Panic—one of the coolest Mac developers out there, and the creators of Transmit (my favorite Mac FTP client) and Coda—is selling their biggest apps for half-price until May 29th. Click here for details.

Earlier this month, my external hard drive—which contained, among other things, my entire iTunes library—died. I tried rescuing what I could when it became obvious that the drive was on its last legs, but I was unable to rescue everything, including my iTunes library.

Fortunately, a lot of the songs in my library also existed on my iPod. By default, however, you can’t copy music files from an iPod to your computer. A quick Google search turned up plenty of methods for getting around this limitation, and I finally chose to go with Senuti.

Senuti says that it’s a simple application that allows you to transfer songs from your iPod to your computer. And to put it simply, it worked like a charm. There were some features, such as transferring playlists over, that I didn’t use. However, the core functionality worked just fine, and was quite easy to do, to boot.

I still have some work to do with rebuilding my iTunes library, but I’m much better off than before, thanks to Senuti. (You can find a more thorough review over on AppScount.)

Yeah, the new MacBook and MacBook Pro are pretty cool, what with the souped up graphics, solid aluminum construction, and other nifty features.

But what really got me drooling is the new 24” LED Cinema Display. My immediate thoughts were somewhere along the lines of “I wonder how this would look sitting next to my iMac?” But apparently, it’s only for MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro systems with Mini DisplayPort, according to the specs page.

It’s not enough to make me want to get rid of my desktop, but it’s still awfully purty.

The official release of Mac OS X 10.5 (aka “Leopard”) is still two days away, but reviews have begun appearing throughout the InterTubes over the last day or so. Some of them are official, others not so much, but the overall response has been pretty positive, if not euphoric.

• “Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard First Impressions”: Despite Apple’s efforts to restrict seeding to select individuals, it appears that the final build of Leopard has made its way outside of Apple. One individual who has claimed to have installed the final version of Leopard on their iMac posted his experience.
• “Apple Offers New Goodies in Leopard System”: Leopard is powerful, polished and carefully conceived. Happy surprises, and very few disappointments, lie around every corner. This Leopard has more than 300 new spots—and most of them are bright ones.
• “Leopard: Faster, Easier Than Vista”: Leopard isn’t a must-have for current Mac owners, but it adds a lot of value. For new Mac buyers, it makes switching even more attractive.
• “Apple OS X Leopard: A beautiful upgrade”: Leopard is a legitimately big deal. It’s underhyped compared to iPhone, and yet unlike iPhone, Leopard is a genuine triumph of customer-focused engineering. It’s a pleasure and a relief to see that Apple remembers how to deliver open, affordable, standards-based products.

Personally, I’ll probably be upgrading to 10.4.11 before making the jump to Leopard. As much as I love Apple, I prefer to let the early adopters work out the kinks and glitches. Once those have been patched via an update or two, then I’ll drop the $129 (and maybe even more, so I can get an external hard drive to use with Time Machine).

Last week, it was announced that NBC would stop selling their television programs via iTunes after December, when their current contract runs up.  Their reasons included dissatisfaction over not having more control over pricing (currently, episodes are $1.99 each), concerns of DRM and piracy, and bundling.

There’s a word to describe this, and it’s “idiotic”.

This is a textbook example of a big media company finding something that works—as others have pointed out, iTunes has been instrumental in the success of NBC programs such as “The Office” (now one of the network’s most popular programs)—and deciding to get greedy and screw it up for their customers.

NBC wanted to increase the per episode price from $1.99 to $4.99.  That’s right—they wanted to charge five dollars for episodes of “The Office”. Actually, they wanted the ability to offer a range of pricing, but do you really think NBC wouldn’t try to profit more from its biggest titles, such as “The Office” or “Heroes”?

It’s worth noting that the other 50+ networks signed up with iTunes will continue to offer their shows for $1.99/episode.

Like I said, idiotic. It’s all a matter of simple arithmetic, really. You can currently watch “The Office” or “Heroes”, or any of the other shows that NBC offers, for free. Or you can buy the DVD sets when they come out, which in the case of “Heroes”, which currently costs $39.99 (plus shipping) on Amazon, would work out to roughly $1.74/episode. But if NBC had their way, you would have to pay three times that amount for a single episode.

I have no illusions about Apple being this charitable, altruistic organization. They’re a business, and they’re out to make money, just like everyone else. And I know that other companies and studios chafed under Apple’s heavyhanded pricing structure. But here’s one case where I have nothing but appreciation for Apple basically telling NBC to not let the door hit them in the ass on the way out.

Related Links

• It Is Estimated That NBC Could Not Have Screwed This iTunes Thing Up Any Worse
• An Open Letter to NBC re: Leaving Apple’s iTunes Store
• Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Cory Shields’, Executive Vice President of Communications for NBC Universal, Response to Apple’s Press Release Regarding NBC’s Pricing Demands on the iTunes Store
• iTunes Store To Stop Selling NBC Television Shows

It’s no secret at all: I love my not-so-little 20” iMac.  In the past, though, I always viewed the iMacs with a bit of disdain.  I realize they were instrumental in completely reversing Apple’s fortunes 9 years ago, but they always seemed a little on the wimpy side to me.  And even though the first Apple computer I ever purchased was an iMac DV SE, the truth is that I was always drooling over the latest Power Mac to come down the assembly line.  That was a real creative professional’s computer, or so I thought.

I don’t think that way anymore.  My iMac is—and I say this with no hyperbole whatsoever—the finest computer I’ve ever worked on.  I’ve had it for a year and a half without any issues whatsoever, it’s as zippy as ever, and the crisp display and gorgeous industrial design still take my breath away.  As a result of this experience, I’ve become rather obsessed with the latest happenings in what is now my favorite computer line.

And so today, Apple announced the latest update to their iMac line, and it’s a doozy.

Further refining the design of the previous iMacs, the new iMac sports an aluminum enclosure that brings the “consumer” machine inline with their other products like the Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, and iPhone.  The 20” and 24” displays use the new “glossy” screen that has been used on the MacBooks.  The new enclosure is even thinner, while containing more processing power than before (up to 2.8GHz, thanks to Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors), and there’s even a brand new keyboard (pictures of which were leaked several days ago).

As is the case with many of Apple’s products, it’s tempting to seek out all of the little things.  Then again, Apple is a company that’s obsessed about the little design details, as they realize that even the most seemingly insignificant detail still adds to the overall impression.  In other words, nothing can be left to chance.  It’s one of the reasons why Apple’s products consistently look and feel more polished and realized than many of their competitors’ offerings.

For example, the new iMac’s case is made from a single sheet of aluminum, meaning that there are no seams or screws (with the exception of a single screw used to access to the memory slots).  The built-in iSight camera looks virtually invisible on the new design, blending perfectly into the black frame surrounding the display.  And speaking of that frame, it does looks a little odd, I’ll grant you.  But I bet it does wonders in helping to draw out even more contrast from the display.

I do have a few questions, though.  How the does the new glossy screen do with glare and smudges?  Does the new keyboard feel less flimsy than it looks?  And perhaps most pressing of all, how long until I can afford one?

The new iMac wasn’t the only thing that got some serious upgrade today, however.  Several of Apple’s software titles received significant boosts: iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, and iWork.  I was especially impressed with the updates made to the .Mac Web Gallery, which allows you to create online photo galleries from your iPhoto collection.

You can see one of the new web galleries in action here, and to put it bluntly, it kicks Flickr’s ass.  It uses a lot of Flash and AJAX-y goodness, and the result is quite beautiful.  And once again, it’s all about the small details.

For example, slide your mouse over the “Family Reunion” photo, and you get an instant preview of the photos contained within the “Family Reunion” collection without actually loading that collection.  And if you load the collection, you can view the photos as a list, a mosaic, a slideshow, or as a carousel—which, if you’ve used the latest version of iTunes, is very similar to Coverflow.

Like I said, it kicks Flickr’s ass.  I don’t know if it kicks it enough to make me want to plunk down for a .Mac account, but it’s still mighty impressive.

There’s no denying that Apple are masters of style.  Everything, from their hardware designs and software interfaces, to the boxes their computers come in, and even down to the twisty ties that they use on their cables—all of it screams that the company is obsessed, perhaps even to an anal degree, with style and presentation.  And obviously, that fanatical approach to design and its importance, has paid off quite handsomely for the company.

Not surprisingly, this focus on design and presentation is also evident on Apple’s website.  Go to any other similar company’s website—Dell, HP, or of course, Microsoft—and the difference is quite clear.

The other websites always feel cold and cluttered, and virtually devoid of any personality whatsoever.  Everything is bullet points and “Buy Now” links.  Compare a sample computer details page on the Dell website with a comparable page on Apple’s website, and the difference is striking.

Continue reading…

Dave Shea said it almost a year ago, and I have to wholeheartedly agree: the Intel-powered Macs (such as my lovely “little” iMac) might just be the most perfect web designer computers ever made.  Not only are they blazingly fast, but thanks to a wonderful little program called Parallels Desktop For Mac, it’s possible to run a full Windows installation on your Intel Mac (I’m running XP, though you can run Vista should you so desire).  You can run several installations, for that matter.  And you’re not just limited to Windows, either.

Parallels is an absolute godsend for someone like me, who is consantly in need of a testing platform so I can ensure that my HTML/CSS/JavaScript concoctions will work in all of the major browsers on both Windows and Mac.  In reality, though, it’s to ensure that they’ll work in one browser in particular (and I think you know which one I’m talking about).

In the past, that required having two machines on your desk, maybe more.  But thanks to Parallels (and those nice Intel processors), you just need one.  Now, I have a complete browser testing suite at my disposal, especially after I installed Multiple IE.  (On a sidenote, not only is my iMac the fastest Mac I’ve ever used, it’s also the fastest PC I’ve ever used.  As well as the prettiest.)

True, there are some minuses, such as when it comes to games.  But I’m not much of a gamer to begin with—and when I do find time to twiddle a joystick or two, I prefer consoles.  But the pluses far outweigh any minuses.  If you’re a web designer, I can’t recommend the Intel Mac/Parallels combination enough.