MacLearner

Microsoft announced this week, according to MercuryNews.com that it will stop developing Windows media player.

This is an interesting move since it means that Apple will have less competition in its own OS to define the future media formats and applications.

It also means that Mac OS users will have less support for proprietary formats that Microsoft may release in the future. So, the announcement may represent a problem for mac users, if Microsoft introduces innovative technologies that will be availabe only in its OS.

Just to complement the previous post, another software you can use to create blogs in the Apple platform is iBlog Product Page, from Lifli Software.


The difference from this program to MarsEdit, however, is that it does not interface with blogger systems, such as blogger and moveable type. Instead, it can be used to manage itself the blog.


In this sense, iBlog is similar to iWeb, recently released by Apple, since iWeb can generate its own blogs that are upload to the .iMac account.

Related posts:

MarsEdit: editing your blog on an Apple Mac


Apple iLife and iWork have new versions

Creating blogs with the blogger interface is easy and fun. You just need to create you blog with two simple steps, and add posts using an intuitive web interface.

However, at times you may fee more comfortable using a software created for your own operating systems, instead of using the browser to add posts. For example, you may want the freedom to define fonts, how to save the draft posts, and the general look and feel of the editor.

In this post I would like to review the MarsEdit editor for Mac OS, which offers some of the facilities described above.

MarsEditor is a product of Ranchero Software, a company that specializes on writting software for the web in the Mac OS platform. They are also the writers of the NetNewsWire news reader.

The MarsEditor is mainly composed of a panel where you can check the contents of your blog and start the edit actions. The program knows about most types of blog systems, including of course blogger.com. Other popular types of blogs supported are: moveable type, typepad, wordpress.

MarsEditor has a left panel that provides easy access to all your blogs. This makes it easier to visualize your content, since your previous posts can be displayed in the main window. This is especially nice if you have blogs in different systems, such as moveable type and blogger. Then, you can use the same interface to control them.

The post editor provides several commands for easy formatting. You can add new posts or edit previous ones with the same easy. And, as in all other mac os programs, you can use the native spell checker to avoid language-related mistakes.

The only problem I saw while using MarsEditor was the lack of support for images in blogger. I don’t know if this is a configuration problem, but I couldn’t add pictures to the server.

All in all, MarsEdit is a very nice package to handle your blog-editing tasks in MacOS. It has a 30 days free trial, so I think it is a good program to check in order to save time and post more frequently in your blog.

Among other companies, Microsoft is also trying to make a few bucks from the success of Apple in the computer market. In the last Consumer Electronics Miscrosoft released a new keyboard for the Mac plataform.

The only catch with the keyboard is that you cannot get the Apply simple in the “command” key. The reason is that Apple does not license the use of the symbol to Microsoft. “Apple controls the licensing, It’s their trademark.”

Reference: Sorry, no Apple for you: Microsoft’s bid fruitless.

Not only the hardware area of Apple presented surprises yesterday: the sofware inside the Macs has also become a little better.

Apple presented new software products that make collaboration and use of multimedia much easier that ever before. The iLife line of products has been updated. This time, the iPhoto software gained many new features to simplify working with pictures, effects, and retouchs. Garage band is able to record podcasts directly, and send them to other applications.

The main change in the package has been the addition of iWeb, a very easy to use web page design software. It integrates seamlessly with the other programs in iLife, and can also be used to upload information directly to the .iMac account. iWeb can be used to create blogs, static pages, and dinamic pages as well.

These improvements were rounded out by the announcement of the new iWork, with new versions of Pages and Keynote.

An article by CNN describes how the industry and the media view the influence of Apple in computing technology.

They describe how Apple, which is not the company with the highest market share in the PC market, is able to create products of high innovation and design. This makes each announcement of Apple to be of high importance for the rest of the industry.

Apple, without doubt, is again in the path of delievering some of the best computers even seen. The recently launched iMac is an example. The MacBook that was previewed yesterday is another example.

According to the article:

At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, a dozen PC makers announced support for the Intel Corporation’s new dual-core Intel microprocessor, saying they would deliver Core Duo computers to consumers in the spring. Apple, which didn’t start working with Intel until last spring, will beat them all to market with Core Duo-based iMac computers, which started shipping to stores as Jobs was speaking yesterday.

As a reward, the shares of Apple are again up for more than 3% in the last two days.

Well, afterwall the MacWorld didn’t bring any shaking innovation to the iPod world, only the certainty that the current geneation of iPod products is really ground breaking.

There are, however, some goodies for iPod fans that are worth notice. First, Radio Remove, the new iPod FM tuner, is a nice addition to the list of great iPod accessories. It is sleaky, and very well designed. Different from the normal accessories for the iPod, the FM tuner attachs diretly to the phones, leaving the iPod free of an extra accessory – in a sense, it works an extension of the phone chord.

Radio remote works as a good remote controler for the iPod. Changing music, sound volumes, or radio stations is much easier to do with the scroll interface, similar to the one in the iPod shuffle.

The Radio Remote also has a nice interface that can be accessed directly from the iPod. It would be great if other products could use a similar trick — although this is difficult to replicate since only Apple at this point can directly program the iPod.

Look at the iPod web page for all features of Radio Remote.

In a quick note, Daniel Terdiman posted to the News.com the incredible fact that, in the day of the introduction of the first Intel-based mac, the share price closed at $80.86.

… t’s pretty unlikely that Wall Street was able to manipulate Apple’s share price, given the thousands upon thousands of people who no doubt bought and sold the stock Tuesday. But it’s little coincidences like this that make technies and geeks sit up and take notice. Or at least I and the friend who pointed this out to me did.

The Macworld expo had today its greatest event in Steve Jobs’ keynote. Among several other announcement, Jobs presented what is certainly the most powerful laptop Apple has even created.

The new laptop, which is also the first Mac laptop using an Intel process, has a dual core processing unit which has almost four time as much processing capacity as the Power PC G4 that are used by the current generation of power books.

The MacBook, as the new laptop is called, has also more innovations, such as embedded iSight camera (with the double of the definition of current iSight models), and a larger and brighter screen. All this enclosed in a metal case that is only one inch thick.

According to the Scottsman:

COMPUTER giant Apple last night unveiled a “revolutionary” new laptop computer which it says is four to five times faster than its predecessor.
The MacBook Pro is just one inch thick and weighs 5.6lb. Its increased speed is down to a new Intel chip, the first time Apple has used Intel processors. The chip will be rolled out to all new Mac machines this year.

Related posts:
Apple iMac is first Intel-based computer
Apple set to launch Intel-inside laptop

It turns out that Kevin Rose predictions were remarkably correct. It may be good advice to hear what this guy writes the next time…

So we have the MacBook, iWord and iLife (although this is a no-brainer), Remote control and FM receiver, and iPhoto, missing only to mention the iWeb app.