Did you know that you can download and watch the Freakonomics movie right now? The theatrical release is October 1 for limited screenings and November 1 for widespread distribution, but why wait? All you need to do is jump on the iTunes Store and you can download and watch Freakonomics right now. The HD rental is $10.99 or $9.99 for standard def, considering it’s a pre-release movie and cheaper than a movie date anyway that’s not too shabby.

In case you don’t know, this is a documentary based on the book Freakonomics which came out a few years ago and explores some interesting relationships and links between seemingly unrelated events and trends. I read the book a while ago and didn’t find any of the data particularly ‘freaky’ but it certainly was a fascinating read, the documentary looks to be just as interesting.

Having pre-release movies available for online rental with iTunes seems to be a new trend that the movie industry is exploring, and one I am certainly not complaining about. How cool is it to watch movies before they’re even in the theaters and in the comfort of your own home? Of course you could also get it on your iPad or iPhone, but I say fire up that Mac Mini media center and start watching!

Have you ever wondered what the top 100 apps on the App Store have in common? Surely there are some similarities, something these successful apps share that made them so popular, but what is it? How about just asking the users what they liked or disliked?
Read more »

You can completely change the appearance of iTunes 10 by running the application in something called High Contrast Mode, which effectively inverts the list display so that the text is white on black (see the screenshot, it’s a very pronounced change).

To enable High Contrast Mode, enter the following command into the Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes high-contrast-mode-enable -bool TRUE

You can revert the changes back to the normal iTunes 10 appearance with the following:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes high-contrast-mode-enable -bool FALSE

This tip from LifeHacker is just one of many adjustments and features made available to iTunes 10. My personal favorite addition is the new iTunes 10 album art mini player but you can also do things like change the iTunes 10 icon back to iTunes 9 and make the iTunes 10 control buttons horizontal again. Happy iTunes hacking!

For whatever reason since updating to iOS 4.0 Pandora has been misbehaving on both my iPhone and iPod touch. If you haven’t run into this basically what happens is a few songs will play normally before they start to skip and stutter, for some songs it almost sounds like it’s part of the song, but the more you listen the more the song skips. Finally the app will either crash or the song will stop playing completely, very annoying.

So how do you stop the songs being played in Pandora from skipping randomly? Get ready for it:

Delete the app and reinstall the newest version.

This might seem like common sense, but not everyone thinks to do this since the app may have worked just fine (it did) on a prior iOS version. Read more »

This is another hilarious commercial for an iPad app, and points out why the iPad won’t be completely replacing a newspaper anytime soon, at least for some tasks. Dubbing itself as ‘better than a newspaper in all kinds of ways’ the commercial pokes fun at another traditional usage of rolled up trees: fly swatting.

If you want to see another great app ad, check out iPad Buddy & Steve Young football. It’s really interesting to see commercials popping up for ads in the iOS ecosystem, but I guess it’s not too surprising. I’m also amused at the different approach the app advertisers are taking, focusing more on humor than on the user experience, which is a stark contrast to what Apple does in ads like their new iPad commercial.

There’s a lot of hooplah in the web world about Google Instant and it’s ability to turn up search results immediately while you type them. Is Google Instant really as new and revolutionary as it’s claimed to be? Yes and no. Yes for the web, and no for computing. You know what other prominent search engine has been providing instant and predictive search results based on user input? Apple’s very own Spotlight.
Read more »

Mac OS X warns users in a variety of different ways if they have downloaded a file from the internet to their Mac, with a popup message that says something along the lines of “[NAME] is an application downloaded from the internet. Are you sure you want to open it?”, or even “this application can’t be opened” – both are a precautionary measure aimed at preventing more casual users from inadvertently launching something malicious or unintended. While this is a great feature for many mac users to keep on, some advanced users may be annoyed with it.

Read more »

Apple may be readying the release of a new iPad in time for the holiday shopping season, according to a report. The refreshed iPad is expected to be equipped with a FaceTime compatible camera and the new iPad iOS 4.2. The report from AppleInsider also suggests that Apple is looking to get FaceTime compatibility on all Apple mobile products before opening the standard to the rest of the world.

Assuming the report holds true, the new iPad may be released at the same time that iOS 4 will come to the iPad as iOS 4.2 in November. The new OS will bring long awaited features such as multitasking and folder support to the device.

FaceTime is expected to come to Mac OS X’s very own iChat in the near future as well, and possibly even to Windows through another chat client. Other rumors surrounding a refreshed iPad suggest the device may sport dual-cameras, additional RAM, larger storage options, and even a higher resolution retina display.

What a great setup: a 32GB iPad, Unibody MacBook Pro 17″, an iPhone, and a 20″ external display attached to an ergonomic desk stand.

[ via Flickr ]

If you have multiple screens or a larger screen resolution it can be nice to play Starcraft 2 in windowed mode. In case you didn’t know, windowed mode basically means the game is contained within a standard application window rather than running in full screen.

Starcraft 2 Windowed Mode Shortcuts

Both the Windows and Mac OS X versions of Starcraft 2 can be played in window mode:

• Mac OS X: Command+M
• Windows: ALT+Enter, or switch to Windowed mode by adjusting the Display options from the Menu screen

There is probably a keyboard shortcut for Windows too, but I spend most of my time playing in Mac OS X.

Parallels is pretty great software that lets you easily run Windows apps on Mac OS X. The latest version was just announced and is faster than ever with full 64-bit support, it retails for $79.99 which isn’t a bad price but why pay more when you don’t have to? I like a good deal, so here’s how to get the newest version, Parallels 6, for $20 (well, actually $19.99). This will work until September 30 when the rebate is no longer offered.

• Find and buy Parallels 5 for Mac on Amazon for $39.99
• Fill out the $20 rebate form from the developer (the rebate code comes with Parallels 5)
• Save your Amazon receipt, then register and activate Parallels at https://www.parallels.com/account/
• When Parallels 6 is released (September 14), go back to https://www.parallels.com/account/ to access your free upgrade to Parallels 6

That’s all there is to it! This deal works by taking advantage of the Parallels Tech Guarantee, which states that if you buy a qualifying purchase of Parallels 5 after the eligible dates (August 15, 2010), you will get a free upgrade to version 6 when it is released:

Buy a qualifying Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac product from an authorized reseller or from www.parallels.com starting August 15th, 2010 and you will be eligible upgrade to Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac at no additional cost when it becomes available on September 14.
Save your Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac dated sales receipt, register your product and activation key at https://www.parallels.com/account/ and keep your activation key in a safe place. Bookmark this page and come back once Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac has been released in your language.

Great software at a great price, can’t beat that.

Update: This deal is still active, you have until November 30th, 2010 to buy Parallels 5 and then get a free upgrade to Parallels 6. This is a great deal!

Here’s the date range from Parallels:

Customers who bought a retail box or download version of Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac or Parallels Desktop Switch to Mac Edition from an authorized reseller between August 15th, 2010 and November 30th, 2010 need to proactively claim their upgrade directly with Parallels

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is finally available in full HD beauty for the iPad and it looks awesome. The game features full 1024×768 HD resolution graphics with higher polygon counts, better models, and improved lighting and graphic effects to take advantage of the iPad hardware, or to put it another way: it looks way better on the iPad than it does on any other portable gaming device. Check out the video below.
Read more »

Special characters can be accessed easily in Mac OS X through a special floating window called the “Character Viewer”. From within this characters menu, you’ll find a list of various dingbats, arrows, parenthesis, foreign currency symbols, pictographs, bullets and stars, math symbols, letterlike symbols, Emoji, and latin characters, plus a helpful “Recently Used” option which gathers a list of the most frequently accessed special symbols.

This quick tutorial will show you how to access all special characters available to a Mac by using the special Symbol and Character Viewer tool.

Read more »

If you’re old enough to remember the “My Buddy” doll commercials from the 1980’s, you should be highly amused by this iPad game ad.

It’s for an iPad app called Steve Young Football, the commercial doesn’t give you much of an idea of what the game is about but that’s sort of besides the point because it’s amusing enough on it’s own. It’s a great spoof on the My Buddy commercials and also has some hilarious lyrics.

Other than having a funny commercial, the object of Steve Young Football is to defend a football galaxy against wild pigs tornados, crazy fans, and assorted other madness. It actually looks like an entertaining game, but the commercial definitely takes the cake for entertainment. If this doesn’t sell an iPad game, I don’t know what will.

There was a lot of speculation and hope that iOS 4.1 would help fix the dreadfully slow speed of iOS 4 on iPhone 3G. Well, it did. Having installed iOS 4.1 on an older iPhone 3G I can confirm that speed is significantly improved over iOS 4.0 and performance is noticeably better.

If you have a slow iPhone 3G running iOS 4, do yourself a favor and upgrade to iOS 4.1! You can download iOS 4.1 now and is highly recommended. To really get the most out of your older phone, combine the software update with disabling Spotlight and clearing out unused/old apps. This combination really does the most to boost performance of the 3G.

While iOS 4.1 is much faster than iOS 4.0, performance is still not as fast as iOS 3.1.3. If you still have an older OS version installed on your iPhone 3G and don’t want folders then I would say don’t bother upgrading at all, there simply aren’t that many essential features in iOS 4 that the 3G can really take advantage of anyway.

You can test your iPhone signal strength and antenna reception easily again, it requires the iOS 4.1 update or later, but will work on any iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S, or later. Here’s how:

• Activate the antenna strength test by dialing the following: *3001#12345#*
• Hit Call

You’ll then see the signal bars be replaced with a number, the more negative the number, the worse the reception (-107 is worse than -80 for example). If you tap the numbers you can switch back and forth to the reception numbers and signal bars. You can exit out of this Field Test mode by just hitting the home button at any time.

The dialed number is actually the same field test that worked on the original iPhone 2G, but the ability was lost between several iPhone OS updates.

The whole iPhone 4 antenna fiasco is mostly a nonissue these days, but it’s still interesting to see the iPhones reception. Whether it’s right or wrong, I chalk a lot of the signal weakness up to AT&T’s network more than the iPhone itself, but this is largely due to the fact that my friends with unlocked iPhones on other networks have significantly better reception in many places.

If you want to make a copy or migrate an iPhone address book into Gmail or Google Voice, you can do so rather easily with a two-step process using a Mac or iCloud. First, you’ll export the address book information, then you’ll open Gmail and import the address book.

Read more »

Did you know that you can immediately open any directory from within the Open & Save dialog windows found throughout Mac OS X? Say you want to open a file contained in a folder which is buried deep in the file system and you know the path, or that you want to save a file to a deep file hierarchy, that’s exactly what this is for. Or maybe you just want to quickly save to anywhere in OS X, you can point to any folder on the Mac practically instantly by using the Go To Folder trick within the Open and Save boxes of apps in Mac OS X. Just use the same keystroke combination to access the Go To Folder feature within the Finder.

Read more »