Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

“I’m concerned about my iPhone keeping track of every place I go.”
“Because it is an invasion of privacy?”
“No, because I’m afraid someone will find out how boring I am.”

Update: This technique also now works with the iPhone 4S.
Update: See episode 702 for a new method of doing this.
Learn how I capture the iPad 2's screen to use in presentations and video podcasts. You must use the iPad 2 plus the HDMi adapter. Then bring the HDMI in to your Mac or recording device using special hardware and software.

You can assign rules to keyboard shortcuts with the Mail extension Mail-Act On. This makes it easy to send messages to folders without your hands leaving the keyboard. You can also assign rules to outgoing messages and alter how Mail sets the read status of messages.

Ever wanted to know what goes into creating iPhone cases? Learn how iPhone and iPad cases are designed and tested at OtterBox, a maker of rugged protective cases. See interviews with designers and technicians and look at some of the equipment they use.

Another fantastic quarterly report from Apple was issued yesterday. Here are some of the more interesting points:

Apple reported a profit of $5.99 billion on revenue of $24.67 billion.

In the same quarter last year, those numbers were only $3.07 billion and $13.50 billion.

This was the best non-holiday quarter in Apple’s history, but the numbers almost topped the last holiday quarter to be the best overall.

About 3.76 million Macs were sold, a 28 percent increase over last year. Strong sales of the new MacBook Pros and MacBook Air.

About 18.65 million iPhones were sold, a 113 percent increase from last year, probably due to Verizon iPhone sales.

You can click on the wi-fi icon in the menu bar to see which wifi network you are connected to and other networks near you. But if you hold down the option key and then click, you can see other information as well, like the RSSI (signal strength), the more important Transmit Rate, and the channel you are using. Move the cursor to the other networks listed and you can see some of that information for each one. RSSI numbers, by the way, are measured backwards, with around -50 being excellent and -100 poor. But Transmit Rate is a better measurement of the connection.

One of the most anticipated game releases of 2011 arrived this week. Portal 2 is the thinking-man’s first person shooter. If you played the original, then you don’t need to be convinced that this is one of the best games of all time. If you haven’t played the original, then you may want to try that first, as playing Portal 2 first would spoil some of the fun of discovery. You can get both from the Mac Steam application.
In both games you solve levels by jumping through portals, moving boxes, making clever jumps and throwing switches. And at the end of the original Portal, you get cake. Maybe.

You’ve probably heard of, or played, this game before. It has been around for the Wii, Windows and Mac since 2008. You build structures out of goo to reach a goal. Very inventive and fun. The iPad version of World of Goo has been around for a few months, and now there is an iPhone version as well.

In the end Tom was thankful that Apple didn’t make the iPad’s screen less reflective.

Many new Mac users have some common misconceptions about their Macs and how they work. See if you are operating under any incorrect assumptions. Add to the list of common misconceptions below.

You can have Pages automatically create a table of contents based on the styles you have assigned to paragraphs in your text. With a little more work you can also have the table of contents automatically insert numbers and subchapters.

With the most recent iOS on your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch you can use AirPrint to print a document from some apps to some printers. Find out which printers are compatible and how the printing process works.

Spring is here and so is baseball. If you are looking for some action on your iPhone, check out Flick Baseball Pro. While it has a few bugs here and there, it is a pretty deep game that does just enough to put you in the action, while not making the interface overly complex. A lot of fun to play.

A long-anticipated update to Apple’s video editing application is close to release. The new Final Cut Pro X will come out in June. It is a complete rewrite of the software to take advantage of multiple processor cores for better performance.
In addition, some new features including editing while importing, resolution independent playback and scalable rendering. It will support resolutions up to the very high quality 4K format. It will also recognize faces in shots allowing for a variety of localized effects.

“My new stock prediction algorithm takes into account futures markets, analyst reports, word currencies and Steve Jobs’ complexion.”

If you use a MacBook and travel often, you may notice that your computer sticks to the time back at home. However, if you go into System Preferences, Date & Time, Time Zone there is an option to “Set time zone automatically using current location.” Turn this on and your MacBook’s time will adjust when you connect to a network in another time zone.

Learn how to find information on the web by bypassing search engines and going right to information-rich sites like WIkipedia, IMDB, AllMusic and Twitter. You can also use map searches and site-specific searches to find information.

You can record multiple microphones each into its own track in GarageBand. First you must set up an aggregate device using the Audio MIDI Setup utility. Then you need to enable multitrack recording in GarageBand and give each track a channel from the aggregate device. To get all microphones working well it takes some trial and error.

If you must browse the web using your MacBook, iPad or iPhone on a public wifi network, you will want to use https whenever possible. Many major sites allow you to force https using an account setting.

By default Mac OS X will hide filename extensions. But these can be useful. To reveal them, go to Finder Preferences, Advanced and look for “Show all filename extensions.” Now you should see the full filename for each file. This is also where you can turn off the warning you get when changing the file extension.