The fastest way to get MP3 and m4a file info out of Mac OS X is using the Terminal and afinfo command. The command line tool you’ll want to use stands for Audio File Info, rather appropriately. You can try it out yourself with any audio file, though for the purposes here we’re looking at an mp3 or m4a file.

To get started, launch the Terminal and type this at the command line, specifying the path to the audio file to retrieve meta info and file details about:

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Is the Kindle and iPad war over digital reading finished already? Did the iPad lose because of the iBookstore? According to TUAW, the “iBookstore six months after launch is one big failure”, which is a harsh way to say there just isn’t enough available content. Let’s review this and the eReader battle between the two devices.

Amazon Kindle Store vs iPad iBookstore

The numbers tell the story. The Amazon Kindle Store has over 700,000 titles, including books and magazines. Meanwhile, the Apple iBookstore has only 60,000 titles, half of which came from a Project Goutenberg, a source of free copyright expired books.

If you’re a bookworm, it’s pretty obvious what your choice would be, right?

Well not quite, the iPad can also download the Kindle app for free which gives the iPad access to all of the Kindle Store content. Suddenly your library just expanded to be equal to that of the Kindle, and due to this I wouldn’t limit my purchase just based on the availability of the digital bookstores offerings.

iPad vs Kindle for reading books

The strength of the Kindle lies in reading. If you compare the iPad and Kindle screens purely for readability, it’s a no brainer who wins: the Kindle’s e-Ink technology produces amazingly crisp typography. This makes the Kindle the hands down winner of the eReader battle… if what you’re looking to do is read books.

I’ll say it again: if you’re an avid reader and you want the best possible eReader on the market, get a Kindle. The screen is freakishly good for reading thanks to digital ink, the available content is bountiful, and the device includes free 3G access – all for about 1/3 the price of an iPad.

The current iPad isn’t an eReader (perhaps the rumored 7-inch iPad with retina display will change this). If you want an all-in-one device that plays games, browses the web, has full access to the App Store, and can also read digital books, grab the iPad.

Is this competition really even fair? Are the two devices really competing against each other? I think unless the Kindle releases a color screen and an app store of it’s own, they’re competing in different markets. Each device has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, and your purchase really needs to depend on what you want out of the device. If you have the money to spare, why not buy one of each?

One of the cooler things about Android phones is Live Wallpaper. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s basically animated wallpapers behind your home screen, and the effect can be really flashy. You can get a similar experience on your jailbroken iPhone by using something called vWallpaper. vWallpaper aims to replicate the Live Wallpaper experience by allowing you to run videos as your iPhone wallpaper.

Here’s how to get vWallpaper on your iPhone:

• Add the following source to Cydia: http://i.danstaface.net/deb/
• Search for and install ‘vWallpaper’
• Launch the newly downloaded vWallpaper
• Tap on ‘Video Wallpaper’ and then slide ON to enable the video effect
• Now select the video you want to use as your wallpaper
• You can also download new videos by clicking on ‘Download Videos’

The effect is much easier shown than explained, here’s a random video from YouTube that shows the effect in action:
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One of the features of Windows 7 that gets pretty good reviews is the window preview, you access these by hovering over items in the Windows task/start bar and a little preview of the minimized window is shown as a pop-up. With a little utility called HyperDock, you can get this same functionality on your Mac Dock.

HyperDock includes window previews (see screenshot above if you’re not sure what this would look like), some advanced window management features, and you can even control iTunes and iCal through the preview windows. I tried it out and it works as advertised.

If you want this sort of thing on your Mac, check out HyperDock, it’s free for now while it’s in beta but is expected to cost money when the final version is released.

The internet is always full of surprises, but this is quite unique, it’s an iPad shirt. Literally. It’s a shirt with a clear front pocket that you can slide the iPad into and wear it on your chest.

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Greenpois0n for Mac is now available to download, it works to jailbreak iOS 4.1 with the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3g, and iPod touch 4g.

If you’re wondering where to download the Greenpoison jailbreak from, you can find the necessary downloads from the official website.

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Updated 5/9/2012: If you don’t have a credit card you can still create an iTunes account. Effectively this is creating a free iTunes account, with access to download all the great free apps and other free content from the App Store.

Setup iTunes Account Without a Credit Card

This is the process to create an iTunes account with no credit card for payment:

• Log out of any existing iTunes accounts
• Launch the App Store from iTunes or by clicking a link to a free app
• Find and select a free app (Remote is a free app from Apple, for example)
• Click on “Free App” to purchase the free app
• Click on “Create New Account”
• Click on Continue and create a new account as per the directions
• You’ll soon see a Payment Options menu, select “None”
• Verify the newly created account with the email address you provided
• Your new iTunes account has been created – with no credit card!

The process is the same from your iPhone or iPod/iPad too, just go through the processes of creating a new account and just be sure to select “None” as the payment option.

As stated before, the account can download any free content, but will be prompted for a credit card if an app costs money. This is a great iTunes solution to provide children with, giving them access to all of the freebies on the App Store, but avoiding any potentially high credit card bills.

Dota fans will be excited to hear this one; Dota 2 is coming as it’s own independent game on the Mac and PC platforms in 2011, and it will be distributed through Steam.

The press release from Valve is brief:

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Dota 2, a massive sequel for one of the most played games in the world.

Coming to the PC & Mac in 2011, Dota 2 promises to take the unique blend of online RTS and RPG action that has made Dota popular with tens of millions of gamers and expand upon it in every way.

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New and old technology rarely work well together. In this case, not just the old, but the real old, the Apple II is pre-Macintosh hardware at it’s finest. If the urge to geek around with old Apple hardware ever strikes your fancy, you can use an app called ADT Pro that lets you transfer disk images to an Apple II from a computer in the modern world:

Apple Disk Transfer ProDOS (ADTPro) transfers diskettes and disk images between Apple II-era computers and the modern world. If you’re familiar with the original ADT, ADTPro extends ADT’s reach by working with more disk formats, drive types, communications devices, and host operating systems.

There is a host (server) component that runs on modern computers with Java, and an Apple (client) component that runs on any Apple II or Apple /// compatible computer with at least 64k of memory

The data is transferred either through a serial card, the II’s modem port, the serial port, an ethernet card, or the cassette port (? didn’t know about this one).

ADT Pro is open source and can be downloaded freely at the ADT Pro project page

You can see ADT Pro in action with the above picture, where a MacBook Pro is transferring disk images to an Apple IIe. This picture was found on Flickr, and probably deserves it’s own post in our Mac Setups section.

What’s your machines record uptime? Uptime is the amount of days since the last reboot or boot up, and this can vary widely per user and per computer. I have an old MacBook that I use as a server of sorts, and as a third screen when working from home. I realized I hadn’t rebooted the machine in a while when I went to check Software Update, so like any geek I went to the Terminal to check system uptime.

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This is one awesome Mac setup: A 24″ iMac hooked up to an external monitor, alongside another 30″ external monitor being powered by a 15″ MacBook Pro… and don’t forget the two iPhone’s and iPad. Definitely an amazing workstation, I’d just be a little nervous with that iMac so close to the edge of the desk! All of this belongs to CS grad student Yutaka Tsutano, who had this to say about the setup:

This is my recent setup optimized for doing my research. I mainly use OS X, but I also run Windows for embedded system programming and Linux for running Simics VM. All of them are virtualized within VMWare Fusion.

In the photo, there are four screens but are actually only two Macs on the 72-inch wide desk. I found this setting to be useful because it’s portable and the load can be balanced between the two. There are several other computers in my room for server and simulation purposes.

All the computers are synchronized using Unison, and controlled by a single set of keyboard and mouse using Synergy. I modified the source code of Synergy so that it supports Magic Mouse perfectly (the original version uses some deprecated APIs which doesn’t support pixel-based scrolling).

[ via Flickr ]

You can easily convert any WAV file to MP3 format by using one of two free methods we’ll detail below, both are simple and fast. The first trick uses iTunes, and the second tip uses a utility called All2MP3 to handle the audio file conversion.

iTunes is ubiquitous and cross-platform with Windows and Mac OS X support, and will handle the conversions easily, or you can go with the free download called All2MP3 that will convert the audio too. We’ll cover the two methods of wav audio file conversion and you can choose whichever is most relevant to your situation.

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Did you know iTunes can find missing Album Artwork for you? If you have ripped your own CD’s or downloaded music from around the web, it’s not uncommon for songs to be missing album art.

But worry not, you can spruce up the appearance of your iTunes music collection by using an excellent feature that retrieves album art automatically. It’s quite simple and works the same in iTunes on Mac and Windows. Read on to discover how to get album art to fill in your iTunes music collection.

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AutoCAD for Mac is now available. AutoCAD brings powerful design and drafting tools to the Mac platform, and promises full compatibility with the Windows version as well.

Anyone can download a free 30 day trial of the software at AutoDesk’s Mac site, purchasing the software comes at the retail price of $3,995.

AutoCAD for Free

If you’re a student or educator, you can get AutoCAD for free. Visit the AutoDesk Student & Educator site to get the free download. This is extremely generous considering the high retail price, so if you can take advantage of this free version you should.

AutoCAD for Mac System Requirements

The Mac system requirements are as follows:

• 64-bit Intel® processor
• 3 GB of RAM (4 GB recommended)
• 2.5 GB free disk space for download and installation (3 GB recommended)
• All graphics cards on supported hardware
• 1,280 x 800 display with true color (1,600 x 1,200 with true color recommended)

As with most software, the better and newer your Mac the better the performance will be.

Logic Studio (formerly Logic or Logic Pro) is a professional award winning application suite that lets you write, record, edit, and mix music directly on a Mac. It’s incredibly powerful and is widely credited by many mainstream artists as helping them create music, and it has also lowered the barrier of entry for musicians to produce studio quality music without the huge studio bills. Think of it as GarageBand on super steroids.

Like any other powerful application, there’s typically a learning curve to come along with it, so wouldn’t it be nice to have some free tutorials for Logic to learn to use the app?
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Halloween is just around the corner, why not show your Apple love and carve an Apple pumpkin? You won’t need much except some patience and an Apple Logo to use as a stencil, but we’ve got you covered.

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Alright World of Warcraft fans, the latest expansion is coming very soon. Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will be released on December 7 of this year. At a cost of $39.99, you will be able to download the game expansion through the Blizzard store or buy a DVD that is Windows and Mac compatible.

The Blizzard CEO had this to say on the upcoming expansion pack:

“Cataclysm includes the best content we’ve ever created for World of Warcraft. It’s not just an expansion, but a re-creation of much of the original Azeroth, complete with epic new high-level adventures for current players and a redesigned leveling experience for those just starting out,”

In other words, you’ll be glued to your computer for even longer than with previous expansions.

Blizzard makes great games, there’s no doubt about it. To top it off, I’m always thrilled that Blizzard has been so committed to offering a Mac release alongside Windows releases of their games. This has been the case since Warcraft 2 as far as I know. Most recently, the Starcraft 2 Mac client was released and, although it’s had some performance issues, it’s otherwise a great gaming experience. If you haven’t picked it up yet, you can buy Starcraft 2 for cheap through Amazon, which offers a 17% discount on the game.

Limera1n for Mac has just been released to download, making it the latest jailbreak for the Mac OS X platform. Limera1n works to jailbreak iOS 4.1 on the iPhone 4 iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3G and 4G. It also works on the iPad running iOS 3.2.2.

You can get the Mac download of Limera1n right now by clicking here, the download link is directly from the developers website.

Using the Limera1n jailbreak is pretty easy, just follow the instructions in the app or learn how to jailbreak iPhone 4 with limera1n on our site. The process is practically identical for Mac OS X and Windows, and a Linux version is expected to be released soon.