Along with fixing a variety of bugs, Ergonis Software's recently released PopChar X 3.2 font utility adds an option to hide the application's corner "P" unless the cursor is nearby, something regular users might appreciate, whereas less frequent users may prefer the constant reminder of PopChar's presence

Fax is dead, right? After all, you don't see ultra-hip Web 2.0 sites trumpeting their fax services, and the Internet in general has surely supplanted the lowly fax machine, hasn't it? And if you do need to fax a document, Mac OS X has fax capabilities built in

A year ago, I might have needed to explain this week's DealBITS drawing in more detail. But a year ago, virtualization - the capability to run Windows and other PC operating systems on an Intel-based Mac - was just getting started, and Parallels Desktop hadn't yet become the must-have application for anyone who needs to use Windows applications on a Mac

For those interested in running Windows on an Intel-based Mac, this week brought two interesting announcements. First, in the ongoing battle of one-upmanship between Parallels and VMware, Parallels announced a new initiative to help developers package and distribute virtual appliances - prepackaged virtual machines containing a full operating system and applications, configured to perform specific tasks and ready to run without any setup

I spend a fair amount of time doing Web development, and although I have access to graphical tools such as Dreamweaver, I've long preferred to do all my coding by hand - yes, even for complex CSS layouts, tables, and forms; it's just the way I'm wired

I'm a fan of Mark/Space's syncing products. The Missing Sync for Palm OS, for example, has made my wife's digital life much more pleasant now that she no longer has to deal with the not-always-reliable collaboration between Apple's iSync and Palm's HotSync conduit to get her Palm TX and her PowerBook G4 on the same page

Robert Movin's recent article "Switching My Mother to the Mac" (2007-04-02) generated a number of nice comments from people who had engineered similar switches for family members

.Mac Ebook Update Covers Latest in .Mac Webmail Access -- We just released version 1.2 of our comprehensive guide to Apple's .Mac service, "Take Control of .Mac." Written by Joe Kissell, the 204-page ebook provides everything .Mac users need to know to get the most of their $100-per-year subscriptions

Today marks the 17th anniversary of TidBITS, which we've published continuously since 1990. On previous anniversaries, I've written about our accomplishments, our goals, lessons we've learned, and more

Kicking off the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference this week, Apple reinvigorated its line of professional video applications, which will collectively be bundled as Final Cut Studio 2

I used to be a huge fan of Nisus Software's Nisus Writer in the classic Mac OS days. In fact, producing TidBITS each week relied on a collection of Nisus Writer macros I'd written

Now Up-to-Date & Contact 5.0 Released -- Now Software has released Now Up-to-Date & Contact 5.0, the latest version of the company's long-standing multi-user calendar and contact management software

My article last week about setting up an account with MaxEmail to receive faxes in email (see "Replacing eFax with MaxEmail" in TidBITS-774) generated a number of suggestions from readers for other services.

Last week we ran out of room to write much about Dantz Development's release of Retrospect 5.0, the lack of which, for many people serious about their backups (see our "Backed Up Today?" series of articles on the topic), was the main obstacle preventing upgrades to Mac OS X. First off, I want to explain briefly why we had to wait so long for Retrospect 5.0, and why making it compatible with Mac OS X was much harder than it would appear