Filed under: Accessories, Reviews
Hands-on with the new Apple Remote

Like many of the others at TUAW who really wanted to see this remote, I got my new Apple Remote a few days ago, and here are some of my impressions.
Filed under: Accessories, Reviews

Filed under: Hardware, Video, Reviews, Mac mini

When we first heard about the Kanex HDMI + digital audio converter a few weeks ago, I was eager to give it a trial run and see if it managed to deliver on the promise of integrated audio with HDMI video. I've been playing with the $70 unit for a few days now, and the answer is a qualified yes: it does the job, but depending on your home theater setup you may be able to get by with a less expensive option.
The digital-audio Kanex unit ships without a manual and is largely self-explanatory (although the company has now posted a basic user guide and FAQ) -- a female HDMI port on one side of the roughly iPod-sized unit, and three male cables coming out the other side. The cables connect to the mini DisplayPort, optical audio out, and USB port of your Mac; while Kanex does sell a $60 unit that handles audio over USB, this version only uses that connection to power the adapter and does not provide a USB audio interface. If you're running short of open powered USB ports you might opt to plug it into a USB power adapter instead.
In operation, there's not much to worry about: I plugged in all three ports to a unibody MacBook Pro and connected an HDMI display, then went to the normal Mac OS X Displays preference pane, where I found a full assortment of resolutions for my enjoyment. The top few 'television' options may vary with your connected gear; on my test set (a Vizio 42" 720p display) I was able to choose 720p and, oddly enough, 1080i and 1080p. Below that you have resolutions ranging from 640x480 up into the 1600x1000 range.
Continue reading “TUAW Review: Kanex HDMI + audio adapter works fine but costs extra”
Filed under: Peripherals, Features, Bluetooth, Reviews


Filed under: Software, Video, Reviews
I have a handful of apps that I use to show off my Mac to those still stuck on the dark side (ahem, Windows users), and ScreenFlow is among them -- heck, it's even the app I use for screen recording Windows (via Parallels). Already the gold standard in the screen recording app genre on the Mac, Telestream's ScreenFlow adds a host of goodies in its 2.0 update. While the new features provide the means for you to enhance the look and feel of your screencasts, they're more notable for better facilitating your screencasting workflow; the end result is more of a one-stop shop for all your screencasting needs.
The first new feature relates to media interaction and management within the app. ScreenFlow 2.0 now allows you to drag, drop and position content from your media list directly onto the main ScreenFlow video canvas. In addition, said media files are now saved within a package. This means that the media files (pictures, music, and movies) you used in your project will be bundled in one place, rather than scattered hither and yon on your hard drive. As a result, you no longer need to worry about the folder(s) you placed your media in.
Prior to 2.0, freeze framing or adjusting the speed of a clip required you to use another video editor, such as iMovie or Final Cut, which was an annoyance given the fact that you had to export the video. In the 2.0 update, however, ScreenFlow has added built-in support for freeze frames and speed adjustments.
And if you yourself need your own personal freeze frame -- er, break -- you can now do so without splitting up clips through the pause and resume feature of ScreenFlow 2.0. While stopping and recording results in a separate clip, pausing and resuming screen recording results in a single clip that can be moved through the editing process as a unit.
As many screencasts eventually make their way onto YouTube, ScreenFlow has incorporated YouTube publishing within the app. No longer will you need to use your browser or export to an iMovie-compatible format to upload your screencast to Youtube. YouTube publishing includes support for distribution control, giving you control over whether or not you want your screencast available for public consumption.
Other notable features in the 2.0 update include:
• New keyboard shortcuts (for resizing the timeline, zoom in and out, and nudging clips)
• Advanced audio edits and audio ducking
• Action curves
• Improved timeline performance and improved export performance
• Support for exporting only part of the timeline instead of the entire document
• Color correction
• Live audio scrubbing
• Snow Leopard optimization
Mac OS X Snow Leopard provides built-in support for screen recording via QuickTime X, and this may serve as a "good enough" solution for basic screen recording needs. But, just as Little Snapper serves as a powerful and elegant screen capturing tool suite over the built-in capabilities in OS X (via command-shift-3 or via the "Grab" app) for more advanced uses, ScreenFlow serves as a compelling screen recording suite for those who want to add extra polish and sheen to their screencasts. And with the 2.0 update to ScreenFlow, Telestream has made adding that extra polish and sheen that much easier.
A 30 day free trial of ScreenFlow 2.0 is available at the Telestream website. ScreenFlow 2.0 is available for USD $99, or as a USD $29 upgrade for owners of previous versions of ScreenFlow. Download and purchase links available here.
Filed under: Software, Reviews, Beta Beat
I discovered Gruml a while back, but didn't write about it right away because there were too many glitches in the first beta to make it really interesting. Thankfully, recent releases have smoothed out the vast majority of the kinks, and I can now present -- with gusto -- a great RSS reader that interfaces with Google Reader.
NetNewsWire switched to syncing with Google Reader back in July, and I was pretty excited. Google Reader has been an amazing tool for me in the RSS world, and the more apps I have that all sync with it, the happier I am. However, despite seemingly endless trials and searches, I haven't really found the app that can top a Fluid SSB with a good userstyle. Gruml comes the closest so far, and it's free (at least right now, I'm not sure what the future holds after beta).
One of the things I like about desktop clients (when it comes to RSS readers) is scriptability. Gruml currently lacks the AppleScript dictionary that, say, NetNewsReader has, and I'd love to see it implemented. The keyboard navigation is decent, but not yet up-to-par with Google Reader's web interface, which can be navigated entirely with the keyboard. It might not make a difference to a lot of folks, but when I'm cruising through headlines I like to be all-keyboard when possible. The "Send Article to ... " menu is fantastic, covering 12 services ranging from Delicious to Twitter, and including Facebook, Ping.fm and Posterous. Note-taking, starring and sharing are all very well done, and sync perfectly with Google.
Continue reading “Beta Beat: Gruml brings GReader to the Mac desktop”
Filed under: Accessories, Reviews
It's likely you've heard of GelaSkins before. They make stickers to cover a variety of gear. They are of a nice thickness with a slight texture, and removal won't hurt either your equipment or the GelaSkin itself (if you're careful). Filed under: Features, Reviews, Friday Favorite

Today's Friday Favorite is a new one to me, but it's been around for a while. I just picked up the latest version of HistoryHound from St. Clair Software -- more famous, probably, for Default Folder X -- and have been using it constantly for days. Its hotkey already has its own spot in my muscle memory. Here's what it does:
HistoryHound indexes bookmarks, history and cache from all of your browsers, with presets for Camino, Firefox 2 & 3, Flock, iCab, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, Shiira and URL Manager Pro. It means being able to bookmark willy-nilly in any browser and know that you'll be able to quickly locate noteworthy sites again, in any application.
Not just the bookmarks, though; in the background -- with a very low footprint -- HistoryHound starts indexing the full text of each page. Then you can search for exact or fuzzy matches, or with Spotlight-style boolean keywords for any text on the landing page. Search comes in two flavors: a tiny popup panel which can be assigned to a hotkey and provides a list of matches as you type, and a full, Webkit-enabled search window with page previews and a multi-column result list.
Continue reading “Friday Favorite: HistoryHound, bookmark with abandon”
Filed under: Software, Productivity, Tips and tricks, Reviews, iPhone

I recently bought a new Mac, and I decided not to migrate years of cruft over to a pristine Snow Leopard install. I also decided to shed years of stale workflow and adopt a new way of doing things. Enter the power tools: software that augments the power and performance of OS X to do things faster and smarter. I'll examine some general system enhancements and look at a couple of powerful Mac/iPhone app combos that really work well together.
Step one was finding a replacement for my beloved QuickSilver. I had abandoned QS well over a year ago due to performance issues on most of my Macs, but after a nagging pain in my wrist surfaced, I realized I had to find more keyboard shortcuts. Enter LaunchBar, which fills in for 90% of what QuickSilver used to do for me. LaunchBar is one Ctrl-Space (configurable, of course) away from Spotlight searching, Google searching, application launching, math calculations and much, much more. LaunchBar is $25 around $35 per seat, and worth taking 15 minutes to learn the basics. Go ahead, hate me for giving up QS, but try LaunchBar before you hurl the insults.
Next I needed a better way to juggle 3 Gmail accounts. But I also needed a way to track the metric ton of inbox items that flow through those email conduits. The solution was the combination of MailPlane and Things. I had really dedicated my heart to Toodledo, but there's one trick I couldn't replicate on any setup (The Hit List included): when I get an email in MailPlane, I can select some text and press Shift-Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-0 and the Things HUD pops up and autofills the notes section with a link to the email itself. It is awesome. Not perfect, mind you, but a huge thing for me.
Read on for more power tools and tips.
Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals, Portables, Reviews
A few weeks ago, we ran a short post about the release of OWC's Mercury On-The-Go Solid-State Drives. The drives, which come in the same miniscule transparent drive enclosures used by OWC for the rest of the bus-powered drive line, use SSD technology to provide users with more shock resistance and higher read speeds than traditional "spinning platter" hard drives.Filed under: Accessories, Reviews, iPhone
After the debacle earlier this year when I lost my iPhone 3G, I decided to not only protect the new phone -- my lost 3G had been "naked" -- but make sure that whatever I used to protect it had a bit of heft. Continue reading “TUAW Review & Giveaway: OtterBox Commuter / Commuter TL iPhone cases”
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Reviews, Developer, iPhone, Graphic Design, SDK, iPod touch
Part of my work requires me to mock up iPhone apps, often to show developers how I would redesign a user interface to work better than something they've come up with. Over the past few months, a number of paper sketchbooks have appeared on the market, all designed expressly for this purpose. I decided to try out all of the sketchbooks that I could find in a cursory Google search, just to see which one would work best for me. Of course, that meant that I had to write a review!Continue reading “Mega-super TUAW shootout of the iPhone UI sketchbooks”
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Reviews, Retro Mac
If there's one Mac application that has seemingly been around forever, it's StuffIt. This compression and archiving utility was the tool to use for compressing files years ago, and I'll still occasionally run into a .sit file extension when pulling up old files. The original application was the source of a bit of Mac folklore, as it was developed and supported for quite a while by a young student by the name of Raymond Lau. Filed under: Reviews, First Look, App Review, Music
Any musician worth his/her credit knows that accurate tuning is a given. It's a crucial starting point to playing any instrument at home, on the job, in the studio, or on the road, and an embarrassment when it isn't. Continue reading “Count the beats: Tuning and more with Guitar Toolkit for iPhone / iPod touch”
Filed under: Software, Reviews
"I switched to the Mac to use this!" might be the highest praise a Mac developer could ever hope to hear. Switching platforms means not just buying a new computer, but also buying a bunch of new software. There are probably only a handful of applications that merit changing platforms all on their own, but Accordance Bible Software is one of them. Accordance isn't just widely respected within the Mac world, it's widely respected within the entire scriptural research software universe. Bible Software Review wrote: "Anyone who knows a little bit about Bible software has heard of Accordance."
The current version is compatible with Snow Leopard, and yet still runs on System 7.5! This is the first time I've seen a Mac application vendor talk about running Mac software in emulation rather than the other way around. Accordance is proudly Mac-only, suggesting to users that once they have switched to Mac they shouldn't put up with "Windows software" on their Macs, and offering crossgrades for those who have made the switch.
Being first is nice, but once other companies have come into the market, it doesn't take long to forget who was first and start to compare based on which features each product provides. Fortunately, Accordance has a lot to offer. There are a wide variety of packages available, ranging from $49 to several thousand dollars, depending on the library options. Like other Bible software programs, you are buying two parts: first, the app itself; second, items for your library, such as commentaries, different translations of the Bible, maps, and so forth. Most users should expect to make an initial investment of at least $100, perhaps $200-$300, but those purchases will almost certainly reflect savings over buying the printed versions.
Continue reading “Accordance: powerful Bible study software, only for the Mac”
Filed under: iPod Family, Video, Reviews, iPod nano
F11 moves all your windows off the screen so you can quickly glance at your desktop. F10 shows you every open window in an application. F9 shows every open window for every application that isn't hidden or in the dock.
| # | Blogger | Posts | Cmts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Steven Sande | 51 | 4 |
| 2 | Mike Schramm | 35 | 0 |
| 3 | Dave Caolo | 34 | 1 |
| 4 | Mel Martin | 30 | 0 |
| 5 | TJ Luoma | 22 | 26 |
| 6 | Erica Sadun | 19 | 2 |
| 7 | Joachim Bean | 19 | 3 |
| 8 | Victor Agreda, Jr. | 16 | 7 |
| 9 | Michael Rose | 15 | 15 |
| 10 | Sang Tang | 14 | 1 |
| 11 | Ken Ray | 13 | 2 |
| 12 | Josh Carr | 13 | 22 |
| 13 | David Winograd | 11 | 18 |
| 14 | Brett Terpstra | 10 | 8 |
| 15 | Chris Ullrich | 5 | 1 |
| 16 | Megan Lavey | 4 | 8 |
| 17 | John Burke | 4 | 3 |
| 18 | Kent Pribbernow | 4 | 0 |
| 19 | Tim Wasson | 4 | 1 |
| 20 | TUAW Blogger | 3 | 0 |
os MacMini BackToSchool SnowLeopard twitter developer IpodTouch Google Apple AppStore iphone3g itunes MacOsX10.6 software Facebook mac tv AppReview ipod-touch GPS ATT tablet app-store giveaway IpodNano video Navigation snow-leopard Mac101 ipod features keynote review update iphone imac macbook AppleStore AppleTv iphone3gs app podcast SoftwareUpdate MacOsX apps talkcast ItunesLp games Bluetooth hgg

All contents copyright © 2003-2009, Weblogs, Inc. All rights reserved
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) is a member of the Weblogs, Inc. Network. Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Notify AOL