Nine Inch Nails iPhone App Awaits Apple's OK

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame has revealed details on a new innovative iPhone app currently awaiting approval from Apple that's offers fans a range of interactive features.

The pioneering musician, known for openly embracing the post-CD era with music and video downloads including torrent distribution, fan remixes and the power of social media, has been developing the app since last summer when he saw fans standing in line for a NIN gig taking and sending photos.

Reznor revealed to Wired magazine and on his Twitter feed plans to use Twinkle, an iPhone Twitter app from Tapulous, as the basis for his free app.

The app is billed as a mobile window on all things NIN: music, photos, videos, message boards, and even NIN fans via a GPS-enabled feature called Nearby.

Nearby is "kind of like Twitter within the Nine Inch Nails network," Rob Sheridan, Reznor's long-time collaborator told Wired magazine.

A feature on the new iPhone app's Nearby tab will enable fans to post messages and photos from their iPhones to the Web site and have them appear on Google Earth.

"You can post a message or a photo by location, and if you're at a show you can see conversations between other people who are right there," added Sheridan.

Apple releases iPod Shuffle VoiceOver Kit 1.0.1 upgrade

You know what really gets on our nerves? When we're listening to Van der Graaf Generator (look it up!) on our newfangled iPod Shuffle and it pronounces the band's name wrong. Seriously, this is an important function. Without it working flawlessly, how are we going to know the names of the tracks we purchased on the iTunes store and placed on the device ourselves? Thankfully, someone at Apple has heard our prayers, and as of today the VoiceOver Kit 1.0.1 is available via Mac OS X software update (we're assuming that it'll pop up on the company's website at some point). The 17MB download corrects pronunciations for several artist names, as well as correcting a few "minor bugs." What bugs? Apple hasn't said. They also haven't said which names will now be pronounced correctly in that cold, robotic voice, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that Klaatu is among them. Remember Klaatu? They were pretty sweet.

Apple anxiously awaits the selling of their billionth App download celebration

Apple's going all out in anticipation of a landmark for the company -- the downloading of one billion apps in the App store. Not bad for nine months of work, if you think about it: over 110 million a month, in fact. About 27 million a week... well, you get the idea. Oh yeah, they're giving away a bunch of stuff too, so be sure to check that out if the mood strikes you.

Flash on iPhone IS Coming, Up To Adobe To Clear Tech Hurdles

Bloomberg's interview with Adobe's Shantanu Narayen reveals that Adobe is developing Flash for the iPhone, it's been in development since June 2008, and is a customized solution just for the iPhone.

Apple has said repeatedly that regular desktop Flash is too heavy (on CPU, and thus battery life) for the iPhone, whereas Flash Lite is too lousy. Jobs has coerced Adobe to create a custom solution. From Narayan's words of "the ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver," the engineering effort lies more in Adobe's engineering team than in Apple's.

Adobe actually said, back in September '08, that there would be a version released "in a very short time" if Apple approved it. Obviously either Apple rejected it, or Adobe themselves decided it wasn't quite resource-friendly enough to launch.

Apple teams up with Adobe for iPhone Flash at long last

With Android getting all Flash-ey, Apple's "Goldilocks" position on Flash -- the full Flash player is too hefty, Flash Lite is too weak -- seemed pretty untenable. Now Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has revealed that Apple and Adobe are "collaborating" on making Flash a reality on the iPhone, citing the technical challenge it presents. What's clear is that with all this work to do, it doesn't seem they're going the watered-down Flash Lite route, but we're trying not to hold our breath for a full-on, Hulu-friendly version that will finally help us get that Doogie Howser fix on the go. Naturally, there's no word on when this will hit.

QuickTime Broadcaster Update Improves Synchronization

Apple on Tuesday released an update for QuickTime Broadcaster, the company's live encoding software.

According to notes provided with the update, QuickTime Broadcaster 1.5.3 improves audio and video synchronization when recording broadcasts to disk. Supported video sources for QuickTime Broadcaster include Digital Video cameras with FireWire output for DV audio and video, an iSight Camera, and FireWire-based analog to DV converters.

The 1.0.3MB update is available for download from Apple's Web site.

Apple Yanks IMovie 6 Download

Back in 2007, Apple announced iMovie '08 would be totally new from the ground up, due to the amazing work of one of the company's engineers (who we now know was Apple's Chief Architect of Video Applications, Randy Ubillos). Not everybody was thrilled, though: many users found themselves annoyed at all the features iMovie '08 lacked compared to its predecessor, iMovie HD 6 (there's a naming scheme I'm glad Apple deep sixed).

So, in a Chamberlainian move of appeasement, Apple graciously provided a free download of iMovie HD 6 to all registered users of iLife '08. Problem solved, right? Well, Tuesday that era of appeasement came to an end, as MacRumors points out that Apple has removed the download page for iMovie HD 6.

It's easy to see why: iMovie '09 supposedly brings the re-engineered iMovie up to par with the old one in terms of features. You don't need iMovie HD 6 anymore, right? In fact, you've never needed iMovie HD 6, and we've always been at war with Oceania.

If you're itching to hold onto a little piece of the past, you can still download the iMovie HD 6 disk image directly (that's a download link there, folks) and hold onto it until Steve Jobs pries it from your cold, dead hands.

Apple to Ship ILife ‘09 January 27

Announced at Macworld Expo earlier this month, Apple on Monday announced that that iLife '09 would ship on January 27.

Apple focused the majority of its time on iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand, adding new features in each of those applications.

Among the changes in iPhoto are new features called Faces and Places, allowing users to tag people in photos and where the photos were taken. iPhoto also adds integration with Flickr and Facebook.

GarageBand has new amp models for guitar players, as well as a new Magic GarageBand Jam function. This allows users to add instruments, jam along with compositions and record the music.

iMovie adds an expanded timeline and automatic video stabilization. iMovie now identifies "jittery" motion and reduces it by comparing frames of video to subsequent and previous frames.

iLife '09 costs $79. The iLife '09 Family Pack includes five licenses and will be available for $99. The iLife Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system on or after January 6, 2009 for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95.

Five Forgotten Apple Products

With any company that's been around for more than 30 years--and with as many interesting, creative, and varied ideas Apple has had--there are bound to be a few Apple products that have slipped through history's cracks. Along with its incredible successes, Apple has made its rightful share of clunkers and obscure products that quickly sunk to the bottom of the deep and vast ocean of public memory.

Come with us now as we explore these depths and dredge up five Apple products that probably won't get the blowout anniversary treatment on the virtual pages of Macworld.com

1. QuickTake 100

Apple Computer--known for its groundbreaking work with PCs, PDAs, and...digital cameras? Indeed, 1994 saw the release of Apple's QuickTake 100, one of the first consumer digital cameras in the US. The inaugural model of the QuickTake series debuted with an awkward form factor that resembled a one-eyed pair of futuristic binoculars.

Capable of storing eight photos at 640-by-480 resolution (or 32 at 320-by-240) on a whopping 1MB of internal flash memory, it was obviously primitive by today's standards. Apple released more powerful members of the QuickTake family over the next few years, but under the weight of competition from Kodak and Fuji, the computer maker's offerings never sold well.

It's no surprise, then, that Apple unceremoniously dumped its entire QuickTake product line around 1997--likely a victim of Steve Jobs' famous house cleaning.

2. Apple Adjustable Keyboard

At some point in the early 1990s, it became legally fashionable to be concerned with computer ergonomics. Prolonged use of any keyboard can lead to hand and wrist strain, repetitive stress injuries, and carpal tunnel syndrome. As any responsible computer maker should (whispers the PR department), Apple decided to offer a "healthy" alternative to its typical keyboards. So, in 1993, the company released the Apple Adjustable Keyboard, which looked, more or less, like a typical Apple keyboard split in two (but with a honkin' big space bar). In the middle of the split was a hinge that allowed users to position the two halves of the keyboard at the most comfortable angle for them.

Unfortunately for Apple, the most comfortable position for the Apple Adjustable Keyboard was as far away from the user as possible, dooming Apple's ergonomic wonder to obscurity.

3. Mac OS X Server 1.0

"Ha! OS X Server!" you scoff, "I remember that!" Well, do you remember the first version of OS X Server? You know, the one with the Rhapsody interface?

In a time before Apple's flashy, translucent, candy-colored Aqua, in a time before OS X's consumer rollout, Apple badly needed a strong server OS.

Eager to take those first steps into a more stable world, Apple released its first production OS based on NeXT technology in March 1999: Mac OS X Server 1.0. It looked, on the surface, a lot like Mac OS 8. But digging a little further, you'd notice the larger icons, the OPENSTEP Workspace Manager instead of a Finder, and...what's this? A Unix-like shell console? Clearly all was not normal in the world of Mac.

Like the later releases of OS X, OS X Server 1.0 was based on a Unix core, owing to its NeXT heritage, but it lacked the graphical eye candy of Aqua and the iconic Dock. Soon, the OS X Public Beta would come along and sweep the last vestiges of Mac OS 8's platinum stylings away for good, leaving this OS X Server 1.0 a unique curiosity in the history of Apple.

4. Apple PC 5.25-inch Drive

Photo credit: Stephen EdmondsAs a minor nod towards achieving some form of IBM PC compatibility, Apple released its own 360K double-density 5.25-inch floppy drive for the Macintosh in the late 1980s. The sleek, low-profile external drive (rendered in the snow white design language of the day) required a special controller card to use, and it never achieved much widespread use. (After all, most people were choosing Macs to get away from IBM PC-compatibles--why bring them any closer than you have to?)

5. Apple Network Server

Pop quiz: What's the only Apple computer officially designed to never, ever run an Apple OS? If you said "the Apple Network Server," then you probably read the header of this section.

Introduced in 1996, this obscure, PowerPC-based behemoth filled a gaping hole in Apple's high-end product line: that of industrial-strength network server--a task that Apple's Mac OS just wasn't capable of at the time. Interestingly, Apple turned to IBM's AIX (a Unix derivative) as the operating system of choice, likely because the ANS's underlying hardware resembled IBM PowerPC-based servers of the day. It seems strange, but this beast was never a member of the Macintosh family; in fact, it contained a ROM that prevented the booting of Mac OS all together. If you ever see one of these sitting on a street corner, take it in and show it your sympathy, as they're quite rare.