- What's up, Brian Tong here and welcome to the Apple Byte for all things good and bad inside the world of Apple.
Now we're still on break.
I can't wait for the office to re-open.
But we've promised you an email episode to get direct access to our brain.
So, let's jump in.
Brad Beasely asked, hey do you guy know when the App store for the Mac is coming out?
Brad it's expected to be released in January of 2011.
So, you still have
a good wait.
But what might be more interesting is that Cydia the App Store for jail broken iPhones will be launching their own Mac App Store that doesn't require any kind of hack and will give you access to outside Apple won't sell due to it's restrictions.
So, look for the Cydia Mac App Store around the time you watch this show.
Now Venus writes, yo Brian, yo.
Do you know if Apple is planning to put a better camera in the Next Gen iPod Touch?
I wanna get the 4th Gen but my iPod is one year old and the lack of a quality camera drove me
away.
Also, how do you rip DVDs to iTunes?
I've been trying for a while and I can't find a good fix.
All right, first things first Ven.
The camera probably improves slightly, it's really sold with it's HDR feature for still shots.
But cameras on mobile devices still aren't on the level with dedicated cameras.
The flash hurts probably more than it helps but it's still evolving.
The bottom line is you just wanna have a killer camera with the iPod Touch because it's so thin and the size of the optics you need for better image quality are larger.
And to your second question for ripping copies of DVDs,
you legally own, Handbreak is the app to get and we've talked about it more than a few times on the show so check out Handbreak.
Now Maximus writes in with an email address to Brien Tongs but I'll answer it anyways.
I want your job, do you think that's possible?
Nope.
Now Hugh Franco says, I was wondering if you all have more info on when the 3D would be available and on what devices?
Also what's the status of the iPod classic, are they gonna increase the storage, enhance the features or discontinue it altogether?
Hugh,
the 3D story is just a pun and Apple will possibly do something in the future but a lot of puns are approved and companies won't do anything with them for years.
Now the unique 3D projection system would be for home use but I just don't see this coming any time soon even in the next year and a half.
Now as for the classic a lot of you people and other [unk] were asking about it.
My hunch is that it'll still be around for at least another year or two.
But it's the classic, Apple doesn't plan on refreshing it.
I don't see any new features coming but it will just leave quietly in the product line.
Now Tim Cadet writes in
with, hey guys so I have a about 8,000 songs and 20 movies in my iTunes library with only 3 gigs left on my MacBook's hard drive.
I just bought a 500 gigs external drive but how do I get iTunes to reconigze the hard drive and use it for music storage without it losing track of where my other media is?
Tim, we have the perfect video for you.
How to move your collection to an external hard drive.
Take it away Donald.
- You have a massive iTunes library filled with gigs
and gigs of music, movies and podcast.
It's not a bad idea to off load that content to a separate external or internal hard drive.
But transfering your library isn't as obvious as dragging and dropping your music folder onto an external drive.
It's not hard but to do it right you gotta let iTunes do the work for you.
To get started, open iTunes and make sure the drive you want to move your library to is connected to your computer and ready to go.
Next, go into your iTunes preferences, on a PC you'll find this under the edit menu, for Mac it's
under the iTunes menu.
Click under the advanced tab and where it says iTunes music folder location, change the location to the desired folder on your external drive.
Next, make sure the copy files to iTunes music folder option is checked off.
This ensures that any new content you download or rip in to iTunes gets transfered to the new location.
After that hit the okay button.
Now there's one more step to take before iTunes really starts moving your library to the new location.
But
before we commit your computer to what could be a few hours of transfering time why not take a moment to do some general iTunes housekeeping.
Delete any old podcast you're not listening to, maybe some movies or TV shows you never plan on watching again.
The point is there's probably a lot of junk in your iTunes library that you don't need to waste time coopying.
You'll thank me later.
Now when you're ready to make the transfer, click on the file menu in iTunes then select library and select consolidated library.
This is going to take all the files referenced by iTunes
on your computer, your movies, music, audio books, podcast, TV shows, and copy it to the new location.
It will take some time and remember it's not deleting the old files, it's just copying them to the new location.
If you're feeling confident you can delete the files living in your old iTunes music folder after the transfer is complete.
But be cautious, if you don't feel sure about what you're doing it can't hurt to use the back up to disc feature in iTunes so that you can restore your library in case something goes wrong.
Once the dust is settled and all of your precious iTunes content has made the journey over to the new hard drive you can finally pat yourself on the back.
Unless the hard drive is powered off or disconnected, iTunes will remember to load your library from the external drive every time it launches.
Without the drive connected iTunes will still function for things like streaming podcast and internet radio, or downloading stuff from the iTunes store.
But you won't be able to play your library content without connecting it back up to the drive.
For CNET.com I'm Donald Bell helping you
to give you iTunes library a little extra breathing.
- Now Eric writes in, what should I do with my Power Mac PC G5 since the majority of software requires Intel PCs now?
Two things, either sell it on eBay or use it a server for your home.
Now Thomas Basio says, please stop buying [unk] music.
Okay.
And finally a picture from a fan, [unk] from Brazil sent this one in.
And
can we flip that around thingy?
Okay, there you go.
See that's what happens when we get upside down pics.
Nice view and I'm confident you speak for all of Brazil.
That's gonna do for this week's show.
Enjoy your holidays with your family and friends.
We'll be at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas next week.
But we'll return a week after that.
Send us your emails to the Apple Byte to CNET.com.
I am Brian Tong.
Thanks for sticking with us throughout the entire year.
And we'll see you next week for another bite of the apple.
