Macworld "Macworld Team"

Bugs & Fixes: When MobileMe contacts will not delete

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

When I first gave MobileMe a spin months ago, I synced my Address Book contacts to the cloud. Recently, I wanted to clear those contacts from MobileMe. You might think this would be easy to do. You'd be wrong.

The book of MacBook

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:58:00 GMT

People keep asking me about my new MacBook. The machines came out about a month ago, but that clearly hasn’t been enough time for people to get their fill of Apple’s latest portable lineup. I have to remind myself that these are, for the most part, civilians: people who don’t eat, drink, breathe, and immerse themselves in all things Apple.

Biggest threat Windows 7: Journalists

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:18:00 GMT

CNET blogger Don Reisinger has an interesting take on the biggest threat to the success of Windows 7: Journalists. His reason?

Remembering Michael Crichton

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:27:00 GMT

I was deeply saddened to read of the passing of Michael Crichton, at the way-too-young age of 66. Michael was an amazingly talented individual, as evidenced by his background—a Harvard-educated medical doctor who wrote The Andromeda Strain while still in medical school, and then wrote (and directed the movie version of) The Great Train Robbery.

Is Yahoo dead?

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:25:00 GMT

The problem with writing about the endless Microsoft-Yahoo-Google mini-series is eventually you run out of metaphors. So I'll quote Michael Corleone: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Microsoft haters, Mac daddies and Linux lovers

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:50:00 GMT

Now that the elections are finally over, let's focus on something even more contentious -- the holy war over operating systems. I've gotten a lot of responses regarding my Halloween post on Microsoft's "I'm a PC" marketing campaign and Windows 7. Some good, some bad, and some plug-ugly.

Stop the page-flicking madness - give us iPhone folders

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

I've been using my iPhone with the 2.x software since it came out a few months back. At first, I wasn't too thrilled with this "upgrade" to my iPhone - my previously speedy and stable device (despite being jailbroken for most of its life) had been converted into a very slow, unstable, and ultimately unreliable product. Then the iPhone 2.1 software came out, and an amazing thing happened...all my iPhone's issues vanished, and it was back to being the device I'd grown to enjoy using over the last year.

The Microsoft comedy continues

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:28:00 GMT

Only one company could spend $300 million to promote a product while at the same time quietly trying to shove it under the carpet. A corporation that posted more than $4 billion in profits in its most recent quarter. A company with more money than God, but far less taste.

Bugs & Fixes: The iPhone app crash champion

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:41:00 GMT

If your iPhone crashes more often than you would like, conventional wisdom typically attributes this to the proliferation of third-party apps on your phone, the ones you added via the App Store. However, this is likely a misconception, or at least an exaggeration.

The iPod: Seven years on

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:39:00 GMT

If you haven't already, be sure to wrap your iPod in wool or copper foil – the substances that traditionally make up gifts given on the seventh wedding anniversary. (Today, y'see, marks exactly seven years since the iPod was first unveiled by Steve Jobs in Cupertino.) By way of tribute, I'd like to present a little history, pulled from my now out-of-print Secrets of the iPod (don't worry, my just-as-jam-packed-with-iPod-goodness iPod and iTunes Pocket Guide is still alive and well).

The case for an Apple netbook

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:13:00 GMT

One of Steve Jobs' sound bites from his appearance on the quarterly conference call with financial analysts Tuesday has been repeated several times since then: "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk."

Our dangerous email addiction

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:02:00 GMT

With the economy in trouble, job security has become a major fear for many people. As a result, the need to be in contact with your workplace 24/7 has led to a growing trend of email addiction, according to a report issued on Tuesday by Neverfail.

Five reasons to try Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:40:00 GMT

I've been using programs like Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, and Corel Paint Shop Pro for so many years that I sometimes have trouble remembering what photography was like before the digital age. But none of those programs have ever felt like a truly natural part of the photo process to me. When I see something I want to tweak, adjust, composite, or fix, I'll open a program like Photoshop, load the image, and do my work. When I'm done, I close Photoshop and move on. In that sense, my photo editor is sort of like an auto repair shop that I pull my car into; it gets the job done, but I don't leave my car there all the time.

Apple's MacBook -- The case of the new machine

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Whenever Apple Inc. releases newly designed products – meaning hardware offering more than just a speed bump – the greater question is, "What does it mean?" That is, are the new features mere anomalies, or are they something truly new that will set the shape, material and design of the future?

FireWire's MacBook absence a fatal flaw?

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:48:00 GMT

As our first look at Apple's new laptops suggests, there's plenty to talk about with the new laptops introduced this week. But it's what's not there in the revamped MacBook product line that has people talking – yelling in some cases. And that's Apple's as-of-yet unexplained decision to drop FireWire connectivity from its consumer-focused laptops. Some users are saying point-blank that they're not going to order the new hardware without FireWire. The absence of FireWire ports is certainly an inconvenience for some users. But it shouldn't be considered a deal-breaker for most of us, anyway.

New MacBooks: What Apple got right & what we want

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:01:00 GMT

Apple's new MacBooks are finally here, and the upgrades they feature are more than modest. The new Apple laptops sport slimmer designs, brighter and more power-efficient LED-backlit screens, new graphics systems, buttonless trackpads, and more. The updates have led some people to wonder whether now is the time to switch from a PC to a Mac.

Microsoft's FUD-filled 'Apple Tax'

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:17:00 GMT

No longer content to extol the virtues of Vista to customers in its "I'm a PC" campaign, Microsoft has now raised the spectre of an "Apple Tax". This coincides with Apple's announcement of new notebooks Tuesday, with lower prices.

iTunes and media file organization

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:42:00 GMT

In a recent Mac OS X Hints blog entry, I explained how to prevent iTunes from changing filenames (in the Finder) when adding items to your iTunes library. As this is something I don't normally pay any attention to myself, I included a disclaimer, to let everyone know that I don't use this hint myself, and as such, may not be able to answer many questions about it. I wrote:

Why the movie and music industries keep losing friends

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:06:00 GMT

More bad news for fans of the "I bought it, I own it, I can do what I want with it" approach to living.

Will Apple be forced to make more money?

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:58:00 GMT

At first the lock-in deal with AT&T made sense to me. Apple's agreement with AT&T includes Apple receiving a share of the revenue the carrier gets from iPhone subscribers - a nice deal indeed. But Apple does not have any such deal about iPods and seems to be doing just fine selling a much cheaper device. Now I'm not so sure that the iPhone lock-in is a good thing for Apple - it clearly is not a good thing for anyone else: Customers cannot chose the carrier that provides the best service, and AT&T's competitors cannot sell the iPhone.

Why online video advertising is struggling

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:02:00 GMT

Online video is in a crisis. It's not a crisis of creativity - the amount of content being uploaded every day, and the range of quality programming are truly astounding. Rather, the crisis lies in revenue. Making a profitable business out of online video is extremely difficult.

A visit with Guy Kawasaki

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:04:00 GMT

So for a whole bunch of reasons far too random to detail here, I ended up sitting in a restaurant attached to a Bay Area ice rink last week, watching skaters slip and fall while chatting with longtime Apple evangelist and Mac columnist, and current venture capitalist, Guy Kawasaki.

Apple makes two great iPhone moves

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:52:00 GMT

The past few days have seen Apple make two incredibly positive strides when it comes to iPhone development. If you haven't heard, last weekend the company limited App Store reviews to those who had downloaded the product in question. And Wednesday the company announced that the blanket secrecy agreement on iPhone development was being lifted.

iPhone trumps Android

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:49:00 GMT

"It's not about pretty icons, Apple fanboys, and its not about business use, Windows Mobile Nerds: its about giving people the true tools to build whatever they want without lame App Store limitations and OS handcuffs. It's about giving phone makers shackled to Symbian and Microsoft's phone OS the chance to build with something different and better and free. And who's going to complain about that?"

Google's image generation is simply Top Draw

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:54:00 GMT

Those guys over at the Google Mac Playground are just having way too much fun with the slides and monkey bars and merry-go-rounds. Now they’ve put together a new app for those that love their geometric images. And really, isn’t that pretty much everybody under the age of seventy?