Kirk McElhearn explains how the French telecom provider Free enables him to pay far less for connectivity — including cell phone, landline, Internet, and TV. We’re not all likely to move to France just to save on our communications costs, but similar market disruptions could take place in other countries.

The big news in iTunes 10.5 right now is support for Wi-Fi syncing and iCloud backups of your iOS devices. Kirk McElhearn explains what they’ll do for you and how to turn them on.

Owners of new iMacs are reporting a significant number of hard freezes after upgrading to Mac OS X Lion, even when the same Macs worked perfectly under Snow Leopard. The only way to avoid the problem currently known is to avoid sleeping. The iMac, not you.

In the first glimpse of what iCloud will mean to Mac and iOS users, Apple has released iTunes 10.3 with a pair of new features: Automatic Downloads that ensures that all purchases appear on all your devices, and the long-awaited capability to re-download purchases.

iTunes 10.2 is out to support the upcoming releases of the iPad 2 and iOS 4.3, but Kirk McElhearn’s eagle eye has spotted a few other minor changes, largely in the program’s preferences, along with slightly improved performance.

Apple has shoehorned every feature short of the kitchen sink into the increasingly misnamed iTunes - surely that means the program is a classic example of bloatware? Or is it? Kirk McElhearn, who has written numerous articles and books about iTunes, examines the charges that iTunes is bloated to see if they're valid.

Amazon has released the international Kindle, bringing its signature ebook reader to the world outside the United States. But do the company's pricing plans blunt an otherwise exciting announcement? Kirk McElhearn, writing from his home office in the French Alps, takes a look.

You may have read that the French are at it again: harassing Apple, and requiring them to open the FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) system used to protect music files sold by the iTunes Music Store

When I bought one of Griffin Technology's PowerMates, I thought it was the cat's pajamas. In my review here last year (see "Unleashing the Power of the PowerMate" in TidBITS-653), I said, "It will most likely remain by my keyboard for a very long time." Alas, that time is shorter than I had expected, for I have found something even better: the Contour Design ShuttleXpress. The PowerMate is a strange gadget: consisting of a rotating knob and a push-button, it can be programmed to do almost anything with any application

Lesson 3: Moving, Copying, and Deleting Files and Directories In the previous two installments in this series, we looked at the basics of using the Terminal to access the Unix command line at the heart of Mac OS X, and then at how to use the Terminal to move around your Mac's file system

I may belong to the last generation for which radio was once not just a source of music, news and sports, but also a primary source of verbal entertainment

Many things can be converted into bits and transferred over the Internet, which is one reason why small pockets of special interests, hobbies, and pastimes flourish on the Web

Looking back through the TidBITS archives, it's interesting to how many appearances Inspiration has made. The first review, by Adam Engst in 1992, looked mostly at the outline functions

Lesson 2: Navigating the File System In the first installment of this series, we looked at the basics of using the Terminal to access Mac OS X's Unix core

Lesson 1: First Steps with the Command Line When Apple announced the release of Mac OS X, many Mac users were stunned: here was a new operating system based on the venerable Unix, which, they feared, would call into question the Mac's legendary ease-of-use

I have always had mixed feelings about gadgets. I like the cool factor inherent in some of them, but I tend to find that the cooler they look, the less useful they are

When I started using Mac OS X, back in the days of the public beta, I was both confused and disappointed. The habits and familiarity I had developed over more than a decade working with Macs had been tossed by the wayside

Last week, Apple announced that it had sold its five millionth iMac, making the translucent machine Apple's best-selling Macintosh model of all time. Its unique design attracted many who had never before purchased computers, and its ubiquitous shape and colors have made it almost standard fare in mainstream magazine photo spreads, television shows, and movies - when you need to show a computer, you might as well present one that looks good. Many TidBITS readers undoubtedly own iMacs, as I do, and many of you may also have family members who own one

Computer books can be big, because computers - as well as the applications and operating systems they use - are far more complex than their makers would often like to admit

The Internet is global in reach, but most Web sites are in English. This is changing as other countries adopt the Internet with the same fervor as English-speaking nations, but it will take time to catch up