Google Updates YouTube for iOS App, Adds iPad, AirPlay, iPhone 5 Support

Google has updated the YouTube for iOS app, adding native support for the iPad and the iPhone 5, as well as full support for streaming videos via AirPlay, reports The Next Web.

Google's Horia Ciurdar says that more than 25 percent of all YouTube watching happens on mobile. Since the launch of the YouTube app back in September, Ciurdar says Google has "been hard at work to improve the app based on your feedback."

Now the YouTube app will get 'enhanced' AirPlay support, letting you shoot your videos over to your Apple TV. Videos are also said to start faster and play more smoothly. Google has also improved VoiceOver support for those with visual impairments.

During the iOS 6 Beta, Apple removed the native YouTube app that had been included on every iOS device since the platform was introduced. Once iOS 6 was publicly announced, Google released a native YouTube app for the iPhone.

YouTube for iOS is available as a free download from the App Store. [Direct Link]

Create a New User Account on the Mac to Separate Work & Play

Creating a new user account and using that exclusively for work or play is an excellent way to increase your productivity by reducing distractions. This makes it very easy to use and carry just a single Mac to serve as both a work and personal computer, and can be a real lifesaver for those of us who are either workaholics or just easily distracted by all the stuff that resides on the computer.

The process below walks through how to create a new user account in Mac OS X, if you're already familiar with how to do that then skip through it and just take the general advice here:

• Open System Preferences from the  Apple menu
• Choose "Users & Groups" and click the lock icon in the corner to make changes, enter the password when requested
• Click the [+] plus button to add a new user



• Make the new account type Administrator or Standard depending on your security preferences, fill in the rest of the information then click "Create User"



• Now enable Fast User Switching by clicking on "Login Options" and checking the box next to "Show fast user switching menu", this lets you easily switch between accounts by pulling down a menu bar

You're now ready to go with the new "work" account (or "play" account).

Get in the habit of only using this account for it's given purpose, and use Fast User Switching to switch back and forth between the work and play accounts when needed, though there's no harm in logging out of the other account either since OS X now can reopen your prior session with all of its windows and apps.

The new user account will have access to all the same apps as your primary account so long as they are stored in the primary /Applications/ folder, which is the default setting for anything installed in OS X be it from a DMG, PKG, or the App Store. If you want to go a step further, you can use Parental Controls to restrict app usage and prevent yourself from playing games, opening Facebook, and otherwise wasting your time with unproductive apps and websites. You can really get strict with yourself by creating standalone apps of websites you absolutely must access, then block everything else, but we're assuming you have more self control than that.

Thanks for the tip idea Ryan

Turn iOS Maps into a Virtual Globe by Zooming Out

Sometimes looking at a flat map view just isn't what you're looking for, but with Apple Maps you can now view the entire world map as a nice round globe too. You'll need to have Maps view set in either Hybrid or Satellite mode to be able to see the globe view, that can be done by tapping the page curl in the corner then selecting either one, then all you need to do is continuously pinch to zoom out until the globe view appears. You can rotate it around in any direction you want, and if you get too disoriented just tap the compass icon to reorient north again.

Play the globe travel game, use it for help with geography homework, figure out how where things are in relation to each other, or just enjoy having the whole world in the palm of your hand. It may not be the single most useful feature of iOS Maps but it's fun to play around with and it beats having to download another app just to see the world in true form.

Globe view is available on any iPad, iPod touch, or iPhone running iOS 6 or later with Apple maps.

New iMac Benchmarks Show 10-25% Improvement Over Previous Generation

Primate Labs today posted a summary of the new iMac benchmarks hitting the company's Geekbench Browser, showing fairly strong performance increases over the previous generation of machines. The analysis focuses on the 21.5-inch models, as the 27-inch models are not launching for several more weeks, and the latest high-end 21.5-inch model scores nearly 25% higher than its 2011 counterpart and even bests the high-end 27-inch model from last year by nearly 10%.


The report also pits the new 21.5-inch iMac against the current generations of Apple's other two desktop lines, the Mac mini and Mac Pro. The comparison to the Mac mini reveals that users can achieve nearly the same performance as the mid-range iMac by purchasing a high-end Mac mini, although customers would obviously have to supply their own displays and other peripherals.

What's interesting here, though, is how the quad-core Core i5 iMacs perform compared to the quad-core Core i7 Mac minis. Since Core i7 has hyper-threading technology (and the Core i5 does not), it can execute more instructions at once, leading to higher performance.

Here this means that the mid-range Mac mini is faster than the mid-range iMac that's almost twice the price. True, you do get a display and a discrete GPU with the iMac, but these Geekbench results show how powerful the new Mac mini is despite its size.

As for the Mac Pro, which is still stuck on older-generation processors rather than adopting Intel's Sandy Bridge E chips, the new iMac is now on par with all but the high-end 12-core Mac Pro models.

As for the new 27-inch iMac, a handful of Geekbench results have already appeared in the database running a special Build 12C2037 of OS X 10.8.2. The results indicate that an early benchmark that appeared in mid-May was indeed accurate and indicate that the new high-end 27-inch model will outperform its 2011 counterpart by nearly 15%.

Chitika: iOS Mobile Web Share Continues to Trump Android [iOS Blog]

Chitika Insights has released a new six-month study that has found that iOS devices' mobile web share has grown 2% over the past two months while Android devices' mobile web share has decreased 2%. The data spans the six-month timeframe of May 27th, 2012 to November 27th, 2012 and includes devices like the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Kindle Fire HD, the Nexus 7, iPad mini, iPad fourth generation and iPhone 5.

According to the data, the share for iOS is at 67% while Android sits at 33%. Over the past six months, iOS has been hovering around 65% while Android hovered around 35%. The peak of Android's share was 40% in late August, which Chitika attributes to the strong sales of the Galaxy S III. That peak softened after the release of iPhone 5 and the new iOS tablets.

Chitika notes that Apple's significant advantage in tablet sales with the iPad and iPad mini is the biggest factor in the mobile web share dominance. Apple also has its' iPod Touch line contributing to its share, while Android's popularity and share is mostly due to smartphones.

The data is also suggesting that users don't switch between mobile operating systems, according to Chitika. They note that if their suggestion is true, Android manufacturers are competing with themselves while Apple is in no danger of a dwindling user base.

Send & Share Contacts Easily from Mac OS X

The Contacts app in OS X makes sharing the contact information of anyone in your address book extremely simple, and if you have iCloud enabled you can share any address from your phone right from your Mac, without reaching for the iPhone itself:

• Open Contacts in OS X and choose the contact you want to share
• Click the [>] Arrow button in the lower portion of Contacts to access sharing options, choose Message, Email, or AirDrop
• Include a message alongside the contact if desired, then choose "Send"

The files being sent out are vcard formatted, meaning just about anything will be able to read the information, whether it's another Mac, iPhone, Windows PC, Android, Blackberry, or whatever.

Everything will be handled right through Contacts, unless you have Gmail or webmail configured as your default Mail client in OS X and choose the Email option, which will upload the vcard to the appropriate webmail client instead.

If you choose the iMessage feature and the recipient has iMessage configured with their Mac, iPhone, or iOS device properly, they'll be able to immediately import the contact right into their Contacts list in iOS just by tapping on it, just like sharing Contacts between iPhones.

Using the email option and sending the vcard to yourself can also be a way of preserving an individual contact that you'll otherwise be deleting from your contacts list, forming a one-off backup for that individual, though if you're looking to backup an entire address book there are better ways to do that in bulk.