Apple news blog

MacNN points to a blog post written earlier this week by Phil Bellaria, a director in the National Broadband Task Force at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), expressing concern over increasing cellular network congestion and citing App…

Yesterday, AT&T announced that it had finally decided to allow Sling Media’s SlingPlayer Mobile to stream video over the carrier’s 3G network. As part of the announcement, AT&T claimed that it had “worked with” Sling Media to develop a version of th…

Here’s a way of mounting Samba shares in Snow Leopard that does not depend on the login process. This method auto-mounts a share when it is accessed. You need to have an administrator password to edit and create the needed files.

First, edit /etc/auto_master (as root) and add a line:

/-     auto_smb

I use the free version of TextWrangler for this; it will prompt you for your admin password. This tells autofs to look in the file /etc/auto_smb for the mount info. The /- means the the full mount path will be specified in auto_smb.

Next, create a file called /etc/auto_smb which is owned by root:wheel. One way to do this is to type the following command in Terminal:

sudo touch /etc/auto_smb

Now edit this new file to put the share info into it.
Each row you add has th…

The old Bonjour Browser hint for Screen Sharing was disabled in a 10.5 security update, and was missing completely in 10.6. However, a new workaround seems to have been built into 10.6, and it might even better than a browser window.

When you connect to any system via Screen Sharing in 10.6, a .vncloc file is automatically created within your user’s Library/Application Support/Screen Sharing folder. (Copying this folder to any 10.5 system will also work, but you’ll need to manually update it.) Clicking on any of these .vncloc files immediately launches Screen Sharing and connects to the selected system.

To make these shortcuts really easy to use, drag that Screen Sharing folder to your Dock, and now you’ve got an instant shortcut to any one of your…

People often want to share a folder on their startup drive (or another drive with ownership enabled) between several local users. It’s easy to change permissions on the whole folder, but any newly created files inside that folder will only be writable by the user that created them.

A standard way of dealing with this issue is by using inherited ACLs as described in this hint. However, that method has a couple of drawbacks. Namely, some applications like Open Office don’t understand ACLs. Other applications use temporary files when saving files that can wash out the ACLs, depending on particular setup. That includes, for example, Photoshop which strips off ACLs on re-saves. Lastly, inherited ACLs are only applied to newly created files and files copied to the shared folder. They are not applied to files moved to the shared folder. The proposed method of sharing a folder has no such deficie…

Nuclear Nova today announced updates to both its GL Golf and Rocket Golf franchise. GL Golf is now on its tenth major revision, which adds the option to download six new courses. In addition, GL Golf now offers a new method to read putting greens, and takes up 20% less hard disk space. Rocket Golf also adds an additional course and improves thirteen previous holes. Both games have had numerous minor enhancements and minor bugs fixed.

Last weekend, book publisher Macmillan won out over Amazon in a battle over eBook pricing, switching to an “agency model” in which book prices are set by the publisher with retailers receiving a percentage (30% in Amazon’s case) of the sales price. …

Walrus Group LLC, today announced they have extended their distinct approach to presentation themes into Microsoft’s PowerPoint software, launching a new website, OfficeDocsPro, and announcing the immediate availability of five premium themes for PowerPoint 2008. The five inaugural OfficeDocsPro Themes are built for THMX, the newest PowerPoint theme standard and first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 and Office:Mac 2008.

TimeStream Software today announces Walt Disney World Guide 2.5, the latest upgrade of its popular Notescast for iPhone and iPod touch. Now with over 300 pages of content, more than 500 colorful photos, updated information throughout the Notescast and an all new Walt Disney World Dining section featuring over 100 restaurants, the new Walt Disney World Notescast is a comprehensive vacation planner and in-park guide covering nearly every aspect of the entire resort and all four theme parks.

Austin based Ashlar-Vellum announces the release of Service Pack 2 for Graphite version 8, their software for 2D/3D precision wireframe drafting. Graphite offers extremely powerful, precision wire-frame drafting with the elegant ease-of-use that makes it productive even when only used occasionally. Running on Mac and Windows, Graphite provides an interface that lets creative people get the job done without worrying about how to run their software.