The holiday season looms large, and we’re easing into it by soliciting suggestions for the annual TidBITS Gift Guide and by passing on news of free Wi-Fi hotspot access during holiday travel. In the iPhone world, we have a pair of new ebooks that will help you get more from your iPhone or iPod touch, news of a digital FM tuner for the iPhone, and links to several App Store rejection stories. On the Mac side of things, Matt Neuburg isolates a Finder-copying bug in Snow Leopard, and Adam passes along news of a workaround to a screen saver bug introduced in Mac OS X 10.6.2. Finally, Adam reviews the ViBook+ USB-based video adapter, explains how you can put Wikipedia in your pocket with the WikiReader, and looks at Waveboard, a WebKit wrapper around Google Wave. Notable software releases this week include Safari 4.0.4, Yojimbo 2.1, Wireless Keyboard Update 2.0, Freedom 0.5.1, Default Folder X 4.3.3, Microsoft Office 2008 12.2.3 Update, and Firefox 3.5.5.
We're gearing up to produce the TidBITS Gift Guide for 2009, and we need your suggestions for the gifts that you plan to give or want to receive this year.
Why pay for Wi-Fi when eBay, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo want you to use typically for-fee hotspots in exchange for nothing but your eyeballs? Holiday sponsorships are bringing free service to airports, airplanes, and elsewhere.
Solve iPhone mysteries and learn clever tricks with a pair of new Take Control ebooks written by Jeff Carlson and Ted Landau.
Radio Shack might have the weirdest iPhone adapter to date: the Gigaware In-line Control pumps digital FM into an iPhone. With streaming Internet radio and podcasts, why spend the $79?
See who won copies of Labels & Addresses 1.3.3 in last week's DealBITS drawing, and if you're not among them, read on to save 30 percent.
Mac OS 10.6.2 made a small change to the Slide Show screen saver that displays images from folders and from iPhoto, causing it to hang when pointed at large folders or iPhoto collections.
If you're one of the lucky few with access to Google Wave, the Macintosh application Waveboard will make Google Wave easier to access and use.
Sure, it won't replace an iPhone or other PDA, but if all you want is a portable encyclopedia, the new WikiReader is cheap, cute, and chock full of Wikipedia.
Certain files can't be copied from one computer to another via File Sharing in Snow Leopard. Details are given, so you can confirm the bug for yourself.
The new ViBook+ enables you to add a large - 24- to 28-inch - monitor to any Mac via USB. Though it still lacks 3D acceleration and isn't the fastest graphics adapter you'll find, it's well worth it for connecting an additional display to a MacBook or MacBook Pro in particular.
Notable software releases this week include Safari 4.0.4, Yojimbo 2.1, Wireless Keyboard Update 2.0, Freedom 0.5.1, Default Folder X 4.3.3, Microsoft Office 2008 12.2.3 Update, and Firefox 3.5.5.
We were busy publishing "Take Control of Your iPhone Apps" (note Jeff's MacVoices interview) and "Take Control of iPhone OS 3" this week, so we didn't have much time for Web surfing, but the articles that jumped out at us this week revolved around the iPhone worm that can infect careless jailbreakers and the latest App Store rejection horror stories.
This week's TidBITS Talk discussions cover several new topics. On the troubleshooting front, readers diagnose why Microsoft AutoUpdate is repeatedly pushing a conversion utility, why Magic Mouse tracking isn't as good when connected to a Mac Pro, and whether something is wrong with an iMac's FireWire bus. Suggestions are also offered for building a Mac help desk for a school, previewing photos on a virtual wall, and obtaining early versions of the Mac OS. We also look at the end of the Apple v. Psystar case and the ongoing costs of using Macs in the office versus Windows PCs.