We don’t want to keep you from your one-horse open sleigh time, so let’s get right down to business. This is the Weekly Wrap, where we point you to our biggest Macworld stories from the week gone by, in case you missed them. Think of it like an early Christmas present. Let’s go-ho-ho:
On the Mac
Christmas is coming very, very late for Quicken 2007 devotees. The company says the years-old app will finally gain Lion compatibility— sometime in 2012.
As you’re snapping holiday photos and shooting holiday videos, and writing holiday screenplays about the craziness that characterizes your extended family, remember that you can share those documents (and others) with ease using Dropbox, as our video tutorial will show you. If you’d like to remotely control your home Mac while you’re at your in-law’s, you may appreciate the news of LogMeIn’s free iOS app for doing just that.
Our latest Mac Gem, Piezo, lets you easily and cheaply capture audio from any other apps on your Mac; we advocate releasing the audio again after you capture it, since it’s really just for sport.
You can use Vocal on your iPhone 4S to dictate to your Mac, even giving it Siri-like instructions. Your Mac may listen to you better than your family, but you won’t know unless you try: We recommend giving the gift of explaining painfully obvious Mac features to your less tech-savvy relatives this holiday season. And if your family lives far off the beaten broadband path, we can help you stay online as you travel.
We’ll bet you didn’t know there was such a thing as Photo Booth power user shortcuts, but we can prove it. We can also offer helpful tips if iCal won’t take your reminders, if you’re ready to transfer your domain name to a new host, or if you’d like to get your audiobooks uploaded to iTunes Match.
Meanwhile, on the iOS side of the fence…
If you like to start your holiday shopping only after everyone’s opened their other presents, have we got buying guides for you! We have our iPad case buying guide, a slideshow of kid-friendly iOS accessories, a review of a pair of iPhone car kits, a slideshow of gadgets for iPad-toting chefs, and the lowdown on giving the gift of iPhone.
As always, we covered a wide menagerie of iOS apps:
- Kindle for iOS—which supports magazines and PDFs now, but still won’t stream movies;
- Another Monster at the End of This Book—which is no monster’s ball;
- Rolling Stone’s Beatles Album-by-Album Guide—and yet, the fab four still refuse to write up a treatise on Mick Jagger and Keith Richards;
- Riot Rings—which sounds a bit like a nasty rash, but isn’t;
- Disney’s Cars 2 AppMates—which isn’t exactly a gas; and
- Find My Friends—which would be of much better service to the depressed and lonely if they subbed in “Me” for “My.”
We also explained how to ensure your iMessages don’t show up on your lost or stolen iPhone. Because we care.
That’s going to do it for the last Weekly Wrap of 2011. Here’s wishing you and yours all the best for the remainder of 2011, and a Weekly Wrapful 2012 to follow.