The MacTrack – iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch and Mac News

BBC releases iPlayer for Mac and Linux
by Mark Hattersley, Macworld UK

Note: The following article is reprinted from Macworld UK. Visit Macworld U.K.’s blog page for the latest Mac news from across the Atlantic.

The BBC has announced that a version of its iPlayer application for Mac and Linux operating systems is now available for download by Mac users in the U.K.

The BBC has worked with Adobe to develop a cross-platform version of its BBC iPlayer Desktop application; the new version of iPlayer uses Adobe Air technology to enable cross-platform support. iPlayer is the BBC’s online media player that enables viewers to watch television programmes online up to seven days after they have been broadcast.

While Mac users have been able to watch iPlayer content via the BBC iPlayer Web site, the new application enables them to download shows and store them locally on their computer.

Users looking to download the new iPlayer Desktop application can get a trial version from the Labs section of the iPlayer site. The BBC news site claims that a finished version is likely to be released in February 2009.

When iPlayer was fist launched, the BBC was heavily criticised by both the Mac and Linux communities for creating a program that only worked with Microsoft Windows XP. The Windows version of iPlayer uses Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) to ensure that television programmes can not be watched after seven days.

Speaking to the BBC news Web site, the BBC’s head of digital media Anthony Rose defended the BBC’s adoption of DRM technology saying: “The BBC Trust said we could make content available for seven or 30 days after broadcast,” he said. “The ability to take things away after some time requires DRM.”

BBC iPlayer now uses three DRM technologies: Windows Media Player, Adobe Air and OMA for mobile devices. The BBC also enables media to be streamed (but not downloaded) to the iPhone in using Apple’s H.264 codec. Because Apple does not share its FairPlay DRM with other companies the BBC has had to use Adobe Air to enable DRM content to be downloaded to the Mac. Because the iPhone does not support Adobe Flash, a version of BBC iPlayer for iPhone would seem to be still some way away.

“We may embrace other DRMs as needed,” said Mr. Rose. The BBC news site also noted that putting the iPlayer on phones, game consoles and more computers was helping to drive the success of the application.

The BBC iPlayer service is only available to users with a IP address located within the United Kingdom.

via BBC releases iPlayer for Mac and Linux | Macworld.

Middleburg Heights, Ohio – Grantwood Technology, LLC today announced the release of the tuneband(TM) for the 4th generation iPod nano, an armband product designed to comfortably secure the iPod nano 4th generation in place during exercise, including Nike+iPod compatibility.

Each tuneband consists of a comfortable and flexible armband strap that can accommodate both large and small arms, a durable silicone skin that allows access to all ports on the iPod nano, and a low-tack, cut-and-peel screen protector that helps guard against smudges, moisture, and daily wear-and-tear. The silicone skin of the tuneband was specifically designed for runners and walkers fully covering the bottom corners of the iPod, securely holding it in place, yet allowing access to the USB port and headphone jack. The silicone skin also does not cover the click wheel to allow it to be used without interference.

“By using the best design features of our previous tuneband products,” states Michael Banks, co-founder and CEO of Grantwood Technology, LLC, “we made this the best iPod armband for the 4th generation iPod available at a very competitive price,” states Michael Banks, CEO of Grantwood Technology.

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Walnut Creek, California – net4mac is a social network built exclusively for Mac users. This is a powerful internet service that allows you to make new friends sharing the same passion for the Mac platform, build new professional relationships, create groups of interests and much more. We are very proud to announce today the new version of net4mac for the iPhone.

Version 1.0 for iPhone allows you to connect to the service, read your messages, send a new message, browse profiles and search members matching your preferences. The user interface is fully optimized for the iPhone. More features will be added in future versions. It’s just the beginning. The iPhone version costs only $4.99 (USD). All updates will be free and we have a strong pipeline for new features.

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A useful summary, via the Apple support website, of extra features of the Apple Mac OS X’s dock, and modifier keys that help you manipulate it.

I’ve been using Parallels desktop for a few weeks now and here are my inital impressions.

From the first moment of loading the install package I’ve been really impressed by Parallels implementation of co-hosting Windows on my Mac. From the beginning of the windows install everything has gone smoothly and without any incidents.

I choose ‘Express Install’, ‘Windows XP‘. I was prompted for my windows license key and install disk (it has to be a Service Pack 2 build – see this page for details on how to upgrade your install disk from SP1 to SP2). Parallels handled the windows install from this point onwards performing a quick and efficicent unattended install of Windows XP (no user intervention needed). After a couple of the windows instance restarts (part of the usual Windows rigmarole) I had a brand new clean windows desktop within a Mac application window.

Interestingly, of the many numerous installs I’ve done of Windows (must be well in excess of 100) this was the fastest and smoothest I’ve ever encountered.

Parallels Desktops allow you to run Windows in 3 modes:

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Does your iTunes library need some TLC, attention, cleaning, sorting out and general first aid?  I know mine certainly does, so I was really excited to learn of a potentially great new utility called ‘TuneUp‘, from TuneUpMedia, the features of which are:

Your music collection is a mess. TuneUp fixes it:

• Automatically clean your mislabelled music
• Find your missing cover art
• Be alerted to upcoming concerts based on your collection
• Get the best music content from the web.

Find your missing cover art.

• Automatically search for missing cover art
• Choose from multiple album covers
• No more grey music notes
• Bring sexy back to your iPhone and iPod

Currently only available for Windows users (boo!) but soon to released for Mac users as well (hurrah!).  You can sign-up for a notification when TuneUp is available for the Mac at the TuneUp website or by clicking here.

TuneUp comment about the availablity for the Mac on their blog:

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Updated 11/05/2008: I did in fact purchase a “Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 500GB” from Play.com on 22th April 2008 but am having to return it There is an overheating issue with the individual drive I received.  It’s getting extremely hot and occasionally there is a burning smell – not good!

I’m getting a refund and am going to go with a LaCie 500GB Quadra v2 eSATA / USB / Firewire 400 / 800 at £114.99.  Hopefully this will prove a better choice for me.

Note: As far as I am aware the fault I encountered is restricted to the one individual unit I purchased.  Luck of the draw I guess!

Original article 02/01/08:
I’m thinking purchasing a 2nd (larger) external hard drive for my Mac. Primarily for Time Machine usage but also to add some redundancy to my system. I’m after a large drive (at least 500gb) with a Firewire 800 port as that’s how I will be connecting to it.

Currently the drives under consideration are:

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Ever wondered what Apple’s Time Machine is actually doing?

Here’s a quick tip on how to view the Time Machine logs:

1. Open the Console utility (found in: /Applications/Utilities)
2. If the toolbar is not showing click on the little lozenge shaped button in the very top right of the console utility
3. In the left hand pane ensure ‘All Messages‘ is selected under the section labelled ‘Log Database Queries‘
4. The search field is located in the top right of the toolbar, labelled ‘Filter’. In this field type in ‘backupd‘ (without the quotes)
5. The right hand pane will update as you type finally restricting the log messages to those relating to the process backupd (the Time Machine process).

You’ll see lots of potentially interesting information (depending on your point of view) including pre-backup and post-backup thinning and the amount of space needed etc.

If you are unlucky you may even see some errors

Here’s a sample (edited) of the sort of output you will see (error free):

No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 267.47 GB available
Copied 14399 files (28 KB) from volume Macintosh HD.
Starting post-backup thinning
Deleted backup 2008-05-08-160302: 267.51 GB now available
Deleted backup 2008-05-08-150256: 267.54 GB now available
Deleted backup 2008-05-08-141309: 267.56 GB now available
Post-back up thinning complete: 3 expired backups removed
Backup completed successfully.

Apple’s Safari web browser is built around the open source web engine called Web Kit. This is developed by the open source community and updated each and every day (and is recompiled nightly).

This ensures that the browser’s ‘engine’ is the most up to date possible, supporting emerging standards and compatibility. Additionally you benefit from faster rendering of pages and their content.

Web kit is available for both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems so the vast majority or users are covered (sorry Linux users!). The Web Kit runs Safari as the front-end application but with Web Kit as the rendering engine running “under the hood”.

To quote the Web Kit site:

WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit’s HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE. This website is also the home of S60’s S60 WebKit development.

The Web Kit open source home is at webkit.org to download either the Mac OS X or Windows version click on the nightly builds button:

To test your current browser you can run Acid3 Test <- note: this link runs the test. The Acid3 test puts the Read the rest of this entry »

[ Please ensure you have the Firmware Restoration CD 1.6 available BEFORE attempting any firmware operations. This is best practice and a very sensible precaution ]

Apple have released new firmware for their MacBook and iMac computers, I had quite a few problems with the firmware upgrade this morning so thought a brief summary of my fix may be helpful to others:

I went through the process as advised and applied the firmware upgrade. As instructed I shutdown and then held the power button down on my (mid-2007) iMac until the long beep. Each time I tried this the iMac just booted normally and did not enter the updating procedure.

Now, I have an EFI firmware password set so just in case this was preventing the upgrade I booted from my install DVD and cleared the password. I then re-ran the firmware update and following the ‘long beep reboot’ everything went as it should and I saw the progress bar etc.

After all had completed successfully I then booted from my install DVD again and re-applied the EFI firmware password.

A bit of a pain but security comes first, at least for me it does.

Update:  A further update has been made to Security Update 2007-009, it’s now v1.1

19th December 2007:  Apple has released it’s latest security updates (Security Update 2007-009) comprising of updates to the following items:

Address Book, CFNetwork, ColorSync, Core Foundation, CUPS (x3), Desktop Services, Flash Player Plug-in, GNU Tar, iChat, IO Storage Family, Launch Services, Launch Services, Mail, perl, python, Quick Look (x2), ruby (x2), Safari, Safari RSS, Samba, Shockwave Plug-in, SMB, Software Update, Spin Tracer, Spotlight, tcpdump, XQuery.

The Security Update 2007-009 may be obtained from the Software Update pane in System Preferences, or by using Apple’s Software Downloads web site

For Mac OS X v10.5.1

The download file is named: “SecUpd2007-009.dmg”

For Mac OS X v10.4.11 (Universal)

The download file is named: “SecUpd2007-009Univ.dmg”

For Mac OS X v10.4.11 (PPC)

The download file is named: “SecUpd2007-009Ti.dmg”

Information is also posted to the Apple Security Updates web site

Full details of the updates in this batch follow:

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If you cannot afford the registration fee for WingNuts 2 then read on:

North Pole — December 21, 2007 — Freeverse today announced that it is offering a free copy of the Macworld “Eddy” award-winning game, Wingnuts 2, to any family in need this holiday season.

Those who might otherwise struggle to afford the game, can simply send an email to Gift@freeverse.com between now and December 26th telling us about the best gift you ever gave. We’ll send you a download link and registration code for Wingnuts 2.

Ian Lynch Smith, President of Freeverse, said “The Mac community has given us a livelihood these last 14 years, and all of us here are truly grateful for that. Games are meant to be played, and meant to be given. We’re happy to offer this game to any Mac user who can’t afford it this Christmas.”

Wingnuts 2 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, an 800Mhz or faster G4, G5 or Intel Mac.
Those with older systems may download the original Wingnuts, which is also free.

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Most of us have a wide range of applications installed on our Macs. A lot of them are self-updating either when you load them or if you instruct them to look for updates using one of their built-in menu options. Additionally, the Apple Software Update service takes care of keeping the OS updated automatically (accessed via Apple Logo menu item located in the far left of each menu bar).

Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that combines all of the above, plus also managing updates to ALL your applications in one place?

Well, now you can with the website iusethis and it’s associated program AppFresh

Simply register with the website, run the application and you get a custom-built report on your applications and if there’s a newer version available. Where possible you can also initiate a download of the updated application.

The site covers Applications, Apple OS, widgets, plug-ins and preference panes.

It’s a great one-stop-shop to keep your Apple Mac as fresh as a daisy

If you don’t like the idea of a 3rd party application examining your system then there’s even a manual version: simply search for the application on the website and add it to your profile.

The BBC iPlayer is now live and available for Apple Mac users

Visit the BBC website to see the new iPlayer

Updated 11th December 2007: Further reports confirm the BBC’s plan to launch iPlayer on Christmas Day so the Queen’s speech can be viewed along with the rest of the Christmas Day schedule. Mac and Linux users will be able to access the BBC’s content, finally

09/12/02: Rumours are afoot that the Mac/Linux version of the BBC iPlayer will be launching on Christmas Day, 25th December 2007. Whilst this would be great if true, it seems a slightly odd choice of day when support teams etc will be their holiday break etc. I’m sceptical but would be more than happy to be proved wrong.

Stay tuned, more info as and when I get it …

The BBC iPlayer (for Windows only – at the moment) can be found at here

Updated 11th Dec 2007 with link to one of the sites showing the rumours.
Updated 10th Dec 2007 with link to one of the sites showing the rumours.

If your Mac is suffering from problems with broken thin black horizontal lines, appearing at random intervals, as well as redraw problems then Macworld’s Mac911 article may hold the answer. If your Mac has an ATI Radeon X1900 XT (Rev. 1) graphics card then it maybe over-heating.

Follow the advice in the article which may help to solve the issue, if this fails then the next step it to contact Apple. It’s been reported that sometimes Apple is prepared to swap the card for a Rev. 2 version which seems to resolve the problem.

More details can be found in this Mac911 Article.

If you are suffering with this annoying issue hopefully the above steps will provide you a with solution.

Just a quick note regarding web browsers (aimed mostly at new Mac users). When I used to/had to use Windows I used Internet Explorer (IE) and then progressed to Firefox. On Apple Macs IE is not available (hurrah!) so what are your choices?

My 3 main browsers of choice are:

Firefox – Available at getfirefox.com

Camino – Available at caminobrowser.org

Safari – Available at www.apple.com/safari

Depending on the website you visit you may find one of the above browsers more suited than others (for example, Camino for Wordprss blog editing).

Reports are around detailing various strange and curious finds deeps down within the Mac OS, is MS Windows support around the corner, check out one of the reports here: Softpedia

If could be a red herring or course but it would be great if Apple did indeed have a plan to support Windows apps.

Updated: 6th Dec 2007, see comment below with details that this could be a myth.