TidBITS

Adam Engst enjoys most conferences, but last week’s MacTech Conference 2012 was superlative, combining useful sessions, interesting discussions, and delightful evening entertainment in a way that left his mind pondering all sorts of new possibilities. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

A technology that started out as the audio-only AirTunes in 2004 and transmogrified into AirPlay in 2010 has now been enhanced in Mountain Lion to enable us to mirror our Mac screens to AirPlay-savvy devices like the Apple TV. Read on to find out what else you can do with it, and to learn how to recover the commands formerly on the Display menu bar menu. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Apple Mail on both Mac OS X and iOS can tell you immediately when you have new mail, but the two versions do so using very different systems. Michael Cohen explains how each works. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Photos from the iPhone 5 are better than those from the iPhone 4S, but not all photo enhancements are due to the new device’s hardware. Jeff Carlson looks at photo improvements in iOS 6 that owners of the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and camera-enabled iPod touch models can enjoy. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

For ExtraBITS this week, we have links to an article by Glenn Fleishman about what it was like to be on Jeopardy (alas, the actual shows aren’t online) and to an interesting overview at MacStories of where in the world Apple sells its media properties. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

The rumored iPad mini looks more likely, now that Apple has sent invitations to a media event on Tuesday. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

So you can more easily participate in our online and real-world events, we’ve created the public TidBITS Events calendar in iCloud. Subscribe and you’ll never miss one of our presentations. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Notable software releases this week include TweetDeck 2.0, Firefox 16.0.1, and Voila 3.3. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

We have two multimedia ExtraBITS for you this week — a video of a Saturday Night Live sketch that pokes fun at the fuss surrounding the iPhone 5 and a Macworld podcast with Glenn Fleishman that discusses some of the real quirks and problems in iOS 6. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Thanks to the personal computer and the Internet, anyone can be a publisher today. But while our software may now solve basic visual design problems for us, most people don’t know how to think like a publisher, which results in information that’s poorly designed and conveyed. Adam Engst explains how to do a better job.  Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

We’re sure you can basically get around on the Web with Safari, but if you want to learn all that Apple’s powerful Web browser can do, check out Sharon Zardetto’s 143-page “Take Control of Safari 6” ebook. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Jeff Porten shares an interesting insight from a talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson — we can identify abandoned or stagnating technologies when examples of that technology remain cool decades later. How might this inform our view of today’s cutting edge devices? Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Notable software releases this week include Things 2.1, Sandvox 2.6.7, Hazel 3.0.13, Airfoil 4.7.4, Adobe Lightroom 4.2, OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 Supplemental Update, Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 Supplemental Update, and iPhoto 9.4.1. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

A New York Times business columnist seemingly lacks history or contemporary knowledge of how the Maps app works; nor does he seem aware of competing programs in the App Store. That doesn’t stop him from drawing specious conclusions. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Despite recent developments, tech-toting travelers still have a number of rules to follow when they’re airborne. But do these restrictions make any sense, given that there have never been any reported accidents attributed to portable electronics on planes? Commercial pilot Steve McCabe says no. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.