iDale

There isn’t much I want to do on a gloomy weekend in JHB, nor is there much one can actually do – so I decided to stay in on Friday evening after I dashed out to get some food…

You’ll know that I’m not usually a whiner, but unlike the weather, there is something that Global Wrapps in Morningside can do about the broken glass panel that covers their food from sneezing clients, coughing kids and general airborne germs – replace it. It’s been like that for almost two months and at this point I’m ready to write them off completely because it’s just plain unhygienic. Witness it…

Global Wrapps Morningside - spread the word as they spread the germs

In their defense, they do make a mean pineapple & chocolate desert wrapp. And to wash it all down – the best stuff on earth…

Fact: Snapple is the best stuff on earth.

Now that you know it only took 24 horny rabbits 6 years to multiply into 2 million hoppers, it’s time to introduce you to my Saturday…

A late sleep followed by another spectacular lunch at Life in Sandton Square – I seem to discover something rad there every single time I pull in. Don’t you just love these lights?

Life - a fine blend of edibles and interiors

I used to enjoy stopping past the “new” Vida after lunch, but it seems the doors have been chained closed for over two months now. I enquired and received a response from the coffee makers that the store is under construction – bullshit.

You see, when a store is under construction, people go in and people go out. Loud noises come from the inside and generally there is a sign that says something along the lines of “under construction” or “work in progress”. Nah ah, not here… if you peer through the security gate you’ll notice dust gathering on 2 month old cookies… what gives Vida?

Those construction Ninjas sure know how to take their time.

On Sunday I decided it was time to get out of my hood and head to the East. I stopped by the ever popular Oriental City in Bruma – it’s one of those Chinese markets run by Nigerians selling loads of no-name brand goods and knock-off stuff like these Chanel and Hello Kitty iPad covers…

Oriental City Bruma

Come to think of it, I’ve been there about ten times and never actually brought anything until yesterday – I found myself a new wallet – small, folds without a button and no coin holder pocket. You’ll be surprised how long I’ve been searching for something like this.

I then headed to Eastgate – officially the most confusing shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere – they could have filmed Labyrinth in that place and got the freaky extras at no additional cost.

I found a Jay Jays store which I love. They sell those rad licensed comic shirts like Ghostbusters, Superman and Spongebob. They also stock (but never sell) crap like these sun glasses…

Guaranteed to get you laid - only by something mechanical tho.

Being the kid I am, I couldn’t help myself wandering into the toy shop. It must be so radical being a kid in this day and age. The stuff they have at their disposal is so awesome, I had to get something…

I settled for an antiquated 1000 piece puzzle of New York City to keep me out of trouble in December. When it’s done I want to get it sealed together, framed and hang it up in the pad.

Puzzles. Keeping grown up kids challenged since 200AD

In the evening I logged on to the Apple App Store and finally downloaded Weber’s On the Grill app for the iPad – It’s the best thing since Twitter.

I found a comprehensive recipe and guide on how to prepare a Beer Can Chicken, so I went to my nearest Spar and purchased all the ingredients I needed to make what I thought to be the ultimate dinner (at the time of course).

So I lit myself a fire in the Weber, prepared the complex chicken rub, cracked open the beer, made the marinade and then removed the bird from it’s packaging…

…it was off.

Weber iPad Beer Bird

So there I was with my fire, my spice, my beer and one rancid chicken. Not the most ideal way to end off a weekend. In the end I ate some rice and fell asleep to the sound of rain.

Apples free iOS 4.2 Software Update was released yesterday. This is important stuff because it brings all-new features to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices, letting you do even more with one of the world’s greatest mobile operating systems.

I’ve installed it and have a run down of the most important implications it’s had for my iPad in particular…

Multitasking

This is the big one and allows you to be more productive as you work, have more fun while you play, or do a little of both. It’s really smooth and efficient and doesn’t affect the performance of the app you’re working in or drain the battery…

Browsing while running 3 apps in the background

Folders

You can now have more room for more apps with drag-and-drop simplicity. You can declutter your workspace and sort your apps for fast access to your favorites…

Pop your best and worst apps into folders

AirPrint

Another big play, AirPrint makes it simple to print email, photos, web pages, and documents with a couple of taps. In true Apple style there’s no software to download, no drivers to install, and no cables to connect…

Print anything from anywhere

Find My iPad

This feature used to be available only to paying MobileMe users, but now anyone can locate their missing device and protect its data. Once you set it up, you can find your lost device on a map, display a message on its screen, remotely set a passcode lock, and initiate a remote wipe to delete your data. And if you eventually find your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can restore everything from your last backup…

Locate your devices from me.com - now free

And there you have it!

Brings your pics together!

I’ve purchased and downloaded a lot of apps on my iPhone in the past year. But over time I’ve come to realise how much money I wasted on novelty junk allowing the real gems of value to shine through. AutoStitch is of the latter – a fantastic app that was worth every cent, works as advertised and adds a huge amount of regular value to my device.

AutoStitch iPhone is a fully automatic image stitcher. It unleashes the potential of your iPhone’s camera to create wide-angle views and panoramas with any arrangement of photos – horizontally, vertically or both!

Just look at what I shot this morning from my office window…

9 Pics Stitched together - click this bad boy to see the big picture!

This app clearly has some advanced technology behind the scenes, but on the outside it’s very simple to use…

1. Snap a bunch of photos on your phone from a single standpoint
2. Open AutoStitch, select the photos from your library and press “stitch”
3. Watch AutoStitch go to work by stitching your photos together
4. Crop, save, email or even post your panorama photo to Facebook

A few special features also add some extra value and are worth being pointed out:

• Unlike the native iPhone email app, AutoStitch’s in-app email sends your photos at their full resolution
• Blending options let you tweak your quality outputs where photos join one another
• Auto-exposure settings assist with variations in brightness of your stitched photos

Get AutoStitch from the iTunes store here.

See more examples on the AutoStitch Flickr Group.

Yesterday Apple made four big announcements that give a glimpse into the future of notebooks, content creation, operating systems and video-calling. Here is the roundup, in bite-size chunks, for you to see:

1. The New MacBook Air

The all-new MacBook Air is the first of the next generation of notebooks that will replace mechanical hard disks and optical drives with Internet services and solid-state flash storage. It’s available in 11-inch and 13-inch models and weighs under 1kg – it’s Apple’s lightest, most mobile notebook ever. The MacBook Air uses the same solid-state storage technology as iPad to deliver instant-on responsiveness, up to seven hours of battery life, and a whopping 30 days of standby time.

It's so thin and doesn't use a hard drive!

The Air is also the first notebook from Apple to use aluminum unibody technology for the screen housing as well as the main body of the machine. Pricing is very competitive and starts at $999.

2. iLife ’11 with new iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand

This is a major upgrade that gives Mac users even more great ways to create and share photos, movies, and music. iPhoto ’11 has a whole new look, with stunning full-screen modes for Faces, Places, and Events.

Add a name to a photo in Faces - it doubles as a Facebook name tag

iMovie ’11 makes it easier than ever to edit videos and quickly transform them into fun theatrical trailers for easy posting online. GarageBand ’11 introduces new ways to improve your playing and create great sounding songs with Flex Time and Groove Matching. New integration with YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook are exciting and deliver amazing features like automatic tagging of your Facebook friends in your iMovie video footage – That’s impressive!

3. FaceTime to the Mac

Apple announced the public beta of FaceTime for Mac, an entirely new application that allows Mac users to video call iPhone 4 and iPod touch users as well as other Mac users. Featuring an intuitive interface, FaceTime for Mac automatically uses your Address Book contacts so there’s no need to create special buddy lists, and it works seamlessly with the built-in camera and mic on Mac notebooks, iMac, and Apple LED Cinema Displays.

Macs, iPhones and iPods can now talk to each other!.With video!

The public beta is available immediately as a free download. This could be a revolutionary step in providing a new alternative and accessible means of video communication to replace land lines and possibly cell phones down the line – you can video call on your iPod Touch for goodness sake!

4. Sneak Peek of Mac OS X Lion

This will be the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system and will ship next summer.

Best iPad & iPhone interface elements coming to Macs!

Lion is inspired by many of iPad’s software innovations and features include the Mac App Store, a new way to discover, install, and automatically update desktop apps; Launchpad, a new home for all of your Mac apps; system-wide support for full-screen apps; and Mission Control, which unifies Exposé, Dashboard, Spaces, and full-screen apps into an innovative new view of everything running on your Mac, allowing you to instantly navigate anywhere. This is going to be the big one!

Bonus: Apple share price

As usual, Apple’s stock went wild as the announcements were released. Look at yesterdays share price with online news items (red dots) plotted on the graph:

Stock graph with realtime RSS news is a feature of See More Markets from Peresys

The day ended off on a high, but the coming week will tell if investors are as excited as I am!

Apple puts it pretty well:

“While everyone else was busy trying to keep up with iPhone, we were busy creating amazing new features that make iPhone more powerful, easier to use, and more indispensable than ever. The result is iPhone 4. The biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone.”

I’ve got to agree! Just look at it and see some of the highlighted features!

FaceTime

People have been dreaming about video calling for decades. And yes, some phones have attempted to deliver video chat, but lets face it, it was shit! iPhone 4 makes it a reality to share a smile from across the globe over Wi-Fi. And it works right out of the box. No other phone makes staying in touch this much fun.

Retina Display

This is plainly the sharpest, most vibrant, highest-resolution phone screen ever, with four times the pixel count of previous iPhone models. In fact, the pixel density is so high that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels. Which makes text amazingly crisp and images stunningly sharp.

Multitasking

Now you can run your favorite third-party apps — and switch between them instantly — without slowing down the performance of the foreground app or draining the battery unnecessarily. No other phones do this!

HD video recording and editing

You can shoot your own movies in high definition. Let me repeat that: You can shoot your own movies in high definition! Even in low-light settings, thanks to a backside illumination sensor and built-in LED light. Then edit and create your own mini-masterpiece right on iPhone 4 using the new iMovie app that has themes, titles, and transitions.

5-Megapixel Camera with LED Flash

The new 5-megapixel camera has a built-in LED flash. The advanced backside illumination sensor captures great pictures even in low light. And the new front-facing camera makes it easy to take self-portraits. Bang!

And you can get a variety of skins to dress it up too:

While you’re here, go see an iPod Shuffle covered in sweet chocolate.

Today, after a week of rumors, Apple released a few exciting and revolutionary products. I’ve summed up the important parts and compiled the ultimate quick-look into their latest lineup…

Meet the Magic Mouse

The entire mouse has a seamless multi-touch surface!

It’s got low-profile design and seamless top shell – so sleek and dramatically different, it brings a whole new feel to the way you get around on your Mac. You can’t help but marvel at its smooth, buttonless appearance! The Multi-Touch area covers the top surface of Magic Mouse, and the mouse itself is the button.

Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere. Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won’t confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you’re just resting your hand on it.

Click
Magic Mouse is an advanced point-and-click mouse that lets you click and double-click anywhere on its Multi-Touch surface.

Two-button click
Magic Mouse functions as a two-button mouse when you enable Secondary Click in System Preferences. Left-handed users can reassign left and right click, as well.

360° scroll
Brush one finger along the Multi-Touch surface to scroll in any direction and to pan a full 360 degrees.

Screen zoom
Hold down the Control key on your keyboard and scroll with one finger on Magic Mouse to enlarge items on your screen.

Two-finger swipe
Using two fingers, swipe left and right along the Multi-Touch surface to advance through pages in Safari or browse photos in iPhoto.

The New iMac with 21.5-inch and 27-inch displays!

The new iMac has come a long way from the first 15-inch iMac. A 21.5-inch or 27-inch display with edge-to-edge glass covers nearly the entire front of the enclosure. When all you see is the display, nothing gets between you and what’s onscreen. Movies, TV shows, websites, photos -everything looks stunning on the new 16:9 widescreen iMac display with higher resolution!

The new 21.5-inch iMac features 1920-by-1080 HD resolution. Apple engineers could simply have stretched that resolution up and out for the 27-inch iMac. Instead, they took the display well beyond HD with 2560-by-1440 resolution. That’s 78 percent more pixels than the 21.5-inch iMac!

In addition to every normal input, the new machine also has a SD card slot built-in to transfer your photos and videos to and from your iMac just as fast as you’re able to take them.  Just insert your camera’s memory card and import your photos to iPhoto.

Wall mountable? Yes, it’s easy to give your iMac a place of honor on the wall. The 27-inch iMac is compatible with the VESA Mount Adapter Kit for use with wall mounts and articulating arms.

Last, but not least, the specs are incredible! 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with 8MB shared L3 cache; Turbo Boost dynamic performance up to 3.46GHz; Hyper-Threading for up to eight virtual cores

Lastly the Durable Unibody MacBook

A mere 25.5 mm thin and even lighter at 1.8 kg, the sleek new MacBook cuts a slim profile on any desk (or in any backpack or briefcase). It features a new seamless, more durable unibody enclosure with rounded contours that make it easy to pick up and slide into and out of your bag.

And it’s made of rugged polycarbonate that withstands the rough and tumble of everyday life – at school, at work, or while traveling. Even the bottom of the new MacBook feels different. Covering its entire surface is a nonslip material that keeps your MacBook right where you put it, whether on a desk, table, or airplane tray.

Brilliant LED-Backlit Display - A glossy widescreen display with spectacular color and instant-on brightness.

Built-in 7-Hour Battery - Work or play for up to 7 hours between charges thanks to the long-lasting battery.1

Glass Multi-Touch Trackpad - Plenty of room to navigate and more innovative ways to interact with your MacBook.

Under the Hood - Advanced NVIDIA graphics, a fast Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory, and a large drive up to 500GB.

MagSafe and More - A magnetic power connection, built-in wireless, SuperDrive, and ports for your everyday tasks.

Built-in iSight camera - Use the camera and iChat software to stay connected with friends and family.

Visit Apple for more info on everything above.

If you use your MacBook as your main desktop computer, then you might find the BookArc appealing…

It’s a stand for your MacBook (regular, Air and Pro all work) that keeps it out of the way while it’s hooked up to your external monitor. You can position it so all your cables are and out of the way – personally, I can never have enough monitors, so I prefer a stand that actually lets me use the built-in screen.

Either way, it can be yours for $49 (about R390) from Twelvesouth.

That’s right Mac lovers, it’s being released this week, right on schedule!

A glimpse at some of the new enhancements:

More Advanced Finder includes 64-bit support

It’s more responsive from top to bottom, with snappier performance throughout the Finder. And it includes new features such as customizable Spotlight search options and an enhanced icon view that lets you thumb through a multipage document or watch a QuickTime movie.

New look and features for Exposé

It’s now integrated in the Dock, so you can just click and hold an application icon in the Dock and all the windows for that application will unshuffle so you can quickly change to another one. So if you hold down the Pages icon, you’ll be shown the various templates for which you want to create a new file from.

Faster Time Machine backups

Now Snow Leopard makes Time Machine up to 80 percent faster and reduces the time it takes to complete your initial backup to Time Capsule.

50% Faster wake up and shut down

Your Mac wakes from sleep up to twice as quickly when you have screen locking enabled. And shutting down is up to 80 percent faster, saving precious moments. Time to connect to wireless and ethernet connections is also reduced!

Smaller footprint

Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing up roughly 7GB of space for you.

A Leap forward for Quicktime

It includes a completely new QuickTime Player application with a clean, uncluttered design, a new trimming interface, and easy uploads to YouTube and MobileMe.

The Right Service

The Services menu in Mac OS X lets you use features of one application while working in another. In Snow Leopard, services are more simplified, streamlined, and helpful. The Services menu is contextual, so it shows just the services appropriate for the application you’re using or content you’re viewing rather than all available services.

And the Winner… Built-in Support for Microsoft Exchange

the Mac is the only computer with built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. So you can use your Mac — with all the features and applications you love, including Mail, iCal, and Address Book — at home and at work and have all your messages, meetings, and contacts in one place.

Not too long ago, we showed you the new Apple iPod Shuffle. Today we’re showing you a nifty case for it that is shaped like a piece of chocolate. Isn’t it sweet?

It will protect your tiny music player, but there is no guarantee some fat kid won’t mistake it for the real thing!

Although Mac’s are largely known to be much easier and more efficient to use, there’s no doubt why people just can’t put them down. The HyperMac is here to end the problem of having to charge up after hours and hours of potable usage. 4 different options are available to have your MacBook running for up to 32 hours on a single charge.