Tip Stash: iTunes 8 Brings Mass Media Type Tagging

Before the arrival of iTunes 8, tagging multiple videos and songs as a TV show, Movie or Music Video had to be done one by one for each individual file which made it a daunting task. Sure Apple Scripts and dedicated Apps came to the rescue but in the end it was a job that iTunes should have handled. Luckily version 8 brings mass tagging support for different types of Media and a few more goodies.

You’re already familiar with the ‘Get Info’ pane, if you aren’t (and shame on you) then please get off this Blog post and Right Click or Control Click the heck out of your screen. Had fun? Good, give it a shot in iTunes to a batch of Battlestar Galatica episodes that were wrongly tagged as Movies (even though it’s really your favorites from season 3). Under ‘Options’ you’ll see a get info bar for ‘Media Kind’ and it’ll give you the usual 3 suspects; Movie, TV Show and Music Video. If you’ve selected more than one (Shift + select) item, this will be applied to all of those, something that was severely lacking in iTunes 7.

Mac OS X 10.5.5 Update Kills Bugs Dead, Brings Stability

Apple took some time to delay the initial launch of Mac OS X Leopard to further refine the yet to be released OS and ensure all 300 of those fancy new features work without a hitch. When Leopard finally pounced (see what I did there?) on Mac fans in late October of last year, some hiccups and problems made it through the development process and through incremental updates, Apple has eliminated a few inconveniences at a time. Leopard’s fifth update released only days ago has put to rest most if not all of all the bugs plaguing it from the start and fixed a massively publicized DNS exploit. Although there are always some rocky bits to an OS Update, Mac OS X 10.5.5 brings a boat load of fixes and stability enhancements that will invigorate your Cat.

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Tip Stash: Combo Click Your iPhone Headphones

Sure Apple may have introduced a fancy batch of new earphones last week but that doesn’t mean they forgot about us much cooler iPhone users.

The greatest thing about the ‘buds bundled with an iPhone was that the microphone’s enclosure acted a single, massive button that allowed a listener to pause (1 click) their music and answer a call or skip (2 clicks) a song and hang up a call. Apple has generously tossed us a bone in the new 2.1 Firmware update for the iPhone and now allows a triple click to go the previously played song. Who knows, maybe four clicks will play random John Mayer songs.

Via: TUAW

Tip Stash: Save iTMS Links

Ever needed to bookmark that quick TV Show link or direct your buddy to the newest bargain bin movie before next week’s discounted flick engulfs it? Luckily there is a clear cut way to do all of that within iTunes.

Unbeknownst to some, the iTMS (iTunes Music Store) is nothing more than a very fancy Web page that scales perfectly with the interface which of course means iTunes is running a browser with the sole task of rendering all the underlying HTML and CSS that makes up what you see when you buy a song, download a Podcast or just window shop. Technicalities aside, if all you want to do is let a friend know that NBC finally got their act together and returned to iTunes with season 4 of The Office, but you’re kind and want to save him the trouble of typing that in a search bar. Merely right clicking on a link as shown above will bring up a small pop up prompting to copy the URL. If you paste it on a sticky note or wherever, you’ll notice it comes out as a very odd link, something like phobos.apple.com. Type that into your browser and you’ll be directed to the iTunes Store and be taken back to the linked page. You can send a few links to your buddies with iPhones but sadly some spit out errors, mainly links to content you can’t grab on the mobile version of iTunes.

Quick Bit: Apple Updates Remote App

Yesterday Apple has pushed out an update for the Remote App that allows an iPhone or iPod Touch with an active Wi-Fi connection to control an iTunes library on a local network. This latest update, which brings it to version 1.1, also includes Genius playlist functionality.

Earlier last week Apple updated iTunes to version 8 which brought with it Genius playlist creation that generates a list of music that sounds similar to a preselected song. This week’s updates brings the same functionality to the Remote App that unfortunately is not bundled with the iPhone and iPod, however, the new interface lines up more with the iPod UI.

Check iTunes for any new Application updates or hit up the store yourself if you haven’t grabbed a little lazy on your couch action.

Via: TUAW

Crunch Down: iPod Nano Fourth Generation

Apple has toyed with various designs before, some make it to market and others stay locked up in their Cupertino based domain doomed to never see the light of day or an over zealous leak through the Blogo-o-sphere. The iPod Nano on the other hand has gone under the knife transforming from a miniaturized version of it’s bigger brother to donning an aluminum clad enclosure reminiscent of the Mini then being shrunk down taking a subtle shot at Microsoft as a Zune look-a-like. Besides the obvious cosmetic improvements and an  additional splash of color that makes previous Nanos pale in comparison, Apple has started to settle on a single UI structure and work from there. A recent price cut however will have competitors start feeling the heat and force them to cut their prices in order to compete.

Aluminum is an element that’s staying with the iPod for a long time to come whether it’s part of the casing or colored to look it and just because Apple already has itself set on a central design doesn’t mean they’re not going to tweak it. New to the Nano is an Accelerometer and a thin sheet of curved glass covering the screen. The upside to a glass screen protector is there have been little to no reports of any serious light reflection that would prevent you from using your iPod. Of course the curvy goodness comes courtesy of the iPhone’s tapered edges allowing it to appear thinner than it really is. The Accelerometer on the other hand does the obvious, flip the UI to match its horizontal orientation but Apple cooked in a feature to shake things up a bit, literally. If you’ve had the rare opportunity to venture out and look at media players not graced with Apple’s design ingenuity or good graces it tends to look drastically different. One such player, the Sansa Shake seems to be on the other end of the engineering spectrum and actually inspired Apple instead of the other way around. Going along the theme of having fun iPods nowadays, the design team has shaken up how you listen to your music, just shake to shuffle. Yea, just shake to shuffle your music, just don’t be jumping around when you listen to the Doodle Bops. Besides the obscene gestures that could be made randomly picking a song, it’s just another way Apple decided to spice the use of an Accelerometer in a non touch screen iPod without all those cool iPhone Apps like Phone Saber and Super Monkey Ball.

The actual specs of the iPod Nano haven’t changed much at all besides the addition of a 16GB model and a generous $50 dollar price cut. Screen real estate hasn’t been altered in any way despite the 90 degree rotation, it’s still the same 2 inch LCD packing a very dense amount of pixels running at 240 x 320. Last generation Nanos did not require their vertical orientation to be changed just to watch a video but the newest generation rotates the same way an iPod Touch must be rotated to watch a movie. Once titled, it looks exactly the same as the 3rd generation iPod Nano plus an awkward hand position. The interface and UI elements largely remain the same except for the position change of the Cover Flow bar, that’s been moved down below the Menu and no longer remains to the side. Besides that much, all other aspects of the Nano have transitioned over without much change.

However there is no telling what the next generation Nano could hold in store, it seems at this point Apple is just toying with a perfect design and through minor cosmetic tweaks and storage increases they’ve found it reasonable to make it a star item at their annual media events.

Crunch Down: iTunes 8

ITunes has come a long way from it’s fledgling self in the early days and now has matured all the way to version 8. The most talked about feature, Genius, is all part of Apple’s new implementations for browsing your music and helping you find lost songs or that old favorite lost in a sea of spanning genres. Depending on your viewing tastes and disk size, HD shows are starting to become a staple of iTunes content. Unfortunately the love-hate relationship is still going between NBC and Apple who’ve brought over a decent catalog of HD shows but what’s not to love about the new iTunes even if the upgrades are minimal, nothing’s really that bad. Unless of course you’re running the Windows version.

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Crunch Down: iPod Touch Second Generation

Apple positioned the iPod Touch as the iPhone without the phone and its price point made it a highly appealing gadget to own. After a drastic price cut and important hardware updates to the iPhone, Apple gave Touch owners the shaft and left it on the back burner for a bit before tossing it off as a clearance item for students who bought a new Mac. Although not as competitive price wise with the iPhone, the new iPod Touch matches up evenly in the price per gigabyte department. Besides a big price cut, the iPod Touch that acted as the iPhone for those not ready to commit has remained mostly unchanged.

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Crunch Down: iPod Classic Second Generation

It was many a year ago that Steve Jobs held the soon to iconic music player, the iPod in his hand announcing its then spacious 5GB Hard Drive and easy to use interface for browsing songs. Over half a decade later the family has grown a bit and Apple is starting to retire the now revolutionary media player rectangle under a new moniker; the iPod Classic. As Flash based storage becomes dominant along side larger touch screens and slimmer profiles, the iPod design of old is starting to show its age but is still kept around for serious media pack rats and the obsessive need of having an entire iTunes library at hand. Today’s update signifies then end of an era and the beginning of a new path for iPods.

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Quick Breakdown: Apple’s Let’s Rock Keynote

Another day another Apple related something down. Sure you could curl up on the couch with that old school rainbow Apple tee and some popcorn watching Steve give his keynote which you surely ripped to your AppleTV. Or you can focus on the finer things in life and grab AppleStash’s fast acting dose of iPod update goodness.

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