Category: mac

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Happy 40th Birthday to the Macintosh!

I first used a Macintosh when I went to college in 1989, I had just left school and started an art & design course. The college was a little behind in technology so even though it was 1989 and there were some more modern Macs these machines were a bit older so probably SE’s and SE30’s. Even though they were old these were amazing, I remember using MacPaint to draw with the various tools and then printing it out on the Apple LaserWriter printer. In hindsight it is obviously so low-tech compared to now but it was incredible.

Prior to using the Mac I had used computers at home, as far back as about 1981 we had a Commodore Vic 20 and then a Commodore 64. So I had tried doing things on those, entering programs in from computer magazines and attempting to write BASIC programs myself. I remember thinking at one point that it would be great if there was an easier way to work with computers, nothing specific but just that entering text into programs seemed hard and long-winded. So when I first used a Mac in 1989 it was a bit like a light came on and it all made so much sense that this is how computers should work.

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How to fix – “LSLaunchProhibited Info.plist key is unsupported on Mac”

I don’t do a lot of iOS development but I do have a sticker pack and an app in the app store. I recently got an email from Apple developer support with the following message about my sticker pack:

Compatible iOS and iPadOS apps will automatically appear on the Mac App Store when the first Apple silicon Macs become available this year. However, we noticed the following issues with one or more of your apps that are opted in to appear.

The following apps will not be made available on Mac until a new version addressing these issues is submitted.

These apps contain the LSLaunchProhibited Info.plist key, which is unsupported on Mac:

I wasn’t quite sure what that meant and the email didn’t really give any indication as to how to fix it. A quick google search only came up with one single result, a forum post on Apple developer forums by someone trying to find an answer to the same question! :)

After having a quick look around in Xcode I *think* I’ve found the answer to the issue. Basically with the new Apple silicon Macs that have been announced it will be possible to run iOS apps on Mac and by default all iOS apps will be included in the Mac App Store. It is possible to specifically opt-out of having your app in the store but by default it will be included, so in this case the message relates to the fact that my sticker pack isn’t currently set to be available on Mac, only iPhone and iPad.

To resolve this you need to go to the sticker pack extension file of your Xcode project, under the “General” tab there should be a “Deployment Info” section. In there you can set whether it will work on iPhone and iPad, and if you’re running the latest version of Xcode there should also be a “Mac” checkbox. Checking that box will make the sticker pack available for Mac. Once that is done and a new build submitted to the app store this should then resolve this issue.

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Painted into a Touch Bar corner?

Back in April 2017 Apple invited a few select members of the tech press to a special event to discuss the situation with the Mac Pro line of computers. At that time the Mac Pro had gone about 4 years without any updates causing a lot of speculation about Apple’s commitment to its pro-level Mac users.

At the event Craig Federighi was quoted as saying:

“I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will. We designed a system with the kind of GPUs that at the time we thought we needed, and that we thought we could well serve with a two GPU architecture. That that was the thermal limit we needed, or the thermal capacity we needed. But workloads didn’t materialize to fit that as broadly as we hoped.”

“The Mac Pro Lives”, DaringFireball.net, 4th April 2017
The 2013 Mac Pro

So whilst they didn’t provide an immediate fix to the problem it was a clear admission that the limits of the Mac Pro design had been reached and that there was no way they could upgrade that design to use newer, faster components. The only way forward was to scrap that design and redesign it completely.

Recently I had a purchase decision to make about a new Mac, I really wanted a good jump in performance over the 2014 13” MacBook Pro I’ve been using and ultimately I opted for a 6-core Mac Mini. 

After looking at all the options within the current MacBook Pro line I knew I wanted at least a quad-core CPU so it was going to have to be at least the high end 13” MacBook Pro, I also wanted 16Gb of RAM and at least a 512Gb SSD, so £2129 for this and an additional £249 to get AppleCare+ cover on top of this, plus the cost of a few dongles to connect non-USB-C devices to it and also my Thunderbolt display. All in all it was going to cost close to £2600 to get something to suit my needs.

In the end however I decided I couldn’t justify purchasing that machine. The reason I decided not to go for the MacBook Pro was that despite spending that amount of money I was buying a machine that had no future upgrade path. It’s not possible to upgrade the RAM or SSD storage so it means having to buy the highest configuration you can afford hoping that this is good enough for your future needs, rather than buying what you can afford now and adding upgrades later if needed. 

Additionally all of the higher-end MacBook Pro laptops come with the Touch Bar whether you want it or not so this adds to the cost, given that I work most of the time using an external display and keyboard it means the Touch Bar has limited usage potential. 

Having not owned a Touch Bar MacBook Pro I’m perhaps not in a position to judge how successful or beneficial the Touch Bar is, but my impression from articles etc online and friends who own one is that it’s not a must-have or key selling feature for many people. I know I would certainly rather have the ability to upgrade RAM and SSD storage down the line than have the Touch Bar.

Combine the Touch Bar with the lack of upgradability and you have to pay a lot of money up front to try and future proof your purchase. Ultimately I realised this wasn’t going to spark joy* and I would resent spending that amount of money to get something I wasn’t completely happy with and didn’t represent good value for money to me. In the end I opted for a 6-core Mac Mini purchased through Apple’s refurb store, the balance of price / features was much better and additionally the current models were released last year so they’re using the latest CPUs and aren’t likely to be superseded anytime soon.

So the question I’m asking is: Has the hardware choices in the MacBook Pro line resulted in a similar situation to the Mac Pro, only this time Apple has painted themselves into a Touch Bar corner? 

Personally, I think it’s time for Apple to consider what changes they need to make in the MacBook Pro line to get out of this corner they’ve painted themselves into.

* Yes, this is a token Mari Kondo reference :)

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Shedworx’ State of the Union 2010

I’ve written a few times about the various apps that the guys over at Shedworx make and I’m always keen to see how their product range is developing and improving.

They published a blog post recently outlining their development plans for 2010 and their main focus for 2010 is on two areas: AVCHD workflow and Digital Asset Management. As such there’s some great improvements in store for their VoltaicHD and FlamingoHD applications.

VoltaicHD: End-to-end native AVCHD workflow

In their post they talk about how they’ve always been working towards having a completely native AVHCD workflow for VoltaicHD which started with the basic AVCHD editor that was added to VoltaichHD 2.

The next step in the process is adding native AVCHD output from Voltaic including trimming / joining files. So you’ll be able to import AVCHD footage from your camera, do some simple editing and then output an AVCHD format file without having to do any format conversion. The end result should fast output of great quality files.

One cool aspect of this for me is that I’ll be able to edit some AVCHD footage and then burn it as an AVCHD disk that can play on my PS3 using Shedworx’ other app RevolverHD.

VoltaicHD is available as both Mac and Windows apps.

FlamingoHD: Improved Asset Management

FlamingoHD is Shedworx’ youngest product but one that has proven to be very useful for managing media imported from AVCHD cameras.

The areas to be improved in 2010 include re-working the media views to provide a faster, easier way to navigate your library.

Improvements in managing your library and metadata. Support for simple editing of all supported media types is also a planned feature.

FlamingoHD is available as as Mac app.

Shedworx Forums

So, I’m looking forward to seeing the improved apps as they’re released. Don’t forget too that Shedworx have support Forums on their website so if you’re looking for help and support with their products then it should be first on your list of places to go:

http://shedworx.com/forum

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Thoughts on the iPad

Apple have finally unveiled their tablet device to the public so we can finally stop hearing all of the pontification that has gone on for the last few months about a device that Apple had never given any public indication even existed (the pontification only to be replaced by the rumblings and grumblings of those who got too enamoured by some of the various rumours!).

In the true spirit of “Internet Journalism” I thought I’d add my own thoughts about Apple’s newly announced iPad. Here are a few thoughts / questions about the iPad and the impact it may have.

Flash on the iPad?

It’s a question being asked by many people, and with a move to a larger screen some would say it deserves even more to be on the device. However, I wouldn’t expect it soon, if ever to be honest. Unless the Flash plugin can be made more efficient processor, memory, energy wise it won’t happen.

I don’t think this is simply arrogance on Apple’s part as some might say, I think Apple approach the usage of the iPhone OS that runs on the iPhone and the iPad with a view to making it as efficient as possible. Some people were expecting or hoping for the iPad to use the full Mac OSX but are disappointed that it’s not on there, although some see that as a limitation I think it shows that Apple isn’t willing to put even their own more fully-featured OS on the iPad as it wouldn’t run as efficiently on the device. So if they do that with their own OS why should we expect an unmodified / unoptimised version of Flash to be allowed on the device?

I do think there is more to it than just the issue of efficiency though, John Gruber makes some good points in his recent post “Apple, Adobe, and Flash“. Personally I doubt Flash will ever be on the iPad or iPhone.

Will there be a new iPad App Store “Gold Rush”?

Even though I doubt Adobe will ever get Flash on the iPad I do look forward to seeing what native apps Adobe might bring to the iPad. Photoshop Mobile is a great little app for the iPhone so a larger sized version of that could be pretty cool. Apple have set a nice precedent for full-featured apps like Keynote, Pages and Numbers at $9.99 each so there could be some financial incentive to create a good image editing app.

It may only be a 1ghz processor in the iPad but it appears to be far more powerful than the raw ghz would suggest. It would be great if the $9.99 price point can remain as it might encourage developers of iPhone apps to develop more for it, as the race to the bottom and the $0.99 / £0.59 price point has made the supposed “Gold Rush” of the App Store an impossible dream for many, many developers.

Does the iPad signify the end of Mac OSX?

Some people have concerns that Apple’s focus on the iPhone OS is an indication that Apple is heading away from the geek or power user and is instead focused solely on the domestic / consumer end user. Whilst that may be true to some degree (Apple is a consumer electronic company after all) I think that Mac OSX has a strong future and a rightful place on the more powerful hardware that the MacBook, Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Pro computers offer.

I think that iPhone OS will influence the future development of Mac OSX in regards to user interface and aesthetics. Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard brought a lot of efficiency improvements, largely thanks to the optimisation required to get iPhone OS running on the limited hardware requirements of the iPhone and iPod touch (along with the dropping of PPC support!).

The iPad is the gateway drug for Mac OSX development.

The iPod and iPhone have often been seen as a ‘gateway drug’ for Apple laptops / desktop computers – people like how nicely they work and are then attracted to Mac for the same reasons. In a similar way I think the iPad will be a gateway drug for iPhone developers getting into developing apps for the full Mac OSX that runs on Apple’s laptops and desktops.

Designing apps for the iPad will bring with it some new challenges for mobile device developers – more screen space for the user interface, processor and memory improvements. Apple are touting the iPad as a third category of device in-between a smart phone and a laptop, developers will have to get used to this paradigm as well.

The iPad isn’t just a laptop with a small screen (i.e netbook) it’s a new type of device with hardware and software tailored to suit the demands of a lower speed cpu and lower memory. Netbooks generally push the limits of their smaller hardware form and tend to run Windows XP or Windows 7 which are really laptop OS’s and as such really need to be running on at least a 1.6ghz atom cpu with 2GB of memory to be usable. The iPad is built a whole different way, with a focus on using the minimum of cpu speed and memory by maximising the efficiency of the OS.

Where the iPad becomes the gateway drug is that as iPhone developers (many of whom didn’t previously develop for Mac OSX) get into developing iPad apps they will get more familiar with developing for a larger screen resolution. They’ll bring with them the knowledge and experience of developing apps within the tight constraints of the iPhone’s cpu and memory and start to enjoy the freedom and power that the iPad’s higher spec offers them. It’s only a short step to see how a developer could then take the next step up and make their apps function on the full Mac OSX laptop / desktop OS.

I look forward to seeing an increase of very efficient programmers developing apps for Mac OSX in future, having learned to code Objective-C within very tight limitations. :)

Other media coverage etc.

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Outlook comes to Mac, will it make Microsoft ‘Fix Outlook’?

Microsoft’s Mac Office team recently announced that the next version of Mac Office 2010 will replace the Entourage email client with a purpose-built for Mac version of Outlook. This is interesting as it suggests that Microsoft see the forthcoming Exchange support built into Mac OSX 10.6 as bit of a threat.

The current email client in Mac Office, Entourage, is a poor citizen of OSX 10.5 due to its single database that is not very compatible with OSX 10.5’s Time Machine back up function. So Entourage was at least due for an update, however, bringing Outlook to Mac at least makes things a bit more consistent between Windows and Mac Office suites. I dare say a number of Windows to Mac switchers will be quite happy to see the addition of Outlook.

Will Outlook for Mac’s HTML email support suck like it does on Windows?

With the announcement I think many web designer / developers might likely have the above question in mind! If you’re not in the habit of creating HTML format emails then you may not understand what the problem is, basically since the release of Office 2007 for Windows the rendering of HTML emails in Outlook took a turn for the worse. Outlook 2007 uses Word’s HTML rendering engine to display HTML emails, effectively taking several steps backward in regards to rendering support in modern email clients.

Due to the poor HTML support in Outlook on Windows, developing HTML email newsletters requires using HTML formatting that hasn’t seen the light of day since the heady days of the late 90’s, table based markup, very little support for CSS markup. If you want to read more about this then head over to the Email Standards Project for lots of good information, and in particular this post: “Microsoft to ignore web standards in Outlook 2010 – enough is enough”.

The Mac Office team have indicated they will make Outlook for Mac from the ground up as a true Mac application:

Outlook for Mac is being built from the ground up as a Mac OS X application using Cocoa. It will have a new database that delivers a reliable, high performance, and integrated experience with Mac OS X. Users will be able to back-up with Time Machine and search email, calendar and contacts with Spotlight.

So I’m reading from this that as it’s using Apple’s Cocoa frameworks that it will make use of the WebKit rendering that Cocoa provides to render HTML emails. As such it should have excellent HTML rendering capabilities, which incidentally the current Entourage application already has. So Mac users should have a good experience regardless of whether they use Apple’s Mail or Outlook email clients.

However, there’s a potential problem. The Windows Outlook team have so far stubbornly denied any need to fix the problem with HTML rendering in Outlook on Windows and indeed seem intent to release Outlook 2010 with the exact same rendering support. As the Outlook team seem to think that the Word HTML rendering engine is appropriate, will they mandate that Mac Outlook should render emails exactly the same way that the Outlook for Windows does? Will they make Word the rendering engine for HTML emails in Outlook for Mac?

If they don’t then basically they’ll have a potential lack of interoperability between Outlook on the different platforms, Outlook for Mac will offer good support for HTML email (as it already does with Entourage), and Outlook for Windows will suck. I’m not sure that Microsoft will be happy with that seeing as Office is one of their flagship products and will want to make the experience the same. The question is, if that is the case then which side will yield?

Email Standards are Web Standards

Regardless of your opinion on HTML emails* it’s a big issue, whether you like or dislike HTML format emails the reality is that they’re here to stay, support for web standards and good layout practices should be encouraged, regardless of whether that HTML is rendered in an email client or a web browser. The recent Fix Outlook campaign hopefully sent a strong message to Microsoft about how the development community feel about it. Let’s hope Outlook for Mac doesn’t come with the same support as it’s Windows counterpart and that the discrepancy between their rendering engines forces Microsoft to step up and make Outlook 2010 for Windows include improved support instead of dumbing down Outlook for Mac!

Update:
There’s a new site launched by a couple of employees from Microsoft, “Make Office Better”, it introduces it’s purpose stating:

Hi! We’re two Microsoft employees looking to collect customer ideas on how to improve Microsoft Office. If you’ve got a new feature idea or an idea on how to improve Microsoft Office, please share it here…and vote on other ideas you agree with. Through the magic of crowd-sourcing the best ideas should rise to the top.

What’s great about the ‘magic of crowd-sourcing’ in this case is that the number 1 Office issue that people want to see fixed is “Improve the HTML support in Outlook“. Well, they asked for feedback!

~

* And don’t say “HTML emails suck, everyone should just use plain text emails”, HTML emails will stop being used around the same time that everyone adopts XHTML 2. If you don’t like them then you can always use a mail client that can force the display in plain text!

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Five Subversion Clients for Mac OSX

Until fairly recently if you were a Mac user and you wanted to use a version control system like Subversion you didn’t have much choice as far as client apps went. If you didn’t have the terminal skills to work via the command line and wanted use something with a nice GUI then you had to choose from apps that were either incomplete or not particularly Mac-like.

However, the latter half of 2008 brought a lot of change in regards to Subversion client apps for OSX. It’s kind of like with buses, if you wait long enough several of them come along at once ;)

Subversion clients from A (Adobe Dreamweaver) to Z (ZigVersion)

To give the various apps available thorough overviews is beyond the scope of this article, so I’m just going to list the various apps that are available and point out some of their features.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4

Dreamweaver CS4 added support for the Subversion version control system, something I’ve long thought would be a great feature and one which via an extension was available to Windows users. However, I don’t think the implementation of it in Dreamweaver CS4 is as good as it could be.

One issue in particular is that the commands for Checking out and committing to a repository are the same as those used for the regular Checkin / Checkout functions of Dreamweaver which I think is a bit confusing as they are very different features. Using these terms is a problem as they don’t match up with the correct terminology used in Subversion. Dreamweaver is often the first app (rightly or wrongly) that people who are learning how to make websites use so there’s a bit of a responsibility for it to teach people correctly and to encourage good habits.

I consider Dreamweaver CS4’s SVN integration to be a good first step but it could do with improvement to make it more usable. Unless you use Dreamweaver already then you’re probably not going to start doing so just to get access to its Subversion integration. But if you’re already a Dreamweaver user then it does offer some useful functionality, and if you’re a DW user but have never used version control then it’s a good enough place to start!

Dreamweaver CS4 costs $399 for a commercial licence but there are also educational licences and there is also a 30 day trial.

→ Go to the Dreamweaver CS4 website

ZigVersion

When I first started using Subversion ZigVersion was the best solution for OSX that I tried. It was the most user friendly / easy to use out of all the clients available at the time such as SVNX, Syncro SVN and SCPlugin. I’ve always used a hosted Subversion repository ever since I started using Subversion so I was needing an application that would allow me to easily connect to an external server. ZigVersion made it pretty easy to do that, and to an SVN noob it was fairly easy to understand what was going on.

Once connecting to my SVN repository it was quite easy to create a working copy and update it from the repository files. After working on files it was easy to find the updated files with a simple click on the ‘Changed Files’ icon in the menubar. Only the new or updated files would be shown which could then be selected and checked in to the repository with appropriate comments added at the same time. It was also easy to get access to revisions of files via the ‘Revision Viewer’ button.

It’s a pretty straight forward application and does the job, one criticism would be that the interface is fairly unexciting in appearance. I mainly say that as this is a review of Mac OSX Subversion GUI apps so the visual appearance is important and the main reason why I’m not including SVNX or Syncro SVN amongst these applications.

ZigVersion costs $99 for a commercial licence but is free for non-commercial use. There is also a 30 day trial period.

→ Go to the ZigVersion website (Zigversion no longer appears to be available)

Versions

We’re now getting into the mac-daddy territory of Mac OSX Subversion apps. Versions was the first of the new wave of Mac SVN apps, despite showing as "coming soon" for over a year and feared by many to be vapourware.

However, although it was delayed the app was launched and it delivered on its promise of providing a much more Mac-like app for dealing with Subversion repositories and the tasks involved with working with them.

Versions’ main tool bar provides buttons for Update, Commit, Checkout and other options, just under the main toolbar there are three tabs, Timeline, Browse and Transcript. The Timeline tab gives you a timeline in the form of a list of revisions and accompanying notes which makes it easy to view the changes made over a period of time. The Browse tab allows you to view the repository files and view history of individual files as well as comparing, managing blame and also a Quick Look option for quickly viewing the contents of files.

There is a quick setup button that will get you setup with an account at Beanstalkapp.com who provide online SVN repository hosting, there’s a free account offering one repository to get you started with various tiered pricing options after that.

Versions deserves credit for really raising the bar for Mac SVN apps, the teaser page had me longing for months for them to launch the app! Although in the end I had give up waiting and buy ZigVersion instead in order to get some kind of GUI access to my repository.

Versions costs €39 (approx $50) for single user licence, there is a 21 day trial period.

→ Go to the Versions website

Cornerstone

This is the Subversion app I’ve been using the most out of all of them recently, although it’s a pretty close race between it and Versions. Cornerstones’ interface is well thought out and well designed and by that I don’t mean just good looks but that it provides a great feature set for working with multiple SVN repositories.

You can easily filter the working copy files in different states such as Changed, Modified, Conflicted, Unversioned and Locked. The ability to filter files this way is an essential feature in an SVN app, finding changed files in order to commit them to the repository is one of the most things I do.

Cornerstone also offers a great horizontal timeline view that displays the various revisions which is great for quickly reviewing the details of each revision such as dates, times, Revision notes and changes made.

Cornerstone costs $59 for a single user licence but you can use a trial version for 14 days to check it out.

→ Go to the Cornerstone website / → Buy Cornerstone from the Mac App Store

Coda

Coda is a text-editor for web development, its main strength being the integration of several aspects of the common web development workflow: text editor, FTP, CSS editing and Terminal. In a recent update the application now has integrated Subversion support which adds it to this growing list of OSX Subversion clients.

Coda’s SVN integration adds a simple source control status window that quickly highlights changed files making it easy to find updated files and commit them to the repository. There is also easy access to a Source Control menu option offering committing / discarding changes, refreshing, comparing and updating the repository.

It is smoothly integrated into the workflow of Coda and rounds out the feature set of the application and it’s aim to provide a one-window web development environment.

Coda costs $99 for single user licence, there’s a 30 day trial period.

→ Go to the Coda website

Closing – Rise of Git

Ironically as all of these Subversion apps start to appear many people are starting to switch to using Git instead of SVN! There are a couple of Mac GUI apps for Git available so far such as GitX and Gitnub so check them out if Git is more your thing.

Update: Couple of new Subversion / Git apps on the Mac App Store

If you’re using Beanstalk for Subversion / Git hosting you might want to check out the app Magic Bean for Mac too. There’s also an app called SourceTree which supports Git and Mercurial and also has some support for Subversion. I haven’t tried either app yet but worth a look I think.

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Pictures from the opening of the Glasgow Apple Store 25/08/07

Well, finally, after the opening of several stores in England we’ve now got an actual Apple Store in Scotland! Buchanan Street in Glasgow to be exact.

The opening of the store was on Saturday 25th of August, I couldn’t make it over to Glasgow myself for the opening but fortunately my brother lives nearby so he went along and joined hundreds of others in the queue (in the rain!) waiting to get inside, there was also a free T-shirt for the first 1500 people inside.

I’ve included all of his photos here as a photo gallery, although he has published them on his blog too with some more personal words to go along with the pictures.

Just click any of the pictures below to view them all as a larger photo gallery.

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What’s the future for ‘iTunes’?

Ever since Macworld San Francisco I’ve been wondering about the future strategy for the iTunes application in regards to it’s name. I mean I know that the Store is known just as the ‘iTunes Store’ and not the ‘iTunes Music Store now but ‘iTunes’ is still a pretty specific reference to Music really.

Not just music…

As the iTunes Store has for a while sold TV Shows and Movies (at least if you live in the US, not for me in the UK though) then it’s pretty obvious that there’s more to it than just music. However, what I’m really talking about is the actual iTunes application. For the last couple of major versions it has supported playback of video as well as audio, this hasn’t been hard to miss. However, the changes that have been slightly under the radar has been the fact that synchronisation of non-music features such as Contacts from the Mac OSX Address Book application, once something handled by the (increasingly redundant!) iSync application, is now handled inside iTunes.

The iPhone effect

With the announcement of the iPhone then it’s a no-brainer that this handling of Contact information is going to be even more important, perhaps even genuinely useful! (I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve looked up contacts on my iPod).

One of the innovative aspects of the iPhone is the visual voicemail feature which allows you to browse a list of all the voicemails you’ve received. It’s just a guess but I would imagine that this will be added to the list of things that may be synchronised to your computer via iTunes. Ok, so adding audio voicemail into iTunes is still just dealing with audio files, but I reckon it’s just just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the data that will be contained on the iPhone.

Name dropping?

So, with all these different data types in the mix it’s interesting to ponder how the name ‘iTunes’ fits in amongst all of this. Will we see a change of name? Perhaps there is a different iApp required? Maybe, but perhaps it’s a likely outcome that it’s just a further evolution of the iTunes app name to encompass the broader capabilities and functions it contains? Ok, doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with that theory I guess.

What’s in iName?

Anyway, let’s see the names in use amongst the iLife / iWork apps already:

  • iTunes
  • iMovie
  • iPhoto
  • iDVD
  • iWeb
  • GarageBand
  • Pages
  • Keynote

Ok, there’s not a completely consistent ‘iName‘ format here so it doesn’t mean that any new name would have to be in that format. However, I think it probably would be purely because of the core association of iPod and iPhone with iTunes as it is now.

GarageBand as a name is a bit of an odd one out really as it’s the only app in the iLife suite to to have the ‘iName’ format. Of course neither of the iWork apps are in that format either but they are part of the iWork package, I wonder if this is a possible scenario for iTunes as an app? Perhaps it could split off into two or more apps as part of a renamed ‘iTunes’ package? Maybe…

Educated guesses?

This is just my little bit of idle pondering, but I’m really not sure what the future of the iTunes application and/or name is. Any ideas?

~Rick

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MacHeist – Want an invite?

If you’re a Mac user, like free or cheap software and don’t mind a little challenge to get it then you might like to check out the invite-only MacHeist.

Picture of Macheist website

MacHeist has been described:

MacHeist is a 5 week long event that will be invitation-only at first and will work towards an über bundle at the end with the last week starting on December 11th.
~PaulStamatiou.com

Anyway, if that’s got you interested then I have some invites for it, I’ve got 7 at the moment so if you want one get in touch! So far the 1st week’s challenge has already been done and I’ve got 3 little applications for free already.

~Rick