TidBITS Headline News Reader

We’re taking a brief break from building an email issue of TidBITS next week in honor of the Memorial Day holiday in the United States, so look for the next issue in your mailbox on 3 June 2013. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously…

The Senate isn’t happy with the taxes Apple’s paying. Is Apple worse than its competitors in using the loopholes at its disposal? Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a…

Marvel Unlimited promises to be the Netflix of comics, but does its app live up to its promise? Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and…

Adds reminders capability with in-app and email due-date notifications. (Free, 40.8 MB) Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a…

Google will no longer support the XMPP standard for its chat system as it moves from Google Talk to Hangouts. It has already severed ties with compatible, federated systems. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology…

Version 2.0 of TextExpander touch, the iOS version of Smile’s text expansion software, offers fill-in snippets, date and time macros, rich text support, and other features familiar to users of the Mac version. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest…

Jeff Carlson wanted to use Dropbox’s Camera Upload feature for automatically copying photos from iOS devices, cameras, and memory cards, but doing so would fill up his 256 GB SSD with image files. Instead, he created a symbolic link (symlink) in Mac OS X to…

Twitter joins a growing club of sites that let you reduce the chance of a hijacked login with two-factor authentication. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed,…

Prompted by a study in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research about perceived sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, columnist Mark Morford of SFGate.com has penned a powerful commentary about why some people may suffer very real symptoms from seeming exposure…

Steve Wilhite, the inventor of the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), received a Webby Award for lifetime achievement. He reiterates that he intended it to be pronounced like “jif.” Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published…

Peter Lewis of Stairways Software has updated the Keyboard Maestro macro utility to version 6, adding a slew of new features, including the capability to automate Web pages, trigger macros when USB devices are connected or disconnected, step through macros one…

New internal drawing order and menu scanning technique improves speed in looking up keyboard shortcuts. (€19.99 new, free update, 2.6 MB) Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a…

Notable software releases this week include MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.0, Skype 6.4.0.833, PDFpen and PDFpenPro 6.0.3, iMovie ’11 9.0.9, Sandvox 2.8, and BusyCal 2.0.5. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published…

This week we have a grab bag of ExtraBITS for your reading pleasure, such as iOS 6 being approved for military use, an overview of announcements at the Google I/O developer conference, Bill Gates talking about the last days of Steve Jobs, Blackberry Messenger…

The United States Department of Defense has approved the “security technical implementation guide” for mobile devices running iOS 6, including the iPhone and iPad, meaning that Apple’s handhelds can now be used on DOD networks. Also approved are…

Addresses a storage firmware issue that could cause a system to fail to recover from a crash. (Free, 1.69 MB) Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support…

Adds infinite scrolling through your chat history, plus the capability to jump to a specific time period. (Free, 39.6 MB) Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed,…

In the wake of Adobe’s decision to provide new versions of Photoshop only to Creative Cloud subscribers, we wonder if Pixelmator could be an acceptable Photoshop substitute. Spoiler: the answer is, “It depends on who you are.” Read the full article at…

Keeping up with Apple is hard enough, but when Google announces a boatload of products, updates, and services during a 3-hour keynote at the Google I/O developer conference, we’re happy to let others — The Next Web in this case — compile the list. Many…

After reading a couple of breathless announcements of the App Store’s 50 billionth download and Pixelmator 2.2’s 500,000 downloads, Adam Engst attempts to bring some context to these big numbers. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously…

Creative Cloud may be the way Adobe sees the future, but lots of people don’t like it. Adam Engst and Josh Centers outline some of the problems with Creative Cloud, with suggestions on both how Adobe could solve them and how you can register your…

Dots is a simple, yet addicting connect-the-dots game for the iPhone.  Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member!…

Maintenance release fixes Zoom to Width on smaller screens. ($59.95/$99.95 new, free update, 50/50.7 MB) Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our…

The release also tweaks the rendering of multi-disc albums for an improved display in Albums view, plus adds display of album artwork to the Songs view, provides AppleScript control of AirPlay speakers, and tweaks the interface for iOS app updates. (Free, 188…

Our latest title, Michael E. Cohen’s “Take Control of PDFpen 6,” explains precisely what you can do with PDFpen 6 and its big brother, PDFpenPro 6, and with the mobile versions, PDFpen for iPad and PDFpen for iPhone. Read the full article at TidBITS,…

Macworld is on a winning streak of constructive suggestions for how Apple could improve the products we all rely on every day. Josh Centers takes a look at some of their best ideas. Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published…

Fixes issues recognizing connected video cameras and improves compatibility with iMovie for iOS ($14.99 new, free update, 1.08 GB) Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text…

In an interview with 60 Minutes, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates reflected on competing with Steve Jobs and visiting the Apple founder near the end of his life. Gates was uncharacteristically emotional, saying, “He and I, in a sense, grew up together.” Gates…

Beleaguered smartphone maker BlackBerry has announced that its Messenger service will come to iOS and Android this summer. The chat service, one of BlackBerry’s most loved features, is still used by 60 million people a month, generating 10 billion messages…

Adds two new designs geared toward image galleries, plus adds support for optimizing Web site images for Retina displays. ($79.99 new, free update, 37.8 MB) Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the…