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..

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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