Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Cubemen is an interesting cross between a tower defense game and real-time strategy. With different levels and scenarios you can deploy the same units as your enemy for a more balanced battle. There is an iPad version and a Mac version.

“Man, I had a nasty Flashback this morning.”
“LSD?”
“No, Mac trojan.”

Multicam editing can be used to combine multiple angles of the same shot. But it can also be simply used to combine a video show with separate audio. You can record video from one device and audio from another and easily combine the two in Final Cut Pro.

In addition to some standard shapes, you can create your own custom shapes in Pages using a series of points. These custom shapes can be used to wrap text around images in creative ways.

Learn how to arrange your app icons on the Home screen of your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. You can also put apps in app folders or along the bottom of your screen. You can launch hard-to-locate apps from the search screen instead of finding the app's icon.

The U.S. Department of Justice will take Apple and publishers to court over their pricing system for ebooks. Apple and the publishers use the agency model in which the publishers set the prices for the books and the retailers, like Apple and Amazon, cannot sell below those prices. The alternative would be wholesale pricing, which lets the retailers sell the books at any price they wish. The DOJ sees the agency model as illegal price fixing. But there is much debate about which model is better for consumers, retailers and publishers.
The threat of the Flashback trojan malware is waning as more people update their Macs and become aware of the threat and how to easily thwart it. Apple is reportedly attempting to take legal action against those responsible, and is also working on a removal tool according to this support note.

When you are visiting a web page in Safari, you can jump up to the subdirectory or web site home page by Command+clicking the title bar. Then select the web page to jump to.

“Ever since the iPad got a retina display, my wife insists on having a model take my place in photos.”

With 162 games in a baseball season it is hard to catch them all in the stands or on TV. For those times baseball fans need to be away from the action the MLB.com At Bat is the app of all apps. You’ll get up-to-the-pitch scores and play-by-play, stats and video highlights while the game is in progress. This free app asks you for a serious $15/season in-app purchase to get all of the features, but that’s less than the price of a 3rd-deck right field ticket.

Spring-loaded folders are a part of OS X that many people may not know about or use often. You can drag and drop files onto folders and the folders will open for you to continue to place the file in the place you want. This lets you drag items in the Finder without first needing to set up a destination.

With the recent increased threat from the Flashback trojan malware, a new spotlight is shining on Mac anti-malware security. Flashback usually appears in as a downloadable trojan, requiring the user to download, run and give permission to install. But for a few days there was a Java exploit that installed it on some Macs without requiring permission. Apple then issued a patch to prevent that.
Some believe that you should use 3rd-party security software as protection. But that software needs updates to remain effective as well. MacMost has always taught that keeping updated, informed and watching what you download is all that is required for protection.
What do you think? Do you use third-part software for protection? Has the recent issue changed your mind one way or the other?

Learn how to compress an image to create a small file for uploading to a web site or sending via email. You can use iPhoto's export function for this. If the image is not in your iPhoto library, then you can also use Preview to create a compressed version without buying any new software.

Check out this useful Dictionary app for the iPhone and iPad. You can look up words, hear pronunciations, and even look up words by speaking them. There is also a thesaurus.

More regional U.S. wireless carriers have announced this week the availability of the iPhone. nTelos Wireless in Virginia, Appalachian Wireless in Kentucky, Cellcom in Wisconsin and Alaska Communications have announced they are getting the iPhone. Looks like April 20 is the start date for all of those networks.
The annoying Flashback trojan, a rare piece of malware that can infect Macs, became a little more dangerous for a short time this week when it appeared as part of a Java exploit. Formerly the trojan only appeared in obviously untrustworthy downloads on sketchy web sites. This exploit allowed Macs to become infected be simply visiting a malicious web site — though no web sites were mentioned in any of the reports. Apple responded immediately this week with a Java patch you can get by simply running Software Update. Another trojan surfaced last week that relied on the user having an older version of Microsoft Word and downloading a suspicious file. As always, of the easiest and most effective ways to protect yourself against malware is to keep your Mac and all of your software updated. Check out MacMost’s Mac Virus and Malware Information Center.

When the iPad first came out I couldn’t help thinking that the old Mac game Spaceward Ho! would be a great app for it. And here it is: Spaceward Ho! for the iPad. The is just as fun and addictive as always. The iPad version seems a bit rushed, with lots of interface glitches. But nothing to get in the way of playing the game, and I’m sure future updates will add some polish. This is a great space strategy game with just enough controls to make it interesting, but not so much that it bogs down gameplay.

“I got a new iPad. That means my husband gets my old iPad 2. Our oldest child then gets his old iPad 1. And it trickles down eventually to our goldfish who gets an original iPod shuffle.”

You can use the volume controls on your keyboard to change the volume in large steps. You may need to hold down the FN key to do this, depending on your keyboard settings. But you can also hold down the Shift and Option keys and then the volume adjustments happen in much finer steps.

You can use the page layout functionality in Pages to frame your photos in various ways using borders, frames, shapes and reflections. You can print these framed photos, or export them as PDF files.

Recently, Apple’s standard one year warranty has come under scrutiny as the European Union requires two years. In the U.S. you get a one year warranty which you can extend to three years with the purchase of AppleCare, which also gives other benefits in addition to extending the warranty. You can read about AppleCare at Apple’s site. On the one hand, making AppleCare a separate purchase keeps the price of Apple hardware lower for those who don’t want AppleCare. On the other hand, some feel that Apple’s warranties should be longer than one year.
What do you think? How does Apple’s standard warranty compare to warranties you get on other products you have purchased? How does their AppleCare program compare to other extended warranties?

TypeStyler is an old Mac graphics tool that has reappeared in the new Mac App Store. You can use it to create beautiful text complete with textures, 3D effects, curves and other elements. It is a handy tool if you need to create titles for projects.