMs, and iChat only worked with AIM. So I used Adium. Then I was looking at pictures of the OS X desktop, and I saw the iChat icon in the dock. So I gave iChat another chance. I opened iChat and put in my AIM, and I was like, Okay. This works. then, I saw what other accounts I could use. I saw a Google Chat account, and I put that in. It calls it the Jabber list because that is what it uses to connect the gmail with iChat. Then, I got an iChat account, and that was awesome. It is called an Apple ID, which apparently when browsing the Apple Store your checkout will already have the info from your Apple ID put into the info. it gives you a _@mac.com username, but sadly you cannot use that as an actual email address.  I haven’t met anyone with an iChat account, but when I do I think it will come in handy. Sadly it doesn’t work with Yahoo! IM, but most of the people I know that have yahoo IMs also have AIM IMs.

The UI is very nice, and I really like the chat interface. The buddy list interface is also nice. I like using it with the spaces function so I can assign it to all of my spaces so when I switch spaces my conversation will come with me. I don’t usually like to keep my buddy list open when switching spaces, so I can just press the X button or do a Command+H, and keep my chat windows open.
I think that iChat is a great IM application, and you can be reassured with compatibility with OS X because all macs come with it.
Use iChat if you have an AIM or Google account that you want to take care of chat capabilities.

Time Machine Problems

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Time Machine is a very cool application. I can use either a USB external hard drive, or use a time capsule. It will automatically backup my data, and with my backup drive attached, I can view and restore my backups in an AMAZING UI (user interface).

But as I realized the first time I tried to use it, there are MANY downsides.
1) To backup using time machine, I need my backup drive to be twice the size of my internal Hard Drive.
2) It gets unhappy with FileVault. Apperently, I was told that you should never have FileVault on anyways by an Apple Genius at the Genius Bar at my local Apple Retail Store. then why do they include it in OS X?
3) You can’t use it with network drives.
Fables
And heres a heads up. If one of the first things you did when you got your new Mac was turn on FileVault, and you have used up ALOT (I mean around 80 GB of a 160 GB hard drive (internal) then it will be impossible to turn it off. You will have to move or delete about 10 GB from your hard drive To turn off FileVault.
Moral: Keep your Hard Drive uncluttered, and ORGANIZED!

I went and tried My 200GB hard drive with Time Machine, and I have a 160 GB backup drive. When I try to backup, it said I needed to have a whole 300GB on my backup drive. I gave up at that point and started running in circles wondering what was wrong.
Answer:You need to have at least twice the size of your internal hard drive on your external backup drive (in this case, my backup drive would have needed to be at least 320 GB).

I go to do a backup and Time Machine is messing up. it is unable to interpret how big my home folder is.
Answer:Turn off FileVault


From those, you can probably tell that Time Machine is incredibly specific about the things it is happy about.
Conlusion: Time Machine overall is a very good product. It jut depends what conditions it is working in, such as cluttered, or encrypted.