Apple released iTunes 8.0.1 tonight. This release “fixes bugs and improves stability.” Big surprise there!
But, there is one great new feature- shifting from the current song to the Genius playlist is now seemless. No more audio restart after hitting the Genius button.
Two new Apple iPod ads means two more new songs. The music used in these ads:
iPod Nano 4G: “Bruises” by Chairlift from the album Does You Inspire You
iPod Touch: “Around the Bend” by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour currently only available as a single on iTunes: Around the Bend (Radio Edit)
Very interesting- Apple includes SD copies of all HD purchased downloads from iTunes. Then, iTunes 8 automagically syncs the SD copy to the iPhone and iPod for mobile viewing. No re-encode allowed or even necessary.
AppleInsider points out that this is very similar to Blu-ray and DVD movies which offer the iTunes Digital Copy. Apple is just taking this concept online.
Steve Jobs: This is the funnest iPod ever.
Jason Snell: And a million English teachers weep openly.
Dan Frakes has a nice writeup on AppleJack 1.5 as part of MacWorld’s Mac Gems series.
It’s surprisingly easy to get remote applications up and running in Apple’s X11 environment. Once installed on your Mac, fire it up and add one additional parameter to your remote SSH connection +X.
ssh -X .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Once you’re in, just start the application you want from the command line. Here, I typed “firefox” and now I have firefox 3 running in its full X11 glory on a remote computer.
More detailed information can be found on Apple’s Configuring and Running X11 Applications on Mac OS X page.
For those times when you just hafta rotate.. Display Rotation Menu provides a quick and easy way to set the rotation of your monitor. And best of all, it’s free!
It took me one search too many to figure out that .cdr or Apple’s DVD/CD Master disc image format is the same as the common .iso format. No conversion is necessary- just a simple rename.
My favorite system maintenance tool, AppleJack, has finally been released for Leopard.
AppleJack down and dirty, but user-friendly troubleshooting tool for Mac OS X. It runs in Single User Mode and runs as a menu-based app for ease of use. This allows you to troubleshoot a computer even when the GUI isn’t available and without using a boot CD.
