NIMUG

LifeClever notes that there are nearly a thousand podcasts on iTunes for free which help you learn more than 35 languages.

• $1.05 billion in profit, up from $770 million.
• Just under 2.3 million Macs sold — representing 51 percent unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth. This is incredible. I remember being pleased when over 750 000 Macs were sold in a quarter. Now it’s three times that. If Apple were selling 750K Macs and had 5% of the market….and the PC market has actually shrunk….but Apple’s shipments have grown…what percentage do they have now?
• 10.6 million iPods sold, up 1 percent (but 6 percent revenue-wise). How many of these are shuffles? How many are iPod touch? That’s the important breakdown!
• 1.7 million iPhones sold. That’s not bad for this quarter and they have three more quarters before the end of the year. Apple reckons they will hit 10 million iPhones by year end.

It’s all very interesting. Still no official news on the Apple Store for Belfast, however!

Yesterday, for Apple’s portable lineup, there were massive changes.

The Macbook Pro and MacBooks were all updated with new Penryn processors. I don’t really care what that means except that they run faster and using less heat and power so there’s apparently a modest increase in battery life.
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BBC Worldwide brings iTunes users in the UK the best of British TV programmes from the BBC. Our programmes are exciting, compelling, passionate, provocative, bold, unpredictable and moving, and include some of the best comedy — Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show and Two Pints of Lager & a Packet of Crisps — and a fantastic selection of contemporary drama, including Torchwood, Spooks and Life on Mars, all available to download now. New titles will be added regularly, including top-quality documentary series and brand-new drama and comedy

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According to Larry Dignan on ZDNet:

• Hard drives are the “hot” PC accessory this holiday season.
  Of course with Leopard and Time Machine we can see that an external drive quickly becomes a must-have for anyone wanting to retain their data. It really takes the pain out of maintaining backups.
• Notebook demand remains strong.
  Anyone could have told you this. With AOL giving low-end laptops away and MacBook demand going through the roof, people are keen on having computing where they want it rather than having to place the computer in the spare room. And nothing beats using your laptop to answer those questions that strike in the middle of the night. Or is that just me?
• Anything Apple.
  No surprise here either. A recent report said that 1 iPhone and 13 iPods are being sold an hour currently in any one of the Apple Retail Stores. Like last year, this is going to increase as Christmas approaches.
• Printers are an afterthought
  I’d not really noticed but I don’t have a working printer at home currently. I’ve just not needed it. Having the iPhone makes a difference for sure because I tend to keep stuff in my email and of course, iPhone is really good for email. I never need to print anything.
• Smartphone discounts abound, but not for long.
  These discounts were in direct competition with the iPhone but they were simply not sustainable. Of course there’s a palpable difference between having a smartphone and a smart phone. Hey, it’s the same phone as Chris Moyles and Jeremy Clarkson.

We can’t buy ringtones for the iPhone yet, Apple hasn’t added it to the iTunes music store. But then if you’re like me you’ll be balking at the idea of paying another 79p for a 20 second snippet of a track you already own. Especially as their service only works with tracks you download from iTunes and not with tracks you’ve imported from your legally owned CDs!

Never fear!

Making Ringtones for the iPhone is not a complicated and difficult proposition.

Ringtones are just sounds which are in the m4r format. What is that format? Well. it’s the same as the m4a format (which is more commonly known as the AAC format) but with the file renamed from m4a to m4r.

Last night I did the following:

• I have a sound file in my iTunes I’d like to use as a ringtone. It’s the 20 second intro to Roobarb which was a childrens cartoon dating from about 1974.
• The sound file is in .WAV format which is one of the default PC sound types commonly round on the Internet. The file name is therefore roobarb.wav
• Within iTunes, I select “Convert selection to AAC” from one of the menus. If it says something different, like “Convert to MP3″ then you need to redefine your import preferences in iTunes to the AAC encoder.
• Once converted, locate the file (using Show file in the iTunes contextual menu).
• Drag it to the desktop and rename it from roobarb.m4a to roobar.m4r
• Go back into iTunes and delete the listing for the AAC version.
• Drag the newly renamed m4r file into iTunes.
• Sync your iPhone
• Bud-da-bing, you have a new Ringtone

Too hard?

You have another choices.

iToner from Ambrosia Software will do exactly the same thing with a pretty interface for about £7.50 and doesn’t require hacking your iPhone. That’s because it’s just automating what I described above.

You’re also not limited to 20 second snippets (though some of the sound effects that come with iMovie and Garageband would be great for use as Ringtones) and you can make your own by chopping up an existing song using something like Cacophony, Quicktime Pro, Sound Studio or even Garageband and iMovie! If you like we’ll demo some of this at the NiMUG meeting next Friday!

(Finally a use for googling items like “Best Guitar Riff Ever”)

From Electronista:

“Simply put, Apple is no longer the leader in the realm of hard drive-based players,” says PC Magazine reviewer Tim Gideon. “While the Zune 80GB and the iPod classic are both outstanding devices, the Zune has more features–and it’s more fun.”

Sounds ominous. The Zune beating the iPod in a fair review? Surely there must be some mistake???

The iPod classic is widely believed to be a form of stopgap measure for Apple, which is gradually transitioning to an all-flash lineup headlined by the iPod touch but feels obligated to maintain a hard drive-based player to address the wide gap in capacity between the differing storage formats.

That explains it.

Microsofts latest unreleased Zune model competes well (on features, if not compatibility or battery life) compared to the previous models of Apple’s iPod line, a line that they’re slowly killing off in order to embrace the iPod touch and iPhone.

That must be pretty depressing. The latest and greatest from Redmond just about beats the hard disk based ‘Video’ iPod which Apple released two years ago yesterday. The updated models since then have just really increased the capacity of the micro-hard drives.

They used to say: Windows 95: Macintosh ‘89 but it’s beginning to look like Microsoft is closing that gap.

Look out Steve - they’re only two years behind now!!!!!!!

We’re having our first meeting of 2007 on Friday the 23rd of November.The venue is Windsor Lawn Tennis Club which is located on Windsor Avenue in Belfast. There’s plenty of parking and you enter in through the main doors and come to the downstairs meeting room. It’s quite exposed and not large but we need to get an idea of the numbers before we book the bigger room upstairs.We’ll definitely have tables, WiFi and we’re going to hit up our local AASP to see if they will buy the MUG a Projector. Donations welcome :)The meeting will starts at 7 pm and we’ll aim to finish up at 9 pm. The format is very fast and loose for the first meeting, just as an attempt to get everyone talking. We’ll also be looking out for volunteers to give demos. The turnout will be the best gauge of success!

Agenda

• A General Hello
• Leopard
• iPhone
• iPod touch
• Apple Stores in Belfast?
• Questions? Ideas? Wrap-up

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..to the new NiMUG web site.

We’re finishing off 2007 with a new revamp of the web site which had stood the test of time and was getting a bit crufty around the edges and installed a brand new Wordpress installation which will usher in a new world of interactivity!