iPhone firmware 2.0 - what to expect

Pre-release version of iPhone firmware 2.0 reveals Chinese Handwriting Recognition Feature

Native iPhone App turns your iPhone into a Flashlight

iPhone firmware 2.0 reveals iPhone 3G will have FM radio and Firmware Over The Air (FOTA) support

iPhone 3D Game - Cybersaurus released

iPhone Availability in Malaysia and The Rest of The World

It's sad that the iPhone won't be launched in Malaysia anytime soon... after the recent WWDC2008 , alot of Malaysian are disappointed over the unavailability of the iPhone in Malaysia..

Here's a screenshot of countries that'll have the iPhone on the July 11th 2008




And here's a screenshot of countries that'll have the iPhone soon.. Even Botswana and Estonia have it.. -.-"




The only country around Malaysia with the coming iPhone 3G will be Singapore and Philippine ... Thailand , Indonesia shares the same fate as Malaysia..

More info soon..

Source

Pro Tools 7.4.2 for Mac OS X Leopard

Digidesign released an update on Thursday for its digital audio workstation, Pro Tools, bringing compatibility with Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard. Pro Tools 7.4.2 is available for Pro ToolsHD, Pro Tools LE, and Pro Tools M-Powered.

Dave Lebolt, Avid vice president and general manager of Digidesign, said they have been working closely with Apple since the release of Leopard, focusing on performance and reliability. Testing of the new Pro Tools versions have been qualified with Mac OS X 10.5.3.
There may be a gotcha for some Pro Tools users. The company said that not all shipping plug-ins are compatible with version 7.4.2 running on Leopard. Digidesign provides a plug-in compatibility page that is updated regularly.

The update is being provided free to all registered users of Pro Tools 7.4.

Details HERE!!!

Opening PowerPoint Documents in Apple iWork's Keynote

PowerPoint to Keynote Slide presentations are tricky to move around between Mac and Windows versions of PowerPoint. So it should be no surprise that you’d lose some of a PowerPoint slideshow when importing it into Keynote. But slide show compatibility problems aren’t consistent, and can really hamper your ability to view the presentation.

Multimedia and slide transitions and builds are a main area of compatibility problems. For embedded movies and audio, QuickTime is the best bet for importing into Keynote and being able to play. Unfortunately, video or audio used in slide builds can interfere with automatic transitions between slides, to the point where you won’t even be able to manually advance to the next slide. The solution is to either remove the automatic transition or remove the multimedia build from the slide.

Keynote does a fairly good job retaining other types of transitions and builds, including a 3-D flip screen transition, and builds with pictures and text bouncing or spinning in.

With text, PowerPoint imports can have the same problems as Word-to-Pages translations, including text overflow problems due to font substitution. If a PowerPoint 2008 presentation contains Word Art, Keynote will retain the typeface if the font is installed in your Mac. Keynote will keep Word Art drop shadows but lose character outlines and multi-color effects.

Source

Opening Excel Documents in Apple iWork's Numbers

Excel to Numbers Functions will be a major compatibility issue for importing Excel spreadsheets. Numbers ‘08 has about 170 functions, about half as many in Excel 2008. Many of the missing functions are statistical and numeric functions, and Numbers doesn’t have any of Excel’s database functions or Excel’s three-dozen engineering functions. If an Excel spreadsheet contains a function that numbers doesn’t support, Numbers will import only the calculated value of a cell. Numbers will flag these cells with a blue triangle, which you can click to see the Excel function that was deleted.

Numbers also doesn’t support Excel’s ability to password-protect hidden cells and rows. Numbers will translate these as unhidden, but empty cells. The only way to retain the information in these cells is to have the creator of the Excel document remove the password protection.

Source

Opening Word Documents in Apple iWork's Pages

Word to Pages Many of Word’s features translate well into Pages ‘08. For instance, Word’s track changes feature imports well into Pages, retaining the names of the editors and the dates of the changes. Styles created in Word get moved over, as do most layout items, such tables, footnotes, and graphics. Some of the items may not end up in the same locations as in the original file, but they will get imported.

In cases where Pages doesn’t support a feature in Word, Pages will attempt to convert the item to something else. Pages will translate Word Art from a Word 2008 file into a text box without the curves in the text and without the outlines and drop shadows. Pages doesn’t support text form fields, but will import the text entered into Word forms.

But even when the original file doesn’t include fancy Word features, the resulting Pages document isn’t always an exact replica of the original Word document. A common problem is text spilling over from the end of a page onto another page. This can happen when your Mac doesn’t have the font used in the original document, when Pages will substitute another font that is a slightly larger physical size.

A frustrating issue is that you can still have the text overflow problem even when you have the same font, font size, and line spacing set in Word and Pages. The reason is that Word and Pages define line spacing slightly differently, so that “single spaced” in Pages is slightly larger than in Word, causing a page full of text to spill into a second page.

To fix the issue, redefine the line spacing in both Word and Pages as pixels rather than lines. A setting of 16 pixels is usually equal to 1 line in most fonts. Pixel settings in Word and Pages are the same size, so the imported document will look more like the original.

Source

Connecting Older Macs and Newer Macs via Airport Extreme

Reader Frank Blank has drawn a blank in regard to upgrading the wireless connection on an older iMac. He writes: "I have three Macs networked at home through an Airport Extreme Base Station. The MacBook and Intel iMac communicate like greased lightning. Communication with the 2.1GHz iMac G5 is much much slower. Since the laptop, Intel iMac, and AirPort Base Station utilize 802.11n, and the iMac G5 uses 802.11g, is there a way to upgrade the older iMac to the faster wireless speed?"

The least expensive way to do this is to eschew wireless on the old iMac and run an Ethernet cable from the Base Station to the iMac. Your iMac's network performance will increase dramatically and its "g" wireless won't slow down the rest of the wireless network.

On the other hand, perhaps you don't feel like completely rearranging your home so that the Base Station and iMac sit near each other. If not, you can upgrade the iMac to 802.11n, but not internally. Apple's n-flavored wireless cards don't work with older iMacs.

Source

MacCity's Apple Promo - Extended

MacCity's Extended Promo

Buy iMac, Get 2GB Ram and Kingston Thumb Drive 4GB.

Buy MacBook, Get 2GB Ram and Kingston Thumb Drive 4GB.

Buy MacBook Pro, Get 4GB Ram (2x2GB) and Kingston Thumb drive 4GB

Buy MacBook Air, Get Apple Superdrive.

contact me @ theapplesalesguy@gmail.com

Band Application on the iPhone - Music Making On The GO

In the recent iPhone's keynote in WWDC 2008 , Apple introduces an application called Band.. and with it you can actually practise your basslines, keys , drums , ... and record them on the go... This is so useful .. and interesting ... and convenient , I love thisssssss..



Source

iPhone 2.0 - More New Features..

Here's more new features on the iPhone..

- eBay on the iPhone! includes most of the classical eBay functions ... now you can buy anything on the go... technology at it's best..



- The AppStore will not only offer pay-per-download application, and some freeware should also be available - that's awesomenessss

- Loopt application is multiplatform, and will come for free at the launch of the App Store and it'll be able to track/spy your friends (or your girl-friend)

- The "first" text editor application, TypePad. This application is designed to make it simple to blog and send photo. One can shoot the photo with the iPhone and send it straight. - that's what the iPhone needs.. functional convenience..

Source

iPhone 2.0 - Interesting New Features...

As we know it... right now , WWDC 2008 is happening in San Francisco... Steve Jobs is doing his thing.. presenting his keynote as I post on this blog... Here's what's up so far...

- 250,000 downloaded the beta iPhone dev program / 4000 have entered the beta version program

- The iPhone 2.0 supports MS Exchange by default, including push email, contacts, calendars, auto-discovery, global address book, etc.

With it's latest SDK , it's soooooo much more interesting... Personally the best thing that has happened to the iPhone is the SDK being released...

WWDC 2008 and 3G iPhones - it's real..

Not sure if you guys are keeping updated... but in less than a few hours , WWDC 2008 will be starting..and it'll mark the year of iPhone... from SDK for developers to 3G for consumers..

I'll update here for more details when everything is official ...

before that , enjoy these pictures.. apparently , Apple Inc actually sent some sealed unidentified boxes over to Apple resellers in Australia (not sure about other part of the world) ... and they're not supposed to open it up till tomorrow i think..

Anyway , there's always some curious people around.. and as the result of their curiosity , here's some 'leaked' pictures of the 3G iPhone.. take notice of the camera positioned in on the front... that confirms the 3G feature (video calls) ...





Pictures taken from here.

Apple iPods Pricing in Malaysia

iPod Nano 4G @ RM569


iPod Nano 8G @ RM769


iPod Classic 80G @ RM939


iPod Classic 160G @ RM1399

667MHz Ram Upgrades for your Macs

These rams are new rams but without 'retail packaging'

1GB - RM 250

2GB - RM 500

Email me if you need it... :)

theapplesalesguy@gmail.com

Apple Malaysia's Promo - Promotion date - June 8 - 22

Buy iPod classic, or touch get iSpace speakers.

Buy iPod nano get Xmini speakers.

Buy MacBook, MacBook Pro get iSwing speaker & PenDrive 8gb

Buy MacBook Air get Western Digital 160gb Passport Essential external hard drive

Buy iMac get iSwing speaker & PenDrive 8gb

Apple fixes 70 issues with Mac OS X 10.5.3 update

Source

Apple updated Mac OS X 10.5 last month to 10.5.3, fixing 70 issues with the operating system and its components.

Among the changes in Mac OS X 10.5.3
are several fixes for Apple’s Time Machine backup application. The
update addresses compatibility issues with the Time Capsule backup
device as well as compatibility issues with Aperture 2, Apple’s
workflow application for photographers. The OS update aims to improve
reliability when doing a full restore from a Time Machine backup, and
an alert message incorrectly stating that a backup volume doesn’t have
enough space has been fixed.

Apple’s virtual desktop
application, Spaces, received some minor updates in 10.5.3. A problem
that could cause the reordering of application windows when switching
desktops and then switching back has been fixed. The update also
tackled an issue where pressing Command-Tab may have incorrectly
switched users to a new space. The update also bolsters reliability for
.Mac syncing.

Mail receieved 10 updates in Mac OS X 10.5.3.
Highlights include a fix for a stability issue when dragging large
attachments to a mail message and reliability issues when changes are
made to a mailbox while offline.

iChat fixes include improved
reliability during screen-sharing sessions and an issue with group
chats not being indexed in Spotlight.

Automator, AirPort, Address Book, Parental Controls and VoiceOver all received reliability enhancements with the update.

The 420MB Mac OS X 10.5.3 update is available for download via from the software Update control panel.