Well, it turns out that the Apple Store that is opening in my own town is opening it’s doors a lot sooner than what I first expected. Grand opening is at 10:00am tomorrow morning (July 1) in West Town Mall, if you’re in Knoxville, TN that is.

If anyone is going from Ktown, I’ll be there from around 10 until 11, as I have to run off to work soon after since I hadn’t planned on the store opening this early. Maybe I’ll meet someone who can pull some strings and get me a position there soon. Be on the lookout for me and I hope to grab myself a t-shirt!

Everyone has a wishlist of features for an upcoming OS release, so I talk about mine.

• Improved Spotlight
• Revised Handling of Applications
• Integrated iCal, Address Book, and Mail
• Front Row on Steroids
• Better built in RSS Support
• More Eye Candy
• Better Dashboard Implementation
• To Quit or Not To Quit?
• iTunes: for Movies
• Death of Plastic

Read more about each of the items in my wishlist here.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Leopard, RSS

Well, it’s official. “TV Shows” doesn’t have the little orange “new” icon beside it anymore, just as the podcast area and others before it have fallen into place and lost part of their new iTMS smell.

So, what’s the new kid on the block look like? Well, quite cool actually. Just head on over in the Music Store and click on “Nike Sport Music”. Picture of a girl running, cool tables, nice red banners, little different than what you’re used to in the store.

You have podcasts available in this area, as well as music, iMixes, and “workouts”. If anyone has a Nano and gets some of the stuff from that area, let me know how it all works out.

There have been a few updates released in the past few days, so here is a quick summary. An iPod updater adds bug fixes for most models and gives the Nano Nike support. A new version of iTunes adds Nike support. A Quicktime update fixes some bugs with iDVD and the Intel version of the 10.4.7 update released a day or so again is said to be missing several files, so all we got was bug fixes, not any of the OpenGL stuff that would have been nice to get in the update. Still waiting to see if a newer version of the 10.4.7 appears on Apple Downloads of Software Update.

Quicktime 7.1.2 51.4MB
iPod Updater 6-28-06 41.8MB
iTunes 6.0.5 18.9MB
Mac OS 10.4.7 49.8MB

If that doesn’t keep everyone on top of everything, I don’t know what will. Update your Macs people!

In conjunction with the previous post, this update to iTunes adds support for Nike + iPod workout stuff to iTunes.

iTunes 6.0.5 allows you to sync your Nike + iPod workout data to nikeplus.com, where you can easily track your progress, set training goals, challenge others, and much more. Visit the Nike Sport Music area on the iTunes Music Store to download workout mixes, Athlete Inspiration playlists, Nike podcasts, and more.

I’d be really interested to see how all of this fits together and if it really works out nice as well. Seems like an awesome idea I have to say.

A new updater for iPods has been released and I thought it was worth mentioning just because it shows support for the Nike + Apple ads that we saw awhile back. Note that under the stuff listed for iPod Nano.

Volume limit
Bug fixes
Note: iTunes 6.0.5 or later required to set a maximum volume limit for iPod shuffle. For information about how to set the maximum volume limit, open iTunes and choose Help > iTunes and Music Store Help.

I found this video clip sometime ago from somewhere in the bowels of the internet.  I was looking for a decent video clip to post this week and just happened to run across it again on my computer.  I have to say that if the year was 1993 and I was at the same stage in life as I am now, I would be excited about a Newton and probably would have bought one just because they are so intriguing.

I’ve never seen a Newton in real life before, but I think this is one of those things that Apple users need to see and get cultured in our unique ancestry….so, expect the 1984 commercial in the upcoming weeks as I try to spread some culture to any new Mac newbies that may be out there watching.  Buckle up, drive safe, and have a good week!

 

 Newton Ad [2:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1540)

I’m on where near being an expert with the Cocoa programming language, but after working my way through half of this book the last couple days and spending every waking free moment coding, I’ve come to a few critical realizations.

First, object oriented programming is the ‘bomb’, for lack of better words. This just makes sense. While I learned a lot about working through problems and all that while learning C, an OOP just makes so much more sense.

Second, Cocoa is heaven. This is the way programming should be. There are probably thousands of well documented and easily searchable classes, objects, methods, etc, all at your fingertips. It’s extremely easy to add functionality to an application because it’s so well documented and right there for you.

Third, there was no third. I love XCode, I love my Mac, I love OOP. Cocoa is the best. Nothing more to say.

I’m a sucker for TV shows that put most of my friends to sleep in a matter of seconds. Some great examples of those are pretty much anything forensic related on Court TV, ME (Medical Examiner) kinda stuff, lots of stuff on the History channel, and some of my favorites being the Modern Marvels from Discovery. Since Modern Marvels isn’t on iTunes and I want to watch something I want to watch right this second, I just happened to run across Extreme Engineering. I’ve seen a few episodes of this before and it’s exactly what I was in the mood for. Cheaper than On-Demand too.

Click on image to go to Music Store. US Only, as far as I know.

This update to the Mac OS actually introduces a few new features that I’ll report on in just a few minutes, the most interesting being the support for chat rooms with iChat over AIM.

The 10.4.7 Update is recommended for all users and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes for the following applications and technologies. It includes fixes for:

- preventing AFP deadlocks and dropped connections
- saving Adobe and Quark documents to AFP mounted volumes
- Bluetooth file transfers, pairing and connecting to a Bluetooth mouse, and syncing to mobile phones
- audio playback in QuickTime, iTunes, Final Cut Pro, and Soundtrack applications
- ensuring icons are spaced correctly when viewed on desktop
- determining the space required to burn folders
- iChat audio and video connectivity, creating chat rooms when using AIM
- importing files into Keynote 3
- PDF workflows when using iCal and iPhoto
- reliable use of Automator actions within workflows
- importing and removing fonts in Font Book
- syncing addresses, bookmarks, calendar events and files to .Mac
- compatibility with third party applications and devices
- previous standalone security updates