Category: Software

iTunes 10.5.1 Released by Apple

Apple today released a couple of updates including iTunes 10.5.1.  This update is supposed to include the new service from Apple  called iTunes Match, their matching service which allows imported CDs to also be stored in iCloud.  This service should address many users issues with the lack of cover art and proper titling of their CD’s and seeks to eliminate many of the gaps in most people’s cover flows. iTunes 10.5 also included:• iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes now stores…

Apple Updates Safari as Part of the Mac OS X Update

Many users were likely left wondering what ever happened to the promised update for Safari.  Apple decided it would be best to include it in the latest update for Mac OS X so most people were left oblivious to the update, but a host of issues were addressed.  This includes: Improve JavaScript performance up to 13% over Safari 5.1* Address issues that could cause hangs and excessive memory usage Improve stability when using Find, dragging tabs, and managing extensions Improve…

Mac OS X 10.7.2 Finally Here!

The long awaited update for the Mac OS X Lion operating system has been released by Apple.  Thanks to a bevy of issues in the preceding releases of the Mac OS 10.7 series, many users have been counting the days until Apple released the latest update to resolve those issues. The 10.7.2 update includes the following new items in it: iCloud stores your email, calendars, contacts, Safari bookmarks, and Safari Reading list and automatically pushes them to all your devices….

Vintage Micros Releases Lisa Sound Card

Vintage Micros (http://www.vintagemicros.com) has produced and released one of the hardest to find products for the Apple Lisa computer.  The Lisa DAC Sound Card is considered to be the holy grail of collectables for the Lisa and now for a limited time, they are offering the card for sale for $229.00  The card uses the Lisa speaker to produce the sound and can produce anything from standard computer sounds to full blown voice and audio reproduction.  The card comes with…

Handbrake: A review

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everybody. This review will be just a quick one. I’m not an expert with this sort of thing and have only dabbled with it from time to time… What is it? Handbrake is simply a transcoder. It converts DVD’s to video files and video files from one format to another. Does it work? Yes. It does what it was designed to do quite well and actually is fairly stable in spite of having not been updated in…

Game Circus LLC Releases Game Claw Halloween for iPhone

One of our favorite games of the previous months has come back in a new incarnation.  Game Claw Halloween is a new play on the popular iPhone game Game Claw, but instead of prizes, you collect ghosts and goblins.  With Halloween right around the corner, this is the perfect game to get you Scare on.  The best part of the download is that it is free.  However, like other Game Circus LLS games, there are in-app purchases which allow you…

Maze+ for iPhone and iPad for Free

Maze+, the three dimensional maze game by Secret Headquarters, Inc. is available for free download from the App store.  The game runs on both the iPhone and iPad and is quite an addicting little game. The game features running of characters through the mazes, beginning with a character named Kolo Jones.  As you gain experience and complete mazes, collecting gems for wins, the other characters can be acquired by converting the gems into coins. You can download the game from…

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 for iPhone Free

Electronic arts is giving away the game Tiger Woods PGS Tour 12 for the iPhone and iPad.  The game which is a whopping 269mb download is an example of what can be accomplished with the graphics on the iPhone.   The game is currently available from the Apple Store at itunes.apple.com/us/app/tiger-woods-pga-tour-12/id427647815?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 and is the full package of the game.

Apple gives Final Cut Pro users quick start videos

These videos somehow got overlooked by us when we were talking about new software this fall.  The video editing system Final Cut Pro is a highly intricate piece of software that takes a good number hours of usage to master, yet now there is a shortcut of sorts now.  Apple released a number of free videos about using the program this past year and they are available on the Apple website at: http://support.apple.com/videos/#finalcutpro While they are not a full support…

aTunes – a cross-platform music player

A few minutes ago I downloaded and tried out a free music player called aTunes. They had a version update to 2.1.0. My impression is it is a good try. There are a couple of features which iTunes doesn’t have but (on the Mac at least) the interface is a little clunky. For the moment Apple doesn’t have much to worry about. However I can see where this project is going so it may be worth considering in the future….

T40 Version 1.3.1 released

T40, the 40 column editor by Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe Software has been updated once again.  The latest version 1.3.1 include some software fixes and a new help screen feature.  The entire list of items/fixes included in this version 1.3.0 and 1.3.1 of the program include: Control-key for program and screen routines Open Apple-key for text editing routines A display bug is corrected A help screen is added (Ctrl-?) Typing always remain in the same column/line, no carriage return…

What to do with an old G4 Mac

Like most people I hate being told how to spend any of my limited money. Especially in this economy. It seems every time Apple releases a major upgrade to their operating system a bunch of older computers are no longer supported. Readers will recall I have a G4 Server in excellent condition. Granted I had to replace the CD drive with a DVD drive, but that was the only hardware change I had to make. In order to get the…

T40 Art Gallery Created

T40, the 40 column text editor created by Antoine Vignau this week, now has a new art gallery to go with the program.   The gallery created by Daniel Kruszyna only has a couple of items as of yet but the gallery is in both picture format and slideshow format in the form of an Apple ][ Floppy image. To check out the latest additions to the gallery, go to the T40 Gallery website at: http://krue.net/fortycolumns/

T40 Text Screen Editor Released for Apple ][

From a posting by Antoine Vignau: Say hello to T40 v1.2 which adds the following features: – screen flipping (horizontal, vertical) – screen mirrorrorrim (left-right, right-left, top-down, down-top) – screen inverting (convert all chars to flash, normal or inverse video mode) – an undo feature for the above ones 😉 – a feature to lock cursor movements (ideal for column art) – is now menu driven (ahem) – a change in the second output buffer (lines are now CR terminated)…

Three E-Book readers compared

The three readers are Adobe Digital Editions from Adobe, Stanza from http://www.lexcycle.com/, and Skim from http://skim-app.sourceforge.net. Each of the three have their strong points and weak points. Adobe is fairly powerful and fast, but lack many of the whiz bang features of other readers.They concentrate mostly on PDF documents (which is no surprise). Apart from formatting, there really isn’t much there which can’t be found in Preview (built into OS X). It has the look of a Windows program ported…

Revew: Jomic

Jomic is another comic book reader. It is written for the PPC, so the Intel folks will need to install Rosetta (allows the Intel machines to run PPC code). The version I have appears to be a demo. Many of the items in the menu are greyed out. However, I found by a bit of experimentation some of these items do function. Since the program was written for slower machines I’ve observed it is very fast on a faster machine….

Add on – Dapplegrey

Dapplegrey is a front end to DOSBox. It is a way to maintain quick access to the features and programs stored within DOSBox. Minimum requirements are OS X 10.3 and a PPC Mac. Access to programs is quite simple. It is a matter of  going to the “Games List” tab and double-clicking on the desired program. The assumption is people running DOSBox are running old DOS (PC) games. In my case this is true. I do everything else in OS…

How to automatically mount an NFS drive (UNIX network) on OS X

This article is a variation/enhancement to a post I found at http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=9289 for a FreeNAS server. Of course purely Mac folks would likely want to stick with the AFP protocol. In terms of generalities the NFS server does not necessarily have to be running FreeNAS. It just has to work. FreeNAS is basically a “Swiss Army Knife” of external storage. I find it does a lot of things very easily. It doesn’t work on all machines (I’ve had a 60%…

Running apps installed via MacPorts (or the others) from the GUI

When an app is installed via MacPorts, or one of the other programs used to bring Linux apps to the Mac, it is stored as a program requiring a terminal program to run. This is fine for some programs such as 7zip but not for others such as pan (a GUI newsreader) and gftp (a GUI based ftp program). I use these programs enough so I’d want them on the dock. After hunting around I found some discussion in a…

Beagle Bros website updated

The Beagle Bros Software Repository, managed and produced by A.P.P.L.E. Staff and Brian Wiser, have once again added a number of graphics images from the long defunct company.  Beagle Bros was one of the most popular Apple ][ software companies and had a large following due to their unique style of graphics According to the Beagle Bros website, “Thanks to the efforts of Brian Wiser, we now have two new graphics sections in the Beagle Bros Software Repository.  Sections 6…