Maccast 01.10.2011 - Show #379
Links
V Opening
V Opening Music
* Music is Say Anything by Manda and the Marbles
* Mandaandthemarbles.com
V Sponsor
V Faronics
* Deep Freeze
* Software trusted by schools, government, and hospitality industry to keep systems clean and running
* Protect operating system and critical files while not obstructing the normal operation of the machine
* Personal and persistent data can be saved to ThawSpaces which can be a folder, a home directory, or an entire volume.
* A simple re-boot restores the entire system to it's original state.
V News
V Apple Quarterly Results call scheduled
* Apple will announce it's Q1 2012 earnings in a conference call scheduled for Tuesday january 24th. Almost all reports expect it to be another one marked by record sales.
V Mac Observer writes that Apple actually stole US smartphone marketshare from Android in October and November
* They cite the latest NPD numbers that show iPhones moving from 26% to an amazing 43% share, while Android share for the two month period fell from 60% down to 47%
V Strong holiday sales of the iPhone 4S and and iPhone 4 were an obvious reason, but surprisingly the iPhone 3GS also factored into the mix. Apple took the top 3 of the top 10 slots in Smartphone sales in Oct/Nov.
* Slots 4 and 5 were the Samsung Galaxy S 4G and Galaxy S II
V Latest Changewave survey shows that 54 percent of consumers planning to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, but that is actually down from 65% in September (maybe they all got one for the holidays ;) )
* iPhone is still way ahead of the competiton though. In second place was Samsung with 13% of buyers expecting to by one of their devices in the next 90 days
* iPhone customers also tended to like their devices better. 75% of iOwners were "Very satisfied". HTC owners were the next most pleased with just 47% reporting being "very satisfied". Still think it's all about the technology features?
V iPad holiday sales were likely flat, but not surprising given the iPad 3 rumors
* Mobile ad firm Chitika says the Kindle Fire seems to jump the most in mobile traffic in December increasing 20% per day leading up to Christmas and then a whopping 120% on December 24th and 25th.
* Blackberry Playbooks had a 50% jump due to fire sale pricing and Samsung Galaxy tab jumped 25% on the 25th.
* Apple shipped about 1.2 million MacBook Airs during the December quarter, claims Digitimes.
V Canaccord Genuity is predicting big numbers for Apple's 2012
* Sales of 116.4 million iPhones and 54.6 million iPads.
* To show how one sided the mobile OS race is likely to tun out though. Canaccord thinks that Google's Android OS will account for 51.9 percent of the mobile handsets in operation in 2012 and that's on sales of 335.5 million device, this is vs Apple's roughly 18% share
V Continuing the March to iPad 3
V John Gruber echoed and unofficially confirmed a March 2012 launch of the iPad 3 rumored by Digitimes
* Then proving their pure speculative nature Digitimes also claimed parts suppliers were working deals for a "much upgraded" iPad 4 due out in the Fall
V On the outside, an iLounge editor claims to have held a prototype and says it's negligibly thicker. Less than 1mm, supporting earlier rumors.
* He did not the model he held seemed at least 6 months old, so could be an earlier prototype.
* While it looked almost identical to current models, it could be that Apple was keeping any design changes until later to avoid leaks.
* More likely though the outer design won't change to maintain accessory compatibility, similar to the iPhone 4S with major changes being internal and software related.
V iOS 5.1 beta has code references that appear to show Apple is testing QuadCore mobile processors
* ASUS is shipping their Transformer Prime tablet with a quad core Tegra 3 chip and Acer and Lenovo have 2012 slated quad core tablets
* It's believed that Apple's A6 will be their first quad core chip and that it could debut in the iPad 3
* As an aside iOS 5 beta 3 also reported brings back the 3G Data toggle switch lost in iOS 5
V 9to5 Mac notes a new "About Dictation and Privacy" page under the Settings > Keyboard preferences page on the iPad 2 in iOS 5.1 beta 3
* Not clear if this indicates that dictation will be added to the iPad 2 with the 5.1 release or in there for a Siri enabled iPad 3
* The current Siri and Privacy legal disclaimers are under the Siri menu in iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S, so it appears that possible just dictation would be on the iPad 2 and potentially a full Siri implementation on the iPad 3
* There has been evidence in the hacking community to show that Siri could run on older iOS devices, but Apple may hold out the feature to support sales of newer devices.
V The cameras should get an upgrade with rumors for the front FaceTime camera going HD and the rear camera getting at least a bump to 5MP, possibly 8MP.
* As a mentioned lat time, I'm excited that this jump may also coincide with a release of Final Cut Touch which would be an awesome way to showcase the new video capabilities and performance of an iPad 3
* The iPad 2 16GB should continue to be sold at $399 as an entry level iPad.
V Cash in the Flash
* Electronista points out that Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research has been crunching numbers on Apple's purchase and use of flash and came to some interesting conclusions
* By his estimates Apple bought 23 percent of all flash memory made in fall 2011.
* More interestingly though was his conclusion that based on Apple's markup for storage, typically about $100 per 16GB jump in iOS devices vs the raw chip cost for Apple, he figures they earned $2.2 billion in profit from flash. About a 78% margin.
* He notes that Apple is the only smartphone manufacture to include large amounts of storage built in and no "slot" for expansion. This he says allows Apple to retain the profit from flash markup, instead of conceding that to MicroSD and SD flash card makers.
* He even estimated that Apple might even be generating twice as much from its own pricing than all the flash suppliers combined.
* This give Apple at least some of their profit edge over the competition.
V TV industry "petrified" about the iTV
* Why? Cult of Mac is reporting from CES and says they are expecting Apple to launch a bezel-less, ultra high resolution TV that runs apps and is controlled by a mixture of gestures and voice control and effortlessly interacts with tablets and smartphones.
V The reduced or no bezel is reportedly possible in part by use of Corning Gorilla Glass 2 technology and Apple has a relationship with Corning shipping millions of devices already using the original version of Gorilla Glass
* The new Gorilla glass is stronger and 20% thinner so that could help the new iPad be bit more svelte as well.
* Apps, do we even need to wonder why? UI will be a big deal, but Apple has some success in bring apps to platforms
V Gesture and Voice control. Meh, I think the bigger thing is simplifying the entire process of finding, watching, recording shows.
* With iTunes you'd never need to record again, since the files are all there just waiting to download.
* Spotlight and Genius technologies fro finding content.
* Smartphone & Tablet Interactivity, one word: Airplay.
V There has been lots of rumor and speculation circling as to what Apple may do in the space
* Recently there were contradicting rumors over what size sets Apple would make
* Some sources said the TVs were in the 32 to 37" range
* But USA Today cited "a person who worked in the Apple TV group" and two TV industry sources saying Apple was targeting a 42" set and that Jonathan Ive had a 50" design in his studio.
* Content deals are said to be the biggest roadblock to Apple entering the space.
V I don't find this surprising since I feel Apple's solution will be all about change the consumer experience.
* This is way more about iTunes, content, and the way consumers want to find and watch TV.
*
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V Feedback, Comments and Commentary
V iOS edited photos lose resolution
* Play comment from Justyn
* There are two possible issues here, but I think in your case it's related to the RAW file format, EXIF data, and opening files in certain apps, like Snapseed.
V According to the Snapseed FAQs, depending on the how and where photos are transferred from, iOS 5 may convert or resize images to make them compatible with iOS before they reach the app
* And I confirmed that the source of the photo can make a difference. Loading images into the camera roll from Dropbox on iOS for example resulted in a a reduced resolution image.
* Also, if you are using RAW images, Snapseed needs to have it's location services turned on so that it can maintain EXIF data and retain the photo dimensions.
* Go to Settings> Location Services and turn this setting to On for Snapseed.
V Another thing noted in the Snapseed FAQ is that iOS devices may have different maximum save resolutions when saving back to the Camera Roll
* iPad 1 can save an image up to 6.25 megapixels and an iPad 2 can save an image up to 16 megapixels.
* I wasn't able to find confirmation of this on Apple site
* Obviously you aren't hitting the save limit so I assume it's resizing on import.
* The other thing that I don;t think is happening in your case, but did happen to me in testing, was confusion caused by which album I loaded source images from when opening them in another iOS app.
V Specifically if you load images from the Photostream, you will get a lower res image.
* This is because while on the Mac Photostream images are synced at full resolution on iOS the images are "device-optimized". Typically at 2048x1536 fro most point and shoot style cameras. This is noted in an Apple support document.
* The same "optimization" also happens on images sync'd back from iPhoto through the standard iTunes syncing.
* So if for example you shoot a photo on your iPhone 4S and then edit the version that is in the Photo stream album. The resulting image is lower resolution. But if you edit the same image, pulled from the camera roll it should be the full res image.
* Same thing would go for images brought in from the Camera Connection kit.
V As I mentioned images sync'd back to an iOS device from iPhoto or Aperture will also be optimized version and there doesn't appear to be a way to change that.
* Some apps though, like Good Reader, allow you to transfer the manually the full res copies from your Mac to their app and then save the images from there into the Photo Library. Good Reader maintained the original resolution for me. Dropbox did not.
* There is a app called Photo Transfer ($2.99 US) that is designed specifically for this issue. Again though it's a manual transfer process using a web browser or WebDAV.
V Apple TV 2 Jailbreak
* Gustavo has a new Apple TV 2, but wants to take it beyond it's stock features
V First off, let me say the stock features are pretty rockin'
* Play all your iTunes content, movies, music, TV, and podcasts
* Airplay support including Airplay mirroring
* NHL, MLB, NBA, and Wall Street Journal
* Netflix
* Apple trailers, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Internet Radio
* PhotoStream, etc.
* What if you want to get other formats, like MKV and AVI. Connect to NAS drives and media servers beyond iTunes.
* That's where Jailbreaking comes in.
V There are a few ways you can do it. I think the easiest, I can't say for sure the best, way is to use Seas0npass
* Supports an untethered jailbreak of the latest 4.4.4 (iOS 5.0.1 - 9A406a)
* Download and run installer
V Connect the Apple TV to your Mac using a Micro USB cable, run the software and follow the instructions.
* Typical warnings apply.
* You can mess this up and brick your device.
* Make sure you don;t have other iOS devices connected when running the tool
* Backup all your stuff first.
V After it's jailbroken you can go out and install 3rd party software
* Things like Plex, XBMC, Last.FM, NitroTv, MediaPlayer, support for VIDEO_TS DVD files, etc.
* You can also get Weather, RSS feeds, and surf the web using your remote.
* You can generally install all that using the Terminal, SSH, and command line or use a software package like aTVFlash (black)
V Mac troubleshooting the stuff you can't see
* Beachballs, slow downs, and lockups can be annoying and often it's the stuff in the background that is the issue
V Robert had just such a situation
* Checked the console and saw a bunch of references to QTKitServer in the console.
* Googling reveals that is possibly related to corrupt AVI files and playback then causing the QT process to run amok
* Since QuickTime doesn't natively run AVIs it tuned out the Perian (which enables AVIs to playback via Quicktime) may be the source, or rather the enabler.
* Point is that we have cool apps like Perian that allow stuff outside the scope of Apple's built in OS features, but those are often the items that get us into trouble without knowing it.
* Flash and Java are others that have given Apple and OS X grief
V Troubleshooting tips
* Check the Console. Applications > Utilities > Console
* Try to reduce extraneous background apps. Login items, system preference panes, menubar items, etc.
V Consider ways to only enable features when needed.
* Remove stuff you no longer need. Use an uninstaller if one is offered.
* Click to Flash
* Perian has a toggle to enable and disable from the control panel.
* Use an app, like VLC, instead of a plug-in, extension, or tool that runs constantly in the background.
V Managing iOS storage
* Robin is running out of space on the iPad and cleared off most of the content (photos, movies, music, etc). Still space is limited, so what's eating it up?
V Checking what is being used and where is fairly easy in iTunes. Select the device from the devices list and look at the bar graph at the bottom
* Show Audio, Video, Photos, Apps, Books, and "Other"
* Can click the values to toggle between size, items, and amount of play time
* That gives you a general sense, but if you want more iOS 5 can give you details
V Settings > General > Usage
V Storage section breaks down each app.
* Video > drill down to Movies, TV Shows, and Music videos
* Music > Segments Music, Audiobooks and Podcasts
* With those you can swipe to delete
* Apps will let you drill down and see how much is "Documents & Data" the total for all apps of which accounts for that mystical, "other".
* Drill down on an app will also let you "delete app" along with all it's data.
* Can of course do the tap and hold to delete an app
V Robin also mentioned having an issue with deleting an app on an iOS device and then it coming back.
* Deleting it should uncheck the app in the sync list in iTunes, but double check that.
* You can uncheck the App from one device, but keep it sync'd (checked) on a different device
* If you 100% no longer want the app and want to deleted it from ALL devices, select the App from the App library in i Tunes and delete it.
V Feedback on Apple in 2012
* Play comment from Lon
V Closing
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