There are lots of word processors out there — Apple’s Pages comes with every new Mac and Microsoft Word has been the professional standard for years. But when it comes to writing one of his many books, Joe Kissell prefers Nisus Writer Pro — so much so that he switched to the Mac in 1991 to use it. In this Macworld piece, Joe explains what makes Nisus Writer so great.

Google has used HTML5 and JavaScript to create a Web version of the famous Rubik’s Cube puzzle. Educator Ernő Rubik created the cube in the 1970s to teach his students about spatial geometry, and it became a commercial hit in the 1980s. You can fully rotate and manipulate Google’s virtual cube, and there are even a number of keyboard shortcuts.

With Apple rumored to purchase the headphone giant, Josh Centers takes a look at the Beats Music streaming service to see what differentiates it from competitors — and why it may be a good fit for Apple.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released its annual “Who Has Your Back?” report, which ranks companies on six factors related to how they comply with government information requests and stand up for user privacy. Thanks in part to Edward Snowden’s revelations about mass surveillance, many companies have taken greater measures to ensure user privacy. Apple, in particular, showed dramatic improvement — jumping from one star in 2013 to a full six this year. Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo also now score a full six stars.

In the latest update to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Apple has restored iTunes-based contact and calendar syncing and added Retina support for external 4K displays.

Developer Panic has decided to not sell version 2.5 of its Apple Design Award-winning Coda Web development app in the Mac App Store, citing the difficulty of working with Apple’s sandboxing requirements. Apple began requiring apps submitted to, or updated on, the Mac App Store to be sandboxed as of 1 June 2012, forcing many developers to pull their apps from the store, stop updating them, or remove features to comply with the requirements.

Adam Pash, formerly of Lifehacker, recently switched from iPhone to Android, but his phone number is still tied to iMessage, preventing him from receiving SMS text messages on his new phone from iMessage users. According to Pash, Apple support informed him that engineers are working on a fix for the problem, but don’t currently have a reliable solution.

Amazon and book publisher Hachette are embroiled in a bitter contract dispute, and Hachette’s authors are feeling the pinch. Amazon, which now controls about one-third of book sales, has launched a campaign to discourage customers from purchasing Hachette titles, removing discounts, taking weeks to ship books, and recommending competing titles. While it’s likely that there are other sides to the story, Amazon did not respond to questions from David Streitfeld at the New York Times.

Do you avoid Gmail due to privacy concerns? Your resistance is futile. Benjamin Mako Hill has hosted his own email for the past 15 years, and despite that, he found that over half of his email messages either come from or go to a Gmail account, where they can be analyzed by the search giant’s automated algorithms. Of course, the same is roughly true of other large mail hosting firms, so although the mail you send isn’t likely to allow these companies to target ads at you better, it’s far from being a private communication between you and the recipient.

Common wisdom says that keeping hard drives cool will make them last longer, but is it true? Backblaze’s backup boffins say no.

TidBITS Managing Editor Josh Centers joined host Gene Steinberg on The Tech Night Owl podcast for a lively discussion of what’s coming next at WWDC, Fire TV impressions, and ComiXology removing in-app purchases from its iOS app.

“Take Control of Apple TV” author Josh Centers spent two weeks with Amazon’s Fire TV as his only living room device. Here’s his take on how it compares to the Apple TV.

Apple is reportedly set to buy Beats Electronics, maker of premium fashion headphones and the Beats Audio music streaming service, for $3.2 billion. Macworld’s Dan Miller suggests a few compelling reasons why, such as Beats’ curated music service and the industry credibility of co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.

Most digital comic books are restricted by digital rights management, but a few smaller publishers are taking a more user-friendly approach, offering comics without DRM. Josh Centers profiles a few of these publishers — including one that is offering a nifty DRM-free starter special for a short time only — and points out a great app for reading their books.

Netflix is raising its prices for streaming accounts by $1 per month, but only for new customers.