Mac Soda

First of all, I’d like to apologize for Mac Soda’s hiatus. Contrary to what you might think, the blog is not dead, I just have been rather busy lately and haven’t had the time to post.

Now that I said that, its time to get to the news. Mac Soda has received word that Final Cut Studio will see another update sometime next year. Features apparently will include Snow Leopard optimization and Native RED support. While this might sound rather similar to our previous (incorrect) Final Cut Studio rumor, its important to note that this comes from a different source.

What features, besides RED support and speed improvements, would you hope to see in the next FCS? Air your thoughts in the comments.

Along with a slew of goodies introduced by our favorite fruit today, a new mouse with multitouch technology was released today. Dubbed the “Magic Mouse“, it will be available at the end of the month.

After browsing Apple’s updated store for a little, I came across something interesting… the Mighty Mouse wasn’t replaced. For some reason, Apple is still selling the Mighty Mouse they had before… but renamed, “Apple Mouse“, presumably because of a little neusance called the US Patent and Trademark Offices. Perhaps Apple doesn’t feel confident that multitouch will please everyone… similar to another updated product in which the old model remained.

So says Seth Weintraub, and based on a few chats with him and others, its pretty certainly legit. The question I asked was “Since when is there an FM Tuner in my phone?”. Apparently its been there since the first iPhone, just never utilized by Apple with no APIs supporting it. My guess is we’ll see this nice software update at the next event, perhaps with new iMacs/MacBooks/Keyboards. But that’s just my guess…

I’ve been using iTunes 9 a ton lately, and let me say… I love it. Its a much needed UI overhaul of the iTunes store, and everything works a little better.

However, there is one thing that is driving me crazy. In all versions of iTunes, its been very simple to decide how much more text you want to see. You can do this now in the music library by simply grabbing an edge, and dragging it the way you want it to go. Very intuitive and useful. Unfortunately, iTunes 9’s new music store has removed this ability. It makes no sense, and when trying to figure out the name of tracks that are named similarly at the start, it gets very annoying (as you can see below).

Have any of you noticed this issue? It just makes me wonder, what in the world were Apple’s iTunes designers thinking when they did this? Did Steve Jobs not check this? Or can it be done and I’m just not looking in the right place? Let me know in the comments.

So AT&T finally delivered on its promise of bringing MMS to the iPhone after failing the first time around (it’s currently Autumn). While all iPhone users are eagerly upgrading their phones, and immediately sending a picture of whatever they can just to test it out, I’m sadly not a part of this group. Why? Because the MMS carrier update breaks tethering. While I suspected it would break the free tethering hack I’ve been using for some time now, I really hoped it wouldn’t. Sadly, it did, and now instead of enjoying the plethora of features 3.1 and MMS have to offer, I’m still stuck on 3.0.1 with tethering. Will I sacrifice my happiness upgrade to MMS ever? Yes, someday I’m sure I will. But not today.

So readers, let me know… did you choose MMS over tethering? If so, what do you think about Apple’s implementation of it? Let me know in the comments.

Join Mac Soda here tomorrow at 10:00 PST for Apple’s Music event! We’ll be using our favorite LiveBlog software, Cover it Live!

UPDATED: THE LIVEBLOG HAS STARTED! CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO FOLLOW!

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH THE LIVEBLOG

Perhaps we'll see the Beatles cruise into the digital age...

Tomorrow is Apple’s annual music-related event… here’s a roundup of what we think we’ll see, and what we don’t think we’ll see.

Beatles on iTunes

In April, when the Beatles announced that their remasters would be available for sale on September 9th, I told my friend Seth that Apple will probably hold an event that day to release the tracks digitally simultaneously. 5 months later, Apple schedules a music event on 9/9/09, as predicted. This, coupled with the recent “Cocktail” rumors, makes tomorrow seem like the perfect day for the Beatles to finally make their appearance digitally. Despite all this evidence, Mac Soda has heard word from our source that there will be no Beatles tomorrow. However, our source has been unbelievably terrible lately, to the point where we can almost expect the opposite of whatever he says, so it almost makes it more likely we’ll hear about the Beatles tomorrow. All Things D says no Beatles, Yoko Ono says yes Beatles, my (crappy) source says no Beatles. I think I’m gonna have to go with Yoko… I say Beatles tomorrow.

iPods with Cameras

No Brainer. Nano, Touch get cameras, small cosmetic upgrades, new colors for nanos, yada yada yada. Classic either gets a camera, or gets axed.

iTunes

Apple loves Facebook as of late… expect iTunes 9 with Facebook integration, application management for iPhone OS.

Tablet

Not yet, unless we see the rumored 6 inch media tablet. Expect an event next month for the real tablets everyone’s been talking about.

iPhone OS

3.1 Update should arrive tomorrow, packing loads of goodies (killing my beautiful tethering).

Steve Jobs

Yes. He’ll be back. Stock will hit the ceiling. The fanboys will shout “Hosanna in the Highest”. Everyone else won’t care.

Those are my predictions… leave yours in the comments.

For those who pre-ordered Snow Leopard, today is the arrival date of the latest great cat. My excitement is nowhere near how excited I was for Leopard, but I hope to be pleasantly surprised. The real test… Final Cut Pro. Does anyone have their copy yet? If so, let me know what you think in the comments. I’ll post my thoughts as soon as I’ve played around with it for a while.

Mac Soda is on Twitter, @macsoda. Follow Mac Soda their for more frequent updates.

Hey Mac Soda readers… I’m sorry for my lack of posts this past 3 weeks, I’ve been away without much access to the internet. Rest assured I’ll be back posting regularly in a few days.

So last week we were treated to Christmas in July… Final Cut Studio 3 was released to the public, a month delayed. I ordered it the second it was available, and have edited a short film on it to test it out. My verdict? A ton of useful new features, some very helpful, but no radical changes whatsoever. I will rate 10 features a day for the next 10 days, until I’ve reviewed every new feature there is. Here’s the Breakdown, feature by feature, rated 1-10 on usefulness… the first 10 features (all from Final Cut Pro 7).

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