MacBook, PowerBook, iBook, and other portable computing is covered
in The 'Book Review. iPad, iPod,
iPhone, and Apple TV news is covered in The
iNews Review.
All prices are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.
News & Opinion
Apple Updates
Software
News & Opinion
Steve Jobs: Mac OS X Not on Backburner
CultofMac's Leander Kahney says:
"Steve Jobs' busy fingers might be needing a rest right now. He has
just responded to concerns that Mac OS X in [sic] on the
backburner to the iPhone OS, which will get a major 4.0 upgrade later
this year.
"Mac fans were worried about the fate of OS X after Daring
Fireball's John Gruber
said there will likely be no OS X 10.7 update at WWDC this
summer...."
Link:
Steve Jobs Emails Again: OS X Is Not on Backburner
Use Your iPad - or Another Computer - as a Second
Display
TUAW's Erica Sadun wonders if you're looking for a novel way to put
your iPad to work. How about using it as
a second monitor for your desktop or notebook? Last week, Erica got a
first look at iDisplay. It
offers a system hack that extends your desktop space onto your iPad or
iPhone. She found it still very buggy, However, she also stumbled
across a $30 program called Screen Recycler (more
below) that you can use with with any platform that supports
VNC,
including spare Windows and Linux systems as well as iPhones and
iPads.
Editor's note: We do just the opposite at Low End Mac headquarters,
where we have two side-by-side G4 Power Macs sharing a mouse and keyboard.
One runs OS X 10.4 Tiger for
Classic Mode, the other runs OS X
10.5 Leopard, which is a requirement of NetNewsWire, my
favorite RSS client. Using Teleport (free), the
Leopard machine is the master and the Tiger Mac the slave. Holding down
Ctrl lets me move from one computer and display to the other. A very
practical way to manage two or more Macs with the same keyboard and
mouse. (Note that some firewall settings can slow the switch between
displays and prevent you from moving clipboard contents between
computers. I learned that the hard way.) dk
Link:
Using Your iPad as a Second Monitor
Apple Exploring Combo Connector for USB 3.0 and
DisplayPort
AppleInsider's Neil Hughes reports:
"A new proprietary cable from Apple could simultaneously transmit
both USB 3.0 and DisplayPort data, cutting down on cable clutter with
future Macs and allowing easier video output with portable devices.
"Revealed this week, Apple's patent applications for a 'Reduced Size
Multi-Pin Male Plug Connector' and 'Reduced Size Multi-Pin Female
Receptacle Connector' aim to offer more functionality with greater data
transfer rates with a smaller cable connector form factor."
Editor's note: We are really looking forward to USB 3.0 making an
appearance on Macs. It's 10x as fast as USB 2.0, bidirectional, and
provides more bus power. No sign of it in this week's MacBook Pro
updates. We also hope that Apple will support audio on Mini
DisplayPort, an inexplicable omission. (See Apple's Half-Baked Support for
DisplayPort.) dk
Link:
Apple Exploring USB 3.0, DisplayPort Combo in New Mini
Connector
Apple Updates
Snow Leopard Security Update 2010-003
Security Update 2010-003 (Snow Leopard) is recommended for all users
and improves the security of Mac OS X.
File Size: 6.50 MB
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.6.3
Link: Security Update 2010-003 (Snow
Leopard)
SMC Firmware Update for 27" iMac
The 27-inch iMac SMC Firmware Update 1.0 fixes Target Display Mode
compatibility issues on 27-inch
iMac computers.
For more information about SMC firmware updates, please see this
article: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4117
File Size: 397 KB
System Requirements: 10.6.3 or later
Link: 27-inch iMac SMC Firmware Update
1.0
EFI FW Update for Quad-core iMacs
The 27-inch iMac EFI FW Update 1.0 is recommended for all quad-core
Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors 27-inch iMacs.
This update addresses the following:
- Resolves an issue that sometimes caused high processor utilization
while playing audio through the headphone output mini-jack.
- Resolves an issue that prevented the display backlight from turning
on after powering on the iMac.
- When your computer restarts a gray screen will appear with a status
bar to indicate the progress of the update.
- Do not disturb or shut off the power on your iMac during this
update.
For more information about EFI firmware updates, please see this
article: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4125
File Size: 2.1 MB
System Requirements: Mac OS 10.6.3 or later
Link: 27-inch iMac EFI FW Update
1.0
MobileMe Backup v3.2
PR: MobileMe Backup 3.2 is recommended for all users of
Backup 3. This update improves the reliability of backup restore and
uses space more efficiently on your iDisk or local storage (e.g.,
external hard drive or DVD).
For more information of Backup 3.2 improvements, visit this website:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3991
MobileMe ($99/year) is the online service from Apple that
automatically keeps your email, contacts, calendar, bookmarks, and more
in sync across multiple computers, your iPhone, iPod touch, and a suite
of web apps on: http://www.me.com
For the latest news and information about Backup, visit: http://www.apple.com/support/mobileme/
File Size: 6.73 MB
System Requirements
- Mac OS X 10.4.11
- Mac OS X 10.5.8
- Mac OS X 10.6 or later.
- MobileMe Account
Link: MobileMe Backup v3.2
Software
Diglloyd Releases Powerful Mac Performance
Enhancement and Testing Tools
PR: Diglloyd MacPerformanceGuide.com (MPG), a leading
resource on Mac configuration and performance optimization, is pleased
to announce the immediate release of diglloydTools 2.0, consisting of
DiskTester, MemoryTester, and IntegrityChecker.
Key features include:
- Solid state drive (SSD) performance enhancement - the recondition
command helps restore performance to solid state drives whose
performance has dropped, a problem that plagues most brands of SSDs on
the market today;
- New drive validation - the fill-volume command forces a hard drive
to map out bad blocks proactively, and it now includes verification of
data as part of the read phase.
- Stream testing for HD video - An all new run-streams command, which
tests how many simultaneous data streams can run, something HD video
users must have to validate their video editing speed;
- Performance graphs - five graphing templates to visualize the
fill-volume, run-sequential- suite, run-area-test, recondition and
compute commands.
- Write/verify - the fill-volume and read-files commands have been
enhanced to verify files previously created by DiskTester. This allows
as many verification passes as desired.
- Enhanced stress test with memory verify - the stress command now
verifies that copied memory matches the original, to rule out memory
errors.
The diglloydTools suite are used as a critical aspect of the burn-in
process for the recently announced MPG Photo Workstation and MPG Pro
Laptop.
All three tools are 64-bit applications that require Mac OS X 10.5
Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard.
Upgrades are free for existing customers, and $39.99 for new
customers.
Link: Mac Performance
Guide
Link: diglloydTools
TypeIt4Me 5.0
PR: Let your Mac do half your typing. Riccardo Ettore has
released the latest update to his text macro utility TypeIt4Me, version
5.
Available since 1989, TypeIt4Me is the original text expander for
Mac OS. Any time you enter text in your Mac by typing it at the
keyboard, TypeIt4Me can help you do it faster and more accurately.
- Define a number of abbreviations and the full text (or picture)
clippings that they represent, then watch the Mac expand them on the
fly even as you continue typing.
- Type a short abbreviation and have it expand to a word, a phrase,
even several pages worth of text in the blink of an eye.
- Expand your custom-defined shorthand: some words and phrases are
both common and awkwardly long. Find yourself using the word
"qualifications" a lot? With Typeit4me you could just type "quls".
Similarly, "ue" could become "user experience", "infsy" could expand to
"information systems", and so on.
Breeze through your email correspondence
You'll find TypeIt4Me is a real boon if you write lots of emails.
Once you get it up and running, you need never type your full name,
address or email signature again. Common greetings, pleasantries and
signoffs, too: "ds" could be "Dear Susan", while you could define
"tyvmfye" to become "thank you very much for your email" and so on.
"rrgbmch" could become "I've read your report and it's great, but I'd
like you to make a couple of changes". You get the idea.
TypeIt4Me is not just great for short snippets, though - it will
help you type those long messages with multiple paragraphs faster, too.
It's particularly useful if you find yourself wearily writing very
similar messages time and again to multiple individual recipients. With
TypeIt4Me, you can write it just once then add it to your list of
abbreviations so that it's available on tap as an expansion. No more
repetitive brain strain injury for you!
Once you get used to this way of doing things, you'll honestly
wonder how you ever coped without TypeIt4Me. It's the business.
TypeIt4Me puts all your boilerplate texts right at your fingertips.
No fooling
Perhaps you work at a law firm and you constantly find yourself
hunting around for that generic Terms of Service clause you're always
copying and pasting into contracts. With TypeIt4Me it could always be
just a couple of keystrokes away. Or maybe you work in desktop
publishing and are always fumbling around for the latin text you use to
populate sample layouts: simply typing 'loremtxt' could instamagically
paste whole paragraphs of filler content into your InDesign or Quark
document.
You don't have to remember all your abbreviations, though. You don't
even have to type them at all if you don't want to. TypeIt4Me stays in
your menu bar and allows you to see all your abbreviations in a handy
dropdown list. Click on one and the full text or picture will instantly
be inserted in your current active document or window.
TypeIt4Me can manage your passwords
If you're anything like we used to be, then you're probably up to
your eyeballs in email accounts, blogging accounts, social networking
accounts and myriad other web services that require passwords to log in
and get to the good stuff. Most of these services insist that you
should use hard to guess combinations of letters and numbers... but the
trouble is you also find it hard to remember them. That's where
TypeIt4Me steps in to save the day: you could store your google
services password as "gpw", your twitter password as "tpw" and so on.
Peace of cake... You don't need to remember them any more.
Correct misspellings - with zero effort
You know those annoying typos that are always catching you out? Tell
TypeIt4Me about them and they'll be a thing of the past. Because "tihs"
can become "this", "taht" can become "that" and "optalmoscope" can
become "ophthalmoscope". You'll be able to type a lot faster, without
stumbling over the common misspellings that used to slow you down. Add
all of your most common misspellings to your TypeIt4Me abbreviations
list, then type as wrecklessly fast as you like, leaving Typeit4me to
instantly fix those mangled mistakes as you go along
System Requirements
This product is designed to run on Intel Macs with the following
operating systems:
- Mac OS X 10.6
- Mac OS X 10.5
Price
- Single user licence: $27
- Student price: $14
- Upgrade: $9
Link: TypeIt4Me
ScreenRecycler: Use Another Computer as an
Additional Display for Your Mac
PR: You like working
with multiple documents and multiple applications? You hate when
windows are being hidden behind your current application. There no such
thing as enough screen real estate. ScreenRecycler is the solution for
you.
What do you need ? Two computers.
Use your old iMac as a second screen for your new iMac like on the
picture above. Use your notebook as an additional screen when you place
it beside your desktop Mac.
If you own two computers with separate screens you can use
ScreenRecycler. Even your laptop can be used as a second screen for
your main machine.
Mac OS X on Windows PC's ? - For sure!
You have a Windows laptop/PC and a Mac? Use ScreenRecycler to create
a second display for your Mac with it.
Why ?
Many Mac users have a second computer sitting right next to their
main computer on their desk including a nice display. ScreenRecycler
now enables you to use this spare computer as a second display for your
Mac. You can even use an old Windows PC for that purpose.
Targeted to all users with two computers to extend screen real
estate. It's like a dual monitor setup without the need to buy an
additional monitor.
$29.90
Link: ScreenRecycler
MouseZoom X Now Available in 64-bit Version
PR: MouseZoom is a prefpane which speeds up your mouse cursor
movement in Mac OS X. As of version 2.0, the speed is set "live"
without having to log out before it takes effect. To do this, MouseZoom
uses the same method as Apple's mouse panel.
New in version 2.4:
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.1 or later.
Platform Support: PPC/Intel
Free
Link: MouseZoom X
Desktop Mac
Deals
Low End Mac updates the following price trackers monthly:
For deals on current and discontinued 'Books, see our 13" MacBook and MacBook Pro,
MacBook Air, 13" MacBook Pro, 15" MacBook Pro, 17" MacBook Pro, 12" PowerBook G4, 15" PowerBook G4, 17" PowerBook G4, titanium PowerBook G4,
iBook G4, PowerBook G3, and iBook G3 deals.
We also track iPad,
iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle deals.
