MacsAndStuff

Parallels Desktop 5 was released. Upgrade price is $49.99. Not planning to upgrade Parallels or VMware at the moment because I rarely run VMs on my Mac these days and use the free VirtualBox when I do.

I just updated iTunes to 8.1.1 and noticed that among the improvements is the ability to rip audio CDs at 256Kbps (iTunes Plus quality). Other improvements are:

- Syncing with 3rd generation iPod shuffle
- Lets friends request songs for iTunes DJ
- Genius sidebar for Movies & TV shows
- AutoFill for manually managed iPods

My day job is as the editor for MobileAppsToday.com (and MobileDevicesToday.com). So, one of the tasks I perform on a daily basis (sometimes several times a day) is to find the extremely long URL addresses associated with iPhone apps in the iTunes App Store. The most obvious way is to email it to yourself. But, that is a slow process. It turns out you can also guess the human readable URL based on an app’s name. But, that is not 100% consistent. A few weeks ago, I noticed the simplest way. And, I’m embarrased I never tried it before. Right-clicking (if you use a two-button mouse on a Mac like I do, otherwise, Ctrl-Click should work) on the app name in iTunes results in the dialog you see above. This copies the URL to the clipboard. And, from there I can paste it into a blog item about an iPhone app. Fast, clean, and simple. Wish I had discovered this last year!

I’ve never used the iWork 08 trial version that came with my Mac. And, I guess I’ve never deleted it either because I was notified of these updates: Keynote 4.0.4, Pages 3.0.3, and Numbers 1.0.3. The notes for all the updates indicate these updates address compatibility with Microsoft Office documents.

Notified that I have GarageBand 5.0.1 update to install.  Update notes are:

This update improves overall stability and addresses specific issues with downloading lessons from the Learn to Play Lesson Store. It is recommended for all GarageBand ’09 users.

My old PPC-based Mac mini died back in 2007. So, I only installed iLife 09 Family Pack on my Intel-based Macs. According to this ars technica item…

iLife suite quietly going Intel-only, PowerPC owners cry

…the GarageBand 09 Learn-to-Play component only works on Intel-based Macs. The rest of the iLife 09 suite works on the old G4 and G5 Macs. The one exception to that rule is that iMovie HD 09 probably requires a G5 (no G4) like its 08 predecessor.

I bought Apple’s iLife ’09 Family Pack yesterday and installed it on an iMac. The installers time estimate fluctuated quite a bit before decided it would take over an hour (about 1 hour 15 minutes if I recall correctly). This time estimate started fluctuating a bit after a few minutes and never seemed quite accurate. The actual installation process took a little over 20 minutes.