iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store for iPhone

Filed under: iTS, iPhoneOur weeks of obsessively checking for iPhone updates were rewarded today with software version 1.1.1. There are several changes, like a new Calculator icon (it now matches that of the iPod touch) and additional text message alert sounds.The big news for iPhone users, however (those that survived the update, that is), is the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Here are my impressions after spending a few minutes with it.Look and FeelUpon first launch, you're brought to the main...

Filed under: iTS, iPhoneOur weeks of obsessively checking for iPhone updates were rewarded today with software version 1.1.1. There are several changes, like a new Calculator icon (it now matches that of the iPod touch) and additional text message alert sounds.The big news for iPhone users, however (those that survived the update, that is), is the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Here are my impressions after spending a few minutes with it.Look and FeelUpon first launch, you're brought to the main screen. I had an excellent Wi-Fi connection and the store came up very quickly. Across the top are three buttons: "New Releases," "What's Hot" and "Genres." Below that are two banner ads and a scroll-able list of top releases. Flipping through the list was snappy, though it did take a second or two to draw album art towards the bottom of the list.At the very bottom of the screen are four icons: "Featured," "Top Tens," "Search" and "Downloads."It feels much snappier than I expected. The album art is nice and big and everything is quite legible.Purchasing MusicI touched The Shepard's Dog by Iron & Wine (I intended to buy it anyway) and got a listing of the album's tracks. Tapping any title launches its 30 second preview almost immediately, just as tapping the price tag reveals the "Buy now" button. I bought the album, and was prompted for my iTunes Store password. The selected music seems to "jump" down into the "Downloads" icon, and a small, red indicator slowly flashes red, indicating the number of tracks remaining.Again I was amazed at how quickly it downloaded: 3MB and 4MB songs were taking 3 and 4 seconds.Once the download was complete, a button for the newly-created "Purchased" playlist appeared in the upper right hand corner. Clicking it quit iTunes and launched the iPod software, where my music was ready to play. The whole process was fast and dead simple. Apple obviously contemplated (and nailed) every last detail.Synchronizing with iTunesAgain, this was laughably easy. With my iPhone connected to my Mac, I launched iTunes and started a sync. iTunes saw and imported the new music. It also created a new, "Purchased on Dave's iPhone" playlist. Other Features Live search: iTunes begins searching as soon as you start typing, which is pretty cool. Top Tens: Quickly jump to the top ten songs across genres, or view the store's over all top ten downloads. Download Extras: If an album contains extras, like a digital booklet or a video, it's described beneath the list of album tracks. This is a very nice piece of software: Speedy, simple and similar enough to the "full"version of the iTunes Store that there's no learning curve at all. Feel free to share your own experiences in the comments.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • 50 of the Most Burning Apple Questions Answered

    You asked for help with the thorniest problems facing Mac, iPhone, and iPad owners, and we answered, providing 50 foolproof solutions that’ll come in handy for anyone who uses Apple gear. For months now, we’ve been asking you to send us your most burning Apple questions, and to put it mildly, you came through. The queue in our inbox looked longer than the lines that curled around NYC’s 5th Avenue Apple Store for the launch of the very first iPhone. And when we dug into the meat and potatoes of your queries, we could only marvel at the insightful list of vexing technical issues and twinkle-in-your-eye trivia tidbits that you challenged us with. We distilled all those inquiries down to the 50 best, most burning questions about Macs, iPhones, iPads, and Apple itself. Then we put our crack team of experts on the job of coming up with this ultimate answers guide for all things Apple. Struggling with iTunes syncing? iPhone backups? RAID cards? iPad printing? Or just wondering exactly what Steve actually wears every day? The answers await, backstopped and bulletproofed by the pros at Mac|Life. 1. Duplicates in iPhoto I can’t find any options in iPhoto for removing all duplicate pictures in one fell swoop, and I don’t want to find and delete them all myself. Any ideas?iPhoto lacks iTunes’ duplicate-deleting prowess, but the shareware app Duplicate Annihilator can fill this gap and free your photo library of clutter. Despite the name, it identifies and tags duplicate pictures with a keyword so you can collect them in a Smart Folder to review and annihilate at your leisure. 2. Wi-Fi DropoutsSince upgrading to Snow Leopard, my Wi-Fi connection randomly drops for no reason. I still get Wi-Fi reliably on my iPhone, and my wife gets it on her PC. Any advice?This problem seems to be affecting many Snow Leopard users, so we’ve come up with a series of steps that should resolve it. Start with the first and work down until the problem goes away:» Update to Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later.» Restart your modem and router.» Upgrade your router’s firmware to the latest version, particularly if it’s a non-Apple router.» Turn AirPort off then on again from your menu bar.» In your Network System Preference, create a new location and delete all of the previous locations.One of our best tips for troubleshooting Wi-Fi connection problems is to create one brand-new location and then delete all of your previous locations.» Within your new location, drag AirPort to the top of the service order by clicking on the gear icon and choosing “Set Service Order.”» Delete all of your preferred networks. To see your preferred networks, click on AirPort in the left margin, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab.» Within that Advanced area, click on the TCP/IP tab and turn off IPv6. Then, go into the DNS tab and make sure that your DNS servers are correct. If in doubt, try Google’s DNS servers of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.» Run Keychain First Aid in Keychain Access, which is located in your Utilities folder.» Manually change your router’s wireless channel to another channel to avoid interference with other wireless networks. See which channels are being used by other networks with a utility like AirRadar ($20, koingosw.com).» Turn off 802.11n mode on your router, leaving it in 802.11b/g mode only.» Change the security settings on your router from WEP to WPA/WPA2.» Zap the PRAM on your Mac (get instructions here). 3. Multitouch Gestures Why can’t I do the one-finger double-tap to open documents in Snow Leopard?You can absolutely use the one-finger double-tap on your Multi-Touch trackpad to open documents in Snow Leopard. Simply go into your Trackpad System Preference and make sure that “Tap to Click” is checked. Your confusion may also stem from the fact that your Multi-Touch trackpad is capable of understanding many gestures. So if you’ve enabled “Dragging” or “Drag Lock,” you might be holding down your finger too long after the second tap. If you’ve enabled “Secondary Click,” you might be tapping in the wrong area of your trackpad. 4. Syncing iPhone Photos When I sync my iPhone, all 6,000 of my MacBook Pro’s photos move to the iPhone--very uncool! How do I remove them from the phone and ensure one-way photo transfers to the Mac in the future?That’s at least 5,950 pictures too many. Just connect your iPhone to your MacBook, then select the iPhone in the iTunes sidebar. Click the Photos tab, where you can choose to transfer none of your pictures or just specific iPhoto Albums, Faces, and Events to your iPhone. Re-sync to apply your new settings and get back a few gigabytes on your iPhone. 5. Uninstalling My Mac still runs processes from a program I deleted. How do I delete an application entirely and prevent this from happening?Unfortunately, there’s no standard way to remove a program from your Mac, but some developers simplify the job by including an uninstaller with their application. It may lurk in the main folder of the app you want to terminate--check those subfolders!--or it might be in the original installer itself. Launch the installer and proceed through it carefully. An uninstall feature may be obvious, or it could be hidden among options to customize the installation process. Be sure to quit the program you want to delete before uninstalling it.If an application didn’t come with an uninstaller, then the only way to delete it is to drag it to the Trash. However, this won’t remove preferences and other support files left behind on your Mac. You can use Spotlight to search for the deleted application’s name to find these strays, but if you have a lot of applications to remove, consider investing in a dedicated uninstaller like CleanApp, AppZapper, or AppCleaner. These programs automate the process of zapping unwanted programs--and their stuff--off your drive for good. 6. File Compression I’d like to save hard drive space with the Finder’s Compress command, but I’m not getting useful results. I recently compressed a 117.4MB file to just 116.7MB. Am I doing something wrong?Not all file types can be compressed with the same space-saving results. For example, compressing a ZIP archive won’t make a significantly smaller ZIP file. Some files, such as JPEGs, MP3s, and other media formats, have a certain level of compression already built in, but the sizes of text files and uncompressed image file formats can be dramatically reduced with ZIP compression. 7. Remote Control When I use my iPod touch as a remote for my Apple TV, it appears to only give me access to the Apple TV’s library as if it were an iPod. Is there a way to use the iPod touch like the traditional Apple remote? For example, can I use the touch to navigate to the YouTube app and search for videos, or to browse the movie rentals?Apple’s Remote app for the iPhone and iPod touch lets you control the playback of media that you’ve already purchased or downloaded. But for content that doesn’t live on your Apple TV, such as YouTube videos or the iTunes Store, you’ll still need your traditional Apple remote to navigate to those screens. However, the good news is that whenever an onscreen keyboard appears on your Apple TV, the Remote app will display its own keyboard, which lets you quickly type what you’re searching for. 8. Photo Migration Can Faces and Places data in iPhoto ‘09 be moved to another Mac, or do I have to click on all those faces and enter all those locations again?All your vacation sites and friendly faces will transfer to another Mac with OS X’s Migration Assistant, or you can drag your iPhoto library file from your Pictures folder to the same location on a new Mac. When you launch iPhoto on the new machine, you’ll be told the locations of pictures containing GPS data must be retrieved again, but custom locations you’ve entered yourself (for pictures taken with older cameras, say) will remain intact. 9. Gmail, Behave! I sync Gmail with OS X’s Mail, but when I delete a message from Mail, it remains in Gmail’s All Mail folder in the sidebar. What’s the right mailbox setting to move a message deleted in Mail to Gmail’s Trash?All your Gmail goes into the All Mail folder, whether or not it’s been recently deleted and no matter which Gmail folder label is attached to the message. Google’s default IMAP Mail settings (available here) are correct, but to send a Mail message directly to Gmail’s Trash, you’ll have to drag it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder in Mail’s sidebar. 10. Crash-Tastic It always happens at the worst possible time: I’ll be using my PowerBook G4 when the screen suddenly dims and shows a Rosetta Stone’s worth of languages telling me to restart the computer. Why does this keep happening, and how can I stop it?Ouch. What you’re describing is a kernel panic, a cute name for a not-so-cute problem. An operating system’s kernel acts as a bridge between applications and the computer’s hardware, and kernel panics are the last-ditch efforts of the operating system to recover from serious conflicts between them. The chief causes of kernel panics are faulty RAM and software incompatible with the operating system you’re running. Unfortunately, that range could include any number of bad things that may be happening on your poor PowerBook.Happily, even a kernel panic isn’t the end of the world, and we can offer some pointers to help you figure out what’s wrong. The first step is to look at your Mac’s history. Was there a time when it didn’t get kernel panics? Think back to any (and we mean any) new hardware or software you installed before the panics began. Update or uninstall them one item at a time to isolate the panics’ cause until you narrow down the trouble. Also note which hardware and software you’re using just before they strike--there may be a pattern. Whatever the issue, your Mac isn’t happy, so be sure to back up important files and verify your hard drive with Disk Utility regularly.Next page: Answers Guide continued >> 11. Get Zippy iPhone Backups How can I speed up iPhone backups so I’ll never have to cancel mid-backup again? They seem to take forever when a couple minutes really should do it.A. First off, keep your iOS software current. Not only will the latest updates squash bugs and add features, they can improve backup times. To update, sync your iPhone, select it in the iTunes sidebar, then go to the Summary tab.B. Pare down the number of applications on your iPhone. Application data like in-app purchases, saved games, and new documents are all backed up when you sync, and that can add up to a long wait while the backup progress bar creeps by. To start cleaning house, connect to iTunes, select the Apps tab, then delete your most infrequently used applications. You’ll lose the data saved in these apps, but you’ll gain speedier backups.Ask yourself this: Are those apps you never use on your iPhone really worth slowing down your backups?C. Sync often. If you sync at least once or twice a day, fewer applications will have new data to back up when you reconnect to iTunes. If you can’t bear to part with any of the applications on your Home Screen, making multiple faster backups will let you keep all your favorite apps at your fingertips.D. Keep Camera Roll clean. While the contents of your iPhone’s photo library aren’t backed up during a sync, the photos, movies, and screenshots in Camera Roll are. Transfer this media to iPhoto as soon as you begin a sync, and delete the files from Camera Roll when the transfer is complete to get this data copied onto your Mac while excluding it from being backed up in iTunes.More photos = slower backups.E. Connect to a USB port on your Mac instead of an external USB hub. Not all USB ports are created equal, and connecting to a powered, full-speed USB port that’s built into your Mac will ensure the fastest possible transfer speeds during backups. That means you can be off to your next port of call quickly, secure in the knowledge that your iPhone data is safe on your computer.F. Before you sync to iTunes, purge unnecessary SMS messages, old call histories, and non-essential files downloaded by apps that store data on your iPhone. For example, if you regularly copy files to your iDisk app or productivity apps like DocsToGo, make sure you’re only carrying what you need before a backup. Odds are these files live elsewhere on your Mac or iDisk, so there’s no need to back them up again.Junk your old, unused files, too. 12. Time Travel I’ve been running Time Machine for months in Mac OS 10.6.3, but I’ve never seen instructions about how to go back in time and retrieve information. Help!Mount your backup drive, then launch Time Machine from your Mac’s Applications folder. Your desktop will be replaced by a timeline and Finder windows showing your Mac’s contents as they were in the past. Just click a Finder window (or click within the timeline) to return to a specific date. You can also search within Finder windows for specific filenames, and more. When you find a missing file, select it and click Restore to return to the present with your document. 13. Rip Encrypted Movies I want an easy way to download a DVD to my computer so I can put it on my iPod or iPad. I used to use HandBrake, but that no longer works for encrypted DVDs.HandBrake (free, handbrake.fr) is still the quickest and most reliable tool for directly converting DVDs into video files that will play on your iPod or iPad. But you’ll also need to install VLC (free, videolan.org) if you want to decrypt commercial DVDs. Place both HandBrake and VLC into your Applications folder, and you’ll be able to convert encrypted DVDs with HandBrake once again. 14. Dump Discs I want to go disc-free on my MacBook, but a few of my games require a CD or DVD to play. Is there any way to make OS X think the disc is in the drive when it’s not?OS X’s Disk Utility can make a duplicate of your game’s CD or DVD and save it to your Mac as a file called a disk image. Once created, disk images can be double-clicked to open and mount on your desktop just like a conventional disc (you’ve already seen them in software installers downloaded from the internet). But there are two things to remember: copy-protection schemes on the disc may prevent duplication, and you should have plenty of room on your MacBook’s hard drive before you begin. A DVD’s disk image will take up several gigabytes.To get started, insert the disc you want to dupe, then launch Disk Utility from your Utilities folder. Select the disc in the sidebar, then click New Image in the Disk Utility toolbar, set the image format to DVD/CD Master in the resulting sheet, and save the disk image to your Mac. Next time you want to play your game, double-click the image file, then launch your game normally once the virtual game disc mounts. When you’re finished, you can drag the mounted disc to the Trash to eject like any conventional media, leaving the disk image on your Mac for the next time you want to get your game on. 15. Branching Out Which operating systems—and I mean all of them, not just Mac versions—will run on a PowerPC-based Mac?The PowerPC processor has become something of a museum piece since Apple abandoned it for Intel’s chips, but these Linux distributions can help you breathe new life into G5- and G4-powered Macs. Ubuntu, Yellow Dog, and Fedora all maintain builds that run on PowerPC hardware. When you’re looking to run a worthwhile alternate operating system on older Mac hardware, the penguin has you covered. 16. The $1M Question When will Adobe Flash content be viewable on iPhones and iPads?Never. In April, Steve Jobs had this to say about Flash on Apple’s website: “Flash was created during the PC era--for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low-power devices, touch interfaces, and open web standards--all areas where Flash falls short.” 17. iLife Oops I accidentally deleted iMovie and the Apple Loops that came with GarageBand. Can I reload them from the original disc without losing all my other iLife files?Sure! First, launch the iLife ‘09 installer from your disc. At the bottom of the final screen is a Customize button that lets you install iLife components individually. Click it, then select the items you want to reinstall. The installer will insist on installing GarageBand along with your missing loops, but your missing applications and files will return to your Mac without affecting other iLife applications and documents, including GarageBand preferences. Just remember to run Software Update afterward to ensure that everything’s up to date. 18. iPad Printing What are the best ways to print from the iPad?Until Apple decides to build printing into iOS, there unfortunately isn’t a “best” way--although there are several apps in the App Store that might meet your needs.Canon’s Easy-PhotoPrint for iPhone runs on the iPad and will print photos to certain Canon printers. And the App Store is full of plenty of third-party apps that promise printing from your iPad, although in our experience the results are decidedly mixed. PrintBureau ($12.99) searches your network for shared printers. It reliably printed to one--but not another--of the printers on our home network without any intervention. There’s an optional free helper application you can run on a Mac to give PrintBureau access to your printers (a solution common to several iPad printing apps), but we’d hardly call that true iPad printing.We also had success with Air Sharing HD ($9.99), which is packed with features for moving and sharing files with your iPad. It didn’t work immediately with our Wi-Fi–enabled printer, but turning on Printer Sharing on our Mac made all our printers visible to the app. But--like using a companion app--that also requires that you have a Mac running. Ultimately, the least fiddly solution often ends up being emailing yourself a document and printing from a computer. Hopefully Apple has something better in the pipeline
 19. Tame Bookmarks I have tons of Safari bookmarks on my Mac. I don’t want them all on my iPhone, but Apple only allows syncing of all or none. Is there a fix?It’s almost elegant. Xmarks (xmarks.com) syncs bookmarks across multiple browsers, and its profiles let you decide which bookmarks appear on specific devices, including your iPhone. Best of all, you can view (and even search) them in a layout formatted for Mobile Safari. Just sign up for Xmarks, follow their instructions, and disable iPhone bookmark syncing in iTunes. Unfortunately, Xmarks doesn’t sync new bookmarks made on your iPhone back to your Mac. Like we said
almost elegant.Next page: Answers Guide continued >> 20. Stay Safe How can I tell if someone is using my Wi-Fi? Elementary, my dear Wi-Fi user! The mystery’s solution lies in MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, which are unique codes that identify network devices. Different routers have different ways of showing which addresses (and thus, devices) are accessing your network. If you have an AirPort router, launch AirPort Utility from your Utilities folder, double-click your router’s icon, then click the Advanced icon in the resulting window. Click Logging and Statistics, then Logs and Statistics. In the Wireless Clients section, you’ll see a graph showing the address of each device connecting to your network. The list will include your Mac, the AirPort router itself, and any other computers, iPhones, game consoles, or other devices using your Wi-Fi connection. Next, match the MAC addresses to your network devices. We’ll get you started: your computer’s address can be found in the Network section of System Profiler. When you’re finished, you’ll know the addresses of devices you want on your network, so you can tell when something with a foreign address is using your Wi-Fi. Then the game’s afoot! 21. Sim-plify I have a 1G iPhone that I want to use as a simple iPod touch, leaving aside the phone features entirely, but I don’t have the original SIM card. What are my options?Your options are slim. Unlike later models, the 1G iPhone requires a SIM card to operate as a basic iPod, even after AT&T service has been terminated or transferred to another phone. You can get a new SIM card from AT&T, but this will require signing up for a new phone service contract. Unfortunately, there’s no way around this limitation besides jailbreaking your iPhone with one of the methods floating around on the internet. 22. Merge Partitions Is there any way to un-partition a non-boot hard drive in OS 10.6 without wiping the data?You’re in luck. Since 10.5, OS X’s Disk Utility has been able to add and remove partitions from disks without affecting other data on the drive. However, Disk Utility won’t merge data from the deleted partition to another partition on the drive, so back up all your data--especially files on the partition you’ll be removing--before you begin.Once all your data’s securely backed up, launch Disk Utility from your Mac’s Utilities folder, then select the drive in the sidebar (be sure to choose the icon noting the drive’s capacity, not just its name). Click the Partition button, then in the shaded box showing the drive’s Volume Scheme, select the partition you want to remove. Click the minus button below the Volume Scheme chart to remove the partition (don’t worry, it won’t disappear right away). Click and drag other partitions to resize them and fill the empty space that will be left behind by the deleted partition. You can also click the plus button to add a new partition that can also be resized. Click Apply to commit your changes and begin Operation: Un-partition. 23. No Scratching I just bought a new 21.5” iMac (late 2009 model) and found a serious design flaw: the CD slot has sharp aluminum edges that can inflict permanent, irreversible scratches to valuable CDs. Help!These days, Apple’s really into razor-sharp edges. For example, the unibody MacBooks also famously have sharp edges where users rest their wrists, and those very same sharp edges have made it onto the slot on the side of the iMac where CDs are loaded. Luckily, those sharp edges are just on the outside, not on the internal drive itself. So if you carefully and slowly slide in your CD without touching the outside edges, you may avoid scratching your CD. But here’s a more practical solution: Put electrical tape around the edges of the slot. This isn’t the most beautiful thing to look at, but it’s almost guaranteed to keep scratches at bay. Another option would be to purchase an external CD drive to either use as your primary CD drive or to make copies of your valuable CDs. That way, if a CD gets scratched, at least it’s not the original. 24. Font Fixes When using Mail, any font that I use in my outgoing email always shows up on recipient PCs as Courier--that archaic, typewriter style font. How can I get my Mac fonts to translate onto PCs?In order for a font to be successfully seen on somebody’s computer, they need to already have that particular font installed on their machine. If your recipient doesn’t have the same exact font as you, their computer will substitute your font with a font that is already installed on their system. This applies to emails, websites, Word documents, almost anything. If maintaining the integrity of fonts is important to you, you’ll need to create PDF files or images and attach them to your outgoing email message. 25. App-Update Errors When I try to update apps from my iPhone, I get a “Cannot Connect to iTunes Store” error, yet I have no problem downloading new apps, and no problem updating them in iTunes on my computer. What gives?Assuming the problem is reoccurring and not a freaky networking accident, it sounds like your iPhone (or the problematic apps themselves) may be confused about the status of your iTunes account. This could be because a different user has logged into your iPhone, because you have multiple usernames or passwords tied to your iTunes account, or even because your billing information was recently changed on another device. The easiest place to start is by navigating to Settings, tapping Store, and confirming that yours is the currently active account on your iPhone. If it is, try signing out and signing back in with your most recent iTunes account information, then verify that your address and billing information are correct. If the problem persists, the apps may the culprit. Try updating them in iTunes, then deleting them from your iPhone. Reconnect your iPhone to your computer to sync the updated apps back to the phone. If, down the road, these same applications refuse to update from your iPhone again, deleting them from your Mac and re-downloading them from the iTunes Store may fix this. 26. Make Windows Behave I have various finder windows set to appear in different views depending on their content. But certain windows stubbornly--and randomly--refuse to remember my preferences. Is it a bug, or am I missing a setting?Setting a specific folder to open in a particular view (such as columns, icons, or lists) can make browsing files in the Finder a lot easier. Just open and set each folder to your preferred view, then select View > Show View Options in the menu bar and check the topmost button in the resulting window to force the Finder window to always open in that view. Unfortunately, the Finder has ignored these helpful preferences since the earliest days of OS X. Your stubborn folders aren’t the first!Your folders may be confused by corrupt .DS_Store files, the invisible files created by the Finder to store icon sizes, window backgrounds, and more. System utility apps like TinkerTool and Cocktail can reveal or delete these files for you, or you can use the Terminal to delete them yourself if your UNIX Fu is strong.If those options don’t do the trick, your Mac may think you don’t have permission to reset the view options of certain folders. Some, like the Applications folder, don’t technically “belong” to any user except the system itself, and only the system (also known as the root user) can make permanent changes to these directories. What looks like random stubbornness may be OS X remembering that it’s in charge of these folders, not you.To show your Mac who’s boss, log in as the root user, then set uncooperative folders to the view setting you prefer. Just be careful, and remember to log back into your normal user account and disable root access when the job is done. Moving or deleting the wrong files while logged in as root can have serious consequences for your Mac. Apple explains how to log in as root here. 27. Just Open! I used to double-click any photo, and it would open in Photoshop. When I installed 10.6, this feature disappeared. Now I have to drop the photos onto the Photoshop icon.Snow Leopard ignores “creator codes,” which changed its file-opening behavior--it’s all about file extensions now. Right-click a JPG, choose Get Info, and under Open With, choose Photoshop, and click Change All. Do this again for PNG, PSD, TIF, and any other photo file types you want Photoshop to get first dibs on. 28. iPads Kill Wi-Fi When enough of us use iPads on the office Wi-Fi, it can crash the Wi-Fi itself! I’ve heard this is a common problem--is there a fix?You’ve heard right, and it’ll take an OS and/or firmware update from Apple to vanquish this annoying glitch. Until then, know that the issue is caused because an iPad can stop renewing its DHCP lease when it goes to sleep, so if you set your iPad to never sleep (Settings > General > Auto-Lock > Never), you’re good. That’s hardly ideal, and at Mac|Life HQ, we set up an iPad-only Wi-Fi network, which creates a smaller pool of DHCP leases and keeps the main Wi-Fi network safe. Interestingly, iPads are also prone to other Wi-Fi glitches, like sketchy signal strength, frequent drops, and slow speeds. Bizarrely, one of the first things you should do is increase the brightness upward and turn off the Auto Brightness option (Settings > Brightness & Wallpaper). We can only guess that something’s screwy with iPad power management
 29. Mac Pros Are Hot I just wanted to bring to your attention a widespread, frustrating issue that exists with all 2009 Mac Pros. Whenever you play any audio, the CPU rapidly heats up (core temperatures as high as 90ÂșC, CPU heat sink 60ÂșC). This problem exists in 10.5 and 10.6, but does not happen in Windows running in Boot Camp, so it appears to be a Mac OS X bug. And after spending $8,000 on Apple’s top machine, I feel like I have been had.Yes, this seems to be a prevalent problem with the 2009 Mac Pros. Playing any type of audio heats up the Pro precariously close to--but not quite at--dangerous heat levels. If your Mac actually reached dangerous heat levels, it would shut itself down. This increased heat also causes decreased performance. Unfortunately, we don’t have any solutions for you, but we’re publishing your letter in the hopes that greater publicity on this issue will help get a speedy resolution from Apple.Next page: Answers Guide continued >> 30. What a Mess!One of my co-workers spilled juice on his older MacBook Pro, and now the keys are sticky (when pressed down, they don’t pop up right away). What’s the best way to clean up?Sounds nasty! Although this particular spill has long dried, we’ll start these cleanup instructions from the moment right after spillage to make them more widely useful. So: Immediately power down, disconnect the power cord from the MacBook, and remove the battery (if it’s removable). After doing as much as you can with paper or cloth towels, turn the machine over with the lid partly open to allow the liquid to drain, making sure that the laptop doesn’t close all the way. Give it about 72 hours to completely air dry and then take apart the machine to thoroughly clean the innards. The website iFixIt.com has great step-by-step guides to taking the keys off and getting your MacBook back to normal. When dabbing at disassembled keys and other parts, we recommend a bit of gauze lightly dampened with rubbing alcohol. 31. Airport Fizzles I stream my music from iTunes to an AirPort router, but it frequently cuts out. What can I do?First, make sure your iTunes and AirPort software are up to date. If the problem persists, move your router away from possible sources of interference. Wi-Fi is convenient, but it’s not an exact science. Signals can be impeded by microwaves, wireless phones, thick masonry, and more. If dropouts continue, try changing the channel on which your AirPort broadcasts in the Wireless tab of the AirPort section of AirPort Utility. 32. Family Planning My wife and I have our own iPhones and iTunes accounts, and we’re adding an iPad to the happy family. Can we sync both iPhones and the iPad (plus our Apple TV) to a single iTunes account, and share our apps on all devices without affecting our current library and future purchases?Bad news first: there’s no way to merge multiple iTunes accounts into one, so your family will have to keep juggling separate accounts and purchases from your iPhones, Apple TV, and bouncing baby iPad. The good news is that apps, like DRM-protected movies and TV shows, can be used on up to five authorized computers and the iDevices that sync to them. Just open iTunes, select Apps in the sidebar, then drag iPhone applications you want to share from iTunes to a networked computer or removable hard drive. Select File > Add to Library in iTunes on the second authorized computer, then choose the exported apps to load them into that computer’s library. These apps won’t retain saved data from the original computer, but otherwise they’ll be fully operational and can be updated normally. Apple TV purchases, however, will still be tethered to one of your computers. But even these files can be synced and transferred to multiple computers and iDevices.Here’s the better news: Home Sharing, introduced in iTunes 9, simplifies this process by allowing users to drag and drop media to shared computers within iTunes. Activate Home Sharing by selecting Advanced > Turn On Home Sharing. Repeat this step on all your computers, entering one iTunes account username and password on each. Then you can drag media from shared libraries in iTunes’ sidebar into a computer’s local library at will. Future purchases can be shared automatically by clicking the Settings button at the bottom of Home Sharing iTunes library, then selecting which media you’d like to share. Once you set up all computers on your network, syncing works automatically, zapping new media off to each machine. 33. Double the Addresses Why do I have duplicate Contact entries on my iPhone but not on my Mac?Odds are your iPhone has gained multiple groups of contacts after syncing them both wirelessly through MobileMe and through iTunes when you connected your iPhone to your Mac. Whatever the cause, check your iPhone Contact app’s Groups. If you see a group named From My Mac in addition to groups you’ve created in OS X’s Address Book, it’s a sign your iPhone thinks you have two distinct sets of friends.It's hard enough to find the contact you're looking for--who needs duplicate entries?To fix the problem, first back up your Mac’s contact data. Connect your iPhone to iTunes, uncheck Sync Address Book Contacts in the Info tab, then re-sync. If that doesn’t remove the extra contacts, turn off MobileMe contact syncing in Settings on your iPhone, choosing to delete the existing contacts on your phone. Next, turn Contact syncing back on, and choose to merge MobileMe’s data onto your iPhone if asked. Now you should have just one set of contacts shared between your iPhone and Mac. You’ll have half the friends, but half the hassles. 34. Conquer Syncing What's the most elegant way to sync iTunes libraries between work and home computers?We use SuperSync, a program that lets you sync your iTunes library among multiple computers on local networks or over the Internet. SuperSync’s busy interface can seem a little daunting, but in just a few quick steps, you can start copying music from your crib to your cubicle and back again. Casual Fridays will never be the same.A. Buy the SoftwareSuperSync looks and feels kinda like iTunes, but is a whole different beast.To get started, you’ll need a copy of SuperSync running on both your home and work computers. Two licenses will set you back $24, or you can snag ten for $34 and give one to your manager for Boss’s Day.B. Make the ConnectionsWhen you first launch SuperSync on your home Mac, it loads and displays your iTunes library in an iTunes-alike window organized by genre, artist, and playlist. While SuperSync may look a little like iTunes (and it can even play some unprotected audio files), it’s really a conduit and control panel for syncing, not a jukebox. Your DRM-protected files must still be played by an authorized copy of iTunes, although SuperSync will transfer them just fine.SuperSync can even keep metadata updated across different Macs.If your music collection doesn’t live in your Mac’s Home folder, you can point SuperSync to a library stored on a remote or network drive and share from there. To set up sharing, just check the obvious boxes and enter a password in the application’s Network preferences. While you’re there, you can fine-tune what you sync and how. For instance, you can keep specific media types--all videos, for instance--out of your shared library and pick which metadata changes will be synced back to your home machine. Whether you simply want to copy files or meticulously update their play counts, ratings, and more across your computers, SuperSync has your back.C. Start the SyncTo sync your library, install and launch SuperSync on your work machine, then turn on sharing and connect to your home computer. This is easiest (and fastest) on a local network, but you can sync your music over the internet by manually forwarding ports on your home router, or by using a UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) router and letting SuperSync do the work for you.When the syncing starts, SuperSync's interface gets pretty busy.Once you get both computers talking to each other, you can synchronize your entire library in one go, sync individual files, or transfer albums, artists, and whole genres at once. You can even sync your playlists--both their music files and the lists themselves in the iTunes sidebar. Naturally, files added to iTunes on your work computer can be synced back to your home Mac. Just finish your download in iTunes, then phone home with SuperSync. New files will be noted automatically and can be transferred with a click. 35. Hot Flash My MacBook Pro has been acting strangely. It will become sluggish, get hot, and the fans will come on at full speed. Activity Monitor shows that a process called “PTMD” is taking over 60 percent of my CPU. How do I prevent PTMD from taking over my Mac?This may not be a common question, but it certainly is a burning one! According to Apple’s Mac OS X Reference Library, PTMD stands for “platform thermal monitor daemon,” and it communicates any OS notifications effecting thermal conditions to your hardware. This daemon is supposed to automatically quit itself when it’s done communicating, but apparently your Mac erroneously thinks that its thermal conditions are continuously changing, so it’s trying to let your hardware continuously know this incorrect information.This seems to be a new problem that has cropped up for some users in Mac OS 10.6.3, so hopefully it will be fixed in a future update to the operating system. In the meantime, you can manually quit out of PTMD in Activity Monitor (launch it from your Utilities folder) whenever it starts acting up. You may also try resetting your Mac’s System Management Controller, which is responsible for thermal management (follow the directions here). 36. It's a RAIDI have Apple’s RAID card in my Mac Pro, and it always pops up this error message: “Write cache disabled due to insufficient battery charge.” But...what is a RAID card, and what should I do?Apple's Mac Pro RAID Card improves RAID performance and reliability.RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Disks, and it’s a tech that lets you combine multiple hard drives so they appear as one. RAIDs can either be mirrored or striped--in the first, each drive is an exact copy (or mirror) of the other drives, so if one fails, you’ll still have all of your data intact on another (known as redundancy). If you configure your drives as a striped RAID, the storage space of all of your drives is added together into one larger drive. This will give you increased performance and increased storage space, but no redundancy unless you’ve configured your RAID with parity handling (which uses a portion of each drive to hold identical copies of data from one of the other drives). RAIDs can be controlled by software like Apple’s Disk Utility or the excellent SoftRAID ($129, softraid.com), or they can be controlled by hardware like your RAID card. The main advantages of a hardware-controlled RAID are increased performance and reliability. With the error message you’re receiving, it sounds like the battery on your RAID card has died, so take it into Apple to get replaced. 37. iPad 2 What upgrades will we see in the next version of the iPad? (We emailed a trio of well-known tech experts for their predictions.)  Daniel LyonsNewsweek"I'd guess the following:» Front-facing camera for videoconferencing» Multitasking (duh, already announced)» Higher-resolution screen» No Flash» Gorgeous ads that will change your life» Unicorn tears"    Christopher NullYahoo! News, Technology"Dual cameras--a front-facing camera for videoconferencing will be huge for opening up a whole new market for the iPad."        Dylan TweneyWired"One of the things most obviously missing from the current iPad is a webcam. This would instantly transform the iPad into a videophone, and its size—just slightly bigger than the human face—would be perfect for face-to-face video chats. It’s also likely that the next iPad will have more memory and a faster processor. If we’re lucky, it might have an HDMI port too, so you can hook it up to a TV to show off photos, videos, and apps. One thing it definitely won’t have, though, is support for Adobe Flash. That door is closed, probably forever."   38. Mac Van Winkle When I wake my MacBook Pro from sleep, it doesn’t connect to my Wi-Fi. Sometimes it even forgets the Wi-Fi password. How the heck do I get it to remember?First, check out the extensive troubleshooting steps that we gave in Question #2 to see if any of those ideas solve your problem. Beyond that, your problem may be caused by one of the following issues:» Two Wi-Fi networks with the same SSID (wireless network name). For example, do you connect to one wireless router that’s named “Linksys” at work and then another router that’s named “Linksys” at home? If so, your Mac may be trying to apply the password from one router to the other router. Rename one of the wireless networks.» Keychain problems. Launch Keychain Access (in Utilities) and delete any AirPort Network password entries for the wireless networks that are giving you problems.» Preferred Networks problem. Go into your Network System Preference, click on AirPort, then the Advanced button, then the AirPort tab. Delete any unused networks, and drag your current network to the top of the list.» Corrupt preference file. Trash the file located at Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and restart your Mac.» Security incompatibilities. Try changing the type of wireless security on your router (for example, WPA instead of WEP).» Wireless interference. Turn on interference robustness on your router or change the wireless channel.» Your system may need a general maintenance. Run Disk Warrior on your machine, repair permissions with Disk Utility, empty the caches, and run the UNIX maintenance scripts with Cocktail. 39. Style Manual What exactly does Steve wear on a daily basis?We asked our team of fashion experts, and they said, “The same dang thing no matter what.” So we made them stalk the streets of Cupertino and watch hours of keynote footage to bring you the scoop on Steve’s sartorial secrets. That’ll show ’em.Next page: Answers Guide continued >> 40. Sad Mac My iMac flat-out freezes when I try to wake it from sleep. I ran DiskTools Pro, which verified and repaired my hard drive, but it still hangs after waking from sleep.This is often a symptom of a failing graphics card or a failing logic board inside your Mac, in which case you would need to take your Mac into an Apple Authorized Service Provider for repair. However, before assuming the worst, you can perform a series of basic troubleshooting steps to rule out other variables that may be causing this symptom.» External devices: When your Mac fails to wake from sleep, try unplugging any external hard drives or peripherals to see if doing so makes your Mac suddenly wake from sleep. If so, those external devices may be to blame. » RAM: You may also have bad RAM inside your machine. You can try to pinpoint bad RAM by either removing one of your RAM chips and see if the problem continues, or by running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it can identify any bad RAM. To run the Apple Hardware Test, take a look at the DVDs that came with your Mac; one of them will say that the Apple Hardware Test is on it. Insert that DVD and restart your Mac while holding down the D key on your keyboard. » Reset your Mac’s System Management Controller (get instructions here).Next, try to rule out the software problems: » Trash the following files and then restart your Mac: Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist and Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist » Reboot your Mac in single-user mode and run fsck (file system check)--get instructions here. » Back up your Mac, then erase and install Mac OS X.If all of these steps fail, it's time, sadly, to bring your Mac into an Apple Authorized Service Provider. 41. Stop Time When Time Machine is running, my Mac virtually comes to a stop. What is happening, and what should I do?Any time an application such as Time Machine is actively reading or writing to a hard drive, you may notice a tiny bit of a speed loss if you’re also trying to access your hard drive as well because the read/write heads take time to physically move to different locations on the hard drive platter.However, the key phrase is “a tiny bit of a speed loss,” meaning that the speed loss should be negligible to most computer users. Time Machine is designed to be fast and extremely lightweight, so if your computer is actually coming to a standstill, then something else is going on. The best way to troubleshoot this is by eliminating variables. First, make sure that you do not have any virus software scanning your backup drive. This is a known factor that could slow down your Time Machine backups to a crawl and that may affect your computer’s overall speed as well.Then, eliminate the possibility that your backup drive has a hardware problem by swapping it out with a different backup drive. If you don’t have another drive handy, a utility such as Drive Genius ($99, prosofteng.com) or Disk Warrior ($99, alsoft.com) can help you sniff out failing hard drives. Your backup drive must also be partitioned properly, as explained at tinyurl.com/3zne68.Next, use a different backup program like ChronoSync to see if the slowdowns continue. If they do, ChronoSync will let you see which file is actively being backed up while the problem is happening. It could indicate a problem with that particular file or with your internal hard drive.Other than that, you can try some general tips to speed up your Mac overall: Upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard; purchase faster internal and external drives (7200 RPM or SSD); use a faster connection interface (eSATA or FireWire 800); add more RAM to your Mac; and turn off hard disk sleep in the Energy Saver System Preference (this last one has a huge impact if your hard drive is powered via USB only and has no separate AC power). 42. Display Despair Why has Apple used so many display interfaces recently, and is the current Mini DisplayPort standard the best tech for the job?Mini DisplayPort meets VGA with this adapter.Apple’s flirtation with different video interfaces makes it seem like a puppet of the International Dongle Cartel, but it’s really all about doing more with ever-shrinking video ports. That includes today’s Mini DisplayPort, which can carry video and audio and connects to VGA, DVI, or HDMI displays at resolutions up to 2560x1600. We’re not sure if that makes it the best technology, but if it lets us carry just one small adapter that works on both MacBooks and iMacs, we’re happy. 43. Feelin' Social Does Apple have a Twitter account or Facebook page of any sort whatsoever?YouTube has your favorite Apple commercials.Steve may be cool with answering emails, but the company isn’t too keen on Twitter. There is no official Apple Twitter account. Facebook is a bit more complicated. While Apple hasn’t set up an official company page, it has created an App Store Facebook page: facebook.com/AppStore. Our preferred destination, though, is the Apple YouTube channel, which lets us check out all of our favorite Apple commercials: youtube.com/apple. 44. Feelin' Blu When will Apple include USB 3.0 and Blu-ray in Macs? What’s taking so long?USB 3.0 gear is already trickling onto the market, so it’s probably just a matter of time before the first computers sporting the blazing new standard roll out of Cupertino. Unfortunately, Blu-ray is another story. Apple’s interest in promoting its HD iTunes movie downloads and Steve’s declaration that bringing Blu-ray to the Mac is “a bag of hurt” don’t bode well for Blu’s chances on the Mac. 45. Photo Downloads There seems to be no way to download my photos from my iPhone directly to my Mac without using iPhoto. Even then, I have to drill down through some crazy iPhoto directories in the Finder just to copy the photos somewhere else. Can’t I just pull these photos off my iPhone and put them wherever I want?Any photos that are in iPhoto can be easily and quickly copied somewhere else on your Mac simply by dragging and dropping them out of iPhoto. For even more control over the size, format, and name of your photos, use the File > Export command in iPhoto. You don’t need to--and you really shouldn’t--be drilling down into any iPhoto directories on your Mac.Now, onto your next question of bypassing iPhoto altogether. In Mac OS 10.6, the Image Capture application gives you a significant amount of control over what happens when you connect your iPhone. If you have multiple cameras or iPhones, Image Capture even lets you set different preferences for each individual camera.Image Capture is the place to go to directly download photos from your cameras or to set what happens whenever you connect your cameras.You could have your iPhone launch Image Capture itself, which lets you manually download your photos into the directories of your choice and then delete those photos from the iPhone. You could have your iPhone launch Preview, which lets you import iPhone photos from the File menu. You could have your iPhone run an AppleScript.But perhaps best of all, your iPhone could launch AutoImporter, a hidden application that automatically imports photos to the directory of your choice, without you intervening at all. It’s located at Macintosh HD/System/Library/Image Capture/Support/Application/AutoImporter, and you can set this application’s preferences by choosing AutoImporter > Preferences. 46. Tame MobileMe I have four Apple devices: two MacBooks, an iPhone, and an iPad. It would be wonderful if MobileMe would do its job and sync all of my calendar and contact information, but I continually have glitches. One of the devices will often stop syncing, and then I have to wipe out data and start all over again. Is there any way to alleviate these problems?We’ve heard from an Apple support representative that syncing problems with MobileMe are very common because the MobileMe servers are not yet robust enough to handle more than 1,000 synchronizations before everything needs to be reset from scratch again. While 1,000 synchronizations might sound like a lot, consider that a sync takes place every single time you make a change to a contact or a calendar. The good news, however, is that this same representative told us that Apple is aware of its MobileMe syncing shortcomings and is continuously working to increase the competency of its servers.In the meantime, if you want to stick with MobileMe syncing, your best bet for solving the glitches you’re experiencing would be to follow our extensive guide from our November 2009 issue (or find it online here--scroll down to #37) on how to reset your MobileMe syncing from scratch on all of your devices.Alternatively, you may want to ditch MobileMe altogether and explore alternatives such as the web-based calendaring and contact solutions from Google, which can synchronize to your iPhone and iPad using Google Sync (google.com/mobile/sync). On your Mac, you can synchronize to Google using Spanning Sync ($25 for one year, spanningsync.com) or use the built-in (but more limited) syncing tools within Snow Leopard’s Address Book and iCal.If you have an extra Mac that you can use as a server machine, you can even take syncing into your own hands by using a product like Apple’s Snow Leopard Server ($499, apple.com) or the outstanding Kerio Connect ($540, kerio.com). 47. The Other Team I’m running Windows 7 on my Mac using Boot Camp. How do I maintain my computer so both the Mac and Windows platforms stay healthy? And how can I make a clone of my computer that captures both?For tips on how to keep your Windows 7 partition healthy, you’ll want to turn to our sister magazine Maximum PC (this is a good place to start), where you’ll find the experts on all things PC-related. Although conventional wisdom about PCs dictates that you’ll want to defragment your Windows hard drive regularly and immediately install antivirus software on your Windows partition, those are two things that Mac users are not required to do.Your Mac will continue to maintain its health as long as all those hundreds of thousands of Windows viruses can’t reach your Mac files from within the Windows 7 environment. And they won’t be able to since Boot Camp only allows you to read your Mac partition but not write to it.If you gotta run Windows 7, Boot Camp can get it done on your Mac.However, if you install a program like MacDrive 8 ($49, mediafour.com), you’ll have full read and write access to your Mac partition...and so will all those Windows viruses. So be doubly sure to have antivirus software on your PC side.To clone your entire computer, you’ll need to make two clones: one for your Mac partition and one for your Windows partition. For the Mac partition, use a tool like SuperDuper ($28, shirt-pocket.com) or Carbon Copy Cloner (donations requested, bombich.com). For your Windows partition, we recommend Winclone (donations requested, twocanoes.com). 48. Log Me OutMy iMac has separate user accounts for my wife and me, plus a Guest Account for when we have parties and people are drawn to the 27-inch screen to play. Can the Mac automatically return to the login screen after some period of inactivity? I don’t want guests to have access to our accounts, and I don’t want my wife to have to remember to log out when she’s finished. I just want it to go back to the login screen to force the next person to log in as a user or guest.No problem--head to System Preferences > Security and check the box for Log Out After X Minutes of Activity, setting X to be any number you like. While you’re there, make sure Disable Automatic Login is checked too. That way, the login screen always appears when you start up, instead of a default administrator account.The auto-logout option is in System Preferences > Security.It’s also easy to lock down the Guest Account with System Preferences > Parental Controls, which lets you select which applications will be available. By default any files in a Guest Account’s Home folder are deleted when they log out, but you could park an alias in the Dock to a shared folder on your hard drive, called, say, “Save Stuff Here.” While you’re sprucing up the Dock, add some big, pretty icons for party-startin’ apps like Photo Booth and Camera Bag.Set up a Guest Account with System Preferences > Accounts, then manage--or spy on--it with Parental Controls. 49. Silence How do I disable voice control on my iPhone 3GS? I never use it, and it's annoying when it's in my pocket and accidentally activates.Good news: You can shut off Voice Control dialing. Bad news: Voice Control everything else stays on. To shut down Voice Control dialing, you need to turn on the Passcode Lock option for your iPhone. To do this and turn off Voice Control Dialing, navigate to Settings > General > Passcode Lock. Once you turn on Passcode Lock, you can turn off Voice Dial. 50. Behind the Black Shirt What does it take to become a Genius Bar technician?There are fewer great occupations in life than working at the Genius Bar. Think about it: When someone asks you what you do for a living, you get to tell them that you’re a Genius. On top of that, you get to manhandle Apple computers all day long, dealing with situations like figuring out what in the heck is going on with a MacBook that a carpenter impaled with his drill (remember to tell him it’s no longer under warranty). Check out our handy chart to see what it takes to become a Genius Bar employee. A. Get Smart! First things first: You gotta have plenty of knowledge about past and present Apple products. Geniuses must know hardware ranging across entire generations of Apple products, as well as software offered for all of the latest operating systems. After all, you never know what to expect when you work at the bar. For all you know, a customer might bring in their Performa 460 and ask you to transfer their hard drive data to one of those newfangled Mac Pros. B. Be Happy--and Discreet Employees at the Apple Store must be like employees at Disneyland--you’re in the Happiest Place on Earth, so smile
and keep your lips zipped tight about any advance knowledge of upcoming Apple products you might have. Or else. C. Magic Hands Before you can get your hands on customers’ gear, you need to get trained. A lot. Applying to be a Genius begins with a battery of tech questions--and we’re not talking the ins and outs of GarageBand, either. Applicants are expected to have deep knowledge about how to diagnose and fix serious hardware and software issues--after all, most of their job involves coping with damaged or seriously broken gear. Survive that hurdle, and it’s off to Cupertino for four weeks of sessions that include acquiring three Apple certifications (OS, Desktop, and Portable) and practice time with fake customers who are really good at being a pain in your backside. After that, the apprenticeship continues in a real live Apple Store for as much as another month before you become true blue Genius material. D. Black is Boss The shirt color is an essential part of working in the Apple store. The shirt depicts what department you work in and makes it so that customers know who exactly the Geniuses are who can help them with their waterlogged iPhone. E. Load-Bearing Can you diagnose a problem and solve it within 15 minutes? The Geniuses at the Bar can. Appointments taken at the back of the store are only supposed to take as long as it takes to get you halfway through your favorite sitcom, which ensures that even stores with heavy traffic volumes have a chance to help everyone out.

  • 50 Killer Mac Apps For Under $50

       Who doesn't need more for less? We present 50 Mac|Life-approved applications--many free, all under $50--that'll guarantee you get the most from your Mac without traumatizing your wallet. The Internet is full of noise--countless different applications for every occasion, with reviews everywhere that love and hate them at the same time. While that’s hardly news, it’s still a hassle that isn’t going away. Say you picked up a spiffy new MacBook Pro, and it’s time to kit it out with the leanest, meanest software. After all, Macs have that rich history of garage-roots development, of a few folks in a basement brewing up quality software that smokes the big-name stuff. So you’ve got a feeling there’s great, affordable software just waiting for you to find it--and you’re right. But how do you sift through the zillion calendar apps and jillion media players to find the gems worthy of your hard drive space? And more importantly, your time and money?We’re here to help with a compendium of essential software. It didn’t come easily--we debated, argued, haggled, and even pleaded to secure a prized position on this list for our favorite, most useful applications. But by limiting the software we’re highlighting to 50, we’ve guaranteed you the best of the best--no Internet spew here. And by capping the cost of the software we’ve selected at $50, we’ve made sure you can reasonably buy what you need. You may love your Mac already, but you’re not gonna believe how much it can do once you load up even a few of these choice applications.   Entertainment Sure, iPods and iTunes make music and movies easier to enjoy, but they're not without headaches of their own. That's where these awesome apps come in. They take the pain out of kicking back with your favorite flicks and tunes. Simplify Media Share & stream your iTunes library over the Internet.The iPod has made several portable music formats obsolete, and we sure don’t miss schlepping around fragile cassette tapes or heavy wallets full of CDs. But even the mighty iPod has its limits--namely capacity. That’s where Simplify Media (free, Simplify Media, simplifymedia.com) comes in handy. It guarantees that the size of your music library doesn’t matter by letting you stream music between computers via the Internet. Yup, this app will play your entire library on any computer (as long as the one that has your library is powered up and online).Stream your tunes from home or the next cube.Once installed, a simple login fires up your music. Simplify Media works with iTunes just like the built-in LAN sharing does, and the remote libraries appear under Shared, alongside any local shared libraries. Even better, you can add up to 30 friends’ shared libraries, and an iPhone app ($5.99) lets you pipe your music to your iPhone or iPod touch.  SuperSync SuperSync keeps multiple iTunes collections in sync. Speaking of iTunes libraries--streaming is great, but what if you want to sync libraries across multiple Macs? SuperSync ($22, SuperSync, supersync.com) makes it so. Sure, Apple introduced limited music-transfer capabilities with Home Sharing in iTunes 9, but that feature requires computers to be on the same local network. SuperSync one-ups iTunes by syncing iTunes libraries over the Internet. It’s perfect for anyone who uses multiple Macs, and SuperSync also has a bunch of other tricked-out features. In deference to the record companies, Apple makes transferring music from an iPod to a computer unnecessarily difficult. SuperSync handles the task with ease, making it a bacon-saver when the hard drive in your Mac kicks the bucket. SuperSync will even allow you to sync libraries cross-platform.SuperSync's color-coded interface helps you synchronize your iTunes tracks across multiple Macs.  VLC Media Player Never worry about video file types again. If most of your Mac video-watching happens in the form of DVDs or QuickTime movies, you probably don’t think too much about player software. But move beyond the most basic video types, and you’re asking for trouble. With the myriad formats, containers, and encoding parameters available, the simple act of playing back a cat video can become incredibly frustrating. VLC Media Player (free, VideoLAN, www.videolan.org) is like a Swiss Army knife for digital media. It’s open source and cross-platform, and the app will play back practically any audio or video file you throw at it. VLC also handles file conversions with ease, so you can use it to convert audio and video for use online or on portable devices.It plays, it converts, it makes toast (okay, maybe not that last one.)  RipIt Backup & convert DVDs with RipIt.There are plenty of legit reasons to rip a DVD. Backup copies of kids’ movies for the minivan, watching Glee on your iPod touch while you’re on the bus, or even just saving battery power on your laptop (playing back a file from a hard drive is much more efficient than spinning a DVD).RipIt's simple interface makes ripping DVDs seamless and easy.Once the domain of ĂŒbernerds, DVD ripping is a one-click affair thanks to RipIt ($19.95, The Little App Factory, ripitapp.com). And since it makes full rips, all of the menus, bonus features, and subtitles remain intact. You can play back the resulting files with DVD Player on your Mac or use a freeware tool like Handbrake to convert your rips into iPod-friendly formats.   Delicious Library We love the iTunes Store, but we still end up accumulating books, DVDs, console games, and, yes, even CDs. Delicious Library ($40, Delicious Monster Software, www.delicious-monster.com) helps catalog your collections by--get this--taking snaps of UPCs via your webcam and then automatically organizing your meatspace content onto virtual shelves for easy sorting and browsing. You can track loans to friends, post items for sale on Amazon, and publish Web catalogs formatted for your iPhone. That way, you can avoid buying another copy of John Hodgman’s More Information Than You Require.   Connect360 We’re Apple-faithful, but that doesn’t stop us from engaging in a little Modern Warfare 2 on our Xbox 360. And since the 360 is much more than a simple gaming machine, we also use it to stream iTunes tracks to our entertainment center and view pictures from our iPhoto library on our HDTV--with the help of Connect360 ($20, Nullriver Inc, www.nullriver.com), that is. It works over wired or wireless networks, and it even streams H.264 video straight from our MacBook. Sweet!   Peel Pack rats, beware: Peel ($14.95, Hjalti Jakobsson, www.getpeel.com) can get really overwhelming, really fast. But if you’re an avid follower of music blogs, Peel can automagically grab new tracks as they’re posted. So forget all that pesky right-clicking and manually adding to iTunes. Just feed Peel a list of your favorite music blogs, and then kick back as tons of new, free tunes get downloaded straight to your Mac. You may never have to buy (or pirate) music again.    CoverScout Cover Flow is one of those features that looks great in a demo but doesn’t quite translate at home. iTunes can attempt to find the album art that makes Cover Flow actually useful, but it’s limited in scope and can’t make fuzzy matches. CoverScout ($39.95, equinox USA, www.equinux.com) scours the Internet to find your missing album art and presents you with multiple options to let you choose the best images. Don’t Cover Flow without it.   TuneUp For all of those untitled and mistitled tracks in your music library, there’s TuneUp ($19.95/one year, $29.95/lifetime; TuneUp Media; www.tuneupmedia.com). Like CoverScout, TuneUp can find and download missing album art, but its best trick is cleaning up your ID3 tags--the artist, title, and album info displayed in iTunes. A quick search is all it takes to clear up all those Track 1s and Unknown Artists in your library. It sure beats cleaning up metadata by hand. Next Page: Productivity Apps >>  Productivity Takin' care of business, every day. Takin' care of business, every way. Workin' on a Mac, it's all right. This productivity software is workin' overtime. WriteRoom Blocks distractions so you can write in peace.Proving the tired adage that “less is more,” WriteRoom ($24.95, Hog Bay Software, www.hogbaysoftware.com) is a light text editor with a full-screen mode. Start a new document, and everything else fades away--your Dock, your menubar, and other windows on your Desktop. You’re left with a black screen and friendly green text for a clutter- and distraction-free experience. The Escape key toggles between full-screen mode and windowed mode, which resembles TextEdit with a live word count.WriteRoom can save your work as plain text, rich text, or Microsoft Word’s .doc format. The preferences offer tons of customization: auto-save, character counts, the appearance of text in full-screen mode, and more. But WriteRoom’s real magic is how it gets out of your way and lets you focus on what you’re doing.  BusyCal One calendar application to rule them all.BusyCal ($40, BusyMac, www.busymac.com) is iCal on steroids. It dances circles around iCal, chanting, “Everything you can do, I can do better.” And it’s right. Sharing is a snap: You can set up two-way syncing with your Google Calendar or with other BusyCal calendars on your local network or the wide-open Internet. But even aside from sharing, BusyCal offers tons of calendaring bells and whistles: customizable views, sticky notes, weather forecasts, moon phases, graphical icons, a to-do list, notes, tags, and much more. And since it uses the Sync Services built into Mac OS X, your BusyCal calendars can sync with MobileMe and your iPhone. You can even switch back to iCal anytime without losing any of the events or to-dos you entered in BusyCal.So what if iCal is free? BusyCal is better.  Things Flexible to-do list syncs with iCal and the iPhone. For busy people like us, a good to-do list is beyond essential. But some that we’ve tried are so complicated that just managing your tasks becomes a chore in itself. So the light, easy-to-understand Things ($49.95, Cultured Code, www.culturedcode.com) is a breath of fresh air. You can go the full Getting Things Done route, adding contexts, priority levels, a tickler file, and so on. Or you can keep it simple, with one-off and repeating tasks and multistep projects. iCal syncing can get your deadlines on your calendar, and Things on the Mac can sync wirelessly with Things on the iPhone ($9.99 in the App Store). We’ve tried multiple task-managment systems, from Web-based ToodleDo to iPhone apps like ToDo to Mail’s built-in To-Do list to good old paper and pencil. Things is the cream of the crop for its good looks, quick entry, and easy syncing.Things uses tags to organize your projects in a million ways--or you can ignore the tags altogether and just work.  Express Scribe Transcriptions made easy... well, easier.Transcribing an interview, lecture, or other recording is hard enough, just with the listening and typing. Toss in the extra arm movement as you frantically click from your text editor to your audio-playback application every time you want to pause the recording or rewind a few seconds, and your transcribing job just got tougher and more frustrating. Express Scribe (free, NCH Software, www.nch.com.au/scribe) lets you set system-wide hotkeys for audio playback so you can stay in your text editor, fully control the audio, and never need to reach for your mouse.Express Scribe can also slow down your audio without changing the pitch, supports video, works with lots of file types, loads recordings from analog or digital audio recorders, and more. Plus, it’s completely free. Wahoo!  NoteBook The Mac is silly with note-taking applications (Evernote, Yojimbo, ShoveBox, MacJournal
shall we go on?), but Circus Ponies’ NoteBook ($49.95, Circus Ponies, www.circusponies.com) is a standout. If you subscribe to “a place for everything, and everything in its place,” NoteBook can be the place for notes, Web clippings, bookmarks, documents, voice memos, photos, and more. It struts its flexibility with ready-made templates for planning a trip, writing a research paper, collecting recipes, keeping a journal, and so on, while its fun spiral-notebook interface is a nice touch.    TextExpander A thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters could produce Hamlet a lot faster if they knew how to use TextExpander ($29.95, SmileOnMyMac, www.smileonmymac.com). This wonder app installs as a System Preferences pane and lets you define shortcuts for your most commonly used words and phrases. Abbreviate long URLs, your email signoff, even your own photo or scanned signature file. Then as you type those shortcuts, they’re automagically expanded to what you really wanted to say. Brilliant.   iFinance 3 Sure, Quicken is popular and Mint.com is free, but iFinance 3 ($29, Synium Software GmbH, www.synium.de) was built from the ground up just for Macs, and it shows. The intuitive interface makes it a cinch--dare we say a pleasure?--to track your accounts, keep an eye on your cash flow, set up a budget, and graph your expenses. It can also import from CSV and QIF files for easier data entry. Plus, a companion iPhone app lets you enter transactions on the go.  FlexTime This charming timer app ($18.95, Red Sweater Software, www.red-sweater.com) lets you set up multistep routines that run once or repeat ad nauseam. Each step can be marked by a sound, spoken text, or even running a script. Once your routine is perfect, you can export the audio to iTunes--great for following a recipe’s carefully timed steps or taking your favorite yoga routines on the road.   DEVONthink Personal Another great catch-all for storing, sorting, organizing, and searching information, DEVONthink ($49.95, DEVONtechnologies, www.devon-technologies.com) can take almost anything you can throw at it. Documents, PDFs, photos, multimedia files, bookmarks, webpages, iChat logs--all of those can be imported, sorted, and read right in DEVONthink. Searching is easy, and you can cobble together a brand-new document from items in your DEVONthink database and export it to your favorite text editor for printing or as HTML for posting.  Next Page: Internet Apps >>  Internet It's a wild place, that Interweb, so there's nothing like a few primo apps to tame everything from blogging to FTPs to Twitter and Flash banners. Transmit Traveling the two-lane FTP highway.FTP has been around forever. Social networking and cloud computing may come and go, but FTP is in it for the long hall. Fortunately, there are a wealth of great FTP clients for the Mac, and the best of those is Transmit ($29.95, Panic, www.panic.com/transmit). The client utilizes a split directory window that shows the path on your computer and the path on the FTP site. With in-app search and the ability to sync folders on your Mac and on the FTP site, Transmit helps alleviate the search and drag-and-drop blues of other clients. The sync feature is especially helpful for Web developers and designers. You can even create desktop droplets for quick uploads to heavily used sites.Two-window FTP FTW.  Mac-Journal Web-based apps suck.Blogging about your life is a faux pas. Blogging about anything else that people actually care about is the proper way of utilizing of the blogging systems available out there. The ongoing problem is that most blogging platforms are bit of a pain to use because they’re Web-based. Plus, if you’re somewhere without Internet access, you can’t start laying out your blog posts for your site. MacJournal ($39.95, Mariner Software, www.marinersoftware.com) solves that problem with an easy-to-use multiplatform blogging client. Lay out your articles offline with images, video, and audio, then save them for later posting. The app includes the ability to both write in full-screen mode so you won’t be interrupted by your Twitter friends, and to record an audio podcast in the client.Create blog posts quickly and without browser issues.  Tweetie Multi-account Twitter action.After wowing the world with its iPhone Twitter app, atebits decided to release a desktop version of Tweetie ($19.95, atebits, www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/). The app can handle multiple Twitter accounts, compose tweets in a separate window, allow you to change the account you’re sending a tweet from on the fly, and let you drag and drop pics and videos right into the Compose window. Don’t have the perfect media on your Mac for a tweet? Record a video or shoot a pic from your iSight camera directly in Tweetie. And since Twitter conversations can be difficult to follow, Tweetie displays the conversation you’re having in a timeline if you just double-click one of the pertinent tweets. The Tweetie bookmarklet in Safari also allows you to share links quickly from your browser.Have an actual conversation on Twitter with Tweetie.  Dropbox Stop, drop, and roll on home.Transferring large files can be a huge pain. Where the hell did you leave that thumb drive? External hard drives leave an unsightly bulge in your pocket, and all those cables are always getting tangled in your shoes. That’s a safety hazard, son. Dropbox (2GB storage for free, 50GB for $9.99/month; Dropbox; www.dropbox.com) is a cloud-based storage drive that you can access from any computer or iPhone. Just pop files into the Dropbox folder on your Mac, and it automatically syncs up with the online disk (which you can view on Dropbox’s website) and with any other machines you have the application installed on. You can even share folders and files with other Dropbox users. If the free 2GB box doesn’t cut it, you can upgrade to 50GB for $10 a month.Access your files from anywhere in the universe (with an Internet connection).  LogMeIn If you need to remotely access a Mac or (gasp) a PC with Windows on it, LogMeIn (free, LogMeIn, logmein.com) allows you to peer into your remote computer from anywhere. You can launch apps, move files, and adjust your preferences via a Web-based interface, as if you were sitting at that computer. For $29.99, you can get your iPhone in on the action too.   TweetDeck If you’re a Twitter power user, TweetDeck (free, TweetDeck, www.tweetdeck.com) should be in your arsenal of Twitter apps. The interface is a series of columns that displays info like your friends’ feeds, saved searches, mentions, direct mentions, and Facebook updates. You can also keep up with trending topics with just a quick glance. If there’s something you need to track on Twitter, TweetDeck can make a column for it.   Vuze Allegedly, BitTorrent steals medication from senior citizens, but isn’t it time to forget about all the evil things it supposedly does? Instead, focus on the greatness of Vuze (free, Vuze, www.vuze.com) and its ability to download legally available video files. After you’ve done the downloading, Vuze can convert your files for use on the iPhone, Apple TV, iPod, Xbox 360, TiVo, and PlayStation 3. It’ll even stream videos to your set-top boxes. Nice!   BannerZest Creating Flash banners is difficult, especially when you don’t know or own Flash. BannerZest ($49, Aquafadas, www.aquafadas.com) takes the pain out the process and gives you a simple way to create quick, beautiful Flash banners. From a standard gallery to an interactive experience, BannerZest comes with a collection of themes for different uses, and it uploads your banners to your FTP or MobileMe disk.    FileChute Sending large files over email can result in the dreaded bounced email. FileChute ($17.95, Yellow Mug Software, www.yellowmug.com) works with your MobileMe-, FTP-, or WebDAV-accessible Web server. Drop your file into the app, and it uploads it to your online server of choice and then creates a URL to add to your email. If you drop more than one file, you get an archive uploaded to your server. Adios, bounced emails!  Next Page: Content Creation Apps >> Content Creation Sure, Adobe's stuff is the gold standard, but you don't want to have to count on a good night at the poker table to pay for it, right? Cue these killer applications, which let you effectively draw, edit photos, render, animate, and even scratch for a very fair price. djay 3 Budgeted beats to grow on.You want to spin phat beats, but your slim bank keeps you from purchasing the high-end DJ equipment and software. That’s okay, young DJ-in-training, djay 3 ($49.95, algoriddim, www.djay-software.com) gives you everything you need to rock the house without losing your shirt. This surprisingly robust audio-mixing software integrates with your iTunes library and puts all the usual mixing and scratching right on your desktop. The application supports multitouch trackpad scratching and fading between tracks, so it’s especially perfect for the last few generations of MacBooks. And as you grow as a DJ, the application will grow with you thanks to its support for MIDI controllers. That means when you get the cash for those fancy digital mixers and turntables, djay will be right there with you.With your iTunes catalog at your fingertips, you'll find some pretty interesting mashups.  Audacity Free audio editor extraordinaire.Audio editing seems simple at first. Then suddenly, you’re knee-deep in samples, frequencies, and bitrates. Sound editing really is part science, part black magic, so we’re thankful that Audacity (free, SourceForge, audacity.sourceforge.net) removes one of the biggest obstacles: choosing a quality application and figuring out how you’re going to pay for it. Audacity is both terrific and free, which is kinda hard to beat. An audio-recording and -editing application, it captures up to 16 channels at once from multiple sources, features noise removal, includes a metadata editor, and supplies unlimited undos. It can handle most of the audio files out there, and it’ll work with multiple files types in the same project. Audacity is also is cross-platform, so if you’re a recent Mac arrival, you may already know about its awesome power.So many features, you'll second-guess the price: free.  SketchUp 3D for you and me.Maya, 3D Studio Max, and SketchUp--all of these will let you create magical 3D worlds. Only one will do it for free, and you probably nailed it in one--it’s Google’s SketchUp software (free, Google, sketchup.google.com) that brings the world of 3D to the average Joe. You can create your own items or utilize Google’s 3D warehouse to find models created by other SketchUp users. With all those models at your fingertips, you can create floor plans for your home, build a level for your favorite FPS, or export the files to animation software or Photoshop. The application includes tutorials that’ll get you up and rendering in no time at all
 so now nothing stands between you and virtual-world domination!Build a virtual man-cave for you and your stuff.  Ringer Wham-bam ringtone, ma'am.We get tons of people asking us, “How do I make a ringtone for my iPhone?” Until recently, we told them to launch GarageBand, cut a ringtone, and export it to iTunes. Now we recommend Ringer ($15, Pixel Research Labs, pixelresearchlabs.com/ringer) as the quickest and easiest way to create ringtones from your favorite songs and audio files. Ringer has access to your entire iTunes library and works with MP3, AAC, MOV, MP4, M4V, and QuickTime files. Yeah, you can make a ringtone from a video file. A super-simple editor with waveform information makes it a snap to select the perfect section of audio, and you can fade in and out of the file and preview the ringtone before cropping it and sending it to iTunes for a sync with your iPhone.   Acorn Using an image editor doesn’t have to cost you hundreds of dollars. In fact, with Acorn ($49.95, Flying Meat, www.flyingmeat.com/acorn), you’ll get features like layers, AppleScript support, 64-bit support, drawing, and filters in a package that’s easy on the wallet. This easy-to-use software strips away most of the features most people don’t use and gives you a clean image-editing tool.   Inkscape While raster-based image editors like Photoshop are great at pushing pixels around, the vector-based drawing programs are where all the real action happens. The open-source application Inkscape (free, Inkscape, www.inkscape.org) is similar to powerhouses like Illustrator and CorelDraw, but with one important difference--it’s free. The app utilizes the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and includes a nice 3D drawing tool that allows you to set your vanishing points.    Screenflick With Snow Leopard, Apple introduced screen-capture into QuickTime, and it’s a nice feature if you’re looking to make a quick full-screen screencast. But if you want something that has features like fixed location output at up to 60 fps, Screenflick ($25, Araelium Group, www.araelium.com/screenflick) is an application you can get behind. It’ll highlight mouse clicks and keyboard events, adding a nifty visual cue into your screencasts that highlights what you’re doing.   Bracketeer While your eye can take in an amazing range of light to dark, your camera cannot. In order to help create images that include a tonal range that the average camera can’t capture, HDR applications and plug-ins have appeared on the market. These applications take a series of images that have been bracketed from dark to light and combine them to include the darkest darks to the lightest lights in one HDR image. Bracketeer ($29.95, Pangea Software, pangeasoft.net/pano/bracketeer) is a standalone application that does just that. Adjust the saturation, the contrast, and exposure from within the application. The application will even auto-align your images in case you got the hiccups while taking your pics.   iStopMotion 2 Home Most animators’ first animation was probably a stop-motion piece with Star Wars action figures. And whether those childhood lightsaber battles have you hoping to become the next Brad Bird, or you just love the look of stop-motion, iStopMotion ($49, Boinx Software, www.boinx.com/istopmotion/overview) is a quick, easy way to create simple stop-motion animations. Use your iSight or connect a camera to your Mac and start making your own Wallace and Gromit short. You’ll feel the Force, Lu
 sorry.  Next Page: Utility Apps >> Utilities Slick utilities can add crucial functionality to your Mac, so we've selected the best options for everything from secure password managers and system-troubleshooting tools to an app that will let you play Windows games on your Mac... without Windows! AppZapper Completely trash applications.Unlike using Windoze, installing and uninstalling apps on a Mac is painless. Drag an application’s icon into your Applications folder, and you’re pretty much good to go. Deleting them is just as simple--just grab them and toss them into the Trash. But if you’ve ever dug around Library or System folders on your Mac, you’ll see that even after you Trash an app, many of them leave crumbs in different parts of your machine. For cleaning up those last little bits, AppZapper ($12.95, Austin Sarner and Brian Ball, www.appzapper.com) is a must-have utility that’s also great for troubleshooting problems. Wiping out all of an application’s preferences and other random files can often turn a troublesome app into a perfectly behaved one after a clean reinstall. Completely remove unwanted applications with a simple drag and drop.  Hazel Clean and organize your Mac--automatically.Hazel ($21.95, NoodleSoft, www.noodlesoft.com) is kind of like Rosie the Robot for your Mac. Or it’s like OS X’s Folder Actions
 if they were super-awesome, easy to use, and perfect for helping you keep your Mac’s folders and files organized. Hazel installs as a pane in System Preferences, monitoring locations that you choose, and performs actions on files based on your criteria. By creating simple rules, you can delegate repetitive and annoying file-management tasks to Hazel--for example, automatically add downloaded MP3s to iTunes or move DMGs to an archive on an external drive. Hazel can delve deep into metadata for complex actions like copying images into subfolders by ISO settings or reorganizing music files according to bitrate. You can even set up simple rules for auto-deleting items that have been in the Trash longer than a certain amount of time.  1Password Keep all your confidential info on lockdown.You’ve heard it before--secure, unique passwords are the way to go. Yet there you are, still using the same password for everything from your maclife.com login to your Gmail and your bank account. Do we even have to tell you again why that’s a colossally bad idea? 1Password ($39.95, Agile Web Solutions, agilewebsolutions.com) can help clean up your online act, creating and managing complex passwords for every online account and then logging you in with a keyboard shortcut. The app can also be used to securely store personal information like credit card numbers and addresses for use in Web forms. And since all of your passwords are unique, you won’t have to worry about your banking info being compromised because of a data breach at that sketchy Russian website you used to download MP3s for a penny.1Password securely stores Web passwords, logins, software licenses, and other important information.  iPhone Explorer Store & browse files on your iPhone.Breaking tradition with the iPods of yore, Apple doesn’t provide the ability to use your iPhone as a USB drive. iPhone Explorer (free, myPod Apps, www.mypodapps.com) is a simple app that will let you drag and drop files onto your phone for easy portability. The app itself is lightweight, and all it takes is a USB cable to view your iPhone’s folder structure. In addition to storing files, iPhone Explorer can be used to restore iTunes tracks from your iPod to a Mac or to rescue photographs from the depths of your iPhone’s memory. No jailbreaking is required, but more adventurous users with jailbroken phones can also recover contacts, messages, email, and other data. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s simple to use for the careful novice.  AppleJack AppleJack (free, The Apotek, applejack.sourceforge.net) is one of those things you’ll install once and never think about again—if everything goes right. But if, god forbid, your Mac starts acting weird one day--or stops acting, period--it’ll be AppleJack to the rescue. It’s a command-line utility for diagnosing and repairing problems with your computer. Use the menu-driven system to repair permissions, validate preferences files, and remove screwy cache files.  SuperDuper With Time Machine built into OS X, there’s really no good reason not to have an automatic backup. But Time Machine has its limits--a big one being the lack of bootable backups. SuperDuper ($27.95, Shirt Pocket, www.shirt-pocket.com) easily handles creating and updating bootable clones of your Mac’s hard drive so you’ll be ready to go when disaster strikes. Just plug in your clone, restart, and you’re up and running again.   CrossOver Games PC fanboys like to slag the Mac for having fewer games, but with CrossOver Games ($39.95, CodeWeavers, www.codeweavers.com), Mac users--and Linux fans too--can easily play games coded for Windows machines. The list of officially supported games is hundreds deep, and since CrossOver is based on Wine, you don’t even need a copy of Windows just to play Team Fortress 2.   Clean My Mac Hard drives are never big enough. Whether you have a MacBook Air or a Mac Pro, there always comes a point when there’s just not enough space on your internal disks. Clean My Mac ($29.95, MacPaw, macpaw.com) can help with that problem, scouring your Mac’s drive and tossing out all sorts of gunk you don’t need. Use it to toss unneeded language files, scrub extraneous code from universal binaries, and thoroughly clean up after deleted applications.   rooSwitch OS X’s Fast User Switching is handy for juggling multiple user accounts and their corresponding settings, but rooSwitch ($19, Rocket, rooswitch.com) allows you to maintain different settings on a per-application basis. Use it to manage Home and Work browser profiles, for example, or to have different profiles in your word processor for writing or editing documents. rooSwitch works with nearly any application, and it supports Automator and AppleScript for the ultimate in customizability.  Next Page: Wild Card Apps & Staff Picks >>  Wild Cards Not all Mac apps fall into your neat little categories. These five break the mold and completely deserve a place on your hard drive. Bricksmith Virtual bricks you can't lose or step on? Sold!Legos are the official plastic brick of Mac|Life--we’ve had many discussions about the empires we built in our childhood bedrooms and how much we miss “playing Legos” as the soulless adults we are today. Bricksmith (free, donations accepted; Allen Smith; bricksmith.sourceforge.net) lets you recapture the magic in a highly geeky way. It’s a 3D Lego-model creator, offering drag-and-drop construction using thousands of parts in every color of Lego’s rainbow. Tutorials and the one finished model that’s included show you the ropes, and once you’re done with your virtual creation, you can export step-by-step instructions to build it for real. There’s even a mini figure generator where you can design and outfit a matching Lego man and insert him into your model. This software couldn’t be cooler.We can't believe an application this sweet is donationware.  CameraBag Desktop Give your photos a new identity or some old-timey charm.We named the iPhone version of CameraBag one of our “101 Essential Apps for 2008,” and now the same fun can be had on your Mac, thanks to CameraBag Desktop ($19, Nevercenter, www.nevercenter.com). You drag in a digital image, and the app re-creates the look of a real film photograph--choose from Helga, Lolo, Mono, 1962, 1974, Instant, Magazine, Cinema, or Colorcross.For more variations, click the Reprocess button, and all the options will change their look and coloring just slightly. Or check the Multi-filter box and experiment with adding multiple filters to a single photo. Of course, you can export your altered images back to your hard drive without affecting the original file. The novelty of taking an everyday digital snapshot and making it look like a Polaroid image or washed-out 1974 photograph never gets old.Your digital photos, plus extra personality.  SousChef Recipe database + shopping list + cooking assistant = one kitchen lifesaver.SousChef ($30, Acacia Tree Software, acaciatreesoftware.com) edges out MacGourmet ($49.95, www.marinersoftware.com) in the cooking-assistant category for its cloud database of recipes. Every time a SousChef user enters a recipe (133,000-plus at press time), it’s synced to the cloud, and you can search those and import them into your own library. You can also opt out of sharing your own recipes so Aunt Erma’s secret matzo ball soup stays in the family.Once a recipe’s in your library, you can edit, print, email, or blog it--or even add its ingredients to your grocery list. Click the Cook button for a full-screen view of the instructions that you can read from across the room, keeping your Mac out of the splatter zone. The Mac’s built-in speech recognition lets you advance the recipe’s steps with your own voice, or you can use the Apple Remote or a Keyspan Front Row Remote.  Temporis Attractive, drag-and-drop timelines make it easy to "show, don't tell."Everyone loves a good infographic, or at least geeky types like us do. (And the geeks shall inherit the earth, don’cha know?) Temporis ($24.99, Bartas Technologies, www.bartastechnologies.com) makes it easy to create neat-looking timelines on your Mac, which you can then print or export as PDF or TIFF files that are ready for importing into your presentation software, word processor, or page-layout app.Adding new events is just a Command-click away, and it’s a snap to drag the start and end dates around on the timeline. The Arrange button will automatically stagger your timeline’s events into the most logical and easy-to-read order, and the Inspector lets you tweak fonts, colors, titles, labels, and your timeline’s span and intervals. You can even export the event data separately as an XML or CSV file.  Manga Studio Debut 4 Create your own comics and manga, and even manga-fy your photos.Manga Studio Debut 4 ($49.99, Smith Micro, my.smithmicro.com) is a must-have for fans of Japanese manga or anyone who wants to make their own comic books. Its ingenious Beginner’s Assistant groups together the tools by processes so you can intuitively wind your way through a typical manga workflow: sketch, panel, draw, tone, and add character dialogue.You can scan or draw your own art (graphics tablets supported, natch), play with the included samples, purchase manga content from www.contentparadise.com, or even import your own digital photos and watch Manga Studio make them all comicky-looking. Draw speed lines, add dialogue bubbles, move your pages around, and then print or export your finished comic book. Manga Studio Debut 4 is the younger brother to professional-level Manga Studio EX 4 ($299.99), but Debut has plenty of advanced features too, including layers, templates, customizable patterns, and more. Mac|Life Staff Picks  Bass Tuner I’m a beginning bass player--like, very beginning. So it’s a huge help that I don’t have to worry about staying in key. This terrific, simple, and streamlined little app ($9, www.rustykat.com) lets me quickly get in tune in front of my MacBook using the built-in mic. With that necessity sorted, I can fire up some tracks and tablature and focus on struggling to play along.   Multiwinia Multiwinia ($19, www.ambrosiasw.com) offers crazy replayability. You devise a strategy for your stick-figure army, then watch them take on up to four other teams in six game types on 40 vector-graphic maps. Online multiplayer against Mac and Windows players works flawlessly and keeps me coming back for more. No Napoleon complex necessary.    MetaX If you need to tag a large amount of MP4 files, you could use iTunes’ painfully slow process. Instead I found MetaX (free, www.kerstetter.net) for all my tagging needs. The app will search the IMDB catalog and plug the information into the appropriate fields, then share that info via tagChimp. You can even scan DVD barcodes via iSight!    Bean For a word dork like me, word processors are a big deal. Bean (free, www.bean-osx.com) is a lightweight, open-source word processor. It’s missing many of the blinky lights and thingamajigs of the big boys, and that’s exactly the point. Fewer distractions equals better writing, faster. And for anyone who needs to hit a certain length, the live word count rocks.    Fluid I often find that Firefox has the tendency to crash when I have too many Web applications running. But Fluid (free, fluidapp.com) lets me create a site-specific browser out of my most essential websites, like Google Docs and Flickr. Simply plug in the URL, and voilĂ ! You have a separate application running that won’t go down if something else does.   Next Page: More Gaming Bang for 50 Bucks >>  More Bang for 50 Bucks Some of the Mac's best games are also its cheapest? Sweet!Fifty bones won’t buy you even one new Xbox 360 or PS3 game, but on the Mac, you can snap up a stack of premier games for less than that. Or at least, that was our theory when we gave Florence, our new associate online editor, 50 whole American dollars and asked her to max out her Mac with the best gaming that short stack of money could buy.  Man, did she score--check out the results of her diligent “research.” Plants Vs. Zombies $16, amazon.comLine up perilous peashooters and sun-soaking sunflowers against an abominable horde of zombies in Plants vs. Zombies.This animated tower-defense favorite pits you against a horde of zombies with one thing on their (decaying) minds--invading your home for brains! Pit your arsenal of zombie-fighting plants, each with their own spectacular organic weaponry, against 26 zombies and 50 levels of adventure. Fair warning: Once you start playing this excellent game, it’s incredibly hard to stop.  World of Goo $10, amazon.comStack up adorable globs of goo to build structures and watch them band together as you help transport them across various levels.World of Goo is another addictive and totally adorable puzzle game. Created around the idea that circular goo balls make adequate building materials (naturally), the game has you solving puzzles by dragging and dropping goo to create all kinds of crazy structures that enable you to transport your goo across the level. The oh-so-cute googly-eyed blobs pack the game with charm, and you can also connect online and play against other Goo architects around the world. Braid $15, playgreenhouse.comBraid's aesthetically appealing backdrop and profound storyline will keep you engrossed until the very end.Some games defy description, and Braid might be easy to pass over because it appears to be just a mix of platforming and time control set against a gorgeous backdrop. But it subverts and transcends those two well-worn clichĂ©s with brilliant design and an absorbing story that packs a twist that you’ll never see coming. Watch the YouTube videos if you need help solving its puzzles, but just make sure you see this masterpiece through to the end. Balcassa $8, openplanetsoftware.comBalcassa has a mountain of exciting brainteasers for the puzzle fiend.Balcassa feeds off those nightmares you still have about attempting to master that archaic, rainbow-colored Rubik’s cube. And while most of you probably never cracked the damn thing (we didn’t!), Balcassa gives you a second chance. The objective of the game is to slide the cubes into a specific sequence, pattern, or orientation. It may sound like a simple task, but much like fiddling with a Rubik’s cube, figuring it all out is the real reward. Freeware Fun If you’re interested in first-person shooters and MMORPGs, Quake Live and Second Life can give you hours of entertainment at our favorite price: $0.00. Both games perform smoothly on Mac OS 10.4 or later. Quake Live doesn’t require beefy hardware because it runs through your Web browser. But that doesn’t stop it from delivering all the fast-paced action of the classic first-person shooter. Second Life, while not as packed with storyline as World of Warcraft, offers a similar massively multiplayer world where you can meet people, customize your character’s look, and participate in a virtual world that’s just like our own. You don’t even have to watch the clock to make sure you’re on time for a player-versus-player raid!You don't need fancy computer hardware to frag your way through this beloved shooter. Vital Statistics on Our 50 Killer Apps Total cost if you bought all 50 apps: $1219.83Number of apps that are free: 13Apps that have an iPhone counterpart: 15Whaddaya waiting for? (apps that have a free demo): 39Number of countries these apps were born in: 7Apps named "iSomething": shockingly... just 3!Apps that require Snow Leopard: 1Apps that require Leopard: 14Apps that promise "iLife integration!": 9 

  • ★ The iPad

    Back in December, here’s how I concluded my piece on what I expected from Apple’s then-still-unannounced tablet: If you’re thinking The Tablet is just a big iPhone, or just Apple’s take on the e-reader, or just a media player, or just anything, I say you’re thinking too small — the equivalent of thinking that the iPhone was going to be just a click wheel iPod that made phone calls. I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing. After the iPad was announced, I got two types of emails from readers. The first group saying they were disappointed, because they had been hoping I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing. The second group wrote to tell me how excited they were because I was right that The Tablet would be Apple’s reconception of personal computing. Count me in with the second group. Apple hasn’t thought of everything with iPad, but what they’ve thought about, they’ve thought about very deeply. I got mine Saturday morning, and I’ve been using it since — or at least as often as I could get it away from my son. Here are my thoughts. The Big Picture The whole thing feels fast fast fast. The only thing that feels slow overall, so far, is web page rendering. Not because it’s slower than the iPhone — it’s not, it’s definitely much faster — but because it’s so much slower than my MacBook Pro. It’s easy to forget on modern PC-class hardware just how computationally expensive HTML rendering is. The funny thing is, the iPad, in raw CPU terms, is a far slower machine than a modern Mac. But the iPad is running a lightweight OS and lightweight apps. It’s like a slower runner with a lighter backpack who can win a race against a faster runner wearing a heavier backpack. Thus, many of the things you do are faster, or at least feel faster (which is what matters), on the iPad than the Mac. Like, for example, launching applications. The built-in apps, and many of the third-party apps I’ve been using the most, are ready to use within a moment of launching them. (Games tend not to load instantly, but that’s true on high-power consoles like Xbox and PS3, too.) There’s something fundamentally strange about how fast the iPad feels considering how underpowered it is versus a modern PC or Mac. How can a computer with so much less CPU speed feel faster? What Apple has done is re-think several fundamental aspects. The iPad was designed from the ground up with a different set of priorities. I think Tim Bray summarizes it well: For a 1Ghz device with limited memory, the iPad is unreasonably fast. I suspect this accounts for a whole bunch of the “Wow!” reaction the iPad obviously provokes. Since there’s no free lunch, I think it’s really important that we understand what they sacrificed to get that performance. My bet would be on some combination of windowing and virtual memory. I tend to work on lots of things at once, but in fact I look at things in rapid succession, my eyes can really only focus on one thing at one time. Given sufficiently fast switching, maybe we all ought to be getting less WIMPy. The iPad (and iPhone OS across all devices) does indeed lack virtual memory. The only memory is honest-to-god RAM. RAM is fast, virtual memory is slow. The tradeoff is that without virtual memory, the iPad can do far less at once, but what it does do is never going to require hitting virtual memory. Without a windowing system, drawing is simpler and faster. Apple has made other significantly different tradeoffs as well. Battery life on the iPad is simply stunning. Reviewers across the board are getting real-life results that beat Apple’s promise of 10 hours of battery life. This is a function both of software (which does less and works hard to keep the CPU from drawing power while the iPad is being used) and hardware — iFixit’s teardown shows that, internally, the iPad looks more like a battery with a computer than a computer with a battery. The iPad, so far, never gets warm. Browse a bunch of web sites. Play some video. Play a game. It still feels as cool to the touch as when it’s turned off. It is also dead quiet — no fan, no humming, nada. This is the future of computing. The iPad was designed with an entirely different set of priorities than Macs or PCs. Someone may well produce a worthy iPad rival in the next year, but it’s not going to be something like HP’s Slate that runs Windows 7, an operating system that epitomizes the traditional set of computer design priorities. The iPad is also eminently affordable. $500 for this thing seems hard to believe. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it at double the price. But clearly there were tradeoffs involved to hit this price point. Build quality is not one — the thing feels perfect in hand. But it only has 256 MB of RAM — perhaps the single biggest hardware weakness of the device (see the section on Safari below). It is super high-quality, but clearly designed for the mass market. Anyone who thinks Apple only makes high-priced products has completely lost sense of reality. “Affordable luxury” is the sweet spot for mass market success today, and Apple keeps shooting bulls eyes. In fact, the only thing that makes my heart ache regarding the iPad is when I start imagining a hypothetical Pro model — imagine what Apple could put in an iPad that cost as much as a MacBook Pro. (My dream iPad Pro: double the display’s pixel resolution and include a gigabyte or two of RAM.) Affordability presents itself in other ways, too. Nothing is included in the box other than the power adaptor. The dock and case are separate SKUs, and it doesn’t even come with headphones. It’s like buying a Honda, not an Acura — the base model is not “well-equipped”. $500 is affordable but not cheap, and the iPad does not feel cheap in any regard. The build quality is outstanding. The brushed aluminum back makes my plastic iPhone 3GS feel cheap. The iPad takes more cues from the current iMacs than it does from the iPhone. The seam between the glass and the aluminum is nearly perfect. It’s just one piece of aluminum and a piece of glass — there is no superfluous chrome bezel between the glass and the backing as there is on all iPhones and iPod Touches to date. Even without turning it on it looks and feels a step beyond the iPhones and iPod Touches we’ve seen to date. The Killer App One thing that’s making it hard for some people to grasp the purpose of the iPad is that no one has an answer to what precisely it is for. This was not so for the iPhone. The answer to the question of what the original 2007 iPhone was meant for was right there at the bottom of the iPhone home screen, in the “dock”: phone, email, web, music and video. The other apps were icing on the cake. The four apps in the dock were what Apple designed the iPhone to do. The iPad also has a “dock” on the home screen, and the default apps in that dock are clearly important: Safari, Mail, Photos, iPod (which, on the iPad, is only for audio). But some are treating the iPad as, fundamentally, an e-reader. Others as a gaming device. Others as a movie player. None of those things are represented in the iPad’s default dock apps. The truth is that the App Store is the killer app. The iPad is meant for anything that can be represented on a 10-inch color touchscreen. Back in January when we were playing the “What’s Apple going to name the tablet?” game, my favorite, by far, was “Canvas”. I’m not saying here that Canvas would have been a better name than iPad, but the word conveys perfectly what the iPad is. Adam Engst captured this: The iPad becomes the app you’re using. That’s part of the magic. The hardware is so understated - it’s just a screen, really - and because you manipulate objects and interface elements so smoothly and directly on the screen, the fact that you’re using an iPad falls away. You’re using the app, whatever it may be, and while you’re doing so, the iPad is that app. Switch to another app and the iPad becomes that app. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. As did Cultured Code’s JĂŒrgen Schweizer: Steve Jobs said about the iPod that “it is all about the music”. With the iPad, Apple has done the same for personal computing as it has done before with the iPod: it made technology go away. But if the device is gone, and the operating system is gone, what is left? The iPad is an empty canvas that invites us to imagine what is possible. It inspires our imagination and it makes us want to create, because never before were we able to create software that was so close to the user. The iPad hardware and OS are profoundly humble — they put all the focus on whatever app it is that is open. Out of Box Experience One thing that is very iPhone-like about iPad is that when you first take it out of the box, it wants to be plugged into your Mac or PC via USB and sync with iTunes. In some ways, that’s understandable. USB syncing is how you load your iPad with music and videos and transfer over stuff like your email accounts, and, if you’re not using MobileMe, your contacts and calendars. But, on the whole, it feels retrograde. It’s creates an impression that the iPad does not stand on its own. It’s a child that still needs a parent. But it’s not a young child. It’s more like a teenager. It’s close. So close that it feels like it ought to be able to stand on its own. Android devices do not have this problem. You can sync an Android device with a desktop computer via USB, for transferring things like music and videos, but you don’t have to. Out of the box, a Nexus One is ready to go. Google’s big advantage here is that they’re using online services as primary data stores. The Google Way is to use Gmail for email and contacts, and Google Calendar for events. You just tell your Android device your Google ID and password, and your email, contacts, and calendars start syncing over the air. Apple has MobileMe, but because it’s a paid service, they can’t (or at least won’t) assume that all iPad owners are going to use it. But then even those of us who do use MobileMe get stuck with a first-run iPad experience that involves a tethered USB connection to a computer. The Apple Way is to assume that your primary data stores for these things are locally stored on your Mac or PC — Address Book, iCal. At the very least, these things ought to be able to sync between iTunes (on your Mac or PC) and your iPad over your Wi-Fi network. Third-party iPhone OS apps like Things do a great job with this — there’s no reason iTunes and the iPhone OS shouldn’t too. Those Heart-Stopping ‘Scratches’ On the iPhone (and iPod Touch; assume from here out that when I say “iPhone” I’m referring to both), app icons on the home screen sit atop a plain black background. On the iPad, they’re spaced further apart, which is why I think Apple has added wallpaper — making the iPad home screen look a lot more like a Mac or Windows desktop. The default wallpaper shows a sunset skyline of a mountain range in front of a like. There’s a meteor shower in the sky. And the streaking meteors look, at a glance, like a series of severe scratches on the display. It’s a curious choice. The Touchscreen Keyboard It’s a lot like the iPhone’s, but, it’s different. Because it’s bigger, there are no pop-up indicators showing which key you hit as you type. They’re not necessary. The feel, overall, is pretty much like typing on a really big iPhone. If you’re in a position where you can set the iPad down on your lap or a table top, it’s not too hard at all to type with all your fingers when the iPad is in landscape (horizontal) orientation. Now, to me, it’s nowhere near as good as even the worst full- or nearly-full-size hardware keyboard I’ve ever used. You can’t just rest all eight of your fingers on the home row keys, and you can’t feel where the key cap edges are. You have to look at the keyboard a fair amount as you type. On a hardware keyboard, I hardly ever look at the keys. But for a touchscreen, it’s good. In portrait (vertical) orientation, I can type on the iPad using just my two thumbs, as I do on my iPhone. I have relatively large hands, though — I don’t think most people can do it. The keyboard in this layout is way too small for me to type with all of my fingers, though. In portrait orientation most people will type using one finger, I expect. Now, the funny thing is, in general, bigger keyboards are easier to type on than smaller ones. That’s why big laptops are easier to type on than compact ones, and, indeed, that’s why the landscape iPad keyboard on the iPad is easier to type on than the portrait one. But at a certain point, the curve flips around and smaller becomes faster. I type much faster on my iPhone using the smaller portrait orientation keyboard than the wider landscape keyboard. In both modes, I use just my two thumbs. With the smaller iPhone keyboard, my thumbs have to travel less from one key to the next. People who aren’t very proficient at the iPhone keyboard, or who have very large thumbs and therefore have trouble precisely tapping the smaller keys, may well prefer the iPhone’s wider landscape keyboard. But for me it’s not even close. I never type in landscape on my iPhone. And in fact (and this is the aforereferenced “funny part”), I type faster on my iPhone than I do on the iPad. That’s especially true for when the iPad is in portrait mode, which puts the keyboard size in a no-man’s land — too small to eight-finger-type, too big to thumb-type. But it’s also true for when the iPad is in landscape mode. I’m hopeful that this is just a factor of experience and muscle memory — I have nearly three years of experience typing on the iPhone, and only two days experience with the iPad. Last Friday I watched Andy Ihnatko eight-finger-type on his iPad — which he’d been using for over a week — and he was typing pretty goddamn fast. One problem I’ve run into is that Apple has subtly changed the layout of the keyboard from the iPhone’s. On the iPhone, the Delete key is on the lower right, above the Return key. On the iPad, it’s in the upper right corner, and the Return key is next to the L key. The iPad adds a right-side Shift key.      The iPad layout makes perfect sense — both these keys are now where they reside on traditional hardware keyboards. Their weird positions on the iPhone are a compromise forced by the extreme lack of space on the iPhone display. Apple has also added a new key to the iPad keyboard’s numeric/punctuation mode: Undo. It’s a good idea — I have the feeling most iPhone users don’t know about the system-wide shake-to-undo gesture, and even for users who do, the iPad is harder to shake (and, when docked, downright silly to shake). But this new Undo key moves the period and comma keys over to the right by two positions. The iPhone keyboard layout is so firmly ingrained in my mind that these changes are problems for me — I keep hitting the (new to the iPad) right-side Shift key when I mean to hit Delete, and I keep hitting Undo when I mean to type a period. I’ll get used to it soon, I’m sure, but I find it interesting that my iPad typing muscle memory is based on the iPhone keyboard, not regular keyboards. I think this is because, overall, it really does feel like a big iPhone keyboard. Hardware Keyboard Support I don’t have (and did not order) the iPad keyboard dock, but I have been using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. In fact, I’m using it to type this entire review. It works great. Pairing (via the iPad Settings app) is easy and quick. And it works great. Several essential text-editing shortcuts from the Mac OS work system-wide on the iPad: Command-Z, -X, -C, and -V work for Undo, Cut, Copy, and Paste. Command-A works for Select All. You can use the arrow keys to move the insertion point. Option-Arrow keys work to move the insertion point one word at a time. Command-Left/Right moves the insertion point the beginning/end of the current line; Command-Up/Down moves the insertion point the start/end of the current text field — which, in the case of something like Pages, is the beginning/end of the entire document. Holding down Shift extends the selection range, and works in conjunction with the Option and Command keys as expected. (Certain of Cocoa’s long-standing Emacs-style text editing shortcuts work too: like Control-K (kill) and Control-H (backspace).) Certain of the function keys on the Bluetooth keyboard are useful on the iPad. The brightness keys control the iPad’s display brightness. The volume (and mute) keys work. The playback buttons — play/pause, next, previous — all work to control the iPod app. By default, once you’ve started using a hardware keyboard, the on-screen keyboard no longer appears, which is great, because the full display is now available for displaying content. But if you want to use the on-screen keyboard while a hardware keyboard is active, you can toggle it using the hardware keyboard’s Eject key. The Esc key dismisses the auto-complete suggestion — it’s like tapping the little “x” next to the suggestion under the current word you’re typing. While a keyboard is connected, you can wake up the iPad by hitting any key — completely bypassing the iPad’s slide-to-unlock screen. Very nice. The iPad is fundamentally a touchscreen device. You absolutely do not need a hardware keyboard for it. But if you’re hoping to do any amount of serious writing with it (and, for obvious vocational reasons, I plan to), you’re going to want one. There are a few places in the iPad UI where I really wish the keyboard was useful but it isn’t. For example, Safari location field suggestions. On the Mac, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move through the list of suggestions. On the iPad, you must use touch to select from the list. Since you’re already typing if you’re entering a URL, this is just begging for arrow key support. (Ditto for suggested results from the Google search field in Safari.) The Esc key does not dismiss popovers, but that’s probably OK. It’s only possible to invoke popovers via touch, so it seems OK that you must dismiss them via touch as well. The Tab key can be used to switch between text fields; Shift-Tab goes in reverse order. (When using the hardware keyboard, I do find myself hitting Command-Tab, without thinking about it, when I want to switch to another app; it does nothing on the iPad.) Display The iPad display is, overall, wonderful. Colors are bright and (unlike the Nexus One’s OLED display) accurate. Photos and videos looks great. Touches seem precisely accurate. The glass feels good. Viewing angles are shockingly good. You can lay the iPad flat on a table while you eat or drink and it looks just fine at a decidedly skew angle — far more so than with the iPhone. This IPS stuff is the real deal; here’s to hoping for an IPS display in this year’s new iPhones. The only complaint I have about the display is that the pixel resolution isn’t all that dense. The iPad’s 1024 Ś 768 display has a resolution of 132 pixels per inch. The iPhone’s 640 Ś 320 display has a resolution of 163 pixels per inch. The difference isn’t huge, but it’s definitely noticeable. Type looks crisper on the iPhone than the iPad, and type rendering falls far short of even newspaper-caliber resolution, let alone glossy-magazine caliber. (Those of you who doubt that the pixels-per-inch resolution isn’t high enough, just wait until you see the type rendering on this summer’s new iPhones.) Safari The iPad is so good as a web reader, that, if you’re a web junkie, everything else the iPad does is just gravy. It’s good. I’m so used to Safari on the iPhone, though, where the toolbar is at the bottom, that I’m having a hard time getting adjusted to the toolbar at the top. I’m not saying it’s a bad decision on Apple’s part. In fact, the iPad HIG is quite explicit that iPad toolbars should go at the top, not bottom — which makes me think Apple thought about and tested this and has concluded that the top works better for the iPad form factor. It’s just that I use Safari on my iPhone a lot, and I am really used to the button placement. When you create a new page in Safari on iPad, text focus goes to the Google search field by default, rather than the URL location field. That’s a change from both desktop and iPhone Safari. I’m finding this hard to get used to, but I can see how this might be a better design for typical users. It makes the default search engine all the more essential to the web browsing experience, though. Zooming and flicking are essential to the experience, just like on the iPhone. Flicking is how you scroll, no surprise. The zooming, though, may come as a surprise. It wasn’t too long ago when 1024 Ś 768 was considered a large display for full-size web browsing. But: what matters on the iPad (and iPhone) is not the pixel count of the display, but the physical size. 9.7 inches diagonally is a bit small for non-zoomed web browser. But the action of zooming — whether through double-tapping or pinching — is so smooth, fast, and natural that it feels better, not worse, than old-school desktop web browsing. There’s one severe problem in Safari for iPad, though: memory crapping out. MobileSafari for iPhone has always allowed you to open up to eight pages at a time. It tries to keep them all truly open, in RAM, so that you can quickly switch between them. But when it runs out of memory it starts flushing some of the pages. It doesn’t forget the URL for those pages, and, in recent versions, it saves a static thumbnail image of the rendered page, but when you switch back to those purged pages, MobileSafari must reload the page — thus, you must wait both for the contents of the page to download and for the page to actually render (which — the rendering — often takes longer than the downloading). It’s very noticeable. Switching between unpurged Safari pages is instantaneous. Switching to a purged page takes as long as opening it from scratch. Wolf Rentzsch, linking to this complaint from Peter-Paul Koch, wrote a brief technical overview of why Apple might have designed MobileSafari this way. (Keep in mind that iPhone OS does not use virtual memory; thus RAM is severely constrained.) This purging problem got a lot better with the iPhone 3GS. The original iPhone and iPhone 3G only had 128 MB of RAM. The 3GS has 256. MobileSafari’s ability to keep more pages in memory is probably my single favorite aspect of the 3GS. The iPad also has 256 MB of RAM. But, in my use, iPad’s Safari isn’t able to keep nearly as many pages open as I can on my 3GS. In fact, sometimes it seems I can only have one, and every page I switch to gets completely reloaded. This is more than just annoying — it can lead to data loss if you have unsubmitted form data sitting in an “open” iPad Safari page. I’ve run into this posting items to DF from the iPad — my posting interface is a web page form. When I want to link to the current page, I invoke a bookmarklet which opens a new page with the title and URL fields of the posting form set to the title and URL of the page from which I invoked the bookmarklet. Often, though, I want to switch back to the page I’m linking to copy another URL or a bit of text to quote. Twice so far, when going back to the posting form, it’s been purged and must reload from scratch — in which case I lose anything I’ve already written. I never run into this problem on my iPhone 3GS when switching between just two open Safari pages. The problem is also severe for AJAX web apps, which tend not to be designed with full page refreshes in mind. I hope this can be improved significantly in an iPad software update, but I worry that it’s endemic — that because the iPad screen is so much larger than the iPhone’s, that MobileSafari must allocate significantly more memory per page for the framebuffers. 256 MB of RAM simply may not be enough for MobileSafari to keep more than two or three pages in memory. If so, Apple really needs to consider some sort of caching or serialization scheme rather than completely flushing away purged pages. Pages I wrote the entire 4,828-word first draft of this piece on my iPad using Pages.1 I didn’t use any of the formatting or layout tools — I used it as a text editor rather than a word processor. It’s quite serviceable. What I like best is that it opens very quickly. Switching between, say, Pages and Safari and back to copy-and-paste a URL feels more like switching than quitting, launching, quitting, relaunching. You don’t need to (and can’t) save manually. Whatever you do in a document simply persists automatically. When you go back to the list of documents, they’re presented as big thumbnails — very much like the list of open web pages in Safari. Pages’s toolbar and ruler are only visible when in portrait mode. In landscape mode, all of the chrome disappears. It’s just a full-screen editing view, a la WriteRoom. I’m writing this piece in this full-screen (landscape) mode, with my iPad propped up on a table in Apple’s iPad case. It’s a nice setup, and I can genuinely imagine leaving my MacBook at home for trips in the future, with the addition of few missing iPad apps (like, say, a good SFTP client). But when I say there’s no chrome in the landscape mode, I mean none. Pages has a decent simple little find and replace feature, but it’s only possible to invoke it in portrait mode. (I must have hit Command-F a dozen times so far, to no avail.) There are already complaints piling up that the iWork apps don’t support the complete feature set of their current Mac counterparts — open a file created in a Mac version of Pages/Numbers/Keynote on your iPad and certain document features may be removed. (The iPad apps prompt you with an alert telling you which aspects of the document have been changed or removed.) Another way of looking at it though, is that the iPad iWork apps are to their Mac counterparts what the iPad as a whole is to the Mac — simpler, more focused, but in some ways faster. Pages launches and is ready for input far quicker on my iPad than on my MacBook Pro. Writing this review, I’ve been switching back and forth between Pages and Safari. It doesn’t feel like quitting Pages, launching Safari, copying a URL, quitting Safari, and re-launching Pages. It feels more like switching — it only takes a moment after tapping the Pages icon on the home screen to be back where I was in my open document. (My only complaint is that you lose the insertion point when leaving and coming back to Pages — the document re-opens to where you left off, but you must tap the screen to place the insertion point. When switching several times, that becomes slightly tedious.) This is obviously not even close to a full review of Pages, but I can say without hesitation that it’s easily worth $10. Syncing There is, however, a severe shortcoming inherent to the iWork suite of iPad apps: document syncing between Mac and iPad. It’s a convoluted mess. In short, the only way to edit a document on your iPad that was created on your Mac, or vice versa, is to go through a convoluted multi-step process of exporting, copying, syncing or downloading, and importing. Ted Landau has copiously documented the entire situation in this article at The Mac Observer. Read it and weep. What it boils down to is that there is no syncing really. Real syncing is something like IMAP for email, or the way MobileMe handles calendars and contacts. When I read a bunch of new email messages using my iPad or iPhone, when I next sit down at my Mac, those messages are marked as read in my inbox. I don’t have to do anything on the Mac for that to happen. That’s just how IMAP works. I can add a new calendar event on my Mac, then walk away from my computer, take my iPhone out of my pocket, and the event is there. I can add a note to that event using my iPhone and a few moments later the note will be synced to the event on my Mac. Certain of my favorite iPad and iPhone apps sync like this too. When I read a bunch of RSS items using NetNewsWire on my iPad, they’re marked as read on my Mac. Sitting at my Mac in my office, I can send a long article to Instapaper. I go downstairs, pick up my iPad, sit on the couch, launch the Instapaper iPad app, and a few seconds later, there’s the article I just added to my Instapaper queue. This is the sort of data flow that makes me feel like I’m living in the future — using multiple hardware devices to view, edit, and modify the same data. I don’t worry about where separate copies of my data exist. Conceptually it’s just there in the apps, and the apps do all the hard work of pushing and pulling changes made on other clients. The data flow with these iWork apps isn’t like that at all, and needs to be for them to be truly useful. It doesn’t matter how good the user interface for viewing and editing spreadsheets is in Numbers for iPad if my spreadsheets aren’t there. Here’s an example. I keep the schedule for Daring Fireball RSS sponsorships in a Numbers document. What I’d like to be able to do on my iPad is launch Numbers and access the current version of that spreadsheet. But the only way I could possibly do that today would be if I went through the following steps every single time I made a change to the document on my Mac: Before opening the current version of the file on my Mac, check to make sure there isn’t a more recent version of it on my iPad. Open the file on my Mac and make changes. Save. Dock my iPad to my Mac via USB. Switch to iTunes and go to the Apps tab for my iPad. Add the newly-saved revision of the document to the file sharing list for the iPad’s Numbers app. Sync. Even after going through all of this, when I do want to open this file on my iPad, I have to remember not to open the last revision of it listed in the iPad Numbers app’s “My Documents” list, but instead remember first to import the latest revision from Numbers’s file sharing list to Numbers’ “My Documents”. And, again, it’s effectively up to me to keep track of which machine, Mac or iPad, has the most recent revision of the file. To say the least, this is a recipe for disaster, and even if you don’t make a mistake and inadvertantly make significant changes to an out-of-date version of the document on one of the two machines, you’re stuck with a preposterously, mind-bogglingly convoluted workflow each and every time you make a change to the document. The bottom line, obviously, is that there is no way that anyone is going to use these iPad apps in the way I describe above. As-is they’re only useful to me in two ways. First, I can imagine using Pages on the iPad to compose original new documents — posts for Daring Fireball — while I’m using my iPad. I’ll either finish them there and then copy-and-paste the result into the web-based posting interface for DF, or, I’ll send the draft to my Mac for further editing (which is what I did for the piece you’re reading right now). I can also imagine creating finished Keynote decks on my Mac and then moving them, once, to my iPad, and taking only my iPad with me to the presentation — i.e. using Keynote, Numbers, and Pages on the iPad as viewers for finished documents. (And, conveniently, they’re viewers that can make edits if you notice a mistake or want to make a last-minute change or addition.) But there’s no possible way to use these apps as clients alongside their Mac counterparts on an ongoing basis. The sort of over-the-air syncing I’m imagining for iWork is, admittedly, a difficult problem to solve. But the bad news for Apple is that their top competitor in this space has a solution: Google Documents. With Google Documents, there’s no making copies, importing/exporting, manually invoked syncing, or USB tethering involved if you want to edit a single instance of a spreadsheet from multiple machines. You just make changes on one machine, and when you next look at that document from another machine the changes are there. The workflow for iWork is downright antediluvian. It’s not just pre-Cloud, it’s pre-network. It’s effectively the “Who’s got the latest revision of this file?” workflow of the days when we moved files from one machine to another via floppy disks. What in the world is iWork.com for if not for solving this problem? At least iWork.com lets you avoid having to physically tether the two machines via USB to get a document from the Mac to the iPad (or vice versa), but it’s no better than file sharing through iTunes conceptually. When you send a file to iWork.com (from either Mac or iPad) you’re pushing a copy, a snapshot of the document from that moment. After making subsequent changes, you’ve got to push those changes to iWork.com all over again. And to get them on the other device, you must manually import — making just another copy. What you ought to be able to do is specify iWork.com as the canonical shared storage location for an iWork document. iWork.com doesn’t serve as any such purpose today. iPhone Apps I predicted it’d be crummy to run non-iPad-optimized iPhone apps on the iPad — like Classic apps running on Mac OS X — and I was right. It’s OK for games — they look jaggy, but jaggy games aren’t that uncommon. But regular (non-game) apps just look and feel weird. When you run them pixel-doubled text doesn’t scale dynamically — everything is pixel doubled. It’s a good way of proving that the iPad is not “just a big iPhone”, though. The only iPhone app I find myself using on my iPad is Simplenote, for copying and pasting bits of text to and from my Mac and iPhone. Needless to say, I’d love an iPad-optimized version of Simplenote. iBooks and Kindle The iBooks app is free, but doesn’t ship with the iPad by default — you have to download it from the App Store. Apple hasn’t explained why this is so, but there are several reasons I can think of. For one thing, e-book rights are managed on a country-by-country basis — it seems likely that the iBooks store won’t be available in every country where the iPad will soon be sold. Making it an App Store app will also allow Apple to update the app on its own schedule — built-in system apps only get updates along with the entire system. So in some ways, the iBooks app is on equal footing with other e-book readers available in the App Store, particularly Amazon’s Kindle app. But iBooks does get some special treatment — the first time I launched the App Store app on my iPad, it prompted me with a dialog box asking if I’d like to down the free iBooks app. It’s impossible to miss. The iBooks app also has display brightness controls that are not availble through public APIs. Winnie the Pooh is included as a free sample, and the choice is genius — it’s a beloved story, a good read, and best of all (from Apple’s perspective) it can’t be read properly on the Kindle because the color illustrations are a big part of the experience. No book on the Kindle will ever look this good. The Kindle has its own advantages — its books are generally cheaper, its selection bigger, and e-ink works better in bright sunlight — but Winnie the Pooh epitomizes the iPad’s advantages. iBooks’s page-turning animation is delightful — it doesn’t just track your finger-swipe precisely, but even renders the type faintly in reverse on the other side of the “sheet”. The practical minded can simply tap the right and left edges of the screen to turn pages. Amazon’s iPad-native Kindle app is good, too. Oddly, to my mind, it is superior to their recent Mac app in every way. It looks better, feels better, renders text better, and has more features. I say this is odd because the iPad was announced just two months ago; Mac OS X was announced over a decade ago. I suspect part of the reason the Mac version is so crippled is that they were more worried about keeping Mac users from un-DRMing Kindle content than they were about making the Mac app an actual good-to-use app. The Kindle doesn’t do animated page-turning, but that’s not a big deal. Reading is great. And the Kindle’s ace-in-the-hole, of course, is the far larger selection of e-books in its store — hundreds of thousands versus Apple’s tens of thousands. I bought When the Game Was Ours, a new book by Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. It is not available in the iBooks store. So Kindle’s advantage is library size (and, secondarily, price per title). iBooks’s advantage is the color display. I’d be shocked if every single piece of advertising Apple produces for iBooks doesn’t focus entirely on screenshots of books with color illustrations, photos, and video. I think it’s going to be easier for Apple to improve the iBooks store library than it will be for Amazon to create a Kindle hardware model with a color display. I think Amazon would do well to add color support to Kindle e-books for use on iPads and iPhones. Kindle has a better chance of long-term success as a software platform than a hardware one. Third-Party Apps in General Given that most iPad-native apps in the store right now were developed using only the simulator by developers without access to actual iPads, you might expect apps to be buggy and UIs to be awkward. I’ve found the bugginess to be true, but the UIs are actually good. I think the physical prototypes developers jury-rigged for themselves paid off, design-wise. There’s no question that UIs are going change rapidly in the coming weeks now that developers have the real deal to measure the feel of their apps against, but for the apps I’ve been using the most, they’re pretty damn good already. As for the bugginess, I’m not saying it’s inexcusable or even surprising — the SDK simulator is not a perfect simulation. Several of the bugs I’ve reported are only present when the apps are running on actual iPad hardware. On the whole, though, the quality of iPad apps on day one is better, by far, than I had expected considering that developers had to build them in the dark, as it were. Prices, so far, are significantly higher than for iPhone apps — but still far cheaper than category equivalent Mac apps. For example, NetNewsWire is $10 (and going to $15 in May); Things is $20; and OmniGraffle is $50. No doubt there are going to be wildly popular 99-cent iPad apps, but it’s also shaping up as serious platform for serious tools. Games are a bit more expensive, too, but, to me, reasonably so. The final word count is just short of 7,300, so admittedly I wound up writing quite a good chunk of it in BBEdit on my Mac. ↩

  • 50 Common Mac Problems Solved

    We present the Ultimate Mac Troubleshooting Guide, so you can banish the peskiest problems once and for all.    Mac problems? Isn’t that an oxymoron? If you just switched to the Mac from Windows, you might be thinking that you accidentally picked up one of your old PC magazines--and, by the way, we’ve got solutions to the seven most common problems switchers encounter, too. If you’re a longtime Mac user, you could even be wondering where we get off accusing the Mac platform of being problematic.Using a Mac is generally painless and trouble free, but things can go wrong. Usually they’re not catastrophic (for solutions to true Mac disasters, click here). Sometimes the things that go wrong are those little annoying things that you just shrug off--over and over, until you finally have to deal with them.We’re here to help you tackle the 50 most common problems in eight different categories, once and for all. If your problem isn’t covered here, email us at ask@maclife.com, and we’ll try to solve it in a future issue. General Mac Problems The Mac OS is, fundamentally, as trouble-free as operating systems get. But nothing's perfect. Here's what to do when you hit a snag.1. I want a tabbed finder.Download the incredibly versatile Path Finder ($40, www.cocoatech.com), which gives you all sorts of features that are missing from the Finder, such as tabs, stacks, bookmarks, and panes. Sounds like fun to us!Now THIS is the Finder we've always dreamed of. Thanks, Path Finder!2. I can't print anymore.This could be caused by a variety of different issues relating to your printer hardware or printer drivers, so you may need to contact the printer manufacturer for more help. But if your Mac is causing the problem, it’s always a good idea to reset your entire printing system by going into your Print & Fax System Preference, right-clicking in the printer list, and choosing Reset Printing System.3. I travel all over town with my MacBook, and I’m sick of reconfiguring my settings every time I show up at a location I’ve been to before. Why can’t my Mac remember various location settings for me--my default printer, mounted servers, iChat screen name, Bluetooth settings, everything? Try NetworkLocation ($29, www.networklocationapp.com), which can perform dozens of actions on your Mac whenever you switch to a new location. Best of all, its AutoLocate feature will determine where you are, using the same SkyHook Wireless Wi-Fi Positioning System that your iPhone uses, and it will automatically change all of your settings for you. If you frequently switch physical locations, NetworkLocation can save you both time and headaches changing your Mac's settings. 4. I forgot my OS X password.After retyping your password very carefully at least twice to make sure you just didn’t mistype it, you’ll need to haul out your OS X install disk, insert it into your Mac and restart holding down the C button. After selecting your language of choice, in the menubar, select Utilities > Reset Password. Follow the directions and there you go. Just try not to get a lobotomy after resetting it!5. My CD or DVD is stuck in the optical drive and won’t come out when I press Eject.After holding down the eject button for several seconds to no avail, restart your Mac and hold down the primary button on your mouse--the trackpad button will work as well if you’re on a MacBook--and during startup the disk should eject.6. My Mac is not recognizing devices plugged in to one of my USB ports.First, make sure your Mac’s firmware is up to date--check Software Update and the Apple Support Downloads page (support.apple.com/downloads/) and install any firmware updates you find for your machine.If nothing happens, turn off your Mac, unplug the power cable, disconnect all peripherals, and let it sit for five minutes. Plug it back in, reconnect the keyboard and mouse, turn it back on, and try the USB ports again.Check the Support Downloads page for firmware updates for your Mac.If they’re still unresponsive, you will need to reset the PRAM (parameter RAM) and NVRAM (nonvolatile RAM), which stores some system and device settings that your Mac accesses on startup. Shut your Mac down. Then position your fingers above the Command, Option, P, and R keys on your keyboard. Turn the Mac on, then immediately press and hold those four keys before you see the gray screen. Keep them pressed until the Mac restarts again and you hear the startup chime for the second time. Then let ’em go. When your Mac is finished starting up, check those pesky USB ports.If they’re still not behaving, there’s one more thing you can try before making a Genius Bar appointment: resetting the SMC, or system management controller. Directions for resetting the SMC on your MacBook Pro are found at support.apple.com/kb/HT1411. Instructions for all other Macs are linked from support.apple.com/kb/HT1894. In Search Of...Search Solutions Leopard makes finding files and data on your Mac relatively trouble-free, but when it comes to search, there are improvements and tricks you can apply to make it even better. Here are two solutions to common search problems we hear about from a fair number of Mac users. 7. My Spotlight results have stopped working reliably.If it’s a single non-Apple program that isn’t showing up properly in your Spotlight results, try turning off and on the Spotlight indexing in that particular app.If you’re still getting Spotlight results for an app that you got rid of a while ago, you may not have completely deleted all of the data or databases that are associated with that program.Spotless gives you a nice GUI for managing, deleting, and rebuilding your Spotlight indexes.If it’s an Apple program--or your entire Mac--that isn’t working properly in Spotlight, try re-indexing your whole hard drive by going into the Spotlight System Preference, clicking on the Privacy tab, then dragging your hard drive into the list. Wait a moment, and then remove your hard drive from the list again.If you’re still having problems, you may need to bring out the big guns by using Spotless ($17, www.fixamac.net), a Spotlight index-management tool that can help fix most Spotlight problems.8. I need more power, flexibility, and customizability with my Spotlight searches and Spotlight results.Get HoudahSpot ($25, www.houdah.com), which lets you create extremely detailed search requests and customize the results to your liking.HoudahSpot handles Spotlight searches with much more flexability than Apple's built-in Spotlight search.  3 Essential Utilities Three more Mac problems solved--before they happen! 9. Disk Warrior($100, www.alsoft.com) This is a great preventative maintenance tool for rebuilding your Mac's directory and keeping your mac running quickly and smoothly. It's also a great emergency tool for repairing disks that have missing files or will no longer mount.10. Cocktail($15, www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php). This general all-purpose utility will clean the caches on your machine, run the UNIX maintenance scripts, unlock hidden features of your Mac, and much more.11. SuperDuper($28, www.shirt-pocket.com). This disk cloning utility is great for backing up or transferring all the data on your entire computer to a fully bootable state. Next Page: Email and Web Problems... Email and Web Problems  We know you spend most of your time in front of a Mac online or pounding out email. Here's how to answer when trouble comes knocking. 12. I use a webmail client to check email, but every time I click on an email link, it launches Apple Mail instead.You can set up Apple Mail to access your webmail account using IMAP or POP (check with your webmail provider for instructions on how to do this; some charge a fee for this service), or you can install the program Webmailer (free, www.belkadan.com/webmailer), which lets you set any webmail site as your default email program.We set up Webmailer to take us to Yahoo's webmail system whenever we click on an email link.If you use Gmail, you have a few additional choices: You can install Google Notifier (free, toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper) and set that to your default email client in Mail’s preferences. Or you can use the outstanding Mailplane ($25, www.mailplaneapp.com), which provides many more features than the Gmail website.13. I can receive but not send email messages.Outgoing email messages are typically sent over the Internet using TCP port numbers 25, 465, or 587. However, in an effort to reduce spam, some ISPs and firewalls are set up to severely restrict the use of those ports. For example, AT&T is notorious for blocking port 25 for its DSL customers, unless you’re sending email with the AT&T email address assigned to your DSL modem. If you’re using AT&T (or another service provider that has similar restrictions), call the technical support number and request that they unblock port 25 for you. If you don’t control the Internet access where you are located, contact your email host to see if they have an alternate port that you can send email on. You can specify alternate port numbers in your email app’s account settings. If all else fails, you should be able to send email through your webmail system until you can physically get yourself to a different location that has no restrictions.Our Web-hosting company, hostbaby.com, allows us to send email messages over alternate port 2525, which typically bypasses any firewall restrictions that have been put in place.14. When I reply to or forward an email, the original message isn't entirely quoted in my reply--sometimes just the header and a few characters are quoted.If you used your mouse to highlight some text in the original email, and then you clicked on forward or reply, only the words that you selected will be quoted in your new email. To override this behavior in Mail (it can’t be overridden in Entourage), go into Mail’s Preferences, click on the Composing button, and you can set it to include all of the original message. If the problem still happens after this, your Mail preferences might be corrupt. Quit Mail, and trash the file located at yourhomefolder/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. Also try upgrading to Snow Leopard, which makes Mail more reliable in general.The Composing preference in Mail ensures that your replies and forwards will always quote the original email message in their entirety.15. I want to send an email later, not now.Each email client handles this slightly differently.In Entourage, choose Message > Send Message Later or click on the Send Later button. (In Entourage 2008, you’ll need to add the Send Later button to your toolbar by choosing View > Customize Toolbar from any outgoing message.) Your messages will queue up in your outbox, and then you can send them all at once by creating an Entourage schedule (Tools > Schedules) or by clicking the Send & Receive button.In Thunderbird, choose File > Send Later. Your messages will queue up in the Unsent folder until you choose File > Send Unsent Messages.The Send Later Extension lets you schedule your outgoing messages in Thunderbird.The Send Later Extension for Thunderbird (free, www.unsignedbyte.com/?page_id=4) lets you schedule an exact date and time in the future to send your message.Surprisingly, Mail provides no ability to send messages later. You could take all your accounts offline (Mailbox > Take All Accounts Offline) before clicking on the Send button, in which case your messages disappear until you quit and relaunch Mail to find a temporary outbox with your messages sitting in them. Or, to schedule emails for a later delivery time that you specify, install the Schedule Delivery script which is a part of Mail Scripts (donations requested, homepage.mac.com/aamann/).Finally, LetterMeLater (free, www.lettermelater.com) offers another way to schedule emails to be sent at a later time.16. I have multiple folders entitled Drafts, Sent, Junk, or Trash for my IMAP email account.Setting up an IMAP account can be a little tricky. After typing your valid account settings into your email program, there are two additional steps:First, you’ll need to set the proper IMAP path prefix (sometimes called the “root folder” or IMAP server directory) in your account settings. For example, Gmail’s IMAP Path Prefix is [Gmail].Defining your IMAP server's root folder is an often-forgotten step when setting up an IMAP email account.In Entourage, you set this on the Options tab of your IMAP’s account settings. In Thunderbird, click the Advanced button on the Server Settings tab. In Mail, this is on the Advanced tab of your IMAP’s account settings.Then you’ll need to designate which folders on the server should be used for storing your drafts, sent messages, trash, and junk. In Entourage, you set this on the Advanced tab of your IMAP’s account settings. In Thunderbird, this is done in the Copies & Folders section of your account settings. In Mail, go out to your main viewer window and select a folder on the server (in the left-hand margin, underneath the IMAP account name), then choose Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For.17. Whenever I address an outgoing email, I get unwanted email addresses for people who aren't in my address book.Most email clients keep track of addresses that you’ve emailed to in the past and will suggest those addresses to you in the future when you start to type the same characters. You can turn off this feature in Entourage and Thunderbird by going into their preferences. In Entourage, this is found on the Compose tab. In Thunderbird, this is on the Composition > Addressing tab. You can’t turn off this feature in Mail, but you can clear the list from time-to-time by selecting Window > Previous Recipients, selecting the names and clicking Remove from List.In Mail, you have complete control over your Previous Recipients list.18. When I email long Web links to others, they sometimes get broken up onto multiple lines and don't work correctly.Try putting angle brackets () around long URLs to help them travel safely across the Internet without “breaking.” Or you turn to TinyURL (free, www.tinyurl.com), which will turn those long URLs into, well, tiny URLs!19. I wish Safari's built-in search field worked with more websites than just Google.You may want to switch to Firefox, which has the built-in ability to customize its search field with any number of search engines that you specify. Otherwise, check out the Safari plug-ins Saft ($12, haoli.dnsalias.com) or Glims (free, machangout.com), both of which let you customize Safari’s Google search field. And one of our favorite utilities, iSeek ($15, www.ambrosiasw.com) lets you add a global customizable search field to your Mac’s menubar that works with any Web browser.iSeek places a fully customizable search field in our menubar at all times.20. I want to filter inappropriate websites so my kids can't access them.Although Mac OS X has built-in parental controls that you can turn on for individual accounts, you can gain more control by purchasing software like ContentBarrier ($50, www.intego.com) or Net Nanny ($39.99 a year, www.netnanny.com). Even better, we’ve discovered that one of the quickest, easiest, and most effective ways of filtering all the computers in your entire household is to switch your DNS servers to the free OpenDNS servers (free, www.opendns.com).ContentBarrier is one of many options you have for blocking websites on your Mac. 21. My Internet connection is slow.That’s a tricky one. A sluggish Net connection could be caused by any number of things, so here are a few troubleshooting tips to start with:Try resetting Safari (Safari > Reset Safari). Then, try a different Web browser to see if the problem happens there as well. You may also want to uninstall any Internet plug-ins that you have installed recently.Next, check your upload and download speeds at www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and see if you’re getting the speeds you’re paying for. If not, try power cycling both your modem and router, such as your Airport Extreme. Turn off or unplug the device, let it sit powered off for several minutes, then plug it in or switch it on again.Our latest speed test from Speakeasy.net shows us that we're not currently getting the full upload speeds for which we've been paying the big bucks!If these methods don’t address the slowdown, try plugging your modem directly into your Mac using an Ethernet cable to see if the problem goes away. If so, your router may be the problem. If you’re using an Airport Extreme or Airport Express, launch Airport Utility to see if there is a firmware upgrade available. If so, install the firmware upgrade and see if that helps.If not, your Mac could be the problem--you may need to perform an Archive and Install of your operating system, which is one of your options on the Mac OS X Leopard Installation DVD.And it’s always possible that your modem or Internet line is the problem too, in which case you should call your ISP’s technical support number. Next Page: Photo and Office/iWork Problems... Photo Problems These solutions to common photo issues will make you want to say "cheese." 22. I need to quickly resize an image and make some color corrections to it, but I can't afford Photoshop and don't really want to learn how to use it.Preview has the built-in ability to resize images and adjust colors. Open up your image in Preview and select Tools > Adjust Size or Adjust Color.This image-size adjustment dialog box is from Preview, not Photoshop!23. I want to email photos from iPhoto through my webmail account by clicking on iPhoto's Email button.Even if you’ve installed Webmailer, as mentioned in problem #12, the email button in iPhoto will only work with four email clients: AOL, Eudora, Entourage, and Mail.However, if you use Gmail, you’re in luck because Mailplane ($25, www.mailplaneapp.com) installs an iPhoto plug-in that lets you click on iPhoto’s Email button and send your messages through your Gmail account.In any dialog box, you can activate QuickLook when browsing your iPhoto Library by selecting a photo and pressing the spacebar.Otherwise, go into your webmail program, and attach photos using the standard method. Leopard’s dialog boxes give you the ability to browse through your iPhoto library, and they even let you use QuickLook by clicking on a photo and pressing the spacebar.24. I want to use iPhoto '09 to export photos to Facebook, but there are too many problems with it.Forget about using iPhoto ’09’s poorly implemented Facebook “integration.” Instead, use the outstanding Facebook Exporter for iPhoto (free, developers.facebook.com/iphoto).Use Facebook Exporter for iPhoto to tag, add captions to, and upload your Facebook photos right from within iPhoto.25. I created a PDF file with lots of embedded photos in it, but now the file is way too large to email.Open up the large PDF file in Preview and select File > Save As. Where it says Quartz Filter, choose Reduce File Size, then click Save. VoilĂ ! You’ve now saved a much smaller version of your PDF file, which will be easier to email.Choose this Quartz Filter in Preview to reduce the size (and quality) of large PDF files so you can email them without choking your email server.For even more control over the resulting quality of PDF size reduction--and to batch-process multiple PDF files at once--try PDFshrink ($35, www.apago.com).If you still can’t get the file small enough for your needs, try a file-sending service such as YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com).26. Somebody emailed me a PDF file with lots of embedded photos in it, and I need to extract the photos from the file.File Juicer ($18, www.echoone.com) will extract images, sounds, and more from any filetype.File Juicer can extract all these types of files out of other files. Office/iWork Problems Work smarter not harder with these troubleshooting tips for common productivity apps. 27. I created an awesome slide show in Keynote, but I have to present it on a PC. I tried exporting it to Microsoft PowerPoint format, but I lost my transitions, effects, transparencies, gradients, and more--basically, all the cool stuff.Export your Keynote file to a QuickTime movie instead. As long as the PC has QuickTime installed on it (which it should, if it has iTunes installed), you’ll be able to play back your presentation with all of its awesomeness intact. If the PC doesn’t have QuickTime, download it for free from www.apple.com/quicktime.With the "Fixed Timing" option, we can set our QuickTime movie to automatically advance to the next slide on a regular interval.When you export your movie, you have several options for how it should advance from one slide to the next. For example, if you set it to manually advance, you simply have to press the spacebar on the PC to move to the next slide.28. I’ve included presenter notes (View > Show Presenter Notes) in a Keynote slide show, but when I play or rehearse the slide show, the notes don’t show up onscreen.In Keynote’s preferences, click on the Presenter Display button, and check the boxes for Notes and “Use alternate display to view presenter information.” Now your notes will show up when you play or rehearse your slide show.This checkbox lets you toggle between mirrored displays and dual displays.However, if you start seeing your notes on both your computer screen and the projector’s screen, your computer is set to mirrored (instead of dual) displays. You can toggle these display modes while the projector is connected to your Mac by launching System Preferences, choosing Display > Arrangement, and deselecting the Mirror Displays checkbox.29. I use Office 2008 to create Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files, but my Mac-using colleagues can’t open the files because they’re using Office 2004.TextEdit can open and edit Word 2008 files. And if your colleagues have iWork ’09 installed, they can work with all of your Office 2008 files in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote.Otherwise, you’ll need to save the file in an earlier file format. Choose File > Save As and select the format that corresponds to Office 97–2004. You can also set this older format as the default in your preferences for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.Choose the .doc format to avoid compatibility issues with people using earlier versions of Microsoft Word.Alternatively, your colleagues can install Microsoft’s Open XML File Format Converter (free, www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads), which will convert your Office 2008 files into a format that Office 2004 can read. Next Page: Syncing Problems...  Syncing Problems Data syncing can be particularly stressful since we need access to info anywhere these days. We've got solutions. 30. I want to sync some--but not all--of my iCal calendars across my Macs.Don’t use MobileMe to sync, which always synchronizes all of your calendars. Instead, use BusySync ($25, www.busymac.com) or BusyCal ($40, www.busymac.com), which both give you an incredible amount of syncing options.BusyMac's products are true champions when it comes to publishing and subscribing selected calendars without any dedicated servers.31. I want to synchronize my iCal calendars and Address Book on my Mac to Outlook on a PC.Sign up for MobileMe ($99 a year, www.apple.com), which will keep all of your Macs and PCs (and iPhones!) in sync with each other.Spanning Sync effortlessly syncs your calendars and contacts to Google.Or, you can use Google Calendar and Google Contacts as a conduit. On the Mac side, you’ll need Spanning Sync ($25/year or $65/one-time purchase, spanningsync.com). On the PC side, you’ll need Google Apps Sync ($50/year, tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync).32. I keep getting duplicate entries on my iCal calendar.Sounds like you’re trying to sync your Entourage calendar with iCal. There’s a known bug with Entourage that causes repeating events to multiply out of control in iCal. We don’t know of any long-term solution at this time except to ditch Entourage’s calendar and stick to iCal for your calendaring needs. To do this, uncheck the box for syncing events in Entourage’s Preferences (on the Sync Services pane). To erase iCal dupes, try iCal Cleaner (free, www.busymac.com).33. I’m getting two of each calendar entry on my iPhone.You may be trying to sync your calendars through both iTunes and MobileMe. You’ll need to choose one method or the other, not both. If you’re syncing wirelessly through MobileMe, then go into your iPhone settings within iTunes and uncheck all of your calendars there.The exception to this rule is iCal’s Birthdays calendar (enabled in iCal’s preferences, this calendar pulls birthdays from your Address Book), which can only be synced through iTunes, so it must remain checked in iTunes.34. My U.S. Holidays and other Internet-subscribed iCal calendars are not syncing between my Mac and my iPhone.Any Internet-subscribed calendars must be resubscribed to directly from your iPhone. You can manually set up the server on your iPhone by going to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account > Other > Calendars.You must resubscribe to your iCal holiday calendars on your iPhone all over again.Or, you can automatically subscribe to a calendar by using Safari on your iPhone to choose from Apple’s extensive selection of calendars at www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars.35. iTunes no longer launches automatically when I attach my iPod or iPhone to my computer.If your iPhone or iPod is very low on power or if the battery is fully depleted, it can take up to 10 minutes to appear under Devices in iTunes.Otherwise, you may have unchecked the box in iTunes for your device that says “Automatically sync when this iPhone/iPod is connected” or “Open iTunes when this iPod is attached.”You may have also removed the iTunesHelper application from your Login Items in your Account System Preferences, which is required to automatically launch iTunes. You can get this back by reinstalling iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes) or by manually dragging iTunesHelper into the Login Items. iTunesHelper can be found by right-clicking on iTunes in the Finder and choosing Show Package Contents, then going to Contents > Resources.36. I want to synchronize files between two computers.There are many different programs available to help you with this task, but our favorite is ChronoSync ($40, www.econtechnologies.com). ChronoSync can automatically mount remote servers, wake your local Mac from sleep, schedule your synchronizations, archive backup copies of your files before syncing, and even give you a list of proposed changes before it makes any of them.Synchronizing files between two different computers is as simple as drag-and-drop with ChronoSync.While you can use ChronoSync to synchronize to any type of volume or folder, if you specifically want to sync to another computer, you may want to additionally purchase ChronoAgent for an extra $10. ChronoAgent lets you communicate directly with a remote Mac faster than using AFP or SMB, and you gain full root access, so you can copy anything without any restrictions.37. I turned on MobileMe syncing on my iPhone, but nothing is syncing to my Mac or Me.com.It’s possible that the MobileMe servers aren’t communicating properly with your iPhone. An Apple support rep recently admitted to us that this is an extremely common problem that MobileMe users may experience every few months until Apple increases the reliability of its MobileMe syncing servers. So you may want to keep these instructions handy for future reference.First, find out if MobileMe sees your iPhone at all. Activate Find My iPhone on your iPhone (Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > your me.com account > Find My iPhone). Then, from a computer (not your iPhone), go to your MobileMe account page at https://secure.me.com/yourusername. Click on Find My iPhone to see if the MobileMe website sees your phone. If not, try turning off your iPhone and turning it back on again. If the MobileMe site still doesn’t see your phone, try deleting your MobileMe account on your iPhone and re-creating it again.We feel like Big Brother is watching us with Find My iPhone's crosshairs centered directly on our house!Once Me.com sees your iPhone, try adding an event or a contact to your phone and see if the change shows up on your MobileMe calendar (www.me.com/calendar) or address book (www.me.com/contacts) within a few minutes.If not, you will probably have to reset all of your sync data on Me.com with information from your Mac’s iCal and Address Book. Make a mental note of any recent unsynced changes you’ve made on your iPhone, because you’re going to lose them in this process. Also, sign out of Me.com. Go into the MobileMe System Preference on your Mac, select the Sync tab, click on Advanced, and then click Reset Sync Data. Click on the right arrow so that you are replacing all sync info on MobileMe with “info from this computer.”Log back into Me.com and verify that it now has your current information for contacts and calendars. If not, you will have to reset the SyncServices database on your Mac. Apple has instructions on this process at support.apple.com/kb/TS1627.But before following those instructions, be sure to do two things on your Mac: First, repair your permissions using Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities), and, second, repair your keychain using Keychain Access (in Disk Utility, pull down from the Keychain Access menu and select Keychain First Aid). After that, try syncing again from the MobileMe System Preference pane.This is how it should look when you're about to overwrite information on the MobileMe website with information from your Mac.Once Me.com has your current information, you are ready to go back to your iPhone. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data. Turn Push off, then completely turn off your phone for 30 seconds. Turn your phone back on and re-enable push. Then, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > your Me.com account and turn off and on each one of the sliders for the information that you’re trying to sync (Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, etc).Wait several minutes, and hopefully all your current information will reappear in your calendar and contacts on your iPhone.If not, you will probably need to have a live chat with a MobileMe support agent. Go to www.apple.com/support/mobileme. Choose any of the troubleshooting options underneath Syncing with MobileMe in the left-hand margin, and a Chat Now button will appear. Next Page: Video, Music, and Backup Problems...  Video Problems These tips address problems you might encounter trying to play video files on your Mac. 38. I’m trying to use my Apple Remote on my Mac to watch movies through Front Row, but the other computers in the room--along with my Apple TV--are inadvertently responding to my remote’s button presses.You need to pair each one of your Apple Remotes to a particular device. Apple has instructions on how to do this at support.apple.com/kb/HT1619.39. Sometimes I can't play Web videos.Out of the box, your Mac can only play Flash and QuickTime videos. To play other video formats, you’ll need to install one or more of the following free apps:>> Flip4Mac Windows Media Components for QuickTime (www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx)>> Perian (www.perian.org)>> Microsoft Silverlight (www.microsoft.com/silverlight/)>> RealPlayer (www.real.com)>> VLC (www.videolan.org)40. I want to convert video files to other formats, particularly those that will work on my iPod or iPhone.To convert your video files into many different formats--including iPhone and iPod compatible formats--try Video Monkey (free, videomonkey.org), VideoDrive (7.99 euros, www.aroona.net), or CosmoPod (8.90 euros, www.cocoamug.com). To convert DVDs, try HandBrake (free, www.handbrake.fr).41. I want to download a Flash video from the Web.There’s a little-known trick in Safari that lets you download Flash videos that are embedded in webpages. Bring up the Activity Viewer (Window > Activity) and look for a file that appears that it may be your video file, perhaps based on its large size or the fact that it is so large that it is still loading. When it‘s finished loading, hold down the Option key and double-click on the video file. Safari will download the file into your Downloads folder for you, and you can monitor the progress through the Downloads window.Little-known Safari secret: You can download Flash vids, like Funny or Die's famous "The Landlord" starring Will Ferrell, to your Desktop to watch at your leisure.If you’d like an easier way to download Flash videos, try TubeTV (donations requested, www.chimoosoft.com), Videobox ($15, www.tastyapps.com), or TubeSock ($15, www.stinkbot.com).42. I want to download a QuickTime video from the Web to my Mac, so I can watch it later.If you’ve purchased QuickTime Pro ($30, www.apple.com/quicktime), you can download many QuickTime videos right from the Web by clicking on the triangle in the lower right-hand corner of the video and choosing Save As QuickTime Movie.However, some QuickTime videos, including those on Apple’s website, don’t let you download them directly. To download these devious videos--with or without QuickTime Pro--view the source of the webpage in Safari (View > View Source) or Firefox (View > Page Source). Do a search for .mov (the file extension for QuickTime videos) to find the full URL of the video file. When you find it, copy the entire URL of the video file. Then, launch QuickTime Player on your Mac and select File > Open URL and paste in the URL. Now you can save the video file onto your computer.43. I bought an external USB webcam, but my Mac laptop isn’t recognizing it.If your Mac is running Mac OS 10.4.11 or later, it can recognize almost any USB webcam on the market, usually without installing any drivers.If you’re running the latest version of OS X but still having problems, the iUSBCam (www.ecamm.com/mac/iusbcam) and macam (webcam-osx.sourceforge.net) websites provide helpful tips and driver downloads.Note that Mac programs like iChat and Skype will first try to use your built-in internal camera before using any external webcams. To change this, you’ll need to go into the preferences of those programs to change your video input source.If you’re unsuccessfully trying to use your external webcam in Photo Booth, you have to switch back to the internal camera in iChat’s preferences before launching Photo Booth. Music Problems How to keep rocking in the free world. 44. I want to make iPhone ringtones from a song that I didn’t purchase (or isn’t available for purchase) from the iTunes Store.If you have a track in iTunes that you own on CD and that you’ve ripped to iTunes, you can make a ringtone from it for free in GarageBand ’09. Click here for instructions and scroll down to “Roll Your Own iPhone Ringtones,” which also provides instructions for doing the same thing in QuickTime Pro).45. My iTunes library is full of duplicates.For smaller libraries, use iTunes’ Show Duplicates feature (File > Show Duplicates) and manually remove the extra files. iTunes only matches on Artist and Title information though, so be careful not to delete legit alternate versions of tracks--live versions, for example. For better duplicate control, try Dupin or some of the iTunes scripts available at www.dougscripts.com.46. One of the rubber tips from a pair of third-party earbuds got stuck in my ear--help!Believe it or not, this has happened to us too--more than once. We recommend keeping a pair of tweezers handy, just in case a tip come off in your ear canal, which can sometimes happen if you pull the ’bud out too quickly. It’s happened to two Mac|Life editors, both of whom agree that having something small and unreachable lodged in your ear can be pretty traumatic.47. My iTunes library is spread across multiple Macs. How can I keep two iTunes libraries synchronized?If all you want to do is listen to iTunes music housed on another local Mac (i.e. connected to the local network), just turn on iTunes’ sharing feature (Preferences > Sharing and check “Look for shared libraries”). To share your own tracks, also check “Share my library on my local network.” You can also store libraries on a network drive that supports iTunes sharing, to share tunes without needing another Mac up and running all the time. To keep two libraries in step for syncing iPods, use a utility like TuneRanger ($29.99, my.smithmicro.com) or SuperSync ($29, www.supersync.com).You don't have to share all your iTunes content--and you can password-protect it if you want, too. Backup Problems Don't tell us you don't back up--especially since Time Machine makes it so easy! Here's what to do when you run into problems. 48. I want to restore a file from a Time Machine backup of a different Mac or an older backup of my main Mac that Time Machine no longer recognizes (due to a new backup drive, a new logic board, or a new internal hard drive).You can restore any Time Machine backup onto any Mac, if you know a few tricks involved with restoring.The first one is related to an odd decision by Apple: You can only browse other Time Machine volumes by adding the Time Machine icon to your dock, then right-clicking on the icon and selecting Browse Other Time Machine Disks.There's our hidden option to browse other Time Machine disks!But even if you do that, it won’t see your Time Capsule or other external Time Machine drives, even if they’re mounted on your Desktop. In Finder, you actually have to manually choose the .sparsebundle file that represents the computer that was backed up, double-click on this file, let it mount on your Desktop, and then Time Machine will let you choose the resulting mounted disk image to restore from.49. Time Machine is giving me an error message that’s too vague for me to interpret.The programs TM Error Logger (donations requested, www.carnationsoftware.com) and Time Machine Buddy (free, www.bluedog.com.au) can help you interpret what has gone wrong with your Time Machine backup.50. I’d like Time Machine to back up to multiple external hard drives, so I can keep one backup drive offsite and one backup drive onsite.Time Machine can correctly keep track of backups on multiple external hard drives. Just give your hard drives different names, and whenever you connect the other drive, you’ll need to manually make a trip to Time Machine’s System Preference and change the disk there. 

  • 100 Greatest iPhone Apps of 2009

    From marking its first year this past summer, to boasting over 100,000 applications in its catalog, the App Store has been great for many developers on the iPhone platform this past year. With 2010 right around the corner, we wanted to take a look back at the 100 greatest iPhone apps of 2009. These applications were nominated by Mac|Life readers. All of these apps have something in common: They've helped make the iPhone better over the past year.   MobileMe iDisk (free)This little iPhone app lets MobileMe users browse through files stored on their iDisk with ease. The app also lets you view files like PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Image files, and iWork files. In addition, you can share files right from your iPhone.  Evernote (free)Evernote is the free online service/application that lets you store notes and images in notebooks for later use. The iPhone application really comes in handy, especially since it syncs with the cloud. Coupled with the new offline viewing for premium users, Evernote has to be one the best iPhone apps, hands down.    Facebook (free)It seems like all of our friends are on Facebook these days, so why shouldn't Facebook be everywhere? Well, with their iPhone application it can definitely seem like that. This application allows you to manage all of your friends, posts, messages, uploads, and otherwise use Facebook without being inside of a browser.   Shazam (free)Without this wonderful application, we would still have that snazzy song stuck in our heads without knowing the title or band. Shazam provides a great service to iPhone users for the wonderful price of free; however, if you're into product(RED), they have a Shazam(RED) version available as well.   Tweetie 2 ($2.99) It seems like Twitter is becoming as ubiquitous as Facebook, and it also seems like there are a bevy of iPhone Twitter clients. Tweetie would have to be a newcomer that won the hearts of the iPhone users everywhere. Multiple Twitter accounts, contact linkage, multiple attachments, offline mode, and more. Tweetie 2 has you covered.   Twitterrific (free)Twitterrific is the great-granddaddy of Twitter clients on the Mac and iPhone, but it doesn't disappoint. Twitterrific got a new face lift this year that updated the client to be in line with other clients like Tweetie. By far, this is the nicest looking Twitter client on the iPhone.  SimplyTweet ($4.99)With the advent of push notifications for the iPhone, SimplyTweet is probably one of the cheapest solutions for bringing push to your tweets. This app also contains all of the features of other comparable Twitter clients.   Zipcar (free)Zipcar is one of those revolutionary applications, giving you the ability to not only pick out a rental car from the Zipcar service, but also unlocks the doors on the car right from the iPhone.   Dropbox (free)This small newcomer of a company has shown time and time again that they can play with the best when it comes to online storage in an iDisk-style fashion. Dropbox offers up 2GBs of free online storage to users (along with other premium paid services). With their iPhone application, you can view and manage files on-the-go with ease.  Pastebot ($2.99)With iPhone 3.0, cut, copy, and paste became a reality on the iPhone. With Pastebot, multiple clippings in an easy to use clipboard manager become a reality. This application also lets you sync over your clippings from your Mac to iPhone and vice versa.   Stanza (free)With Amazon Kindle-like finesse, Stanza lets you read eBooks on your iPhone for free or little cost. Download free Guttenberg Project books, or paid books from several publishers right from the app; then sit back and read.   TomTom U.S.A. ($49.99)This year gave way to turn-by-turn GPS navigation apps for the iPhone. TomTom is one of the many GPS apps available that is really well designed. This app has 3D maps, fast route calculations, and a new lower price that many iPhone owners will enjoy.  Navigon MobileNavigator ($59.99)With maps from NAVTEQ, and features like Lane Assist Pro, Navigon is a great navigation app for the iPhone. The app also includes Google local search, iPod control, and bird's-eye view of maps.   Things ($9.99)Sure, it's been around since the App Store launched, but it gained tighter syncing with its Mac counterpart, which makes it all the better. Things is a complete GTD (Getting Things Done) solution for your Mac and iPhone.  1Password Pro ($7.99)What would we do without 1Password? This handy application manages all of our passwords on both the Mac and the iPhone. And with the pro version, you get all kinds of nifty features like copy/paste passwords, folders for managing, and copying multiple field values. If you're always forgetting your passwords, this app is for you.   VNC Lite (free)This application is a must have if you want to control your Mac or PC right from your iPhone. It has zoom and scroll capability, landscape mode, and support for 8 and 32 bit color modes.  AP Mobile (free)AP Mobile lets you browse local, national, and international news right from one iPhone application. Utilizing news from the Associated Press newswire services, this application sends out push notifications of breaking news straight to your device. You'll always know what's going on with AP Mobile.  Air Sharing Pro ($6.99)Air Sharing Pro gives you the ability to turn your iPhone into a wireless hard drive that can be mounted on your Mac to add files for viewing from the device. You can also mount remote file server, connect to your computer, perform advanced file operations, and print files directly from your iPhone.    Documents to Go ($9.99)Docs to Go has been around since the Palm days, but the application has also made its way over to the iPhone and it's pretty decent. The application lets you sync your Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, etc.) files to your iPhone and create/edit Word and Excel files. You can then sync the files back to your Mac or PC with the included Desktop sync utility.   Yelp (free)Yelp has definitely helped us when we're hungry and visiting a new area. This application searches for places around you like restaurants, bars, cafes, and more; plus, it lets you write and read reviews. With the augmented reality of the Yelp Monocle built right in, this app is worth a look.   Remote (free)Apple's Remote application has cut down on the clutter needed for a Mac or Apple TV. With one device you can control the ATV, iTunes or Front Row on the Mac via a Wi-Fi connection.   Pandora (free) The iPod feature on the iPhone is great, but if you're looking for a great music experience, Pandora is a good way to go. This application allows you to stream uninterrupted music from Pandoras online service straight to your iPhone in an iPhone styled application.   AOL Radio (free)AOL Radio gives you a streaming music experience from their online service and from CBS Radio. This app also lets you listen to streaming local radio stations, including live steaming sports stations. Plus, AOL Radio now streams 128kbps while on Wi-Fi, 3G, or EDGE.   Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid (free)Ngmoco did something interesting with their latest iteration in the Rolando series. Rolando 2 is free for the first chapter, but other levels can be purchased using the in-app purchases. Ngmoco has created a game play that is like no other on the iPhone with the Rolando series.  OmniFocus ($19.99)OmniFocus is similar to other GTD (Getting Things Done) applications, but it gives you the ability to manage tasks by location. OmniFocus is like a task list on steroids.    Lose It! (free)So many people try to lose weight all the time, but often time fail to succeed. This iPhone application can keep you motivated to lose weight by keeping you on track with eating and exercise habits. Lose It! is a free application that also interfaces with an online companion website.    Todo ($9.99)Todo is a great GTD task manager that lets you sync with applications like iCal, MS-Outlook, Remember the Milk, and Toodledo over Wi-Fi and 3G. You also get a full calendar view for choosing due dates.   Assassin's Creed ($4.99)Gameloft has innovated the iPhone game marketplace with games like Assassin's Creed. They've taken a game that's from another console and brought it to the iPhone, but the game feels like it has been created especially for the device. You can take this great RPG with you anywhere.   Dragon Dictation (free for limited time)Dragon Dictation gives you speech to text software for the iPhone that lets you speak what you want to say instead of typing it. This application, which is built around the popular Dragon Naturally Speaking Engine, works extremely well.    Convertbot ($0.99) Ever out and about and need to convert between two units? Convertbot lets you convert between over 440 different units with ease. It can also convert currencies and the rates are updated upon launching the app.     I Am T-Pain ($2.99)Admit it, you've been singing along to T-Pain songs and you've really wanted to make your voice sound exactly like his? Well, with this auto-tune music application for iPhone you can do exactly that. Just select your favorite song and start singing. Being famous not included.  Shoot It! (free, paid service)Shoot It! is a social network application that lets you take any picture you want and turn it into an actual snail mail postcard. You can select a photo, add an address and note, and the next business day the postcard will be printed and mailed out for you for only $0.99 for the US.   IMDB (free)The Internet Movie Database has long been the go-to destination for looking up information about movies and TV shows, and now it has its own app on the iPhone. You can get all of the information you would on their website, but now in a convenient iPhone-formatted way.   Analytics App ($5.99)Analytics App for iPhone lets us see our Google Analytics stats no matter where we may be. This app offers up a Today report, dashboard quick view, and more analytics data than you could ever want.   HyperBowl ($1.99)Sure, there are a lot of bowling games for the iPhone, but none of them match the legacy that HyperBowl has. The gameplay feels organic, with its beautiful outdoor themed bowling lanes.  Wolfram Alpha ($19.99, on sale)Wolfram Alpha is the new smart search engine that Wolfram Research recently launched. You can now have all of that power right on your iPhone with this small application.   Wunder Radio ($6.99)Wunder Radio is an iPhone application that can stream live from over 50,000 Internet radio stations. This application also includes a sleep timer and ability to listen to local NOAA weather radio streams.   New York Times (free)Always stay up to date on the news with the New York Times application. The application synchronizes with the NYT news site so you can read stories even when you don't have an Internet connection.   Occasions ($0.99, on sale) Never forget any of those important dates with this application. It syncs with Facebook and your contacts to find Birthdays and reminds you via push notifications. Also reminds you of holidays and other important events.   Doodle Jump ($0.99) This addictive little game has been likened to the original version of Mario Bros. Tilt the iPhone to move around in this 2D game. Facebook and Twitter integration means you can brag about your accomplishments to your friends.  Touch Todo ($0.99, on sale)Touch Todo lets you sync your todos with Google Calendar (not Google Tasks, however) and in turn to the native iPhone calendar. Application backs up your todos on Google Docs for safe keeping, and send tasks from one iPhone to another.   Tap Forms Database ($8.99)The Tap Forms Database lets you easily and securely store information like social security numbers, drivers license number, or credit card numbers for later look up. Handy if cards get lost or stolen, and includes AES-256 bit encryption for all data stored in it.  Bento ($4.99)Bento for iPhone is the companion application for the Mac version. It will sync with your Mac and bring over all of your databases. You can then edit and create data on-the-go.   Daylite Touch (free, additional software required)The Daylite Touch application syncs with the Daylite Server on your Mac to help you manage your business projects, contacts, and tasks all in a streamlined interface that feels very native to the iPhone.   Skies of Glory (free)Shoot World War II airplanes out of the sky in this action game. Featuring awesome graphics and great Internet 8-player multiplayer mode, this game is a great deal.    BeatMaker ($19.99)Who says you can't create music on the iPhone? With BeatMaker that's completely possible. This application is basically a recording studio in your pocket with the ability to export your creations right from the device. Comics (free)Reading comics is just plain fun, and with Comics for the iPhone, you can read over 70 comics for free from one simple application. The app allows you to browse and view nearly 700 different comics.  Ustream Live Broadcaster (free, account needed)UStream Live Broadcaster gives you the ability to stream live audio and video from your iPhone over Wi-Fi or 3G to the world via the free UStream.tv service. You can also take live polls and see the UStream IRC chat room for your stream.  The Oregon Trail ($4.99)The classic Oregon Trail game is back in an iPhone version that's just as good as the original. In this side-scrolling adventure game, you'll guide a family through the Oregon wilderness in search of shelter. Along the way, you'll have to protect yourself from wild animals and other events that take place.   Amazon Mobile (free)Amazon has changed the way many of us shop online, and they've also changed the mobile shopping experience with their iPhone application. This application lets you do all of the normal Amazon.com stuff, but you can also take a picture of an object and let Amazon figure out where the product is on the website via Amazon Remembers. Tap Tap Revenge 3 (free) A music rhythm game that started out life as a jailbroken game when the iPhone was first released has matured into a great game backed by music from popular artists. The third iteration of this game boasts extensive online multi-player support over both Wi-Fi and 3G. In addition, TTR 3 gives you weapons and shields for use when playing online. Gorillacam (free)The iPhone includes a great camera, but some of the functions are limited. Gorillacam is an application that can extend that functionality to include a bubble level, grid, time-lapse, and even a self-timer. You can also specify how many shots are taken over a specified interval.  Photoshop.com Mobile (free)Good, free, photo editing software on the iPhone is hard to find, but who would have guessed that Adobe would release their Photoshop.com software on the iPhone for free? Well, you get some basic editing functionality and the ability to upload your photos to the Photoshop.com cloud.  Mover Lite (free) Moving items like photos, video, contacts, and calendar events from one iPhone to another can be a bit of a kludge depending on what application you're using. But with the free Mover+, it's easy and cool at the same time.    Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies ($9.99)A mini game from the World at War console game, CoD:WaW:Zombies lets you frag zombies all day... right from your iPhone, too! Choose from several different modes, including an infinite mode. This game makes any company meeting go by much faster (Please note: We're not responsible for any job loss resulting from the mention of this game).   BeeJive ($5.99, on sale)BeeJive gives a lot of instant messenger bang for the buck. Not only does it support the most popular IM services, but it also lets you create as many logins as you need. Plus the application includes Push Notification support, and the ability to send and receive attachments like photos, video, and audio (recorded directly from the application).    Awesome Note (+Todo) ($3.99)Combining both notes and to do lists, Awesome Note (+Todo) has a great-looking interface that lets you organize all of your ideas and projects in one app. In addition, you can insert images into notes from the camera, and import/export to Google Docs and Evernote.    Credit Card Terminal ($0.99, on sale)This application has been shown on Apple's commercials and is quite nifty if you are a small business. Credit Card Terminal gives you the ability to accept credit card payments anywhere you may be, quickly and easily.   ReelDirector ($7.99)Who says you can't put together a full movie on your iPhone? With ReelDirector you can, and you can even include opening and closing credits, transitions, and more. When you're done, save, email, or upload directly to YouTube.  Trivium ($2.99)Test your trivia skills against the computer or against a friend around the world. Trivium has thousands of questions for you to answer and a head to head network play that works over Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE. Four different modes including: Endless, Endurance, 100 Questions, and Timeless.   Rock Band ($4.99, on sale)A rhythm game to end all rhythm games, Rock Band lets you play the drums, guitar, or bass. Plus, you can sing your way to the top in this game that includes 26 free tracks.  Tweetr ($3.99)Have something amazing to say on Twitter, but don't want to tweet it right now? Tweetr is an application that lets you schedule tweets for multiple accounts for a later time when it might be more relevant.   Peggle ($1.99, on sale)Pop Cap's highly addictive game for Mac and PC made its way over to the iPhone in a move that just seemed natural. Shoot your way to becoming the Peggle master in this arcade adventure game.   NetNewsWire (free)NetNewsWire changed the way that many people read their favorite RSS (really simple syndication) feeds on the Mac, but that same experience was moved to the iPhone. The earlier versions were a bit clunky, but NNW now syncs with Google Reader which makes reading feeds on-the-go that much better.    Yowza!! (free) We normally stray away from applications with two exclamation marks in the title, but this one is just that good. Yowza can end up saving you a few chunks of change with its many coupons that are sorted by your location.  WriteRoom ($4.99)Distraction-free writing at its finest on the Mac, and now the iPhone. Sync documents over with built-in syncing, and just write. Plain and simply. You can change the colors in the preferences.  Wikitude (free)Augmented reality on the iPhone was a huge hit this year, and with Wikitude you can browse the space around you and see all of the Wikipedia articles that correspond to your location. Just launch the application and bubbles will appear all around you with Wikipedia articles for cities, buildings, etc.  Mark the Spot (free) AT&T finally started paying more attention to its network and users when they launched the Mark the Spot application for iPhone. You can submit network trouble spots, which will help AT&T in fixing network problems. Sure, this app isn't the nicest looking, but it gets the job done.   Ramp Champ ($1.99)Skee ball is just plain fun, and with the Icon Factory's Ramp Champ, it's even fun on the iPhone. Choose between several different lane themes, and even purchase add-ons that will expand the available themes. Earn tickets to "purchase" cool digital trinkets.  WordPress 2 (free)Mobile-Blogging (MoBlogging) has becoming increasingly popular among people who travel, and it's extremely easy with WordPress 2 on the iPhone. If your blog platform is WordPress, then you'll be all set to connect and add content right from your iPhone.   Fandango (free)Find movies around you, watch previews, get showtimes, and even purchase tickets on-the-go with the awesome Fandango application for iPhone. You can also see critic and fan ratings for different movies.   Flickr (free)Upload, view, and share your photos with the world on Flickr with this application. In addition, you can view friends photos and comment on them from one convenient location.   DOOM Classic ($2.99, on sale) Who doesn't love DOOM? Now you can play it all day long, right on your iPhone. Includes multi-player mode with up to four players over the Internet. MapQuest Navigator ($3.99, service plan required)MapQuest started offering turn-by-turn directions with its maps. Not only that, but they offered a completely different pricing strategy than the other guys: With the $3.99 purchase, you'll get 30-days of use, after which you can purchase different tiers of service between 30-days and one year.   Where To? ($2.99)With GPS-style POI (point of interest) searching, Where To allows you to pinpoint a location, be it a restaurant, amusement park, or even an archery range. The application then locates the POI inside of the Maps application on the iPhone.     Skype (free)Skype VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has been beneficial more than once for us, and with AT&T's announcement that they'll be allowing VoIP apps on the 3G network, we're extremely excited about Skype. This application will allow you to place calls through Skype and chat with your friends.   Fring (free)Fring is a free VoIP and chat solution for the iPhone. The cool factor about this application is that they just started doing one-way Skype video chat right from your iPhone.   SlingPlayer Mobile ($29.99)SlingBox Solo, Pro, or Pro-HD owners will appreciate the ability to stream live TV to their iPhone over Wi-Fi. In addition, you can  control the video for many set-top boxes including the Apple TV.   PocketGod ($0.99)A minigame that lets you rule over an island. You can bring life to new islanders, take life away, and otherwise demonstrate your powers in this hypnotic game.   FlightTrack Pro ($9.99)Never be in the dark about your flight information again. FlightTrack Pro lets you track your flight and get updates via push notifications. You can also see a live flight map with weather radar.   RedLaser ($1.99)Scan the barcodes of products and instantly get back product search results that includes the price online. A great way to bargain shop when in the store.   Attendance ($3.99)Always know who was missing at that last meeting with Attendance. This iPhone application lets you mark atendees present or absent for any meetings or class for later reference. You can import people from contacts in Address Book or from a CSV file on a web server.    Read It Later Pro ($4.99)Who says you can't put something off for later? Well, you can put off reading webpages with Read It Later. This application interfaces with a free online service and Firefox plugin that allows you to save webpages for reading later.   FastMall (free)Ever been in a mall and didn't know where the rest room was? Well, you could find a mall guide, or you can also bust out your iPhone with FastMall. This application lets you download mall maps (for a small fee) that will guide you around the mall similar to the way a turn-by-turn GPS does.   CBS Sports: Live College Games ($4.99) This CBS application lets you view stats and live stream video of college football and basketball games from the Big East, SEC, and Bit Ten conferences. This application will work over both Wi-Fi and 3G.   Vintage Video Maker ($2.99)Turn your iPhone 3GS into a camera that can shoot video with three different filters: 20's movie, black and white video, and 60's home video. You can assign classical 20's piano music to accompany your video or the sound of a projector running.  G-Park ($0.99)Never forget where you parked your car with G-Park. This application uses the GPS in the iPhone 3G or 3GS to park your car and locate it when you're ready to drive home.   CubeCheater (free)Solving a Rubik's Cube is fun, but you might be in the mood for letting your iPhone solve it for you. With CubeCheater, just input your cube's state and it will tell you how to solve it.   Where R U? ($0.99)Want to find out where friends or family are located geographically at a particular moment? If they have Where R U, they can let you know where they are and you will be shown their location on a Google Map. Nifty application for keeping tabs on your kids.   Photo2Contact (free trial, in-app purchase)Do you get tired of sending photos to each and every one of your friends or family members? Photo2Contact allows you to easily export a group of photos as a zip file and uploads them to an FTP location, and automatically emails your friends to let them know how to download them.    DogBook (free)Join the over 2 million pet owners who have created a Facebook profile for them. DogBook lets you see a list of your animals, their friends, and even lets you find nearby Parks. If your pet gets lost, use "Arf Alerts" to alert everyone in the area.   Qik Live (free)When you just want to post a quick video to the Internet, Qik is a, well, quick solution. Their new Live application lets you stream live video from your iPhone over 3G and WiFi. You can also send and receive chat messages with your viewers.   Cha-Ching Mobile ($2.99) Cha-Ching mobile is money management software that complements its Mac-counterpart. This application gives you the ability to manage your money and budget on-the-go and sync back later to your Mac over Wi-Fi.   Amazon Kindle for iPhone (free)Read Kindle books on your iPhone without having to purchase a separate version of the eBook. Amazon delivers the content wirelessly over Whispernet. Get an almost identical reading experience as on the Amazon Kindle.  Shelf Life ($1.99)Keep track of the expiration dates on food in your refrigerator and pantry with Shelf Life. This application uses a database that its users contributes to to determine the shelf life of foods found in your kitchen. You can also specify a custom shelf life.   Pizza Hut (free)Need food and need it quick? Pizza Hut now allows you to place an order for anything on their menu, directly from your iPhone. Checkout and pay right from the device as well without ever leaving your house.   Memento ($0.99)Send customized greetings to people through e-mail right from your iPhone. Memento lets you pick a template, add a photo and message, and send to loved ones. The application comes with 19 templates.  Eventful (free)Never be bored with Eventful. This free application lets you find local events happening in your area and lets you know what venues and performers will be heading your way.   OpenMaps ($1.99)OpenMaps for iPhone uses the open map data from OpenStreetMap.org, which contains editable maps for the entire world. The application lets you download maps for use when you don't have an Internet connection, and can use the built-in GPS to locate you.  TextGuru ($4.99)Sure, there are a lot of text editors for the iPhone, but TextGuru will let you edit HTML documents and preview them right from the device. In addition, you can download PDF files from the Internet into TextGuru for offline viewing.  Got a favorite app we missed? Drop it in the comments and share your excitement with the world.  

  • The Complete iTunes History -- SoundJam MP to iTunes 9

    Watching Steve take the stage and roll out a new version of iTunes got us all nostalgic for the old days, when iTunes logos changed color and our jukebox looked like it could withstand a bomb blast. Below is the history of the application that is running more than any other on our Macs. It spawned the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and gave us an excuse to throw out those ugly CD towers that resided in the corners of our houses in the 90s. The ever present, iTunes. THE STARTSoundJam MP Somewhere around the time Metallica began suing Napster over the leak of its "Mission: Impossible II" track, "I Disappear," in 2000, a light bulb appeared over Steve Jobs’ head. Ever the innovator, Apple’s iCEO saw the peer-to-peer network as more than an illegal nuisance and began to develop a way to leverage the Napster revolution into the next killer Mac app. Audio players such as Audion and SoundApp had already exposed the inadequacies of QuickTime, and Apple knew it needed to build its solution from the ground up.After being rebuffed by Panic, which was already in negotiations with AOL over use of its Audion code, Steve Jobs approached Robin Casady and Michael Greene to discuss their SoundJam MP app, a powerful digital encoding program that looked a lot like Apple’s QuickTime player. After a series of short negotiations, Casady & Greene sold the rights for SoundJam to Apple for an undisclosed sum, and Apple immediately set to work on the app that would forever change the digital landscape.While the terms of the contract were top secret (Casady and Greene discontinued their app on June 1, 2001, but were barred from discussing the Apple deal for two years), Apple certainly wasn’t shy about ransacking SoundJam as it incorporated many of its signature features into iTunes, including visualizers, plug-ins, online retrieval of album data and drag-and-drop playlist creation. Much to the dismay of Jelly fans, however, Apple opted to leave SoundJam’s skins on the cutting-room floor. iTunes 1 (Jan. 9, 2001-Oct. 23, 2001) About 10 months later, at Macworld San Francisco in 2001, Apple debuted iTunes alongside iDVD and the CD-RW-enabled Power Macs. While it wasn’t exactly a show-stopper (though 275,000 copies were downloaded in the first week), the "world’s best and easiest to use ‘jukebox’ software" definitely raised the bar for music players on the Mac, which were relatively sparse and rather pricey (SoundJam cost $40). By offering iTunes as a free download and installing it on every new Mac, Apple essentially cut down the competition at the pass--or at least put a good scare into them. "Apple has done what Apple does best--make complex applications easy, and make them even more powerful in the process," said Steve Jobs at the time. "iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution."For many Mac users, iTunes was an introduction to digital music, and Apple strived to create a straightforward jukebox that needed little or no instruction to get started. Popping a music CD into your Mac automatically launched iTunes, which loaded the disc, collected track data from Gracenote and added them to your library. A clean interface split into boxes kept everything neat and always within reach of a mouse click.Conspicuously missing from iTunes 1 was the ability to burn a CD on an external drive, a deficiency compounded by Apple’s mostly CD-RW-less line of Macs. Apple answered the cries a month later at Macworld Tokyo with the introduction of new iMacs and Cubes with write-able drives, a 1.1 update that added third-party support, and the launch of the controversial "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign. iTunes 2 (Oct. 23, 2001-July 17, 2002) After racking up more than a million downloads in just a few short months, it quickly became clear that iTunes was every bit as revolutionary as Apple hoped. What all those users didn't know, however, was that the music player was merely the first part of a strategy that would redefine the company as more than a Mac maker. in October 2001, Steve Jobs showed us the next piece of Apple's digital hub in the form of an oddly named, undeniably sexy hand-held device. Built exclusively to leverage the popularity of Apple's music app, iPod came bundled with a brand-new version of iTunes that allowed it to seamlessly integrate with the songs and playlists stored on our Macs.Along with a considerable ratcheting of burn time, Apple also added "the three most requested features" into iTunes 2: MP3 CD burning, a 10-band equalizer and cross fading. A holdover from SoundJam, iTunes’ overdue equalizer came preloaded with more than 20 presets and brought robust, receiver-style tweaking to the desktop. The new crossfader eliminated the annoying gaps between songs and paved the way for a new generation of laptop DJs, and a sound enhancer appealed to audiophiles by adding depth and richness to tracks.But the real reason for iTunes 2 was iPod support, offering an unparalleled experience that transferred a few days’ worth of music from your Mac to your pocket in just about 10 minutes. iTunes 3 (July 17, 2002-April 28, 2003) Introduced at the final Macworld New York keynote as a companion to the first “solid-state touch wheel” iPod, iTunes 3 was a mostly incremental update with few dramatic changes. In the 18 months since its inception, some 14 million copies had been downloaded, so Apple had little reason to change the formula; rather it added just enough new features and enhancements to keep the iPod + iTunes revolution rolling.With iTunes 3, however, Apple threw down another gauntlet. Reduced prices, greater capacities and slimmer enclosures made the second-generation iPod even more desirable, but the addition of Windows support was the big change, opening up the popular player to millions of new music lovers. But Apple wisely kept iTunes tied to the Mac, forcing Windows users to sync their iPods with MUSICMATCH, a sub-par jukebox that basically served as an advertisement for iTunes’ sleek interface and finer points.As if to drive the point home, iTunes 3 added a few dozen new features, including track ratings, Sound Check for consistent volume playback, support for Audible audiobooks and Smart Playlists, which streamlined and automated the creation of digital mixes based on a series of predetermined rules. A few other enhancements--new track tags, library consolidation, playlist importing/exporting and track joining--added to the experience and widened the gap between iTunes and every other jukebox on the market.   Click to embiggenTHE STOREiTunes 4 (April 28, 2003-Sept. 7, 2005) If iTunes 1 was a revolution, iTunes 4 was a bloody coup. What otherwise would have been a point update with a few minor playback improvements, AAC encoding and network sharing, iTunes 4 would have barely been noticeable without the addition of a new member to the "Source" sidebar: Music Store. A first-of-its-kind shopping experience that blew the roof off the industry and turned a thorn into a rose, the iTunes Music Store brought 200,000 high-quality songs from BMG, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal and Warner under one fully searchable, completely legal roof.Album artwork, one-click purchasing, in-apps video and a mostly unrestrictive DRM all for less than $1 a track. A million tracks were sold in the first week; four months later it surpassed 10 million. Along the road to the milestone 100 millionth download, however, Apple took iTunes 4 in a decidedly different direction when it rolled out the second generation of its store. Determined not to duplicate its prior proprietary mistakes, Apple didn’t renege on its promise to deliver the iTunes Music Store to Windows users by year’s end--and certainly didn’t skimp on the goods. A near-identical port of its award-winning iApp made its way onto PCs in October 2003 with a streamlined, expanded store (Mac users called it iTunes 4.1).With a 28-month upgrade path, version 4 stayed on desktops longer than any other iTunes release, gaining a slew of new features before retiring to digital graveyard: iMix, Party Shuffle, Apple Lossless, Podcasting, AirTunes, iPod photo and shuffle, and the European and Asian Music Stores all made their debuts under the iTunes 4 umbrella. Half a billion songs and 10 updates later, Apple had established itself as the undisputed king of the digital music domain. iTunes 5 (Sept. 7, 2005-Oct. 12, 2005)  Where iTunes 4 was a lengthy, meandering release, the next version came and went in just five weeks. Introduced in tandem with the iPod nano at what would become an annual September digital music event, iTunes 5 packed an overall peppiness and a refined, cleaner mini player, but was surprisingly light on new features--and fittingly was the first numbered upgrade that didn’t come with a new color for the music note in its icon.Sadly, the highlight of the pack was a new Search Bar that made quick work of rummaging through the store’s two million songs, rounded out by Smart Shuffle, playlist folders, parental controls, AAC VBR importing and Outlook syncing. Ultimately, though, it was the bug-ridden app’s dark platinum makeover that got the most attention. iTunes 5 ditched the outdated brushed-metal skin of its predecessors, and the thinner, sexier look filled many a forum with praise and criticism.Better known as iTunes 4.10, the fifth version of iTunes was mostly a disappointment. Rumors about TV show purchases and movie rentals that had swirled in the days leading up to the event failed to materialize, and even Steve struggled to come up with something nice to say: "We are constantly improving iTunes with new features like... better searching because we love music ourselves and want to surprise and delight music fans around the world." iTunes 6 (Oct. 12, 2005-Sept. 12, 2006) What a difference 35 days make. At an unexpected "One More Thing" event in early October, Steve kicked iTunes 5 to the curb and rolled out the red carpet for the next generation of the digital jukebox. Arriving in tow with new iMacs and video iPods, iTunes 6 brought serious changes to the store, adding online gift options, customer reviews, "Just For You" recommendations and some 2,000 music videos and Pixar shorts, all priced at $1.99 and formatted for new iPod’s 2.5-inch color screen.But that wasn’t all. Never content to rest on his laurels, Steve rolled out TV show downloads with iTunes 6, priced at the same $1.99 as the far-shorter music videos. Just five Disney shows were available at launch--"Lost," "Desperate Housewives," "Night Stalker," "That's So Raven" and "The Suite Life" --but when more than a million videos were purchased inside of three weeks, it didn’t take long before other networks came knocking. Before the end of the year, NBC Universal had signed up, followed shortly by MTV, Showtime, Fox and CBS, and soon iTunes 6 had done for TV what iTunes 4 did for music, cramming more than 220 shows onto its shelves within 12 months.iTunes 6’s TV Store didn’t make quite as much noise as the Music Store, but its 11-month tenure marked the start of an exciting time for Apple, as momentum began to build toward something huge on the horizon.  Click to embiggenTHE SYNERGYiTunes 7 (Sept. 12, 2006-Sept. 9, 2008) Billed as the "most significant enhancement to the world’s most popular music jukebox and online music and video store since it debuted," iTunes 7 was indeed a dramatic reinvention of the five-and-a-half-year-old iApp, with sweeping interface changes, speed boosts and a renewed focus on the jukebox.Packing two new navigation views--a list mode dotted with album artwork and an officially sanctioned version of Steel Skies’ Cover Flow--iTunes 7 put the emphasis back on iTunes as a music player, starting with the debut of the MiniStore, which strengthened the marriage between the two segments. Everything from the Source list to iPod integration received an overdue makeover, and Apple even fixed the age-old microsecond of silence that iTunes stubbornly inserted between joined tracks. Of course, it wouldn’t be an iTunes update without a new addition to the store, and Apple didn’t disappoint here, either. With users already downloading more than a million videos and TV episodes each week, iTunes 7 made the logical leap to movies, adding some 75 near-DVD quality titles from Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films at launch and growing to more than 2,500 films from nearly every studio over the course of its two-year upgrade cycle. What made the seventh version so significant, however, was its versatility. By the time it had run its course, iTunes 7 had well grown into its role as the center of the digital hub, with iPhone, iPod touch Apple TV, movie rentals, the App Store, and a slew of nanos and shuffles all landing on its watch. Through it all, iTunes 7 never felt stale, bloated or sluggish, smoothly adapting to the new demands with little more than a software patch.  iTunes 8 (Sept. 9, 2008-Sept. 9, 2009) After 19 software updates to iTunes 7, it was time for the next whole number, and Apple finally delivered iTunes 8 at its annual music event in 2008. Following such a tremendous update was no easy task, and Apple could easily have packaged the new stuff into iTunes 7.8, if not for the super-smart technology hiding within.The centerpiece of iTunes 8 was the Genius feature, an underrated playlist tool that combined the controlled randomness of Smart Shuffle with the queue capabilities of Party Shuffle (iTunes DJ after 8.1) to transform your Library into a personalized radio station. Adding to the fun was the optional Genius Sidebar, a mildly intrusive strip of song recommendations culled from a mix of your favorite songs (and in later versions, TV shows and movies) and "anonymously-gathered knowledge from millions of other iTunes users," all crunched by a series of Apple algorithms, neatly packaged and beamed back to your computer.Minor tweaks elsewhere improved upon the broad refinements introduced in the prior release, and Apple dumped the Search Bar in favor of a return to field-specific exploring. An enhanced grid mode replaced album view with an iPhoto Events-like scheme that grouped albums and artists into interactive mini widgets. Taking a break from its relentless tide of upgrades, the store was mostly left out this round of enhancements, but iTunes 8 did usher in high-definition content (despite Steve’s previous declaration of 2005 as the year of HD).iTunes 9 (Sept. 9, 2009) Exactly a year after iTunes 8 meekly landed on desktops, Apple welcomed Steve Jobs back to the main stage by dropping a bombshell of a release that overhauled the store, made iPhone syncing effortless and updated the classic vinyl jacket for the 21st century.Open iTunes 9 and you’re immediately smacked by a new white background, giving the grid a clean, bright look that makes your album art pop and beckons you inside. Speed improvements are noticeable throughout, particularly when using Cover Flow, which can now handle speedy scrolling with only the slightest bit of lag. Delving further into the latest version of Apple’s nearly nine-year-old jukebox reveals hipper icons, a few extra curves and whistles, and a new Home Sharing feature that finally lets your trade music with friends and family members.Flip to the store and you’ll find a host of newness, beginning with a personalized welcome note, sensible layout, enhanced album pages with quick view windows and previews that borrow cues from the mobile iTunes Store. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find iTunes Extras (think DVD bonus features for digital movies) and iTunes LPs, the greatest thing to happen to music since, well, iTunes. A far greater thing than the digital PDF booklets bundled with album purchases, iTunes LP--while currently limited to just 12 albums and saddled with nonuniform pricing (Jay-Z’s pre-order costs $16.99 while Pearl Jam’s costs $9.99)--is poised to rekindle the creativity and connection that’s all but been stripped away by MP3s.  With iTunes X most likely slated for a September 2010 release, we can only wonder what new features are being realized in a secret bunker in Cupertino. Only time, and Steve Jobs, will tell.   What has been your favorite feature over the years? Share in the comments.  

  • 57 Ways To Supercharge Your Browser

       If you only use your browser to, well, browse the web, you have not yet begun to harness its power. Learn how extensions and bookmarklets can throw the doors of the internet wide open. Your web browser can Google, it can YouTube, and it can even Twitter, but if that’s all you’re doing with it, you haven’t scratched the surface of its potential. A universe of extensions and bookmarklets is out there, and these free software add-ons give your browser the power to remove ads, reshuffle web pages to your liking, speed up your downloads, rip videos, and perform other wizardly feats. You can even get into the act with Mobile Safari on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re already armed with a suite of your favorite extensions, our guide to the best browser add-ons will transform your time surfing. It’ll practically feel like magic. Mac Extensions It’s an exciting time to surf the web on a Mac. No, really! We’ve never had so many top-notch browsers to choose from. But as good as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are, each can be made even better with extensions. (Wondering what this extension business is all about? Navigate to our beginner’s guide.) The right extension can improve your browser’s existing features and even add new ones. We’ve picked the most useful extensions no Mac user should be without, and then we unearthed some hidden gems you that’ll help you work easier and play harder online. Power Surfer's Toolkit: You’ll surf smarter and faster with these must-have extensions. Don’t leave your homepage without them. FreshStart Save your current session or restore an old one.This simple extension saves all tabs in a window (or just the ones you check) in sessions you can restore later. Sessions are saved with the date and custom names in a convenient dropdown window. Cooler still, FreshStart backs up all your windows and tabs at timed intervals to protect your browsing against crashes.Compatible with: Chrome · tinyurl.com/ye7k4m6 GreaseMonkey Don’t like how a webpage works? Get Greasemonkey. With it and some of the thousands of Greasespot scripts available online, you can make your favorite pages do your bidding. Want to strip ads out of Facebook? There’s a script for that. And Chrome users, set your faces to smug--most Greasespot scripts install in your browser without any extra extensions.Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox · greasespot.net Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer Chrome’s PDF support is a little
nonexistent. Bring Google’s shiny new browser into the 21st century with this extension that displays PDFs and PowerPoint files as Google Docs right in your Chrome window.Compatible with: Chrome · tinyurl.com/ydx44tn Shareaholic Shareaholic lets you broadcast to a zillion blogs and social networking sites, squash long URLs, and even email links to friends like folks did back in olden times. Don’t worry about running out of things to share—Shareaholic brings you the latest news from Twitter, OneRiot, and Buzzster as you browse.Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox, Safari · shareaholic.com Xmarks Xmarks syncs and backs up bookmarks automatically across multiple computers and browsers. Better still, you can assign profiles (Work and Home, for instance) to browsers so only certain sets of bookmarks are synced. That’s handy if you don’t want business and pleasure links to mix on the same machine.Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox, Safari · xmarks.com ClickToFlash ClickToFlash doesn’t just block Flash, it manages it. A click loads an individual Flash element, all Flash on a page, or adds the current domain to ClickToFlash’s list of unblocked sites with Flash content you want to play normally. Compatible with: Safari · tinyurl.com/laoc8q 1Password   1Password is a Mac application and extension combo that saves login and form data as you surf, guarding it all with one password. It also generates strong passwords for secure sites and syncs them--with form data, credit card numbers, notes, and more--across multiple browsers and Macs. Better still, your sensitive data is secured in style with 1Password’s beautiful interface. Compatible with: Firefox, Safari · agilewebsolutions.com DownThemAll!   Grab a page's downloads quickly and easily.DownThemAll accelerates your downloads, retries stalled attempts, and grabs all a page’s downloadable files with just a few clicks. Oh, and that acceleration? Our demo download crept along at 40kbps until DownThemAll gobbled up the same file at a smokin’ 150kbps. Compatible with: Firefox · downthemall.net StumbleUpon   StumbleUpon helps you find sites you didn’t know you liked. Just browse normally and rate sites with a thumbs up or down, or browse StumbleUpon categories that interest you. Soon StumbleUpon will know enough about you to recommend web pages that are right up your alley. Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox · stumbleupon.com PriceTrace Toolbar   Always get the best deal. Attention, Kmart.com shoppers--and shoppers at over 40 other online stores. PriceTrace Toolbar lets you instantly compare an item’s price, view price trends, and subscribe to price alerts with a click. If you want to save money, put PriceTrace on the case. Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox · pricetrace.com Next Page: Cool Browser Tricks >>Cool Browser Tricks You think different, why not browse different? After all, there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all web. Firefox Environment Backup Extension FEBE backs up and restores Firefox extensions, bookmarks, passwords, and more to every computer in your life, saving time when fine-tuning multiple Firefox installs. You can copy your extras to local disks or send them to the cloud with built-in Box.net integration. There’s nothing feeble about FEBE. Compatible with: Firefox · tinyurl.com/y9293md RSS Subscription This extension lets you subscribe to RSS feeds with a click in Chrome’s address bar. Google Reader is the default, but you can use Google, Bloglines, My Yahoo, or another online service to get your RSS fix. Compatible with: Chrome · tinyurl.com/yjbshqs Chrome Themes   Themes alter Chrome’s look to suit your mood--whether that means Mariah Carey or Infected Mushroom is your call. Find a look you like, click its Install button, and you’re good to go. When your mood changes, you can drop back to the default appearance in Chrome’s preferences. Compatible with: Chrome · tinyurl.com/mucqd6 Send From Gmail Send From Gmail lets you mail links to your current page via Gmail. Cooler still, it makes email addresses embedded in web pages launch a new Gmail window when clicked, instead of activating your old-fashioned desktop mail client. If you live in Gmail, Send From Gmail. Compatible with: Chrome · tinyurl.com/ye2toyj TabExposĂ©   It's like ExposĂ© for your tabs--get it?TabExposĂ© tidies a window of cluttered tabs just like OS X’s ExposĂ© cleans up your Desktop. A toolbar button (or customizable hotkey) sends your pages zooming into view. Your browsing will be so
how you say
elegant. Compatible with: Safari · cocoamug.com FastestFox   FastestFox is a potpourri of browser boosters that give you context-click web searches, Google search results in the address bar, a configurable bookmark launcher, and much more. Pick and choose which features you want and let your browser do the work faster. Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox · tinyurl.com/af2v5t Evernote Web Clipper   Evernote Web Clipper lets you add links, text, and images to your Evernote account from wherever you are on the web. Just don’t forget to check in with Evernote for OS X to get the big picture. Better write yourself a note to be sure. Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox, Safari · tinyurl.com/m4z9gz Google Mail Checker Plus   Google Mail Checker Plus’s toolbar icon displays your unread message count, new Gmail message alerts, and lets you preview new mail or mark it as spam. You can even load full messages in a mini-window and compose a reply without leaving your current page. Compatible with: Chrome · tinyurl.com/yd8u55k Tab Mix Plus   My name is Firefox, and I'm a tab-aholic.Tab Mix Plus adds rows of tabs to Firefox windows, keeps track of unread tabs by styling their titles to stand out from the pack, and much more. Its session manager even saves your tabs for later when you can’t bear to close them. It’s a treasure trove of tab tools at your fingertips. Compatible with: Firefox · tmp.garyr.net Yoono   Yoono lets you flit among multiple social networking and media sites in a collapsible sidebar where you can also search for YouTube videos, Wikipedia articles, and Amazon bargains while gabbing with friends. Why open another window again? Compatible with: Firefox · yoono.com Integrated Gmail   If you use Google’s services regularly, put them all in a single window with Integrated Gmail. Just log in to Gmail and get Google Calendar, Maps, Notebook, and more through unobtrusive, collapsible icons. Why didn’t Google do this first? Compatible with: Firefox · integratedgmail.com CosmoPod   Download a YouTube video or nine. CosmoPod converts Flash and other non-QuickTime web videos to iTunes-compatible files--and even rips DVDs--in preset formats for the iPhone and other iDevices. Videos can be tagged before export to iTunes, and CosmoPod even recognizes your Elgato Turbo.264 devices to cut conversion times. Think of it as a little HandBrake DNA spliced into Safari. Compatible with: Safari · cocoamug.com FlashBlock   FlashBlock lets you allow Flash on your current site, disable it entirely, and add sites to a list of sites with Flash content you want to allow. If you think Flash takes the shine off Chrome, FlashBlock is for you. Compatible with: Chrome · tinyurl.com/ye5srym Personas Plus   Skin your browser with nifty designs. Spice up Firefox windows with a persona makeover. These themes are easy to apply from getpersonas.com, but for more options, install the Personas Plus extension. It lets you switch personas right from your Firefox window. Compatible with: Firefox · tinyurl.com/cu4y2b RSS Ticker   RSS Ticker scrolls Live Bookmarks beneath your toolbar or at the bottom of the page. Mouse over items to see more information, then click to open the article in a new tab. You’ll never be at a loss for cocktail party conversation. Compatible with: Firefox · tinyurl.com/5suwzf Glims   Extend the search box beyond Google. Glims adds multiple search engines to Safari’s search field, web page previews to Google search results, favicons to tabs, and a full-screen mode to Cupertino’s favorite browser. Features can be customized or turned off entirely to suit your needs. Compatible with: Safari · machangout.com LastPass   LastPass secures usernames, passwords, and notes with one password—the last one you’ll ever need—to let you access them across multiple browsers in a friendly web interface. If you can’t run 1Password or you just want a free solution to your security needs, don’t pass on LastPass. Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox, Safari · lastpass.com History Tree   Extend the search box beyond Google. History Tree displays your history as a flowchart complete with screenshots, page names, and more. Search pages’ descriptions, reopen old pages in new tabs, and fine-tune your settings in a full-screen window. You’ll never look at browsing the same way again. Compatible with: Firefox · tinyurl.com/n4svje Adblock Plus   Install Adblock Plus, and your browsing will be free of unwanted ads. Block them all, Control-click specific ads to keep them from loading, or allow certain sites to keep displaying important messages from sponsors--like MacLife.com, for instance. Compatible with: Firefox · adblockplus.org Cooliris   Flip through images in Cover Flow fashion, thanks to Cooliris. Cooliris turns YouTube, Facebook, Google Images, and other sites into Cover Flow–like 3D galleries. It even recognizes and displays your iPhoto library in the same slick style. Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox, Safari · cooliris.com SafariSource   Flip through images in Cover Flow fashion, thanks to Cooliris. If Safari’s plain black View Source text has you seeing red, try SafariSource. It lets you customize source text and colorize tags, comments, and other elements to make them easier to read. If only learning HTML was this simple. Compatible with: Safari · tinyurl.com/2pltoo Glubble   Share with your family, not random weirdos on Facebook. Glubble is like your family’s private Facebook. Family members can log in to send messages, share photos, and schedule activities. Better yet, Glubble lets kids surf safely by limiting their access to sites that were approved by Mom and Dad. Compatible with: Firefox · glubble.com FireBug  Because every page could use a little tinkering. Firebug puts a web development toolbox in your Firefox window. Edit HTML, fine-tune CSS, and much more in a simple, easy-to-read interface. Now there’s no excuse not to write the next great American webpage. Compatible with: Firefox · getfirebug.com Fox Splitter   Three pages open side-by-side--looks a little odd, but maybe you'll love it anyhow. Why view just one page when Fox Splitter can divide your window into multiple panes with a click? Keep your web mail or calendar at the ready as you surf, compare multiple versions of the same page, or just make modern art as you browse. Compatible with: Firefox · tinyurl.com/24n3ct TooManyTabs   A dumping ground for tabs. Don’t close tabs--tuck them away. TooManyTabs frees up RAM by letting you nest tabs in a special menu to retrieve and reload later. Chrome’s extension lets you search saved pages; Firefox’s offers better organization. Whichever you choose, you’ll be browsing better. Compatible with: Chrome, Firefox · visibotech.com/TMTChrome Next Page: Mac Bookmarklets >>Mac Bookmarklets Like rabbits you pull out of your bookmarks toolbar, these little snippets of code have lots of useful tricks up their sleeves.Besides just being a fun word to say, a bookmarklet is a snippet of JavaScript that you can store in your browser’s bookmarks bar, just like a regular URL. When you click it, it’ll perform some kind of action on the page you’re viewing, instead of taking you to a new page. They’re fun, they’re free, most work in all browsers, and if you know some JavaScript, you can even program your own. Until then, we’ll get you started with some super-useful bookmarklets that’ll add some magic to your web surfing. We’ll also make it easy to find these bookmarklets by posting them online at maclife.com/bookmarklets, where they’re ready to be dragged to your toolbar. Share on Facebook   When you find a thought-provoking article, amazing video, or hilarious photo of a cat, click this bookmarklet for a pop-up window that lets you post a link to your Facebook profile, optionally adding your own two cents too. Use it judiciously--a handful of truly excellent links per week will make your friends think you’re King of the Internet. facebook.com/share_options.php Readability   Make any site more readable--even MacLife.com.This slick bookmarklet makes articles and other text-heavy pages easier on the eyes by stripping away all the ads and clutter, so you feel like you’re reading a document in a word processor. You even get to select the settings before dragging the bookmarklet to your toolbar. lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability Wayback Machine   Ever surf to a page and notice something missing--that a controversial blog post has been pulled or the whole site has simply disappeared? Click the Wayback Machine bookmarklet to be transported to previous versions of that page, all courtesy of the Internet Archive. archive.org/web/web.php Lingro   Simultaneous translation, just like the UN.The translation service Lingro.com offers two bookmarklets. The full-service one opens the page you’re viewing inside of Lingro.com, letting you click on any word to get a definition or translation. The quick-lookup version works the same but keeps you at the original URL and omits the full version’s toolbar. lingro.com/docs/browser-tools.html Linkify   This one is a big time-saver for bloggers. You highlight text on a page, click the Linkify bookmarklet, and you’ll see a pop-up of Google search results for that string of text. You click a Create Link button by the webpage you want, and the text is now a hyperlink to that page. It’s great for linking up the names of people and places in your blog posts. mattcutts.com/blog/linkify-the-best-bookmarklet-youre-not-using/ Bit.ly   When you want to shorten a long URL for posting to Twitter, including in a blog comment or any other short-URL needs, just click the bit.ly bookmarklet to launch a new window with the URL all shortened and ready to go. bit.ly/pages/tools Remove Bloat   Remove Bloat yanked the ads and video player off the MacLife.com home page for us. Oops.Nothing’s more annoying than coming across a page with auto-playing music, obnoxious Flash-based ads, or other browser-slowing nonsense. Remove Bloat strips all that away with one click. cybernetnews.com/cybernotes-the-best-bookmarklets-for-your-browser Clip to Evernote   Keeping track of all the information, links, images, and PDFs you want to save is easy with Evernote’s clipping-and-syncing service, which boasts Mac and iPhone apps (and Windows and Android and BlackBerry), along with the web app at Evernote.com. And the bookmarklet makes using Evernote even easier by adding selected text when you click it, or adding the whole page if you haven’t selected any text. evernote.com/Login.action Instapaper and Read It Later   The pop-up lets you know Instapaper did its thing.We can’t put one of these nearly identical services above the other. You sign up on the website, then drag the bookmarklet to your toolbar and click it when you’re on an interesting article or page that you want to keep to read later. Each service also has an iPhone app, a full-fledged Firefox extension, RSS feeds, Kindle integration, and more. instapaper.com/extras · readitlaterlist.com/bookmarklets BugMeNot   If you don’t feel like signing up for your own account on a website, click the BugMeNot bookmarklet to log in anonymously with a public login and password created by the users of BugMeNot.com. bugmenot.com Note in Reader   Google Reader has social features that let you share articles from your RSS feeds with your contacts and comment on them. This bookmarklet extends that to the whole internet, letting you share any URL without having to subscribe to its RSS feed first. googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/05/share-anything-anytime-anywhere.html Map This   One of several useful Google bookmarklets, this one lets you select an address on the page you’re viewing and click to see that location pinpointed on Google Maps. googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/07/useful-google-bookmarklets.html Remember the Milk  An easily updated to-do list is the best way to ensure you use it.Versatile to-do service Remember the Milk has a handy bookmarklet that launches a Quick Add dialog for adding a new task to your to-do list. rememberthemilk.com/help/answers/quickadd/firefox.rtm Next Page: iPhone and iPad Bookmarklets >>iPhone and iPad Bookmarklets As awesome as they are in your desktop browser, you can also bring the power of bookmarklets to Mobile Safari on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The installation can be a little trickier on these devices, but the right set of bookmarklets can add functionality that the iPhone OS lacks and really soup up your mobile browsing.On your Mac, installing a bookmarklet is as simple as dragging it to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar. But since Mobile Safari doesn’t support such drag-n-droppery, you’ll need to work a little harder to get bookmarklets on your phone. The simplest way is syncing bookmarklets from a desktop version of Safari via iTunes. That works fine, but what happens when you come across something useful when your Mac is in another zip code? Thankfully, you can add bookmarklets directly on your device, though it is a little trickier. Reorder your iPhone's bookmarks to put bookmarklets on top.To save a bookmarklet in iPhone OS, you’ll need to navigate to the address where it is located and tap the Plus icon to create a new bookmark. For sites that allow you to generate customizable bookmarklets that don’t have a single address, we found the easiest way to install them was to copy/paste the bookmarklet code into an email that you then access on the phone, pasting it into a new bookmark. Often, you’ll need to slightly modify the bookmarklet before it will work by tapping the Bookmarks icon, tapping Edit, and choosing your newly saved bookmark. Usually it’s just a simple matter of removing some extraneous text from the Location field of the bookmark. And while bookmarklets are freely available all over the internet, you can also buy an app like Tap Factory’s WebToolbox ($0.99) to browse and install a large collection of bookmarklets.Once you’ve got your bookmarklets installed, using them on a device running iPhone OS is a snap. From a web page in Safari, just tap the Bookmarks icon and select the bookmarklet you want to activate. You might find it easier to collect all your bookmarklets in a single folder, or you can manually move them to the top of the Bookmarks list by tapping the Edit button and dragging them to a new location.You'll usually have to edit an iPhone bookmarklet to paste in the JavaScript.To get you started with bookmarklets on the iPhone, here are a few of our favorites:Find In Page is probably the most popular bookmarklet for iPhone OS--versions of it can be found with a simple Google search. Find In Page allows you to search text-heavy websites to quickly find the exact information you’re looking for. It’s so simple--and useful--that it points out a glaring hole in Mobile Safari’s functionality.Find In Page adds text search that should have been in Mobile Safari in the first place.Dictionary.com offers a trio of bookmarklets for quickly looking up words via Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com. Now you won’t have any excuse for misspelling antidisestablishmentarianism or not knowing a synonym for adventitious.Like its Mac counterpart, Instapaper is one of our favorite tools for marking articles and websites to read later. There’s a dedicated iPhone app for reading your marked stories and a bookmarklet for use in Safari for tagging stories as you browse.Lots of iPhone Twitter clients support bookmarklets. Some of our favorites include Tweetie, Twittelator Pro, and Twitterific. All of them let you tweet links to whatever you’re currently reading with a single tap.As it does on the Mac, Readability strips web pages down to the bare bones, which is even more of a relief on the iPhone’s screen. It’s a great tool for quickly removing images, styles, and other extraneous elements from articles online.The popular link-shortening service bit.ly offers a Shorten with Bit.ly bookmarklet that’s every bit as useful in iPhone OS as it is on your Mac. We like to use it for quickly firing off complicated links via text message, which are faster than email and show up to the recipient as instantly clickable links.And if these options don’t suit your needs, there are literally thousands more to choose from all over the web. If you need a truly custom solution, you can always roll up your sleeves and learn some JavaScript to create your own. Next Page: The Beginner's Guide >>The Beginner's Guide Master the basics of extensions and bookmarklets in a flash. (No, not that Flash.)Before you install your first extensions and bookmarklets, take a minute to learn more about them and how they can help--or hinder--your surfing. What are extensions, exactly? Extensions are small programs that run inside your browser to add to, replace, or improve its features. Because each browser has its own way of talking to extensions, an extension written for one browser won’t usually work with another. How do bookmarklets differ from extensions?  Bookmarklets are small snippets of JavaScript that you can bookmark like normal URLs, and when you click on them, they perform an action on the page you have loaded instead of navigating you to a new page. Some of them duplicate the functions of browser extensions--Evernote, for example, has full-blown extensions for Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, but it also has a bookmarklet that does pretty much the same thing. Where can I get them?   Download thousands of extensions from the official Firefox (tinyurl.com/yr5dxm) and Chrome (tinyurl.com/ygy8qkj) websites. Safari extensions are fewer in number and a little harder to find, but sites like pimpmysafari.com can make your search easier. For bookmarklets, try marklets.com, pimpmysafari.com/bookmarklets, squarefree.com/bookmarklets, or operawiki.info/BookMarklets. Why aren't there as many extensions for Safari as there are for other browsers?   Short answer: Steve likes it that way. The long answer is Firefox and Chrome come from a tradition of open-source software in which anyone is welcome to expand on a program’s features. Apple disagrees, but that hasn’t kept developers from bringing great extensions to Cupertino’s browser. Someday Apple may change its mind and make Safari easier to tinker with, but we’re not holding our breath.Chrome is highly extendable. Are extensions and bookmarklets safe?   Most are harmless and work as advertised. But as with any software, they can have security flaws that may be exploited for nefarious purposes. However, you’re less likely to encounter hackers and more likely to run into headaches over extension conflicts when two or more extensions interfere with each other’s functions.Your best bet is to download extensions and bookmarklets from trusted sources, check user comments before you download, and avoid being the first person to install one if you can help it. Be sure your browser and all extensions are updated to the latest version too. Updates not only bring you the latest and greatest features, they often plug security and compatibility holes. How do I organize or turn them off?   Firefox and Chrome offer extension-management tools that let you easily disable, uninstall, and update your extensions. In Firefox, select Tools > Add-ons, and click the resulting window’s Extensions button to see which extensions are installed and alter their settings. To do the same in Chrome, select Window > Extensions, and a list of your installed extensions will open in a new tab.Because Safari lacks this centralized approach, users must manage extensions individually, and that’s not always easy. Some Safari extensions can be turned off or uninstalled from within their preferences, but many require finding and deleting files in the Finder. The developer’s website or the Read Me files that came with the extension will usually offer specific instructions.If you don’t want to use a bookmarklet, simply don’t click it or just delete it from your bookmarks.Manage your Firefox extensions from Tools > Add-ons. How many can I install?   You can install as many extensions as you want, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should. An active extension uses your Mac’s valuable RAM just like any application does. Running too many at once can lead to sluggish surfing or even crash your browser. And the more extensions you install, the greater the risk that some will conflict with each other. So read the developer’s notes and use common sense when adding bells and whistles to your browser. You probably don’t need to run half a dozen mouse-cursor managers all at once, for instance.On the other hand, bookmarklets work across more browsers, and opting to use them instead of installing an extension can keep your browser lighter and speedier. So go crazy with these bad boys. Return to the main article.

  • iTunes Power Tips Every Mac Owner Should Know

    Your quick-and-dirty guide to the world's most popular digital media app. It’s been more than eight years since Apple released the first version of iTunes. And although it’s expanded to incorporate many smart features since its January 2001 debut, it still looks remarkably similar to the way it did when it first appeared, running on OS 9. Back then it was just a jukebox, but over the years came enhancements like CD burning, the iPod, smart playlists, the iTunes Store, video support, and, most recently, the iPhone.Apple has gradually turned iTunes into a hub for managing and playing all the music and movies on your Mac and mobile devices, while continually adding support for new devices and services like the Apple TV, movie rentals, and much more. In 2003, Apple made the smart move of developing a Windows version of iTunes, opening up the iPod market and the iTunes Store to a much wider audience. iTunes remains one of Apple’s most important applications, and it’s capable of far more than just playing music.Whether it’s converting movies to watch on your iPod, building party playlists, getting album art online, buying music, renting movies, or backing up your iPhone, there’s an awful lot under the surface--and even more than ever with the release of iTunes 9 in September. Many of the tips and tricks we show you throughout this feature will save you time and even reveal a few things you didn’t know you could do. Master Your Music Take control of your music collection with these time-saving tips and tricks. Use smart playlists to manage music on the fly. Apple introduced smart playlists in iTunes 3, and it’s one of those features that, once you make using it a habit, you’ll never go back to plain-vanilla “dumb” playlists again.To create a smart playlist, go to File > Smart Playlists (or press Option-Command-N). You’re presented with a dialog in which you’ll set the “rules” for your smart playlist. When you’re first starting out, it’s best to keep it relatively simple. But once you have the hang of it, you can go bigger, creating much fancier smart playlists to capture only specific types of content, weed out other content types, and so on.Smart playlists take the manual drudgery out of creating dynamic playlists out of iTunes media libraries of any size--and they're not limited to music.If you specify that the playlist should show all songs with the Artist tag “Rolling Stones,” for example, all tracks in your library by the Stones will appear in the playlist. You can go a step farther and add all Rolling Stones tracks that have certain star ratings. By using the Match Any Rule option plus other options, you can have playlists that display different sets of tracks--a playlist, for example, where the genre is both blues and rock, as well as a bit rate greater than 128kbps. Be sure to check Live Updating, so iTunes will watch the library and automatically add any new files that meet the criteria you’ve specified. Use Genius to find new music--or rediscover music in your library. With more music than ever available in the iTunes Store, it can be time-consuming to find new artists and albums you might like. The Genius feature in iTunes sends information about your musical tastes to the iTunes Store and recommends new music based on similar artists and other people’s listening habits (if you haven’t already, you need to turn Genius on by choosing Store > Turn on Genius). If you select a track from your library and click the Genius button in the lower-right corner, iTunes will create a list of recommended albums and tracks that you can buy from the iTunes Store to complement your chosen track. Then you can preview and buy these songs directly from the sidebar. Since it knows what music is already in your library, Genius won’t recommend anything you already have.By activating the Genius feature you can have iTunes recommend new music based on your listening habits.With iTunes 9, Apple expanded Genius to include mixes using songs already in your iTunes library. To get the Genius Mixes feature to appear in iTunes 9, turn on Genius if you haven’t already, then update Genius by selecting Store > Update Genius. Now, to see what Genius Mixes iTunes recommends for you, click Genius Mixes in the left-hand pane (under Genius) in the iTunes window. You’ll see a grid view of album cover-style graphics. When you mouse over one, you’ll see a name for the mix and a brief explanation of what it’s based on--for example, “Rock/Pop Mix 6: based on: The White Stripes, Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers & others.” Mouse over each mix and click the Play button to hear the mix. We just wish that once the Genius Mixes are created you could do more with them than just sit and listen--once a mix starts playing, there’s no way to tell what song is coming next. And, most frustrating of all, there’s no way to capture the mix as a regular or smart playlist.Genius Mixes in iTunes 9 auto-create mixes using songs in your own library on the fly. Share iTunes libraries. You can duplicate an entire consolidated iTunes library by simply copying the Music folder on your Mac. But with libraries frequently running into many gigabytes in size, this is a slow, inefficient method. iTunes can share your library over a local network, so it can be accessed by anyone on your Ethernet or wireless network. Go to Preferences > Sharing and turn on sharing of the whole library or specific playlists. You can password-protect access and also tell iTunes to look for other shared libraries. Since the music is streamed--not copied--it takes up no disk space on the machines of those who tap into your library.iTunes can share selected playlists or your whole library, including videos, over a local network, with optional password protection. Automatically rip and import music CDs. Go to Preferences > General and select “When you Insert a CD, Import CD and Eject.” As long as this setting is active, whenever you insert an audio CD, it will capture track names, encode tracks based on your import settings, and your Mac will then eject the disc. Next click the Import Settings button and choose the quality setting you want iTunes to use to convert the CD tracks as it imports them (192kbps AAC or MP3 files will offer good sound quality at reasonable file sizes). When you insert an audio CD, iTunes will now retrieve all track names and artwork from the Internet and import the tracks using the quality settings you chose.To set the bit rate for the AAC encoder, in the Import Settings dialog, choose 192kbps, leave the other options on Auto, and click OK. Next Page: Video Tips: What You See is What You Get...  Video Tips: What You See is What You Get iTunes is just as good with video as it is with music. Manage playback settings for the best viewing experience. iTunes can display videos from your library in many ways. If you go to Preferences > Playback, you can tell it to play back videos in the small artwork viewer, in iTunes’ main window, in a separate window, or in full-screen mode. You can have anything from a small, unobtrusive window to a full theater presentation, blanking out additional displays. When it’s in a floating window, video can be resized during playback, and if you right-click, you can select any preset size. If you have more than one screen, move the floating window onto the display you want to use as the main screen. This is handy if you have a digital TV connected as a second screen.Use the Playback settings to control how video screens are arranged on your main monitors or multiple displays. Convert video for playback in iTunes & on your iPod. iTunes is picky about what video file formats it can read and play back. It doesn’t like AVIs, WMVs, or other non-Apple formats, for example. If you have a movie that’s already been digitized into one of these incompatible formats, the best course of action is to convert it with QuickTime Pro ($29.99, www.apple.com/quicktime) into an MP4 or M4V file using the File > Export > MP4 or Apple TV options. You will also need to install Perian (free, www.perian.org) to enable QuickTime to open the videos in the first place. You should be able to drag the converted movies into your iTunes library, holding down the O key if necessary to override automatic copying of the file. Then choose Advanced > Create iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV version, and iTunes will convert the video using the optimum quality and screen-size settings for the device that you plan to view the video on.Combining QuickTime Pro and Perian, you can convert video formats that iTunes doesn't favor (such as .AVI) to .M4V files, so you can watch them on your Mac, iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Export your home movies to your iPod or iPhone. If you use iMovie ’08 or ’09, you can export a project directly into iTunes using the Share menu. Or, choose Media Browser and check the iPhone and iPod options. For each option you check, a different version will be compressed and exported.However, if you’re still using iMovie HD 6 or your movie has come from another source, such as straight from a camera, you can use a third-party compression tool like ffmpeg (homepage.mac.com/major4/) to convert most kinds of video files.If you have QuickTime Pro and Perian installed, you can opt to export directly for iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV within QuickTime Pro. Next Page: How to Digitize Your DVDs...  How to Digitize Your DVDs There are, of course, legal issues with ripping a commercial DVD. To keep the feds off your back, only use this how-to for digitizing a commercial DVD movie or other content that you have purchased. This, according to the MPAA, is legal. Making 100 copies of I Love You, Man and selling them for $5 each at your cousin’s garage sale--not so much.Before you start, download and install Handbrake (free, handbrake.fr) and VLC (free, www.videolan.org/vlc). 1. Get to the source.Load the DVD into your Mac and launch HandBrake. The software needs you to select your video source. Navigate to your DVD and select it. Now it should appear under Source.2. Get inside the source.HandBrake doesn’t make it easy to figure out which file on the DVD is the movie. In the Title section in the main interface, you get a pull-down menu showing the available files on the DVD. The files are identified by time length, so if you’re ripping a movie, you’ll probably want to select the file with the longest running time. (It can get tricky if you’re ripping a DVD with a commentary track or extra features that run the same length as the featured video.) If you’re selecting a TV show, look for running lengths of about 24 to 45 minutes. Under Destination, pick a place where you want to save the converted file.We identified our Lawrence of Arabia movie file by its length of 2 hours, 19 minutes, 16 seconds.3. Output settings.If you want to convert a video for iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV, you can use one of HandBrake’s presets. Click the Toggle Presets button at the upper-right to open the Presets window (if it’s not already open). To create a video to play on your Mac, select QuickTime.We're taking a cross-country plane trip and plan to watch Lawrence on our iPhone to while away the hours in flight.4. Tweak video and audio settings.The bottom half of HandBrake’s main window lets you make adjustments to the video settings. For example, lowering the frame rate can help reduce the file size. The Quality settings also influence file size. If you select a target size, HandBrake will rip the video based on your setting; the smaller the setting, the lower the video quality. If you go with an average bit-rate setting, enter a setting between 400 and 600 (though you can go much higher or lower if you want). Constant quality reduces the quality based on a percentage. Click on the Picture Settings button to adjust the pixel size of the video.Selecting 2-pass encoding will improve video quality, but it takes longer to create the file.Click on Audio & Subtitles to tweak the audio settings. Make sure the language you want is selected in Track 1. You can also adjust the sample rate, bit rate, and activate subtitles.5. Hurry up and wait.When you have your settings settled, click on Start, and go do something else. It can take a while to rip a DVD. Fortunately, HandBrake is a Universal application, so Intel Mac folks will get much faster results. Lawrence of Arabia took 1 hour, 12 minutes to rip on a 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM.6. Drop into iTunesWhen HandBrake is done, navigate to where you saved the file. Drag and drop the file into iTunes, then connect your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV, and sync. iTunes will transfer the file to your device. Or, if the movie was converted for your Mac, just double-click the file to watch it. Next Page: Sync and Swim...  Sync and Swim Better ways to manage music, video, and apps between your Mac and your iPod or iPhone. Manage apps on your iPhone or iPod touch. Hallelujah--iTunes 9 brought the option to more effectively manage which Home screen’s apps appear on your iPhone or iPod touch. Now when your device is connected and you select it in the sidebar, click the Applications tab to see a visual representation of where app icons will appear on the 10 possible Home screens. Although we’d love to see the option to name each screen rather than having them be numbered, the new management option is miles ahead of the old way of doing things.We created a screen just for the news apps we use most. Automatic syncing saves time and space. iPods and iTunes have always had the ability to automatically sync with each other--sharing exactly the same music files. For some this is great, as it maintains an exact copy of your music, photos, and contacts on your iPod or iPhone and on your Mac. Others, though, prefer more flexibility. With your iPod selected, go to its Summary tab and click Manually Manage Music and Videos. Then you can add or delete tracks from the iPod’s music library by hand. Just drag and drop tracks from your iTunes library to add them.In each subsequent tab you can choose to manually sync contacts, calendars, ringtones, videos, applications, and more. This is a great way of syncing some data without performing a full sync, which can be slow and puts you at risk of accidentally overwriting data.  Use Senuti to get music from an iPod to your Mac. Being able to copy songs from an iPod to a Mac is incredibly useful, and no, we’re not talking about pirating. If you keep distinct iTunes libraries on more than one Mac, your iPod can carry them back and forth. If your hard drive crashes, or you get a new Mac, restoring iTunes tracks via an iPod is a great trick to have at hand.FadingRed’s Senuti ($18, www.fadingred.com) lets you do exactly this--a simple operation you’d think iTunes would allow but doesn’t.You can drag not only songs and videos, but whole playlists, right to your iTunes library.Senuti supports the iPod touch and iPhone, as well as all the iPods. When you connect your device, its library and playlists appear at the top of the sidebar, while your iTunes library and playlists are listed on the bottom. Blue dots next to the tracks show you which songs on your iPod already exist in iTunes. Drag songs from your iPod’s library and drop them onto your iTunes library, or select songs and click the big green Transfer button. Senuti can copy the songs anywhere on your hard drive for you to back up, or it can even add the songs directly to iTunes--just choose iTunes Music Folder as the default download location in Senuti > Preferences.Senuti can also rebuild playlists from your iPod in iTunes. Smart playlists on your iPod become regular playlists in iTunes, however, preserving the list as it was on your iPod, without adding in more qualifying songs from your iTunes library, as a smart playlist would. To copy a playlist to iTunes, you drag the whole playlist name from the iPod area of the sidebar and drop it on top of the word iTunes in the bottom half of the sidebar. Pump up iTunes with AppleScripts We have long been fans of Doug’sAppleScripts for iTunes, a huge--and we do mean huge--catalog of AppleScripts created by Doug Adams and available to the iTunes-loving masses for free at dougscripts.com/itunes.You can laugh, but we would never have taken the time to manually compare the similarities of these playlists. Thanks, Doug's Scripts!One particularly useful script--though it’s very hard to pick just one--is the Compare Two Playlists script, which compares the contents of two playlists and creates a text file on your Desktop listing the tracks they have in common and the ones that are exclusive to each. This comes in handy if you make a lot of playlists for parties and want to easily tell them apart. Download the script, unzip it, and copy the scripts to the your usernameLibraryiTunesScripts folder, creating the Scripts folder if necessary, as directed in the instructions.  

  • Turn iTunes Up to 11

     It might be the hardest-working app in show business, but iTunes can rock a lot harder when you tune it up with add-ons and AppleScripts--and learn how Smart Playlists bring more of your favorite songs to center stage. iTunes started out as a smart, simple music player, but over the years, it’s evolved into one of Apple’s most important applications. Although it’s still used for managing and playing your music collection, iTunes now also stores apps, films, TV shows, podcasts, ringtones, and books--maybe “iStuff” would be a better name?--and of course, it’s the sole Apple-approved method for syncing content with iPods, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TVs.But that doesn’t mean you should take it at face value. Like many of Apple’s applications, iTunes is multilayered. Underneath its simple, straightforward hood, it’s surprisingly feature-rich, offering many powerful configuration options. And it’s time to make that power work for you with our guide to tapping into iTunes’ lesser-known but highly useful features. We also delve into the add-ons that expand the iTunes experience, including the very best third-party applications and highly useful scripts. So fire up iTunes 9.1 or later (it’s currently at 9.2), and get ready to rock! iTunes 9.2's Greatest Hits If iTunes were a rock band, it’d only play stadiums. Besides storing and managing your music, the application has to deal with video, books, apps, ringtones, and more. To Apple’s credit, iTunes remains pretty usable, and much of its complexity is kept hidden under the hood. But don’t forget about these useful features. Library Sources Uncheck any media types you don't want cluttering up your sidebar.To change the default media types shown in the Library section of the sidebar, use the checkboxes in iTunes > Preferences > General. If any sources are grayed out in that menu, they’re probably disabled via parental controls. Those settings can be adjusted in the Parental section of the Preferences window. Import Settings Set the import format here.By default, iTunes imports audio using the AAC Encoder set to 256kbps, which is how iTunes Store music is sold. AAC is fine for iPods, but if you use a non-Apple player, you might prefer MP3--head to iTunes > Preferences > General, and click Import Settings. If you’ve got tons of storage, Apple Lossless is the best encoder, and iTunes 9.1 and later can automatically convert songs to space-saving 128kbps AAC when you sync an iDevice (in the device’s settings pane). Multiple Windows Open sesame.Although primarily designed as a single-window app, iTunes lets you open most sidebar components (Music and Connected Devices being exceptions) in their own windows by Control- or right-clicking and selecting “Open in New Window.” If you’ve got a large monitor, it can be handy, for example, to view your music library and the iTunes Store simultaneously. Sound Enhancement Pump up the bass, yo!The often-overlooked Equalizer (Window > Equalizer, or Command-Option-2) has sliders you can fiddle with to adjust the sound, along with presets in the drop-down menu. iTunes can save your custom settings if you choose Make Preset from the drop-down menu. Keyboard Shortcuts  View Menu As List - Command-Option-3As Grid - Command-Option-4As Cover Flow - Command-Option-5Show/Hide Column Browser - Command-BShow Artwork Column - Command-GShow Genius Sidebar - Command-Shift-GSwitch to/from Mini Player - Command-Shift-M Controls Pause - [Space]Next - Command–right arrowPrevious - Command–left arrowEject - Command-E Store Menu Back - Command-[Forward - Command-]Home - Command-Shift-HNext page: Smarter iTunes Playlists >>Smarter iTunes Playlists Power up your iTunes playlists with minimal effortTechnology moves pretty fast. People used to spend entire Saturdays happily compiling a “mix tape” by carefully recording favorite tracks on a cheap cassette deck, but once digital music hit its stride, such endeavors were seen as a startling waste of time. With a music collection sitting on your hard drive, mixes could be made quickly thanks to the magic of drag and drop.Select any track in your library, click the Start Genius button, and presto, you have a unique playlist!iTunes easily creates static playlists, and always has. Click the invitingly large Plus button at the lower left of the main iTunes window (or go to File > New Playlist), name your playlist, and then drag in tracks from your library. Tracks can be reordered, and you can also drag songs from one playlist to another; note that the track also remains in the playlist it was dragged from--it isn’t removed. It’s also worth noting, in case you’re concerned, that playlists contain “shortcuts” to the original tracks. Delete a playlist or an item from a playlist, and the original track remains in your library.  An Automated Approach With iTunes 8, Apple introduced its Genius technology, which tries to predict listening habits based on the collections of millions of iTunes users. This lets you create a playlist of tracks based on a favorite song. Select a track in your library, then click Start Genius at the bottom right of the iTunes window (or Control-click and select Start Genius). iTunes will create a 25-item playlist containing that track and similar songs. By using the controls above the playlist, you can extend it to 50, 75, or 100 items; refresh it; or save it.Saved Genius playlists appear in the sidebar’s Genius section, but Genius Mixes are included by default. Select this to access mixes that are genre-based, randomized, and sealed. You can’t access Genius Mixes to see which tracks are up next, nor can you view a full list of albums and artists, but they’re still a handy “personalized radio” for those days when even starting up a Genius playlist seems a bit too much like hard work. Smart Playlists Introduced in iTunes 3, smart playlists are dynamic; they’re based on user-defined criteria. This same idea is used elsewhere on your Mac--smart folders in the Finder, smart mailboxes in Mail--although the iTunes implementation is the most advanced and flexible at the time of this writing.File > New Playlist Folder adds a handy folder to the sidebar, into which you can drop static and smart playlists for easy access.To create a new smart playlist, go to File > New Smart Playlist or use the keyboard shortcut Command-Option-N. This brings up the Smart Playlist dialog. To create a basic smart playlist, leave all the settings alone, but add your favorite artist to the empty field, and then click OK. Your new playlist will be added to the sidebar and highlighted. In the main iTunes view area, you should see a list of tracks from your specified artist.An example of a nested playlist­--these can be as simple or as complex as you like, so go crazy!Since they’re dynamic, smart playlists can be updated with new settings. Select your playlist and go to File > Edit Smart Playlist (or Control- or right-click it and select Edit Smart Playlist). Click the Plus button to add a new rule. The left-most menu includes many criteria you can pick from. Add as many rules as you like, and define specific values for them. The Match menu lets you choose whether the playlist includes tracks determined by all of the rules or any of them. The former could be used to create a playlist of tracks by your favorite band, not including that one lame album (Album > is not > [album name]), and only from the 1990s onwards (Year > is greater than > 1989). To remove a rule, click the adjacent Minus button, although be aware there’s no undo. Advanced Rules The Smart Playlist dialog has a few options that can further refine your playlists. The Limit checkbox enables you to set a specific track count and also a selection criterion (random, recently played, and so on). If the Live Updating box is checked, relevant tracks subsequently added to iTunes will be added to the playlist without you having to do anything.With iTunes 9, Apple finally added a change that smart-playlist gurus had demanded for years: nested playlists. Before iTunes 9, complex playlists of the form “A and (B or C)” required you to make the “B or C” playlist first and then a second playlist to work with its output. Now, however, you can use the “
” (ellipses) button to create nested rule groups and therefore playlists with complex logic.If this concept sounds tricky in the abstract, here’s a practical application for nested smart playlists. Say you want to create a playlist comprising tracks from 10 of your favorite bands, only using songs rated above four stars and that have not been played in over a month. Previously, this would have required two playlists, because the bands are an “any” match, whereas the other rules are an “all” match. With iTunes 9, you set up a single match-all smart playlist with the time and ratings rules, and nest a match-any set that deals with the band names. An example is shown above, but the sky really is the limit with smart playlists, and once you’ve set a few up, you can let iTunes do all the hard work of adding tracks. It’s a long way from waiting for a cassette to run out of tape! Base Your Playlists on Ratings This simple smart playlist finds favorite tracks you haven’t heard recently.The best smart playlists are often the simple ones: If you rate your tracks, create a smart playlist where track ratings are greater than 3 and call it “4+ tracks.” For your very best tracks, create a smart playlist with tracks rated 5. If you’re always forgetting what music you’ve added over the past couple of months, create a smart playlist with the rule: Date Added > is in the last > 60 days, and where Media Kind is Music. Create a similar playlist, but change 60 days to 12 months to include songs you’ve added over the past year. Or if you’d like to unearth lost favorites, create a playlist called “4+ neglecteds” and set rules based around track ratings (Rating > is greater than > ***) and when the tracks were last played (Last Played > is not in the last > 30 days). Target Your iPods Unless you have a 120GB iPod classic, your Apple music player has a relatively limited capacity. That’s fine if your music collection is small, but if it isn’t, you can always create a playlist with nested rules to fill it full of favorite tracks.In the example below, the Time rule dispenses with very short (under 40 seconds) and very long tracks (over 5 minutes), classical music, and anything with a very high bit rate (although you can automatically “downsample” audio during syncing in iTunes 9.1). The Media Kind rule restricts the playlist to music, filtering out spoken audio and the like.If you’ve got an iPod shuffle, fill it with highly rated, short-ish tracks.Our nested rules follow this logic: Tracks are only added to the playlist if they’re rated over 3--unless they’ve been added within the previous 14 days and don’t have a rating of 1. This means that you always get recent tracks (including all unrated ones) unless you’ve already decided to mark them as rubbish, but older tracks are filtered by your rating.Next page: The Best iTunes Add-Ons >>The Best iTunes Add-Ons iTunes gets even better with one (or all) of these apps as its backup singers I Love Stars Once you set the preferences, the app stays in your menu bar.Even if your library is modest, rating all your tracks can seem daunting. But a rated collection gives you more possibilities for smart playlists, and I Love Stars lets you rate as you go. The app sits in the menu bar and shows the currently playing track’s rating. To change the rating, click on the relevant star. Control-click to access the preferences and define systemwide keyboard shortcuts for rating tracks. I Love Stars can even alert you (optionally) when an unrated song is almost done playing. iTunes Preference Pane Tinker with these additional settings when iTunes isn’t running.As with Mac OS X itself, Apple hides a number of iTunes preferences, not making them accessible via a graphical user interface. iTunes Preference Pane installs into System Preferences and provides options for tweaking iTunes. Perhaps the most useful setting is Invert Library Links, which turns the library arrows into links to your own library rather than the iTunes Store (Option-click for the default functionality). The ability to apply half-star ratings will benefit anyone who considers Apple’s default system too restrictive. Note: Make changes to the settings only when iTunes isn’t running. iTunesMenu iTunesMenu stays out of your way.Plenty of iTunes-notification apps exist, but most take up valuable space on your screen, or get hidden by other windows. iTunesMenu uses your menu bar to display the name of the song currently playing in iTunes, along with other information, such as the artist and album. The drop-down menu also provides access to basic iTunes controls, although we recommend your Mac’s keyboard for those. Bowtie Bowtie has a few looks, and you can download more.Bowtie is similar to iTunesMenu, but instead of displaying the current track’s name in text, it displays the album artwork. Preferences let you define the artwork window’s depth (Desktop level, normal, or always on top). Bowtie includes two alternate themes: one purely text-based, and one with a tiny vinyl record poking out from the artwork. Additional themes can be downloaded (search Google for “bowtie theme”), or if you have knowledge of HTML and CSS, you can make your own. Lounge Lounge resembles the Now Playing screen on Apple TV.Lounge is an interesting mix of screen saver and iTunes kiosk, and it’s perfect either for parties or just as a good-looking screen saver for any Mac. Instead of iTunes-style visualizer pyrotechnics, Lounge displays the current track’s artwork and information. Options let you toggle keyboard controls for skipping tracks and adjusting volume without exiting the screen saver, flip the screen periodically to avoid screen burn, and even choose a screen saver to switch to when a playlist has ended. Album Artwork Assistant Match all your albums to their artwork in no time.Album Artwork Assistant beats its artwork-seeking rivals by being comprehensive and offering plenty of choice regarding potential artwork to import. It also provides a queuing system for when you’d like to work through a bunch of albums, rather than immediately applying new art every time. To use this feature, switch Add Immediately for Add To Queue in our walkthrough below (Step 2), and when you’re done, open the Queue drawer and click Process Queue.Next page: How to Setup iTunesMenu & How to Find Artwork for Your Albums >>How to Set Up iTunesMenu 1. Get Started iTunesMenu communicates with iTunes to find out what the currently playing track is. The track artist is displayed in the menu bar, updating as new songs begin. Click the artist name to access the app’s menu. Choose Preferences to configure the display. 2. Configure the Display Select General and decide what you want displayed in the menu bar. To show the title and artist, separated by a bullet and with a space afterward, type %Title ‱ %Artist into the Status Menu Order field, then click Save Preferences. (Ensure Scrolling is set to None.) 3. Fonts and Hotkeys To change the iTunesMenu font, click Select and choose a new one from the Mac OS X Fonts panel. If your Mac keyboard lacks media keys, use iTunesMenu’s Donate section to give $1.99, enter your activation key, and use Hot Keys to define iTunes controls. How to Find Artwork for Your Albums 1. Install a Script Quit iTunes and System Preferences. In Album Artwork Assistant, select Install iTunes AppleScript from the Application menu, then click OK. Select a track or album in iTunes to change its artwork. From the Script menu, select Find With Album Artwork Assistant. 2. Select Your Artwork Album Artwork Assistant will display the tracks to be updated. Below this list, the search string used is displayed, along with image results with a resize slider. To choose new artwork for your tracks, select an image and then click Add Immediately. 3. Find Alternate Artwork Album Artwork Assistant may not find artwork right away for obscure releases. Try changing the search string. Alternatively, select the Web Search tab to activate the browser area. Once you find artwork to use, Control- or right-click it and select Add Immediately.Next page: Scripts Make iTunes Sing >>Scripts Make iTunes Sing AppleScript is something of an unsung hero. It easily automates repetitive tasks, but few users ever go near it. If you’re an iTunes power user, scripts are a must, but you needn’t hack away in AppleScript Editor--many prebuilt iTunes scripts are available online. All you need to do is download them, plonk them in the iTunes Scripts folder, wait a second or two, and the extra functionality is yours.If you regularly use a script, apply a keyboard shortcut via Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences.The walkthrough below shows you how to set up and manage scripts, so we’ll concentrate on the best available scripts. All of the scripts mentioned are available for free from the Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes website (dougscripts.com/itunes). Track Management If you’ve got a pretty big music collection, keeping it in good shape can take time--way, way, way too much time. Scripts can assist you with management tasks, taking minutes or seconds to accomplish what might take you hours or more.One of the best housecleaning scripts is Super Remove Dead Tracks. This finds songs in your library that are no longer available on your Mac. Every 500 tracks, it throws up a dialog to inform you of its progress, and the optional text-based log file at the end tells you which entries have been deleted. On our 13,500-track test library, this entire process took under a minute.Tracks Without Artwork To Playlist is similar--you select a library, playlist, or an arbitrary bunch of tracks, and the script copies songs without artwork to a new playlist. On activating the script, all you need to do is click Proceed, choose a name for your playlist, and wait for a bit. On our iMac, the script took about 5 minutes to churn through our 13,500 tracks, finding about 1,500 that lacked artwork. With a No Artwork playlist in place, it’s simple to send these tracks to Album Artwork Assistant to grab artwork online.Another great playlist script is Gather Up The One-Hits. It collects tracks where the artists are each represented in your library by just a single song. Chances are, this will mainly comprise content from compilations, but we found a bunch of one-offs we’d grabbed from the iTunes Store and subsequently forgotten about. Track Info and Playback Along with rapidly cleaning up your library, scripts can deal with metadata issues, and you don’t have to open a single Get Info window. Quite often, iTunes downloads inaccurate data when you import tracks from CDs by obscure artists--a common error is the artist and track name fields being reversed. The Swap This With That script from the This Tag, That Tag Scripts compilation can handle this. Launch the script, select a tag to swap from and another to swap to, and your songs’ data is amended. However, be aware that there’s no undo. If your metadata issues are subtler, investigate Track Names To Sentence Caps and Track Names To Word Caps (both of which reformat cases in track names) and Remove N Characters From Front or Back. The last of those enables you to remove a specific number of characters from the start (‘front”) or end (“back”) of a selection of song titles. So if some song titles have track numbers at the start or “disc 1” at the end, this script removes that information quickly and easily.Scripts can also assist with playback controls. Needle Drop enables you to audition a selection of tracks in automated fashion, after defining playback length and an intro point. For example, you can play 10-second bursts from 2 minutes into every track from a specified playlist.Another favorite script is Make Bookmarkable, which turns the file type of selected AAC tracks into M4B, thereby making them “bookmarkable,” so playback resumes where you left off. Make UN-Bookmarkable reverses the process. External Considerations Search Wikipedia and Google Video Search search the web for more information about your music, working in similar ways: You select a script, and a dialog asks whether you want to search based on the currently playing track or the currently selected track. You then select a category to base the search on. For Wikipedia, you can select the artist, album, or composer. For Google Video, you choose between song, artist, and album. The dialogs aren’t pretty, but they get the job done and save time.Search for an artist or album on Wikipedia directly from within iTunes simply by using a little script.Another set of scripts enables you to export track information from iTunes. Although this can be done using File > Library > Export Playlist, the resulting text file is complicated, huge, and unwieldy. Instead, we recommend Album-Artist To HTML Table, which exports a list of your artists and albums (and, optionally, associated tracks, although processing that information takes a long time, so we don’t recommend it) to an HTML document that you can open in a web browser. The script has a couple of quirks: you need to reorder your track list to Album By Artist for best results, and don’t let the script open a browser when it’s finished, or you’ll likely get an error. Instead, click Done and then manually open the HTML file it outputs.Another export option worth a look is Playlist To Papercdcase.com. It lets you export up to 28 tracks from a playlist to papercdcase.com (the site opens in Safari), which cunningly formats the data into a PDF file that can then be turned into a CD case if your origami skills are up to snuff. Back Up Your iTunes Folder The add-ons mentioned elsewhere in this feature do relatively little to affect the content of your iTunes library. At most, they add a little data here and there, such as ratings and new artwork, and these things are easy enough to revert or delete at a later date. Scripts in iTunes can be a very different matter, because some of them automate complex and “destructive” processes, including reworking and deleting tracks. We’re not trying to scare you off--iTunes scripts can often be very handy timesavers--but we do suggest that you don’t just start using scripts blindly. Before you work with scripts that do anything major to your iTunes library, ensure that you first back it up. The iTunes folder--including your music, other digital content, and databases--lives in the Music directory inside your user folder. How to Manage Your Scripts Folder 1. Create a Scripts Folder If you haven’t installed scripts before, you won’t have a Scripts folder to use. To add one, quit iTunes, use the Finder to access ~/Library/iTunes (the Library folder that’s found inside your user account’s home folder), and if a Scripts folder isn’t present, create a new folder called Scripts. 2. Install and Remove Scripts Managing scripts is a case of drag and drop. To install a script, drag it into the Scripts folder mentioned in Step 1. To remove one, drag it out of the folder or trash it. It’s best to do such management when iTunes is closed, but iTunes typically tracks script changes well. 3. Check Things in iTunes Launch iTunes. After installing a script, you’ll see a script icon in the menu bar between the Window and Help menus. This is where you can activate the scripts. Scripts can even have keyboard shortcuts assigned in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, just like other menu items. 

  • How to Use Your Mac and Your iPhone to Completely Automate Your Home

    Modernize your home and simplify your life with these painless products and strategies that automate your house, apartment, castle, or whatever keeps the roof over your head.   Illustrations by Hanoch Piven Still using jagged little strips of metal to unlock your front door? Paying someone to feed your pets while you’re away for a weekend? Then it’s time to truly enter the second decade of the 21st century. Setting up home-control automation that runs from your Mac and iPhone is surprisingly simple, and the results can feel like magic. We kick things off with a primer that takes the hassle and jargon out of home control, then dive straight into showing you the best possibilities for managing your home’s lights, entertainment, security, and loads more. Just wait until you check out the washing machine that tweets when it’s finished a load
 What Exactly is Home Control? You might’ve also heard it called “home automation,” and you might be a bit reluctant to slog through all the jargon and devices that the phrase brings to mind. But really, it’s simple. There are two types of home-control systems: the fantasy technology you see at Disney’s Tomorrowland and the gear you can actually deploy in the real world. Unfortunately, manufacturers of home-control systems have overpromised and under-delivered for so many years that many people have just stopped listening.Good news: It’s safe to start listening again. There’s still a yawning chasm between fantasy and reality--we’re a long way from having a robot butler greet us with our smoking jacket and a perfectly muddled mojito as we step out of our flying car. But we can manage nearly every system in and around the home: lighting, heating and cooling, home theater, security, even irrigation.Why bother? Home-control systems are appealing for many reasons: They deliver unparalleled convenience and efficiency, they add value to your home, they strengthen your home’s physical security, and they help reduce your impact on the environment. With the right tools, you can monitor and manage all your home systems whether you’re on the couch, in the car, or at work. We’ll discuss those specific applications in the following pages, but first, it’s important to begin with an overview of the basics. Which home-control standard do you want to use? There are four major ecosystems to choose from, and naturally, they’re mutually exclusive (at least for the time being)
 X10/Insteon Introduced by Pico Electronics way back in the 1970s, X10 is the granddaddy of home-control technology. The passage of time and the long absence of significant competition helped X10 amass the largest installed base of any home-control technology, despite a reputation for being as reliable as a British sports car from the same era.X10 devices use a primitive form of power-line networking, meaning commands travel over your home’s existing electrical wiring. The X10 protocol doesn’t include a feedback loop, so there’s no way for devices sending commands to know whether those commands have been received and executed. The technology is also highly susceptible to electrical noise, which X10 devices sometimes interpret as valid commands. This can result not only in false negatives (a light or an appliance doesn’t turn on or off in response to a command), but also false positives (turning on or off in the absence of a command).Insteon, developed by SmartLabs (a major distributor of X10 products) in 2001, builds and improves on the X10 protocol without rendering X10 devices obsolete. Like the ZigBee and Z-Wave standards we’ll discuss next, every node on the Insteon network is capable of receiving information and passing on the command to the next node if it’s not the intended target. Unlike those two standards, Insteon devices use both radio frequencies (RF) and power lines to communicate (this retains X10 compatibility and reaches devices where radio waves can’t penetrate).SmartLabs' Insteon uses radio frequencies and power lines to communicate.SmartLabs maintains its own online retail operation and sells directly to the do-it-yourself market. The Insteon ecosystem is extremely robust in terms of the systems it can manage. You can buy plug-in and in-the-wall lighting controls; thermostats; motion, door, and window sensors; irrigation controllers; and more. Third-party support is very good in some respects and surprisingly limited in others. For instance, you’ll find a number of Mac software controllers (see below), but none of the major lighting-control manufacturers in the U.S. (Cooper Wiring Devices, GE, Intermatic, or Leviton) build Insteon-compatible switches, dimmers, or receptacles.Insteon’s failure to gain support from other manufacturers will likely limit its long-term prospects. The development of a bridge (a device capable of translating commands from one standard to another) would save Insteon customers from getting hosed if the market ultimately embraces one of the other competing standards.  ZigBee ZigBee is the only home-control specification based on an IEEE standard (IEEE is the leading standards organization for device manufacturers; you’ve likely heard of its 802.11 standard for wireless networking). And you might think ZigBee’s designation as an international standard would automatically render it the marketplace winner (after all, how many wireless-networking products buck 802.11?), but far fewer ZigBee products are available to the do-it-yourself crowd than either Insteon or Z-Wave.Part of the problem is that early versions of the ZigBee standard didn’t guarantee interoperability; companies were allowed to develop products that worked only within their own proprietary systems. ZigBee does have a strong presence in the energy-consumption and -management market, where it’s embedded in thermostats inside the home and in utility smart meters outside it. One of the largest home-control manufacturers, Control4, builds complete ZigBee-based systems; but you must acquire it from a contractor who will handle the installation (charging you handsomely and limiting your expansion options in the process).Few ZigBee devices are sold at retail today, and none of the Mac home-control software programs we looked at are capable of operating a ZigBee network yet. Still, ZigBee’s status as an IEEE standard carries a lot of weight, and that could make it a major contender down the road. Z-Wave Z-Wave is a proprietary wireless home-control standard developed by Zensys, and it enjoys robust support from more third-party manufacturers than either Insteon or ZigBee. Cooper, GE, Intermatic, and Leviton offer comprehensive Z-Wave lighting controls; Wayne-Dalton builds garage-door openers; Schlage manufactures door locks; and so on.Control your home's temperature with this Z-Wave thermostat from Trane. You can buy nearly all these products at retail, but Wayne-Dalton’s HousePort and TrickleStar’s Z-Wave widget are the only Mac-compatible home-control programs we’re aware of, and they’re both very rudimentary. But Z-Wave has gathered more industry-wide momentum than either Insteon or ZigBee (including a critical endorsement from Intel), which could help it become the eventual home-control standard. Hybrid ZigBee/Z-Wave systems are also an option--Control4, for instance, introduced a bridge device late last year that enables its ZigBee system to control Z-Wave devices. Handy. The Future Awaits
  Even more good news: There’s no need to make a decision just yet. In the next few pages, we’ll outline the most useful automation options for everything from automatically turning on your lights to amazingly simple webcam security to streaming video servers. Once you decide what’s right for your home, refer back to this primer to decide which hardware standard and corresponding software is right for you. Then it’s time to get your DIY on
 even if doing it yourself amounts to Googling “professional home automation installers.” Home-Control Software You'll need to manage your entire home-control system by running software on your Mac that "talks" to your various interfaced devices. The major software players are:Indigo: Perceptive Automation’s Indigo Lite ($89.95) is compatible with Insteon and X10 modules, but not ZigBee or Z-Wave. It includes both a built-in web server and client/server architecture, so you can control the entire system locally or remotely. You can also schedule events (turn on the outside lights at dusk), set up triggers (send an email message if a door sensor is activated; monitor and program your Insteon thermostat), and more. Indigo Pro ($179.95) adds a host of advanced features, such as voice-command response. You can also control Indigo with your iPhone using the free app Indigo Touch.Indigo's software enables you to control your system remotely.XTension: Sand Hill Engineering’s XTension ($149.95) is compatible with X10 devices, several RF and niche interfaces, and certain wireless weather-monitoring products manufactured by Oregon Scientific. A technically savvy audience--even home automation contractors--will find a lot to like, but the software doesn’t support ZigBee, Z-Wave, or Insteon modules, which is
 odd.Thinking Home: Always Thinking’s Thinking Home ($79) works with X10 and Insteon modules, but not ZigBee or Z-Wave devices. It’s not as sophisticated as Indigo, but it covers the basics and boasts an easy-to-learn user interface.  Next Page: Lights, Power, Heating, Actions! >>Utilities: Lights, Power, Heating, Actions! Play puppetmaster with your home's utilities from your Mac and iPhone, and reap the benefits of convenience and efficiency. Light Your Way Lighting automation puts the “utilitarian” into home-utility automation. These upgrades are flashy only on a literal level; you probably won’t go bragging to coworkers about how your House of the Future can turn its lights on and off. But these techniques form the foundation of home automation and make a great place to kick things off.For starters, try teaching your house to turn on the lights as you pull into the driveway. In addition to a basic home-control setup with Mac software and a hardware interface, you can add driveway-sensor modules ($169.99) or an automation-savvy garage-door retrofit ($71.99). Or just get a new garage-door opener ($189) with a Z-Wave interface to both control and monitor the door. With your Mac software, you can then build an if-then script that ties into your home lighting. If a car pulls into the driveway, activate the exterior house lighting. If you open the garage door, turn on the entryway lights inside.XTension lets you graphically assign icons that match your home setting.More sensors can create additional options. An outdoor motion sensor with floodlights ($54.88) can turn on when someone passes by. Your Mac could then log the time it happened and snap a webcam picture of your yard.You can take the process indoors, activating room lighting based on a motion sensor ($34.99). Full indoor automation can be harder since you might want to lounge around, but sitting without moving would turn the lights off. Still, it can work well in certain situations, such as lighting up a party as it moves around into different rooms. Control Utilities and Devices Over the Internet Most home automation software can connect online, letting you control devices from anywhere. Cancel your sprinkler schedule on a rainy day, open the shades in your teenager’s room at noon, adjust your thermostat when away, and otherwise tap into your setup over the Internet. Indigo and Thinking Home (see above for details) enable a web server within the automation interface. XTension uses an optional plug-in, X2Web ($39.95), to connect online.Indigo Touch, a free iPhone app, lets you change home-heating conditions from wherever you are. You could also remotely connect to an online Mac and control the whole computer as if you were sitting at home, directly using the automation software of your choice. Several remote-access tools enable this approach, including GoToMyPC ($19.95/month) and LogMeIn Free (free). LogMeIn even offers an iPhone version of the app, LogMeIn Ignition ($29.99). Or if you’re on MobileMe ($99/year), the Back to My Mac feature does the same thing. These tools might also be easier alternatives to setting up online components in the automation software because you shouldn’t have to make special network configurations on your home router to allow access.Open-ended plugs, such as the EZ102X4 (top) and the ApplianceLink V2, let you connect any device to your automation network.And many iPhone apps offer another way to connect to your hardware over the Internet. Indigo Touch (free) is a companion for that desktop software. Otherwise, just search for “X10,” “Insteon,” or “home automation” to browse the App Store. Be sure to read the requirements closely--some interface with software on your home Mac, while others talk directly to certain Internet-enabled automation controllers. Create Your Own Animal House You can more easily take good care of your pets in an automated house, especially if you’re coming home late or taking a short vacation. Some hardware ties directly into your setup, while you might have to creatively hack other devices.For occasional meals, consider an internet-connected device, such as the Petwatch feeder ($269.99). The hardware includes a webcam so you can view your pet wherever you are.With this Petwatch feeder, you can watch and feed your pets remotely.If you’re technically minded--or you can draft someone who is--get creative with other home automation devices for great pet combinations. Some pet doors unlock when Fido or Whiskers get close; their collars hold a key. For one option, try a Solo Pet Door ($395 and up). This device retracts when it senses a magnet that your pet wears.We couldn’t track down any pet doors that talk to home automation systems, but you can combine a door like this with your own sensors. Add a proximity sensor and webcam to track and record your pet movement; you could even have your Mac email or SMS a picture. If you add a power relay to the mix, such as the EZIO2X4 ($134.99) or Insteon ApplianceLink V2 ($34.99), you can lock the door remotely. Maybe you want to give your pets access depending on the time of day. Or you could lock the door after a cat returns from a night of carousing. (There’re loads of creative options out there; for a few more, see Top Ten Wonders of the Home Automation World below.) Use Home Control To Live Greener A home-control system can also help you to reduce your carbon footprint and use previous resources more efficiently. Here are six ways to get started:>> Rather than leaving your exterior lights on all day so your home isn’t dark when you get home, retrofit your light switches and use home-control software to turn them on when the sun sets.>> Conserve water by installing programmable sprinkler controllers that can adjust their irrigation schedules in response to weather conditions and forecasts.>> Create a vacation “scene” that turns your HVAC system off while you’re away. The system can also turn various lights on in the evening and off at night, using a randomized pattern that will fool prospective thieves into thinking the house is occupied.>> Install a programmable thermostat that turns your climate-control system off 30 minutes before you leave and 30 minutes before you’re scheduled to return home. Use your iPhone to remotely update the routine should your plans change.>> Reduce your electrical consumption and improve your media-room ambience by installing a dimmer that brings down the lights when you press Play on your remote control.>> Add an Insteon-enabled 220-volt control to your current high-voltage electrical appliances, such as a water heater (a notorious energy-waster), and conserve money and power by shutting them down during the day or when you’re away from home for extended periods. Next Page: Become Master of All You Survey >> Security: Become Master of All You Survey You install software updates to keep your Mac and iPhone secure. Let them return the favor by keeping tabs on your home while you're away. Keep an iSight on Things Mac has a built-in iSight--or almost any QuickTime-compatible camera attached--you’re one step away from a surveillance system. All you need is software like Security Spy ($50) or EvoCam ($30), and you’re in the counterespionage business. Each application records pictures and video to your Mac continuously, according to schedules you define, or when it detects motion in a camera’s field of view. Just launch the app, point your iSight where you expect snoops to sneak (like a doorway or maybe the desk holding your plans for world domination), then leave your computer running. When the camera picks up movement, the software can start recording, email you a photo of the suspicious event, or alert the Mac running your home automation system to trigger a larger security plan. If you’re more curious than concerned, both applications can upload pictures to an FTP site and serve video to the internet, letting you view your camera’s feed from a browser. You can even log in remotely and tweak your security camera’s settings.EvoCam's surveillance system indulges your counterespionage fantasies.An iSight or webcam is fine for a small room, but Security Spy and EvoCam can monitor and control multiple video sources simultaneously. If your need to know extends to several rooms or even outdoors, you’ll want to weave a larger web of spies... er, cameras. Expand Your Horizons Stepping up from a single-camera system doesn’t have to be difficult. The same software and principles apply; you’ll just add additional cameras, video servers, or network cameras to view and control it all from a central Mac. Video servers send footage from multiple cameras to your wired or wireless network. If your cameras are digital, other Macs running surveillance software can do the job of the server. But if you’re using analog cameras like Q-See’s night-vision-capable QSC48030 ($199.99), you’ll want a dedicated server like Axis’ 240Q ($499.99) to digitize the signals so they can be seen by your Mac.Monitor from afar with Axis's 214 PTZ camera.Network cameras have built-in web servers that can join networks without the need for extra gear. A wide range of network cameras is available for every budget, from Panasonic’s webcam-style, 802.11g-enabled BL-C131A ($299.95) to the Axis 214 PTZ ($1299.00), which wouldn’t look out of place in a villain’s lair (or on a department-store ceiling). These and many other network cameras also sport lenses that can remotely pan, tilt, or zoom in to give you a better view of the action.There are endless varieties of hardware to consider, but the good news is there’s plenty of gear out there to fit your needs. Both Security Spy and EvoCam’s sites offer lists of compatible equipment that make good starting points for building a home-surveillance network. Sensor Yourself Handy as video surveillance is, it probably won’t be a good fit for every room in your house. For places where cameras are impractical, obtrusive, or just plain weird, Insteon motion sensors and magnetic door switches can keep tabs on who goes there when you’ve gone out.SmartLabs Design’s battery-powered Wireless Motion/Occupancy Sensor ($34.99) installs almost anywhere to detect motion in a 110-degree arc at a range of 40 feet. When an intruder is discovered, the Mac running your Insteon system can send you an email, turn on lights, or release the hounds. Because these motion detectors work by sensing heat, you’ll want to install yours in places without extreme fluctuations in temperature. That includes areas near heating grates, fireplaces, or large windows that get lots of sun.SmartLabs' wireless motion sensor alerts you to intruders.If motion detectors won’t do the job, guard your perimeter with SmartLabs’ TriggerLinc Wireless Open/Close Sensor ($34.99). Half the sensor attaches to a door, and the other half installs beside it on the door frame. Opening the door breaks the magnetic contact between the halves, letting your network know a would-be 007 has entered the room or found the hidden compartment in your desk. Since the TriggerLinc is compact and wireless, it installs on just about anything that opens: windows, drawers, server closets, you name it. You’ll never wonder if the babysitter has raided your liquor cabinet again. Unlock the Possibilities Security isn’t just about keeping people out. It’s also about letting the right people in, and the internet can help. The web lets you access secure information... why can’t it open your front door? For a monthly fee of $12.99, that’s just what Schlage’s LiNK Starter Kit ($299) can do. Its lever lock (also available in a dead bolt model) replaces the one already installed in your door, and ten buttons above its traditional keyhole allow entry with a programmable access code. But the lock also sports a battery-powered transmitter that talks to the included Bridge, a base station that connects to the internet and creates a wireless network for other LiNK devices, like the lamp controller that rounds out the kit.Schlange's LiNK Starter Kit remotely opens your front door.Once you’re a LiNK subscriber, you can log in to Schlage’s site and control your lock from anywhere. Need a friend to check your house while you’re away? No problem--remotely program your lock with a custom access code. The in-laws arrived while you’re stuck at work? Just open the door for ’em (or don’t, we won’t judge). You can even use the free Schlage LiNK iPhone app to manage access while you’re on the go. If you’re worried about being locked out when the internet is down, Schlage claims its locks’ batteries will last up to three years... but keeping a spare key on hand never hurt anybody. Put Professional Security a Touch Away Schlage’s LiNK is one of several commercial packages that combine home security, automation, and the iPhone to monitor and control your home without fuss. Even if you’re not the DIY type, you can bring your peace of mind into this century.Commercial security companies offer plans and products designed to work together seamlessly. Products can include motion detectors, cameras, and other sensors run from a central control panel on a wall instead of your computer. While the basic idea is the same as a home-built system--devices monitor your house and warn you in case of trouble--commercial systems can offer integrated fire detection and alerts to personnel who will contact the authorities in an emergency. Plans cost anywhere from $30 to $50 a month (plus installation fees), but their features and simplicity may be worth the expense.For a monthly fee, commercial security companies can provide more than peace of mind.Alarm.com, CPI Security Systems, and Platinum Protection each offer free applications that let iPhone users control their security systems. These apps let you arm and disarm your system, monitor camera feeds, receive notifications when sensors detect something, and view a history of recent security events. Want to know what time your teenager really got home from his friend’s house? There’s an app for that. Next Page: Just Stream It >> Entertainment: Just Stream It Your entertainment wants to be set free... and you want it to be too. These four easy setups will help you get the most out of your music, movies, and TV. Enjoy Your Music Everywhere Setting up a streaming audio system for the first time is like that day when you switched to a DVR to watch TV--you’ll wonder how you ever enjoyed your tunes without it. Once all your music’s on a home network, you can listen to your songs from any computer or standalone music-playing device. Whether you’re unwinding, waking up in the morning, or broadcasting beats throughout your house for a party, you don’t have to fuss with issues like which Mac has which MP3 or where that blasted CD got to--all your music is where you want it to be.Mac fans typically choose between three major music-streaming systems: Apple AirPort Express ($99), Sonos hardware ($349 and up), or Logitech Squeezebox devices ($149 and up). Each system has its own infrastructure, including ways to control everything from an iPhone or iPod touch. And each one has benefits and drawbacks in certain situations.Apple's AirPort Express wirelessly connects your Mac to your stereo.As expected, Apple’s AirPort Express is the best match for iTunes
 and little else. These little boxes connect to a small set of computer-style speakers or into a home stereo, so factor those costs into your budgeting. You’ll need one AirPort Express and speaker set for each room you want to play music in. An Apple TV ($229) can also do double duty, streaming music even when your TV is off.While AirPort Express scores with simplicity, there are a few drawbacks. One or more Macs will have to be left on to play music, and extra features that the other systems pack--such as alarms and online services beyond basic streaming radio--don’t work without additional software.Next up: the Logitech Squeezebox devices. They work well once set up, but they feel more complicated than the other choices. Their server software runs off one of your Macs, telling Squeezeboxes where to find your songs. Like the AirPort Express, you’ll have to have a Mac running to access home audio.Sonos Bundle--along with the Sonos app--turns your iPhone or iPod into a remote control.Unlike Apple’s option, Squeezebox devices can play back more internet choices, including Rhapsody and Napster subscriptions. And you won’t have to keep a Mac running when playing online sources--woot! Logitech also offers several Squeezebox devices, from a clock radio–style box with a built-in speaker to hardware that connects to an entertainment center. Consider the Squeezebox if you can sacrifice some of the AirPort Express’s simplicity for better internet features.Last but not least, Sonos rules high-end audio streaming because of the care put into its hardware and interfaces. And audiophiles can really hear the difference between a Sonos device and its competitors. Like Logitech, Sonos hardware comes in a few packages, some designed to attach to a home stereo, one with built-in speakers, and some that connect to speakers. Sonos devices lack an interface beyond volume/mute buttons, so you’ll typically control everything with the excellent standalone remote ($349) or iPhone app. Sonos’ internet streaming choices match the Squeezebox, but unlike either competitor, Sonos hardware can play music directly from a network hard drive, so you don’t need to keep a Mac running. But Sonos might K.O. your budget as much as it does its competitors. You can pick and choose which gear you want, but plan for roughly $500 or more per room. Yowza. Share a Single iTunes Library with Multiple Macs You’re probably thinking, wait
 iTunes works well to share libraries and stream audio over a network. And if you’re happy with that method, there’s no harm in sticking with it. But iTunes sharing doesn’t let you sync music from any system to an iPod or compile ripped songs in a single location--and again, your main Mac needs to be left on for it to work. Fortunately, you can show your music who’s boss and let all of your Macs access a consolidated iTunes library.Before you begin, consider using TuneRanger ($29.99) to sync different libraries together into one master audio source. Then transfer that combined music folder to a network server or always-on Mac that everyone can reach. Launch iTunes on one Mac while holding Option, pick Choose Library, and navigate to the library file on your network.This time, the dreaded can't-find-library box is a good thing.On the other Macs, hold Option when launching iTunes, but make a new library on the local hard drive when prompted. On those systems, change the media folder location in the advanced iTunes preferences to point to the music shared on the network. Within the advanced iTunes preferences on all Macs, be sure to enable the checkbox to copy files to the media folder when adding to the library.Now install Syncopation ($24.95) on each Mac to keep the iTunes libraries synced. Check the setup documents for details, but be sure to click the option to Import Tracks Without Copying in the Advanced preferences. Breathe Music into Old Macs and iPods If you’ve got an old Mac sitting around, you can dust it off and turn it into an audio client. Translation: You’ll be able to control it from another computer, pushing songs over your network as if it were Squeezebox or AirPort Express hardware.You’ll never have to turn on--or even connect--a display, either. Try Airfoil on your host computer ($25) with Airfoil Speakers for Mac (free) on the old-Mac-turned-audio-client. You can even duplicate results on an iPhone or iPod touch with Airfoil Speakers for Touch (free).Stream MP3s and internet radio to your stereo with Softsqueeze.Even if you have no Squeezebox hardware, you can install the basic Squeezebox Server (free) software on your main computer to stream audio. Then add Softsqueeze (free) to your old networked Mac, and the Squeezebox software will treat it just like standalone hardware from Logitech. Get Started on Streaming Video Yes, your screen-viewing time can get better. Instead of sharing videos directly between various Macs, you can streamline your consumption of movies and TV by creating a central server that holds all your video. With this method, you’ll leave the server running instead of having to keep various Macs online. You’ll be better organized too.Don’t overthink the biggest piece of hardware in this process: the server. Just repurpose nearly any Mac sitting around. Even a five-year-old laptop or iMac will do the trick. Or for bonus points, turn an old PC into a Linux server.Once you scrounge up an old computer, consider its drives. For a moderate video collection, you’ll want about 60GB of free space. If you gobble down video like Wimpy takes to cheeseburgers, plan for 120GB or even more. Also aim for a speedy drive interface; essentially, just avoid connecting over original USB, which you might find on old systems. And be sure you’ve got a DVD drive if you’re going to transfer over movies. Check out this article for tips.Your network makes up the other biggest factor for streaming success. 100BASE-T is a must; if you have any old 10BASE-T devices between the server and clients, video will stutter. Ideally, consider gigabit (1000BASE-T) devices. If you must have a wireless client or server, get at least 802.11g or 802.11n Wi-Fi, and keep 802.11b devices--the original AirPort standard--off the network. In many situations, old devices slow down the network to maintain compatibility. That said, more than 10 years after Apple introduced AirPort, we still prefer an all-wired connection because it’s more reliable and faster than most wireless networks.Once you connect everything, you’ll just store all video files on the server and play them from client Macs or other devices. Again, iTunes provides the simplest way to manage everything: Run it on both systems, and use shared libraries to stream the video.iTunes can also help you get started with video streaming.But several other software options deliver fine alternatives. Bundled with OS X, Front Row’s big interface is ideal for watching shows across the room. Plex (free) and Boxee (free) are also built around long-distance interfaces and add more internet features than Apple’s software. Check out this article for even more tips, including additional TV-connected devices that can stream shows and directions to hack an AppleTV to run Boxee. Have fun! Next Page: Top Ten Wonders of the Home Automation World >> Top Ten Wonders of the Home Automation World You've seen home automation by the book--now check out home automation off the hook. These labors of love take the good life to a level even the Jetsons never imagined. 10. Grass Has a New Enemy  We’re all about using the right tool to make a job easier, especially when that job is mowing the lawn in the summer heat. Terry Creer must agree--his remote-controlled lawn mower grafts an electric lawn mower to the wheels of a motorized wheelchair operated with a hobby-store radio controller. Swapping out the wheelchair’s original joystick for a wireless receiver keeps the mow-bot on the right path, and a fail-safe mechanism kills the motor if the controller’s signal is ever lost. Total cost for the project was less than $500. Sipping a cold drink while the lawn mower does all the work? Priceless. 9. Tweets, Shoots, and Leaves Want to make the world a greener place? The Botanicalls tweeting plant monitor lets you do just that, one plant at a time. It’s a $99.99 kit that, along with a soldering iron and a little patience, lets you build a leaf-shaped moisture sensor that you stick into a plant’s soil. Once installed in your plant’s pot, the Botanicalls runs on AC power and plugs into your router’s Ethernet port to tweet when your leafy friend is feeling a little dry. With Botanicalls, you can embrace the DIY spirit, expand your techie know-how, and keep the flora in your life happy. What could be better? 8. "Alcohol? Why, It's My Primary Function, Sir." When you sense the need to party, Jamie Price’s Bar2D2 is definitely the droid you’re looking for. Built in eight months from plywood, polycarbonate, and a used electric scooter, Bar2 works the room by remote control, serving drinks wherever he’s needed. A beer elevator brings cold bottles to any partygoer’s reach, and six onboard mixers let Bar2 make a galaxy of cocktails with the push of a button. And when the music starts, his sound-activated neon lights help make the party fully armed and operational. Maybe the Empire would have been cooler about that whole rebellion thing with a few of these guys scooting around the Death Star. 7. Dryer Sheets and Washer Tweets Getting clothes dirty is fun, but washing ’em is a drag. Who needs the stress of waiting for the spin cycle to end? That’s why we wish we had Ryan Rose’s tweeting washing machine. The limit switch installed on its timer lets a simple microcontroller know when the washer is on or off. Red LEDs added to the washer’s controls show when it’s waiting for a wash to start, and a green LED shows when a wash has begun. When the load is finished, the washer tweets an update and displays an alert on a wall-mounted screen. It’s the coolest thing to happen to cleanliness since the bubble bath! 6. The World Will Tweet a Path To Your Door  You might think a wireless doorbell would be convenient enough, but not Roo Reynolds. His tweeting doorbell transforms an everyday wireless doorbell and ringer into an internet-connected chatterbox that gets two alerts for the price of one. The doorbell works like any other, but the ringer mechanism--squeezed into an Altoids can carefully cut to expose the ringer’s wireless antenna--sports a tiny circuit board that’s attached by a USB cable to a nearby computer. When visitors drop by and ring the doorbell, the computer tweets a simultaneous alert. Now that’s a curiously refreshing idea! 5. Just the Cats, Ma'am  When the neighborhood critters started sneaking through Ioan Ghip’s cat door for free meals, he took matters into his own hands, DIY-style, to make a tweeting cat door. First he outfitted the collars of his cats Gus and Penny with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags. Then he added an RFID reader and computer-controlled servo to the cat door so it would recognize only his two cats--no squirrels, raccoons, or bears allowed. Now when the spare laptop that monitors the cat door detects the lucky kitties nearby, it opens the door and tweets an update, while a webcam snaps a shot of them coming or going. Say cheese, guys! 4. And We Thought Kernel Panics Were Scary  Who says all automated homes have to be convenient and relaxing? Not automation contractor Jeffrey Lehman. Years ago he teamed with Halloween Park, a haunted-house attraction in Strinestown, Pennsylvania, to turn the spook show into a fully interactive, living videogame. Fiendishly clever use of motion detectors and other sensors guides victi
 er, visitors through 26 rooms of creepy interactive puzzles that must be solved to escape the park
 alive! Doors creak, lights flicker, and the terrifying Dead Fred leaps out of nowhere--all in response to people’s actions. Amazing what you can do with the right gear, ingenuity, and a healthy desire to scare the crap out of folks. 3. "Incoming Romulan Ship! Fire Blu-ray!"  Maybe it’s the big screen, but doesn’t it seem natural to mix Star Trek with a home theater? Yet that’s only half of what’s so cool about Gary Reighn’s entertainment command station, The Bridge. Sure, it’s packed with a starfleet of gear: a video projector, media players, and X10-powered lights--all under remote control. But what makes The Bridge so appealing isn’t its slick final-frontier technology--it’s that it looks like a fun place to hang out, just like the original Enterprise. Gary didn’t forget the home when he set out to build himself the ultimate home entertainment center on a budget, and it sure looks like he got his money’s worth. 2. Now U Can Automate Cheezburger?  The problem: feeding Mathew Newton’s cats Frankie and Elmo while he’s away. The solution: the internet-controlled cat feeder. A cereal dispenser stores the cat food, and a motor turns a flap to drop food into a splitter that sends the kibble to each kitty’s bowl in roughly the same portions. Here’s the trick: The feeder is controlled by the port status lights in an old Ethernet switch. Remote commands from a browser activate the lights, and their signals tell the feeder when to let Frankie and Elmo get their nom-nom on. Wow. No one can say these cats don’t have a well-trained owner. 1. Push-Button Party Palace  Each Wonder uses home automation in cool, creative ways, but the sheer excess of Zack Anderson’s MIDAS--ahem
 that’s a Multifunction In-Dorm Automation System--deserves special notice. Made from a mini ITX motherboard and a battery of X10-controlled sensors, appliances, and displays, MIDAS transforms the room with the tap of a touchscreen (or even voice commands). There’s a work mode for studying and a relax mode for chilling, but when it’s time to party, swatting a big red panic button dims the lights, draws shades that serve as projection screens, and kicks out the techno jams. Sound-activated strobes, laser lights, and a fog machine do the rest. Surveillance cameras and a fingerprint-scanning security system keep everything safe while Zack’s away, but we have to wonder--why leave?  

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