If you need to convert FLAC to MP3 in Mac OS X for free, the best way to do this is using a utility called All2MP3.

Convert FLAC to MP3

Here are the steps to convert FLAC audio to MP3 format within Mac OS X.

• Locate the FLAC audio files you want converted
• Download All2MP3, it’s a free utility that will handle the conversion
• Launch All3MP3
• Drag the FLAC audio files into the All2MP3 GUI
• If you wish to adjust quality options, use the sliding bitrate scale. The default is set to 320kbps.
• Click on “Convert”

All3MP3 goes to work and handles all the conversion. The time it takes depends on the processor speed of your Mac, but it’s generally really fast for audio conversion standards. The FLAC files will be converted to MP3 within their original directory, so look for the new converted files in the same place.

What is FLAC anyway? Can iTunes play FLAC?

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, and every once in a while you’ll come across audio files that are in this format. FLAC files are great because they’re usually of very high quality,but they’re annoying because iTunes can’t open a FLAC file by default. The solution is to convert the FLAC to MP3 format, and then iTunes can read it as usual.

Using the same app you can also convert wma to mp3 amongst other supported audio formats, including MPC, APE, WV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, AIFF, WAV, and others.

If you have young kids there’s a couple things you can do to make your Mac even more friendly and easy to use for them. TheAppleBlog has a pretty good post on the matter, and the focus is on simplifying the user experience by reducing anything that’s confusing or distracting. Here’s my favorite tricks for making the Mac experience extra friendly for young children:

Tips for making a Mac kid friendly

* Create a New User Account for the child, then login to that user account and:
* Disable things like Spaces and Expose
* Shrink/Hide the Dock
* Disable ‘Recent Items’
* Increase the icon and font text size of Finder items
* Choose a simple Desktop Picture
* Install kid-friendly and fun applications for the child to use
* Setup Parental Controls through the System Preferences > Parental Controls panel to do things like: determine what applications they can use, set time limits on computer usage, set bed-times, create logs for websites visited, limit email and iChat conversations to only allowed users, limit access to certain websites, and more.

You can see a few other tips at TheAppleBlog.

Another great solution… let them use an iPad! Kids love an iPad or even an iPhone but the iPad in particular is great with little kids. There isn’t much room to mess about and you can put them into a good app or game and they will be entertained for hours on end. I find the iPad to be a great kid-friendly device and it’s really just a highly simplified Mac in terms of appearance so it works quite well for them.

You can easily save or open any PDF into the iBooks application on either an iPhone or iPad.

• First you need to open the PDF on your iPhone/iPad, this can be done through eMail or Safari
• Once the PDF is open, click on the “Open in iBooks” button in the upper right corner
• Anytime you open a PDF with iBooks like this, it stores a copy in your iBooks library for accessing later
• Now you can access that PDF from iBooks, anytime

This is really nice because it lets you access those PDF files on your iOS device later even when you are not online, and you can skim through it like any other iBook within the app. You can also sync these PDF’s as books within iTunes too for easy backing up.

This works on any iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch running the iBooks application. This really is the easiest way to get a PDF file onto your iPad or iPhone for use in iBooks.

Thanks to reader Dustin L for sending in this tip and screenshot!

Apple released the iOS 4.0.1 update to download for iPhone users today. The update addresses the signal issue that many iPhone 4 users have complained about, or as Apple says in the release notes: “Improves the formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display”

Download iOS 4.0.1 Update for iPhone

The download is available for iPhone 3, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 users.

To download and update your device, plug your iPhone into your computer and sync it with iTunes. Then click the Update button and you will be able to download and install the iOS 4.0.1 update.

If you’ve been to Google.com today you can’t possibly have missed their logo honoring the late Josef Frank, a famous architect. The crazy looking Google logo is actually a take on Josef Frank’s wallpaper designs, which are intricately detailed and quite fancy.

After seeing these, I thought they’d look great on my iPad, so I decided to make a few Josef Frank wallpapers for the iPad. Here are four that I created fitting the iPad dimensions, but they’ll work on on your iPhone too. Enjoy!

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SNES9x is a full featured SNES emulator for Mac that lets you do all sorts of things, including using an external game pad, customized controls, enter cheat codes and Game Genie codes directly into the game, create freeze states (ie: saving anytime anywhere), export movies of gameplay, and so much more.

It’s been out a while, but I just wrote about playing SNES on the iPad and realized that we’ve never covered the very SNES emulator for Mac that I mentioned in that article: SNES9x. Yes, there are other SNES emulators for Mac but I always find myself returning to SNES9x, I never have a problem with it and I’ve been able to play through games completely without a crash. In my opinion, it’s the most developed SNES emulator for the Mac platform, if there is a better one I haven’t found it yet.

Downloading the SNES Emulator for Mac

SNES9x is open sourced and a free download but it’s nowhere to be found on the official developers homepage so you usually have to Google around to find a download link. At the moment, Softpedia download works for SNES9x 1.52 and this link works to download SNES9x 1.43 but these may change and you may be forced back to Google around for the package. The version I am using is 1.52 and was released this year, it works flawlessly in Mac OS X 10.6.4.

Playing SNES Games on the Mac

Now that you’ve downloaded SNES9x, you’ll need ROM files of the games to actually play SNES on your Mac. Playing the ROM files is simple, you just double click the .smc and it will launch automatically into SNES9x.

Downloading and Playing SNES ROM Files

Many ROMs are available to download without issue and these are called abandonware, but some ROM’s are considered a legal grey area; some people say it is straight piracy to download ROMS, others argue that if you bought and owned the SNES games a long time ago you should still have the legal right to play them in whatever form today, and of course there are others who say they’re ancient games so it shouldn’t matter anyway. This is made even more complex due to the various copyrights that may or may not exist for the games themselves. Due to this ambiguous nature and various copyrights, you should probably just Google around for specific ROM files and check the copyright yourself, they are generally really easy to find and many games belong to the public domain.

I always end up playing games that are either not controversial (aka Abandonware) or that I owned before anyway so I don’t have any moral dilemma with ROMs, but that’s me, and by no means am I an expert on ROM copyright or rights usage. Do your own research and enjoy playing SNES on your Mac!

Need to access the current Finder directory immediately within the Terminal? Get cdto, it’s one of those must-have apps for anyone who’s constantly switching between the command line and the Finder. Installing cdto is simple, just download the app and place it somewhere in your Applications or Utilities folder, then drag the app directly into your Finder toolbar.

Now anytime you want to open any Finder window within with the Terminal, click the cdto icon and a new Terminal session is started with the PWD set to the same folder that you were using in the Finder

cdto developer home
Download now

Microsoft is busy trying to play catch up with Apple’s runaway success of the iPhone and App Store model. According to BusinessWeek, Microsoft is actually providing financial incentives and revenue guarantees to developers that create for their new Windows Phone 7 platform:

The company is providing financial incentives ranging from free tools and test handsets to funds for software development and marketing, said Todd Brix, a senior director at Microsoft who works with app developers. In some cases, Microsoft is providing revenue guarantees, and will make up the difference if apps don’t sell as well as expected, he said.

This is an interesting strategy considering Windows Phone 7 is an OS that doesn’t even exist yet, which is a large obstacle Microsoft faces at the moment. Trying to convince developers to work for an unreleased an unproven platform is no easy task, especially when there is a pervasive gold-rush mentality with developing for the iTunes App Store, and to a lesser extent with Google’s Android Marketplace.

Will this strategy work for Microsoft? If I had to guess I’d say they will closely emulate the iOS and App Store experiences, just like they are trying with the Microsoft Stores that are so closely modeled after the Apple Store. Hey, maybe they’ll even revive Internet Explorer for Mac and bring it to the iPhone? Jokes aside, Microsoft is a potentially fierce competitor to both Apple and Google in the mobile space, so this should get interesting very quickly.

Update: The final version has been released and everyone can now download iOS 4.1. You can do this through iTunes or with links to the iOS 4.1 direct download from Apple servers.

Apple has released iOS 4.1 beta firmware to developers, with SDK updates that incorporate the Game Center features. When it comes out of beta, this will be the first major update to iOS 4.

iOS 4.1 Compatible Devices

Firmware for iOS 4.1 has been issued for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch 2nd and 3rd gen. Noticeably absent from the firmware lineup is the iPad.

Despite the speculation that the 4.1 release would include iPad support and unify the iOS across devices, it doesn’t look like there is iOS 4 support for iPad quite yet. Perhaps in future beta updates the iPad will join the iOS 4 party.

iOS 4.1 Download

Everyone can now download iOS 4.1, just launch iTunes.

To get the iOS 4.1 beta and SDK, you’ll need to be an Apple iPhone Developer.
* Login to developer.apple.com
* Download the firmware from the download links

Installing the iOS 4.1 beta is the same as any other iOS update. So far the only GUI difference that has been noticed is that the signal bars are more accurate. More to come!

All the jokes and iPhone 4 humor have finally gone mainstream. David Letterman featured the iPhone 4 on his famous ‘Top 10 List’ segment. Video is hosted below for now, but don’t be surprised if it gets pulled for copyright. Here’s the list repeated below:

David Letterman’s Top 10 Signs You’ve Purchased a Bad iPhone 4

• 10. To make a call, you have to insert a quarter
• 9. Automatically answers every call with a computerized, “Yello!”
• 8. Operates on 20 “D” Batteries
• 7. Pre-loaded with naked photos of Steve Jobs
• 6. You keep getting anonymous texts reading, “iPhone kill you”
• 5. Apple Store looks suspiciously like some dudes trunk
• 4. It smells and tastes like a pop tart
• 3. There’s no lather when washing your cornea (oh I’m sorry, that’s a sign you’ve purchased a bad eye foam)
• 2. You check your email and it shocks your nuts
• 1. Only accepts calls from Mel Gibson

The entire list misses the whole antenna debacle completely, but it’s still interesting to see that Apple-bashing is now part of late night comedy routines. Read more »