ExtraBITS for 27 February 2012
Two quick bits for you this week — Serenity Caldwell’s highlights of new features in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion over at Macworld, and Chris Foresman’s article at Ars Technica about the new Mastered for iTunes section of the iTunes Store.
System Change Highlights in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion — While much of the chatter over the upcoming release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has focused on the Gatekeeper security feature and unifying the Mac and iOS experience, Macworld’s Serenity Caldwell delves into ten less-heralded system changes, including multi-disk Time Machine backup, draggable files in screen sharing, and a Dashboard overhaul.
Mastering the Audiophile Experience for iTunes — Apple recently debuted a Mastered for iTunes section in the iTunes Store, where audiophiles can discover releases that have been optimized for playback within its 256 kbps AAC format. Chris Foresman at Ars Technica delves into what goes into the mastering process for compressed digital audio files, including a discussion with Masterdisk Chief Engineer Andy VanDette (who recently completed a remastering project for Rush’s back catalogue).