Ever been frustrated when looking for a power outlet in an airport? Adam feels your frustration and adds some of his own. He also looks at TypeTester, a slick Web application for choosing typefaces. Matt Neuburg returns from an AppleScript-induced hiatus to tell us about his new AppleScript book (and other AppleScript-related projects) and to review OmniGraffle 4, a powerful diagramming tool from The Omni Group. In the news, Apple lowers prices on the iPod shuffle and introduces a new iPod nano, and we release "Take Control of .Mac" 1.1 to cover .Mac’s new features and iLife ’06.
Apple Locks Up Low End of Music Player Field -- In a move sure to stymie competitors' attempts to offer less-expensive MP3 players than the wildly popular iPod line, Apple last week lowered the prices of its tiny iPod shuffle players and introduced a new, less-expensive 1 GB model of the sleek iPod nano
DealBITS Drawing: browseback Winners -- Congratulations to Viktor Berry of viktor.com, Perry Prince of mind.net, and Fernando Rendon of comcast.net, whose entries were chosen randomly in last week's DealBITS drawing and who each received a copy of SmileOnMyMac's browseback Web history utility
Possibly you haven't noticed, but during the past several months, up to just a couple of issues ago, I didn't contribute much to TidBITS. The reason is that I was extremely busy all that time, working flat out on some AppleScript-related projects
If you're the designing type, perhaps you can visualize what different typefaces look like without seeing them on screen. But for people like me, seeing is believing, and whenever I'm looking at creating something for the Web, the trial-and-error process of finding a good combination of font settings always takes longer than I'd like
Given the canonical exchange rate of a picture for a thousand words, sooner or later you're going to need to draw diagrams. OmniGraffle, from The Omni Group (the same folks who brought you OmniWeb, Adam's favorite Web browser), is a wonderful application that draws diagrams with easy grace.
OmniGraffle has a venerable history
Okay, I'm annoyed. Why is that airports, even relatively modern ones, have so few power outlets accessible to the public? I discovered this during a layover in Chicago's O'Hare Airport, waiting for a connection en route to San Francisco for Macworld Expo
"Take Control of .Mac" Updated to Cover iLife '06 -- Joe Kissell has been hard at work ever since Macworld Expo, adding 22 pages to his comprehensive "Take Control of .Mac" to cover the changes Apple unveiled in Steve Jobs's keynote
The first link for each thread description points to the traditional TidBITS Talk interface; the second link points to the same discussion on our Web Crossing server, which provides a different look and which may be faster.
Sony to do for books what iTunes did for music? Sony is about to introduce a new ebook reader that comes closer to the experience of reading text on paper, but even more intriguing is an online ebook store fashioned like Apple's iTunes Music Store