You don’t need to memorize where each and every system preference is located. Just go to the system preferences and “show all” if you are not already at that view. Then type something into the search box at the upper left. Preference icons will highlight that have an item that matches your search term. Suggestions will also appear below the search box. For instance, type “corners” to find the hot corners setting.
Evernote is a note taking application and organizational tool for the Mac and PC. The Evernote iPhone app is a free download that will autmatically sync your notes from your Mac to your iPhone. So you can add some notes on your Mac and then find them later on your iPhone. You can also add notes on your iPhone and have them sync the other way. This includes handy photo and audio notes. The basic service and software is free, with a premium version for heavy users.
Audacity is a free, open source audio editor. It is simple, yet has a lot of depth. It is great for times where GarageBand is overkill for a simple recording task. And it concentrates on just audio recording and editing, which can make it more powerful than GarageBand for that. You can edit with precision, apply filters and effetcs, and export in a variety of formats. Even if recording or editing audio is a rare task for you, or you already own another sound editing application, you should download the free Audacity application and add it to your arsenal of programs.
Buy an iPhone at Walmart, save $2!
$2? What’s the big deal? Why is everyone so excited about the iPhone being at Walmart?
After all, it has been available at 250 Apple Stores in the U.S. since mid 2007. And it can be found at even more AT&T stores. But Walmart does add one very interesting aspect — besides the $2.
Walmart grew to become the nation’s largest retailer by starting outside of cities. Instead, Sam Walton but his stores in the thousands of small towns and cities across the country. They went where others wouldn’t go. Even today, when there are plenty of Walmarts in the big cities too, Walmart can be found in just about every small city and town in the U.S.
So, for Apple and the iPhone, this means that they can now reach places that the Apple Store and AT&T can’t. For instance, in my home state of Colorado, there are six Apple Stores. Five are in the Denver/Boulder area and one in Colorado Springs. But go west across the mountains and you get to Grand Junction where there you are a four hour drive from the nearest Apple Store and you were previously left with only one choice: a single AT&T store that sells the iPhone (at least according to the AT&T site). But you have three Walmarts.
Now go south to Durango, Colorado. A great place. But no Apple Store, no AT&T store. But 2 Walmarts.
You get the idea. With 5,700+ Walmarts Apple has significantly extended its iPhone sales reach.
Walmart has been known to make or break small manufacturing companies by simply deciding whether or not to stock their product. Apple’s OK with or without Walmart, but with this deal they move one step closer to dominating the smart phone market.
It is finally time for the MacWorld rumors to start flying. We’re only two weeks away from the big show now, but it no longer seems like a big show with Steve Jobs sitting it out. Expectations for Apple announcements are low.
The most outrageous rumors have to do with Apple announcing a new mini-laptop netbook or an iPhone Nano. Other rumors tell of new iMacs or a new Mac Mini. But more sensible rumors say that Apple VP Phil Schiller will simply talk about Snow Leopard during his keynote.
Outside of the rumors, there is little news. In Britain, Mac users finally get the BBC iPlayer on Macs. This application is used to view BBC programs on computers and the BBC received criticism for originally making it Windows-only.
The MobileMe service seems to be receiving continuous attention from the developers as Mac OS X 10.5.6 introduced some speed improvements for syncing data — and the Web applications in MobileMe also received updates in the past week.
Before Time Machine Apple produced a great piece of backup software, called Backup. The only thing that kept it from competing with other pieces of backup software was its weird distribution method: you got it by subscribing to .Mac (now MobileMe) and you could find it in the Software folder on your iDisk. So it is free, as long as you are already paying for MobileMe.
Well you can still find it there and it still works great. It offers many advantages over Time Machine. You can choose exactly what to backup — such as specific folders or types of files. You can also back up to many different types of places — like a hard drive, a CD or DVD, a network drive or even your iDisk. You could also schedule backups or do it manually. And the backups are incremental.
While I still use Time Machine as my main backup procedure, I also still use Backup to do an occasional second backup to another hard drive at a different location. And while on the road, I do backups of my Documents folder to my iDisk.
At first I thought that an app that simply showed movie times and information was a bit unnecessary. You can look that info up in so many places on the Web. But this little app has gotten so much use that I now have to recommend it. Movies from Flixster will use your GPS location and very quickly find info for you. For instance, while at dinner one night I was able to pull my iPhone out and find the showtime for a movie in about two clicks and 20 seconds.
In the Finder’s application menu are two ways to empty the Trash: Empty Trash and Secure Empty Trash. The second one will overwrite the data when you erase files, while the first leaves the data around and potentially recoverable. If you wish to use Secure Empty Trash all the time, there is no need to always go to the Finder application menu, however. Instead, just go to Finder preferences (Finder, Preferences or Command+,), go to the Advanced tab, and check off Empty Trash Securely. Now that becomes the default and even the Shift+Command+Delete shortcut maps to it instead of plain Empty Trash.
Some rumors are going around that Apple will release a netbook next year. But there are many reasons why this simply won’t happen. The rumors are the result of wishful thinking by people who love the concept of a netbook and would naturally like to see one from Apple.
A netbook is a small ultra-portable laptop that is very inexpensive. A typical one costs less than $500 and weighs less than 3 pounds. They have very small screens and slow, energy-efficient processors. They are called netbooks because they are primarily for email and Web surfing, not for processor-intensive applications or development.
I love them too, and wish Apple would come out with one. But here is why they probably aren’t even considering it.
So don’t hold your breath for a Mac netbook. I’m sure Apple has a iPod Touch “plus” or “pro” as a prototype somewhere, and maybe that will emerge one day. But I think the only budget Mac that will be available for a long time will be the Mini. Look for an update to that in January.
A quick look at eleven iPhone games, including Fieldrunners, Pac-Man, SinkSub, Touch Physics, Idle Hands, Ocarina and more.
Big news this week as Apple dropped a bomb on the Mac community by announcing that there will not be any Steve Jobs keynote at this year’s MacWorld Expo. Even more shocking was the fact that Apple won’t be at next year’s MacWorld Expo at all.
Not only is this the end of an era for Apple and our community, but it probably means there aren’t going to be any big announcements in January, either. See this blog post about it.
The Mac OS X team was busy this week with the release of Mac OS 10.5.6. This consisted of lots of bug fixes, and much faster syncing for MobileMe users. There were also some security patches involved, so make sure you run Software Update.
It’s also time for last-minute holiday shopping. You can get some good gift suggestions for Mac and iPhone users in our latest gift guide.
We’ve also released a new set of iPhone ringtones this week, featuring Los Angeles artist and podcaster Anji Bee.
This week’s recommendation is FileSalvage. What this program does is to look on a hard drive for deleted or corrupt files and tries to get salvage them for you. It is fairly expensive, at $80, but when one of my digital camera memory cards became corrupt, I paid the money to see if I could get my precious pictures off of it. And it worked. Later on, I accidentally deleted some files from my hard drive and emptied the Trash. Once again, FileSalvage rescued them. So well worth the money if you have the need.
It is already pretty easy to search Amazon on your iPhone using the Safari Web browser. But a new App from Amazon.com itself makes it even easier and faster. You can log in with your account and quickly search and get results including prices, information and reviews. You can order it, of course, but you can also add it to your wish list. So the next time you are out shopping and see something you want, use this App to compare prices and maybe add it to your wish list so someone else gets it for you.
Can’t remember where a menubar command is located? In Leopard, go to the Help menu and use the Search field to search all of the menus for the application you are using. For instance, in Safari, search for “Autofill,” use the down arrow to go to the first result, and you’ll find it in the Edit menu. A big blue arrow will actually point to the menu item.
Check out some gift ideas for Mac and iPhone users that cost less than $50: headphones, headsets, cooling pads, media readers and even a game.
