Seems the Apple’s new iOS, A4 powered (and much smaller) AppleTV is being packed into boxes in China – ready to embark on their journey to the US.

Anybody else get their “ready for shipment” notice?

Man, this is a serious laptop case. Rainer Spehl has created some killer wooden sleeves complete with a leather lined interior. It’s designed in three sizes accommodate the 13, 15 and 17″ MacBooks. But this doesn’t come cheap. The 17″ MacBook model, will set you back almost $360 plus an extra $60 for shipping if you live outside of Europe. Ouch!

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Funny, I was looking at my phone yesterday and saying how much I love certain apps, but hate their icons. Thanks to a special utility (that doesn’t require you to jailbreak your phone) you can actually change an iOS apps icon. This tip was only tested on an iPhone 4, so I can’t verify that it would work on a 3GS or 3G – but I’m sure that somebody can check it out for me.

First you need to install iPhone Explorer (It’s a free program for both Mac and PC). Then plug your phone into your computer and launch the app.

Before you replace the icon its important to know the replacement icon you want to use must be 114 x 114, PNG, No Transparency, No Layers, 72 PPI.

As an example I’m going to change the icon of the UNEASYsilence app.

1. Navigate to “(name of your phone)/Apps/UNEASYapp/UNEASYapp.app”
2. Rename the file in there “icon@2x.png” to “icon@2x_Old.png”
3. Name the icon you want to replace the original with “icon@2x.png” (yes it is case sensitive)
4. Now simply drag this icon into the UNEASYapp.app folder and reboot your phone.

When you reboot your phone you will see a brand new beveled shiny icon for the app you just worked with.

Now, I would imagine you could replace the icon.png with a 57 x 57, PNG file to change an icon on a iPhone 3 or 3GS – but I have no way of testing that.

How many times are you jamming out to music on your iOS device and somebody is trying to tell you something? Awareness! The Headphone App allows you set the microphone on your iPod or Phone to pick up outside noises like traffic, car sounds or conversations and feed them into your earphones. You can control how much outside noise you want to hear.

Headphone wearers with the app will not be so oblivious to what’s going on around them and that, says Essencys, the British company behind the app, makes it a lot safer to listen to headphones while out and about. “With increasing numbers of people using in-ear and closed headphones, there are serious safety issues caused by their isolation from the world around them.”

Available int the iTunes App Store for $4.99.

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UGH! How many times have you purchased an application for your iPhone or iPad thinking you owned it – but you didn’t and had to buy it. Thanks to a little trick you can find out if you already own an iPhone app to avoid accidental purchases!

You can add it to a wish list!

Simply find the app and instead of clicking the “BUY” button, click the drop-down arrow next to it, and choose “Add to Wish List”. If you have already purchased the app (or any iTunes media for that fact), you will be told that you have already purchased the item.

Neat. Unfortunately you can only do this trick on a desktop computer and not on your device – but I’ll take it.

Felt the “Smart Playlists” in iTunes were lacking a little? Now with iTunes 10 you can make a smart playlist that allows you to see what songs are missing artwork. Previously you needed a third party utility to do this. Neat!

So you like Apple’s fancy Magic Mouse? Its a beautiful piece of engineering with an insane price tag of $70. Problem is, even at $70, it only works on Macs leaving Windows users in the dust. But thanks to a hidden update here is how you get this little guy to work in Windows XP (32 bit) to Windows 7.

Thanks to a little hackery from Apple’s Bluetooth Update (located here) the Magic Mouses driver was extracted via WinRar resulting in a 32bit version and a 64bit version that you can install on any ordinary Windows PC that will enable all the scrolling ‘magic’ of the Magic Mouse.

Update: Still not working? try following this guide – https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2221427?start=91&tstart=0

Time for a trip down MacOS memory lane.

I have been a Mac user since OS 6, and when you have been a Mac user as long as I have you get to know and love the old alert sounds. With every new OS release Apple eliminates a swath of their old alert sounds, from System 6 to System 7 we lost Clink-Clank and who could forget the hysterical Monkey noise. Over the other OS changes we lost ChuToy, Submarine, Laugh as well as the dearly missed Wild Eep to name a few.

Some alert’s even have their own back story – for example “Sosumi.” The sound’s unusual name was coined during a trademark dispute with the Beatles. The sound’s name also exists currently in an inside joke on Apple Computer’s website, where it marks the CSS class denoting a copyright notice #.

Anyway, might as download all these alert sounds and bring your modern machine back to the good ol days. Windows users don’t fret, they are encoded a WAV’s so you can join in on the fun.

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So you’re running OS X and keeping track of your schedule. If you’re anything like myself this means at some points you have Stickies open, maybe a couple looming unsaved instances of “Textedit” or possibly even a word file, some even resort to spreadsheets. Maybe you’re a note fanatic however and seek more organization so you’ve started using “Mail” app to keep track of idea’s and notes or gone to a new extreme and setup some filters and labels so you can email yourself ideas as reminders.

All of these methods work, success greatly varies depending on your work and thought style however. With this in mind I will say that Journler isn’t going to be for everyone… or maybe it is!

Price:
journler right from the get go won me over with it’s price … FREE! (as in beer. for now). This is a “feature” pretty much non-existent in this software market with some apps/suites costing up to $130! Now you probably noticed I said “(for now)” above, this is because the developers are moving the application over to a shareware model… everyone’s gotta make ends meet.

Features:
The feature set is what sold me (as it should be when using an App.) it can be as cut dry and simple or as needlessly complex as you desire. This is something we don’t usually see. From most of the “personal productivity” software I’ve used you’re given a series of tools and a set idea as to how they are going to be used. Not the case with journler.

Notes:
Keep your thoughts stored just how you had them. Attach files, record your own video or audio clip. Insert HTML elements … make a todo list with HTML checkboxes. Toss pre-fixes on list items or high light a line out of a copy and pasted paragraph. I would go so far as to say that the interface for composing and organizing your ideas inside your notes rivals Word or Open Office.

Organization:
Labels, Tags, and Folders on my! Corny I know, but seriously you’ve the ability to organize your notes any given way… even multiple ways! Using Labels and Folders would be enough to keep a veteran personal productivity app user happy. When you consider Tagging and Smart Folders along with this the way you organize your ideas almost becomes blaring obvious.

Smart Folders: (my favorite feature)
It’s like real time message filtering for your notes. You’ll create a Smart Folder that doesn’t actually contain anything, nor will it ever per-say. Smart Folders are more like a logic location, any give item can span multiple Smart Folders based on that items characteristics. I’ll give you a simple example.

I’m a web developer by choice and trade, I love it. With that said at any given time I’m usually juggling work, freelance, and my own projects simultaneously. This means I have serious collisions of time and ideas. I might have 50 separate tasks from 3 different projects 13 of which are Urgent. Now rather than look over notes from a 3 projects and find the ones I’ve labeled as “Urgent” I could simply create a smart folder. Using the stupid simple interface I could add a “requirement” or “exclusion” for items that should appear in this folder. In my example I’ll say I want “all” notes with a “label” or Urgent. The smart folder would instantly populate with my 13 labeled notes for all projects/categories/etc.

Great!… now lets say an entire project is placed on developmental hold, these tasks are no longer urgent because of the dev freeze but once that project begins development I’ll need them to remain urgent. I could now edit my Smart Folder and depending on your organizational preference exclude that project from showing up in said filter. If using folders you could tell the smart folder to “exclude” notes from folder “project foobar”… or if using tagging (my preference) “exclude” notes tagged “foobar”.

Application Integration:
Talk about stream line! Journler hooks into some of OS X’s most popular Apps. While composing a note attach a file (also note the files are reference pointers, so if you update that file… it’s updated in the note) using finder… or view an attached file in Finder. However you can also attach a contact from your Address book, or email a file/note from Mail. Attached an XLS file… have Office installed, it already knows and shows the Office Excel Icon as the viewing option. Listen to an MP3 file you’ve attached or watch a vid right inside the app using native Quicktime support. Hook dates into iCal and link them to existing iCal entries. It even hooks into Spotlight, just type in the title of the note you want to view and Spotlight tracks it down, hit enter and it opens right up in Journler. All of this is done so smoothly you’ll start to wonder why other applications don’t do it the same way. As if that wasn’t enough Apple Script integration allows you to write your own functionality!

Summary:
I consider journler although one of my newer Apps easily one of my MVP apps. As I get more used to it and discover new ways to use and implement it the more I fall in love with it’s simplicity and functionality. I’d suggest everyone give it a week worth of trial and see if you don’t agree. It’s so open anyone could find a way to utilize it…. and I mean anyone… Soccer Mom’s to NASA engineers.

check it out @ http://journler.com/

I must say that today is a really exciting day. Not because his Steveiness is taking the stage in a couple of hours but also because friend of the site TUAW is using Pingie to deliver LIVE SMS updates.

I highly suggest, if you are Apple addicted, you signup for these updates at TUAW’s special page or by simply texting “ping tuaw” to 95495.

Also I will be providing pre and post game coverage on UNEASY and via my own special dedicated live page (Or you can subscribe wirelessly by texting “ping uneasy” to 95495).

Let the games begin!