Diego's Rants » apple

The all new 52″ Apple Cinema Display.

Diego Massanti — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:15:27 +0000

No words….

The new 52" HD Apple Cinema Display

Updated HE-AAC (aacPlus) reference encoder for Mac OS X

Diego Massanti — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:10:55 +0000

This is an updated build of the 3GPP group AAC Plus (or HE-AAC) reference audio encoder for Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” or newer.

You can get the binary build (3 way universal binary with PowerPC, i386 and x86_64 architectures) here:

enhAacPlusEnc for Mac OS X Leopard, Binary build with 3 architectures.

Xcode project (3.2 or newer) can be downloaded here:

enhAacPlusEnc Xcode project (3.2 or newer)

For more info visit the original post here.

HE-AAC Support in the QuickTime API, finally.

Diego Massanti — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:18:05 +0000

Looks like Apple finally added HE-AAC audio decoding capabilities to both QuickTime X and iTunes 9. I have been praying for this for a long long time, seems like it is finally a fact and it works flawlessly.

The digital certificate breakage

Diego Massanti — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:42:29 +0000

So um… some weeks ago I released a new version of MediaInfo Mac with several fixes on my own code, with also a newer build of the MediaInfo Lib by Jerome Martinez, and, finally, a newer version of Sparkle (the amazing framework that i use for the automated software updates).
To make a really long story very short, Sparkle changed an important behavior: Now each and every update that I release has to be signed with a digital certificate, which is nothing but good, because it gives an extra layer of security for the final users.
Bad news are that I totally missed that part in Sparkle’s release docs, so I released an update without the certificate, and from there on, users were stuck on that version without the possibility to update.
I still had the ability to show to the users a nice dialog informing them about my error and kindly asking to update manually, but even that, i still can see that a LOT of people is still using the broken version (0.7.7.58), which leads me to the following conclusion:
Most people will NOT upgrade their software unless the process is totally automatic and painless, not even users of MediaInfo which are usually over the “Average Joe”.

This can be seen on the usage statistics that i keep (which I did reset some hours ago btw, due to some preparations for the upcoming MediaInspector beta) where you can see that there are still a LOT of users stuck on 0.7.7.58.
So to sum things up:

If you are using Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”, the latest version that you can use is 0.7.17.3, get it here.
If you are on Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” or newer, just get the latest version here.

Cheers!.

Diego.

Why the new tabs in Safari 4 are a shame…

Diego Massanti — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:44:13 +0000

So yesterday I downloaded the new Safari 4 beta release from Apple… and yes, it is faster, the new “top sites” feature is kinda “cool”, but I happen to see way too much “Chrome like” UI features here, specially, the new tabs design. Apple clearly wanted to imitate the tabs in Chrome, but they did it wrong, because, if you have 3 opened tabs and you want to reach the 3rd one, the distance between Tab 1 and Tab 3 is more than 2/3 of your screen (or more than 1000 pixels in most standard screens).

Die hard apple fanboys have told me things like “It’s just a matter of getting used to them” or “You have to use keyboard shortcuts to switch tabs”.

Well, let me tell you that i see no reason why i should “get used” to something that I don’t like at all, and let me also tell you that when I’m browsing the web, i usually DON’T use the keyboard at all which is why I’m blaming at the new tabs. Of course, thanks god you can switch back to the old tabs scheme, but right now, the preference is hidden, so i really hope that apple adds this as a standard preference for the final release.

Anyway, a video is better than a thousand words.

Last minute note…. while editing this post, i found that Safari 4 breaks the Rich Text Editor in WordPress, but since it is yet a beta, i guess it’s ok.

iPhone’s “Code Signing”: Is there any limit for the ridiculous ?

Diego Massanti — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:45:52 +0000

Some hours ago i was pointed to an interesting post about the new “code signing” features that Apple is going to implement for the iPhone software developers, and honestly, I am speechless…
There was a time when i used to believe that there was a good reason for Apple to be so closed in some aspects: To keep the user experience as clean and smooth as possible.
That could explain several behaviors in the iTunes Music Store, in the iPod and of course in the whole Mac platform, but after reading several times this great article at Rogue Amoeba’s blog, just one thing comes to my mind… “is there any limit ?”.

I still can’t believe the fact that it is just NOT possible to load an application inside an iPhone unless it’s blessed (read: digitally signed) by Apple, and yes, you read it right, not even for testing purposes, which means that if you want to start writing some code for the iPhone, you have to a) buy a $99 testing certificate, and b) buy an extra iPhone compatible with that extra certificate.
But the story continues….

Apple seems to have a list of things that they are not going to bless, like for example Porn, or “Bandwidth Hog” applications, and there is also the “unforeseen” category, which translated to plain English means “anything that we don’t like at all or we consider bad for our business model”.

I happen to believe that protecting the user experience as much as you can is a good thing, and that is mainly the reason because Mac OS is more enjoyable than any other OS out there, no discussion there, but when a company starts telling me what I am allowed to run (or not) on a device that i OWN, I think that something is really wrong. In my particular case, I don’t own an iPhone (and not even planning to own one, mostly because I use Nextel, and I wouldn’t change it for anything), for the contrary i own a Motorola headset, and i can load any application on it, or even write my own if I feel like.

No matter how much I love Apple and their products, I think that freedom of choice is one of the most valuable things that our society must protect, and while I read a lot of forum / blog posts by the so called “Apple fanboys” saying things like “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it” I just don’t want to believe what could happen if a company with this way of thinking becomes the market leader.

I have yet to see the evolution of this whole thing, but right now this just makes me re-think if some other eternally blamed companies are really sooooo evil after all…

“Here’s to the crazy ones”. Remake of the “Think Different” soundtrack.

Diego Massanti — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:34:49 +0000

It was some days ago that i had some free time and i decided to re-create the glorious soundtrack from the Apple’s “Think Different” TV commercial.
I don’t know who is the original author of this, so i cant really credit him / her, but whoever you are, i really love this track, in fact, i love it that much, that i decided to make it again.
This is not an “exact” replica of the original of course, because i play it with my own style, but if you know the original, you will find that this one is pretty close to it.

You can listen or download the song by going HERE.

For the techies out there:

The Piano comes from the fabulous Steinberg’s “The Grand”.
The Strings are from the Miroslav Vitous – String Ensembles AKAI library.
All this has been sequenced and mixed in my beloved Cubase sequencer and the reverb used is Waves IR-1.

The first ever iPod commercial by Apple

Diego Massanti — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 09:14:24 +0000

This is the first ever commercial for the iPod released in 2001.
Not really a lot to say about this one, i personally don’t find it really “creative” when compared with other Apple campaigns, but i think it deserves a place because it was “the first”.
The song used for this one is “Take California” by The Propellerheads.
Enjoy one of the very few high quality versions available on the web.

Please note that you will need a 512kbps internet connection (or faster) in order to watch this video without interruptions.

[vidipress mode="rtmp" rtmpserver="rtmp://plusmediaserver.com/media/" rtmpid="iPod/1st_ipod_2001"/]

Apple’s Think Different TV commercial, in good quality…

Diego Massanti — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:41:25 +0000

As many of my friends already know, im working on an online archive of Apple related commercials and institutional videos, so well, some days ago i received a series of uMatic tapes, and i found this inside one of them.

This is, in my humble opinion, one of the better (if not the better one) examples of clean institutional advertising & branding, and one of those commercials that “touch your heart”.
Quick Tip: In recent pre-releases of Mac OS X Leopard, you will find the whole narration for this commercial in the high resolution icon of the “Text Edit” application.

I hope you enjoy this, because you wont find a better quality version in the whole web
Please note that you will need a 512kbps internet connection (or faster) in order to watch this video without interruptions.

[vidipress mode="rtmp" rtmpid="massanti.com/td_hq" /]

Quote from Wikipedia: “Think Different was an advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in the late 1990s by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. It was used in a famous television commercial, several print advertisements, and several television advertisements for Apple products. Apple’s use of the slogan was discontinued with the start of the Apple Switch ad campaign in 2002. The slogan may have been a play on the venerable IBM Think motto coined by Thomas J. Watson.”