Not much in the world of Apple news this week. There are some rumors floating around. First. there is talk of an update to the Mac Pro line, featuring new Intel processors at the end of March. Second, there is speculation that Apple may split the iPhone into two lines later this year, with a $99 low-end phone with only Edge network and no GPS, and a higher-resolution screen iPhone 3G for $200 or $300.
More phishing emails have been going out claiming that your MobileMe account is set to auto-renew but your credit card info is wrong. If you roll over the links in this email, you can see that they don’t go to Apple. Learn more about protecting yourself from phishing in episode 54 of MacMost Now.
If you use Screen Sharing or something else that requires that you can rely on a local machine’s IP address, you can tell your Airport basestation to assign a static IP address to a certain computer based on its MAC address. Run the Airport Utility program and look under Internet, then DHCP settings. There is a section called DHCP Reservations. You can tell your basestation to always give a specific local IP address to a specific device.
With more and more paperwork happening without the paper, your control over those PDF files becomes more important. What’s frustrating is that you can’t edit, write on or draw on PDF files like you can with paper, even using some professional PDF programs. PDFpen from SmileOnMyMac allows you to do almost anything with a PDF file, and then save it back out as a PDF file. So you can mark up or simply sign a PDF document. Very handy.
One of the most useful features of Leopard is the ability to connect from one Mac to another via Screen Sharing (VNC). You can do the same thing from your iPhone with the Mocha VNC app. While navigating a large screen on the small iPhone one restricts this to simply accomplishing a single task or two, it can be invaluable for someone who is frequently away from their computer. You can also try the free Mocha VNC Lite.
A company called Net Applications has determined that about 10% of all Web traffic is from Mac users. This could be considered a more accurate measure of computer marketshare as it rules our machines used for more mundane business tasks and focuses on those used actively. This is the highest mark so far by Macs on the Web.
In other news, Adobe has let it slip that they are working on some form of Flash for the iPhone. No real word yet on what that will be, and whether it will be for use inside the iPhone’s Safari Web browser or some sort of stand-alone viewer.
Those waiting for a new 17-inch MacBook Pro will have to wait until at least the middle of this month. Originally, the machines were to ship at the end of January.
You may know that you can select a file or folder and press Command+I to get information about it. But did you know that if you press Command+Option+I you get the same information, but in a floating palette window called the inspector? This window will stay above all other Finder windows and the information displayed will change as you select different items in the Finder.
Your computer is the perfect place to store information. But what about when that information is so important that you want to guarantee that no one can get at it? Data Guardian gives you a secure database fore information, protected by strong encryption. So now you can store your credit card numbers, passwords and other bits of important data on your Mac without worry.
Here’s a great twist on a word game. Instead of just re-arranging letters, you have to re-arrange letters and pictures to form words. Stitch’em Words keeps you thinking in many levels and is pretty clever.
The big news this week was the release of iLife 09, now selling in Apple stores. Every component of iLife has been updated, with new features like facial recognition and GPS location tags in iPhoto, precision editing and video effects in iMovie, and music lessons in GarageBand. A single copy costs $79 and a family pack costs $99.
The iPhone version of OS X got a minor update this week to 2.2.1 with bug fixes to make Safari more stable and some issues between Mail and the Camera Roll. Some rumors are flying around this week that Apple has already started testing the next generation of iPhone hardware. Other rumors point to 3G wireless connectivity in the next generation of MacBooks as well.
Apple was awarded a touch screen phone patent this week, essentially covering the basic features of the iPhone. This patent will strengthen Apple’s position in the mobile market and make it harder for other major mobile phone makers to compete by simply copying the functionality of the iPhone.
A smaller news item, but one very important to many, is the controversy over the new expensive Dual-Link DVI cable that Apple started selling. It is the only way to connect a new MacBook to a 30-inch monitor, which is a common setup for MacBook Pro users who have been able to do it directly from the MacBook Pro to the monitor in previous versions of the MacBook Pro. The $99 cable was delayed several months, and not it appears to have flaws that make it unusable for many. Apple released a video driver update that may fix the problem, but they also now claim that the connector is only for Apple 30-inch displays and not others, changing the product description that was originally in place.
You can easily build your Address Book by just using Shift+Command+Y when reading your mail. This is the keyboard shortcut for Message, Add Sender To Address Book. If you already have that person in your address book, it will allow you to add the email address to their entry if it isn’t there already.
