Tom and Rafe discuss what they love and hate about Apple computers.
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In this week's Buzz Report, I suggested (gently, of course) that the iPhone sucks on AT&T. I'm certainly not the first to suggest it: there's a pending class-action lawsuit over flaky 3G connectivity and AT&T and Apple are pointing fingers at each other over ongoing network and connection issues. Plus, every person in the background of my rant is someone who works at CNET and has had trouble with their iPhone (mostly because we don't even get service in our downtown San Francisco office).
So far, the feedback I've gotten leans heavily toward problems with iPhone/AT&T connectivity, but not everyone is having the same experience. So, here's your chance to tell us your story! What's your iPhone-on-AT&T experience like?
It's CNET Live's two-year anniversary and we celebrate by taking your calls. And with whiskey.
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Things we crave:
New PSP to take on iPhone this Christmas?
GM, Segway partner on two-wheel city vehicle
Download of the week
New York auto show
Ford Transit Connect Family One
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Take a look at shop.cnet.com where you can order CNET T-shirts, mugs, and more.
Your video calls:
Teresa from Irvine (we call her RogueTess) asked about live-streaming video on an iPhone and how to record audio on the iPhone. Jailbroken iPhones can do a lot of live streaming. Qik has announced support for the iPhone. Its official app is not yet available in the iTunes store. Brian Tong recommends HT Professional recorder as a voice recorder for the iPhone. Express Scribe is transcription software for turning audio into text.
Your calls:
Solving Vista sleep problems usually involves updating drivers, often for more than one component. See this blog as an example of one story.
There are a few ways to take a portion of your screen and display just that part on another monitor. Windows users can use magnifier. Hardware solutions exist, like the $5,000 Folsom Image Pro HD which we use on CNET Live. More reasonably priced at around $300 is the TwinPact100. These hardware solutions take your video out and then allow you to zoom, pan, and resize the output. You could also try using CamTwist to send video to another computer.
The iPod Touch 2G supports headphones with a mic, just like the iPhone does, but the original iPod Touch does not. For the original iPod Touch, Brian Tong recommends Macally iVoice III. Brian Cooley pointed out you could use something like the Alesis ProTrack, too.
If you have your computer hooked up to your TV, is there a way to get keyboard and mouse functionality in a one-handed device? It's possible to mod the Wii remote to be an input device for a PC, although our caller said he tried that and couldn't make it work. Logitech makes a keyboard mouse wireless combo unit, but it's not one-handed. Then there's the AirMouse that allows you to use gestures to control the pointer on a computer. There are a lot of onscreen keyboard apps out there, though. Look in places that deal in software for tablet PCs. One open-source version that seems fairly popular is the Java Virtual Keyboard.
If you want to share screens between a Mac and PC, try LogMeIn or Yugma.
Ypops provides Pop access to Yahoo Mail. Getmail can retrieve mail for one or more accounts.
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Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like YouTube, and then e-mail us the link.
We take a look at the new iPhone 3.0 software as well as the new Dell Adamo.
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First Look
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Your calls:
What if you want to see two screens on one monitor? The perfect solution is a Dual Screen Splitter, but it also costs $3,000. You could also possibly use something like CamTwist and capture one screen then monitor it in the other. Our caller had a situation where he has two monitors, one that he can see and one that a customer sees, and he wants to mirror the customer monitor on his. Another way to do this would be to get a secondary monitor and split the signal from the customer monitor off to the secondary monitor.
To make a NAS work with Time Machine, you'll need to do some tweaking. One method involves creating a sparsebundle image on your machine. A different method involves mounting the backup drive copying a couple files to it then unmounting and remounting.
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Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like YouTube, and then e-mail us the link.
Brian Cooley and I lose our jobs, but before we do, we answer questions on wireless TV streaming, VirtualBox, and more.
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Things we crave:
Suction cups mount your camera to your car hood
Download of the week
First Look
Quick Tip Send and receive text messages in Gmail
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Your video calls:
Alexander in Brazil wanted to know about PC gaming in Boot Camp on a Mac, and how to change the middle-click button option so it doesn't bring up the Dashboard in OS X. Windows games play pretty well, but you have to take in account the Mac hardware. It's not up to what a good PC gaming rig would be. As for the middle-click, go to System Prefs pane choose expose and spaces and look for Dashboard. There's a setting there for turning of the middle-click to bring up Dashboard.
Your calls:
What's the best free antivirus? Download.com has a great page of editors' picks for security software you should look at. Our top free antivirus pick at CNET is AVG Free Edition.
Need some good free Mac software? Take a look at OpenSourceMac.org
I didn't have an answer for our caller from Mumbai about port forwarding in VirtualBoxc, but Tales in the #cnetfans chat room suggested looking at this posting.
If you want some info on TV tuner cards with closed captioning, look over at the Hauppage site for their WinTV2000 Application FAQ.
Some of the best gear Brian Cooley has found for wirelessly streaming TV is from Netgear. Here's its product pages.
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Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like YouTube, and then e-mail us the link.
Tom and Brian tackle Steve Jobs' departure from Mac, as well as your tech questions.
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Things we crave
First Look
Download of the week
Insider Secrets
Swap out your MacBook Pro's hard drive
Your video calls
Petter from Norway wanted to know how to get audio from one laptop to a computer with better sound. Brian suggested just plug in in the speakers to the laptop. Tom Suggested either using Audacity to record and playback the sound or tweaking the settings int he desktop and connecting to the the laptop via a wire.
Your calls
Want to download a copy of Windows 3.11? Here's the place to go.
Brian recommends the Synet Windy31 USB Wireless router.
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Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like Youtube, and then e-mail us the link.
We share some of our scariest tech stories involving the FBI, Rock Band, debit cards, and Windows 98.
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First Look
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News
Take a ride in a modern Zeppelin
Your video calls
Franklin's questions: Tethering a Treo to a Mac?
Watch our video by Rich DeMuro and read this detailed step-by-step from PeachPit press.
Tim's questions: If I delete junk mail will the spam filter still work?
Yes. Here's the wikipedia article on how Bayesian filters combat spam.
Your calls
If you're having trouble uninstalling SmartDefrag, read this forum thread from IOBit's message boards. Then you may want to try Revo Uninstaller or CCleaner.
Want to start your own hot spot? You can buy a plan from a vendor like this one. Or you can try rolling your own with some free and open source software.
Brian C. pointed a caller with about 3,000 photos to high-speed scanners. He also pointed out ScanCafe as an example of a service that will do the scanning for you..
Should you get the Sony AW laptop or the HP HDX18? The HP's safer but if you can hold on, wait until we can get a full evaluation of the Sony, because even though the AW is more expensive, it's got killer specs.
To downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP, you need a legal version of XP, and you need to back up your data and format your hard drive. See John Wilkinson's excellent explanation in the Windows Vista forum at forums.cnet.com.
Want to stream your iTunes to your Internet connected receiver? Brian Tong recommends Airport Express.
And finally this from Vladimir, one of our engineers. "Just wanted to let you know that the menu-ing problem happening in Linux is actually NOT our fault. It's a problem with Flash 9 for Linux. The easy fix is to download and install Flash 10 which should take care of the issue.This was also answered on Mailbag from 10/21. "
E-mail us!
Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like Youtube, and then e-mail us the link.
The Apple TV is an excellent little device, if you limit yourself to the Apple universe of music, video, and podcasts. Who wants to be limited? Watch our video on how to add DivX, AVI, and more to your Apple TV. Then return here for the written steps.
XBMC is free and open-source software for Windows, Linux, and OS X that many consider the best media-center software out there. It grew out of the mod chips used on the original Xbox. Because it can run on OS X, that means it'll run on the Apple TV, which runs OS X.
Boxee, is a service based on XBMC that is currently in private alpha. You can get some free invites at www.boxee.tv/cnet. You'll have to download and set that service up separately.
Let's get started. Make sure you have your Apple TV turned off. Then make sure you have a USB stick with at least 1GB of space.
- Download the ATVUSB-Creator from Google Code.
- Insert a "bootable" USB drive into your Mac. Most USB drives are bootable. Watch out for drives that have the U3 software pre-installed on them; they're the ones that give the most trouble.
- Run the ATVUSB-Creator.
- Select "ATV patchstick."
- Make sure the XBMC and Boxee plug-ins are selected.
- Make sure your USB drive is selected.
- And press "Create Using."
- Again, make sure you Apple TV is off...remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV.
- Power on your Apple TV, and the patchstick will run the ATV bootloader.
- After the bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV. It now has options for Boxee/XBMC on the main menu.
- Click on Boxee, then select Update Boot Launcher--this helps prevent problems with the remote.
- Then select XMC/Boxee, then Update, and then Boxee. This will download Boxee from the Net.
- Once it's done installing, restart your Apple TV. Then do the same for XBMC. You'll probably want to explore the FAQs at XBMC and the blog at Boxee to make the most of your new capabilities.
iTunes: now with 100% more everything.
You know how sometimes you get a huge mound of dishes piled up in the kitchen sink, and then something starts to stink, and it takes a long time to realize where the stink is coming from, but eventually you wash every dish and scrub the whole thing out and it takes maybe a day or two, but you're finally fresh and happy again? OK, well, iTunes is a kitchen sink full of crud, and it stinks. Apple? You need to clean that bad boy out. Trust me. We'll all feel better.
Listeners of Buzz Out Loud will have heard this rant earlier this week, but I'd like to expand on it a bit here, because iTunes is a program that a lot of people use, and it's turning into a bit of a national nightmare. Let's indulge in just a list, off the top of my head, of the tasks this former jukebox software now has to perform:
- It organizes your music and syncs with your iPod
- It's a music player
- It's a video player, which necessitates that it come bundled with QuickTime
- It indexes and delivers both audio and video podcasts
- It's a storefront that sells music, TV shows, movies, audiobooks, iPod games, and music videos
- It rents movies (and handles the requisite DRM-checking and so forth)
- It's cell phone syncing and management software
- It's the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store, handling registration, syncing, and sale of those apps
- It's a veritable set-top box, syncing content with Apple TV for playback on TV
This is one program we're talking about, here. As a result, iTunes 7.7 is a 60.5MB file. Last time I did a fresh install, about a week ago, it took me 30 full minutes to download it, complete a full registration procedure (when all I was after was iPod syncing), get it installed, index my entire universe of music and its entire universe of online content, and get it up and running. When my husband recently bought an iPod Touch, it took him 45 minutes to update iTunes, re-register, and connect the new iPod.
On top of that, with so many functions and so many possibilities for bugs, it seems like there's a new iTunes update every week. And every update is mandatory, no matter how old your iPod or how uninterested you are in access to the iPhone App Store or how unlikely it is that you'll ever download or play a QuickTime video via iTunes. It'll keep bugging you until you upgrade, or maybe stop syncing your two-year-old iPod, and when you finally do upgrade, you'll have to restart, because, I assume, iTunes has about as many functions as an operating system and has its tendrils in almost as many system files.
Yes, you can get by without iTunes if you just want media playback. I use VLC and I won't load iTunes unless I absolutely have to. (I've had the laptop I just installed it on for almost six months, and I only downloaded the darned thing so I could get at Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.) And I know there are plenty of alternative apps I can use to manage my iPod. That's not the point.
The seamless iTunes integration used to be the best thing about the iPod. And until people (bless you, Joss Whedon, but you're one of them) stop doing "iTunes exclusives," I'm going to need it or some other program for downloading those videos. I shouldn't have to live in fear of loading it, because it takes so long to launch, it's so bloated, and it's almost certain to drop an update grenade in my lap. iTunes has become anathema to Apple's simple and elegant persona, and it's time for a fix.
May I suggest, for example, iTunes Lite? Give the iPod masses a slimmed-down version for managing just the device and their music, and give them an online interface for the iTunes Store. Or start carving out features to trim down the program overall. The iPhone does not need to be managed by iTunes. It's a cell phone. Get it a separate sync program that includes the App Store and let it call (pun intended) iTunes for music the way iMovie does. Build a separate media player so we don't have to get QuickTime along with iTunes.
I know Apple thinks it's keeping things simple by offering one program with one-stop shopping. But instead, they're creating bloatware that, increasingly, people don't want to use for any shopping. Apple, get out your scrubbing bubbles. It's time to save iTunes.
A lot of folks were understandably upset when Apple released five new applications for the iPod Touch that currently exist on the iPhone (Mail, Stocks, Notes, Weather, and Maps), and then proceeded to charge $20 for the package. Now, they're even more upset. Apparently, Apple's insistence on selling Touch owners the $20 upgrade is sending some of them into an unending loop of refusal and redirection.
I SAID "No, thanks"!
(Credit: Courtesy of Apple.com)We've been discussing this a lot lately on the Buzz Out Loud podcast. It started when a caller told us that he plugged in his iPod Touch shortly after the new applications were announced, and was presented with a nag screen about upgrading, with no way to say "No, thanks." A few other people reported that they were nagged several times before a "No, thanks" button finally appeared (I guess they got out of the screen by clicking Cancel or something similar). Then people started e-mailing us tales such as this one from a guy named Matt:
"You click 'No, Thanks' and the program brings you back to the upgrade screen with only an 'OK' button. Click the 'OK' button and you're routed to the iTunes store to purchase the apps that should have been on the iPod Touch to begin with. Click back to your iPod, and you're at the upgrade screen with 'OK' again."
Users on the Apple forums (as well as some BOL listeners) report one worse--instead of the infinite loop, they actually get an error when they try to decline the $20 upgrade:
"I click "No Thanks" and an the following message keeps coming up: 'an error occurred, the iTunes store could not process your request.' "
People are unable to sync at all, because they're trapped in the "No, thanks" loop or getting the error--workarounds range from choosing Sync from the File menu to actually unplugging the computer from the Internet so you can sync (apparently the latter was a suggestion from Apple support).
Perhaps cruelest of all, the problem is plaguing users in countries, such as Brazil and Singapore, who can't even purchase the software from the iTunes store. Ouch. So far, there are at least two active threads on Apple's forums about the issue, but no indication of a fix coming anytime soon.
Technical flubs with iTunes are nothing new, but this one does seem particularly cruel to the people who are already feeling a bit shafted by the $20 price tag for, as Matt puts it, applications that should have been on the Touch in the first place. Here's hoping Apple quits kicking sand in their faces long enough to fix this glitch.
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