#FF00AA

@apple@

Apple’s iTV to have a hard drive after all. I’m confused now — sure, it’s definintely more in line with a $300 price, but I’m very unsure as to what size the hard disk might be, and what it’s actually going to be used for. And how they’re going to justify not including DVR functionality, then. And, finally, how they’re fitting a hard drive and embedded power supply in a box that seems to be a third of the Mac mini’s height.

Anyway, it’s coming from a Disney CEO quote, and I’m not exactly sure he knows what he’s talking about (neither regarding Apple’s secret projects, nor as to what a hard drive actually is).

 

@apple@

Security fix for AirPort drivers. Apple says they found the flaws on their own while investigating about that SecureWorks thing, without any sort of information from them; SecureWorks is going to say that’s indeed the flaw they’d demonstrated, and they’d reported it to Apple, and it’s all thanks to them; nobody will ever know which of the two parties was more honest on that matter.

The sure thing is, that’s going to be poor PR for Apple in the coming days. And they’ll have brought it upon themselves, playing with words like they did — even supposing they only said the truth, they should have focused much more on the “we’re currently auditing our drivers” part.

However, they could also have swept the found bugs under the carpet and waited a few months before they released the update, so we can be thankful they didn’t.

 

@apple@

iPod nano box becomes DIY nano dock. Now that’s ecological and it’ll please Al Gore. And it’s kewl.

 

@apple@

Since iTunes video playback is still laggy, but that’s still the best option for podcast management, here’s a little AppleScript to send the selected podcast (or any other file) to QuickTime Player, based on that one :

tell application “iTunes”

try

set selectedItem to last item of selection

set selectedItemLocation to location of selectedItem

set selectedItemCount to played count of selectedItem

set played count of selectedItem to (selectedItemCount + 1)

on error errMsg number errNum

display dialog “Error ” & errNum & “:” & return & return & errMsg buttons {“Cancel”} default button 1 with icon caution

end try

end tell

 

tell application “QuickTime Player”

activate

open selectedItemLocation

end tell

I’m no AppleScript guru, so this could most certainly be optimized to handle multiple selections — I had to tinker quite a bit in order to be able to handle cases when the selection is a podcast feed.^*

Now I use Proxi to execute that AppleScript when I press Cmd-Enter while iTunes is active — the Proxi Editor for those conditionals is a bit counter-intuitive, so here’s a screenshot.

 

^* A little hint that would have saved me a lot of trouble if I’d figured it out beforehand (which I would have very easily if I were more proficient at using Script Editor): as far as AppleScript support is concerned, there’s no such thing as podcast feeds; if the user selection is a feed (as opposed to an individual episode), AppleScript just sees it as a selection of all the episodes, either downloaded (file tracks) or not (URL tracks). All in chronological order, apparently, hence the last item. Or maybe not. You’re much better off selecting the individual episode before you trigger the script.