Posts By: Gary Rosenzweig

It is important to keep your third-party non-Apple applications updated so they are stable and you have the latest features. Often you have to manually check your version against the version at the Web site and carefully follow update instructions.

So rumors are growing stronger that Apple will come out with a tablet product later this year or next. A lot of people seem to think it will be a large-screen iPod Touch.
In a way, this makes sense. With the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store a huge success, Apple can come out with an iPod Touch that takes advantage of all of that third-party software and the whole iPhone OS with its Web browser, Mail and other apps.
What a cool device that would be. Or would it?
For instance, I’m not sure how I would such an “iPod Tablet” myself. Would it come in handy at the office? Not with my desktop Mac, or even my MacBook Pro around. Why would I setting for an iPhone OS experience when I could have a full Mac experience.
At home, I use either the MacBook Pro for bits of work, or my iPhone for something quick. The only advantage of the iPhone is that it is on my person, which gives it an advantage when the MacBook Pro is somewhere else in the house. An iPod Tablet would suffer that same drawback since it won’t fit in my pocket.
So what about when I step out of the office? Well, the iPod Tablet probably won’t come with me. I need my iPhone, because it is a phone. I can check email, check news, tweet, etc., with it. It is small enough to be in my pocket all the time. The Tablet just won’t be there when I need it.
How about on long trips — overnight excursions to conferences or on vacation? Well, for that the Tablet probably won’t be enough. I’d need to take my MacBook Pro. And my iPhone for communication. So why do I need a Tablet?
So a Tablet won’t be for someone like me. It is more likely that it will be for someone who doesn’t use either an iPhone or MacBook. I just can’t see that being a very big market.
So how could Apple make it better? Make it a real Mac. If it runs Snow Leopard, and not the iPhone OS, then it can be a successor to the MacBook Air and a competitor to the NetBooks. Make it touch screen, sure, but also make sure Bluetooth and USB keyboards and mice work with it so you can use it for real work with real apps. For that, I would ditch my MacBook.
I hope they go that route, iPhone apps are great, but they are more for communication, organization and entertainment. To compete with NetBooks, a Mac Tablet would need to run applications, not apps.

Gary Rosenzweig talks about the software, hardware and Internet services he uses to produce and distribute the MacMost Now video podcast. See the full post at https://macmost.com for links.

Learn the ins-and-outs of titles in iMovie 09, which include title overlays, in-between clip titles, lower thirds, and more.

This was a slow Apple news week for both hard news and rumors. Predictably, the new 13-inch MacBook pros are selling well according to reports. The machine has a low price but includes high-end features.
There is a new version of Safari, 4.0.2, this week, which addresses security issues. At the same time, we are hearing rumors that Apple is already working on version 3.1 of the iPhone OS, with possible improvements to the copy and paste feature.

If you are ever reading a blog post and see a word you don’t recognize, click Ctrl+Click or right click on the word and you’ll get a contextual menu. You can choose to quickly look that word up in Mac OS X’s dictionary, or start a Google search with that word.

Been using the Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock beauty to quickly dock 1TB hard drives and swap them out almost like floppies. It just works well and seems to be priced well below a lot of other similar devices.

So sliding puzzle games are easy. Child’s play, really. But what if the image wasn’t just an image? What if it was a ball moving around as you tilt your iPhone? You’d need to figure out which pieces are supposed to go where before you starting putting them into place. Behold: Bedeviled.

Spaces creates virtual displays that you can switch between even though you only have one physical screen. You can place different windows and applications in different Spaces to extend the amount of desktop space you have to work.

Snow Leopard will arrive in September. Here's what you need to know about the new Mac OS X.

In addition to screen capture keyboard shortcuts built into Mac OS X, you can also use the Grab utility to capture the screen. This enables you to capture windows and perform timed screen captures as well.

This week’s news seems to be dominated by little problems with the iPhone 3GS. First, it seems to be out-of-stock in a lot of places, and orders from AT&T are taking more than a week to fill. Second, when people do get their iPhones, they are still reporting long delays in activation. Third, there is an overheating problem reported by many that has the phones getting so hot that the white-colored ones are already turning yellow.
But all the news isn’t bad. AT&T seems to be seeing record sales of the new iPhone and most users reporting in to MacMost love their iPhone 3GS, even while having to pay extra for the unsubsidized price.
Back at Apple, reports are that Steve Jobs is back at work, at least for several days per week. The news broke last week that Jobs actually had a liver transplant during his absence, and the procedure went well. Not much fanfare was given to Jobs’ return, but his return has been official acknowledged by Apple.

This odd game is like tower defense combined with whack-a-mole. In Knights Onrush you defend your castle by picking up and flicking the attackers with your finger. Oh, and you can sacrifice some of them to dragons, or detonate the little bombs they carry with them. Lots of fun!

When taking an international plane flight recently, I almost bought an airplane power adapter to keep my iPhone and iPod charged. Good thing I didn’t, as the plane didn’t have the outlet anyway. I found that it was cheaper and more practical to buy the Kensington Battery Pack and Charger which allows me to carry around a full charge and more for just about any USB device. It even comes with a wall-power to USB adapter as the charger, which doubles as an extra iPhone wall charger. I’ll get a lot more use out of this device on long trips or just long days away from the office.

If more than one person uses your Mac, and you have a user set up for each person, then you should enable Fast User Switching to allow you to switch between accounts without logging off and logging on each time. Go to System Preferences, Accounts and then Login Options. Turn onEnable fast user switching. Now you can switch between users using a pull-down menu on the right side of the menu bar.

You can change your system alert sound, even using a custom one that you create.

Learn all of the different ways you can edit clips in iMovie 09. You can select a portion of the clip, trim the ends, split a clip, use the clip trimmer and the precision editor.

iWork 09's spreadsheet program Numbers isn't like the old-fashioned spreadsheet programs you may be used to. You can create small tables and design a sheet with each table having its own numbers and formulas and also using numbers from other tables.

Following last week’s release of the iPhone OS 3.0, the new iPhone 3GS hardware became available in Apple Stores and elsewhere in the U.S. and several other counties. More then one million new iPhones were reported to have been solid in the first week.
The new iPhone is faster and has a better camera than the old one, but many customers in the U.S. won’t be eligible for a partially discounted upgrade until July and a full discount until 2010.
Some people who bough the new iPhone in the U.S. found themselves unable to use it for hours because of glitches in AT&T’s system needed to activate the new phones. Similar problems plagued the initial iPhone launch in 2007, and the launch of the 3G in 2008.
Outside of the new iPhone, the other big Apple news is that Steve Jobs, on medical leave from Apple since December, is reported to have undergone a liver transplant two months ago. These same reports indicate that it went well and that he has been seen at work. Rumor has it that he may return as CEO of Apple soon, though not with a full schedule.

If you need to plug a microphone into your Mac, you’ll need a USB audio adapter. The line-in on your Mac won’t handle most mics. The Griffin iMic USB Audio Interface is small, inexpensive, and gets the job done. For anyone who records from a mic this product, or one like it, is a must-have.