Apple news blog

Low-cost flat panel HDTV maker VIZIO recently said it will enter the home audio market with its simulated surround sound system comprised of a slim speaker and a wireless subwoofer. Earlier this year, the company’s only other attempt to …

Apple is often considered one of the largest flash purchasers in the world due to the spread of the iPhone and iPod, and is most often cited as the cause for price drops like these as well as shortages should it order more than …

Apple has posted a job opportunity for a position it calls “iPhone Security Engineer.” An “exceptional individual” will get the chance to “have a major impact on Apple’s embedded operating system products,” according to the job posting. …

Speculation about a possible Apple tablet has started infiltrating the mainstream media with an article on ABCNews summarizing public reaction to this possibility. The buzz about Apple’s next product kicked into high gear after Apple’s Peter Oppenhe…

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster issued a report Friday indicating Apple, Inc. Board of Directors should be obligated to inform shareholders of any material changes in Steve Jobs’ health that could impact his abilitiy to maintain his …

The new iPhone 2.1 Beta Firmware that was released to some iPhone developers yesterday has been found to have hints at an upcoming Copy and Paste feature. According to MacNN:

One notes that in exploring the Localizable.strings entry …

The new iPhone 2.1 Beta Firmware that was released to some iPhone developers yesterday has been found to have hints at an upcoming Copy and Paste feature. According to MacNN:

One notes that in exploring the Localizable.strings entry …

Amazon.com offers the Apple Mac mini Intel Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz Desktop, model no. MB138LL/A, for $595 with free shipping. This $25 mail-in rebate cuts it to $570. Although it’s a buck over last month’s mention, since expired, …

In doing an mdimport -A in Terminal, I noticed a particular attribute called com_apple_ats_font_invalid. Spotlight seems to set this attribute for files in a font folder (e.g. ~/Library/Fonts) that aren’t valid font files. Try this is a Terminal window to see if you have any bad fonts:

$ mdfind "com_apple_ats_font_invalid == 1"

You can see this in action if you use the -live switch on the above command. Once the mdfind starts, in another Terminal window, create a bad font:

$ echo "bad font" > ~/Library/Fonts/badfont.ttf

You’ll see that the query in the first window now shows one match; remove the file you just created (rm ~/Library/Fonts/badfont.ttf), and the query count will drop to zero. Press Control-C to end the mdfind in the other window.

I’m not sure if this is new for Leopard or whether Tiger has it as well.

The stock OS X date command ships with a useful -v command that allows date calculation. For example, to determine the last day of February, you could use the following:

date -v3m -v1d

That’s the third month in the first -v, and then less one day in the second -v. man date gives many examples. On the other hand, the Gnu version of date that’s available from MacPorts does not support this option. Playing a bit with the –date option for Gnu’s date, I came up with:

date --date="march 1 1 day ago"

This results in the same date calculation as in the stock date function. Gnu’s date also includes the option of printing rfc-2822 and rfc-3339 dates. The latter can be used for applications like Google that require xls dates:

date --rfc-3339='ns'
2008-07-23 18:28:00.110568000+05:30

The …