News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
Mac OS X’s FileVault feature, which encrypts your entire user folder, is great for security. But because it stores your entire user folder as an encrypted disk image, it adversely affects performance, makes backups difficult, and – worst of all – can render all your data inaccessible if something bad ever happens to the monolithic encrypted disk image hosting your account. An alternative is to use smaller encrypted disk images for particular types of data; for example, one for all your financial data, one for your work documents, and so on. You can create these disk images using OS X’s Disk Ut...
With Aperture 3’s release a scant two weeks ago you might not have expected the imminent release of Aperture 3.0.1 on Wednesday—unless of course you had actually been using Aperture 3. The much anticipated update should hopefully fix the memory-devouring issues that many users have been seeing as well as bringing a chocolate-box assortment of other tweaks and enhancements.
Dan Moren | Feb 25, 2010
A software update usually doesn’t grab much attention—particularly if it’s released in the midst of Macworld Expo. And yet, last week’s release of Mac Pro Audio Update 1.0 brings welcome relief to many Mac Pro users. Our tests found that the update improves the performance of the desktops Apple released last March when they’re running the latest version of Snow Leopard.
James Galbraith | Feb 22, 2010
It's been well over a year-and-a-half since I reviewed Now Up-to-Date & Contact 5.3 and mentioned that Now Software planned to release Now X (formerly NightHawk), a completely new, redesigned calendar and contact application. Now X finally made its debut late in August 2009 and holds some promise for the future, but at present it behaves more like a late beta than an application ready for general release and is unlikely to offer enough to entice you away from your current favourite calendaring and contact management apps.
Jeffery Battersby | Feb 17, 2010
Few exhibitors at Macworld Expo put their products’ reputation on the line as much as MacSpeech did in its booth last week.
David Dahlquist | Feb 16, 2010
Macworld Expo organisers dedicated a large corner of the show floor to the Macworld Music Studio stage, which featured regularly scheduled presentations at last week’s trade show. Those presentations tackled everything everything from getting great guitar tones on your Mac to programming drums and learning to DJ with special software.
David Dahlquist | Feb 16, 2010
If you enjoy a good brainteaser and have spent an evening or two at the symphony, Auditorium is the high culture iPhone game you’ve been looking for.
Meghann Myers | Feb 16, 2010
Those who ventured back into the far northeast corner of the Moscone Center (right next to the Macworld Cafe) would have found Flatscreen Arms and its Aluminum Flatscreen Arms for Mac on display at Macworld Expo this week.
Jonathan Seff | Feb 16, 2010
A stroke of paint can be much more than a simple swatch of color: it can have a wet gloss, a rippled surface, and seep into the canvas below it. Ambient Design brings these subtleties to ArtRage 3.0.5, a painting app that mimics the nuances of natural media such as ink, charcoal, and paint. Two versions of the application are available: ArtRage Studio Pro ($US80/$A96), reviewed here) and ArtRage Studio ($US40/$A48), a pared-down variant that lacks a number of advanced brush and tool controls.
Chris McVeigh | Feb 15, 2010
Roaming the floor of Macworld Expo, it was hard not to notice the amount of attention focused on the as-of-yet unreleased iPad. Targus’s prominent display featured a variety of protective iPad cases, and a number of other stands featured their own iPad cases and screen protectors as well.
David Dahlquist | Feb 15, 2010
Do have any unidentified tracks in your iTunes collection? How about mislabeled albums? Tune Up can help. Tune Up is a why-didn’t-I-think-of-it-first iTunes add-on that cleans up your iTunes library by identifying missing information in your iTunes library.
Chris Holt | Feb 15, 2010
As I type these words, I am waiting for Apple's Developer Connection web site to ease up sufficiently for me to download the long-awaited Software Developer Kit for the iPhone (and iPod touch, just by the by). In a way, I hate developer-oriented announcements — "here's a really cool thing we're working on, and it's available now, and hoi polloi can have it in about six months". Actually, it's the six months I hate.
