In an effort to clear the decks before Leopard pounces, we have published not one, not two, but three free updates to popular Take Control books about Apple Mail, managing spam with Apple Mail, and Apple's .Mac online service.
More options to update older Macs to nearly the fastest flavor of Wi-Fi - 802.11n - without fuss. A USB option is particularly attractive for the widest support of varied systems.
A Wi-Fi connection program lets you hook your iPhone into hotspots without entering a user name and password at each location. It removes the friction from connecting to public free and fee networks.
Instead of resting on its laurels, Apple continues to break new ground in the iPod world, releasing the iPhone-like iPod touch, putting a 160 GB drive in the new iPod classic, enabling the new iPod nano to play video, and giving the iPod shuffle new colors. Other announcements included the capability to purchase custom ringtones for the iPhone from the iTunes Store, the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store for the iPhone and iPod touch, and a price drop - $200! - for the iPhone.
If you use Fetch in an academic setting, writing a short essay could win you a brand new MacBook and $750 or a new 8GB iPod nano and $100.
A TidBITS reader emailed us this week wondering if we'd experienced or heard of an issue where subscribers to .Mac in Europe are seeing unusually slow download speeds (capped at roughly 768Kbps). Apple responded to our query.
After nearly 11 months, the Penelope project has shipped the first public beta of Eudora 8.0, marking the release of something that's functional, but probably more attractive to developers than normal users.
QuickerTek lowers prices and adds options for Mac users who want to add Wi-Fi to Macs without it, or boost the speed of their Wi-Fi networks with the latest 802.11n standard.
Apple updates its 802.11n-based AirPort Extreme Base Station to a certified flavor called Draft N to improve compatibility among equipment from many makers.
The free Teleport utility enables you to control multiple networked Macs from a single keyboard and mouse. It's very cool, and worth using for anyone who wants to use multiple Macs at the same time.
"Sidejacking" has entered the lexicon of network attacks. This newly defined term refers to a method of hijacking an in-progress Web session with a remote service - like Gmail - by intercepting and re-using the credentials that identify you to that server. Protecting against sidejacking may take a rethink on the part of Web site operators, users, and browser makers.
Our long-time co-location facility, Digital Forest - the folks that house our servers and provide juice, cooling, and connectivity - needed to add additional capacity for their power backup. Even though the large new units would slide through the building, it was unclear whether certain paths along the way were engineered to handle that much point weight. Why not rip open the roof, instead?
A new version of the AirPort Utility and related software fixes minor bugs and improves the password interface.
At last week's press event, Apple took the wraps off the next version of its iLife suite, bumping the name from iLife '06 to iLife '08 and providing a completely new version of iMovie.
Google bumps storage for Gmail, Picasa, if you're willing to pay $20 to $500 per year for 6 GB to 250 GB of storage.