Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Every now and then, it's nice to have a platform like this blog. A few weeks ago, I was using it to complain: "Do you know how hard it was to find out if a movie is available? Every time I want to show my kids some movie I consider essential to their cultural education, I have to surf every online source, one after another. Netflix. Amazon. Apple TV. iTunes. Vudu. Searching, searching, searching. Why isn't there a central Web site that collates the catalogs of all those online sources?"

Well there is, and it's a free Mac app called MoviesHunt, available now in the Mac App Store. Basically you do a search for the movie you are looking for and the app takes care of the rest, searching Vudu, Netflix, Amazon, Clicker, iTunes and Hulu. If you get the upgraded Pro version for $0.99 [affiliate link], it will give you four more sites, plus let you add your own sites to the search list. Once it finds the movie it opens a webpage with information regarding the movie from the site where it's located.

"Wow, what an opportunity! Imagine having a newspaper column published precisely on the last day of the year. What a chance to step back, look ahead, sum it all up. Or else I could just trot out my usual end-of-year silliness, better known as the Pogie Awards."

The "Find My iPhone" feature from MobileMe is one of the award winners, as is an iPhone app called ITYPE2GO (gives you camera view while walking and texting so you don't run into anything), but the rest were pretty much a broad spectrum of things that he thought were winners. My favorite? The MiFi, and since I do own one I can attest to its much deserved spot in the winner's circle.

"Apple's new 5th-gen iPod nano, unveiled this past Wednesday, is "exactly the same size as the previous one: 3.6 x 1.5 x 0.2 inches. That is, it's a wafer-thin, rounded-edged slab that comes in 9 metallic colors," David Pogue reports for The New York Times."

It is a down and dirty quick review of the Nano, something that Pogue seems to really like. I have to admit I'm tempted to pick one up to play with. The video quality is standard definition and is like the iPhone 3GS according to Pogue. You can read the entire review here.

"David Pogue tweets a pretty cool little tip for those of you who've upgraded to Snow Leopard: <Option-clicking> on the sound menu item at the top of the screen allows you to quickly change your sound input and output options."

See folks, there are some good things out of the upgrade! I kid of course, there are plenty of good things with the upgrade and this is just one quick tip that David Pogue relayed via Twitter a couple days ago.