TidBITS

Amazon has strengthened its hand in the tablet sector with the Kindle Fire HD, which provides a choice between 7- and 8.9-inch models with dramatically improved screen resolutions while also adding a bevy of compelling software features and synergistic services. The company also debuted the Kindle Paperwhite, a revamped Kindle Touch e-reader.  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.

An offhand remark by Jeff Bezos during the launch of new Kindle models led industry watchers to wonder which hardware maker he was razzing. 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.

AT&T’s new Mobile Share plans seemed like a bad deal at first, but wound up the right fit for Glenn Fleishman’s family. Depending on your usage patterns, they may be worth a look for you as well. 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 enhanced fill-in macros in TextExpander 4 make complex fill-in snippets easy to construct. Michael Cohen, author of “Take Control of TextExpander,” explains what they are and why they’re so useful. 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.

App.net appeared from nowhere, raised $800,000 to launch a social networking system with huge similarities to Twitter, and has 15,000 people who have paid at least $50 for a year’s membership. Does it really think it can beat Twitter and Facebook at their own games? Not at all.  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 taking a brief break from building an email issue of TidBITS next week in honor of the Labor Day holiday in the United States, so look for the next issue in your mailbox on 10 September 2012. 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 Transmit 4.2, CloudPull 2.1.3, and VMware Fusion 5 and Fusion 5 Professional. 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 main industry news that broke late last week was Apple’s win in the patent lawsuit against Samsung — it’s interesting gossip, but won’t materially affect the lives of Apple users. Our other two ExtraBITS for you this week are pointers to Tonya Engst and Matt Neuburg appearing separately on Chuck Joiner’s MacVoices podcast. 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.

Boingo Wireless makes its money selling access to an aggregated footprint of half a million Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide. Its updated iOS app, however, provides a neat (and free) answer to the question: how much cellular data have I consumed so far this month? 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.

Mountain Lion gets its first maintenance update, which provides a small number of targeted fixes as well as a fix for a battery drainage issue experienced by many MacBook Pro and MacBook Air owners. 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.

If you found the recent hack of technology writer Mat Honan as unsettling as we did, tune in to TidBITS Presents “Protecting Your Digital Life,” recorded live on 22 August 2012. Security experts Rich Mogull and Joe Kissell share their recommendations for the best things you can do to ensure that your digital life can’t be laid bare for virtual vultures to peck through. 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.

Curious about App.net? Tune into as Glenn Fleishman explains it in this TidBITS staff meeting, held live on Google Hangouts On Air. 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.

Join us on Wednesday, 22 August 2012, at 12:00 PM Eastern for TidBITS Presents “Protecting Your Digital Life,” a look at what you can do to reduce the chances that someone can take over your online identity, and, if one of your accounts is hacked, to ensure that other accounts and data remain safe. 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.

It’s easy to blame Internet performance problems on incorrect settings or a corrupted operating system installation, but sometimes the problem really is related to hardware. And even hardware doesn’t always fail in an “it works or it doesn’t” fashion — it’s possible for an older cable modem to just get worse over time without failing entirely. 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 OmniFocus 1.10.3, ClamXav 2.3.2, and DEVONagent Lite, Express, and Pro 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.