Apple Releases New iMacs with Faster (1066Mhz) Front-Side Bus: “As predicted, Apple released new iMacs today. The new iMacs include faster processors bringing the low end up to 2.4GHz and with the top end reaching 3.06GHz. The high end 24′ 3.06GHz iMac also introduces the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS (512MB) video ca…”
FrankenMac in the Lab
April 26, 2008
FrankenMac in the Lab: “Brian Chen is joined by Lab director James Galbraith, who acts as our tour guide into the inner workings of the Rob Griffiths’ home-built Mac OS machine. They talk briefly about its performance and some of its peculiarities.
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(Via Macworld.)
Quick Look Plug-ins: Save More Time
April 25, 2008
Quick Look Plug-ins: Save More Time: ”
With the release of Leopard came over 300 new features. Some of these new features includes Time Machine, Screen Sharing, and Quick Look. I find Quick Look to be the most useful addition to Mac OS X. Upon installing Leopard, Mac users had one gripe — they complained that Quick Look could not handle all of the file extensions that they used in their daily lives. To solve this problem, developers created plug-ins for Quick Look in order to make it more compatible with different file extensions.
My favorite three plug-ins save me much time in addition to the time that I already save with Quick Look alone. Suspicious Package, BetterZipQL, and Folder View can all be installed easily to help you use your time more effectively. All one needs to do in order to install a plug-in is to drag the qlgenerator plug-in folder to /Library/QuickLook/ or ~/Library/QuickLook/. Upon a computer reboot, one can use these plug-ins to their advantage.
Suspicious Package can be very useful when dealing with .pkg installer packages. Before clicking any buttons in the window one can see a basic overview of what will occur upon installing the package. For example, you see the size of the package, if it needs administrator privileges, if it needs a restart upon installation, and even the amount of installer scripts the package contains. If one wants to get into more detail, they can press the Show Contents button, and the window will then expand and display all the files the package will install and where. This can be useful if one installs a package and then later wishes to delete it off the computer. When Quick Look is equipped with Suspicious Package, it can be used to detect Trojan installation packages.
Folder View is a plug-in that puts a neat idea into action quite well. This addition to QuickLook does exactly what one might guess: it allows the user to see the contents of a folder when activating QuickLook instead of just the folder’s icon. This can be handy when one would like to know what documents are in his Documents folder, their file kind, creation date, size, and even the folder’s creation date! Folder View is a great addition to QuickLook because it adds to QuickLook’s main purpose, allowing the user to view files quicker more effectively.
Macitbetter, the creators if the Mac program BetterZip, have outdone themselves by creating a free Quick Look plug-in called BetterZipQL with abilities similar to BetterZip.app. This add-on works with many different archiving formats including ZIP, TAR, RAR, and SIT. Upon activation, Quick Look will show the contents of the compressed file, and then one can see the archived file’s properties, kind, size, and date created. There is only one problem with my favorite free Quick Look plug-in — it displays hidden files. This clutters the window making it less efficient as it would be without this flaw. While I do have this small problem with BetterZipQL, it is still my favorite addition to Quick Look.
QuickLook’s entry into the Mac OS X system has been great in terms of saving time. These three free plug-ins, Suspicious Package, BetterZipQL, and Folder View, make a great addition to any Mac, and I truly suggest installing them today. If you know of any other great, time saving plug-ins, please comment on this review
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(Via MacApper.)
This, that, and the iTunes Store
April 23, 2008
This, that, and the iTunes Store: “Apple has been quietly tweaking the iTunes Store. Here are some changes you might not have noticed.
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(Via Macworld.)
Nova offers USB HSUPA wireless modem
April 23, 2008
Nova offers USB HSUPA wireless modem: “The GlobeSurfer Icon HSUPA wireless modem will let your Mac surf cell phone data networks worldwide.
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(Via Macworld.)
Baseline: There’s Nothing Baseline About This App
April 22, 2008
Baseline: There’s Nothing Baseline About This App: “s you all the scans that you have saved for a hard drive. You name the scans, so if you name them by date you can easily find which scan you are looking for. It would be nice if you could double-click on one of those managed scans and compare to it, though. You can do this easily, though, by just selecting a scan in the popup box in the upper-left hand corner. Another thing that would be very useful would be, when you open Baseline, to load the last scan made so you can see what it looked like.
Another amazing feature of Baseline is the ability to archive and compress files with the click of a button. Just press ‘Archive’ in the toolbar (when you have already scanned), and it will take that file and compress it in .gzip, and put the original file in the trash. If you choose to archive the file, it will compress it with .tgz and trash the original. It would be nice if they asked you whether you wanted to have the original trashed.
Baseline is well worth the ~$5 more you pay than for OmniDiskSweeper or WhatSize because of all the features listed above. Not all of them are perfect, but no one expects them to be. The final most important thing that makes it even more worth the money is the interface. Its interface is so much more Mac-like than all the rest. I absolutely love the interface, and think that it is so much easier to use than those of the others. It just looks better, which in my opinion is worth the $5 alone.”
(Via MacApper.)
Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.5.3 (9d19) to Developers
April 20, 2008
Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.5.3 (9d19) to Developers: “Apple waited a full week before seeding the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5.3 (9d19) to developers on Friday. The latest version of Mac OS X Leopard adds 31 bug fixes to the growing list of issues addressed in the upcoming release. Features that ar…”
Web Snapper: Video and Review
April 20, 2008
Web Snapper: Video and Review: “
Have you ever found yourself in the position where you need to archive an online receipt or article or web page? Instead of just copying and pasting the text, would you like it to look exactly like the web page? Well, if so, then Web Snapper is the perfect tool for you, because it does all of that and more!
Web Snapper (previously Red Snapper) by TastyApps retails for $15. Web Snapper is perfect for snapping a page off of the web, and turning it into a PDF with pages (or not). Being only $15 it is much cheaper than getting an OCR application to do these tasks, and the final product looks much better! This is why it’s called Web Snapper: it takes an exact replica of the web page, text and everything, and turns it into a beautiful PDF document.
Here is a video made by the developer about the new version of Web Snapper, Web Snapper 2.2:
Web Snapper from TastyApps.com on Vimeo.
Again, Web Snapper retails for only $15 from TastyApps and a new version, 2.2, has just been released, which adds many new features as shown in the video. It is a very useful application, and the final product that you make looks, well, exactly like it should. If you really like it, buy it!
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(Via MacApper.)
New MacBook and MacBook Pro designs “leaked” online (Updated): “
Images that appear to be an updated MacBook and MacBook Pro designers were reportedly discovered on a rogue .Mac account this morning, in addition to updated iTunes and iPhones. These all seem to line up perfectly with previous rumors and speculation, but it may be is too good to be true, too.
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(Via Infinite Loop.)
YourTube: Edit and Download YouTube Videos on your Mac and iPhone: “Ever wanted the option to queue your YouTube downloads? How about watching off-line YouTube videos on your iPhone or iPod touch?
In this week’s Freeloader Friday we’ll check out picks that will download and convert YouTube videos and drop them right into iTunes. If you’d rather not sync them from your Mac, we also have a fantastic iPhone app that downloads and plays off-line YouTube clips.
As…
[read more at MacMerc.com]
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(Via MacMerc.com.)
