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>> Brian Tong: What's happening? I'm Brian Tong, and welcome to the "Apple Byte". You know how we do it. It's all the good and bad inside the world of Apple, and I'm pretty sure you're a little tired of hearing about iPhone use all the time. I am too. So let's shift things over to the big cat, Snow Leopard. Now, I got my hands on the latest build, and I have to say that on first impressions, this is definitely a snappier OS even if it's a early build. So, I'm going to bring in our special correspondent to show off some of the new features, and a few things Apple hasn't. All right, thanks, Brian. Hey you guys. Snow Leopard will be available sometime in September 2009, and the price to upgrade, just $29.00. So we have a sneak peek, and let's just jump into this. Now, the first off, the finder is a lot more powerful with the ability to directly preview files. So you can see here. I can resize my file icons on the fly. I also have a PDF file, and I can move page by page without even opening it, and for movies, I can play them directly from their thumbnail as well, and even while I'm resizing the thumbnail. Now, this is a two gigahertz cartridge reel [phonetic] that I'm working on. So it just really shows you what Snow Leopard can do even on an entry-level Macbook. Now, if you're familiar with Expose, they've now added a feature called Doc Expose. So what I do is if I hold my button on top of an app from the doc, all the specific windows for that Apple immediately snap to Expose. From there, I can now move around and press the space bar to preview individual items as well. Now, a lot of times, we have so much going on, and a really cool feature is the ability to find content, and then use Doc Expose to throw it into an application. So here, I have an e-mail, and I want to put a picture in it. So I know it's hanging out in my desktop. I've got to go and find it. Then I'm going to drag, and hold it onto the mail app. You'll see Doc Expose in action, and I'll find that e-mail window that I want. I'm going to hold the picture over it, and then it brings it to the front, and now my picture is in my e-mail. Oh, snaps just like that. Now, Stacks [phonetic] has also been improved where you can now navigate through a stack on your dock and drill down into folders and the files inside of those folders. Previously, once you opened any folders, Stack would throw it up into the finder, and the Stack interface would go away. Quick Time has also seen a major face lift going borderless. It's really clean, and the controls fade out as you're watching a video. The big deal here is the ability to trim your clip directly in Quick Time, and then instantly upload it to YouTube or MobileMe. And if you want to send the video to iTunes, you have a choice to optimize it for the iPhone, Apple TV, or computer if the file has a high-enough resolution to support it. You can also jump directly to videos with chapter markers, and this isn't really a new feature, but the new slick graphical interface of Do It is. After you set your video to full screen, there's also a button that fills out your video to the edges of the screen, and another little thing that I found in the preferences is that you have more control over specific settings in the energy saver preferences. Now, there's obviously a lot more stuff I haven't even found, but overall, this is a really snappy OS from what I can tell. So that's a first look at some of the goodies on Mac OS10 Snow Leopard. Back to you in the studio. Alright. Thanks Brian. A great job on that stuff, and really, dude, you need to stop dressing like me. OK. Let's get to some of the news here. Reports from Reuters say that ten of the top mobile phone manufacturers, including Apple, have signed on to adopt the micro USB connector standard for charging smartphones in the European Union. You're all familiar with Apple's proprietary dock connector, which is anything but universal, and they've built an entire cottage industry for it. Now, Apple will probably just add a mini-USB next to their dock connector because with all the accessory support, that thing isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The rollout is planned to begin next year, and it's only a matter of time until other countries jump on board. Now, I said I was sick of it, but I have to throw a little iPhone use in here. Apple has released the iPhone 3.1 software beta to developers recently. And yeah, you're probably asking, didn't 3.0 just come out? But Apple's not sleeping on this stuff. New features included allow people to use the 3GS exclusive voice-control feature with Bluetooth headsets now, and the ability to save an edited version of a video clip as its own copy instead of overwriting the original file, plus some other graphical tweaks. And since we're on the iPhone 3GS, you know what? Roll the graphic. It speaks for itself. [Music] There are reports on the Internet that some owners of white iPhone 3GS's are finding that the backs of their phones have been changing pink or brown near the edges after frequent use. Now, I have a black 3GS, but I found, and plenty of other users have found, that the phone can run very, very hot compared to previous models when it's being used heavily. Apple insider reports that it's likely due to a flawed battery cell. Well, come on now, Apple. Let's get this power management issue under control, or at least start advertising a new color option like the iPhone 3GS Neapolitan. Bottom line, the iPhone does run significantly hotter at times. When Apple doesn't comment and instead closes the discussion thread on its forum about the issue, come on now. We have to throw the bad apple at you. Alright, guys. That's going to do it for this week's show. Send me your e-mails to the applebyte at cnet.com, and I'll get to as many as I can. I'm Brian Tong. Thanks for watching, and come back next week for another Byte of the Apple.
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