Apple news blog

Tropical Software, Inc. today announced a TopXNotes “Celebrate Macworld 2010″ promotion. Starting immediately through Macworld 2010, just go to our website, take the new iPad survey, and get a discount on TopXNotes. TopXNotes is an award-winning full-featured personal note manager. Create, view, organize, and instantly access your Mac notes with TopXNotes. You can also encrypt sensitive information to protect it and create iPod notes with TopXNotes.

TBI Research reports that not all major book publishers are enamored with the “agency model” being pushed by a number of publishers inspired by Apple’s forthcoming iPad tablet device and iBookstore online store to assert more control over their conte…

In April 2008, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published an Apple patent application revealing the company’s research into ways of integrating social aspects into online shopping as part of enhancements to the visitor experience. As des…

MediaMemo notes that Warner Music Group has reported seeing slower sales growth via Apple’s iTunes Store since the introduction of variable pricing last year.

Warner Music Group (WMG) said this morning that it has seen unit sales grow…

Independent developer Esa Helttula today released Long Multiplication 1.2, a new update for the popular educational math app for iPhone and iPod touch devices. Long Multiplication allows the user to study and practice the standard pen and paper algorithm for multiplying large numbers. The method breaks down a multiplication problem into a series of easier multiplications. Long Multiplication features an intuitive interface with customizable colors and other settings.

Often I need to edit text files that don’t have any associated application. This usually occurs when I’m changing system configuration files. My original process was to Control-click on a file and then select Open with and then Other, and then search through the application folder for my text editor program. From another site, I learned that it is very easy to create Services with Automator in 10.6. So now I have a one-click process to open any file in my text favorite text editor.

Run Automator and choose the Service template. At the top right, change the drop-downs to read Service receives selected files or folders in any application. On the left, click Files & Folders in the Library column, then drag Open Finder Items (in the next column) into the work area on the right.

Change the Open With drop-down to your fa…

This hint enables you to turn off (and back on) moving files to Trash when deleting files, thus deleting them immediately when the trash is off.

This hint takes advantage of the fact that if the .Trashes folder in a user’s home folder is not accessible, Mac OS X ignores it and displays an immediate file deletion warning like the one seen at right.

Create a service in Automator that (via the top two drop-down menus) takes no input and is available in any application. Add a single Run AppleScript action that has following contents:

on run {input, parameters}
  do shell script "chown root ~/.Trash" with administrator privileges
  do shell script "killall Finder"
  return input
end run

Save the service as Bypass Trash…

Google Chrome for Mac (in beta) doesn’t yet give you a way to mass edit bookmarks in your Other Bookmarks folder. (You can click the yellow star next to a bookmarked page once it’s loaded to edit each bookmark one at a time, but that’s tedious.) As a workaround, you can do mass edits in TextEdit (or most any other text editor).

1. Turn off Bookmark Syncing If you have the developer build of Chrome (which allows you to sync your bookmarks to Google Docs), turn off Bookmark Sync by going to Chrome » Preferences » Personal Stuff, and click Stop Syncing This Account. You can turn sync back on after you’ve edited your bookmarks, but it will add back your old ones (the edited version will be kept, but the old one will be added as well).
2. Quit Google Chrome
3. Find the file to edit Go to your user’s Library » Application Support » Google » Chrome » Default folder. Open the Bookmarks file in TextEdit -…

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

MacFriendly today announced their new Bundle of 12 applications for Mac users. The Bundle is available for a limited time and represents a savings of over 85% off the list prices. The bundle includes the latest version of each application. The MacFriendly Bundle provides an unprecedented selection of high quality software at unprecedented low prices. The MacFriendly bundle sale ends on February 26, 2010.