These are simple instructions on how to boost the volume level of songs or video when playing in iTunes. You may need to do this if the audio track for a particular song or video is too low to hear.

Step One
Launch iTunes from your Dock.

Step Two
If you haven’t already, drag your media into iTunes to add it to the library.

Step Three
Select a song or video then press Command+i on the keyboard or right click the item and selectGet Info from the contextual menu.

Step Four
Click to select the Options tab.

Step Five
Move the volume adjustment slider to the right to increase the volume then press the OK button.

Apple releases Safari 5.0.1, Extensions Gallery now open

Safari 5′s extension support just got a whole lot more useful this morning, as Apple’s just released Safari 5.0.1, which enables the feature for end users, and opened its official Extension Gallery. Extensions can be installed from anywhere, but you might think of the Gallery as the App Store for browser add-ons  and it seems decently stocked at launch, with notable entries from Amazon, eBay, Bing, MLB.com, the New York Times, and Twitter. We’d expect that number to grow over time, as extensions are apparently quite simply built in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

More Info

http://extensions.apple.com/

Phone Disk, an application that mounts your iPhone, iPod, or iPad directly in Finder, is being offered free until September.

Until September 1st 2010, we’re giving away Phone Disk to everyone for free! If you unlock the software before that date, you get free upgrades and can enjoy the full version of the software on that computer with no expiration (just make sure you enter the code before September 1st)! Use the following registration code to unlock the full version Phone Disk: 2H96A-QK7MX-8GEYK1V-ZR6S8

Open, copy and save files directly on device
Preview, open, edit and save images, documents and more directly on the the device. You can even access the device directly through other programs such as a document editing program.

Expands to work with multiple devices
Mount multiple iPhones and iPod Touches simultaneously

Browse the iPhone in Finder
Phone Disk provides seamless integration of iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch file system in OSX’s finder

Clean application
Works with or without jail breaking the device. It’s simple application that runs in your system tray and won’t clutter or slow your computer.

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This brief tutorial will show you how to add PDF files to iBooks so that you can read them on your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone.

1. First up – we’re going to make the assumption that you have iBooks installed on your iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone. If you don’t, click here to install it.

2. Now open up iTunes. Select File -> Add to Library….

3. Navigate to the PDF file(s) you want to add to iBooks. You can select more than one file, or select an entire folder. Once you’ve made your selection, click Choose.

Read More (continue here)…

Apple’s new Safari 5 brings support for browser extensions, which the company plans to showcase on its own gallery in a few months.

Web & Utilities

AdBlock

The AdBlock extension is a great way to remove unwanted content from your browsing experience. Download the extension and load your web pages without as many intrusive ads. There’s even beta options to remove Google ads and YouTube ads.

BuiltWith Analysis

The BuiltWith Analysis extension provides an insider look into a website with one click. You can see what JavaScript libraries a site uses, who provides analytics as well as other nitty-gritty details that are totally public, but often obscured in tons of HTML source code.

Invisible Status Bar

Google’s Chrome browser does away with the status bar at the bottom of your window and only shows it when you hover over a link. The Invisible Status Bar extension does the same thing for Safari!

Live CSS Editing

The Live CSS Editing extension provides a quick way to load up a page and test modifications to the CSS in real time.

Bit.ly Shortener

The Safari Bit.ly Shortener extension makes it easy to shorten a URL with Bit.ly. Simply load the URL in your browser and then click the button!

PageSaver

The Svay.com PageSaver extension will, in one click, save the visible portion of a web page as an image and automatically download it into your Downloads folder.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an extension for using a centralized place for posting to all of your blogs, supporting a variety of typical blog features including formatting, categories and tags.ScribeFire’s Safari Extension brings support for this right into Safari.

Snapper

Similar to PageSaver, Snapper also saves the currently viewable portion of a website as a PNG and automatically downloads it for you.

Type to Navigate

The Type to Navigate extension is pretty darn cool. If you’re browsing a page and there’s a link you want to follow, just start typing any word that’s contained within it. It’ll highlight the link and then you just press Return to load it. If it’s not the right link, press Command + G to move to the next one.

E-Commerce

Amazon.com Search Bar

If you frequent Amazon.com, you’ll want the Amazon.com Search Bar extension. It’ll add a new Amazon.com bar to Safari giving you one-click access to your shopping cart, wish list, the latest deals and a quick way to search Amazon.com.

InvisibleHand

The InvisibleHand extension will subtly let you know when it finds a cheaper price to a product elsewhere on the Internet. The list of supported retailers is fairly decent for the U.S., UK and Germany, but more are being added frequently.

Social

FaceBlock

The FaceBlock extension blocks all of the annoying ads on Facebook. I always feel a little sadness for the advertisers that are paying for impressions that I never have to see. Oh well.

safari140

This gem of an extension allows you to post directly to Twitter from within Safari. Links are automatically shortened by is.gd.

Share with Facebook

The Share with Facebook extension gives you one-click access to share your current URL with your Facebook account.

Webbla

If you use Webbla for managing your bookmarks, take a look at the Webbla browser extension, which allows you to quickly add or modify them.

YouTube Full Screen

This extension is a great way to enable full-screen support of YouTube videos if you’re using YouTube’s HTML5 player instead of its Flash player.

Productivity

Background Tabs

The Background Tabs extension will allow you to open a new tab in the background by simply pressing the V key.

Gmail Checker

The Gmail Checker extension will give you an icon and badge in your Safari toolbar to show unread messages on your Gmail account. Keep an eye on their website for updates because the next version will support Google Apps users.

GoMBoX

The GoMBoX extension transforms your Google Images experience by showcasing results in a Lightbox overlay, allowing you to see larger versions without having to leave your search results page.

Instapaper

If you love Instapaper, check out Instafari, a simple one-click way to save an article to your Instapaper account.

InstaPaper Greystyled and Article Tools

The Greystyled and Article Tools extensions provide you with a cleaner style for your Instapaper.com account. Once the extension is installed, just visit instapaper.com to see the changes.

Google Reader – Simplified

If you’re a fan of Google Reader and the GreaseMonkey scripts that give it a simplified look, check out Lucidica, an extension that’s based off Helvetireader.

Safari Reload Button

If you’ve ever wanted to move the reload button for Safari out of the URL window and into its own button, the Safari Reload Button extension does just that.

Search Preview

With the Search Preview extension, you can preview the web pages that show up in your search results. This extension works with Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Toodlethings

If you use Toodledo for your task management, the Toodlethings extension re-styles the web interface with clean buttons and easier to read fonts.

For more great extensions, check out the Safari Extensions blog and keep an eye onApple.com for its showcase that’s scheduled to premiere later this summer.

iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 3 offers new spelling features similar to those available on the iPad.

According to AppleInsider, developers are reporting new spellcheck and suggested word replacement features.

You can now touch a misspelled word to select it, and then touch “Replace…” as an alternative to cut or copy operations. The system then offers replacement word suggestions in blue type, allowing for one touch correction. Misspelled text is underlined in red, a convention from Mac OS X’s system wide spell check that was originally taken from Microsoft Word.

You can see the new features in the screenshot below…

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Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

Multi-Tasking Can Be Easily Enabled on the iPhone 3G

Multi-tasking can be easily enabled on the iPhone 3G by setting a flag in the capabilities plist, according to a tweet by cdevwill.

wow looks like multitasking can be enabled on the 3G if you just set multitasking=TRUE on the capabilities plist in SB (N82AP.plist)

This doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Apple doesn’t want multi-tasking to run less than optimally. Disabling it is most likely a choice made to keep the device from running slower. (and of course to sell more iphones…)

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The iFixIt iPad Teardown Reveals FM Capabilities

iFixIt has posted their full iPad Teardown revealing the Broadcom BCM4329 chip. 9to5Mac notes that this is the same chip as the latest iPhone and iPod touch. It supports FM radio and FM broadcasting.

The Broadcom BCM4329 integrates a complete IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n system (MAC/baseband/radio) with Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), and FM radio receiver and transmitter. By combining several proven wireless technologies onto a single silicon die, the BCM4329 enables mobile devices to support today’s toughest media applications — without impacting device size or battery life.

Take a look at some teardown pictures as we wait for Apple to release a Radio.app

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PCMag’s Tim Gideon takes an in-depth look at Apple’s first tablet, the iPad, prior to the April 3rd launch. Check out iWork, Maps, iBooks, and other apps and read the full review at using the link below…

Read More | Check the Video