Kibbles & Bytes Blog

For many families and college students, we’re about to enter the final weeks of back-to-school preparation. Our Mac to School specials will run…

Fellow art geeks rejoice. The folks at the “*MoMa*”:http://www.moma.org/ have released an official iOS App for Apple’s mobile devices. This free app brings the museum’s vast collection of modern art to your pocket, alongside other high quality and informative museum related content. The default screen is a calendar of current events taking place at the institution including current exhibitions and film schedules. Users can also select from Tours, Art, and Info by tapping on the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. The Mobile Tours portion of the app is designed to provide accompaniment to a museum visit, and the Info screen provides museum hours, admission, a floor plan, and more.

Unless you’re actually at the museum, the Art category of the app is the next best thing. This immense catalog of the museum’s permanent collection provides users with information and high quality images of every piece to ever pass through the MoMA’s doors. Art can be searched by artist, collection, and by current exhibitions. The app also features a comprehensive “Art Terms” section. This can serve to bolster both the credibility and pretentiousness of the art historian in us all. Plus, its an awesome way to impress people at parties! (A trick I learned pretty quickly as an art major.) The only downside to the app is that due to its small size, it relies on a Wi-Fi or 3G connection to load the majority of its content.

You can download the app “*here*”:http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=19XpSnZWhPI&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fapp%252Fmoma%252Fid383990455%253Fmt%253D8%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30

If you are a gamer who has been plagued by slow frame rates and unstable graphics performance since updating to Mac OS 10.6.4, you’ll be happy to hear Apple has officially released a fix. The problem, which effected certain NVIDIA cards in newer Macs, caused unpredictable frame rates, unresponsiveness, and graphical glitches in many current games. Valve and Blizzard titles such as “*Portal*”:http://store.steampowered.com/app/400/ and “*StarCraft II*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76463/blizzard-entertainment-starcraft-ii-wings-of-liberty/at_kb were particularly troublesome. Other graphically intensive titles including Apple’s own “*Aperture 3*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/75425/apple-aperture-3/at_kb were also experiencing problems prior to the new patch.

The Snow Leopard Graphics Update can be easily downloaded by selecting Software Update from the Apple Menu. It can be externally downloaded “*here*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1083

Last week we posed the question: Do you prefer to read digital or paper books? in our weekly Kibbles & Bytes newsletter. We received an overwhelming response from our readers which led us to wonder which apps are best on the digital side of things. With the steadily rising popularity of the iPad, and the firmly established iPhone/iPod touch platform, App developers have taken full advantage of the surge in ebook popularity. Though one of its highly advertised features, the iPad does not ship with an included e-reader. Apple’s free iBooks may seem like a no brainer on your inaugural trip to the App Store, but it unfortunately lacks some of the content and features supported in other apps. So which e-reader apps are the best of the best? We’ve surveyed iPad users around the office as well as our Twitter followers to find out.

The first five apps are listed below. “Click here to see the top five on our Blog, Barkings!”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/toptenplist-1-our-favorite-ios-ereaders/

*10. Nook*

Barnes & Noble’s reader features the largest library of digital publication available on any platform. Similar to the Kindle app, the Nook app allows syncing between all Apple iOS devices including Macs. Though the library of over 1 million titles is impressive, the Nook experience just doesn’t quite compare to iBooks and Kindle. *Free*

*9. Classics*

Classics was one of the first e-readers to land in the App store and has been claimed by many to be the inspiration behind iBooks. As its name implies, Classics is a collection of literary masterpieces ranging from Pride & Prejudice to Treasure Island. In total the app features about 25 books several of which include illustrations. *$2.99*

*8. STARSS*

Depending on how you feel about Star Trek, STARSS may be the coolest or dorkiest RSS reader ever. Featuring an excellent recreation of the LCARS graphical user interface this app make the news of today feel like the news of tomorrow. *$2.99*

*7. Goodreader*

If you’ve got momentous PDF files to view on the go, GoodReader is your app. With users reporting fine performance with file sizes up to 1GB, this app can tackle nearly any file you toss at it. Featuring additional support for MS Office and iWork documents, web archives, TXT, and media files, this app is a must have for referencing documents on the go. Plus, it’s a steal! *$0.99*

*6. Instapaper*

The folks behind Instapaper realize that when you’re at work you should be working. This app is incredibly useful if you’ve ever stumbled upon (get it?) something you’d like to read but just don’t have the time to. The app allows you to effortlessly save long news articles or blog posts (like this one) for reading later on when you’re off the clock. *$4.99*

Again, these are just the first five apps “Click here to see the top five on our Blog, Barkings!”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/toptenplist-1-our-favorite-ios-ereaders/

We have three different Airport wifi networks at our headquarters in Waitsfield, Vermont. Recently I was in the office by myself and couldn’t remember the very complicated password for our secure network, which I needed to access on my iPad. I almost gave up, but then remembered that I had previously accessed the network with my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, I had only entered the password once and then clicked “Remember Password”, so I still had no clue what the password was.

But slowly, like an iceberg melting in the Indian Ocean, the realization dawned on me: Keychain Access. This utility stores all of the passwords you tell your Mac to remember. I grabbed my MacBook Pro, launched Keychain Access, recovered the password and set up my iPad. Here’s how you can do this:

In Spotlight, search for “Keychain Access”, or navigate to Applications folder > Utilities > Keychain Access. You’ll see your different keychains organized here, such as Login, PrivateEncryptedData, System, or System Roots.

To reveal the password to a wireless network you’ve logged into in the past, double click the name of the network under “System.” Under the attributes tab, select the “Show password” checkbox. Now enter your keychain password, which is usually the same password you use to log into your Mac or install new software. To display the password for the keychain item, click Allow. The password will be displayed next to the “Show password” checkbox.

There you go! I need a Keychain Access for my brain.

_Dear Friends,_

It’s Ed writing for Don again this week. He ??was?? on his way back to Vermont from Sturgis, but apparently his progress east was slowed by his life goal of stopping at every Waffle House from here to South Dakota.

I’m excited to say that progress on our store in Manchester, NH is going well. The store is swarming with construction workers, hammers are swinging and dust hangs in the air. Soon we’ll be announcing our Grand Opening date. We’re making this one a blockbuster, with a full week of exciting themed events, seminars, lots of giveaways and freebies, and discounts and special offers all around. I used to live in New Hampshire, though not in Manchester. It’s the 7th largest city in New England, rapidly growing, and is highly rated for both living and doing business. I didn’t realize how great Manchester is until we started thinking of opening a new store there.

I want to say thank you to everyone who wrote in with your thoughts concerning ebooks vs print books. What I learned from your feedback is that it’s not really a ??versus?? situation at all. While most people (not all) prefer real, printed books, they also say they’re happy to use ebooks in certain situations. Personally, even though at this point I’m a committed ebook reader, I love printed books for aesthetic reasons, because they don’t require electricity, and because they are easy to pass on and share. And last week I forgot to mention a minor limitation of reading ebooks and magazines: if you’re on an airplane, you’re not supposed to turn your reader on during the period while the plane is waiting and taxiing on the runway. I usually travel with one paper magazine or newspaper for that occasion.

Since this issue sparked so much commentary, we decided to base our very first
TopTen.plst on it. We’re covering “Our Top Ten Favorite iOS eReaders” below. We won’t typically print the TopTen.plist in Kibbles, but this is a special occasion. TopTen.plist is a weekly list of the top ten items related to our favorite subjects.