Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

We’re starting the annual quiet period for Apple news as Apple will not typically release new products or make announcements during the holiday shopping season.
Apple released minor updates this week to Keynote on the Mac and iBooks and Cards on iOS. iBooks new features includes new fonts and a nighttime reading theme.

An art classroom that serves 600 students in Defuniak Springs, Florida, some of whom have physical disabilities, would like to get an iPad 2. They will be able to use the Internet and art apps. Join MacMost in supporting this project.

“We have to move to a new cloud. This one is now filled with peoples’ crappy iTunes music collections.”

Ever wanted to design your own platform game levels? With the MakeQuest iPad app, you can. You drag building blocks and create rooms. Rooms link together to make a game. Design it any way you want. Add objects, treasure, weapons and monsters. Use signs to create a narrative. This is an interesting “experiment” from CleverMedia, MacMost’s parent company.

In Lion you can create a custom message that appears with the login prompt. Go to System Preferences, Security & Privacy, General and then turn on “Show a message when the screen is locked.” If you have a portable Mac, why not add a message there with your contact info? A good samaritan who finds a lost laptop may return it.

You can use QuickTime Player in Lion to capture a single frame of video and save it to an image file. By using the Edit, Copy command you can grab the current frame, and then paste it into Photoshop or Preview. You can also use this technique to quickly grab a still image when using iMovie.

If you have an Airport Extreme or a Time Capsule you can create a separate guest network. This appears as a different wi-fi network than your main one. Users of the guest network cannot see the computers or other devices on the main network. Setting one up in advance is a good idea so you can grant visitors access to your Internet connection without worry.

While iMovie doesn't really have any audio effects, its sibling app GarageBand allows you to take video clips, or an exported iMovie video and apply all sorts of effects. You can change voices, echo, distort, and so on. You can apply the change to the whole video, or only a portion. You can use the same techniques in regular audio projects.

Here’s a fast-moving platform game that just became universal for the iPhone and iPad. In League of Evil has retro art and gameplay but still manages to seem fresh. You run, jump, climb and punch your way through level after level.

If you don’t use certain features of iTunes, like Ping, Genius or streaming Radio, you can remove them from the left sidebar. Go to iTunes, Preferences and click on the General tab. Now you can uncheck the items from the left sidebar that you don’t need.

A science class at Curtis Creek Elementary School in Sonora, California needs a MacBook for journaling and research. Join MacMost in supporting this project.

Apple released Safari 5.1.2 on Tuesday, improving stability and adding new functionality. The update fixes a bug that caused white flashes experienced by many users. It also uses less memory. A new feature is the ability to display PDF documents inside of web pages. You can get the new version through Software Update in Lion and Snow Leopard. Or, you can download it at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1070.
Today Apple is observing World AIDS Day by promoting RED products in Apple Stores. Some of the revenue from these products, such as the red cover for the iPad, go to The Global Fund To Fight AIDS. You can also buy these in the online Apple Store.

“Captain Earl E. A. Dopter became the envy of his crew when he was the first to get the new iPatch.”

Uninstalling apps is easy in Mac OS X Lion. If you have purchased an app in the Mac App Store, you can use Launchpad to quickly remove them. Otherwise, you can still use the basic techniques of simply dragging an application to the trash, or running its uninstaller program.

Preference files store your preferences and data for each application. Find out where they are and what they look like. In some cases you may want to delete or restore an old copy of a preference file.

You can buy gifts in iTunes for your friends and family. You can gift songs, albums and iOS apps. They would get a code and use that to purchase the specific item in iTunes. You can also buy them Apple and iTunes gift cards. You can send them via email, or order a physical one with a special message.

A recent tradition at Apple stores has been to hold modest sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Tomorrow may prove to be slightly more than that, with some Apple Stores opening as early as midnight, and several products having decent sale prices.
To check to see when your local Apple Store will be opening, go to Apple’s retail section and look up your store. A special list of holiday hours should appear on that store’s page.
Reports of sale prices include as much as $101 dollars off MacBook Pros and the Air, and also up to $61 off iPads.

A school in New York is looking to get one iPad to share between six classes of students with autism. Many of the students can benefit from computers, but cannot use a mouse. The teacher already has apps in mind that could be used on this iPad Join MacMost in supporting this project.

“You’ve heard of turducken? Well this is a MacPadTV. I’m streaming a video
from my Mac to my iPad and then on to the Apple TV with AirPlay.”

Here’s another free game from MacMost’s parent. Mah Jongg Solitaire is a very full-featured tile matching game. You can choose from many tile sets, backgrounds and layouts. It is a free ad-supported game, but similar to other games that you would need to pay for.