Category Archives: Apple

Mostly about tech products and software made by Apple. Generally this would be my MacBook, MacBook Air, iPhone, iPod or dreams of my iPad.

iLike Music (especially FREE music)

So I keep forgetting to mentioned that I found iLike, it’s kind of a music social networking site.


The big difference is it recommends music to you and allows you to download it for free. It appears to work best with iTunes, if you download the iLike sidebar it’ll upload lists of what you listen to most and make recommendations in the sidebar where it’ll let you preview music and download it directly to iTunes. Now the free songs are mostly artists that you haven’t heard of, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t any good, I’m really enjoying some of my new found music. It seems like most (all?) of the new music comes from GarageBand.com

My iLike page is at http://ilike.com/user/garylapointe

They just keep adding new features that they’re pretty god a keeping you up-to-date on the iLike Blog. And they’ve got a widget for your web page (which I’m hoping is showing up on your screen as you read this) and it’ll even let you play my recently played songs as you read this post! Continue reading

The iPhone

So I haven’t said much about the iPhone since it was announce but what’s to say it looks awesome!!! It’s a widescreen video iPod with an internet browser, e-mail and it makes phone calls. The downside (IMHO) is it’s only on Cingular and I don’t think the network the iPhone is using is as fast as the EVDO speed networks.

IphonehandThe negative I’ve seen some reviewers mention is that it only accepts music from the iTunes music store. Which isn’t true, it only accepts protected music from the iTunes music store. And it’s important to remember all other players don’t allow music from the iTunes music store, I see that as a problem. You can buy from some (smaller) music sites and put your CDs on it. FYI, the iTunes music store sells 58 songs a second (5 million a day) that makes them the fourth largest retailer of music (Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target are above them) then just pulled ahead of Amazon. The iTunes and iPod experience makes it so pleasant to use I don’t think most people care if you can only use one store to buy (protected) music from… Continue reading

Better BlueTooth on Tiger 10.4.7

So apple just released a new 10.4.7 update to Tiger. The biggest things that excite me are:

Bluetooth file transfers, pairing and connecting to a Bluetooth mouse, and syncing to mobile phones

I’m really hoping this helps with Syncing to my new Sprint Treo 700p. More info at Apple (and more detailed info here).

Apple Keynote Address and New Products for Early 2006

So I was going to write a post about the new Apple products (iMac, iLife 2006; I already drooled the other about the MacBook a few days ago) and the stats on the Music Store and the B & M stores but PeachPit Press did such a nice wrapup, I’m just going to link to theirs.

Grrrowwwlll!! Why I hate (parts of) Tiger!!

I absolutely hate the new find in OS X Tiger. I didn’t think I’d like it when I saw it, I didn’t like it when I got it, now it’s a few months later and I still hate it.

When I want to search for a file name it automatically searches inside the files too, so I get a million more hits than there are just files. And you can’t easily separate from the two (filenames or contents). Plus you can’t easily sort by date or filename, it breaks it down by category.

And Spotlight should allow me to control/right-click on a name to open the folder, not the item. If it’s a zip or sit file and you just want to find it, it uncompresses it if you click it…

For being this huge new “feature” it’s not very friendly. I looked to see if the old find was still there but I don’t see it anywhere. :(

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A request for the Macintosh readers (or writers)

Since I’ve got a high-speed internet connection I’ve always got programs (processes) in the background that are downloading (syncing) files (iSync, iDisk, podcasts) for me. This is great except when I’ve got a slow connection. Slow generally means a cable hooked to my cell phone or dial-in or sometimes it just means an extra slow connection.

Here’s the problem: I just want to connect via some slow method for a minute and the computer wants to start downloading stuff via iSync, iDisk, podcasts and probably something else I can’t think of. All I want to do is very quickly check my mail or the movie listings and it starts synchronizing megabytes of data which is really detrimental as to why I logged on. I need a way to easily turn this stuff off temporarily. I see several ways to do this:

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Shipping and Handling

You know how when you really want something and it takes F O R E V E R to get shipped? This isn’t about that. This item (unfortunately) shipped (almost) before I actually ordered it.

So the last time I ordered something from Apple it was a present for Heather and I had it shipped to her place (FYI, it made good time). So I ordered myself something from there last night. As soon as I hit send I realized it was going to ship to Heather’s place, 90 seconds later I’m on the phone explaining the problem. He says he just submits it to the folks who fix it, it 12 hours I’ll get an e-mail knowing if they did. (Can you see where this story is going?) So at 5 am it ships to the wrong address (of course). I don’t think I’ve every had an Apple product ship so fast for me.

PS – At 12:47 PM I got an e-mail letting me know they couldn’t change the address… Sigh…

Apple Ranks Number One

In a news article at Yahoo/Reuters they polled brand recognition with branding professionals (it’s an odd url, I’m assuming it won’t last but I’ll put the pertinent info below). It’s interesting that Apple nudged Google out of first place. I’m surprised that Ikea isn’t as high in North America as it is globally and that Al Jazeera is on the global list. Even though I’m a big fan of 80% of the North America list, I’m still surprised that Pixar made the list. Also, Coca-Cola didn’t make the top 5 list anywhere world-wide….

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