Apple has arbitrarily decided that the South Park app was too offensive for iTunes App Store inclusion. Apple is the sole governing body which oversees the process of which applications are accepted or rejected. Obviously, this is bull@$%*.

Is it just me, or does it seem like 1984 is a bit closer than what Apple led us to believe? I have to go back and check my Chinese calendar, but I think 1984 was the “Year of the Tyrannical Apple,” if I’m not mistaken.

I love all things Apple. I’ve purchased no fewer than seven Macs since 2005, a few iPods and an iPhone. I really like Apple. But the control freaks may end up running this company into the ground. I can understand that Steve Jobs likes to dictate how the public interacts with his products. I’m sure he is very proud of the Mac and wants us to get exactly out of the hardware/software what he thinks we need to get out of it. But at some point Apple must let our hands go, and come to terms with the fact that we are all grown up, and know what we want and what we don’t want.

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I’m running Photoshop on my cloned drive. Adobe doesn’t let you do this without authorizing the software, as you can only use it on one machine at a time. Sighs… So I authorized it. Then I went to open an image and got this message.

To continue using Photoshop, I have to reinstall the entire suite? What? At least they were polite and said sorry. For the record, I’m using CS2, so it’s not the latest and greatest, but it still works worked.

Just kidding. It still works.

I opened Apple Mail only to see my one and only Note gone. If that wasn’t disturbing enough, Mail said I had 4,294,967,293 notes! I know I’m not that busy, plus I’m sick. Why or how this happened, who knows. I probably could try to get my note back, but it’s not even worth it. I downloaded a trial version of Things. If I like it, I’ll probably post back here.

I’m doing some work and I needed to edit a flash (FLV) movie. I used to use VisualHub, but the developer went belly up. It’s now some open source deal where you have to download all kinds of files and jump through hoops. Can’t be bothered.

Enter Perian

I found this great QuickTime plugin called Perian– billed as the “the swiss-army knife for QuickTime.” It will let you open flash and other file formats not natively supported by QuickTime. Quickly and with no fuss I was able to start watching the flash movie. I could edit the movie and even save it as a .MOV file. The best part about it is that it’s a FREE plugin. How can you beat that?

If you need to watch or convert some odd file format, check out Perian, it may just do the trick!

These are some of my favorite Mac apps and frankly, I don’t know what I would do without many of them. Without further adieu, here they are.

Amadeus Pro
This app is for audio editing. Simple as well as complex edits can be done. I used to be a fan of Sound Studio, but I found that Amadeus offers a better interface and a better all around app.

AppZapper
A handy utility which helps clean up your Mac after you remove a program. Often, some straggler files persist, such as preference files. AppZapper will search for all associated files and delete them.

ArtText
Great app that lets you create artistic and unique text images. You simply type in the text you want, and you can add all the effects you like. Great app for web designers who want to liven up their pages.

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This is a first for me. I’m writing a review of a piece of software as I’m using that piece of software to write the review. Huh? The review I’m talking about, you are reading. The software I’m talking about is Blogo. If you are looking for Blago, continue here.

So what is Blogo? Blogo is Mac-only software (sorry Windoze users) which allows you to post to your blog right from your desktop, without all that messy web interface stuff. Writing to your blog should be a fun and easy process. Even though I love WordPress, I don’t particularly care for it’s interface, and having to go log in all the time is a pain. Blogo offers relief.

From Blogo:

Easily publish text, images, videos, slideshows and more. With a simple, intuitive interface and support for WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Typo, Drupal, and Expression Engine, Blogo is the best way to maintain your blog and spread the word with Twitter, Ping.fm and other supported services.

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You heard it here first… I am coining the phrase “Dumb Rational & Mentality” as referring to DRM, or digital rights management. I was able to break my eBook DRM without even trying. Without any tools except a print dialog box. How sad.

I am taking an online course this semester, and one of the requirements was purchasing an eBook. I have never purchased one, and found that the software I need to use it was Digital Editions, by Adobe. So I downloaded the free software, then bought the book ($14.95), and indeed I was able to read my digital book.

The software didn’t look all that great, it was functional and let me read my book. Lack of zoom features were something I noticed right off the bat and it’s unintuitive scroll bars never let me jump “to here” as do most scroll bars for applications that I use. Anyway, it worked.

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If there’s one problem I’ve had since 1994, it’s how to keep all of my miscellaneous text, image and file data organized, in one place, and in a file format that will be viewable years to come. This usually involved Microsoft Works, MS Word, Text Files, and various other files, such as .bmp and even obsolete file formats– that is until now.

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After many years of Tascam hardware-based recording, I’m moving to a software solution– well, with a little hardware too! This is going to be a really big change that is going to take weeks, even months to get through.

After buying a 24″ iMac this week, I decided that I would enjoy recording/mixing/mastering much more on a Mac:) And since Apple offers a great audio production tool, Logic Pro, my choice was made that much easier.

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Ok, so I did a few things I’m not proud of. So I bombed a few places I shouldn’t have. So I threatened a few people I didn’t know. That’s all behind me now. This is phase two, of my new Second Life.

So basically, Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, touted this new security feature to ban users of the Second Life world. Egregious violators would have not only their accounts banned, but their computers as well– meaning, they would no longer be able to play Second Life on that computer, even if another user of that computer was perfectly innocent.

That worked for like a day.

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