Apple issued updates for iPhoto and Apple TV 2 this week. Both updates fixed some bugs. In iPhoto, merged events will no longer split up again when synced to an iPhone. On the Apple TV, 2 a variety of video and audio issues were addressed.
Apple and two app makers have been hit with a lawsuit over privacy. The suit claims that the unique phone ID is being used to track individuals and serve advertisements. It appears that those two app makers were specifically targeted only because they were mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article about user tracking.
Apple has reportedly decided this week to not use its advertising network, iAd, on apps meant for kids. A message to one developer said this was at the request of advertisers. This may leave some app creators without a source of revenue for apps they have spent time and money developing.
Microsoft has made a deal to buy Internet telephone company Skype from eBay. This alarmed many Mac and iOS users, fearing that they may lose support. But Microsoft issued a statement saying they plan to continue to support non-Microsoft platforms.
If you hold down the Option key and press the brightness keys (F1 and F2) it will bring up the System Preferences, Displays pane. You may need to hold down the “fn” key too, depending on your keyboard settings. You can also get the Expose & Spaces pane with Option+F3, and the Sound pane with the two volume keys (F11 and F12). Older keyboards will work slightly differently, so experiment.
Its fun to have a lot of your music on your iPhone and to be able to jump from song to song at a party, in the car or wherever. But when you want to do something better than cutting off one song to go to another, look into some of the cheap live mixing apps like djay. With this you can fade one song into another, match beats, play with loops and scratching, and so on. Lots of fun with your iPod music library. There’s even an automatic mode that is a better way to listen to your playlists and shuffle than the built-in iPod app.
“My new toaster has an App Store. For 99 cents I can get an app that burns a picture of Elvis into the toast. For $2.99 it will tweet when the toast is done.”
