Apple news blog

Media Memo reports that popular ringtone site Thumbplay has launched a new subscription music service, offering consumers unlimited streaming for $10/month with the option to purchase songs from a catalog…

Mockup of Mac mini with HDMI port in place of existing DVI port
AppleInsider reports that Apple is preparing to introduce HDMI connectivity into some its new Macs later this year, bringing increased compatibility with home theater syst…

Blue Room Software today announces ImageArchiver for Lightroom 1.0. ImageArchiver for Lightroom is an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Export Service plugin that simplifies the creation of disk image and compressed archives of your Photoshop Lightroom image collections. All of the image archive creation features found in Blue Room Software’s peer ImageArchiver products for both Aperture and iPhoto have been brought to the users of Adobe System’s Photoshop Lightroom 2 photo processing tool.

Digital Daily reports on a new research note from analyst Peter Misek at Canaccord Adams claiming that availability of Apple’s iPad tablet device may be limited at its launch later this month, citing a “manufacturing bottleneck” at partner Ho…

Digital Daily reports on a new research note from analyst Peter Misek at Canaccord Adams claiming that availability of Apple’s iPad tablet device may be limited at its launch later this month, citing a “manufacturing bottleneck” at partner Ho…

The New York Times reports that magazine publisher Condé Nast is firming up plans to bring its content to Apple’s iPad, rolling out dedicated versions of a number of its high-profile titles beginning in A…

I got the idea to put this together after reading an article on TUAW about creating iCal ToDo’s with AppleScript. I remembered that SuperDuper! supports running shell scripts before and after a copy job, so I thought it would be nice to script myself a reminder to clone again in two weeks.

First save this code as a shell script (AnyName.sh)

#!/bin/sh
arch -i386 osascript << EOF
set theSummary to "Backup HDD with SuperDuper!"
set bkpDate to (current date) + 14 * days
tell application "iCal"
  make todo at end of events of (item 1 of every calendar) with properties {summary:theSummary, due date:bkpDate}
end tell
EOF

N…

The motivation for this hint was to have one folder for common use, with read and write privileges for every user. In Mac OS X, the Shared directory can be used by all users. However, a file there is still owned by the user who put it there. Another user cannot edit the file without authentication. This hint creates a common volume named AppleBasket, where users can have files in common.

In practice, an encrypted disk image mounting automatically for every user is a good solution to this problem. The following AppleScript automates the unixy requirements in creating such a disk image. Here’s the script:

(*

AppleBasket 0.9

Creates a common volume for all users.
Motivation for the script was to have a folder for common use, with read and write privileges for every user.

Tested with Mac O...