Monthly Archives: January 2009

5 tips for shopping on the iTunes Store

Posted on by

Finding the song you’re looking for or just looking for something that strikes you in the iTunes Store can be daunting. After all, they have over 10 million songs to choose from and loads of podcasts, movies, TV shows, and now applications for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Here are five tips on how to improve your experience of shopping on the iTunes Store.

Search

Use the search field in the top right hand corner of iTunes. When you have the iTunes Store selected in the pane on the left side of the iTunes window, this field switches from searching your library to searching the store. A simple search will return anything that matches what you typed in – songs, albums, videos, movies, etc.

Type the name of that song you're looking for here.

Type the name of that song you're looking for here.

You can narrow the results you got to a particular type of content by selecting it from the pull-down menu on the top-left corner of the iTunes Store.

If you’re still having trouble finding the needle you’re looking for in the haystack of results, click on the Power Search button. This will give you very specific control over what you’re searching for.

Limit your search to whatever type of content you select here.

Limit your search to whatever type of content you select here.

Browse

You’re probably familiar with iTunes’s browse mode from looking through your library. Browse is the mode where you’ll have three columns for Genre, Artist, and Album above the list of songs in your library. It is turned on by selecting Show Browser from the View menu. This works for your library or the iTunes Store. With the iTunes Store, the number of columns and what they hold will change. For instance, if you’d like to find a music video by the First Lady of France, just select Music Videos from the first column, French Pop from the next one, and Carla Bruni from the last column. Then you’ll see the video for her song “L’amoureuse.”

Popularity

Whenever you’re looking around in the iTunes Store, you’ll see the Popularity column. This can be a big help if you’re looking at an album with a lot of tracks on it, or if you got a few more results than you expected when you searched for “Landslide.” Click on the column header labeled Popularity and you should see an arrow pointing downward appear in the header. You’ll then see all of the items sorted with the most popular downloads at the top. You can see an example of this up above in the browsing screenshot. This will usually help you find what it is you’re looking for unless you have particularly eclectic tastes.

Arrows

Apple puts little arrows to the right of song titles, artist names, and album titles when you have a song selected. You’ll see them for other fields too, but they always do the same thing. They’ll take you directly to the search results for the item you have selected. This is great if, say, you’re enjoying “Belief” off of the Continuum from John Mayer and would like more from that album or maybe you’re watching a great episode of Battlestar Galactica and would like to watch another.

Genius

Finally, one of the newest features of iTunes is Genius. It has two parts, Genius Playlists and the Genius Sidebar. The sidebar is what will help you find new stuff on the iTunes Store. If you don’t see the Genius Sidebar on the right side of your iTunes window, you can turn it on by selecting Show Genius Sidebar from the View menu.

If I select “Love Missile F1-11” from my library (hey, it’s a song from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), the Genius Sidebar will give me a link to their Complete My Album feature for this album so that I can either buy more songs from it or buy the rest of the album minus what I’ve already spent on tracks off it. It will also tell me that Sigue Sigue Sputnik‘s top album on the store is Dress for Excess and it’ll show a few of their most popular songs. If the song you’ve selected is a part of any of the collections iTunes has assembled, those will show up here. This song happens to be a member of their Synth Pop iTunes Essentials. The sidebar will also give you some recommendations, at the top of the list for “Love Missile F1-11″ is “The Edge of Forever” by The Dream Academy. That song was also in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and iTunes is recommending it to me even though John Hughes didn’t want the movie to have an official soundtrack.

President Barack Obama's Podcast

Posted on by

US President Barack Obama provided his first address to the nation on January 24, 2009. But, he did it in a way no other president has. I first saw it on YouTube after reading about it on Digg (a social news site). But, they’ve also provided a video podcast of Obama’s addresses. If you subscribe to it through iTunes, you’ll always have the latest address downloaded automatically.

At this time, his inaugural address is also available through the podcast. And, judging by the full title of the podcast, “President Obama’s Weekly Address & Speeches,” he intends to make other speeches he gives available through this podcast as well.

Continue reading →

Apple Posts First Quarter Results; Best Ever

Posted on by

Apple may not be recession proof, but they are at least resistant to it. Despite the dire economic conditions towards the end of 2008, Apple recorded $10.17 billion in revenue and a record net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion during their fiscal 2009 first quarter (ending December 27, 2008). “Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history—surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. 

Apple sold 2.5 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 9% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. This bucks the industry trend. According to IDC, the overall market for personal computers shrunk in the December quarter. During their Q1 2009 quarterly earnings call, Apple indicated that they felt customer response to their MacBook announcement in October was very strong. Portables accounted for 71% of all Macs sold in the quarter. Apple believes that customer excitement over the announcement led to the strong Macintosh performance this quarter and also shows an industry trend towards portable computers. In addition, almost half of all Mac sales through retail Apple Stores were to customers that had never had a Mac before.

 The iPod division booked a record 22.7 million iPods during the quarter, representing 3% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple’s US  market share for portable music players is over 70% according to the NPD group. And the iPod continues to gain market share world-wide. The iTunes Store also had its best quarter ever along with its biggest sales ever during the week of Christmas and on Christmas day.

Quarterly iPhone units sold were 4.4 million, representing 88% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. This great quarter for the iPhone means that Apple totaled 13.7 million sales for 2008 – ahead of the 10 million unit goal set by Steve Jobs when the iPhone was first announced. A side note that Apple announced prior to this earnings report is that the iTunes Store has over 15,000 application available and customers have downloaded these over half a billion times since early July of 2008.

Apple will continue to invest in the Apple TV because they see a profitable future for them in that space. Apple representatives stated that movie rentals through the iTunes Store  have resulted in improved sales of the Apple TV.

Conficker Worm Now an Epidemic

Posted on by

According to Panda Security, the Windows worm outbreak that I reported on last Thursday is now an epidemic. Panda found that 6% of the two million computers they scanned were infected by the worm.

Read my article from last week for information on what to do to. Additionally, F-Secure notes that “Downadup disables Automatic Updates, so updated versions of MSRT [ed: links for this are contained in last week's article] will need to be downloaded manually, it will not be automatically installed on infected machines.”

Multi-button mousing with your Mac

Posted on by

One of the biggest issues that detractors of the Mac have had over the years is that Macs don’t work with two-button mouses. And one of the curious things about detractors of the Mac is that they apparently have never used one. Macs work with multi-button mouses. They have done so for years. Until recently, Apple only sold one-button mouses, but Mac OS X has supported multi-button mouses since it was first released on March 24, 2001. Apple now only sells multi-button mouses.

The multiple button Mighty Mouse that Apple designed retains the overall form of the Apple Mouse that it replaced and works as a single-button mouse for those that don’t feel the need for multiple buttons and to reduce stress on the index finger since the mouse can be clicked with your entire hand.

So, if you feel the need to right-click, you’ll want to change your system preferences since the mouse defaults to acting like one with a single button. System Preferences are accessed through the Apple menu in the menu bar. Select the Keyboard & Mouse icon that is in the Hardware grouping. Then select the Mouse tab at the top of the window and you’ll see all of the preferences you can set for your mouse. By default both the left and right side of the mouse are set to act as the primary button. Regardless of which side of the mouse you click on, it’ll always register as a “left-click.” So, you’ll want to set one of those to the secondary button. If you’re a right-hander, then you will be most comfortable setting the right side to the secondary button. Keep in mind that the secondary button is registered if only that side is touched when you click the mouse. I really like this feature because I can still use the mouse like a single-button mouse (clicking with my entire hand), and when I need to context-click on something I just click on the right side of the mouse.

You can also set what happens when you click either the scroll ball or the side buttons. There is a key on your keyboard that will activate the Dashboard, so I don’t understand why Apple defaulted the scroll ball to this function. And, the Exposé key on your keyboard will reveal all windows for you, so the side buttons could also be put to better use. My recommendation is to use the two extra mouse buttons for Exposé, but you can set them to whatever you want. I’ve got the scroll ball set to show me the windows for my current application (Exposé – App Windows) and the side buttons set to expose the desktop (Exposé – Desktop). I feel this is best because if you’re going to your desktop, you’re probably going to be dragging something to or from it and dragging works well with the side buttons. You can also see from the screen shot that I increased the tracking speed to be closer to what I was used to on Windows. Adjust this slider to whatever makes you comfortable.

Now you’re all set. You can close the system preferences and use the mouse the way you want to from here on out. Just remember that if you have more than one account set up on your Mac, the other people can configure their own preferences for the mouse. So, you can turn on all of the buttons on your account but make all of them (including the scroll ball and side buttons) act as the primary button for your young child’s account.

Watching AVIs & WMVs with QuickTime

Posted on by

If you’ve had your Macintosh for a while, you’ve undoubtedly run into the occasional video on the Web that you can’t view. They’re usually classic Windows formatted videos like Audio Video Interleave (AVI) or Windows Media Video (WMV). This can be easily remedied and it doesn’t even involve running anything other than QuickTime to watch the videos.

QuickTime is an advanced multimedia authoring and playback system. As such, it has support for a wide range of components that expand the functionality of QuickTime to support a variety of technologies – including AVI & WMV.

There are two things you need to download. The first is Perian. This is what will give you the ability to play back AVI files (and DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, VFW files as well). Perian is open source software, so there is no fee for using it. However, the development team would appreciate a donation if you get a lot of use out of their work.

To be able to view WMV movies, you need to download the Windows Media Components by Flip4Mac. There is a free version of this that will allow you to play back Windows Media in QuickTime as well your web browser. And you can also upgrade to one of their other versions that start at $29 and give  you extra functionality like being able to convert Windows Media to another format such as MPEG-4 AVC.

Once you have these two QuickTime components installed, you’re prepared to play virtually any video you might come across. And you never need to think about it. Just open them in QuickTime as you would any other movie.

What is Exposé?

Posted on by

Exposé is a feature of Mac OS X that allows you to see all of your open windows at any time. All you have to do is press the function key labeled with the Exposé icon on your keyboard (F3) and all of your windows will slide around to reveal other windows behind them – shrinking when necessary. It also dims the desktop so that the windows really pop out from the background. You can then move your pointer over one to see the title of that window. Clicking while over a window will switch to that window and every window will resize itself back to normal and slide back to where it was.

This is very useful for finding the window you want to be working in at the moment. It might be better than using the Command+` keyboard shortcut depending on how you like to work. But, it has even more usefulness than that. If you’re working in one window and you want to drag something out of it into a different window, Exposé works for that too. All you have to do is:

  1. start your drag
  2. activate Exposé
  3. hover over the window that you want to drop onto
  4. deactivate Exposé
  5. complete your drag & drop

Quickly tapping the Exposé key will reveal the windows and they’ll hang there in space waiting for you to do something. But, if you hold down the Exposé key, the windows will rearrange themselves only for as long as you hold down the key. Once you lift your finger, the windows will go back to normal. Holding the Exposé key is a good way to handle dragging & dropping.

You can also activate Exposé through a variety of ways that can be set in your System Preferences. Select the Exposé & Spaces System Preference and you can set Exposé to activate by moving your pointer to one of the four screen corners, typing keystrokes, or clicking mouse buttons.

The normal behavior for the Exposé key is exposing All Windows. Holding the Command key while pressing the Exposé key will move all the windows out of the way to reveal the Desktop. This is helpful since current Apple keyboards only have one function key labeled with the Exposé icon. Using the Command modifier key means you don’t have to remember which other unlabeled function key you may have assigned the Exposé – Desktop command to. Use the same keyboard shortcut to bring the windows back to normal (if you aren’t using the hold method from above). You can also modify the behavior of Exposé by holding the Control key while pressing the Exposé key to show only the current Application Windows. Again, use the same keyboard shortcut to bring the windows back to normal. Finally, for some fun, you can hold down the Shift key while pressing the Exposé key to watch the animations in slow-motion.

Conficker Worm Infects 3.5M Windows PCs So Far

Posted on by

F-Secure, a security firm based in Finland, conservatively estimates that 3.5 million Windows PCs have been infected with a new worm called “Downadup” or “Conficker.” It is infecting Windows computers at a rate of more than 1 million in the past 24 hours. According to ComputerWorld, the worm exploits “a bug in the Windows Server service” that is used in all versions of Windows currently supported by Microsoft; including Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft recommends that Windows users install an update provided in late October and follow that up by running the latest version of their Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) which was updated this January in response to the Downadup worm. There is another cure, however.

Update: According to Panda Security, the Downadup outbreak is now an epidemic. Additionally, F-Secure notes that “Downadup disables Automatic Updates, so updated versions of MSRT will need to be downloaded manually, it will not be automatically installed on infected machines.”

Mike Huckabee Switches to Mac; Praises Apple

Posted on by

Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and current personality for Fox News program “Huckabee“, has recently switched to the Mac after 22 years of using a PC. Mike Huckabee was fearful of making the switch – 22 years is a lot of history to leave behind. But, he credits the “patient and personable staff” of the Apple Store in New York with making his switch “a breeze.” He doesn’t mention whether he took advantage of their Personal Shopping program or not, but if you’re interested in making the switch it is something that I recommend taking advantage of. It’s a great program that even experienced Mac users can benefit from.

Thanks to Leo Laporte from MacBreak Weekly for the tip.

Upgrading Mac OS X

Posted on by

Regardless of what your experiences have been with Windows in the past, traditionaly upgrading the OS of a Mac has resulted in a faster computer. Apple has consistently made noticable performance improvements with each new release of Mac OS X. And the focus of the next OS, Snow Leopard, is on increasing the performance and reducing the storage requirements of the OS. In addition to the performance improvements you’ll find, there are over 300 new features in the current OS, Leopard, that will will save you time and generally improve your experience. Three big ones to highlight are Quick Look, Time Machine, and Spaces. 

The bottom line is… Don’t be afraid of upgrading your Mac OS. Just make sure you have a recent backup before doing so – as you should with any computer.