Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

A look at what Apple may have in store for us in 2011. The Mac App Store will launch in January, Lion in the Summer, and rumors of a new iPad and iPhone should make 2011 another interesting year.

While 2010 was another record year for Apple in many ways, the company may have plans for 2011 to grow even larger. Apple news for the last week of any year is hard to find, but rumors always seem to appear to fill the void.
We’re about to enter into the fourth year of iPhone-on-Verizon rumors. This week we hear that Apple projects an unusually high number of iPhone shipments in the first quarter, which leads many to believe they must be launching on Verizon. There is even a specific rumor of a February 14 announcement date.
The other side to those rumors is that the increased numbers could simply be due to new sales initiatives in other countries like China. A more plausible rumor is that the next version of the iPad will have a model compatible with Verizon’s network. This makes sense since Verizon already sells iPads, and AT&T has no exclusivity over the iPad.
Rumors of the iPad 2 are also floating, including a March or April release date. The new version may include a front-facing camera, a USB port, wide-range speakers and a iPod Touch-like design according to some.
What is certain is that one week from today the Mac App Store launches, ushering in a new era for Mac software. This will be a game changer for Mac developers who may have to get into the store or face difficulties being found by Mac users.

Yep, that’s a Mac 128K from 1984. Ever year he decides to upgrade, then he hears a rumor of a new Mac coming out soon and he decides to wait.

Here’s another free game from CleverMedia (MacMost’s parent). Just Mah Jongg Solitaire comes from a long history of Mah Jongg tile games starting with Nile Tiles in 1999. You must find matching tiles and try to clear the board. This iPhone version is free, and contains more than 100 layouts, 5 tile sets and several backgrounds.

There are three sets of keyboard shortcuts for moving between tabs in Safari. You can use Command+Shift and the left and right arrows. You can also use Command+Shift and the square bracket keys. In addition, you can use Control+Tab to cycle forward and Control+Shift+Tab to cycle backward.

The Safari AutoFill feature allows you to quickly fill in web forms using data stored in your Address Book contact and from information you have filled out in web forms before. You can see what information is stored by AutoFill in Safari preferences. You can find the passwords used by AutoFill in the OS X Keychain, and restrict access to those passwords.

You can use the application Text Expander and other programs like it. You assign shortcuts to longer pieces of text, so that when you type a few characters, those characters are replaced with the longer piece of text. It works in any Mac program. ;

Take a look back at 2010 Apple news. The year saw record financial quarters, sales growth, the launch of the iPad and iPhone 4 as well as controversy around App Store policies and the iPhone 4's antenna.

Apple shook the Mac software development world this week by announcing that the birth of the Mac App Store also means the death of the downloads section of the Apple web site. In the Windows world developers often need to list their software at dozens or even hundreds of different web sites to be found. But in the Mac world being listed on the Apple downloads section was usually enough. Developers who decide not to move their applications to the Mac App store will now have to look for other ways to be discovered.
While the Mac App Store is destined to become the main way users find and download software, many applications will not be available there because they won’t be able to adhere to the rules. For instance, utilities that need to access system functions to work won’t be allowed. This leaves out many popular applications. Other developers may not wish to give Apple 30 percent of the sale price.
The Mac App Store will launch on January 6. There are rumors that a new version of iWork will be available for download in the store on launch day or soon thereafter.
Apple engineers continued to issue updates this week, including an update to iPhoto that adds back the ability to attach a photo to an email without a complex background.
Sales of the new Apple TV appear to be strong according to Apple as it may top one million units this year. They report that users are renting 150,000 movies and 400,000 TV shows per day.

The iPad seems to be the perfect device for college students. What it has been lacking, though, is the perfect note-taking app. But finally the best Mac application for taking notes has come to the iPad. With Circus Ponies NoteBook for iPad you can write, draw, record audio and organize notes. I wish they had this when I was in school. But I can still get some use out of it today taking notes in meetings and brainstorming on my own.

If you have a large collection of videos and want an easy way to preview them, try putting them in a folder and setting the folder to icon view. Then choose View, Show View Options and set the icon size to 64×64 or higher. Now you get a play button at the center of each icon and can play the video inside the icon. You can also do this in Cover Flow view, which gives you a list at the bottom and playable cover flow icons at the top.

I’ve been hearing about this scanner for years. I finally decided to go paperless in my office, which means scanning a ton of documents. So I paid the price and bought the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M. Worth every penny. You can feed this thing tons of pages and it eats them up and spits them out as PDF files. The Mac software works great too. This thing looks small and fragile, but it acts big and tough.

I think I believed you more when you were tracking big foot and UFOs.

With many households now using more iOS devices than computers, it is important to be able to sync multiple devices to one Mac. This can be done using one of three main methods.

You can import video from video DVDs using Handbrake. This free application will read DVDs and convert the video to formats that you can use on your Mac, iPhone, iPod or Apple TV. You can also edit converted videos in iMovie.

While the set of iMovie 11 titles is more limiting than most video editing tools, you can use some simple tricks to place and style titles. Some of the title options allow you to position the text by simply inserting lines and changing font properties.

The Mac version of the App Store will launch on January 6 according to an Apple press release today. The Mac App Store will operate like the iOS App Store, bringing an easy, centralized way to find, purchase and download applications for the Mac.
According to the release, it will feature categories just like the iOS store, plus featured apps, best selling lists, and so on. Developers will get 70 percent of the revenue from any sale, with Apple keeping the rest to pay for hosting and credit card fees.
Not all applications will find their way into the App Store. Restrictions mean that many utility applications that alter how your Mac works will be not be allowed in the store. These utilities will remain as they are now, sold by the developers directly or through other channels. Some developers may choose to remain independent of the store where they can get more than 70 percent of the sale price and not have to submit applications to Apple for approval. The Mac App Store will also feature free apps.

Been enjoying StarCraft II on the Mac. It runs smoothly on both my Mac Pro, and my little 13-inch MacBook Pro. Nice graphics, good gameplay, lots to do. It is a real-time strategy game heavy on the sci-fi.

Here’s another one of our own free apps. With the Snowman Construction Kit you can build your own snowman combining various parts to make a picture. When you are done, you can save it to your camera roll and send to friends or upload to sites. It is based on the web version which we first created back in 1997 and have updated many times since.

When you press Command+F to search in the Finder, the search starts with a default search location. It can either be the entire Mac, the current folder, or the last place you performed a search. To set this preference, go to the Finder and choose Finder, Preferences, then Advanced. Look for the “When performing a search” setting.