Posted By Paul Kafasis on October 7th, 2005

Airfoil was first released to the public in March, and it’s proven to be quite popular. If you’ve got an AirPort Express and you haven’t checked out Airfoil, or if you’ve been holding off on buying an AirPort Express at all, Airfoil is definitely worth a look.

We’re now happy to announce the forthcoming Airfoil 2. We first announced to our mailing list that we’d begun work on Airfoil 2 at the end of July, and now we’re ready to preview it for the world to see. Airfoil 2 sports a whole new look, as well as some great new features. Check out the screenshots below.

Airfoil 2 Screenshots

Airfoil 2 Main	Airfoil 2 Sources	Airfoil 2 Effects

If pictures aren’t enough to whet your appetite, have a look at Airfoil 2’s feature list.

Airfoil 2 Features
• Brand-new, compact user interface
• Basic effects for audio adjustment, including our renowned 10-band equalizer
• Direct support for Griffin’s RadioShark and D-Link’s DSRB-100 USB radios
• Now transmits audio from Dashboard widgets
• Support for sending all audio from your Mac, with the System Audio option

Airfoil 2 is set to be released by the end of 2005, so keep your eye on the site or join the mailing list. The update will be free for all registered owners of Airfoil, meaning there’s no need to wait – if you purchase now (or if you’ve already purchased), you’ll get Airfoil 2 for free. So try out Airfoil 1 and start enjoying your AirPort Express to the fullest.

Oh, there’s one thing you’ll find in Airfoil 2. Many users have told us of their desire to send audio from their Mac to multiple AirPort Express units. Apple doesn’t allow for this with iTunes, and Airfoil 1 can’t do it either. That’s all about to change though, with Airfoil 2’s simultaneous support for multiple AirPort Express units!

Yes, you read that correctly, with Airfoil 2 you’ll be able to send audio from any application (including iTunes) to multiple AirPort Express units throughout your house. Anytime you want to add audio to another room, just plug in another AirPort Express. With Airfoil 2, your audio will go anywhere and everywhere you want. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: At this time, the Airfoil beta program is now closed. Thank you for your interest, and stay tuned for Airfoil 2!

Uncle Ammo Wants You!
Can’t wait for this update? You can join our beta team, by signing up for our forums here. Once you’ve done that, email af2beta@rogueamoeba.com with your full name and forum user name, and we’ll provide access to the private Tester Forum. The few. The proud. The testers.

Posted By Paul Kafasis on September 30th, 2005

Macworld Boston (Macworld <insert East Coast City>, really) is no more. If you attended either of the last two shows in Boston, or even the relatively bleak 2003 New York City show, this should come as no surprise. However, it is something that should be noted. I haven’t seen a whole lot of news surrounding this, so I thought I’d link to at least one article on it.

Sure, it’s sad. But now you can turn that frown upside down, with a visit from Rogue Amoeba. Don’t look now, but Rogue Amoeba may be coming to a town near you! Over the next few months, we’ve got several appearances planned, so I thought I’d provide a calendar. If you’re in the area of any of these, please drop by and say hello – we’d love to meet you. Bring a friend and they can learn about our products as well.

DrunkenBlog’s Evening at Adler
October 21st, 6:30 pm
Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
Chicago, Illinois
http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000662.html

I already mentioned this one in a previous post, and that post has the full details (or rather, a link to the full details). Basically, seven mac developers (including myself) and one well-lubricated host will be talking about all things Macintosh, and it should be a lot of fun. if you’re in the Chicago area, you should definitely RSVP at DrunkenBlog right away, as seats are filling up fast. If not, we hope to have downloadable content (transcripts, audio, video) from the show.

Podcast & Portable Media Expo
November 11-12th, 10 am – 5 pm each day
Ontario Convention Center
Ontario, California
http://www.portablemediaexpo.com/

This is a new expo, focused largely on the ever-popular podcasting. Audio Hijack Pro is one of the premier tools for creating podcasts, and when we were invited to exhibit we found we couldn’t resist. We’re hoping the place won’t be overrun with PC users, so if you’re interested in podcasting (or any type of broadcasting, really), come join us.

Macworld San Francisco 2006
January 10-13th, varying Exhibit Hall hours
Moscone Center
San Francisco, California
http://www.macworldexpo.com/

This is the big one. While the east coast Macworld has slowly lost attendees and now finally been laid to rest, San Francisco has stood strong as one of the few must-attend trade shows in the technology world in general. Apple is sure to unveil something new and shiny, and hundreds of exhibitors will be showing off their products. Come for the full conference and learn about dozens of different topics, or simply get a pass for the Exhibit Hall where we’ll be showing off our wares. As the event draws nearer, we should have free passes, but if you’re impatient, you can register online.

That’s our calendar for the coming months. We hope to meet up with our users at these events. Come say hello, give us a pat on the back, or slip us a crisp Benjamin Franklin to convince us to implemente that feature you’ve been dying for. See you soon!

Posted By Paul Kafasis on September 29th, 2005

There seems to be a lot of confusion, or at least a lot of differing opinions, on when Apple will unveil their first Intel Chip Based Macs (ICBMs, as I like to call them). Apple may have cleared up some of the mystery last week, when CEO Steve Jobs said they were on track to ship by June 2006. In one direct quote, from a meeting at Apple Expo Paris, Jobs said:

“We said we’d be shipping by next June and we are on track to have that be a true statement.” (9/20/2005)

There are plenty of rumors flying around, and we’d love to determine exactly when the first ICBMs will fly out the door. Prior to last week’s revelation, I had re-watched the keynote address from the 2005 World Wide Developer’s Conference. The following quotes are all pulled right from there, and may still be relevant in determining Apple’s timeline for the release of their Intel machines. Next time someone says “Didn’t Apple say 2005 for shipping Intel Macs?”, you can point them here.

The following quotes are all from June 6th, 2005, and all refer to Intel machines.

“For you now, and for our customers in 2006…”

“Starting next year…”

“When we meet here again, this time next year, our plan is to be shipping Macs with Intel processors by then.”

Referring to WWDC ’07, Apple plans the transition to be “mostly complete”

Complete by end of 2007.

“When we’re here next year, we plan to have them in the marketplace”

“When we meet again here next year, we will have Macs with Intel processors entering the market”

So there you have it – uncertainty! It’s nearly certain that no ICBMs will ship in 2005. It also seems unlikely we’ll see anything at Macworld San Francisco, in January 2006. Will Apple unveil the new machines at WWDC ’06? That seems unlikely, as that’s not a consumer show, but we currently expect to see the first ICBMs in the second quarter of 2006. As far as the order in which the machines will be updated, that’s anybody’s guess.

Posted By Rogue Amoeba Alumni on September 28th, 2005

Last week, we released Audio Hijack Pro 2.6 (and shortly after, version 2.6.1, the current latest), bringing a completely new timers module and a bunch of other additions. Today, we’re going to walk through all of the new features in detail. So grab a seat and make yourself comfortable. My name is Mike, and I’ll once again be your tour guide today.

Extra! Extra!

Audio Hijack Pro 2.6 introduces not one but two new Extras. The new Extras are Unsanity’s Smart Crash Reports and our very own Schedule Helper.

Like A Black Box For Your Mac – Smart Crash Reports

As we already covered in another post, Audio Hijack Pro 2.6 is our first product to support Unsanity’s Smart Crash Reports, with support coming to the rest of our products as they’re updated. Smart Crash Reports lets us get at all of the juicy black-box info that Mac OS X generates when one of our programs crashes (not that they ever do, of course). Mac OS X only sends this information to Apple, but Smart Crash Reports makes it so that we can get this information as well, which helps us make even better products for you.

Schedule Helper

Audio Hijack Pro’s timers system got an internal overhaul with this release. Although the interface is virtually unchanged, the guts have been rebuilt. Things like waking your computer from sleep and launching Audio Hijack Pro if it’s not already running need to be handled by a separate program. In previous versions, this separate program was a little tool called ra_timer_helper that lay buried within the application’s bundle. Unfortunately, ra_timer_helper was getting old and creaky and causing problems with people’s timers. As of 2.6, responsibility got handed off to Schedule Helper, an application which sits in /Library/Application Support/Audio Hijack Pro and provides the same functionality, but in a way that’s shiny and new, and far less prone to failure.

When you first use a timer, or when you launch Audio Hijack Pro after upgrading if you already have timers set, you’ll be prompted to install Schedule Helper, which requires an administrator password due to the automatic wake-from-sleep feature.

Once you do this, you should never hear from Schedule Helper again, while it carries out its duties in the background.

Messages For You

Sometimes Audio Hijack Pro likes to put up a lot of messages. Normally we have two choices, we can display an alert or we can display a sheet. Both of these choices force you to respond before you can continue with what you’re doing.

So we came up with the idea of the Message. A Message is a lot like an alert, but it doesn’t force you to acknowledge it right away. Messages appear grouped in their own floating window, which you can move aside or work around if you don’t want to dismiss them right away. Like Smart Crash Reports, this feature will get also worked into our other products as they get updated.

More Black Box Recorders

Just like an airplane, Audio Hijack Pro actually has many different systems working to record data so we can figure out what happened when something goes wrong. This update includes a new debug panel, as seen below. You can make this panel appear by holding down the Option key while starting Audio Hijack Pro. The options are the same as before, but now it’s prettier, and it’s also more extensible so that we can easily add more debug logging in the future.

MP3 Settings

You now have a couple more options when recording to MP3. The sample rate can now be set to a specific value if desired, although in most cases you should leave this on Auto. There’s also an option for creating bookmarkable MP3s. A bookmarkable MP3 will remember your position within the file when you stop it, so that the next time you play it, playback will begin at the same position instead of starting over from the beginning.

VoiceOver

The interface for the VoiceOver plugin has been revamped. It’s now a compact window with a nice tabbed interface to get at all of the options.

iTunes URLs

The URL selection window now has the ability to select URLs from iTunes, as well as the many other applications it supports.

File Extensions

It’s now possible to change the file extension used in a recorded file by simply adding the extension to the name of the file. If the extension is one that Audio Hijack Pro recognizes, it will replace the extension of the file rather than becoming part of the file’s name. This is useful for users with PCs who attempting to make use of the Bookmarkable AAC format, which relies on the file extension on Windows.

The Use of Cell Phones Is Now Permitted

That covers the major changes in Audio Hijack Pro 2.6, and so we’ve reached the end of today’s tour. Please make your way to the exits at the front and rear of the site be sure you have all of your personal belongings. I hope you enjoyed the tour, and don’t forget to download the latest version as you leave.

Posted By Quentin Carnicelli on September 25th, 2005

The initial reaction to the new window style in iTunes 5 seems to be mixed. However, just about everyone universally condemns it for introducing yet another style into an already inconsistent user interface. Personally, I think the sooner brushed metal is gone, the better. And so to further that cause, I present the secret to making your very own Polished Metal windows.

Step 1 – Pre-conditions

We start off with a standard Brushed Metal window. Using any other base window style for what we are going to do won’t work.

Step 2 – Margins and Layout

Next, we divide the content of the window into 3 basic areas: Header, Body, and Footer.

Our header is comprised of the window title bar, and any number of pixels below it.

The body is everything below that and above the footer, and can not reveal any of the window background (you’ll see why in step 3). Some single pixel black border lines are also recommended.

Finally the footer is any size of space below the body.

Step 3 – Header gradient

Now then, we are ready to install our first bit of polished metal, the gradient that will be displayed in the header.

First thing we do is compute the height of the header. In our example window, our header area is 38 pixels tall, plus the height of the title bar. The title bar of a Brushed Metal window is 22 pixels, so the total height we need is 60 pixels.

So we fire up Photoshop, and make the approriate gradient by just using the Gradient tool, and sucking color values out of iTunes with the Apple Color Picker:

Now for the real magic. To get our window to display our header gradient, we set the window’s background color. Makes sense, right? Not to me either, but that’s how it works. First we create an NSColor based off our gradient image, and then setBackgroundColor: on the window itself:

That will give us this:

So now our header is looking good, but you’ll note that the footer doesn’t look quite right. What’s happening is, NSWindow tiles it’s background image. So our 60 pixel high header gradient repeats itself over and over again. This is precisely why the body section can not show any of the window background. So next, we fix the footer.

Step 4 – Footer gradient

To fix the footer, we’ll just draw a proper gradient over the background. So we go back to Photoshop and create a second footer gradient image of the proper height (amazingly enough in our example here, that height is 60 pixels). Then in Interface Builder we just drop in an NSImageView into the footer area, and set it to display the footer gradient:

Step 5 – Post-conditions

And that gives us the final results:

Which for thirty minutes of work isn’t half bad. It’s not a pixel-by-pixel clone, but it’s passable. The big differences between it and iTunes 5, are the window corners and the resize thumb. The upper corners are too round, and the lower corners aren’t round enough. The only way to fix that would be to reimplement the entire window from scratch with the base window being a borderless window (which is what iTunes does).

But now you know the secret: -[NSWindow setBackgroundColor:] & +[NSColor colorWithPatternImage:]. Now try not to do quite so much evil with it as Gus.

Update 1:
Mark Johns notes that if you add a little transparency to the footer image, you can round the bottom corners back out.

Update 2:
Matt Gemmell shows how to do it and avoid having the background image tile.