Have you gotten chummy with a Chumby? (Are you thinking we’ve gone out of our minds?) Kevin van Haaren looks at the plush computing device and explains what you can do with it. Matt Neuburg writes about how Default Folder X 4 is an essential update for your Mac, and how Quay makes Leopard’s stacks usable again. Joe Kissell makes his Windows and Mac partitions talk to one another via NTFS for Mac, and Adam raises concerns about Google’s Knol, which seems to be taking aim at Wikipedia. In security news, Apple released QuickTime 7.3.1 to fix the serious RTSP vulnerability. Lastly, we’ve published new and updated Take Control ebooks about the iPhone, digital TV, running Windows on a Mac, and Mac OS X terminology (all of which are 20% off via the MacSanta promotion on 18-Dec-07). Have a safe and happy holiday – our next issue will be 07-Jan-08!
We're taking the last two weeks of the year off, so look for the next email issue of TidBITS on 07-Jan-08. But we'll continue posting new articles to our Web site, and TidBITS Talk will also continue apace.
Apple has released QuickTime 7.3.1, a security update that patches a potentially serious exploit that could enable unauthorized access to your Mac.
If you're interested in creating DivX-encoded videos, you can - for an unspecified limited time - get a free serial number for the $19.99 DivX Pro software.
Save 20% on all Take Control ebooks on December 18th, and if you miss that day, you can still save 10% through the end of December.
Thanks to up-to-date details from troubleshooting guru Ted Landau, iPhone users can learn to use their iPhones more effectively and solve nearly any problem that might afflict their shiny new toys.
In our final crunch before the holiday break, we have three more ebook updates for your reading pleasure - new versions of "Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac," "Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon," and "Take Control of Digital TV."
First the Dock lost its silly reflectiveness, then we blocked the menu bar's transparency. Now a new utility, Quay, lets you replace Stacks in the Leopard Dock with folders that have hierarchical menus - just like on, uh, Tiger, Panther, and every iteration of Mac OS X. Except Leopard. Except that Quay's hierarchical menus are cooler.
You know there's something really clumsy and annoying about Open and Save dialogs, but you can't quite say what it is. Right? Right??? Well, Default Folder X shows you what it is - by fixing it.
A new tool called NTFS for Mac OS X enables you to read and write to NTFS volumes (such as a Boot Camp partition) seamlessly and with better performance than previously available options.
What's a Chumby, and do you want one in your life? Kevin van Haaren explains what's behind (and inside) the new beanbag computer, and expresses frustration at its reliance on Flash in favor of JavaScript.
Camera manufacturers make a big deal about how many megapixels their cameras have, but does it really matter? Or ought we be looking at other aspects of the camera's image sensor?
An ambitious new project from Google takes aim at Wikipedia, but at least as it has been described so far, it suffers from numerous conceptual problems and makes Google seem more like Microsoft than ever before.
Only two bonus stories this week, as we wind down to our end-of-year holiday hiatus.
This week's discussions are all over the Mac map, ranging from streaming audio through an AirPort Express and potential bugs in Leopard and Tiger to readers' impressions of the iPod touch and how to store data on it.