Apple has released a Graphics Update for Snow Leopard, and this is particularly good news to Mac gamers. Remember those pesky Starcraft 2 crashes I wrote about two weeks ago? This update specifically addresses some of the problems with Starcraft 2 for Mac as well as other issues with Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Aperture 3.

If you are a Mac gamer it is highly recommended to install this update. You can download the graphics update through the Software Update control panel, accessed through the Apple menu.

Here are the release notes from Apple:

The Snow Leopard Graphics Update contains stability and performance fixes for graphics applications and games:

Addresses frame rate issues occurring in Portal and Team Fortress 2 by Valve, on iMac (Late 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac mini (Early 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook (Early 2009 and Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) or MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) models.

Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture 3, or StarCraft II by Blizzard, to unexpectedly quit or become unresponsive.

Resolves an image corruption issue that may occur when disconnecting and reconnecting external displays while the system is running.

The hardware and software affected by this performance update are the following: MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010), iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009), Mac Pro (Early 2009), Mac mini (Early 2009), Mac OS X 10.6.4, Mac mini (Mid 2010), iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010), iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010), Portal, StarCraft II, Team Fortress 2

I recently encountered a strange bug where iTunes refused to add a song to it’s playlist and wouldn’t play the original source MP3 file either. Interestingly enough, the mp3 file played fine with Quick Look and even was able to play within the Finder preview, but no matter what I did I could not add or import the mp3 file to my iTunes playlist.

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Have you ever wondered what an iPad and Kindle screen would look like up close? Not just to the naked eye, but really up close… say at 26x and 400x magnification. Despite the fact they are serving completely different markets, I know people compare the iPad and Kindle frequently so these shots are quite interesting.

These pictures were taken with a Veho USB Powered Microscope, which I had no idea you could even get a 400x USB powered microscope for $65, that’s amazing in and of itself. Anyway, more pictures:

At 400x the iPad looks like any other close up of a LCD display, while the Kindle amazingly enough actually holds detail and, well, resembles ink.

Admittedly this isn’t the most fair comparison considering the current iPad screen is using a traditional LCD display while the Kindle uses the wildly complex MIT creation known as E Ink. Of course, the Kindle also isn’t intended to compete against the iPad and vice versa (try playing games or browsing the web in a meaningful fashion on a Kindle), but it’s neat to see these detailed pictures. I’d really like to see this test done using the 326ppi iPhone 4 retina display, which is rumored to appear on iPod touch and iPad models in the near future.

These images confirm the opinions I’ve long held: if you’re looking to get a handheld device for only reading books, the Kindle takes the cake. If you want to do more like play games, browse the web, email, listen to music, watch movies, etc, the iPad is a no brainer.

The above pictures originated from microscope shots by Keith Peters at his website, Bit-101. There are several more pictures and also comparisons with real printed ink if you’re interested in seeing them.

Did you know you can download a file instead of opening it in Safari on the Mac, simply by dragging a link to the Downloads window of Safari? And did you know you can also start a download in Safari on Mac by pasting a copied download URL into the Safari downloads window?

This combo of download tips are little known tricks, but they’re quite useful, particularly if you have a direct download link stored in your clipboard, or a URL elsewhere, or maybe a link saved as a bookmark or even as a link from another webpage.

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Adobe Photoshop for iPad has been released and it’s a free download. Technically called Photoshop Express, the Express moniker suggests a more full featured version may be in the works from Adobe to further utilize the power and screen size of the iPad. Photoshop Express is the as the Photoshop for iPhone version released last year, but the name has been updated and there is an iPad specific feature.

Photoshop for iPad exclusive feature set:
• Support for portrait and landscape orientations
• Redesigned Online, Edit, and Upload workflows
• Ability to work on multiple photos in sequence from within a single workflow
• Redesigned Organizer view with simplified album sharing
• Updated icons and visuals that make it easier to navigate and use the Editor
• Ability to upload to Photoshop.com and Facebook simultaneously

Adobe says that Photoshop Express for iPad lets you use the simple touch gestures to make quick edits and share the photos from your mobile device. Personally I think the existing features leave something to be desired, as there are a significant lack of real photo editing abilities. This is especially amplified considering some of the other relatively more powerful photo editing and manipulation packages available for iPad and iPhone.

Despite the shortcomings, the Photoshop app is useful and the brand is strong. I’m sure future versions will have many more features even if in the form of a paid download, for now though you can get Photoshop Express for iPad as a free download via iTunes.

You may recall the figure released last week by a research analyst saying that 70% of incoming college Freshmen use Macs, well, at some schools it’s already higher than that. Take this classroom at BCIT, where out of 17 computers in the classroom, 16 are Macs.

I’m not sure what the class is, and obviously certain majors could skew the Mac to PC ratio, but this image really captures the trend of Apple dominating in higher education. These pictures were taken by visiting lecturer Tod Maffin, who says he noticed “a lot of glowing white Apple logos staring back” and then asked the students to hold up their computers to take a picture.

All versions of Mac OS X default to saving captured screen shot files to PNG format, but if you’d rather have screenshots save as another file type, it’s actually quite easy to modify the file format and change the default to something new.

Whether the desired format output is JPG, TIFF, PDF, GIF, or back to PNG defaults, let’s walk through the process of changing the format of screenshots made on the Mac.

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Many new Mac users are coming from the Windows world where they would access the Task Manager to end tasks and stop errant processes. The Mac has it’s own Task Manager but it goes by another name: Activity Monitor.

Activity Monitor functions in a very similar way to how Task Manager does in Windows, letting you easily view, manage, and end tasks, applications, and any active processes that are running in Mac OS.

If you’re unfamiliar with Activity Monitor or task management on the Mac in general, don’t worry, because despite it’s immense power and control, it’s not complicated to use. And you can access it and use the feature the same way in all versions of Mac OS, since Activity Monitor works the same from the earliest releases to the most modern.

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I’ve always thought having a screen in portrait mode would be odd, but as a secondary display it really makes sense for development. Here a 15″ MacBook Pro rocks a portrait mode 24″ widescreen display.

[ via Flickr ]

If you’re in the USA you probably know the iPhone 4 price starts at $199 with a plan and $599 without contract, but did you know that the top end iPhone 4 costs nearly $1000 in much of Europe and over a grand in Italy? Yikes! At least it comes unlocked…

All the prices in the above graphic are listed in euros but with the € euro stronger than the dollar it’s not too difficult to see the high prices. Much of the price differences are due to VAT and other taxes, but it’s still interesting to see nonetheless. The best deal for iPhone 4 looks like Hong Kong, where you can pickup a base model unlocked iPhone 4 for about $650, not bad considering $600 in the USA keeps you glued to AT&T!

The graphic comes from Flickr where you can see a much larger version, thanks for sending this in Rick.

If you’re a Photoshop user and you’re frequently zooming in and out on images and photoshop files, you’ll likely find this simple trick to be particularly handy.

You can immediately zoom back to 100% on any document within Photoshop by hitting Command + 1 (yes like the number one).

If you’re not a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you can also just double-click on the magnifying glass icon to zoom back to 100%.

I’ve been using Photoshop for years and I didn’t know this until I came across it on TheGraphicMac.com. Granted I’m not a big keyboard shortcut explorer, but sometimes these little tips really amaze me with how useful they are.

Happy Photoshopping! You can check out more Photoshop tips here if you’re into that.

EPUB stands for ‘electronic publication’ and it’s the accepted standard format for digital book publishing. If you want to make an ebook that can be read on a digital device, you’ll need it in this EPUB format.

You can convert virtually any text containing document to EPUB format, which is the preferred format for reading on many ebook readers, including the Barnes & Noble Nook, Android, and the Apple iOS iBooks platform that runs on iPhone and iPad (note that the Amazon Kindle currently favors .mobi format which Calibre can also publish to). Here are the exact steps to convert a file to EPUB.
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There’s a pretty interesting feature included in iOS that lets you run your iPhone in James Bond mode, causing the device to self destruct if an incorrect password is entered 10 times concurrently.

Ok, well it’s not really called James Bond mode and it doesn’t actually self destruct, but it does erase all the data on the iPhone, which is basically the digital equivalent of self destruction. This feature is very effective, but it’s also unforgiving, so if you enter a password wrong often this is not for you.

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If you have two directories you need joined together, you can either drag and drop everything together, use the ‘mv’ command to move files manually, or, as we’ll show here, you can quickly merge any two directories within Mac OS X by using the command line tool ditto or ‘cp’.

The command line is generally aimed at advanced users, but ditto is pretty simple to use so almost anyone can use it this way if they’re comfortable with the terminal. Let’s learn how to merge directories with the ditto command on Mac.

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A security update has been released for iPhone and iPod touch that stops potentially malicious code from being executed on the devices. Released as iOS 4.0.2, the update is in response to the recent release of JailbreakMe, an extremely easy iPhone jailbreak that is browser based and used the exploit that the update patches.

The description of the problem is described by Apple as follows:

A stack buffer overflow exists in FreeType’s handling of CFF opcodes. Viewing a PDF document with maliciously crafted embedded fonts may allow arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking.

While jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod touch is practically harmless, the potential of a malicious third party attack is of legitimate concern, even if unlikely.

If you have a jailbroken device, you should not install this update quite yet. Likewise, if you want to jailbreak or unlock your iPhone it’s also not a good idea to install the update because there are currently limited jailbreaking and unlock abilities for iOS 4.0.2, with the exception of iPhone 3G which works with ultrasn0w.

Install & Download iOS 4.0.2

To update and install the iOS 4.0.2 update, all you need to do is plug your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer and click on the “Update” button within iTunes. Then click on the ‘Download and Install’ button and let iTunes handle the rest.

You can easily prevent changes being made on any files or folders in Mac OS X by locking the file or folder in question. This locking capability will also prevent the file or directory from being deleted, since the Trash will not empty while a file is in a locked state.

Locking files and folders in Mac OS X is quite easy, and the process is the same in all versions of the Mac operating system.

You’ll obviously want to know the file(s) or directories you wish to lock down ahead of time, then proceed with the following instructions.
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Are you ready for a Steve Jobs joke? Of course you are! Ok, so this joke is a little corny, but who cares, because sometimes corny is good for a laugh, right?! OK here we go:

Why does Steve Jobs always wear turtlenecks?

Because suits have too many buttons.

Get it? Oooooh boy.

Corny, but kind of appropriate and so fitting since Steve Jobs does indeed enjoy the turtleneck and has an obvious dislike for unnecessary buttons.

Thank you to Eric for sending this in. I’m not sure if Eric is the originator of this one or if it’s from someone else, but if you know of any other Steve Jobs or Apple jokes, feel free to put them into our comments.

So you forgot your Mac password… uh oh. Don’t worry, it happens and you aren’t out of luck. You’ll need to reset the forgotten password and there’s several ways to do this, we’ll focus on the three best methods; the first is dirt simple and will utilize the Apple ID (yes, the same on you use for iTunes and App Store purchases), the second method is a hack of sorts and does not require a Mac OS X recovery drive or CD and is guaranteed to be effective, and the third trick is fairly simple but it requires either a Mac OS X DVD, boot disk, or Recovery mode partition to use. Use whichever method works for your situation, but whichever method you choose you will have your password reset and gain access to your stuff again.

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