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TidBITS#1046/27-Sep-2010

We weren’t expecting it, but between a surprise release of iTunes 10.0.1 very late last week and Kirk McElhearn’s editorial about whether iTunes deserves to be called bloated, iTunes looms large in this issue. In other news, version 1.3 of the Dropbox iOS app adds some useful features for Glenn Fleishman, and Adam looks in depth at AppTamer, a new utility from St. Clair Software that promises to improve overall performance, quiet laptop fans, and improve battery life, all by stopping applications from executing unnecessarily in the background. Finally, if you’re a PDFpen user, or are looking for help with PDF manipulation software, check out our latest ebook, Michael E. Cohen’s “Take Control of PDFpen 5.” Notable software releases this week include NoMoreiTunes 1.51, Adobe Flash Player 10.1.85.3, DEVONthink and DEVONnote 2.0.4, Security Update 2010-006, TinkerTool 4.2, Mailplane 2.2, and Pro Applications Update 2010-02.

Adam Engst 14 comments

iTunes 10.0.1 Integrates Ping

iTunes 10.0.1 adds a Ping sidebar that shows contextual and recent activity, along with Ping buttons that make it easy to "like" or comment on a selected or playing track. The changes make Ping significantly easier to use, but don't yet provide any significant reason to use it.

Adam Engst 3 comments

AppTamer Quiets CPU-Chewing Background Apps

If your Mac is laboring under the load of applications running in the background that aren't even really doing anything, St. Clair Software's new AppTamer may provide the respite you need. It can stop applications in the background, reducing CPU usage and thus helping portable Macs run cooler, quieter, and longer.

Kirk McElhearn 74 comments

Is iTunes Bloated?

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.

TidBITS Staff No comments

ExtraBITS for 27 September 2010

It was a busy week here, and all we ran across worth sharing was a fabulous Joy of Tech comic about devices Facebook could work on and an iPhone case from ThinkGeek that gives an iPhone a flip-out physical keyboard.