Hasta La Gadget!

The Mac App Store will go live on Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011, ready to download for Mac users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, available in 90 countries.

Coincidentally, that’s the same day that the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off, which probably indicates Apple’s intention to steal the spotlight from other tech titans.

More importantly for the rest of us, this will also mark the date when regular people start to buy third-party software.

The Mac App Store, to give it its stable name, will run on the same model as the iOS App Store: Sign in with your Apple ID and you can grab apps and have them charged straight to your credit card. And just like the App Store, updates will show up automatically, with just a click needed to get them.

Hard as it may be to believe, people still buy software on DVDs, in boxes, from stores. You or I might be happy buying shareware and paying for it with PayPal, but many people who are not as enthused about tech are terrified of buying anything on the internet.

It helps that the Mac ships with a great software suite, including iLife, but there is so much more great indie software out there that most people never see. The Mac App Store could solve that problem with the friction-free payment model that made the iOS App Store and iTunes so successful.

Developers can continue to sell the same apps on their own sites, and if they want to offer a trial version, they’ll have to — Apple won’t allow trials or betas in the store. On the other hand, new developers won’t have to bother setting up payment systems; they just let Apple take care of it in return for a 30-percent cut.

What I’m most looking forward to are cheap, $1 apps that do something simple. Right now, it’s not viable to sell a Mac app for a buck, but with the App Store, I’ll bet we’ll see a lot of them.

Apple’s Mac App Store to Open on January 6 [Apple Press Release]

See Also:

• Mac App Store Provokes Developer Interest, Concern

Along with “multitasking”, Airplay is easily the best new feature of iOS 4.2. It lets you beam music and video from an iPhone or iPad to compatible speakers, Airport Expresses or AppleTVs. Best of all, it is easy and always works.

But what if you want to send some video to the big-screen iMac you use as a media center? Tough. Unless you grab Erica Sadun’s AirPlayer, a Mac App that turns your computer into one giant AppleTV.

It is ingeniously simple. The app runs a Bonjour server on the Mac which identifies itself on the network as an AppleTV. Start it up and it shows up in your iDevice’s AirPlay list as a destination. Touch it and the video streams magically to your Mac.

Or it should. Although it works just fine in Sadun’s video demonstration, I could’t get any video to my iMac from the Video application. YouTube works great, though, starting up after a couple seconds of buffering. With TV shows and movies, however, all I get is a blank, black video player on my computer screen. Perhaps these big files are choking something.

Still, give it a try. AirPlayer is free (with ads), and adds useful, if niche, functionality to AirPlay: Imagine your friend comes over and wants to show you a quick clip of video. Now you don’t have to both stare at the tiny iPhone screen, and better, your friend doesn’t have to install anything.

Hacksugar: Mac-based AirPlay service allows device-to-Mac playback [Erica Sadun]

See Also:

• AirPlay Can Stream to Apple TV From Any iOS App – Not Just iTunes …
• The Hidden Secrets of Apple's AirPlay

Though we found Verizon’s new LTE network pleasantly speedy in early testing, there are a few rough edges to the tech — Verizon’s USB modem have difficulty handing off connected users from an EVDO network to an LTE one, and of course, they don’t yet work on Mac. However, Verizon’s since admitted to both these issues and pledged to remedy the twain. “Hand-offs can take up to a couple minutes, but that was expected and a fix is in the works,” it told Computerworld earlier today. “Mac is not yet supported, and we’ve been working on drivers for Mac OS for weeks, and expect to update relatively soon,” a representative added. Now let’s see the company bring some sense to the wild, wild west we call the 4G market.

Verizon: LTE modem handoff has two-minute delay, fix (and Mac compatibility) on the way originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Dec 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

This morning I woke up and saw that we had received a tip from someone pointing to this article by the Inquirer. It caught my attention because it was talking about a new set of upgrades to Apple’s MacBook Pro line of computers. As the day went on we received a few more tips on this, and a few of them linked to some gadget websites who had also written about it. But when I went to visit some of the articles they pretty much disappeared into a black hole.

This was all pretty confusing to me, and maybe you’ll understand why after reading this snippet from the Inquirer:

Apple has quietly updated its Macbook Pro laptop range while no-one was looking. There wasn’t even a press release.

The new versions which come in five fruity flavours ranging from a 15 incher with a 2.4Ghz Intel dual core Penryn processor, up to a 17-incher with 2.6GHz under the bonnet.

All come with the usual Apple bells, whistles, software and gorgeousness, but the most interesting new addition comes in the form of Multitouch, previously only seen on the bank-balance-battering Macbook Air.

My initial instinct was to check the date on the article, but it was indeed written today. As you might recall this aforementioned MacBook Pro upgrade actually came back in February 2008… nearly 3-months ago. Hmmm, and they said that there was no press release? Guess they must have glanced over it.

CrunchGear and Gizmodo wrote about the story, and instead of providing an update they both just yanked the articles all together possibly hoping that no one saw them. Although Gizmodo has managed to scrape together 12 Diggs thus far on their non-existent article. Neither of their articles linked to any source, but I think it’s safe to assume that it all of this came from the Inquirer’s write-up.

We’re all human and make mistakes, but I guess I’m just in awe that this news has slipped by so many gadget-loving geeks. I wasn’t originally going to cover this story, but I wanted to keep everyone informed in the event that you saw these articles in your feed reader. And since the gadget sites didn’t provide an update you might assume that these are the new models you’ve been waiting for.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Apple’s New 13-inch MacBook and 15-inch MacBook ProApple Updates MacBook LineBig Deal: MacBook Pro for $1,650!Frustrated? Turn Your Macbook Into A Smackbook!One Year After “The Switch…”

This article was written on May 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Keyboard shortcuts step aside! Mouse gestures have been around for quite some time, and are often used as a way to quickly issue commands. One of the places that these are used the most is in the web browser, and that’s because a lot of repetitive actions are performed there. Just think about how many times each day you click the back or refresh buttons.

Today we’re going to demonstrate the various ways that you can use mouse gestures in Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer. The only problem you’ll run into is trying to absorb everything you can do with the mouse gestures.

–Firefox–

Windows; Mac; Linux
As you can imagine there are quite a few Firefox extensions out there that provide some sort of mouse gesture support. Here are two of my favorites (they both work with Firefox 3, although they are not officially compatible yet):

• FireGestures [Homepage]
  This is everything that you would expect from a mouse gesture system, and more. There are dozens of different commands you can associate with your own gestures, and you can even take it one step further by creating your own commands. My guess is that you’ll be more than satisfied with the built-in commands though.

  (Click to Enlarge)
  

• Easy DragToGo [Homepage]
  This isn’t a full-fledged mouse gesture extension like the one above, but it does use mouse movement to perform useful actions. What you can do is set it up so that when you drag-and-drop text, links, or images in a certain direction it will perform a special action. This can be an easy way to open links in a new tab, perform a Google search for text, or save images to your computer.

  (Click to Enlarge)
  

–Opera–

Windows; Mac; Linux
Opera has got to be the easiest browser to use mouse gestures simply because they are included out-of-the-box. You can perform a gesture by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse in one of the basic patterns described here, or one of the more advanced gestures here.

The first time you perform a mouse gesture it will prompt you with a box asking whether you want the gestures to be enabled. Alternatively you can open the Preferences and go to Advanced -> Shortcuts to turn them on. While you’re in the preferences you can also have it flip-flop the back and forward gestures if you’re left handed.

If you find yourself having trouble remembering the various gestures then you may want to consider adding this site as a panel in the sidebar. You can do this by bookmarking the site and choosing the option to show it as a panel. You’ll be more inclined to use the mouse gestures if you leave that site open in the sidebar for a few days while you grow accustomed to the various mouse gestures.

–Internet Explorer–

Windows only
Of course Internet Explorer isn’t without mouse gestures. There are two plug-ins that I believe do a good job of executing mouse gestures in Internet Explorer, and the best part is that both come in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors! Here they are:

• Mouse Gestures [Homepage]
  What I really love about this mouse gesture system is that it integrates very well into the browser. You can assign gestures to dozens of different commands, and it is also capable of opening a bookmark or simulating a keyboard shortcut.

  (Click to Enlarge)
  

• IE7Pro [Homepage]
  This is a pretty popular plug-in for Internet Explorer, but if you’re looking only for mouse gestures this won’t likely be what you want. It’s a feature-packed add-on that does dozens of other things besides just gestures. Not only that but the configurability of the mouse gestures is not nearly as good as the previous plug-in that we mentioned. However, if you’re already using IE7Pro for some of the other features then you might as well take advantage of the mouse gestures.

  (Click to Enlarge)
  

–Overview–

As you can see mouse gestures are all over the place, and can be found in all the major browsers. Do you use mouse gestures, or are they not your thing? Personally I’m more of a keyboard shortcut person myself, but I’m sure many of you would rather keep your hand on the mouse.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Your Week In Review with Sunday’s SummarygMote: Mouse Gestures for WindowsCyberNotes: K-Meleon Browser is Lightweight and FastBuilt-In Opera Features That Firefox Needs Extensions ForCyberNotes: Your Week In Review With Sunday’s Summary