Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

Sure, there are plenty of app games that show you how to kill zombies. But what about one that gives you the task of keeping one alive. Or, undead. Or whatever zombies are. In My Pet Zombie you awaken your zombie and feed him. You can also dress him and make him dance. There are even mini games.

All Apple has said about the Release of Lion, Mac OS X 10.7, is that it will happen this month. But many rumors pin the date as early as today. Others say next week.
In addition to the new OS, there are rumors of new Macs. Most rumor sites agree that there will be new MacBook Air models soon with i3 or i5 processors and Thunderbolt ports. Some rumors also claim new Mac minis, new low-end MacBooks and new Mac Pros.
It is likely that if Apple is planning to release new Macs soon that they would wait for Lion so that the new hardware comes with Lion installed. Otherwise, buyers would need to perform a major system update just days after purchase. Apple has its quarterly earnings report due out on Tuesday and has sometimes released new Macs shortly after such reports.

“I want to get iOS 5 for my iPhone 3Gs but I’ll upgrade to an iPhone 5 if it has 4G.”
“5, 3, 5, 4 what? Why can’t Apple use cute kitty names instead of numbers for the iPhone too?”

If you’ve got a bunch of tabs open in Safari and you want to quickly switch between them, use Control+Tab. This allows you to cycle through the tabs. You can also use Command+Shift+Left Arrow or Right Arrow, but it doesn’t work if you have a text field selected. Control+Tab seems to always work.

Sometimes computer users stress too much about disk usage. They worry when they see varying amount of free and used space and their computers and when they notice those numbers change even though they haven't done anything. Find out what Mac OS X does that uses disk space on a regular basis.

Apple users can sometimes stress about when is the best time to by a new Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod. Rumors are always around that a new device is on the way. But putting off a purchase isn't always that important. Learn to research the validity of rumors and don't stress about getting your new Apple hardware at the exact right time.

In this special episode, learn to now stress about your MacBook or iOS device battery. It may not be worth it to expend a lot of time and stress to extend your battery's life by only a little bit.

Mac OS X 10.7, AKA Lion, should be released this month. And according to reports Apple is right on schedule. They released a gold master update of Lion to developers on Friday. Such a release usually signals the end of testing.
Once Lion has been released, all new Macs will feature the OS pre-installed. The update will be available in the Mac App Store to Snow Leopard users at the same time. It is expected to be a 4 GB download. Apple has said that users can bring their Macs into Apple Stores and use the wifi there to download the update if their home connection is too slow.
As of today, Verizon is no longer offering unlimited data plans for the iPhone. They warned at the launch of the Verizon iPhone that unlimited plans were only going to be offered temporarily. They offer 2 GB, 5 GB and 10 GB per month data plans, with overage costs of $10 per GB. Presumably anyone currently with an unlimited plan can continue with that plan. Check your Verizon account or their sales site for details and pricing. AT&T also started with unlimited data plans but now only offers similar tiered plans.

If you take a bunch of pictures in one spot, but only some of them get geo-tagged, you can copy and paste the location from one photo to another. Simply select the photo and use Edit, Copy or Command+C like you were copying the whole photo. Then select the other photo and select Edit, Paste Location to paste just the location of the first photo into the second. You can continue to paste the location to more photos.

Another web-based game makes its way to the iPhone and seems like it must have been originally meant for it. Shift!2 is gamer’s puzzle game. You must move your character through seemingly impossible situations that require you to shift spaces — walls become open space and open space become walls. Its disorienting and pleasing at the same time.

“Roger has been impossible to deal with since Apple decided to use his picture in the OS X Lion icon.”

Take a look at four extensions that you might find useful. You can discover web page-specific keyboard shortcuts. You can select and jump to links using only your keyboard. You can lock tabs. You can make it easier to generate shortened URLS.

Learn how to look up the serial number for your Mac, and then use that number to get the official model number for your Mac. You must have that model number to purchase memory upgrades. Find out about the Tech Specs section of the Apple web site where you can learn more about your Mac and other Apple devices.

Take a look at four free Safari extensions that you may find useful. You can add a customizable toolbar, view multiple pages in one long page instead, print specific areas of a page and see your incoming Gmail at the top of the Safari window.

A major update for Snow Leopard was released this week that sets up the Mac App Store for the Lion upgrade expected in July. It also fixes many security issues and bugs. You can get the update by running Software Update on any Mac with Snow Leopard. You can read details about the update at Apple’s site.
The Thunderbolt connectors on new MacBook Pros and iMacs became useful this week with the release of the first RAID disk drive system and an official Apple Thunderbolt cable.

I’ve been using an iPhone for years now and I still can’t type text messages very quickly on the screen. But with HeyTell I don’t have it. I can speak messages and send them to someone else who also has HeyTell. Then they can just hear my voice. If we both have the app open, it works like a walkie-talkie. You can even send your location and it works over 3G, so it is like walkie-talkies with unlimited range.

If you find something in your System Preferences, Accounts, Login Items list that you can’t identify, then Control+Click on it. Select “Reveal in Finder” and you will be shown the program’s location. Often these items are utility applications that are found inside the package of a larger applications. For instance, iTunes Helper is inside the iTunes application. Doing this will often help you figure out what a Login Item is.

“Kodiak, Cheeta, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion.”
Apple Fanboys don’t count sheep.

There are many ways to edit song information in iTunes that will help you sort your music. You can group songs together in an album using the Album Artist field. You can also set track numbers and use alternative song, album and artist information just for sorting.

If you have produced a video in iMovie and the file size is too large, you can use a free program called MPEG Streamclip to compress it with little loss of quality. The key is to use .mp4 with h264 compression and then adjust the bit rate to get the right trade-off of file size versus quality.