VLC Player 2.02 releases and fixes a lot of bugs and finally works as should on PPC G4 Macs w/ radeon 9000 gpu

Wow! the Mac developers of VLC Player has been updated to version 2.02 and it fixes a lot of bugs and finally works with PPC G4 Macs w. Radeon 7500/8500/9000/9200 and Nvidia Geforce 2MX/4MX! The performance issues has also been fixed.

VLC 2.02 for the Mac requires Mac OSX Leopard and up for both PPC Macs and Intel Macs.

VLC Media Player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Mac ppc VLC PLAYER 2.02:Download for OS 10.5

Mac INTEL 32BIT VLC PLAYER 2.02: Download for OS 10.5+ 

Mac INTEL 64BIT VLC PLAYER 2.02: Download for OS 10.5+

WHAT'S NEW

Version 2.0.2:

Video Output:

• More accurate colourspaces conversions for YUV->RGB in OpenGL
• Add menu support for libvlc / VLCKit applications on Mac OS X
• Various fixes on Mac OS X, notably for crop, zoom, osd and menu support
• Misc fixes in OpenGL module, on all platforms
• Fix video output on PowerPC-based Macs equipped with an ATI Radeon 7500, an ATI Radeon 9200 or a NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 Ultra.
• Fix video output of 10bit encoded contents on Intel-based Macs equipped with an Intel GMA 950 chipset running OS X 10.6 or later.
• Add support for the HiDPI mode used on recent Apple products with so-called Retina Displays.

Access:

• Rework Digital TV module for Windows. DVB-T and DVB-C should work again
• Fixes for RAR compressed files
• Fix DirectShow crashes on exit
• Improve PulseAudio input latency
• Fixes for HTTP access through a proxy
• v4l2 webcam outputting H264 can now be used directly (use --v4l2-chroma=h264)
• Fix subtitles auto-detection in subfolders and detection behaviour
• IE http proxy is not used anymore by VLC on Win32
• Accept more extensions for DVD images
• Fix crash in VC1 packetizer
• Improvements in Blu-Ray playback
• Improvements and fixes in HLS support

Codec:

• Fix crashes in AAC decoder on channels changes, notably in ISDB streams
• Fix compilation with multiple FFmpeg and libav versions
• Fix G726 support
• Fix MP3 free format support

Demuxers:

• Fixes for MKV segments, seeking and MKV title display
• Fix for some mp4, voc, midi and au crashes
• Fix for Real .ram, .f4v, .avi and .ra files support
• Fix for DVB channels file support
• Fixes for alac, vorbis, DTS, VC-1 and Dirac in mp4

Encoders:

• Fix for MPEG Audio encoding, use layer2 when using fourcc "mp2 " and "mp2a"
• Fix for JPEG generation, when doing snapshots

Audio filters and output:

• Limitation of spatializer volume output
• Fix DirectSound device selection
• Correct PulseAudio volume control
• Do not apply volume in file output
• Fix sampling rate in JACK output
• Fixes in ALSA output for latency and for broken drivers

Mac OS X:

• Enable drag and drop of playlist items between the temporary playlist and the persistant media library
• Enable import of playlist items taken from the service discovery modules to the media library or the temporary playlist
• Media key support for keyboards by other manufacturers than Apple This fix was facilitated through a hardware donation by ZF Friedrichshafen AG manufacturing keyboards under the brand "Cherry".
• Add support for the Apple Remote to set the Mac to sleep using a longer press on the Play/Pause button
• Remove libfontconfig's font cache by an Apple Type Services lookup. This removes the "Updating Cache" dialog, before finding all fonts.
• Re-add an option to hide the window decoration during video playback
• Improve compatibility with other 3rd party apps using SPMediaKeyTap
• Many Fullscreen fixes
• Keep Aspect Ratio when resizing is back
• Add controls to manipulate the Subtitles Duration to the Track Synchronization panel
• Hidden items in the sidebar are being retained for the next launch now
• Fix crash when trying to open an Audio CD by drag & drop
• Improve reliability when opening DVDs or BDs by drag & drop
• Fix crashes on exit
• Fix crash when mounting a device with multiple logical volumes while VLC is running
• Chosen audio output device is retained throughout multiple sessions
• Since running the Mac OS X interface as an Extra Interface or Control Interface can lead to undefined results, eventual settings will be automatically reset on the first launch.- This fixes issues with unresponsive playback controls and crashes on quit.
• Update Growl plugin for use with Growl 1.3
• Miscellaneous minor interface improvements

Lua Scripts:

• Fixes for stdin/stdout and for different locale issues
• Fixes for icecast SD

Qt:

• Fix preferences for audio devices on Windows
• Fix playlist search and selector behaviour
• Fix multiple issues in the Open Disc dialog
• Miscellaneous fixes in preferences, buttons, EPG, playlist and customize dialog
• Fix tags and file names display
• Fix various crashes, display issues and usability issues

Skins2:

• Fix mousewheel on Windows
• Fix for key events and focus loss

Web interface:

• Fix display of some buttons
• Fix listing of files in the Open interface
• Fixes for widgets behaviour and vlm dialog

Security:

• Fix Ogg Heap buffer overflow
• Update taglib (CVE-2012-2396)
• Update libavcodec and other codecs libraries

Translation:

• Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Walloon, Slovak, Polish, Khmer, Japanese, Italian, French, Czech, Belarusian, Breton, Greek, Spanish, Estonian, Irish, Galician, Hungarian, Japanese, Dutch, Telugu, Ukranian, Thai translations update
• New Scottish Gaelic translation

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Google releases Chrome browser for iOS!

Today Google released the Chrome Browser for iOS- and it is a universal app that runs natively on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch!

It is very similar to the desktop Mac & PC version except there is no custom v8 javascript engine and no flash support.  It uses the same webkit core as Apple Safari due to restrictions in iOS but it still works great!

Clicking on the star icon in the search bar bookmarks a webpage and clicking on the mic icon in the search bar allows for web search via voice-- which is really cool! The voice recognition is really good and i tried it while listening to a podcast on my Mac at the same time.

Kudos to Google! Nice Job!  I now have Apple Safari, Photon Flash browser (for Flash Content) and Google Chrome for my web browsers on my iPad but Google Chrome will be my main browser!

It is free and available now at the App Store!

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The official Gmail app for iOS now supports notifications!

It is official! The official Gmail app for iOS by Google supports notifications!  I used to use the app Secure Gmail and i now i've switched to the official Gmail app! I waited long and hard for a Gmail client that supports notifications and my wish is answered.

The new features as listed in the Gmail app description:

* Notification center support. Banners, alerts and lock screen notification options.
* "Send-as." alternative sender support, if configured within Gmail.
* Persistent login. Sessions no longer expire.

Thank Google for answering my prayers! And it is free!

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My thoughts on the Apple Keynote @ WWDC

My thoughts on the Apple keynote @ WWDC 2012

iOS 6 looks pretty good and these are some of the things i like about it:

1) I like the Single App mode-- which allows for less distraction and allows me to focus on 1 app

2) The new Maps App looks promising and is a worthy upgrade to the Maps App in iOS 5; look the 3d view and and the new GPS like nature of the new Maps App and it incorporating similar features of the   Waze App into it; why need a separate GPS unit when you got an iPhone running iOS6 that got similar  functions and features and then some!

3) Siri gets more capable and it comes to the iPad! -- finally! but for the 3rd gen new iPad only (sorry iPad 2 users, we're don't get Siri)

4) More Facebook intergration with iOS!

5) Safari with iCloud tabs

6) And PassBook for an easy convenient way to handling tickets and stuff

*** iOS 6 will be a FREE UPDATE and comes out in the Fall 2012***


*** iOS 6 will run on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4S; the iPad 2 and third-generation iPad; and the fourth-generation iPod touch 

Now on to the Macs:


Mac OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion only $19.99 and be available in July I believe and it will become more iOS like in nature


Only Portables got updated--


1) New MacBook Airs--  11 inch and 13 inch models bumped up in specs (usb 3 and 4gb ram standard), Starting at $999 for the 11 inch model and $ 1199 for the 13 inch model


2) New Retina MacBook Pro-- A very nice portable, gorgeous 15 inch screen, sans optical drive, ssd drive, usb 3, thunderbolt, next gen nvidia graphics, fast but the ram and ssd drive are soldered on and not user upgradable. Starting at $2199


3) New MacBook Pro (non-Retina version): bumped up in specs (intel 4000 HD graphics core, better nvidia gpu for 15 inch, usb 3) starting at $1199 for 13 inch model and $1699 for 15 inch model


4) a minor update to the Mac Pro (no usb3 or thunderbolt)-- Apple confirmed that the Mac Pro will receive a major overhaul in 2013.


The thing I am wondering is-- when are they going to refresh the iMac line and the Mac mini line?

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Tenfourfox 13 & Tenfourfox 10.0.5

I forgot to mention that Tenfourfox 13 & Tenfourfox 10.0.5 were released a few weeks ago.

In case you didn't know, Tenfourfox is a Firefox derivative browser for PPC Macs running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for G3, G4 and G5-- each with a specialized tweaked version for each processor.

Tenfourfox 13 is the latest and greatest and is in the unstable branch and Tenfourfox 10.0.5 is a maintainence release of Tenfourfox 10 and is in the stable branch.

Tenfourfox homepage: http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/

Tenfourfox 13 download here:
 G3 version: G3
G4 version: 7400, 7450
G5 version: G5

 Tenfourfox 10.0.5 can be downloaded here:
G3: TenFourFox for G3 processors
G4 :TenfourFox for older version of G4 CPU7400, and newer version of G4 CPU7450 ("G4e"), and G5: TenFourFox for G5 processors

And you can read about Tenfourfox development on the developer's blog:

http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/

Enjoy :)

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2 other alternative web browsers for PPC users running Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard

I recently just learned of 2 other alternative web browsers for PPC Mac users-- for PPC Mac users running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard only:

Webkit, as we know is the core of browers like Apple's Safari, Chrome and other browsers.  Apple no longer updates Safari for PPC.  Luckily a lone Apple developer maintains a build for us PPC Mac users running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

the homepage for the PPC Webkit build:  http://code.google.com/p/leopard-webkit/
the download page for the PPC Webkit:
download link for the more stable version: WebKit-536.18-Leopard-PowerPC.dmg
download link for the more experimental version: WebKit-536.19-Leopard-PowerPC.dmg

Aurorafox 10.5Fx is another browser option for us PPC Mac Users running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.  i was browsing the web and reading other Mac bloggers' blog and I learned of Aurofox 10.5Fx-- thank you macpowerpc.com!

Aurorafox 10.5Fx is similar to Tenfourfox exception it is designed for PPC Mac users running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Aurorafox 10.5Fx homepage: http://code.google.com/p/aurorafox/
Aurorafox 10.5Fx download: firefox-14.0a2.en-US.mac.tar.bz2 

So not we have more choices for web browsing!

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