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The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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Quick Tip: Safari Double-click Tab
There are numerous ways to open a new tab in Safari. You can right click on the tab bar, use the keyboard shortcut Command + T, or use the File Menu item.

Another, less known, way is to double-click the tab bar. Double-clicking will create a new tab and highlight the address bar so you can start typing right away.

Update: Apparently (according to Simon in the comments), this is a new feature of 3.1. So if this isn’t working for you, make sure you’ve upgraded to 3.1.

Hat tip to my wife for letting me know about this one.

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Quick Updates, Slow Security, and Quick Look
With less than six months under its belt, Leopard is preparing to receive its third update to 10.5.3. This update includes 75 fixes from Address Book to VoiceOver. The list includes changes to: AddressBook, AppleScript, Audio, Back To My Mac, Dashboard, Dock, DVD Player, Finder, Graphics, iCal, Mail, Portable Home Directories, Printing, Rosetta, Spaces, Spotlight, Time Machine, VoiceOver, and probably a bunch of other stuff.

This news comes on the heals of a study by a couple security researchers from IBM (hmmmm, suspicious) who say that Apple is slow at fixing their 0-day security vulnerabilities (for those who don’t feel like popping over to Wikipedia, 0-day means nobody knew a particular weakness existed before). They say [PDF] that Microsoft is getting faster at fixing their 0-day issues, while Apple is getting slower. I wonder if it has anything to do with Microsoft’s years of experience is fixing so many 0-day attacks…

Anyway, the thing that worries me the most about the 10.5.3 news is that I couldn’t find anything about Quick Look. The ability to look quickly at files makes Leopard so much more attractive than many of its other features. I am hoping for the ability to print straight from Quick Look. Now that would be grand!

What else should be included in the 10.5.3 Leopard update?

Via PC World and The Register

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April Community Giveaway
Each month we will be having a giveaway in the community.

This month’s giveaway will be a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.

The basic rules of the contest are that you simply have to be involved with the community. We’ll take a look at who contributed the most to decide the winner. It won’t be based completely on who has the most posts or starts the most threads, but will alsol take in to account who adds the most helpful and useful content throughout the month.

Go ahead and get involved!

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Would a weekly TAB summary podcast be useful?
I’ve been throwing around the idea of doing a weekly podcast basically covering the previous weeks posts. There would be extra dialogue in there so it’s not just me reading the posts, but I figured it might be a good way for people to get an overview of news and articles that were covered.

Let me know in the poll below if you’d be interested in something like that.

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10 iTunes Add-ons Worth Checking Out
With the 3,700 songs of my iTunes library constantly pushing some sort of noise out of my speakers, iTunes is easily the most used app on my computer. It literally never gets closed.

With it being my most used app, I’ve taken quite a bit of time trying out different add-ons to make the most of iTunes. Below is a listing of 10 apps that I’ve used and feel comfortable saying they’re worth the price you pay for them.

CoverSutra

CoverSutra (previous coverage) is one of my favorite add-ons. It is packed with little features that aren’t immediately apparent when you first start using the app.

A few features include music search, a mini-player, Last.fm integration, keyboard shortcuts, and album cover display.

The $22 price tag seems a tad much, but I’d suggest giving the free trial a run and then deciding for yourself if you can live without it.

Moody

I tend to listen to music based heavily on my current mood, or the mood I’d like to be in. Moody (previous coverage) makes that a piece of cake.

Moody lets you tag your music based on color. The app has a spectrum of 16 different colors to classify your moods. From there, you can pick a combination of colors to create a dynamic playlist based on your mood.

What is even better about this is the fact that it is completely free.

Tangerine

In the same vein as Moody, Tangerine (previous coverage) creates playlists based on the BPM of your songs. So say you wanted to create a playlist for a workout (something more intense with a higher BPM), Tangerine can whip up a playlist for you right on the spot.

Tangerine will set you back $24.95 after the 15-day free trial.

Awaken

I find the sound of a regular alarm clock to be one of the most abrasive and painfully horrible ways to start my day. Awaken helps change that by turning your mac in to an alarm clock.

By tying in to your iTunes library, you can now wake up to something soothing like Sunrise instead of that horrendous, ear-piercing buzzer.

Awaken is well worth the $12.95 (with free updates for life). Give the 14 day free trail a run for the next few mornings and see how you like the change.

Simplify Media

One of the really nice things about living in the dorm rooms back in college was that I had access to the iTunes libraries of hundreds of other iTunes users…effectively expanding my listening options exponentially.

Now that I live in suburbia with no one else on my network except for my wife, I’ve lost that easy access to other music.

Fortunately, Simplify Media (previous coverage) has created a really cool add-on that basically gives you that access back.

All you do is add the username of other Simplify users (who have approved your adding them), and you’ll then be given access to stream their iTunes library just as if it was on your own local network.

Simplify Media is free in every way possible.

Synergy

Synergy is a “classic” iTunes add-on. It has been around for over 5 years and is probably one of the most widely used apps for iTunes.

The latest major release (3.5) was a complete rewrite for Leopard.

Synergy basically adds 3 small buttons to your menubar to give you immediate access to controlling iTunes. It is an affordable $8 and includes a free trial. Be sure to check out the tour.

The Filter

The Filter (previous coverage) is another playlist-creation add-on that almost seems magical.

Simply select a few songs that you are interested in, click on The Filter and an entire playlist is created with other songs you’d probably want to listen to at that point.

The Filter uses “advanced recommendation technology” to create these unique playlists by tying in to The Filter community of other users.

The Filter is free to download and use.

DiscoBrick

I don’t use the iTunes visualizer that much, but sometimes it’s just fun to check out what what your music visually creates.

DiscoBrick takes that one step further and creates some seriously amazing visual effects based on the beat of the music.

DiscoBrick is $10.95 for a single, personal license and up to $55 for a public-use license if you want to use DiscoBrick at parties or other events.

TuneBar

TuneBar picks up where Synergy leaves off. On the surface it’s just a simple iTunes controller. Past that…it’s still an iTunes controller. Ultimately TuneBar is more customizable than Synergy and lets your create your own themes by editing simple HTML.

Is it worth the $4 extra over Synergy? Maybe not. Just depends on how much you’d like to customize your player.

iWow

The iTunes equalizer is quite capable for the majority of iTunes users.

But if the sound controls are quite what you’re looking for, or if you’re looking to make those small headphone or desktop speakers sound better, I’d suggest you check out iWOW.

iWOW is an audio “enhancer”…which basically means it uses different settings and effects to make the audio larger, fuller, and more crisp than what iTunes can do.

iWOW is currently on sale for $19.99 here.

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Community Activity: March 31, 2008
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Microsoft's RDC beta expires; no new release available
Apple promised to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007 and Microsoft released a Universal Binary version of Office in January 2008, but a Remote Desktop Connection Client that runs natively on Intel Macs is still in beta. Except now that beta has expired… sort of.

Microsoft released RDC 2.0 Beta 2 on October 25, 2007, with the release note that it would expire on March 31, 2008. Users launching it today will receive the message shown here:

You might think that the insistence to upgrade to the final release version means there is a final release version available. Yet clicking the default button simply takes the user to the Mactopia home page. Clicking on the Remote Desktop link there reveals that the “lastest” version is still 2.0 Beta 2, which, according to the message given on launch, is “out of date.”

Here’s how I see Microsoft’s options for this situation:
- Ideal Option: Release the final version of RDC 2.0 for download
- Near-Ideal Option: Release Beta 3 with a future expiration date
- Acceptable Option: Continue to let us use Beta 2 and stop telling us it’s out of date
- Worst Option: Beta 2 stops working completely and nothing new can be downloaded
Oh, and maybe someone over there should double-check the spelling in the dialog boxes.

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Many Happy Returns: The State Of Tax Preparation On The Mac
Apart from accounting professionals who make their living interpreting government economic legalese, I suspect tax season in the United States is the least favorite time of year for anyone required to ﬁle, or – in the case of this year's "rebate" – anyone who wants to cash in on some government overspend. Using your Mac to prepare your taxes has always seemed like a hit-or-miss endeavor to me, either from a lack-of-choices perspective when it came to actual software or just compatibility problems when using purely online e-filers.

Up until 2006, I still used tax software written for Windows when we weren’t letting an accountant handle everything for us. There were just too many horror stories about differences in outcomes between on Macs & PCs when using the same program from a single vendor. This year I did the same and wanted to give last-minute filers an overview of their options for getting returns in on time using a Mac.

On Your Mac

Both H&R Block’s TaxCut & Intuit’s TurboTax are available for use on either G3+ & Intel-based Macs running OS X 10.4. (Tiger) or better (TaxCut actually supports OS X 10.3.9+). They both offer different packages depending on the type of tax-situation you are in (whether you are filing just Federal or both Federal+State) and Intuit provides two extra titles that are more tailored to users with investments, run a small business or manage rental properties (TaxCut Home & Business only runs on Windows). Both packages will require updates upon first launch, so be prepared for an initial delay in preparation.

I prepared and filed my return with TurboTax Deluxe 2007 and did not purchase a copy of TaxCut just for this review, so I’m going to make a preemptive request to any TAB readers who have used TaxCut to definitely speak up in the comments with your experiences & opines.

TurboTax begins by asking if there is data you would like to import from either previous returns or other programs, such as Quicken. I had it import our 2006 return and began my editing. They programmers definitely tweaked the user interface more than just a bit this year with the whole program feeling much more solid (save one experience you’ll see in a bit). While I always choose to let the program interview me and provide guidance, at any point during the filing you can jump to the fields in on-screen versions of the printed forms if you feel that direct-entry would be faster/easier and then return to the prompting. TurboTax knew about this year’s economic stimulus package and provided thorough information on how to handle the deduction of moving expenses.

When you are finally done with entry, the error checking stage ensures that no mandatory fields go unfilled and points out inconsistencies between different parts of the return(s) that require attention & correction. It even gives you an idea of the likelihood of an audit based on what your return looks like as compared with Intuit’s database of returns that have been audited by the government and information gathered from IRS sources. Once the Federal return is finished, the majority of the data is then used to populate your State return (if you are required to fill out a state return and have purchased a version that includes State filing).

While my experience with the program was good it did crash on me three times when I tried to switch into manual-form-entry mode during the tail end of my Federal return. While that is a somewhat-scary experience – is the file corrupted? – I save & copy often and reverted back to a known, good version of the data file before continuing with data re-entry.

E-filing is simple and quick and I’ll be starting the program again daily to have it check on the status. TurboTax also provides the option to encrypt your data file with a password which I used even though I store it in a secure disk image. I have to admit not being thrilled with the security-question override to the password protection, but that may allay the fear of forgetfulness for some users.

For TurboTax, you’ll end up paying between $19.95 & $89.95 (many bargains are out there, tho) with e-filing being an additional charge of $17.95 per eFile for up to five Federal returns and $17.95 per eFile for up to three state returns (charges apply to downloaded product only).

TaxCut charges $24.95 for just their Federal program and $44.95 for their Federal+State package. E-filing is a separate charge for either version, but they have bundled Federal+State & e-filing into one final option for $74.95.

For either TaxCut or TurboTax, it is very important to remember to keep a copy of your old software and save a copy of your return as a PDF document! You cannot rely on newer versions either being available or reading older formats correctly and the government will not accept that as an excuse when attempting to retrieve information for an audit. Remember to store the PDF copies as either secure PDF documents (my version 4.1 of Preview.app allows for encryption) or store them in a secure disk image. Despite my attempt to go paperless, I will always print & securely file the paper copies of my tax returns.

In Your Browser

Both companies and a host of others also give you an option to file completely online; no client software to download. There is a helpful page at the Nebraska Department of Revenue site which lists may e-filers and their compatibility with various platforms, including which combinations of browsers and Macintosh operating systems they support.

I used Safari 3.1 to start a return on the TaxCut online site and the TurboTax online site. When I began the TurboTax version I was struck by how close the look and feel mimicked the OS X native version. For example, here is a screen capture of the full Mac program on one of the initial screens:

and here is the same stage in the online version:

The online version also has the same smooth transition between interview stages and enables you to go back and forth between screens or save your return for later entry.

Here is a sample of a similar page from TaxCut’s online offering:

While the TaxCut site seemed to cover the same elements in nearly the exact same stages, the Intuit web programmers did a much cleaner job making their web version feel like you are working in a native program.

What Works Best For You

A few friends have mentioned that TaxCut integrates better with OS X but failed to elaborate on how they were using the .Mac, iCal and iDisk support. Definitely drop a note in the comments if you have direct experience with that feature.

TurboTax is almost a sure bet for you if you use other Intuit products/services. The fact that their program has improved so dramatically from 2006 to 2007 is also a good sign that Intuit is taking the Mac more seriously.

If your needs do not justify the purchase of one of these programs or you just like to kick-it old school and paper-file, Nathan Vander Wilt has a pretty cool Numbers spreadsheet that includes the main F1040 form. As he points out in his post, the form “is "complete" although there is a very simplified part of Schedule C that hooks in as well”. There are few forms for Excel floating around the Internets as well, but they all seem to require enabling Visual Basic macros which are – thankfully – missing from Excel 2007 for the Mac.

As I’ve said more than once in this post, your feedback on Mac tax preparation software or using the Mac when preparing taxes online or offline would be most appreciated by me and – I suspect – many TAB readers. More voices usually end up helping to make better choices. Better hurry, though, April 15^th is just about two weeks away!

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