A drum roll, please! This is our 1,000th issue of TidBITS (we’re shocked too), and Adam shares some thoughts on where we are now and how we tell when we’re doing a good job. But there’s no time to rest on our laurels. Matt Neuburg explains how he tracked down a bug that will cause certain Apple events to fail and Rich Mogull recommends using Preview for PDF files to avoid Adobe Reader security vulnerabilities. Plus, Doug McLean covers Apple’s acknowledgment of a data-destroying bug related to guest accounts, Microsoft’s extension of Office 2004 support, and welcome new features in Gmail. Adam also explains how Find My iPhone can be used to increase comfort levels, covers Apple’s In App Purchase policy changes, and walks through the new shared folders in Google Docs. Finally, Glenn Fleishman weighs in with some thoughts about how Apple missed the boat with the iPod nano’s radio capabilities. Notable software releases this week include Acorn 2.1, Nisus Writer Pro 1.4, Phone Amego 1.0.8, Snapz Pro X 2.2.1, Performance Update 1.0, Airfoil 3.4, Cocktail 4.5.2, Evernote for Mac 1.5, Logic Pro 9.0.2, iMovie ’09 8.0.5, SuperDuper 2.6.2, and Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3.
With user complaints piling up since September, Apple has now publicly acknowledged a nasty data-destroying bug related to using the guest account in Snow Leopard.
Microsoft will extend Mainstream Support for Office 2004, originally slated to reach end-of-life status on 13-Oct-2009, until 10-Jan-2012.
At long last, Apple has made it possible for iPhone developers to distribute a free version of an app and use the new In App Purchase feature to buy content and unlock features.
Ever include the wrong person in an email message to a group? Gmail can now help you out, with a new Google Labs feature that alerts you when it appears you've included an erroneous recipient.
Collaborating with others via Google Docs has just gotten a little easier, thanks to Google's addition of shared folders. Adam looks into the feature and finds a few odd behaviors for people accustomed to how folders work in Mac OS X.
All users should immediately patch Adobe Acrobat and Reader and, due to Adobe's ongoing string of major security flaws, should set Apple's Preview as their default PDF reader.
While Tonya trained for a 100-mile bike ride this summer, Adam monitored her location from afar via Find My iPhone. Privacy breach? No, just making her feel more comfortable about being all alone many miles from home.
You may think you don't care about Apple events, but they're everywhere, and on Snow Leopard they're ever so slightly broken, in a way that causes intermittent random-looking scripting failures. Here's how the bug was discovered, proved, and reported to Apple.
Colleagues seem alarmed by Glenn's antipathy to the iPod nano's analog FM radio tuning. But by failing to leverage data in the radio stream, Apple delivers a typical and irritating experience - compared to what it could have been.
We've hit the decimal 1K of issues, enumerated as M in Roman numerals, 1111101000 in binary, and woo-hoo in English! Adam shares where we're at these days, and explains how we now determine success.
Notable software releases this week include Acorn 2.1, Nisus Writer Pro 1.4, Phone Amego 1.0.8, Snapz Pro X 2.2.1, Performance Update 1.0, Airfoil 3.4, Cocktail 4.5.2, Evernote for Mac 1.5, Logic Pro 9.0.2, iMovie '09 8.0.5, SuperDuper 2.6.2, and Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3.
Read on for a collection of links to a few of the most interesting articles and resources that the TidBITS staff discovered on the Web this week.
This week's discussions focus on Time Machine backups being deleted unexpectedly, unlocking iPhones after the service contract is up, connecting a digital camera via a USB keyboard, the future of Quicken, permissions problems when synchronizing folders, merging events in iPhoto, recommending a webcam for a relative, and working around a damaged audio-in port.