Apple looks like they’ll be jumping full force into the touch screen market sometime in the future. An uncovered patent application shows an iMac Touch that runs both Mac OS X and iOS, which seamlessly switches between the two operating systems depending on how the screen is orientated.

In this image, the iMac screen is tilted upright to be used as a traditional Mac with a keyboard. In this orientation the iMac runs Mac OS X and would appear as any other iMac.

Here’s where things get interesting:

This image shows the same iMac slanted down, and when orientated horizontally the iMac looks to seamlessly switch to running the touch based iOS. Amazing! The patent application also describes touchable areas on the screen that would activate iOS, suggesting that iOS will run on a layer atop Mac OS X, almost like a super powerful touch version of Dashboard.

The patent also describes similar OS switching functionality on a laptop. This is fresh off the heals of the MacBook Touch patent discovery that clearly demonstrates an Apple laptop with a high resolution touch screen.

If you’ve been were wondering what Apple plans to do with the future of their hardware and dual operating systems, this should give you some great insight. Mac OS X and iOS look to be integrated on the same hardware when applicable, allowing a user to either use the simplified touch GUI or the more powerful and traditional computing environment of Mac OS X. Will we see these features in Mac OS X 10.7 and iOS 5? Time will tell!

Head over to Patently Apple for more pictures and a good walkthrough of the patent. How many years off are these features and hardware? Who knows. Will we ever see touchscreen Macs that switch between OS on the fly? It’s as good as a patent and rumor at this point, but hopefully! This is really exciting stuff.

Gitbox is a pretty nice GUI to the Git version control system. All the features you’d expect are there: quickly see branches, history, working directory status, then easily commit, pull, merge, and push files with minimal effort. I first used Gitbox as a Preview version a while ago and enjoyed it, you’ll need both Xcode and Git installed to be able to run the app yourself.

Here’s what the Gitbox developer lists as the features:

Check Out Everything. You may check out a local branch, tag and even a remote branch with a single dropdown button. From now on you don’t have to remember the obscure branch-tracking command or edit .git/config. Select the remote branch, type a local name for it and you’re done.

Up To Date. Gitbox updates working directory status each time you focus the window. When in background, it periodically fetches data from the selected remote branch and displays unmerged commits in the history. The status of the working directory, local and remote branches are always up to date.

Rich History. History shows all commits on both local and remote branches. Non-pushed commits are green. Non-pulled commits are grey. You can also select another local branch in a “Remote branch” menu to merge it into the current one.

Clean Design. There are no palettes or additional windows cluttering the screen. Your repository fits nicely inside a single window with a few buttons. Use the Main Menu for infrequent operations such as adding a new repository URL or stashing away changes.

Super Fast. We all love the command line for the speed. But it is not very smart. Say, you move a file from one folder to another: in the Terminal you would have to “git rm” the old path (the file is gone, so no tab-completion) and “git add” the new path. And it becomes a real pain when you happen to rename multiple files. But in Gitbox you just click the checkbox. Status is updated instantly, you don’t have to type “git status” ever again.

If you’re looking for a Git GUi client for Mac OS X, check out Gitbox.

Often overlooked, the Terminal can be used to accomplish all sorts of fun stuff. Something that you may find handy, is the ability to Tweet using built in Mac OS X command line utilities like curl. Yes, curl! Now of course this is not a full featured Twitter client by any means, but if you are looking for potential geek “cred” this is a fun trick to demonstrate.

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If you’re using a Windows 7 machine, why not make it look like Mac OS X? This task is made very easy with a theme/skin set called the Snow Transformation Pack, it turns your Windows 7 theme into a very convincing near complete Mac OS X interface including icons, wallpapers, the Dock, sounds, dialogue boxes, login screen, window skin, and more.

The Snow Transformation pack is freeware and available to download here

Of course if you’re this obsessed with Mac OS, you should probably just buy a Mac and save yourself from the burden of Windows 7 and trying to skin it to look like a Mac, right?
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If there was one command I would really complain about not being on Mac OS X, it would be “watch”. Watch is one of those great pieces of software that is tiny and completely out of the way, but when needed it will be a life saver. We’re going to show you three different ways to install the watch command; through a precompiled binary, with HomeBrew, and with MacPorts. Plus, we’ll show you a little about how to use watch and why it’s useful.

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Apple may be working on a MacBook Touch, and will integrate high resolution touch screens into future Apple hardware, according to a recently discovered Apple patent. The information is pretty straightforward, as Patently Apple puts it “There’s no wishy-washy lingo about it” since the patent specifically names a MacBook, MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air:

one of the prime target products for such a new display is a touchscreen based MacBook as shown below in patent FIG.3. Later in the patent under patent point 46, Apple clarifies that FIG. 3 could be a MacBook, MacBook Pro and/or MacBook Air.

The patent also suggests that the MacBook and MacBook Pro will soon have the same high-resolution IPS display that is featured on the iPad, iPhone 4, and the latest iMac. Upgrading the screens seems like a no brainer to me, but it’s the touch screen and it’s applications that make this news. Perhaps even more interesting than just a MacBook Touch (yes I just made up this name), the patent also indicates that the touchscreen technology could apply to a television and gaming system.

Of course this is all speculative and should certainly be branded as a rumor for now, but it sounds like Apple has a lot up there sleeves! You have to imagine something like this is quite a ways off from release (if ever) considering the current versions of Mac OS X are not nearly as touch friendly as iOS. Maybe we’ll start to see touch features in Mac OS X 10.7?

If you’re a patent geek or you just want to see the full scoop, head over to Patently Apple where you can see all the details, some more drawings, and all the abstract patent application details.

Here’s a Mac setup I wouldn’t mind to have: a 13″ MacBook, 24″ iMac, a couple of iPod’s, and an iPad.

[ via Flickr ]

Do you want to know what song is playing? Don’t be left wondering, you can find out for sure thanks to an awesome app called Shazam. The app first came to the iPhone some time ago and has made it easier than ever to discover what song is playing regardless of where you are. It works flawlessly in loud bars, clubs, restaurants, stores, cars, just about anywhere music is playing, it handles background noise remarkably well and is nearly always able to identify music. Once a song is identified, Shazam will provide links to buy it via iTunes or watch the related music video from YouTube.

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According to an email exchange between a customer and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, a software update will be released soon to address the widespread complaints of iPhone 3G slowness running iOS 4.

A frustrated iPhone 3G owner apparently wrote the following email to Steve Jobs complaining about the abysmal performance of iOS 4 on his iPhone 3G:

I’ve waited patiently through 4.0.1 and 4.0.2, looking for a fix that will make my phone work again. I’ve read the forums that advise me to jailbreak my phone or use some other method so I can downgrade back to a version of iPhone 3, however I’m not prepared to use a method that is not supported by Apple.

To which Steve Jobs replies:

Software update coming soon.

Sent from my iPhone

This latest email exchange comes to us from MacRumors. Sending emails to Steve Jobs and publishing responses online is growing in popularity, although the authenticity of many of the email exchanges is questionable. As the owner of an iPhone 3G suffering under iOS 4 I really hope this particular email exchange is real and that we’ll get a software update soon.

The tablet wars are about to heat up. The iPad is currently the only meaningful tablet device around, but that may change as soon as November when Google is rumored to release their Chrome OS Tablet. According to MacRumors, the Google Tablet may be released as soon as November 26 in order to fit into the holiday shopping season.

Running Google’s Chrome OS and attached to data plans through Verizon, the hardware specs of the Google Tablet are anticipated to be impressive so that the device doesn’t “disappoint its early adopters”:

It’ll likely be based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 platform and sport a 1280×720 multitouch display, 2GB of RAM, minimum 32GB SSD, WiFi/Bluetooth/3G connectivity, GPS, webcam, and possibly expandable storage via a multi-card reader. Expect it to be every bit as geek-tastic as the Nexus One

Google will likely aggressively price the Chrome Tablet against the iPad, although the pricing structures for the device and accompanying data services are currently unknown. Data plan contracts are expected to subsidize the consumers cost of the tablet dramatically, similar to the manner of cell phone contracts.

Apple’s iPad is the dominant tablet computer at the moment, and thus far all other attempts at competing in the marketplace have flopped. Microsoft has already floundered, leaving Google to be the only foreseeable threat to the iPads dominance. Google hopes to replicate Androids success against the iPhone with their entry into the tablet market, creating yet another head-to-head battle between Apple and Google.

Not much is known about the touch interface of Chrome OS, or the appearance of the Google Tablet itself, the above image is nothing but a speculative mockup. You can run Chrome OS in Mac OS X, but the current version floating around really isn’t that exciting, it’s basically the Chrome browser running in a virtual machine. It’s highly unlikely the released version of the tablets Chrome OS will be as boring.

The iPhone battery is designed to provide a significant amount of talk time, internet/app use, and data consumption. By using the phone properly and customizing a few settings you can dramatically improve how long your iPhone battery lasts.

Here is a comprehensive list of tips to improve the health and battery life of your iPhone.
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If you’re looking for a simple stopwatch menubar timer for Mac OS X, look no further than a little utility called Thyme. No, not the herb, Thyme is a very simple Mac app that sits in your menubar and allows you to quickly start and stop a timer.

Wondering how long it takes you to perform a certain task? No problem, use Thyme and figure it out. Or perhaps you’re thinking of using it for a DIY Pomodoro technique, that works too. Whatever the reason you need for a simple timer in the Mac menu bar, Thyme does the trick.

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Apple released a new iPad commercial called “iPad is Delicious” that features the text “iPad is…” followed by images of someone browsing a pictured recipe book, playing games, reading books, writing on a virtual chalkboard, etc, the video is posted above if you haven’t seen it yet.

Playing in the background is a piano song with fingers snapping to a gradually increasing energy level and soon come handclaps, a bass line, and the whole shebang… of course since it’s an Apple commercial this song is about to get very popular and two people have already asked me what the song is.

Watch the commercial for iPad 1, and read on to hear the full song that soundtracks the commercial and to learn learn what it is.

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Did you know that that Mac OS X includes a bundled VNC app? It’s called Screen Sharing, and you can quickly launch the bundled VNC client from either the OS X Finder, Safari by typing an address into the URL bar, or directly from the app itself.

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Apple has released a Graphics Update for Snow Leopard, and this is particularly good news to Mac gamers. Remember those pesky Starcraft 2 crashes I wrote about two weeks ago? This update specifically addresses some of the problems with Starcraft 2 for Mac as well as other issues with Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Aperture 3.

If you are a Mac gamer it is highly recommended to install this update. You can download the graphics update through the Software Update control panel, accessed through the Apple menu.

Here are the release notes from Apple:

The Snow Leopard Graphics Update contains stability and performance fixes for graphics applications and games:

Addresses frame rate issues occurring in Portal and Team Fortress 2 by Valve, on iMac (Late 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac mini (Early 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook (Early 2009 and Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) or MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) models.

Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture 3, or StarCraft II by Blizzard, to unexpectedly quit or become unresponsive.

Resolves an image corruption issue that may occur when disconnecting and reconnecting external displays while the system is running.

The hardware and software affected by this performance update are the following: MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010), iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009), Mac Pro (Early 2009), Mac mini (Early 2009), Mac OS X 10.6.4, Mac mini (Mid 2010), iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010), iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010), Portal, StarCraft II, Team Fortress 2

I recently encountered a strange bug where iTunes refused to add a song to it’s playlist and wouldn’t play the original source MP3 file either. Interestingly enough, the mp3 file played fine with Quick Look and even was able to play within the Finder preview, but no matter what I did I could not add or import the mp3 file to my iTunes playlist.

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Have you ever wondered what an iPad and Kindle screen would look like up close? Not just to the naked eye, but really up close… say at 26x and 400x magnification. Despite the fact they are serving completely different markets, I know people compare the iPad and Kindle frequently so these shots are quite interesting.

These pictures were taken with a Veho USB Powered Microscope, which I had no idea you could even get a 400x USB powered microscope for $65, that’s amazing in and of itself. Anyway, more pictures:

At 400x the iPad looks like any other close up of a LCD display, while the Kindle amazingly enough actually holds detail and, well, resembles ink.

Admittedly this isn’t the most fair comparison considering the current iPad screen is using a traditional LCD display while the Kindle uses the wildly complex MIT creation known as E Ink. Of course, the Kindle also isn’t intended to compete against the iPad and vice versa (try playing games or browsing the web in a meaningful fashion on a Kindle), but it’s neat to see these detailed pictures. I’d really like to see this test done using the 326ppi iPhone 4 retina display, which is rumored to appear on iPod touch and iPad models in the near future.

These images confirm the opinions I’ve long held: if you’re looking to get a handheld device for only reading books, the Kindle takes the cake. If you want to do more like play games, browse the web, email, listen to music, watch movies, etc, the iPad is a no brainer.

The above pictures originated from microscope shots by Keith Peters at his website, Bit-101. There are several more pictures and also comparisons with real printed ink if you’re interested in seeing them.

Did you know you can download a file instead of opening it in Safari on the Mac, simply by dragging a link to the Downloads window of Safari? And did you know you can also start a download in Safari on Mac by pasting a copied download URL into the Safari downloads window?

This combo of download tips are little known tricks, but they’re quite useful, particularly if you have a direct download link stored in your clipboard, or a URL elsewhere, or maybe a link saved as a bookmark or even as a link from another webpage.

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