Seth Steve on, writing for Slate, makes a good point about the new A le ads: John Hodgman (the actor portraying the PC) gets all the good lines. He's the fu y, likable one. The Mac (played by Justin Long) is kind of a oying and not the least bit fu y.
Sadly, I don't think A le counted on Hodgman's rise in popularity before they shot these commercials, but does that mean the ads don't work? Since I am clearly already a Mac user I can't really judge if they work or not. I know there are a few switchers out there that read TUAW, so tell me: do these commercials make you want to buy a Mac?
0xFE (pronounced "254" I su ose...) has a very nice how-to up showing how to use otlight metadata to find files from the command line. The post shows how the 
Like many on the Mac web, we at TUAW are fa of John Gruber's Daring Fireball. Now, thanks to Macworld Magazine, we can all hear Gruber at a se ion he ran at Macworld, together with his guest Cabel Sa er of Panic. As nearly always with Gruber, it's an interesting se ion with on the fly commentary about the iPhone (which is perforce a little underinformed), discu ion about Panic and independent Mac development: definitely worth a listen (caution: the language is a little rough some times).
This week's podcast involves Dan Pourhadi and the C4 developer shindig he attended, those exclusive Leopard scree hots we na ed, iPod viruses and the corporate blame game, and we round off with A le's preliminary 4th quarter earnings results. Dan and I kept things short this time around, as the podcast rounds off at just over 20 minutes and 18.6MB.
Occasionally strange iPod cases surface (no not that pink knit case your great-aunt made you last year).Take for example this wooden velvet-linediPod nano case engraved on the cover with the To-fu Oyako character found by Popgadget today. I find a few things wrongwith this case, beyond the fact that a cartoon tofu guy is on the front: there is no acce to the iPod controls nor,from what I can see, acce to the dock co ector when the case is closed.
Jason ell at Macworld just ti ed me off to PicLe . PicLe is a Safari-only plugin from Cooliris that enables gorgeous full-screen slideshows on the fly, out of whatever set of images you are currently viewing in Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, as well Google, Yahoo and Ask.com Image search engines. 
You say you don't have six hundred bucks sitting around for the Burton/Motorola Audex jacket? Don't worry, you can still be cool on the slopes. The Ke o jacket features similar iPod co ectivity for only $275US. Once your iPod is co ected to the jacket i ide the interior pocket, you can use butto on the left sleeve to pause or play your music, skip forward or back and adjust the volume. It requires no batters and can be machine washed or dry cleaned without damaging anything. I don't know if you need to have the dramatically iked hair that the Kempo models are orting, but what do I know.
Over at TechEBlog they have posted a list of their picks for the top ten strangest iPodacce ories, seven of which we have covered here at TUAW in the past. Their list is as follows:
PC World has just released their '20 Most I ovative Products for 2006,' and there i 't an A le product in sight. Why, then, am I writing about it you might ask. Because 3 Mac related items did make it on the list:
Brainchild Products, LLC offers a new in on the iPod case with the custom iPod iJacket, a customizable siliconjacket for "all version of A le's iPod," though the latest 5G version is not on their list - yet. They offera slew of interesting and fairly unique pre-designed cases for the iPod 4G/photo, nano, mini and shuffle, while alsooffering a fairly robust customizing service that seems geared towards organizatio and companies who want a customdesign in bulk packages of at least 50 cases. A six-stepcustomization proce is outlined with a choice between downloading a DIY design template or having BrainchildProducts, LLC design the case for you. For now pricing on custom jo is only available by phone, but pricing onindividual pre-designed cases starts at just $12.99.
Setting up FTP services on your Mac can be as simple as checking the "FTP" box in Sharing Preferences, if you don't care about anonymous acce or maintaining a user list separate from your regular accounts. It can be as full-featured as ru ing Rumpus or Mac OS X Server (both over $200), or as free as PureFTPd Manager (with an excellent walkthrough at MacDevCenter). Seems like there's an open middle of the market, no?
Anousheh A ari is the first female ace tourist, as well as the first female Muslim and Iranian in ace. That's pretty cool. But what does a ace tourist bring with her to help ease her to sleep? Why what has become a traveler's best friend, an iPod. Anousheh blogs about her experiences on the I (International ace Station) and she notes that before hitting the hay she sli ed on her headphones and rocked out to her iPod.
Most of our readers know that Mac OS X is a much more secure environment than any flavor of Windows. Microsoft apologists like to say that the lack of viruses and malware targeted towards Mac OS X is because its much smaller marketshare. I believe there's a kernel of truth in this argument, but it's also an oversimplification. It's true that Windows is a larger target, but it's also true that Windows is just not very secure. Study after study after study shows that plugging a Windows computer into a broadband co ection without any protection is a surefire way for that computer to become infected with a virus or worm. Yes, there are ways to harden your Windows computer so that it doe 't become a am-sending zombie and these anti-virus and anti- yware tools are getting better all the time, but it's still a lot to ask a new computer user to do just to get online.
Continuing in the long line of questionable iPod enabled clothes comes the iSoundCa trade; Ski Cap. This 100% acrylic fiber hat has a little pocket in the back for you to slip your iPod nano into. There is a clear plastic window that lets you acce the click wheel, and eyelets that allow you to ake the headphones through the hat.
A post at Mac OS X Hints lists some bizarre shortcuts that a ear to be new in iTunes 7. The shortcuts a ly to selecting the various content sectio such as Music, Movies and the Store, but what's strange is that if you have any playlists which begin with the same letter as the shortcut, the playlist takes precedence. For example: the letter M (amongst others) can take you to your Movies section, but if you have a playlist titled "Mashu ," the letter M will take you to the playlist, not the major content section.
The other day, I posted about a Zune video riff on "I'm a Mac", fully convinced that it was a fa oy production. After all, you can't "squirt" video from one Zune to another (at least without resorting to the "rename-it-as-a-jpeg" hack) and it takes more than a single button hit to send data, and so forth. Lots of inaccuracies.
Radar Online is reporting that Justin Long, the actor who plays the part of the Mac in A le's Get a Mac campaign, is no longer an A le okesman. A new round of ads is being worked on with John Hodgman (the PC) and < an cla ="bodyText_interior">director Phil Morrison but Justin Long with not a ear in them, according to his 'people.'
It looks as though A le is officially taking pre-orders for the $30 Nike+iPod ort Kit, a customized wirele tra mitter and receiver set that hel you track your run by integrating with A le's iPod nano. The ti started pouring in, and sure enough, it's up in the store in all its %26uuml er-branding glory. Fortunately, more compatible shoes have also been added to the Nike Plus site, though I'm sure pioneering DIYers are scoffing at the thought of purchasing a pair, and are already hard at work at a embling ecs and carving out their present ru ing gear (I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to see a guide for thi send in those ti people!).
Gawker, the clever a for recording, sharing and combining time-la e movies, has been updated to version 0.70 with some unique features. It is now compatible with non-iSight cameras, including even DV cameras, and can record from up to four cameras simultaneously (when you co ider the power of using other cameras through Bonjour, this gets pretty interesting). The ability to capture deskto as well as a countdown timer have also been added.
Hot on the heels of the WWDC '06 Stevenote the Macweb was in a tizzy. Didn't Steve look a little sickly on stage? Why did he include so many other A le execs in the keynote? Could this mean that Steve is in ill health?
Lost in the shuffle of all the big news yesterday was this gem from Surfin' Safari, the Webkit development blog. Now all you Mac geeks on the bleeding edge, and developers who depend on Webkit for your a to function properly, can keep abreast with the current build of Webkit. Every night a new version will be posted for download, using a different icon so you don't confuse the real Safari for the nightly built variety.
If you're primarily a Mac user, you probably haven't heard much about Slingbox, largely in part because it's never had a Mac OS X client. Slingbox, for those interested, is a device that attaches to your home TV/cable/DVR setup and allows you to stream your TV programming over the internet, typically to a Windows PC or even some mobile phones - but soon, a Mac as well. Blake Krikorian, Sling Media's CEO, confirmed yesterday in an interview with the The Guardian that a beta Mac client was coming "this week" for Slingbox, though since it's already Friday even in the U.S., maybe Blake includes 'the weekend' when defining 'a week'.
A few weeks ago we asked how you felt about some of the inco istencies in Mac OS Xs user interface. Re o es were mixed. Lach said, "This stuff drives me nuts. Even Quicktime and iTunes look differentfrom each other. iPhoto is a disaster, you didn't mention that littlea . iSync is a me , and they're all different from Safari and Mail.At least in Windows the design is CO ISTANTLY cra y." But Lach wa 't alone. Continued after the jump.
Have you heard? Some manufacturers are making wacky iPod products! Seriously, it is true. Would I lie to you? Luckily Busine week has yet another round up of these gizmos for us to chuckle about, though I've seen most of these products before.
If you're a user of the recent Adium 1.0 beta releases, and you've been having i ues co ecting to AIM, you're not alone. According to reports in the official IRC cha el and from developers, AOL did something to change the co ection protocol, ecifically involving the new joscar co ection protocol, co ection rate limiting, and buddy icon requests. Users experiencing problems have three optio : 
I'm humble enough to admit when I need some help, and I'm lucky to have an esteemed group of readers such as yourselves comprising my very own hive mind. The i ue is this:
A le has published a list of a licatio that offer su ort for .Mac in one way or another. The list is broken down into four categories, and offers a description of each a . 
D'Arcy Norman was one of the lucky ducks who actually got to attend WWDC, and even luckier, he got the o ortunity to attend the A le Campus Bash. Well, unfortunately it wa 't U2 and Bono rocking the stage, but then again it wa 't Mr. "Your Body is a Wonderland" either (I hate that song). . . .
In the short NYT video which goes along with his print review of Redmond's newest OS, the always amusing David Pogue takes it upon himself to debunk that the old saw that Microsoft just copies A le. For i tance, David points out that unlike otlight, which is located at the top right of the desktop, Vista's equivalent search feature is located at the bottom left. Certainly worth a chuckle at Microsoft's expe e.
Microsoft has just released the "WPF/E" (codename) Community Technology Preview for Mac (Dec 2006) (gotta love those Microsoft names). What is WPF/E? It is short for 'Windows Presentation Foundation/ Everywhere' which is the new graphical su ystem of the .NET Framework 3.0.
When you've chugged back a gallon of 'nog in an effort to soothe your irits over the size of your holiday bonus, co ider the gifts that employees of BIG Images got this year. The entire staff of the large-format printing provider got iPod Shuffle units... neatly wra ed in two $100 bills.
So what's the real difference between A le and Microsoft? Microsoft tries to bribe bloggers. A le sues them. It would be hard to come up with a joke as odd as this real-life situation. Someone posted a link to a site that used iPhone screen shots to skin Windows Mobile phones. Let me repeat. It was a link to an external site. He received a cease and desist order from A le's lawyers.
Thedevelopers of Voice Candy pitch is as doing for microphones whatPhotobooth does for webcams. It is a clever little a that can change the sound of your voice using a variety ofeffects (including the popular Vader. I imagine lot of people saying, 'iMac, I am your father.'). But it doe 't stopthere! You can also set up voice reminders.
As part of the festivities surrounding the opening of the Fifth Avenue A le Store in NYC (are you sick of hearing about it yet?), A le gave away a bunch of MacBook. Here is a gallery of some of the wi ers. Don't they look so ha y? Don't you feel so envious? So do we.