Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"To kick start Apple Week here at CotyGonzales.com, I've compiled a comprehensive list of Apple T-Shirt suitable for any Apple Fanboy or MacHead! And chances are, if you're a MacAddict like me, you probably own a few of these shirts already! Later in the week I'll be posting a list of Official Apple Released T-Shirts. They have a long history of releasing T-Shirts to members of specific Apple projects - be on the lookout for that coming sometime this week!"

Great list of t-shirts that offer something for everyone, with links on where you can buy them. Worth checking out!

"Today Google is kicking off its third installment of Doodle for Google, a yearly nationwide art contest for students in grades K-12. Eligible students can submit their own "Google Doodles," and the winning Doodle will appear on Google's homepage for one day. Plus the winner and his or her school will receive money and scholarships."

This year's theme is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would..." The idea, obviously, is to get those kids dreaming about what they would do or want to do in their future. You can get all the details at the official site and the school registration deadline is March 17th, with a deadline of submissions on March 31st, 2010. Cool contest.

"iPhone and now iPad Developers now have a more detailed way to see how app approvals are progressing. Apple added a clock a few weeks ago that displayed the percentage of apps approved within the last 14 days."

Any way that Apple can improve the developer aspect of the iTunes App Store is a good thing, but I'm not so sure how great this is for developers except in a general sort of way. The developers can see the percentage of new apps and updated apps that were approved within the last seven days, right now it stands at 98% and 99% respectively for them. Now if they made it so you could see how far along YOUR app was in the process that would be of greater benefit I would imagine. But kudos for Apple for improving the process in some fashion.

"The formidable Economist magazine has blessed Steve Jobs with a rare cover story examining the potential impact of the Jesus tablet. Even rarer, the iPad story is mostly positive, even if the religious imagery is over the top."

Yes, it is a little over the top in my opinion. You can read the story here.

"John Gruber of Daring Fireball is the most influential Apple pundit on the web, but readers often complain about the lack of comments on his website. In fact, Gruber's site is famous for not having comments. In an age when every website falls over itself to accommodate reader interactivity, Gruber stands alone. He has stubbornly resisted adding comments to his site for years."

Daring Fireball With Comments is live and you can toss a comment or two onto what Gruber has posted on his site. His reason for not allowing comments? In his words, it "takes away from what I'm saying." Yea so you can see why the word egotistical and arrogant are sometimes attached to his name. This should be an interesting experiment if nothing else. It appears that his isn't the only website that isn't allowing comments though.

"Macworld Expo's iMacworld 2.0 app for the iPhone and iPod touch is available at Apple's iTunes-based App Store in time for the show's February 9 kick-off."

If you are going, this will be a handy app to get around, since it has information on all the vendors and locations at the Expo. It also lists all the speakers and conference sessions as well as giving you the search ability for all events and products during the Expo, which runs from February 9th through February 13th, 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. More info on the Expo at their Web site.

"Mac OS X's System Preferences program is the one-stop shop for customizing many aspects of your operating system. Open System Preferences by choosing Apple menu -> System Preferences, or by clicking on the Dock icon that looks like a set of gears. Each preference pane is labeled to give you a clear idea of what type of elements it lets you change: Appearance, Spotlight, Displays, Network, and so on."

And he goes on to list the five that he likes the best, including taking control of your Spotlight searches as shown above in the screenshot from the preferences window. My favorite of the five? Disabling the CAPS lock, I hate that key!

"On Monday, Apple released iTunes 9.0.3. According to the release notes, the update's numero uno bug fix is "iTunes no longer ignores your ‘Remember password for purchases' setting." In other words, if you enable this iTunes Store option, you will no longer have to continue to re-enter your password each time you make a purchase."

This really annoyed me so I'm glad they finally fixed it. You can get info and download from the update page at Apple, but this should update automatically for you from the software update feature.

"Apple issued an update late Monday that supposedly fixes issues with the company's 27-inch iMac display. According to notes provided with the update, the fix 'updates the display firmware on 27-inch iMac systems to address issues that may cause intermittent display flickering.'"

You can get details at Apple on this update, but it's basically firmware update for the display in hopes that it will fix the flickering issues. No mention about the fix for the yellowing screen issues.

"Google Jan. 29 said it would cease fully supporting Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 for its Google Docs and Google Sites applications March 1. This pledge extends to other older Web browser versions, including Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Apple Safari 2.0, as well as Google's own Chrome 3.0. The move is Google's push to rid the messaging and collaboration world of the dated, insecure IE6 and put Google Chrome in its place. Chrome has 4.63 percent of the browser market and would love to chomp away at IE's 63 percent share."

Doesn't seem on the surface to be anything as sinister as forcing their way into marketshare, appears to me like its natural progression of things as software advances. But I suppose since IE 6 has over 60% of the market for browsers that it would be natural to assume Google was up to some skullduggery wouldn't it? What are your thoughts?