Agen Schmitz
Agen Schmitz has worked within the Apple eco-sphere since helping manage conference speaker content for Thunder Lizard Productions in the mid-90s. After spending time at Amazon in the early 2000s (as senior editor for the Electronics, specializing in PDAs and MP3 players—he still has his original pre-release iPod), he has continued to focus on e-commerce content and works with a variety of brands across the e-retail landscape. Agen lives in Seattle with his wife and son (who, sadly, has moved onto Windows for gaming), loves making monthly music mixes, and is always dreaming of Iceland.
Adds the capability to select folder favorites via the Finder’s contextual menus and supports Automator workflows in Lion. ($34.95 new, free update, 10.6 MB)
Major update to of free, open-source multimedia player includes overhauled user interface, faster multi-processor decoding, and “experimental” Blu-ray compatibility. (Free, 24 MB)
Fixes small glitch in initial selection of some ebooks, expands font size range, adds toolbar tips for better VoiceOver support, and more. ($9.99 new, free update, 2.6 MB)
Tonya Engst discusses raising children in the age of screentime as part of the “Parenting in the Mobile Internet Age” panel discussion from Macworld | iWorld 2012, moderated by Chuck Joiner of MacVoicesTV.
With tongue firmly in cheek, Cracked (yes, Cracked) delves into the pitfalls of our societal move away from printed books to ebooks on iPads and Kindles — from no longer having an extra support for your IKEA bed to the declining impact of book burnings.
Following weeks of heated discussion over working conditions that included some protests, Apple announced that it has asked the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to begin special voluntary audits at the company’s final assembly suppliers, including Foxconn, Quanta, and Pegatron.
Dan Frakes at Macworld details the steps for creating a bootable installer disc or drive for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, which is important especially for Macs that debuted after the release of Lion (as they don’t include a downloadable version of the installer). While nicely thorough and practical, it’s also notable for a hair-raising maneuver to avoid re-installing Mac OS X and zapping your Mac’s PRAM.
Restores compatibility with pulling video from Netflix in full-screen mode and can now capture audio from sandboxed applications sold through the Mac App Store. ($25 new, free update, 9.8 MB)
Subscribers to Apple’s iTunes Match service are sending copyright holders “magic money,” writes Jeff Price at the blog for the TuneCore online music distribution service. And while not an overwhelming amount ($10,000 in the first two months, spread out across 55,000 TuneCore artists), Price points out that it is more than the null sum that artists were previously receiving.
Fixes addition of “-Temporary” to some EPUB display names plus disappearance of table of contents when resizing window in Mac OS X 10.6. ($9.99 new, free update, 2.6 MB)
Fixes issue that prevented recording audio from Skype on Mac OS X 10.7.3. ($10 new, free update, 2.8 MB)
Trio of updates for additional 2010 Macs enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection. (Free, 3 MB)
Long list of new features, bugs, and tweaks highlighted by support for archiving Lion Recovery HD partition and cloning a Lion installation disk image. (Free update, 6.0 MB)
Refines connections between ChronoSync and ChronoAgent with SSL encryption, plus additional new features. ($40 new for ChronoSync, $10 new for ChronoAgent; free updates; 29 MB, 8.1 MB)
Includes latest version of Instant On component for pulling audio from sandboxed application from the Mac App Store. ($32 new, free update, 5.2 MB)