Apple recently announced at Macworld 2008 that they would start renting movies from ALL the major motion picture studios. With all the excitement many people forget that you can still buy movies on iTunes. Movies are for sale from Paramount, Lionsgate, MGM, as well as all the studios currently owned by Disney.

Paramount seems to have the largest library. All of these studios are also renting some of their features while just offering others for sale. Fox, Sony, and the other major studios have started to allow rentals through iTunes (requires version 7.6) and these movies will be viewable on the computer, ipod, iphone, and apple tv.

To access movie rentals open the iTunes store and go to the movie section. There will be a number of areas advertising movies for rent. Feel free to browse through the available movies by content categories or searching for a title that you hope is currently available. The library is continually being updated so you may have to wait to watch a certain movie on your new iPod Touch while riding public transportation into work.

Besides all of the really useful features that makes OS X stand out from Windows, there is also the spoken user interface (also known as speakable items). This nifty (big) little feature gives demonstrates how well polished the operating really is. The spoken user interface was developed mainly to assist people with disabilities, but since most macs also have built in microphones, anyone can use it. Instead of interacting with the computer using the keyboard and mouse, you can speak commands. The commands range from the simple telling you what day it is, to sending an email to someone in your address book (it will recognize their names too).

You can activate the spoken user interface under the “Speech” section of System Preferences. The system preferences screen looks like this:

Your first task is to enable speakable items by clicking the “on” radio button next to “Speakable Items”. Normally, this will enable your Mac’s internal microphone to start listening for voice commands as well as display the Speakable items interface window. I’ve noticed the microphones that come with macs are very sensitive to background noise so once you turned on speakable items you will want to click on the calibrate button to adjust the mic’s sensitivity as well as test your Mac’s “ears”.The calibration screen looks like this:

The speech recognition software can adapt itself to the person speaking and so calibration helps your mac “learn” your voice. The phrases to the left are actual commands your mac understands (there are lots more). Go ahead and calibrate, it’s a great moment when your mac hears you for the first time.

With speakable items on, you’re probably noticed a new little window appear that looks something like this:

This is the speakable items interface. The “Esc” means that I have to press the Escape key in order for my Mac to listen for voice commands. You can change that to another key in Speech Preferences. Also, you can have your mac listen for a special word instead of pressing a key. The little down arrow will bring up a menu where you can open a list of available speech commands or go to the speech system preferences. There is an impressive number of commands to help you accomplish tasks simply by using your voice. My personal favorite is still “Tell me a joke”. You really haven’t experienced all that OS X has to offer until it tells you a joke (or two).

Like many of the previous Macworlds, 2008 was filled with anticipation, excitement, and rumors. But after everything was said and done Apple and Mr. Steve Jobs delivered again on many of our expectations.

Apple announced essentially 2 new products with significant updates to their other product offerings.

THE NEW PRODUCTS

Time Capsule is apples latest addition to Time Machine, the backup software included in OS X 10.5 Leopard. It is a wireless approach to allow multiple computers in a home to backup their data to one location using Time Machine. Time Capsule comes in either 500 gb or 1tb sizes and includes wireless access. The drive is a great compliment to their other new product, the Macbook Air.

Macbook Air is the thinnest notebook ever. It literally fits into the size of a business envelope and supports a 13.3 inch monitor. Its thickness ranges from .16 to .76 inches. Apple requested a custom chip form intel for the notebook and they delivered a 1.6ghz and 1.8ghz Core 2 duo chip that is a bit slower than the Macbook and Macbook Pro notebook lines. Intel integrated graphics provides the video capabilities and with micro-DVI you can connect the notebook to external monitors.

Some things to consider before picking up the Macbook Air for yourself is some of the features it lacks:

1. No optical Drive (But with the Included Remote Disk Software you can access your desktop CD/DVD drive). This may not be the best bet if you’re constantly swapping dvds on your notebook.
2. 1 USB port and No Firewire port. The Macbook Air does include Bluetooth for peripherals devices but don’t plan on connecting a number of USB devices without first picking up a USB hub.
3. Lack of Swappable Battery. Like the iPod and iPhone the Battery is built into the notebook itself. If you feel like you’ll need to use more than 5 hours of battery at a time, this new ultra mobile computer may not be for you.

Despite some of the things the notebook lacks, its seems to be a very impressive mobile computer. I also noticed that it comes with 2gb of RAM standard. Looks like Apple learned from the lack of performance on the standard Macbook line. Great for business travelers or students who plan on using them in their class studies. Priced at $1799. Complete System Specs can be found at the Macbook Air specification site.

PRODUCT UPDATES

Although these products have been part of the Apple line the updates make them feel new again.

iPhone received an update to version 1.1.3. This update includes some added Google Map features, the ability to send one sms messages to multiple people, adjustment of the home page, and clips of webpages you visit. These updates will quickly be used by all individuals already sporting an iPhone

iPod Touch is now literally an iPhone without the phone. Current Touch owners can upgrade to the latest software for $20 while new purchasers will find the software already part of the touch. The $20 to upgrade is pretty weak considering new purchasers won’t have to pay anything extra for the added features. Mail, Maps, and additional widgets will be great compliments to the mobile media player. Additionally it will make each iPod Touch owner that much more comfortable with upgrading their phone to iPhone the next time they plan on picking up a new product.

Apple TV now supports rentals from all major motion picture studios! This is wonderful news for us end users. Not only can you now rent movies through iTunes but you can do it with Apple TV and without the need of downloading it to your computer. I imagined that such an update would be included after the mobile iTunes purchase was so successful for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Additionally, the Apple TV will support HD content, including the new Rental services. Renting a movie will cost between $2.99 and $4.99 depending on how new the movie is and what quality of video and sound you select. It will be interesting to see how Netflix and Blockbuster rental services respond to the new product offering. Movies will be available for 30 days from purchase or 24 hours after you start watching the rental. And like other video content you can take the movies with you on your iPhone or iPod. All these features will be available via a software update to the Apple TV

Overall the Macworld Keynote event was great. It included some great new products and some wonderful updates to the current line of products that we already love. Additionally its positioned the Apple TV to really compete in the living room this year. Check back here at maciverse.com for new tutorials and reviews about these new products.

I came across an application that enables the use of your Nintendo Wiimote on your Mac. DarwiinRemote can be downloaded at Sourceforge.net. Its a small application that uses both the motion sensors or the IR sensors to allow you to navigate around OSX as you would with your mouse.

1. Installation
Installation is easy, simple download the file and drag it to your applications folder. You can of course launch the application from the dmg file if you’re not sure you’ll want to keep it on your system.

2. Enable Bluetooth
The Wiimote will communicate with your computer through Bluetooth so make sure you have this enabled. You should be able to do this by selecting the Bluetooth icon on your menu bar and clicking Enable

3. Sync the Wiimote to your Mac
Open DarwiinRemote and push the 1 and 2 buttons on your wiimote simultaneously. This will put your wiimote in discover mode and DarwiinRemote will let you know when its found your wiimote.

If you have problems detecting the wiimote or can’t connect it to your system at all, close DarwiinRemote, open it again, and try to connect the wiimote to the system again. If this does not work. Go to System Preferences and then to Bluetooth. Remove the Wiimote from the device list and then open DarwiinRemote and try again. I had to do this once and it worked perfectly.

4. Using the Wiimote
Once your mac and the wiimote have been synced you should be able to control the pointer as you would with you mouse by enabling mouse. The application gives you the option to do so using the motion control or through IR control. IR works best but you may not have IR receivers setup on your computer. Motion control is a bit jerky but is fun to play around with as the mouse follows the movements you make with your hand.

The Great feature that the DarwiinRemote offers is the ability to pull up Front Row as you would with your Mac Remote Control. Pushing the B button pulls up Front Row and you can navigate around with the arrows and other buttons on the system. B will also return you to your desktop.

Conclusion
Overall, using the wiimote as your mouse can be fun to play with. The process only takes a few minutes and is as simple as clicking a few buttons. The ability to use the remote in place of the Remote Control for Front Row heavily outweighs the ability to use the remote as you would a mouse.

If you’re like me and have a number of songs or mp3 files in your iTunes library that are missing the name, artist, and album and you’re not sure who sings it you need to look no further.

ieatbrainz is an application for Mac OSX that uses the sounds from the song to help it determine what song it is and then updates the meta data information for the file.

To update your iTunes library, download ieatbrainz and then after launching the application, select the songs you want to update the information on and it will scan the files, compare them to the musicbrainz database and then display what it has determined to be the name of the song you’re looking up.

Be sure to look at each songs because sometimes it will offer a number of options that are potential matches. After you accept the suggested changes from ieatbrainz it will update your iTunes Library with the additional information.

After you’ve added the missing information, be sure to have iTunes go out and get the related album artwork so that you can browse your library in Full Screen mode on the latest version of iTunes.