Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs reveal what's new in Mac.

Watch it here: http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/oct/0810rtdws876/m_08100053744wuasd_6...

Do you find yourself constantly using the Apple menu to find your recently opened applications? This simple Terminal hack will create a custom Stack on the Dock that will show your recently opened applications. Just open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/) and type in the following command:

Once you type in the command, you will need to restart the Dock by typing "killall Dock" and pressing enter. If you decide you don't want the newly created Stack, just drag it off the Dock like any other Stack.

Both Apple's second-generation iPod touch and fourth-generation iPod nano are expected to be widely available at Apple Retail stores today. The folks at iFixIt have already snagged one of each, tore them down, and weighed in with some observations.

Read more here: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/09/11/new_ipod_touch_ipod_nano_g...

Watch the video here: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/0809dt4bs89/event/index.html

Mac OS X only: Free iTunes add-on GimmeSomeTune automatically fetches missing album artwork, lyrics, and automatically embeds them in your music library. GimmeSomeTune runs in the background, and in addition to the metadata tools, it also supports scrobbling your music to Last.fm, universal hotkeys, iChat status updates, and even Apple Remote control. Apart from all that, GimmeSomeTune is also an excellent iTunes desktop remote, complete with a fully customizable song notification window. The donationware GimmeSomeTune is a must-have for the iTunes lover, Mac OS X only.

Apple has never been a stranger to temptaion. From iMacs to iPods, the 30 year-old computer company has repeatedly set off public frenzies with their cutting edge and often cutesy-products. As they get consumers buzzin over the newest Mac gadget, a look back at ten landmark moments in Apple history.

Read the story at: http://www.newsweek.com/id/91512

Make hidden Dock icons transparent

Without using Exposé, it is hard to tell which Mac OS X applications are hidden and which aren't. But, with a simple Terminal hack, you can have all your application icons displayed as transparent. Simply open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities) and type the following command exactly:

Once you type the command and press enter, you need to restart the Dock by typing "killall Dock" and pressing enter. Once the Dock restarts and you hide applications, you will notice that hidden applications have a transparent look. If you want to reverse the command, just replace the "YES" with a "NO" and restart the Dock again.

More tips after the break.

If you don't like using the Input Menu (System Preferences: International: Input Menu tab) to activate the Keyboard Viewer and Character Palette, here are two AppleScripts that do the same thing:

Keyboard Viewer: Get this script

Character Palette: Get this script

Once the scripts are created, you can put them in your Dock, Sidebar, assign a hot key (via your favorite third-party tool), etc.

Organized is a new widget from iSlayer featuring a calendar with events, world clocks, notes and to do’s. The calendar and to do’s utilise OS X’s inbuilt databases, so they’re always in sync with iCal and Mail. The world clock uses our very own database with over 700 locations.

As with other iSlayer widgets like iStat menus/nano/pro, it is obvious that a lot of thought went into the design of the user interface for Organized. It packs a lot of data into a very small widget and even has a feature I immediately turned on -- the ability to shut off Marker Felt as the default font for Notes.

Organized is free, but if you use it then please consider donating. Oh, and don’t forget to check out the Organized manual.

Sales of Apple’s Macintosh computers have been growing much faster than PC sales overall, with many new Mac buyers switching from years of using Windows computers. For that reason, every month I get emails from readers asking about the differences in using the Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

While the Windows and Mac user interfaces are broadly similar, they do have subtle variations in day-to-day use that require some re-education for switchers. And because there are so many fewer Mac users than Windows users, help from friends and co-workers can be harder to obtain than it is for people switching the other way, to Windows from Mac.

So, here’s a quick tip sheet explaining a few of the most common differences in the daily use of Windows XP (MSFT), from which most people would be switching, and Apple’s (AAPL) Mac OS X Leopard, which switchers would be adopting.

This column isn’t an argument for making the switch to a Mac, merely an attempt to help those who have done so, or who are considering doing so. Of course, all Macs currently sold can run Windows and Windows programs concurrently with the Mac operating system. But this guide is for folks who intend to use their Macs primarily with Leopard, not Windows.

Have you noticed that screenshoots you make with the key command Apple-Shift-3 or Apple-Shift-4 are somewhat blurry and not pixel perfect? That is because by default the screen-shoot format is a made as a jpeg set to resolution 60. That's pretty low and therefore it produces small file sizes which is good for most uses, but not if you want to see every pixel in detail.
To fix this issue you have to set the deafult screenshoot format to png, pdf or tiff. You can do that with Terminal. Type these commands:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type png
killall SystemUIServer

Press return after each line and replace png with pdf or tiff as you wish.

Leopard has a new unwelcome (to me, at least) feature -- a shadow around whole-window screenshots (ie, Command-Shift-4, Space). Fortunately this can be disabled from Terminal with this command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

To make the changes take effect, logout and login, or restart SystemUIServer.

NOTE: This works, and I activated it with killall SystemUIServer in Terminal. To add the shadow effect back in, delete the newly-added pref: defaults delete com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow, then restart SystemUIServer again.

Although Apple is marketing Mac OS X Snow Leopard as an operating system update with "no new features," under the hood improvements will actually translate into a slew of new enhancements, five of which are described herein.

Citing sources, RoughlyDrafted is offering of an overview of some of the big new features that are due to make an impact when Snow Leopard drops next Spring. Among them are previously disclosed or well known additions such as SproutCore, the LLVM Compiler, the CUPS printing engine, native exchange support in Mail (as well as iCal and Address Book), and self-contained Web apps.

Finally, a modern file system on a consumer OS
As if Grand Central weren’t enough bad news for Microsoft, now they have ZFS to contend with. Building a reliable, high-performance file system takes years and Microsoft doesn’t have years to respond.

The formal announcement is for Snow Leopard server, which is how Apple introduces new file systems. HFS+ first arrived on a server version as well.

Who cares?
Anyone who stores data should.

Microsoft’s NTFS is 20 year old technology borrowed from DEC. Fine for small disks and puny CPUs. Not so great for today’s data intensive systems and applications.

Silent data corruption is common - only you don’t know it - because the corruption shows up as other problems, like missing DLLs.