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Apple Headlines 9.26.2007

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 | Apple Headlines | No Comments

Your iLife just got better
Apple just released a slew of point-updates for iLife ‘08, promoting hard-workers iMovie, GarageBand, and iPhoto…

Apple drops new Leopard build, may be release candidate
Labeled “Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard build 9A559,” the new release came just hours after the Cupertino-based company issued two minor updates to the previous full-sized build (9A527), both of which were aimed at testing the system’s automated Software Update mechanism.

Notice for Boot Camp Beta Users
The Boot Camp Assistant and license for Boot Camp beta versions 1.0b through 1.2b will expire on September 30th, 2007. Expiration does not affect installed copies of Windows. Updating the beta license is simple.

Hands on: Getting down to iWork ‘08
With iWork ‘08, the latest generation of its office suite, Apple has given Mac users a powerful alternative to Microsoft’s Office for Mac. This new version finally offers an alternative to Excel called Numbers, a spreadsheet tool unlike any that has come before it. It also adds some great new features to iWork’s other two applications — the presentation program Keynote and the word processor Pages — including a few that many users felt were lacking in previous releases.

Apple’s Leopard Will Exclude 800MHz G4 Processors
According to AppleInsider, Apple is about to announce that Leopard will not support 800 MHz G4 PowerPC processors. Previously developers had been told that it would require at least an 800 MHz G4.

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Mac 101 - System Preferences: System - Part 1

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 | Mac 101 | 1 Comment

We’re nearing the end of the series on System Preferences. System settings is that last category in System Preferences. There is a category of Other, which will vary from Mac to Mac based what software or utilities you have installed. In the System area of System Preferences we have six groups of settings that allow you to control the behavior of your Mac system.

Accounts
This is where you control the user accounts on your Mac. If you’re the only user of your Mac you will only have one account in this area of System Preferences. This is where you can set up additional user accounts if you desire to do so. It may be useful to have multiple user accounts if your Mac is used be several people. Multiple user accounts help to keep settings and data organized for each user. In the Accounts are you can set and change user passwords, change the user picture, modify login items and set parental controls. Login Items are programs or services that you want loaded upon login. So, if you’d like to have a particular program load when you login to your user account this is where you would set that up.

Date & Time
Here you can set the date and time of your computer. You can keep the time current manually or you can select an option to automatically set time and date according to a server at Apple. Further, you can set the Time Zone that you live or work in. This will adjust the time accordingly and allow the Apple server to synchronize your computer to the proper time if you’re using that feature. Finally, this is where you can modify Clock settings. You can change if the clock appears in the task bar and how. You can view the clock as digital or analog, 12 or 24 hour format, display the time in seconds and other options.

Software Update
Every Mac comes equipped with a software update utility. This utility periodically checks for new software updates. In Systems Preferences under Software Update you can change the frequency at which the Mac checks for new updates. Here you can also tell the system how you would like it to behave if there are new updates. Software Update can notify you when new updates are available for download or it can download them in the background and let you know when its ready to install. Finally, you can also see a list of all updates installed to date. In case you’re uncertain if you installed a certain update, this is where you can find out.

In the next installment of Mac 101 we will cover Speech, Startup Disk and Universal Access settings. If you’d like to receive these posts and other content from Gustacci.com in your Inbox, please sign up for email delivery.

Next Lesson:
Mac 101 - System Preferences: System - Part 2

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Free Software for the Mac

Monday, September 24th, 2007 | Free Stuff, Reviews, Software | 1 Comment

We all like free stuff. I know I do. When it comes to free software, the Windows world is known to have plenty available. But what about the Mac side of the world? Are there any free applications for the Mac? And the answer is yes. There are free applications for the Mac. Now, when I say “free,” I mean legally free. I’m not talking about any of the pirated stuff.

Now that we established the fact that there is free software for the Mac, the next step is to find it. There are several ways of doing that. You can search Google, visit Apple.com and browse around in the OS X section, or you can visit other freeware directory sites. But there is one other way. And this way is MacLibre.

I’ve found this to be the easiest way to find, download and install free Mac software. MacLibre is a small program that aggregates freeware applications for Mac and allows you to download and install these applications from one simple user interface.

MacLibre organizes these applications into five categories.

• Create - image editing and authoring and audio editing programs
• Internet - web browsers, instant messengers, email and RSS
• Multimedia - video and audio players and rippers
• Office - productivity software such as word processors and spreadsheets
• Utilities - desktop management, anti-virus scanning and terminal enhancing applications

Some of the titles that you will find in MacLibre are:

• Audacity - software for recording and editing sounds
• Gimp - application similar to Photoshop for editing and authoring images
• Adium - an instant message client that supports protocols such as MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, AIM and others
• Cyberduck - FTP and SFTP client
• Firefox - open source web browser
• Thuderbird - open source email application
• Vienna - a free application for reading RSS feeds
• MPlayer - a media player that plays a variety of DivX and other codecs
• NeoOffice - an open source office application that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, vector drawing and database applications
• ClamXav - an antivirus scanner
• VirtualDesktop - a desktop manager for Mac

These and other applications are available for download and installation through MacLibre. To begin enjoying these free programs all you need to do is install MacLibre.

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