I was reading Mac Format this morning and read about an application called Taboo that stops you from accidentally closing Safari windows with multiple tabs open, or even quitting Safari when there are multiple tabs open in a window.
Category: Mac OSX
Mac OSX 10.4.3 released
OSX 10.4.3 was released a few days ago (October 31st). There are quite a large number of fixes in there but an interesting one was “MS-DOS formatted volumes, including the iPod Shuffle, perform better and consistently mount (become available) in the Finder.”
VOIP, Voice Over IP
I’ve been playing around with a few voice over IP products for my powerbook just recently and it has to be said that some of them are pretty good.
I tried iChat AV as that seemed like the obvious choice because it comes free with Tiger (Mac OSX 10.4) and since I tried it a few times for AIM and Jabber instant messaging it was already setup with a few friends that I could try calling. Unfortunately, the VOIP part seems limited to those who have iChat AV themselves (makes sense), but also you have to be using an AIM login – just using Jabber alone doesn’t seem to let you place calls. I guess this is probably because you can use any Jabber server you want and there’s no way that Apple could guarantee that the server you use is compatible. Call quality was pretty acceptable over a cable modem and it didn’t drop out unexpectedly.
I gave Skype a miss because although it’s encrypted traffic (which is good), it’s a proprietary protocol so you have to use Skype at both ends. Oh, and the company was recently acquired by eBay so there’s no telling what might happen.
AddressBook / iCal feature.. and a bug
Just found a cool feature in iCal. You can add a “Birthdays” calendar to it by going to Preferences and then ticking the box near the bottom that says “Show Birthdays Calendar”. No big deal you might think, and that’s what I thought.. until I noticed that there were a few birthdays showing up on the calendar that I hadn’t entered!
Graphics for OSX
Just recently I’ve been wanting to do some basic graphics stuff in OSX, copy & paste some bits of image, paint onto the canvas, average run of the mill actions that MS Paint would do easily enough. The problem I’ve found is that OSX seems to lack any kind of simple paint application, sure you can download The GIMP but that’s not the point (and not really very simple, see review below). Apple, if you’re listening, there really should be something along the same lines as MS Paint included with OSX 10.5. Please?
iTunes 4.9 update
It seems that lots of people were keen to try out iTunes 4.9 and the sheer volume of downloads was why a number of the podcasts were timing out. I tried them today and they all updated fine however there is an intermittent issue where iTunes complains that the podcast isn’t a valid URL, but then an hour or two later it works ok again. Now if I can just figure out how to add some unlisted podcasts to the subscription page, I’ll be sorted.
iTunes 4.9 released
The long awaited (well, since the world wide developers conference earlier this month) iTunes 4.9 release is out! The main new feature is support for podcasts through the iTunes music store.
I subscribed through iTunes to a bunch of podcasts that I currently download using iPodder and it timed out fetching half of the files.
Tiger has arrived
Today’s the day that Tiger (Mac OSX 10.4) was released to the public. As promised by Apple, pre-orders have been despatched in time to arrive today. We weren’t in when the van from TNT came to deliver it so we decided to go and collect it after work. Lori phoned to find out when we could pick it up and apparently the chap from TNT said they didn’t normally deliver on saturdays but this weekend they were because of all the packages from Apple that needed to be delivered!
iPod solution
Problem solved thanks to Canis. The trick is to install the iPod updater software in Windows. Reboot the PC (as requested by the installer). Run the iPod updater and plug the iPod in. Restore it (note that it will wipe everything on it) and plug into the mains charger as per the instructions in the installer. Once it’s rebooted, check that both the PC and the mac can talk to it and that’s it. Job done.
iPod problem
I was lucky this year – I got an iPod for my birthday so now I can listen to audiobooks and music on the go without the hassle of running out of unique tracks after 60 minutes of CD or the joy of tapes being chewed up by old cassette playing personal stereos.
I had planned to use some of the disk space to carry documents to and from work but having used the iPod with my mac, Windows XP refuses to show it as a usable disk instead asking if I want to format it! I tried using the iPod restore software in Windows but almost broke it when it refused to give me the normal menu until I re-restored it using the restore software for the mac.
Any ideas on how to use it with both Windows and OSX would be much appreciated.