software - page 27

Apple recently updated its Backup software to v3.2, improving its reliability and efficiency.

So now is a great time to show how to use it to make offsite backups of your most important files.

This week a tip for Firefox power users. In addition to the Preferences accessible via the menubar, Firefox retains a comprehensive set of hidden settings that go back to it’s roots in the Netscape era.

Of course you are presented with an initial Caveat Emptor about the stability of your system and all that, but you’ve already jailbroken your iPhone and iPad (right?) so go ahead and dive right in…

So you’re busy chugging away on your computer, downloading loads of video as you do, and suddenly there’s a problem. Your computer says it’s running out of disk space. WTF?

The sad truth is that as fast as hard disk capacity increases, we come up with new ways to fill up our hard disks with digital stuff. Video, in particular, swallows up huge amounts of disk in the blink of an eye. How do you keep track of the state of your hard disk? GrandPerspective is one way to do it.

Adium is an all-purpose instant messenger application for OS X, and a very useful app to have around.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HQ2GVMi2tQ

First released in December 1996 for MacOS 8, ReBirth RB-338 was a revolutionary synthesizer by Propellerhead Software that emulated two Roland TB-303 synthesizers, a Roland TR-808 and a Roland TR-909 drum machine. In the late 90s, it wasn’t an easy task even getting a computer to run ReBirth… but almost fifteen years later, it works flawlessly on the iPhone, featuring built-in FX units, some full featured pattern sequences and a scalable interface.

It looks fantastic, and while I think it would probably be a better experience on the iPad, you can’t overlook the cool factor of mixing some fresh, professional quality beats together on the bus. It costs $6.99

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wklrVOFMKA&feature

The guys over at Redmond Pie have gotten their jailbroken iPad working with the Magic Mouse, thanks to the BTStack Mouse Driver application, which can easily be found on Cydia.

I’m struggling to see the point of this, other than “because we can.” You simply can’t do anything with a mouse under iPhone OS, short of badly emulate the job of a finger. There’s no contextual menus to open, no text to highlight, no windows to move around, no dock to multitask with. Why would you bother?

Using a mouse with a finger-based OS makes about as much sense as using a finger to navigate a mouse-based OS (and we all see the hatchet job Windows 7 did there). If you want a mouse so badly, just buy a netbook already… don’t fool yourself that using a mouse under iPhone OS is anything besides sheer pig-headed folly.

The latest MacBook Pros’ ability to seamlessly switch between integrated Intel graphics and their discrete NVIDIA GPUs is a wonderful feature, capable of saving hours of battery by only employing the more powerful and power-hungry card when an application really needs it.

The problem is, there’s a lot of poorly programmed applications out there that trigger the discrete GPU when Intel’s integrated graphics should suffice. Until these applications are updated, it can be maddening to watch your laptop suck up hours of battery life because it’s treating Tweetie like its Crysis.

gfxCardStatus is a neat open-source menu bar application that allows you to control which graphics card your 2010 MacBook Pro is using at any given time. For the most part, you’ll want to leave it alone and let OS X juggle GPUs, but if you happen to notice your text editor triggering a discrete GPU switch, gfxCardStatus will help you rein it back in.

It’s free to download, so if you have a 2010 MacBook Pro, grab it now.

[via Boy Genius Report]

Deals are good; free stuff, better —Macbuzzer currently has both on their site.

We’ve just started playing around with Cockpit, a customizable multi-controller that controls other apps on your Mac; normally $25, Macbuzzer is giving it away for free.

If that doesn’t hit your sweet-spot, they’re also selling a collection of nine Mac apps that includes: time-tracking/invoicing app, recipe manager, Twitter client, Internet radio recorder, information manager, backup manager, book-keeping app and a bookmark utility. The $288-valued package is currently at $20, but the price increases by a dollar per day, so best not waffle if you want ’em.

As an IT consultant you get accustomed to certain problems and complaints from users.  “My computer is running slow” is a universal favorite.  “You said this would only take a few minutes” is another perennial frontrunner.

But one stands out as arguably the most common end user headache: “My Email Isn’t Working.”

Sigh… Welcome to the club.  Email headaches are endless.  Fortunately, many issues are common problems that can be fixed relatively easily.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Aw5C7WQ6g

Macs do bundles better than anyone, but if you’re a Mac gamer, the Humble Indie Bundle might be the best one yet. Not only do you get to name your price for five amazing Mac indie games worth $80 — World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra Overture and Aquaria — but you get too choose if you want your money to go to support Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or line the developers’ pockets with filthy lucre.

Right now, the average contribution for the pack is just $7.87, with the total money raised over $360,000. I’m sure Cult of Mac readers can push that average contribution number up a few sense: these games, these developers and these charities are all worth your money.

Over the past few days, the latest beta of the iPhone OS has afforded a treasure trove of revelations about upcoming software improvements, but few previously unknown details about the hardware of the upcoming 4G iPhone and iPod Touch.

This is news, though: two new presets in the underlying architecture of iPhone OS 4.0 tease the possibility that the next iPhone, and possibly the next iPod Touch, will gain the ability to shoot 720p video.

These are the video presets in question:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640×480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280×720

That’s about what we expected: phones are more than capable of recording HD videos these days. Still, it’s nice to get further confirmation that the iPhone’s wimpy camera modules are about to get an industry-best upgrade.

Perian calls itself “the Swiss Army knife for QuickTime,” a description that’s pretty much spot-on.

Technically, Perian is a “QuickTime component” and it’s a preference pane rather than an application (which means that after installing, you’ll find it in System Preferences, not in your Applications folder).

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZW_JEo59Nw

As the resident sadomasochist in love with roguelike games, I’ve been waiting for months for Dinofarm Games to release their lovingly crafted take on the genre, 100 Rogues. Now they have, and it’s available on the App Store for $4.99! Kalloo! Kallay!

Beta 3 of the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK has a couple of great new interface features, including the ability to close background apps through a hold-and-close method similar to the way deleting programs functions on the operating system, but I think I like the new media player widgets best.

In the latest beta, if you load the multitasking interface you see a new set of widgets that sit in the dock to control iPod playback. The widgets include three buttons for track navigation (Play/Pause, Track Back, Track Forward), a shortcut to launch the iPod application, and a software orientation lock which serves the same function as the iPad’s hardware switch. Accessing the widgets is as simple as swiping left on the dock.

Very slick, but what interests me most is the possibility of further widget sets. If third-party developers can program their own widgets to control background apps from the dock, multitasking on iPhone OS 4.0 is just going to rock. Skype widgets anyone? My guess is that’s just what Apple has in mind, and the screen orientation lock will be the one standard icon

Scrivener is quite simply an excellent tool for writers.

Packed with features but not overwhelming you with them, it is particularly well suited for writing long-form works: books, screenplays, academic papers, and any other text work that can be broken into chapter-sized chunks.

Scrivener was developed by a writer, so it works the way a writer’s brain works. It knows that long written works are likely to be written in these scattered chunks, not always in the order they will appear in the finished book, and not always published in the order they were written. Scrivener lets you write, then re-arrange your writing using smart outliner modes.

The chunks of writing are known as “Scrivenings”, and if you use the “Edit Scrivenings” command you can edit each chunk in context alongside its siblings. It’s a terrifically useful way of writing.

Scrivener is flexible. There are loads of features on offer, but you can switch off anything you don’t need. It handles big projects with many hundreds of text pages and associated research files, it saves everything automatically (you never need to hit Command+S), and it offers excellent value for money.

For basic writing, you have TextEdit which comes pre-installed on your Mac and is excellent for many tasks (I use it for writing articles every day). But for anything beyond basic writing, Scrivener is well worth considering – and is a great deal cheaper – than the likes of Microsoft Word. For long-form writing, it’s hard to beat.

(You’re reading the 3rd post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications. Read more.)

If you took the plunge on the Spirit jailbreak over the weekend, no need to wait for AT&T to fulfill their long ignored promise to bring data tethering to the iPhone in the United States: the MyWi App will turn your iPhone into a wireless 3G modem right now.

The app costs $10 on jailbroken iPhones and it looks pretty simple: you just launch the MyWi app, flip the “WiFi Tethering” switch to “On” and then you can connect any WiFi-capable device to your iPhone.

This would be a great way to make your iPad WiFi 3G capable while saving yourself $130 bucks. If you want to try MyWi, you can grab it now through Cydia.

[via Gadget Lab]

According to the Wall Street Journal, industry insiders are predicting that Apple will cave on the terms of the iPhone 4.0 SDK rather than be dragged into an antitrust battle over them.

When Apple acquired music streaming service Lala year, almost everyone assumed that iTunes’ tenth iteration would find Apple’s music syncing software re-envisioned as a service which allowed users to stream their tunes from anywhere without actually having their musics locally stored.

That’s still a safe bet , especially as Apple phases out their older iPod models and shrinks down the footprint of 3G SIM cards to be installable in even the smallest chassis. But it did raise a question: would existing Lala customers be left high and dry by the Apple buyout?

No, as it turns out. While Lala has just announced that their service will be shutting down on May 31st for good, with no new users accepted. Lala’s going the extra mile by converting any money spent on streaming music into iTunes credit. That counts even if you have unused Lala credit. How generous.

Today, Patently Apple revealed a whole slew of new multi-touch gestures that Apple might introduce in new products and software updates, most of which are detailed in the image above… which, incidentally, looks like the pictogram instruction set for the secret high five that was in vogue my senior year in high school, and which I could never pull off without the tendons in my wrist rolling up like a window shade.

Patently Apple’s post also indicates a neat new iPod technology which is unrelated, but plenty cool: automatic adjustment of music tempo based on your performance. For example, if you’re flagging on the hill, the tempo increases, while if your heart is about to explode, it slows on down. Looks like a smart evolution of Apple’s current Nike partnership to me.

Do you still use a USB stick to move files between one computer and another?

You should be using Dropbox.

The popular European music streaming service Spotify has gotten a substantial new desktop update in new version 0.43, which brings social networking integration, the ability to import your own MP3 into your Spotify library, an offline storage locker, and a new user inboxes for the sharing of tracks.

Transmit, the popular OS X FTP client by Panic Support, has finally broken its half decade run of version 3.x executables and finally released version 4.0, a significant and shiny upgrade that boasts faster performance, a new user interface and several fantastic new features.

HTC just got a powerful new ally in its patent fight against Apple.

Following Google’s announcement that they would support their frequent manufacturing partner in its defense against complaints made by Apple that HTC handsets infringe upon a number of key iPhone-related patents, Microsoft has issued a press release saying that they have signed a broad patent-sharing agreement with HTC.

According to the agreement, Microsoft will license its patents to HTC across all of their phones. If the phone is a Google Android handset, HTC will pay them a couple bucks in royalties on every handset sold.

I Love Stars is one of those apps that does one thing and does it very well. It sits in your Menu Bar and lets you rate songs as they’re playing in iTunes.

We’ve shown you a first generation iPhone dual-booting into Android OS, but want to do it yourself? You’re in luck! Here’s an easy to follow seventy step guide, simple enough for that even a drunk, googly-eyed neonate could figure it out.

We’re slightly kidding: a lot of this instruction list is devoted to things like setting up virtualized Ubuntu installs, so it’s really only fifty steps. Still, that’s an order of magnitude too many steps for a guy whose technical sophistication tops out at dragging the install icon to his Applications folder.

Are you Cylon enough to attempt it though? God speed, and let us know how you get along in the comments.