TidBITS: Mac News for the Rest of UsInsightful news, reviews, and analysis of the Macintosh and Internet worldsSlingPlayer Mobile Would Drive Slingbox Owners to iPhone- June 16, 2008 At a coffee shop near Moscone West, where Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference took place last week, representatives of Sling Media showed me a proof-of-concept version of their SlingPlayer Mobile video placeshifting software on an iPhone and an iPod touch. The software, already available for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian handhelds, enables users to watch video from their Slingbox devices while away from their televisions. The iPhone and iPod touch are great devices for watching...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9659?rss TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 16-Jun-08- June 16, 2008 Iris 1.0 from Nolobe is a new image editing application for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Iris uses a single-window interface to provide tools for painting and drawing, plus compositing of text, images, and effects on multiple layers. Iris also offers powerful color correction tools and supports a wide range of import and export formats. ($79 new, 3.5 MB) AirPort Utility 5.3.2 from Apple probably has some changes from the previous version, but they're a closely kept secret and Apple's not telling...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9658?rss Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk16-June-08- June 16, 2008 Service Scrubber Cleans Services Menu -- A reader points out that the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane can also remap keyboard shortcuts. (1 message) Are Time Capsule backups encrypted during transmission Calling on the TidBITS Talk community for help, wondering about encrypted backups to a Time Capsule as well as backing up one machine to multiple drives using Time Machine. (1 messages) Dealing with Doppelganger Folders in Volumes -- Adam's article on file weirdness sparks a question...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9657?rss Take Control News: Ebooks about Screen Sharing and Back to My Mac- June 12, 2008 Leopard brought us oodles of new features, including built-in screen sharing and a theoretically seamless way to connect back to your own Macs for both screen sharing and file sharing. With screen sharing, you control the mouse and keyboard of one computer while you sit at another computer across the room or on the other side of the world. It's great for providing remote tech support for family and friends, for configuring and managing remote servers, and for collaborating with colleagues in...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9656?rss Font Auto-Activation Still Broken in 10.5.3- June 12, 2008 Perusing the Apple Discussions board several weeks ago, I was surprised (and, okay, pleased) to find my name, and one of my books, mentioned in passing. But the thread was talking about how the font auto-activation feature wasn't working for TextEdit in Mac OS X 10.5.2, and the mention was "interestingly, the book by Sharon Zardetto, 'Take Control of Fonts in Leopard,' has a section on auto activation, and there is no suggestion that it doesn't work." And that's true: except for stipulated...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9655?rss QuickTime 7.5 Addresses Security Concerns, iMovie and iDVD Updated- June 11, 2008 While the iPhone 3G and Snow Leopard grabbed everyone's attention at the Worldwide Developers Conference last week, Apple also released security and bug-fix updates to QuickTime, iMovie '08, and iDVD '08. QuickTime 7.5 tackles several security issues dealing with maliciously crafted media: PICT images, AAC-encoded media, and Indeo video. It also changes the behavior of handling URLs by revealing files in the Finder or Windows Explorer instead of launching them. (For more information on...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9654?rss iPhone 3G Actually $160 More Expensive- June 11, 2008 The Reality Distortion Field is starting to wear off, and I'm getting a bad feeling about the iPhone 3G. Don't get me wrong - my complaint isn't about the iPhone 3G itself or how much it costs, but about how much more it will end up costing U.S. customers than the original iPhone thanks to higher monthly fees, and how Apple and AT&T are hiding that price increase from potential customers. (It appears that things are different in other countries, where plans for the iPhone 3G are little...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9653?rss iPhone 3G GPS Details, Power Adapter, and Industrial Design- June 10, 2008 The initial outpouring of information from Apple about the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software, and .Mac's metamorphosis into MobileMe left us dazed. Here are a few additional details that we glossed over at first. Touch Me, 3G -- In an Apple briefing, I was able to play with an iPhone 3G briefly, and I can report that it does, in fact, feel better than the original iPhone, which I have owned since the night they were first released. The plastic back feels good, and is clearly going to be more...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9652?rss Mac OS X Snow Leopard to Focus on Performance, Not Features- June 9, 2008 At the beginning of the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Apple announced it would provide information about the next version of Mac OS X - code-named Snow Leopard - after the keynote. Since all the content at WWDC other than the keynote is covered by non-disclosure agreements, it seemed that Apple didn't plan to talk in public about what we could expect. However, a press release about Snow Leopard appeared late in the day revealing some details. Instead of adding marquee features...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9651?rss MobileMe Oh My (or, Apple Breaks Record in Making My Book Obsolete)- June 9, 2008 In early 1997, my second book (co-authored with David McKee) was published. The topic: Cyberdog. If you have no idea what Cyberdog was, don't worry - it's immaterial. All you need to know is that at almost exactly the time my book came out, Steve Jobs returned to Apple, and one of his first official actions was to kill Cyberdog, along with its OpenDoc parent project. Less than three months after my book hit the shelves, my contact at Apple informed me that, unfortunately, Cyberdog was being...http://db.tidbits.com/article/9650?rss |