Just before press time (whatever that means in the Internet age), Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.2, fixing a slew of bugs and providing a vast number of security fixes; we have some initial coverage. Despite what some other publications seem to believe, email isn’t going away any time soon, and Adam explains why. He also looks into how the 100,000 apps in the iPhone App Store stack up against the competition, and why size may be the App Store’s biggest challenge. Joe Kissell reports from Paris on the opening of the first Apple Store in France and reduced pricing for the Backblaze online backup service. Glenn Fleishman notes the new Google Dashboard service for displaying what Google knows about you, and goes in depth on the new 2D barcode trend. Be sure to enter our DealBITS drawing for a copy of BeLight Software’s Labels & Addresses too! Notable software releases this week include Viewfinder 1.0, Captain FTP 6.2, MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.6, BBEdit 9.3, Sandvox 1.6.5, Kaspersky Anti-Virus For Mac 1.0, DiscLabel 6.1, BusyCal 1.0.3, Parallels Desktop 5, and TweetDeck 0.31.3.
Backblaze has taken the logical, if unusual, step of applying flat-rate pricing for unlimited backups to business customers as well as individuals.
Mac OS X 10.6.2 is now available, fixing many bugs and security issues in many areas of Snow Leopard. Notably, the update squashes a nasty bug that may delete a regular user account when logged in following a Guest login session.
Paris now has its first Apple Store - under the Louvre Museum. Joe Kissell visited it on opening day.
Google knows our most intimate details, and promises to do no evil. Its new Dashboard is a good faith effort by the firm to show you as much as it knows about you all in one place.
Starting to think about printing mailing labels for your Christmas cards? BeLight Software's Labels & Addresses improves significantly upon Address Book's printing capabilities, and you can win one of three copies in this week's DealBITS drawing.
This iPhone thing? It's probably going to catch on, if Apple's announcement of reaching the 100,000 apps available in the App Store is any indication. But just because Apple's App Store has 8 times more apps than the second place store doesn't mean smooth sailing unless Apple can conquer the discoverability problem that's scaring off developers.
The recent talk about how email usage is waning among certain populations misses two important points: email will never die because it's based on open standards that enable anyone to develop and run servers and clients, and, because of this, email remains the lowest common denominator for interpersonal communication on the Internet.
With the right software, a matrix of rectangles and dots turns into a URL, a piece of text, or an action. Welcome to 2D barcodes, courtesy of TidBITS.
Notable software releases this week include Viewfinder 1.0, Captain FTP 6.2, MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.6, BBEdit 9.3, Sandvox 1.6.5, Kaspersky Anti-Virus For Mac 1.0, DiscLabel 6.1, BusyCal 1.0.3, Parallels Desktop 5, and TweetDeck 0.31.3.
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.
New threads this week were lighter than normal, something we chalk up to everyone being busy reading all the new articles we've published at TidBITS and continuing to chat about old topics. Among new topics, readers discuss computer monitor viewing angles and desks to support them, utilities for downloading streaming Flash videos, and inconsistent selection behavior in the Finder.