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iPhone Captures 17% of Smartphone Market

Brian Proffit — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:48:41 -0600

Gartner research shows the iPhone now has 17% of the smartphone market worldwide. That’s a huge jump from only 12.9% a year ago. Nokia is still on top with 39%, but that’s down from 42% last year. Research in Motion is in second place with 20.8% of the market. Interestingly enough, however, Internet Ad Sales reports that the iPhone has passed RIM in western Europe. HTC is fourth, but showed a strong gain over last year. Apple’s numbers should be even stronger in the fourth-quarter reports as Apple begins sales in China and 16 other countries.

Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi said, "The third quarter of 2009 saw the announcement of many new mobile devices, including several Android smartphones ready for the holiday season in the fourth quarter, but hardware commoditization and the growth in open platforms will make it harder for them to stand out."

Gartner said the average selling price of the iPhone was expected to hold firm, which is good news for Apple since the average selling price indicates a predominance of high-end 3GS models. From an operating system standpoint, Android is still only at 3.5% and Windows Mobile numbers continued to decline.

New Macs! Redesigned White MacBook, LED iMacs, Mac mini Refresh, and a Magic Mouse

Susie Ochs — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:09:38 -0500

Yes, it's New Mac Day, everyone's favorite day, after St. Patrick's Day, New Year's Eve, and Pretzel Day. What blessed gifts hath Apple bestowed on its faithful? Oh man, lots. Let's dive right in.

New plastic MacBook!

Um, that's polycarbonate to you, actually. The entry-level MacBook (actually, the only model not positioned as Pro or Air) is still around, still white, and still $999. But it's been redesigned, with a unibody shell that's more like the aluminum unibody MacBook Pros, just, you know, not aluminium. It has Apple's built-in, 7-hour battery, a departure from the last model's removable, 5-hour battery.

The display uses LED backlighting, just like the Air and Pro models. The last MacBook's display was TFT, so this is the first time Apple's entire notebook line has gone to LED-backlit displays.

And naturally, its specs are improved. It's got a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (the last MacBook's Core 2 Duo ran at 2.13GHz), and a whopping 250GB hard drive (the last one's was 160GB), for the same price. They also made it lighter, down to 4.7 pounds from 5 pounds.

How does it differ from the 13-inch MacBook Pro? No backlit keyboard, no FireWire port, no SD card slot. That's no FireWire at all, folks -- the last white MacBook still had a FireWire 400 port. But the new MacBook is on sale today, and you can check it out here.

iMac makeover!

The new screen sizes are 21.5 inches (up from 20) and 27 inches (up from 24), for a nice widescreen view. All the iMacs have LED-backlit screens now. Both models have four USB ports, one FireWire 800 port, and for the first time, an SD card slot.

Specs-wise, the 21.5-inch iMac can have an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 3.06GHz with a 3MB shared L2 cache, or 3.33GHz with a 6MB shared L2 cache. For graphics, there's an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M chip with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with the main memory, or an ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 256MB of dedicated GDDR3 memory.

The 27-incher is available in dual-core versions as well as a beefier quad-core version for pro-level usesrs who don't want to spring for a Mac Pro. Dual-core versions use the same 3.06GHz and 3.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chips as the 21.5-inch models, and the quad-core iMacs use either a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5 processor with 8MB shared L3 cache and Turbo Boost performance up to 3.2GHz, or a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor with 8MB shared L3 cache, Turbo Boost up to 3.46GHz, and Hyper-Threading for up to eight virtual cores. They feature ATI Radeon HD graphics, either the 4670 or 4850 chips.

All the iMacs come with 4GB of RAM standard, sporting four SO-DIMM slots for RAM upgrades up to 16GB. The 21.5-inch models start with a 500GB SATA hard drive, with upgrades to 1TB and 2TB drives. The 27-inch models start with a 1TB SATA hard drive, with a 2TB drive option. All those SATA drives run at 7200rpm.

The 21.5-inch iMacs start at $1,199 (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 500GB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics) and $1,499 (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 1TB HDD, ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics). The 27-inch iMacs start at $1,699 (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo, 1TB HDD, ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics) and $1,999 (quad-core 2.66GHz Intel Core i5, 1TB HDD, ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics). Buy them here.

Mac mini refresh!

The lovable little mini got some much-deserved attention from Apple. The new minis start at $599, the same price as the old ones, but feature faster processors. You can choose from a 2.26GHz, 2.53GHz, or 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, all with 2MB shared L2 cache. They've got double the RAM out of the box, with 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM in the entry-level model, but they still top out at 4GB of RAM in two SO-DIMM slots. And the hard drives are bigger, starting at 160GB with upgrades to 320GB and 500GB. (The last round of minis had 120GB, 250GB, and 320GB drives.)

The size is the same. The ports are the same (5 USB and one FireWire 800). The graphics card is virtually the same, an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with the main memory (the last entry-level Mac mini's graphics card used 128MB of shared memory, no longer an option here). You can buy them starting today.

And there's even a Snow Leopard Server model! For $999 you can get a Mac mini running Snow Leopard Server and sporting two 500GB but no SuperDrive. Yep, an all-in-one server ready to go right out of the box, just BYO display. That is cool. Check it out here.

New Mouse!

The new iMacs come with a funky new mouse, Apple's Magic Mouse, "the world's first Multi-Touch mouse." Apple mouse haters who remember "the world's first crappy hockey puck mouse!" can be forgiven for rolling their eyes, but this thing actually does look pretty interesting.

It's got no visible buttons at all, but has "a Multi-Touch area" on top that responds to one-finger scrolling, two-finger swipes, and clicks and double-clicks anywhere on the mouse. Apple swears its secret-sauce software and chip will be able to distinguish a a scroll from a swipe, and "even knows when you're just resting your hand on it." Obviously we haven't tried it here at Mac|Life HQ yet, but if it works more like the iPhone touchscreen and less like, um, every other Apple-made mouse in history, it could be really something.

You can buy it today for $69.

69 Awesomely Free Snow Leopard Compatible Apps

Mac|Life Staff — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:53:48 -0500

The word free gets thrown around quite a lot lately. Cell phone carriers offer "free" phones that are tethered to a two-year contract. Those free rooms in Vegas come at the price of three hours of your life spent listening to a time share pitch. Even Steve Jobs said the new camera in the iPod nano was free. If you're still paying money, it's probably not free.

To help get free back to its rightful place of, well free, we've compiled a list of apps and services that are indeed free and won't require you to sit through a pitch about how great it is to be a foster parent to a monkey. We do want to note that some of these items are services or system preferences. But hey, they're free, so stop complaining and enjoy.

We would also like to note that some of these apps are donationware. If you find that an app you find here is the greatest thing ever and you plan on using it all the time, consider donating some money to the developer. They'll appreciate being able to buy food for the monkeys they're currently playing parent too.

Adium - Talk to anyone

The go to chat app on Macs for years. Connects to AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Facebook, ICQ, Bon Jour, Google Talk and more. If there's a chat, chances are, Adium can handle it.

Alarm Clock - WAKE UP!

Versatile alarm clock app can wake you up to your iTunes music, and even wake up your computer first if it happens to be sleeping. Supports the Apple Remote for snoozing.

Anxiety - So much to do

Lightweight to-do list that syncs with iCal and Mail.

AppCleaner - Clean your virtual room

A small application that helps truly delete applications when you move them to the trash.

Audacity - Sound off

Cross-platform audio editor.

Bean - You want how many words by when?

Word processor with live word count, autosaving, and other features.

Boxee - Reply to emails or watch It's Always Sunny in Philedephia?

Turn your Mac into a multimedia powerhouse with this free open source app. Hulu may have put the kibosh on Boxee support, but the media player still rules the TV.

Burn - Burn it all!

Burn CDs and DVDs of just about anything: music, data, DMGs, etc.

Carbon Copy Cloner - Making copies.

Create a clone of your drive ready for installation on another drive. A great backup tool for those that value their data.

CyberDuck - Ducktales, wooohooo.

Robust FTP client with plenty of cool features. Plus, how can you deny the cute factor of a duck controlling your data transfers. Utility

doubleTwist - Sync your Palm Pre.

Sync your random non-iPod device to your iTunes library. Oh, did we mention you can buy music from Amazon.com from within the app?

Dropbox - Files to go.

Your files, anywhere you need them. Sync, backup and store your data with Dropbox.

Evernote - All your notes in one place, all over the place.

Sync your notes, webpages, snippets of text and photos with Evernote on to your Mac and iPhone. Get a free account with 2GB of storage.

Firefox - Maybe you've heard of this already

The mozilla-based browser boasts impressive download numbers. There's a reason for that.

Flip4mac - Play those scary Windows Media.

Play windows media files in quicktime.

Fluid - Make an app for that

Creating native Mac apps from your favorite Websites and Web apps.

FreeDMG - Image is everything

Easily handles disk-imaging tasks: Create, resize, encrypt, burn disk images, and more.

Gawker - Make a video of a flower blooming or your roomate lounging around.

Uses your iSight to make a time-lapse video you can watch in QuickTime.

Gimp - I'm making purdy pictures.

Powerful open-source image editor. The Photoshop of the open-source world.

Google Earth - I can see my house from here

Fly around a 3D model of the whole world, get directions, and view satellite imagery, building models, and more.

Google Notifier - Google wants to tell you something

Sits in your menubar to alert you to new Gmail messages, and remind you of events in your Google Calendar.

Google Quick Search Box - Search it all

Search tool and application launcher searches your Mac as well as the Internet as you type in a query.

Growl - Yakitty yak, apps talk back

Allow your applications to notify you when something exciting happens.

gTuner - Are you ready to rock? OK, I just have to tune this thing.

Tune your guitar with your Mac.

HandBrake - Tag your media

Video transcoder lets you rip DVDs and convert lots of video formats.

Hulu Desktop - Oh hai, The Office is on.

Watch your favorite shows on Hulu in an app.

i Love Stars - Fast acting critic

Rate your iTunes music from the menu bar.

Inkscape - What's your vector Victor?

Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor that bring Illustrator-like capabilities to your Mac for free.

iPhone Explorer - I can see its insides

Using the supplied USB cable, darg and drop files from your Mac to your iPhone and iPod touch.

iProcrastinate - Download today, or maybe tomorrow

Task management app that lets you break items down into smaller step.

iTweax - Tinker away

Optimize and tweak the OS X Finder and other OS X bundled apps like Safari and Mail.

KeePassX - What's the password?

Password-generating utility and secure-information database.

LEGO Digital Designer - Be like Zack, the LEGO maniac

Build your LEGO dream house, or car, or starship with rocket cannons and jacuzzi.

Minitube 0.7 - YouTube without the browser

Native YouTube client. Watchin your favorite videos with taking up a browser tab.

Mint.com - I spent how much on that?

A handy budgeting tool, beware it may make you think about what you are buying though. Not an actual app, but it's going to help you save money.

Miro - All your favorite video memes in one place

Video player supports RSS feeds, downloads Bit Torrents, searches and downloads from YouTube, and supports lots of file types. video

Monolingual - Adios Español

removes unnecessary language files from your computer.

Name Mangler - From this point forward, you shall all be named George

batch file renamer with the ability to create droplets for saved configurations.

NeoOffice - Who is this Ms Office you speak of?

Open-source office productivity suite featuring a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation, and drawing. Based on OpenOffice.org but runs natively on the Mac, looking and feeling more Mac-like.

NetNewsWire - It's robo-Katie Couric.

RSS reader can archive articles to your hard drive, plus sync with Google Reader and integrate with Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Growl, Twitterific, and more.

OnyX - Stand back, I'll fix it

OS X maintenance tool. Verify your start up disk, run system maintenance, configure system parameters.

OpenOffice - Open up and say ahh

Replace Microsoft Office and Apple's iWork with the free OpenOffice suite.

Perian - Play anything, well almost anything

Give QuickTime the native support needed to play almost any video format.

Picasa - One more cog in the Google take over of your machine

Google photo manager that integrates with your Picasa account

Poladroid - Cheaper than the film that's making a comeback

Create polaroid like pictures from your digital photos.

Quicksilver - Shazam! Thats what we yell when we use Quicksilver.

The ultimate Finder extender continues to rule the lives of those addicted to its speedy ways.

Quinn - Come on column piece, come on.

Free Tetris game for the Mac.

ResizeIt - Resize all the avatars you need quickly

Batch change the size and format of multiple images without spending a bunch of cash.

Seashore - Selling images by the sea shore

Image editor based on GIMP technology but in a native Cocoa framework for the Mac.

SelfControl - Must. Stay. Away. From. Facebook.

Block yourself from time-wasting sites for a predetermined amount of time.

Shadow - We were going to write, "The Shadow knows," but that seems lame

Clipboard manager that uses Bonjour to let you copy and paste from one Mac to another.

Simplify Media - Keep on rocking in the free world

Stream your music anywhere for free.

Sketchup - 3D for you and me

Create, modify and share 3D models.

Skype - Talking heads

Audio and video chat with other Skype users, or make low-cost phone calls overseas.

Solitaire Greatest Hits - The offical game of your mom's computer

A collection of solitaire games ready for those lonely nights.

Spark - Take the shortcut

Powerful shortcut manager for those that would rather stay away from that pesky mouse.

SuperDuper - It's super

It's billed as "heroic system recovery for mere mortals". A quick, easy--and yes free way to make bootable backups of your hard drive. Hooray!

TextWrangler - Yehaw!

Text editor that writers, html monkeys and Coders should have in their arsenal. Far more powerful than the OS X bundled TextEdit app.

Thunderbird - Thunder, thunder, thunderbird HO!

Mozilla-based email client.

Tilt2Joystick - Your MacBook as a Wii Remote

Use the motion sensor on your MacBook as a joystick for your favorite games.

Time Machine Editor - H.G. Wells would be proud

Allows you to change the scheduling of time machine from every hour, to a more pleasing schedule.

Tooble - YouTube to go

Download YouTube videos and save them to play on your computer, iPod, or iPhone.

TweetDeck - The columns, the beautiful columns

Versatile Twitter client supports multiple accounts, updating Facebook, user groups, syncing columns between the Mac and iPhone versions, and more.

Tweetie - Multi-account Twitter magic

The incredible iPhone Twitter app on your Mac. Handle multiple accounts and shoot video directly from your iSight camera. Get it for free with ads popping up in your stream.

Virtual Box - Guest OSs playing nice

Open-source virtualizer. Run Windows, Linux, etc on your Mac. For FREE.

VLC Player - Play it all

an open source video and audio player. Capable of playing MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac.

Vuze - Stream your legally-aquired media

Bit-torrent client that doubles as a media server to your favorite video game consoles.

xBench - Just how fast is your Mac?

Benchmark your machine and test it against the giant database.

Xmarks - Bookmarks anywhere you need to be.

Sync and search your Bookmarks.

Did we miss your favorite free app? Drop it in the comments.

Thanks to all the readers that helped us with this list.

Fifth-Generation iPod nano

Susie Ochs — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:51:45 -0500

We loved the last iPod nano (5 out of 5 stars, Nov/08, p68) with its brightly colored, sleekly tapered aluminum case, accelorometer-assisted Cover Flow and Shake-to-Shuffle, and Genius playlists. The fifth-generation nano brings back all that goodness and shovels on even more "OMG WANT" features, including an FM radio, pedometer, and video camera.

The video camera is obviously the marquee addition, no pun intended. A tiny lens on the back of the nano captures 640x480 H.264 video, and an even tinier microphone records AAC audio. We needed to experiment to find the best ways to hold the nano while keeping the screen visible and our fingers out of the shot. Whichever way the nano is held, the preview appears right-side-up on the screen, so we initially thought we could hold it upside-down in portrait mode--and we wound up with a bunch of upside-down video. If you start shooting with the nano upside-down, your video will be OK. But if you start shooting right-side-up and then turn the nano upside-down, your footage will flip too, even though the preview image on the screen is always upright.

Video quality is not up to the Flip cameras' standard, with more washed-out colors and less detail. Still, it's fun to shoot with, provided you have enough light. Holding the center button brings up 15 special effects that can be added to your footage in real time--Sepia, Black & White, X-Ray, Motion Blur, Cyborg, and more.

When you dock the nano, the videos (in MP4 format) are uploaded to iPhoto, but you can't use iPhoto's Facebook or Flickr uploaders to get them online. Your best bet is to export the clip to your Desktop (File > Export, and choose Original as the format). Then you can open the exported MP4 file in QuickTime to perform some trims or add a quick soundtrack. You can import the clip into iMovie for more extensive editing, although we had to choose File > Import > Movies from iMovie, as dragging the MP4 file onto the iMovie icon didn't work.

The camera's tiny mic also lets you record voice notes using the built-in Voice Memos app. Your memos are saved as AAC files and synced to iTunes with date stamps. You can also label a memo as a podcast, interview, lecture, idea, meeting, or memo, to make it easier to tell them apart later.

The radio feature is new too, but it only works with headphones plugged in, since the wire acts as an antenna. This means you can't listen to the radio with the iPod in a speaker dock, since the dock connector and headphone jack are next to each other on the nano's bottom. The radio won't play through the nano's tiny built-in speaker, either, even though any other audio can. You tune the dial (87.5 to 107.9) with the clickwheel, and save stations as favorites. Pressing pause will buffer the radio for up to 15 minutes, letting you resume playback where you left off. If the station supports iTunes Tagging, you'll see the current artist and song name displayed on the nano's screen, and you can hold the center button and choose Tag from the contextual menu. The nano remembers everything you tagged, and when you sync with your Mac, you'll see a playlist of Tagged Songs in your sidebar, with links to buy those songs on iTunes.

The built-in pedometer can be always on, or turned on manually, and it counts your steps as you bop around with your iPod in your pocket. When you dock the nano, the data is uploaded to nikeplusactive.com, tracking your progress toward various goals (walking to the top of a virtual 100-story skyscraper, burning off the calories in a hot dog, and so on). You can also tell the nano your weight, and have it calculate the calories burned by your steps. This Nike+ Active system isn't the same as the more robust Nike+ running system (nikerunning.nike.com), which still requires the Nike+ iPod Sport Kit ($29, www.apple.com) with its wireless sensor for your shoes and wireless receiver that plugs into the nano's dock port.

Besides the new bells and whistles, the fifth-gen nano is pretty close to its predecessor. It's the same shape and size, but the new nano's 2.2-inch, 240x376 display is bigger than the fourth-gen's 2-inch, 240x320 screen. The fonts are a little bigger, the menus a little more spaced out. For watching videos or using Cover Flow, just tilt the nano on its side and the accelerometer reorients the display.

The nano supports VoiceOver, letting you hear what song is playing and navigate between tracks and playlists with buttons on your headphones. But bizarrely, the included headphones don't have the buttons--you have to upgrade to the $29 Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic, or the pricier $79 Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic, or use a compatible third-party set. (Our Griffin TuneBuds Mobile worked fine.) Visually impaired users can opt for the Spoken Menus feature instead, which works with any headphones or speakers.

Battery life is impressive. Apple estimates 24 hours of music playback, but in our tests (with the pedometer off, Energy Saver on, and volume set to 50 percent), a brand-new nano pumped out a little more than 29 hours of music before needing to be recharged. Apple estimates 5 hours of video playback, and using the pedometer or video camera does ding those numbers a little.

Screencast Video: Create 3D Photo Effects in Final Cut Pro

Michael DeLano — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:53:28 -0500

Tired of the same old boring Ken Burns effect? Try out our tutorial for dynamic photo montages.

The video player requires Flash 8 Player or later. Please download the latest Flash Player.

Using USB Drives to Protect Your Valuable Data

Ray Aguilera — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:53:00 -0500

Your Mac is a pretty secure device right out of the box. Because of its Unix underpinnings, Mac OS X isn’t vulnerable to the viruses and malware that can wreak havoc on Windows. And Macs are a less-attractive target for hackers looking to infect the largest number of machines with the least amount of effort, since Windows PCs own a considerably larger chunk of the market. But threats are still out there. Need proof? Check out your firewall log to see what kind of activity is coming through the network pipes toward your Mac. Most of that traffic is legit, but if you dig through even a little, you’ll no doubt find more than a few sketchy entries in there.

OS X’s built-in firewall does a good job of protecting your computer from incoming threats. In Leopard, check your settings by going to System Preferences > Security > Firewall (Tiger users will find their firewall settings in System Preferences > Sharing). But plenty of security risks exist that your Mac’s firewall won’t catch. While viruses on the Mac aren’t the epidemic that they are on Windows PCs, you can still pass along viruses attached to outgoing email. And for laptop users who frequently hook up to the Net via public Wi-Fi hotspots, you never know what kind of security is--or isn’t--protecting that network. And what about your data? All your precious documents are just sitting unprotected, vulnerable to theft by bad guys. One-stop options exist for locking down your data and securing your network connection. We ran Yoggie’s Gatekeeper Pico for Mac and the IronKey Personal through a battery of tests to help you choose the security device that best suits your needs.

Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico For Mac

Show would-be data thieves and hackers who’s in charge by guarding your computer with this plug-n-protect device.

After you load the included software, the Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico becomes a full-time security guard for your Mac and all your data.

Yoggie’s Gatekeeper Pico is a hardware security device--basically a mini computer packed with security applications that attaches to your machine via USB. It sports its own Linux operating system, RAM, and 12 security apps onboard to protect your machine from viruses, spyware, and all manner of nefarious attacks. It also features Web filtering (i.e., parental controls), customizable email spam controls, and can even connect your Mac to the anonymous Tor network (see “Tor: What Is It Good For?” below), so that not even the geeks at your Internet service provider will know about your addiction to perezhilton.com.

Despite the industrial-strength security it provides, installing the Gatekeeper on our system was a snap. After loading software from the included CD, we plugged the device into a USB port--it’s the size of a standard USB flash drive. Then the Gatekeeper updated its software automatically, and we were ready to roll.

Configuring security settings is simple. The Gatekeeper uses a browser-based control panel for system configuration and monitoring. Inexperienced users can simply set it and forget it, while advanced users get a whole host of configurations options to meet specific needs.

Gatekeeper’s Status panel keeps track of incoming threats.

Beginners can simply choose from High, Medium, or Low security levels. Unfortunately, Yoggie’s rather tight-lipped about what each of the settings really means, and we had to dig through online tech support articles to find out the differences between them. Even then, the answer was a chart of protocols, rather than a plain-English explanation that a non-IT user could understand. While we certainly understand there is a high-level of intricacy involved in network security, since the Gatekeeper Pico is designed and marketed as a consumer-level device, we were expecting much more thorough and coherent documentation to describe the huge number of available options.

For more advanced users--or those with solid Google-fu to help them understand the choices--the Gatekeeper Pico offers a host of custom options for locking down your system. You can filter Web content by selecting categories of banned sites or create custom white- or blacklists. The Gatekeeper can also be set up to surf the Web anonymously via the Tor network. This will slow down your browsing quite a bit, but for users who need anonymous http connections, the option to surf completely anonymously might well be worth the price of admission.

Because the Gatekeeper offloads all the security processes from your Mac to its own processor, Yoggie claims it can actually speed up your machine, compared to how fast it would run if you just installed software-based security. In our tests, speed gains were slight and not significant enough to be noticeable on a MacBook or iMac. More important than slight performance gains, however, is the tightened security. Since the security features of the Gatekeeper are hardware-based, they’re not vulnerable to attack the way that software firewalls and antivirus apps can fall prey to malware designed to disable your software protection.

Because of its small form factor, the Gatekeeper is portable, making it easy to protect any Mac you happen to be using. By default, once the Gatekeeper software is installed on a machine, network connections are disabled if the device is removed from the machine, preventing users from insecurely accessing the network by accident. We also appreciate the option to override that feature, in the event that the USB device is lost or stolen. The Gatekeeper Pico comes with one year of free, secure software updates for the device. After that, a $30 per year subscription will keep your Gatekeeper up to date with the latest security software.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
Gatekeeper Pico offers top-notch, hardware-based security in a portable package. We only wish it had more thorough documentation that would allow users to make appropriate, informed choices about securing their Macs.

COMPANY: Yoggie Security Systems
CONTACT: www.yoggie.com
PRICE: $149
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later, USB port
Simple to set up. Comprehensive suite of security applications. Can deny network access when device is removed.

Online and electronic documentation can be vague at times. Security novices could become overwhelmed.

Ironkey Personal

This gadget’s No. 1 job is to keep your data secret and secure--we just wish it were more Mac-friendly.

Like an army jeep, IronKey Personal does what it’s meant to do, without offering a lot of extras.

IronKey’s line of hard-core flash drives are the stuff that action-movie heroes and paranoid privacy freaks dream about. On the outside, the rugged metal case is waterproof, and the drive itself is protected against both physical and electronic attacks. While the military-grade encryption housed on the device is strong enough to keep state secrets, well, secret, this USB drive is geared toward consumers looking for some electronic privacy, making the IronKey Personal a good place to stash your tax returns, banking records, website passwords, secret family recipes, and anything else you need to keep from prying eyes.

With some major caveats for Mac users, the IronKey works right out of the box. Software and documentation come on the drive itself, and there are no drivers or applications to install on your Mac before you use it. The first time you mount the IronKey, an app called IronKey Unlocker will prompt you to create a password for the device. Entering a password creates a secure key stored on the device. And pick something good, because that password is what stands between your secret information and the bad guys. From that point, mounting the drive requires entering your password, which can be changed at any time.

Your data is stored in on the drive after being encrypted by onboard hardware that can’t be hacked or turned off. To protect against brute force attempts to guess your password, the IronKey will delete your files after 10 incorrect password entries--so be sure you have backups somewhere. And the device itself needs to be removed and reconnected after three failed password attempts. The drive itself can also detect physical tampering, destroying your data if the case is compromised. So you can rest assured that if your drive is lost or stolen, the data it contains will remain unusable to anyone else. Pretty sweet, although unfortunately that’s where the good news ends, at least for Mac users.

The IronKey is multiplatform and supports Mac, Windows, and Linux environments. Unfortunately, however, the majority of the IronKey’s additional security features are Windows only.

For Windows users, IronKey also includes a secured version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, which can be set up to access the Internet via IronKey’s private Tor network for added security. Mac users could mimic some of that functionality by grabbing a copy of Portable Firefox (www.freesmug.org/portableapps/firefox). Using the Windows-only IronKey Control Panel software, you can create a lost-and-found message to be displayed in the IronKey Unlocker so that Good Samaritans who stumble across your lost drive can contact you.

Windows users also have the ability to use IronKey’s secure Password Manager and a virtual keyboard--both handy for using your IronKey on foreign computers. The Password Manager makes all your login info portable and secure, while the virtual keyboard can be invoked to thwart any keyloggers that may be lurking on the machine you’re using.

IronKey also offers encrypted backup of device contents--again, only for Windows users. Using the Secure Backup client, you can send some or all of your encrypted files into a local encrypted backup, to protect against your IronKey device getting lost or stolen. And via the MyIronKey service, you can store your access credentials for your IronKey device, in the event that you forget your password--and set up monitoring to report on any interactions with your online account.

For those who have a mixed environment of Mac and Windows computers, the suite of security options that come with IronKey Personal offer several useful features. But for Mac-only setups, the IronKey’s hardware encryption is its only truly useful feature.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
Hardware-based encryption and rugged, tamper-proof construction is compelling, but for Mac-only users, the lack of support for IronKey’s other security features is disappointing.

COMPANY: IronKey
CONTACT: www.ironkey.com
PRICE: $79, 1GB; $109, 2GB; $149, 4GB; $199, 8GB
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS X, USB 2.0 port
Built-in hardware encryption. Waterproof. Hardware and software is tamper-resistant. Multiplatform (Mac, Windows, Linux).

Nearly all features are Windows-only. Mac support limited to encrypted storage.

NEXT: Utilities to protect your data.

TOR: What is it good for?

Vidalia simplifies Tor with a convenient GUI. See www.torproject.org/vidalia to download it.

Tor is a distributed network for allowing anonymity on the Web. By rerouting your browsing sessions through a volunteer network of relays, using Tor prevents someone spying on a network from figuring out which sites you’re visiting. It also keeps websites from knowing where you’re located based on your IP address, which can be tied to a specific user at a specific Internet service provider. Traffic over Tor is encrypted as it travels across the network, so anyone intercepting your traffic midstream won’t know what you’re requesting or who requested it.

Why use Tor? Anytime you send information over the Net, it’s vulnerable to being intercepted. And anyone from the IT guy in your office, to employees of your ISP, to admins at your favorite website can tell where you’ve been, and where you’re going on the Internet--not to mention where you’re at as you surf. And it’s not just crooks who need to cover their tracks. Everyone from soccer moms researching medical conditions to journalists covering political issues could use a little online anonymity now and then.

How can I protect myself with Tor? A device like the Gatekeeper Pico can enable anonymous browsing automatically on your Mac, or you can set it up yourself to work with your browser. For more information on using Tor, see www.torproject.org.

How to Encrypt any USB Device

Disk Utility has everything you need to stash your secret stuff.

Specialized hardware like the IronKey Personal can offer military-grade encryption for your super-secret files. But plenty of free software offers data encryption too--including some options built in to your Mac. Using Apple’s Disk Utility, you can encrypt any USB hard drive. The open-source TrueCrypt (free, www.truecrypt.org) is highly portable, and it plays well with others.

Encrypt a DMG with Disk Utility. Fire up Disk Utility, create a new disk image small enough to fit on a flash drive, and enable 128- or 256-bit AES encryption (if it’s strong enough for the U.S. government, it’s probably good enough for your website passwords and holiday shopping lists). Specify a password, and drag the resulting DMG file onto a USB drive. Opening that disk image will prompt you for a password, before mounting on your Mac as a separate volume. Drag files to and from it as needed, and when you unmount the volume, everything gets locked up tight again.

TrueCrypt’s Wizard interface can walk you through encrypted volume creation.

Use TrueCrypt for cross-platform data security. Similar to creating an encrypted disk image, the open-source TrueCrypt can also create encrypted volumes that can be carried on a flash drive. TrueCrypt offers some additional encryption schemes for more security and can perform several handy tricks, like disguising an encrypted image as another type of file. Additionally, TrueCrypt can hide an encrypted TrueCrypt volume inside another volume, so that your secrets will remain safe, even if you’re forced to reveal your password--a useful safeguard for international superspies and the paranoid alike. TrueCrypt is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, so it’ll work practically anywhere.

16 Tips to Become an INSTANT iPhone OS 3.0 Power-User

Roberto Baldwin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:01:57 -0500

Shout it from the mountain top, copy and paste has arrived on the iPhone. After you've gotten your fill of pasting links into your favorite Twitter app and Facebook, follow these tips to make using iPhone OS 3.0 just that more exciting.

Before you start

Before you install the new OS, it's a good idea to back up your iPhone one last time before you take the OS 3.0 plunge. You can right-click on your iPhone in iTunes to initiate a manual backup of your iPhone. This is your safety net in case something horrible happens. And if something does goes awry, use Restore from Backup and choose the latest backup to get back to square one.

Select and Delete

Select the text then delete it.

Tired of the spastic deleting of the delete button? What happens is you hold the delete button, and it starts removing offending characters -- and then it goes on to removing whole words. Next thing you know, you've deleted too many words, and you have to start over. To avoid this, use tap and hold to show the Select|Select All pop-up. Select what you need deleted, hit the delete button and -- poof! -- you've gotten rid of the offending text without trying to judge the speed of the delete button.

Quick Spotlight

Search is just an extra tap away.

When you tap the Home button on the iPhone while on a secondary Home screen, it'll return you to your main iPhone Home screen. If you tap the Home button a second time, you'll be taken to the spotlight search page. You can also reach this page by swiping to the left of your main Home Screen.

Adjust Spotlight Search

We care more about Email search results, and don't care at all about Podcast and Video search results.

If you don't need your music collection showing up in your Spotlight searches, you can turn music search off. In fact you can fine-tune your Spotlight searches to include and/or ignore most of your iPhone items. Just navigate to Settings > General > Home > Search Results. There you'll see the options available for search. You can even drag the search results fields so that you see Mail items first.

Use Copy to Email Photos Instead of Share

One feature that has the Mac|Life staff excited is the ability to email multiple photos in one message.

Using the Share option you can email up to five images. Sure, five is more than one, but what if you have 10 really dope images you want to send at once?

In that case, use the Copy option. Select the photos you want, then press Copy. Navigate to the Email client and paste all the images in.

Warning: The more images you copy, the slower the Mail app runs while it's pulling the images from the clipboard and placing them in your message. Also, the Mail app will refuse to send large messages; we got up to 10MB (25 - 30 individual pics) of images in a message before the app reigned in our fun and crashed. Chances are, you'll probably send fewer than that.

Emoji is Still There

Make your iPhone 80% cuter with Emoji iconography.

If you're an Emoji icon addict, don't fret. If you had Emjoi enabled before you update, it'll still be there when you're done. If you don't have Emoji and you've already updated, no worries. You can choose one of a couple 99¢ Emoji enabler apps from the App Store. Remember, Emoji only works from iPhone to iPhone. Your Pre- and Android-loving friends won't get your message if you slap Emoji characters into it.

Who Called From Where

The information is available in Voicemail and Recents

Now when someone calls and leaves a Voicemail, or just shows up in Recents, under their name it shows what phone they called from. This is great for contacts who have multiple numbers, and, say, you know that their mobile is a better way to get a hold of them than their work number. Now you don't have to guess if the number your calling is the correct one.

Find My iPhone - Stalker Fun

It's off by default. Turn it on before you need it.

To turn on Find My iPhone, navigate to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Your MobileMe account.

There you'll see the Find My iPhone option. Turn that puppy on for ~~stalking~~ iPhone finding fun. You can have multiple iPhones utilizing the service. ~~Stalk~~ Find your whole family. Don't forget to enable Push is haven't enabled it before.

Find the Find My iPhone page on MobileMe under your Summary tab.

If you have a family member who tends to get lost, Find My iPhone can be used to locate that person and give them directions to their destination, or at least help them get out of the Mugging District.

If you have kids, and you want to make sure they are keeping to the library and not the local heroin den, you can track and send them messages. Nothing says "get back to your studies!" like a strongly worded message and a two-minute sonar chime.

NEXT: Setup your Exchange Calendar and Notes Syncing.

Exchange meetings without the cost

AT&T wants you to pay extra for Exchange service on your iPhone. Forget that! You can set it up without paying any extra fee.

Now you can send and receive invitations to meetings with the Calendar app

Navigate to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Set up an Exchange account via Add Account. You can get this information from your IT department or just get the information from your Entourage or Outlook client if you're sneaky. Be sure to turn on the Calendar option and your ready to rock. Just be sure you're on your employer's Wi-Fi network so it can find the Exchange server. After set up we were able to set up meetings and we received alerts about meetings we were invited too.

Shake your iPhone

Shake the Killers away.

Shake to Shuffle is a great way to skip to the next song -- and accidently toss your iPhone across the room. But it does have its limitations. You can't Shake to Shuffle once you leave the iPod app, and it won't work while the iPhone is locked.

Bummer.

However, you can still double-tap the Home button to get the iPod controls once you're out of the iPod app.

UPDATE: Commenter DTrigger05 points out that if you have the iPod controls on the screen via a double tap on the Home button while music is playing, you can indeed shake to shuffle while you're not in the iPod app. With this method, you can even shake to shuffle while the iPhone is locked, with the screen on and you have the iPod controls being displayed.

Public Transportation

Find out who is running the bus you're riding

Google's Map app got a public transportation update. In addition to being able to tap on each stop along your route for a nugget of information pertaining to that stop, there is also a sub-menu that gives you information about the transportation service you're using, and a link to that agency's website.

Not All Apps are 3.0 Ready

Before you start launching apps and complaining that the keyboard isn't landscape, keep in mind that not all apps are 3.0 ready. Give it a week or so for all the apps to make it through the App Store review process. Just keep your fingers crossed that they don't reference any swears in their apps.

Passing Notes

Get those notes into the Mail app for safe keeping

To start syncing Notes from your iPhone, you need to enable the feature in iTunes. Plug in your iPhone and navigate to the Info tab. Scroll down and check the Sync Notes box.

All your notes in one place

The notes will sync with Mail on your Mac under the Reminders drop down.

Record Your Message

Why, hello there...

Use Voice Memo to record and email a special greeting to your all friends and family. Record your touching message, trim off the fat on the ends, and email it to your most beloved contacts. Your Voice Memos will also be synced to iTunes.

Copy the Answer with the Calculator

Copy large numbers into other apps. Or, you can try and remember this string of numbers.

Copy and paste to, and from, the Calculator app. If you have a large number you need copied into Calculator app, you're covered. If you need to save the the answer to that huge equation, you're covered. We just wish you could copy the entire equation. Maybe you'll be able to in iPhone OS 4.0.

Redeem on the Go

Redemption!

Got a sweet iTunes card from your friend as a gift while you're away from home? Both the iTunes app and the App Store app now support redeeming iTunes codes. Both apps keep the redeem feature under the More tab. Now you can download that $25 worth of Rush before you even get home. RAD!

Got a sweet tip, drop it in the comments below.

Safari Escapes from Beta

JC Domingo — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:22:39 -0500

After a few months in beta, Safari 4 is ready for action. Whether you're using Leopard or, (ahem) Windows, the new Safari is ready for download now.

If you haven't been test driving the beta, here are the new features.

The ‘Top Sites’ page allows you to navigate to your favorite websites by previewing up to 24 thumbnails all in one page. You can also personalize the display by relocating each in the grid, making it easier for you to find your top sites. You can also tell if each top site has changed since your last visit when you see a white star on the top-right corner by looking on the grid page. And, of course, each would be at your disposal.

If you're a fan of Cover Flow, Safari has you covered. Now you can review your site history and bookmarked sites in full-page versions, just like iTunes or navigating the Finder.

Can’t find what you’re looking for? Just type what you’re looking for in the ‘Search’ bar. Typing a simple word or phrase will search through the whole browser.

Apple reports that Safari is the world’s fastest web browser, overshadowing Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. ‘Nitro Engine’ performs JavaScript at almost 8 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and more than 4 times faster than Firefox 3 (testing on iBench and SunSpider).

‘Developer Tools’ allows you observe the structure of a page, debug JavaScript, optimize performance and compatibility, inspect offline databases, or test experimental pieces of code. Click here for more information and here for all 150 features.

Download and enjoy the new Safari 4 here for free! Happy browsing.