As if there was any remaining doubt that Apple was working on a cloud player for your iTunes library, a patent has surfaced that describes just how part of the service will work. Somewhat amusingly, one of the drawings contained within the patent is, well, of a cloud.

So how will this work for the end user? The gist is that iOS devices will have the option to locally store small cached snippets of songs you want to play, and the remaining portion of the song will be downloaded and streamed while that initial local cache is playing. This setting will be contained within iTunes, as indicated in the patent image at the bottom of this post. Patently Apple describes this further:

The electronic device could receive and locally store initial portions of media items in the electronic device. When a user then instructs the device to play back a media item, the electronic device could initiate playback of the locally stored portion of media item while requesting a stream from the user’s media library for the remaining portion of the media item

Also, in an indicator that Apple is planning far into the future, the iTunes cloud patent shows that users will be able to select the speed of the network that which they are streaming onto. These network settings include 3G, WiFi, and, somewhat surprisingly, 5G coverage. This is also referenced in the graphic below.

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There is increasing evidence to suggest that Apple will be releasing thinner iPhone and iPod touch models sometime in the near future, although it’s unlikely to be the “iPhone 4S” update that is expected in September.

Thinner Camera Means Thinner iPod Touch?
The first piece of evidence comes via MacRumors, who tells us that Apple’s preferred camera sensor supplier, OmniVision Technologies, has just released a new 5MP camera lens that is 20% thinner than existing versions. With rumors saying that the next iPhone will have an 8MP camera, this new OmniVision camera seems a better fit for an iPod touch since “Apple has had to sacrifice on the camera quality and resort to thinner, lower-resolution sensors on those models,” according to MacRumors.

Tiny SIM Card Suggests Thinner & Smaller iPhones… But We Still Have SIM Cards
Next up is news from Reuters that “Apple has proposed a standardized SIM card smaller than those it currently uses in the iPhone and iPad in order to be able to produce thinner devices.” This is certainly good news for a thinner and small iPhone, but, as MacGasm points out, bad news for the universal SIM or SIM-free iPhones that were conceptualized and even patented. The idea behind a SIM-free phone allowed users to let cell carriers bid for their business and thus reduce rates for consumers, but MacGasm suggests rightly so that this idea probably didn’t go over so well with cellular carriers. In this case, the consolation prize for the consumer is likely a future smaller phone.

2+2 = Smaller and Thinner iOS Hardware
Combining these two pieces of news with various reports from earlier in the year looks to confirm Apple’s continued effort to minimize the iOS hardware footprint. In February, Bloomberg reported that Apple was working on a smaller iPhone, that report that was later substantiated by the Wall Street Journal only to be contradicted by another from the NYT. Now that smaller hardware components are turning up, it doesn’t take much to put 2 and 2 together, and that gives a decent chance we’ll at least see a redesigned, and maybe even smaller, iPod touch in September.

The much anticipated Final Fantasy Tactics is going to finally make an appearance on the iOS platform in the very near future. First up will be a release for iPhone in the “late June -mid-July” timeframe, and then followed by an HD release with higher resolution 1024×768 graphics specifically for the iPad.

This information comes directly from the official Final Fantasy Tactics Facebook page, where a few screenshots were posted. They also provided this sample of the redrawn graphics for the iPad:

It looks snazzy and Square RPG fans should be excited for another release to hit the iOS App Store. I saw this on MacStories, who points out that pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but considering Final Fantasy 3 for iPad is $16.99 the price tag will likely be similar at least for the iPad version.

So you already setup your Apple TV2 to run XBMC, and now you’re bored with it. Why not turn the ATV2 into a webserver like the guys at MacMiniVault did? Yes this link opens a web page served from an Apple TV2. You can do this yourself with your own Apple TV without too much work, just a bit of patience.

Before getting started, you’ll need to jailbreak the Apple TV2 with Seas0nPass, Seas0nPass is the easiest jailbreak utility around, but you could use PwnageTool or Redsn0w if that floats your boat. After you’ve done this, here’s a rundown of what you’ll need to do:

• SSH into the newly jailbroken Apple TV2 from the Terminal, the default root password is ‘alpine’ and you’ll need to know the AppleTV2’s IP address or you can try using the hostname apple-tv.local:

ssh root@apple-tv.local

• Change the root password from alpine to something else by typing ‘passwd’
• Install Lighttpd onto the Apple TV2 by using apt-get:

apt-get install lighttpd

• Use your favorite SFTP app (CyberDuck is free) to upload a lighttpd config file to /etc/lighttpd.conf – here’s a sample lighttpd.conf to work from
• Now launch lighttpd server with (you may need to run this as /usr/sbin/lighttpd-angel):

lighttpd-angel -f /etc/lighttpd.conf

Your Apple TV2 web server should now be up and running, this can be verified by pulling up the ATV’s IP address in a web browser.

If you want the webserver to automatically start when the Apple TV boots or reboots, you’ll need to add a launch agent plist to /Library/LaunchDaemons/, plist files are different than bash scripts in that you have to spell out each individual flag and argument as a string. In this case, the command to execute lighttpd-angel would translate to plist keys looking something like this:

This walkthrough isn’t perfect yet, it’s an elaborated version from the super simplified instructions on MacMiniVault who setup this live Apple TV webserver just to see how well it will handle the traffic load.

Migrating from a Windows PC to Mac just got a whole lot easier thanks to an app called Parallels Transporter. It’s actually two apps, one client that runs on the Windows PC and the other runs in Mac OS X, install both and they’ll talk to each other and do almost the entire file migration for you.

Key features of Parallels Transporter include:

• Gathers and moves all your personal files, music, movies, photos, from a Windows PC and automatically transfers them to the appropriate locations in Mac OS X (My Documents -> Documents, My Photos -> Pictures, etc)
• Moves your Windows PC web bookmarks to the default web browser in Mac OS X (Safari, or otherwise)
• Transfers data through either direct USB connection, WiFi, or an external storage device (USB key, hard drive)
• Migrates Windows applications to a virtual machine on the Mac, allowing you to run any necessary Windows apps directly on your Mac (this feature requires the separate optional purchase of Parallels VM to use)

Is there an easier way to move files from a PC to Mac? Probably not.

You can buy Parallels Transporter on the Mac App Store, it’s just $0.99 for now but the usual price is $39.99. That’s a pretty huge discount, so if you or someone else has any plans on ditching a PC anytime in the near future, do yourself a favor and buy it now for the whopping discount.

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The default setting in Mac OS X Finder is to display no file information, but you can easily set the Finder, Windows, and the Desktop to show image dimensions through a setting in View Options. Basically, you’ll see the complete resolution of a picture highlighted in blue underneath the file name, hugely useful for Mac users who do a lot of image work and editing.

Here’s how to enable this great feature and view the image file dimensions right from the Mac Finder.

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You can increase and decrease the text size of artist and song info when you’re in iTunes Cover Flow view, all you need to do is right-click on the Cover Flow view and select “Use Larger Text” or smaller, if that’s your preference. The text size is fairly adjustable, but annoyingly, you have to repeat this process and continue selecting your choice repeatedly in order to get to the largest size, or the smallest size.

For full screen iTunes Cover Flow view I find large text looks nice, whereas in windowed mode smaller text is nice and tidy. Here’s the smallest text size:

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If you travel with a laptop often, do yourself a favor and install Prey, it’s free theft tracking and recovery software that really works. Prey is basically a tiny daemon that runs in the background on your Mac (or Windows or Linux PC) that does nothing until it receives a signal indicating the hardware is missing or stolen via the Prey website or an SMS… then the magic happens.

Once Prey is activated, it starts gathering the following information and enables these features:

• Current hardware location via GPS or WiFi triangulation, shown on Google Maps
• Force connections to nearby WiFi to transmit data
• Pictures of the thief via the laptops built-in camera
• Network information and IP addresses
• Screen shots of the desktop and application usage, to find out what the thief is doing on your computer
• Hardware status
• Remotely lock down the hardware, requiring a password and displaying a “STOLEN” message
• Remotely clear your saved passwords
• Remotely sound an alarm (think car alarm for your laptop)

All of this data is silently gathered unbeknownst to the perpetrator, allowing you to collect information to help law enforcement (or yourself) track down your stolen goods and return them to the rightful owner.

You can download Prey for free at PreyProject.com (Mac, Windows, Linux, Android compatible)

Installation is simple and there is practically no overhead, it just runs quietly in the background waiting to be activated. In addition to being free, the app is also open source so if you can check out the source code yourself if you’re into that sort of thing.

Here’s the most important part, Prey actually works to recover stolen hardware. You may have read about this recently when a popular tech authors MacBook Pro was stolen and he successfully tracked the machine down in and recovered it using Prey.

Check out this video of Prey in action, and then go install it yourself. It’s free, it works, there’s no reason not to install this if you have a laptop you care about:

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If you haven’t had a chance to poke around Lion yourself yet, check out these six videos from the latest Lion Developer Preview 3. There’s a general overview of changes in DP3, a video showing the new boot login screen and animation, Mission Control, Safari’s new Download manager and Reading List, and another video showing off the new login screen when waking from sleep.

An overview of changes in Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3:

New Mac OS X Lion boot and login screens:

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You can access two unusual debugging options in the Mac OS X System Preferences for Desktops and Screen Savers panel by using a keystroke while accessing the panel.

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Knowing how to clear browser history, cookies, and cache are absolutely essential for all web users, and this is no different for anyone using an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. This is particularly true when you’re using a someone elses hardware or when you’re testing out iterative changes on websites.

Keeping this in mind, here’s how to delete all your browsing records, history, data, caches, and otherwise from the default web browser Safari on iOS:

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After posting the Lion wallpaper pack we got several requests for the two pictuers missing from that wallpaper pack; the pink lotus flower you see above and that was also the wallpaper in the first public demonstration of Lion, and the blue sky moon wallpaper which is below.

Both of these are from Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3.

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Mac OS X Lion is set to include a wide variety of new high quality text-to-speech voices in a multitude of languages, thanks to a long suspected partnership between Apple and Nuance, a speech technology company. The new voices are of surprisingly good quality and speak in major world languages including English, Mandarin, German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Thai, Bahasa, Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, and many more.

Want to hear some voice samples? Here’s a few different voices in WAV format, these are confirmed to be the same voices as what is in Lion DP3:

• English American Accent – Samantha
• English British Accent – Serena
• French Canadian – Felix
• Spanish – Monica
• Finnish – Mikko (seen in screenshot)
• German – Yannick (seen in screenshot)
• Mandarin Chinese – Mei Ling

You can listen to more voices at the NextUp Nuance Sample page, but even that contains only a fraction of what is listed in Lion’s new Speech preferences. As you can hear, they are significantly improved from the current voices in Mac OS X text-to-speech, some of which are comically drone-like (Cellos anyone?).

The new voices exist as downloadable content in developer preview 3 of Lion, and were originally discovered by NetPuting and brought to light by 9to5mac (screenshot source). 9to5Mac mentions that each voice independently costs $45, suggesting Apple has reached an agreement with Nuance to license the voice technology, and they also suggest that these voices and text-to-speech technology will be a component of iOS 5.

I’ll go ahead and remind everyone that until Lion ships this summer, we don’t know for 100% certainty that these voices will be included in Mac OS X, but the evidence certainly points that way.

Looking to play some new games? Both Civilization V and Portal 2 are on sale for $29.99 this weekend, one is through MacUpdate and the other is from Amazon:

Civilization V for $29.99 (40% off via MacUpdate Promo)

Portal 2 for PC & Mac for $29.99 (40% off via Amazon)

Civilization V from MacUpdate is a digital delivery, but you’ll have to wait for the Amazon Portal 2 bundle to arrive via free shipping. These are two of the hottest games that are playable on the Mac platform right now, so if you’re a gamer and you’ve been holding out, get on it at a great price!

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Lion Developer Preview 3 brings some nice new UI changes to the lock and login screens. Now when you lock your Mac screen in Lion with Control+Shift+Eject, you’ll see a small login window over the current background wallpaper like the screenshot up top. What you can’t make out in the screenshot is a small HUD in the upper right corner showing the current time, battery life, and wireless signal strength.

There’s also a new login screen on system boot. The login screen is pretty plain, it’s all grey with a few controls and the same HUD in the upper right corner, as you can see in the following picture:

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This Mac setup features a 27″ iMac and a 13″ MacBook Air. What’s worth pointing out is that this setup replaced the users previous machines: a Mac Pro connected to a 30″ Apple Cinema Display, and a MacBook Pro 15″. If you’re thinking it’s silly to replace a Mac Pro with an iMac as a powerhouse desktop, check out the new iMac benchmarks and you might change your mind.

If it was mine, I’d throw a stand under the MacBook Air and I’d use a mouse because I just can’t get used to the inaccuracy of a trackpad, but to each their own. If you were wanting the cool wood wallpaper too, it can be downloaded here from InterfaceLift at a variety of high res sizes.

Image from Flickr

Mac OS X Lion Dev Preview 3 was just released to developers and along with it came a new bunch of beautiful high-res wallpapers at 3200×2000 resolution.

You can download all 14 wallpapers in a zip bundle from Mediafire

Here’s a few to see, but you’ll need to use the above download link to get them:

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Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3 is now available for developers to download. The release is labeled as another update to Developer Preview 2, but MacStories notes that Apple’s Mac Developer Center indicates the release is in fact Lion Developer Preview 3.

The update is available through Software Update and weighs in between 1GB and 1.2GB depending on the Mac you are installing it on. As usual with Lion Dev Preview updates, the installation notes are brief, nothing simply that it is recommended for all users of Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2.

Along with the Dev Preview 3 comes the release of XCode 4.1 Dev Preview 5, which is necessary to install after updating Lion if you plan on using the XCode development suite.

Lion is due for a release this summer, with WWDC 2011 looking like a prime date for announcement. Check out our Mac OS X 10.7 Lion archives for more.