Google gets more Mac-friendly

Have you been frustrated at getting so many Windows-oriented results when trawling for tech help on Google? Well, Google is doing a little bit more to help us Apple-ites out. Not only have they consolidated all their Mac software products on one page (including Google Desktop, Google Earth, Sketchup and Gmail Notifier), at the top they’ve added a new Search button that targets Mac sites. Vive la revolution!
(Check out the page here.)

Alvin Meets Tivo

This blog is normally about switching to Mac, but I needed a place to talk about my experience switching to Tivo, so I figure this is as good a place as I can find (there will be Mac stuff mentioned as well). If you’re reading this thinking, “Switching to Tivo? Does your Tivo have a time-travel feature to take me back to when that was actually something worth reading about?” Well, cut me some slack (you must be living in the U.S., the Land of Media Plenty). In Canada, we’ve only had Tivo officially available for a couple of months. (Many have been using Tivos purchased independently for years.) Now we have official Tivo service in Canada along with the Tivo Series 2 boxes on sale. I hadn’t found much feedback on the web from Canadians who had actually purchased one of these boxes and were using it with one of the local TV services (I use Rogers Cable) so I wanted to put my experiences out there.

As most of you probably know, Tivo is a popular brand of digital video recorder, used for pausing and recording TV programs. Tivo is known for its user-friendly interface and super-handy recording features. I’ve been using the Rogers Personal Video Recorder (made by Scientific Atlanta) since they first started offering it more than 5 years ago. At best, the Rogers box does an acceptable job, but I’ve always longed for the fabled ease-of-use that a Tivo brings. Before I continue, I need to make the obvious caveat that the Series 2 box which is now selling in Canada does not support high definition recordings. From what I’ve read, there are incompatibilities between the Tivo Series 3 box and the delivery devices for HD programming here in Canada. Boo-hoo for all you HD fans out there.

First Impressions

There are very clear setup instructions (in the form of a poster with connection diagrams) and two bags of cables clearly labelled A and B. I’m pretty experienced with home audio/video equipment, but the instructions made it very simple (even including connecting the ethernet cable to allow my Tivo to access to my home computer network). In a snap I was ready to go and there was an on-screen guide to take me the rest of the way. (Oh, I forgot to mention, that before I got going with the on-screen setup, I followed the instructions to activate my Tivo service — which you need to pay for — at tivo.com/canada first. That part was a little odd. Be sure to click the link for Canadian subscribers because a pop-up window shows you how to fill out the form if you have a non-U.S. address.)

So once I got up and running it was very nice to use. The interface was as slick as promised. Lots of soft little chimes and fun graphics. This was a far cry from my Rogers experience with its clunky and primitive interface. The show listings were very easy to navigate and since Tivo uses a semi-transparent overlay on top of the TV image, I could see a lot more information at once. Scrolling was quick and smooth (Rogers is slow and very stilted. Often if you hold down the arrow button you end up going past where you want to get to and then you have to navigate back — whaddapain!) The one oddity I have found with the Tivo listings so far is that it’s not very easy to switch from one day to another. It’s a few clicks down some not-quite-logical submenus to change the date on the listings. There’s got to be a quicker way.

Recording stuff

The one big drawback that I was anticipating from what I’d read was that Tivo was not going to be able to decode the digital cable signal directly. I have standard definition digital cable with Rogers, which means that I have a box which changes digital channels for me. When I used to use a VCR, I had to keep it on channel 3 and make sure that when I set a timer to record a show, the VCR would record channel 3 and the digital cable box would change itself to whatever channel the actual show was on. The same kind of thing happens with Tivo. The machine comes with a set of little sticks that you put around the digital cable box and these IR blasters send infrared signals to the digital box as if it were your remote control, changing the channel for you when it’s time to record a show. This was not a problem that I had with the Rogers box. The digital cable tuner was integrated with the recorder, so I could record any channel at any time and the machine would change the channel itself.

Thankfully, Tivo is able to take care of the channel changing for the analog (i.e. non-digital) channels which appear in the lower numbers (up to 72) but the quality is not digital, so the picture is definitely inferior. Because the Tivo Series 2 is a dual-tuner machine, it can record two shows at the same time. However, you can only record one digital signal because your digital cable box can only be showing one channel at a time. Also, if you’re watching TV on a high-numbered channel, Tivo warns you that it needs to change the channel for a recording (if that recording is on a digital channel). All that being said, Tivo does a really good job of making things as painless as possible. You don’t have to worry about which channels are digital and which ones aren’t. You can just let Tivo do its thing for the most part.

Tivo meets Mac

One of the most exciting aspects of the Tivo experience for me was going to be TivoToGo. That’s the feature that allows you to transfer your recorded shows to your computer and from there to your portable media (i.e. DVDs) or devices (i.e. iPods). The catch, however, was that it wasn’t going to be as simple as just copying a file off of the Tivo. Tivo offers some free software, but for the Mac, the TivoDesktop software only allows your Tivo to show photos from your computer on the TV and play your music (from iTunes). While that in itself is a pretty cool set of features, it’s still missing that major video piece. The Tivo downloading feature is (for some reason) packaged within another company’s CD/DVD burning software called Roxio Toast, which costs about $100 (or their smaller program Popcorn, which is about $50). Tivo offers a more complete TivoDesktop application for Windows users (which I tried to run within Parallels on my Mac, but couldn’t quite get it to work). Along comes the open-source community to the rescue: a free program called Galleon (after a few trials at getting the settings right) allows me to download the shows off of my Tivo and allows my Tivo to see the videos on my iMac (make sure you convert video files to mpeg2 if you want to transfer them back to the Tivo). Another little program called Tivo File Decoder allows me to strip away the stuff around the Tivo video files (.tivo) so that other video conversion programs can convert them to a normal format for me to use. Yay! I am now able to truly take Tivo To Go.

I’m really enjoying the Tivo (I’ve only had it for 4 days), and I don’t mind the sacrifice in video quality or the whole IR blaster inconvenience (though I’d still love it if they could integrate digital cable decoding in the Tivo box). I especially love the great interface and the back and forth communication between my computer and the Tivo. Also, compared to my Rogers PVR, it is the difference between something you have to use to something you actually enjoy using. If you’re thinking of getting into the world of Tivo, you’re in for some fun.

Am I Happy I Upgraded to Leopard?

Finally, two whole months after it came out (and about a month after most people finished blogging about it) I took the plunge and upgraded to Mac OSX Leopard. With issue of incompatible software floating around, I was a bit hesitant (especially since Tiger was doing just fine). However, I hate being left behind (reminds me of when I was the only one left at the dinner table because I had to finish my soup and didn’t really want to). When I finally put the installation DVD into my precious iMac, I was kind of nervous about messing with a working OS (a result of a Windows upbringing, no doubt), which was only made worse by the fact that my DVD was corrupt (kudos to Apple for adding that disc validation step, though). We had to bring it back to the Apple Store for an exchange. Now I’ve been Leopardized and I am pretty happy about it. After about 3 weeks with it, there are still many of the upgraded features that I haven’t done much with. I don’t use iChat, Safari, Boot Camp, or Mail (though the new email templates are really tempting) so I can’t really comment on improvements there. I tried the new speedier Safari, but I didn’t feel the difference. I guess there’s just too many factors that impact web browsing speeds. Let me walk through my impressions of some of the other Leopard enhancements.

Dock/Desktop

The change to a 3D Dock is no big a deal. It looks slicker to have the icons appear to sit on a shiny glass surface, but I don’t understand all the hubbub about it. There’s a little spotlight now instead of the triangle pointing to open applications — again, subtle touches, but no big. Stacks is a relatively big change, though. Now my folders that are on the Dock show little pictures of the files in them like a stack of images. I don’t really like that because it’s confusing (especially the image reflects whatever’s the first file on the list, so the icon will change). Many people are annoyed by the way clicking the folder displays icons in a fan formation or a grid, but what bothers me is the fact that when I click the folder icon, I still have to click a second arrow icon to open the folder in Finder. I guess I just like working with Finder (again, Windows upbringing) and want to get right to the folder I want.

One of the general improvements regarding icons, though, is that the graphical resolution is higher. One of my old pet peeves was seeing the icon for Preview in the dock because it’s a picture of a little boy and for some reason, because of the way the pixels appeared, his eyes always looked creepy — kind of glowy like in Village of the Damned. Now that I can clearly see his eyes and his cute rosy cheeks, all is well.

Finder

The biggest improvement in Finder seems to be Cover Flow. Now I can see and browse all my files as graphical previews (much like album art in iTunes). Actually, I’m not sold on this one. When I see a window with Cover Flow, I feel like iTunes is open and I always do a double-take (”When did I open iTunes?” I ask myself, “And where is my Finder window?”). I’m sure I’ll get used to it eventually. Nevertheless, I still haven’t found it super-useful. When I am browsing files, I’m going to have to interact with them so I would rather use big icons (since most document icons now also display miniature previews) than Cover Flow. Quick Look is very slick, and probably a handier feature than Cover Flow. By clicking on the space bar, a window flies out showing a full size preview of the file (including graphics, documents, and even plays video). The best part about all these browsing conveniences is that they don’t slow down my system. Cover Flow seems even smoother in Finder than it does in iTunes.

Spaces

I think Spaces is a great feature. It allows you to basically have separate virtual desktops for your applications and can switch between them easily. It’s very easy to use and I love that when you click the application icon in the Dock, you are automatically switched to the virtual desktop that the application is in. However, I can’t say that I’ve gotten into the groove of using Spaces. I don’t exactly run a ton of applications at the same time, so there’s not that much clutter on my desktop. Nevertheless, I’m glad that it’s there for when I need it.

Front Row

I’m told that Leopard’s Front Row is more like the AppleTV interface (which I can’t confirm, since I don’t have one, but from what I’ve seen in the Apple store, that seems accurate). It’s less flashy, using more lists and less animation of graphics whirling around (if you use or remember Front Row in Tiger, you probably know what I mean). For me, the best thing about the new Front Row is that it doesn’t have to process all my movie files before bringing up a list of what it can play for me. In the old Front Row, it took so long that I moved most of my movie files to a separate folder and used an alias to connect the two because Front Row would work for hours just to show me what was in my Movies folder. Now I put them all back because it takes almost no time for me to see all the folders and find whatever I want to watch.

Other Features

Unfortunately I have not been able to use Leopard’s fancy backup solution, Time Machine (which I was really looking forward to doing), because my external hard drive is already half-used by other files. Time Machine demanded the entire drive, but it’s not worthwhile for me to reformat or repartition the drive to allow Time Machine to go at it, so I’ll have to find some other less-pretty backup solution. Also, I was kind of keen to try Back To My Mac (to access my computer remotely) but I don’t have a .mac account, so that’s moot.

As for application compatibilities, I have upgraded a few things to be compatible with Leopard (including system maintenance application Onyx), but I haven’t had any problems with my applications so far (including the Adobe CS3 collection — I don’t have any of the Adobe video apps, though, which I have read about compatibility issues with). All in all, I am really happy that I upgraded, but none of the features have dramatically changed my computer life. Experts keep saying that a lot of the upgrades are invisible and that when people start developing software to take advantage of the under-the-hood improvements, things will really start to feel different. If you’re on the fence about Leopard, you could probably wait until something comes along that forces you to upgrade. However, unlike some of the horrific Windows Vista stories that are out there, the change is also relatively painless if you want to get on board now.

Virtualization: The Return of Windows

Sorry that it’s been so long since I last posted. Given the current buzz in the Mac community, you’d expect that I’d be posting about the new Leopard operating system. Unfortunately, I haven’t made up my mind to drop coin on an OS upgrade. All the reviews I’ve seen are pretty positive, but it’s still going to take some bigger reason for me to change my Tiger’s stripes to Leopard spots. Since I’m not topical enough to post about Leopard, you’d guess that I’d be posting about the iPod Touch, eh? (No. not that, either.) It has now been over a year since I swore off all things Microsoft, so it’s probably enough distance for me to finally try out virtualization software for the Mac. I decided to take a little adventure and tried both Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion — the two most popular virtualization applications for Mac OS X.

If you don’t know what “virtualization” software is, it allows users to run a “guest” operating system such as Windows from within their Mac OS. Simply put, it’s running Windows in a Mac window. If you think about it, it’s a great idea because it gives switchers like us the best of both worlds. Whatever software it pained me to leave behind from the Windows world can now be run on my cool little iMac. Frankly, there wasn’t that much that I felt sad to leave behind (another reason why this virtualization adventure is so late in coming). Nevertheless, you’ve got the software, why not dust it off and put it to use?

You may wonder what happens when you start this guest operating system (aka virtual machine). Well, the installation part is a breeze (which is something more Mac-like than Windows-like, if you ask me). Both Parallels and Fusion have an easy installation mode. You just enter your Windows key number and the application takes care of the rest (it’s actually even easier than installing Windows on a PC). The virtualization application takes care of setting up all your hardware and network connections, as well as sharing your Mac folders with the virtual Windows OS. That means that when you’re in virtual Windows, you can still get access to all your Mac documents as if they were on a networked drive or something (of course, there may still be compatibility issues, depending on the program you try to open them with in Windows).

Once the initial OS installation was done, installing additional applications within the virtual Windows was just like what it was like on a PC. Once I installed MS Office, it ran great (at least on Parallels it did). This brings me to my very short head to head comparison of the two applications. For me (and I stress that last word because I’ve read reviews that differ completely from my experience) there was no contest because Parallels worked smoothly and Fusion was beyond-slow. I gave up installing any software on Fusion because it took me minutes just to open a single folder. I don’t know what went wrong and I probably could have figured it out if I’d invested more time with it, but Parallels had no such problem so why bother? I immediately uninstalled Fusion.

However, there’s not much more to say about how Parallels works other than that it works pretty much just as you might imagine: Windows living within a Mac window. The additional aspect that is really cool is a mode called Coherence (in Parallels, “Unity” in Fusion) that gets rid of the Windows background and other icons and narrows down the frame just around the application window: so except for all the Windows-style frame, bars and buttons, a Windows application in Coherence mode looks like it’s a Mac application (see my little screen grab showing MS Word and Minesweeper as windows next to my iTunes window) — pretty cool, eh?

I also found that the Windows stuff looked even better than I remember (mainly because my iMac has a much nicer monitor than my PC did). Unfortunately, I am going to have to reinstall any fonts that I want to use in Parallels (even though they are cross-system TrueType fonts) — unless I discover a way for Parallels to link to the Mac font folder without needing duplication of the fonts within Windows. Also, my understanding is that the virtual machine is vulnerable to viruses and other malware since it is the Windows system and connected to the Internet (Sigh! Good ol’ virus-ridden Windows … I have absolutely not missed that aspect.)

So, if you’re pining away for some of the software from your Windows days, consider trying Parallels (or Fusion) to keep those applications alive on your Mac. That way you can have your cake and eat it too.

Web Sites for Switchers

Switchers — I know this topic sounds kinkier than it should, but if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a Mac switcher. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. When your PC friends start talking about Vista or their latest Microsoft applications, maybe you can play a little sabotage by bringing up the topic of which anti-virus software they are using now (obviously to lead to the end point where you get to say how you don’t need any anti-virus software). However, regardless of how much we may love our Macs (again, nothing worthy of naughtiness or shame), we are in the minority. You can probably spit in any direction and hit a PC user, but don’t look for a Mac user in your line-of-fire. So we probably overcompensate whenever we represent ourselves in a PC crowd by stating emphatically how great our Macs are. Unfortunately, we may preserve our pride, but sometimes it ends up feeling a little lonely. There’s something to be said for the commiseration of being afraid of the same new trojan viruses or being able to share each other’s blue-screen-of-death stories or tips on how to best re-install one’s Windows system again. Very recently, another switcher asked me if I had any recommendations for where to get information about Macs. Of course there are plenty of Mac news sites (lately plagued by endless news and non-news about the iPhone) however, I found a few web sites with potentially useful information for us switchers.

The first site is a work-in-progress from the guy who also brings us new Mac tips every day: The Ultimate Guide for switching from a PC to a Mac only has one chapter so far, but it looks like it will be great source of basic and essential info for anyone switching to Mac from PC.

Another even more comprehensive switcher web site is My First Mac. The name sounds rudimentary and pre-school, but don’t let that put you off. This site has tons of useful information for switchers and Mac lovers alike. Their tag line is: “Help Buying and Getting Started With Your New Mac”, but this site has so much more. Everything from basics to tweaks, tips to testimonials, even an analysis of the newest Mac news in very everyday language makes this a comfortable site for the not-so-technical. It’s also full of pictures and has an eye-catching style that makes it a fun site to check out. (If you know how, you can even subscribe to its RSS feed).

Plus, don’t forget about the page I mentioned before on lifehacker.com

I know there are probably tons of other sites like these (and I’ll add more when I find them). It’s a great little community of shared, quiet pride for us switchers. Let’s all get informed about our beloved Macs so we can really show those PC users a thing or two.

iMac is back

Just in time for Apple to announce a new, cooler iMac, my own white, non-aluminum iMac has finally returned from the shop. I’m very happy to have my computer back. I’ve been using my work PC laptop at home in the interim and I have to say that it’s been a bit odd. I definitely felt less eager to use the PC to do stuff than the Mac. The Mac just made everything feel slightly more fun. Using the PC full time again felt a bit like going into the past for me (granted, I don’t have Vista on my PC, it’s still XP so maybe it is kind of like going into the past).

Sadly, my faith in Apple has been shaken a bit. Don’t get me wrong. I still think Apple is awesome and I’ll recommend them to whoever wants to hear me, but the fact that such a major hardware problem happened to me less than a year after getting the computer is a bit of a shock. Again, I never had this kind of problem on any of my PCs (even the clones). I know it’s a bit unfair because Apple has such a pristine reputation for reliability that I might be reacting more harshly to a problem with my Mac than I would have to a PC problem, but that’s what makes it kind of worrisome. When I picked up my iMac, there was actually someone else’s iMac also waiting to be picked up — and this isn’t even a Mac-only repair shop. All I’ll say is that I used to look at my iMac (perhaps naively) without any concern that it might let me down. After having that very thing happen (at a really inopportune time no less), my attitude has definitely changed. I’m at least a bit more realistic about things now. I guess the honeymoon is truly over.

As far as Apple and me, I have to say that their support and customer relations people were very nice. When I explained the situation they were helpful (as much as they could be), but there was still a problem because it took so long to get my part. I would have expected that a logic board (which sounds pretty essential to me) would have been in constant supply. How do they build the new iMacs without them? So despite having nice people answering the phones and talking to me, in the end the problem is still the problem. Without a good supply of parts, the problem doesn’t get solved and the customer is still unhappy. Maybe because of the new iMacs, mine was obsolete and they didn’t really put a high priority on parts for those older models (older being less than one year old). Let’s hope that’s not true. I mean, the new iMacs look great, but I’m not quite ready to upgrade yet.

The saga continues

So it’s been a week and a half since my own Black Tuesday. My iMac is still in the shop. Apparently there was something wrong with the logic board. (Which is ironic because I’m such a logical person myself.) The shop told me last Wednesday that they’d ordered the part and that it would arrive in 2-3 business days, so like a good little boy I waited until Monday to phone (at least I think I waited; it’s all becoming a needy, desperate blur in my memory). As you may recall from my last post, I was about to hand in a crucial assignment for my Advanced Flash class and now I couldn’t touch any of my work (why didn’t I just pull an all-nighter on Monday to get it done… I guess I need a good crystal ball to help me avoid such pitfalls, eh?)

When the part didn’t come even the next day (one week after Black Tuesday), I got antsy. I called the shop and they still hadn’t gotten the part. I explained how desperate I was and how my entire grade depended on this assignment. The shop was sympathetic, but there was nothing that they could do. I then (at someone’s suggestion) called Apple again. They didn’t see that the part was shipped yet, but I explained my situation and my case got transferred to Customer Service instead. The customer service rep told me that there was some demand for this part and that it might take until the middle of August for me to get it. Again I told my tale of woe and pleaded with him whether there was a way to make this happen sooner. He took pity on me and had me escalated to the top of the list to get the part (I felt like I was on the kidney waiting list or something), I think he even mentioned that I was top in Canada and US.

Sadly, my kidney… I mean logic board, has still not arrived today (two days later). I couldn’t wait any longer because tonight’s my last Flash class. Now keep in mind, I’m not an all-eggs-one-basket kind of guy. Meanwhile I’d been emailing my teacher, telling him my tale of woe and he was really understanding and willing to do what he could to give me extensions, etc. Nice guy. Finally, I had the idea that since my hard drive was OK, why couldn’t the shop hook it up to another computer and get my files onto a CD. When I called them up, they were very accommodating and nice (they’d already become familiar with my tale of woe) about it. They set things up for me (for a non-warranty fee) and I was able to get my files onto a CD to hand into my teacher.

It’s been an interesting ride so far (it’s interesting now because I had something to hand in tonight. If not, I think it would still be in the “frustrating” domain) because I don’t think I’ve ever really taken any of my PCs to the shop. My Dell never had any problems. Ironic, no? So my point is, I don’t know whether the service I’ve been getting has been on the nice and helpful side, or just normal. Either way, I’ve appreciated everyone’s understanding — if only they could make the parts move faster. Bottom line is still bottom line, isn’t it? I still don’t have my computer back. Another funny thing is that every time I call Apple, they send me an email for feedback on the call. Part of me feels like saying: the call was great, but I can’t email you back the frickin’ survey without my computer. But I don’t want to hurt their feelings when they’ve been so considerate of mine.

The black screen of death

I couldn’t believe what happened this past Tuesday. After I woke up I was going to do some work on an assignment for the Advanced Flash night course that I’m taking. When I went to my iMac, the screen was all black, and the little white light was on. I figured that it was just asleep. I moved the mouse around and nothing happened. Then I held the power off button until the white monitor light turned off, then tried to start my computer again, but only the white light turned on (the hard drive whirred a bit) but then nothing else happened.

I tried all the things they suggested in the starter manual, but nothing. I called Apple care and had no wait to connect, but the only thing the support guy could suggest was the old unplug, wait, and replug. When that didn’t work, he said it was a hardware problem and gave me the name of an authorized service place. I went promptly over and dropped off my precious iMac into their hands. It’s still there right now (one day later) and they are not certain what the problem is yet.

Maybe I’m just overly anxious because of recent health issues of my own, but I feel so sad that my iMac is in the shop. I don’t want to doubt the sterling reputation for reliability that Apple has, but I can’t argue with the fact that my own is in the shop. Waiting for a call back from the shop has been like waiting for a call from the hospital. I keep wondering if I would have had the same reaction if this had been my PC rather than my Mac.

Frankly, despite having numerous PC problems over the years, I never had anything like this. I guess that’s the problem with the “closed box” computer: its problems seem much more mysterious. It’s a lot more like the human body: I need to rely on the opinion of an expert because I have no insight into the symptoms. I think if this happened to my PC, I might be tempted to write it off (but if it were still under warranty, I’d probably get it fixed). It might not have been as much of a shock, though. I half expect PCs to fail (especially fail me), but when my iMac stares prettily back at me and refuses to start up, it just seems that much more tragic.

Suping up your iTunes experience

This all started when I was walking down the street with my iPod in “Shuffle Songs” mode. I was totally groovin’ and then suddenly a slow song came on and tanked my momentum. Yes, I know I could’ve just skipped to the next track, but it was kind of a bummer and I thought that there must be a way to make a playlist of only faster songs. There’s a BPM (beats per minute) info field on all my music tracks, but alas none of them have the info filled in. So I turn to the internet for more free software to help me supe up my iTunes/iPod experience.

iTunes-BPM Inspector (and Tangerine)

The solution I found for adding BPM information is called iTunes-BPM Inspector. It’s not a new program, but it’s good. A floating window appears with a button that you click while playing a song in iTunes. As you press the button to the beat, the program tells you the BPM of your clicking. Once you reach the correct number (the number turns blue), simply hit Set and iTunes-BPM Inspector will drop it straight into your track’s meta-information. It’s really very easy and iTunes-BPM Inspector even has a little graphic that switches and two little lights that toggle to the beat so you can test that you’ve got the number right. Once all the tracks have their BPM info, it’s a snap to create a smart playlist for tracks that have a certain BPM and up — pure uninterrupted strutting can commence! (By the way, it may seem like a lot of work to do this for each track, but it actually becomes kind of fun. There’s no easier way to get into a song than to tap the mouse to its rhythm.) There’s also a cool program called Tangerine which does all the BPM analysis for you (at a zippy 3 songs per second), but you have to pay $25 for it. For those of you without the time or inclination to do it all manually Tangerine’s an incredibly painless way to go (you might want to check out the free trial).

While we’re on the iTunes topic, I thought I would mention a few other little add-ons that I like to use.

Sing that iTune!

If you are interested in lyrics, this free little Dashboard widget will grab them for you every time you play a track in iTunes. (It’s a bit of a trick because you have to switch on your Dashboard for it to do the lyric search, but that’s not too tough.) You can follow along with the song as it plays, or the widget also includes the option to write the lyrics to the audio track each time it finds them so you can take them with you on your iPod.

Amazon Album Art

For those of us fond of album art (especially for using with Cover Flow, where we just can’t tolerate the generic clear square that appears when we don’t have album art for a track), this widget is perfect. Whenever you encounter a track that just doesn’t seem to retrieve any album art using the handy dandy right-click in iTunes (like Madonna’s Grammy-winning album, Ray of Light), just click on this widget and it will go to Amazon.com to retrieve all the different covers that it finds. Click the bar to set the album art in iTunes and voila!

Gimme Some Tune

This is another free program which you can set to run whenever iTunes is on. It will display a semi-transparent window at the bottom of your screen with the track info and album art. If you turn on a setting, it will get song lyrics for you as well. There are many other settings that you can customize to your own style (for example, one option will make the window vanish whenever the mouse pointer runs into it.)

Bottom line is that while iTunes is a great program to use for your many music needs, there are a number of add-ons to make things even better.

Widget Watch

One of my favourite part of OS X is the Dashboard. There are always lots of cool, useful widgets for all kinds of convenient purposes. If F12 isn’t becoming one the most worn out keys on your keyboard, you’re really missing out on some great, free stuff.

iStat Pro

This is one of the best widgets available. It’s not new, but an updated version just came out recently. Basically IStat Pro displays all kinds of useful statistical info about your computer, including CPU usage, memory usage, disk space, system uptime, system temperatures, etc. There’s also information about your network/IP addresses and running application processes (both not pictured above). Even if I don’t quite understand all the more technical info, it’s still great for keep an eye on how your computer’s running. It’s very customizable and displays in a tall or wide configuration and various colour schemes. It all looks quite sleek.

TV Forecast

For TV fanatics like myself, this widget is the answer for finding out when new episodes of my favourite shows will be on, what their episode titles will be, etc. It’s linked into TV.com (the most comprehensive site for info about TV shows). If you click on the name of the show or episode in the widget display, your browser opens up to the corresponding detailed info. It’s as simple as picking your shows and letting the widget do the rest to keep you up to date.

Photo Drop

It’s hard to believe that they could fit a picture editor into a widget, but they have. Granted, you won’t be airbrushing out wrinkles with this tool, but for resizing and cropping pictures without opening a full blown application, this is a really awesome widget. Included are a few special effects, including reflection, shadow, and even pushpin (an image of a pushpin is added to your photo to make it look like it’s pinned to a bulletin board) just for fun. The interface is a bit tricky to get used to, since there isn’t the tool palette that these kinds of applications usually have, but once you learn it, this will become an invaluable tool for quick picture editing.

Backpack

Part of an online service, the Backpack widget allows you to access lists and other pages that you’ve created as part of that service. It’s a subscription service that you need to join, but they offer a free level as well (which is what I’m on). They only allow about half a dozen pages at the free level, but it’s enough for me to use. It allows you to access this information simply and easily from any web browser. The full blown service is full of features for creating some pretty fancy pages, but for me I just create lists of movies I want to see, or things I want to buy, etc. I can add or check off items from all my lists using the widget, and if I click the backpack icon to open the browser, I can reorganize and manipulate my lists as well. Backpack is a great tool for keeping all your little snippets of information stored in one easy-to-access web location.