Apple's welcome support for Bluetooth keyboards with the iPad and, in iOS 4, for recent models of the iPhone and iPod touch brings with it an unfortunate risk: if you regularly travel with a paired Bluetooth keyboard, be careful that it doesn't drain your device's battery, lock you out, or erase your data.

Chris Pepper looks at what's happening with books and reading, and ponders the impending impact on living authors, who are at risk of having their livelihoods (if not their brains) eaten by zombies like Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and Jules Verne.

If you don't have high-speed Internet access, downloading software updates from Apple may be difficult or impossible. Chris Pepper offers a few solutions, both for scheduling when Software Update runs and for working around it entirely.

Frustrated with having to pay for SMS messages on his iPhone - both sent and received - Chris Pepper examines alternative ways of sending text messages.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) are systems for providing security to Internet communications, particularly Web browsing

With Amit Singh's release of MacFUSE at Macworld Expo 2007, the Mac now embraces a much broader array of file systems, improving cross-platform compatibility, network connectivity, security, and convenient integration with a variety of online services

In the first two installments of this article, we looked first at Apple's proprietary programming environments for Mac OS X - Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa - and then at its cross-platform Unix layer

In the previous installment of this article we looked at three of the five breeds of programs that run in Mac OS X: Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa. Those three are most notable because they're used for the majority of current Mac OS X programs

As we discuss Apple's new operating system, there's a strong awareness that, no matter how good Mac OS X itself might be, it can't succeed without applications created outside Apple

With Mac OS X, Apple is bringing Unix to a large, new audience. In part one of this article, I offered a brief history of Unix and mapped out how Unix will provide the basis of Mac OS X

With Mac OS X, Apple is building Unix into the Mac OS, and this has technical, social, and political ramifications for Mac users and the rest of the industry

One of the best things about the Internet - a legacy of its educational history - is that it lets us share information with people all over the planet