Kid's Paint is a lot of fun-just beware of in-app purchases

I went looking for free painting apps for my new iPad. I found this set of brief reviews and links here

I would like to thank the author, Mustapha, for this set of reviews.

Anyway, I downloaded several of these apps to play with. I really enjoyed Kid’s Paint from Virtual GS.

The features I liked most are the ability to take a picture with your iPad and then play with it. (Figure 1). You can also import pictures from your Photo picture gallery.

With one finger, you can free draw. The color of the paint changes every time you touch the screen.

With two fingers, you get a line. Extend it out and you get a spectrum of colors.

With three fingers, you can clear the drawing and start over again.

This is a fun application for kids of all ages. Just one caveat. The app contains advertising for other games and apps. You may want to set your iPad in AirPlane mode (no Wi-Fi or cellular) before handing the iPad over to a kid. Tell the kid if they want to get an advertised app, they must ask their parents first.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley User Group

Star Walk for iPad is on sale for $1.99 Go Get It NOW

The Star Walk astronomy app is on sale for $1.99 for Mother’s Day. Go Get It NOW.

I’m serious. If you want an app to show off your new iPad, get this app. At the regular price of $4.99, it’s a deal. At this Mother’s Day price, it’s a steal.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, Macvalley User Group

How to Save a PDF of a Chicken Salad Recipe Exactly Where you want it

I find one of OS X handiest features is the ability to save a PDF of an article, such as a chicken salad recipe, instead of printing it out.

You do this by going to the print menu of an application and selecting PDF instead of a printer. (Figure 1)

Just click on that PDF button I put the red rectangle around and you get more options. (Figure 2)

Now you see several options. You can open the PDF in Preview to look at it before saving it. You can just save it as a PDF with a name of your choice. You can save it in the PostScript format. You can FAX it, although recent Macs don’t come with a modem.

Below the divider line are more options. You can add a PDF to iTunes. You can e-mail it. You can save it to the Web Receipts folder, which OS X puts into your Documents folder. They thought of you going on-line, doing shopping and paying the phone bill.

You see the option “Recipes Alias.” This is the one I added. “Save PDF to MacJournal” and “Save PDF to Paperless” were added by two programs.

“Recipes Alias” is one of my own. This is how I added it.

First of all, some background. The heart of this lies in the folder “PDF Services” which you will find within your Library folder within your User’s folder. Look at Figure 3 to see the route

Start at the Library folder within your User folder and NOT at the Library folder at the root level. That’s not the folder you want.

Within that folder you will find “PDF Services”. If you don’t find it, you can add it by adding a folder and naming it PDF Services

Put a space between “PDF” and “Services,” and capitalize the S in Services.

In most cases, you will find it already made by OS X.

Now for the secret sauce.

Decide where you want your folder for Recipes or Jokes or George Will/Paul Krugman columns in your Mac’s Document folder. Yes, you can put this folder within another folder if you like. That’s where I put my Recipes folder.

Now click once on the desired folder to highlight it. Now press Command + L. Command + L is the command for making an alias. You will see an alias appear below the original folder (Figure 4)

Notice that the icon shows a folder, but below it at the left-hand corner is an arrow. That arrow indicates this is an alias, a small file that points to the original folder elsewhere.

Now for the last part. Set up two finder windows side by side. You display the PDF Services folder in one window. You display the alias you just made to the folder for your PDF articles. Now drag the alias over to the PDF Services folder. That’s it.

Time to test it. Open up your Internet browser of choice. I will use Safari for this illustration.

I put “chicken salad” into the Google search bar, pick a recipe, and display it.

Now I go under the File menu and pick Print. The Print dialog comes up. In the corner is the PDF button.

Click on that and voila!. There’s the Recipe Alias. Click on that and the recipe goes to the folder as a PDF. See Figure 6

Notes to those who have OS X 10.7. Where’s the Library folder?!

By default, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion hides the Library folder from view. This is to avoid problems caused by the inexperienced and clumsy.

If you want to view the Library folder, hold down the Option key while clicking on the Finder’s Go menu. Now you can view the Library folder.

For more tips, go to Macworld’s article 18 Ways to View the Library Folder.

As you can see, I keep a copy in my Recipes folder :o

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley User Group

The Proview Case Really Should Go to Judge Judy and other highlights

Good Morning! I’m running late on my promise to blog every day, but today, you’ll get a double dose.

Anyway, Proview continues to badger Apple in the American and Chinese courts over its claim that it holds the Chinese rights to the name “iPad”. Not that it invented the iPad, thank you; their device just let you get on the Internet. I don’t think I’m alone in believing that the case comes down to “Pay me a lot of American money and I’ll go away. Otherwise, I’ll pester you as long as I can.”

Judge Mark Pierce in Santa Clara County up north threw out Proview’s case in the California case. Here’s the details.

Oh, here’s even more details. Proview wants $400 million dollars. Apple offered it $16 million. What do you think, readers? Go for the big payout or settle for what you can get now?

On to a more serious issue, Apple sent a developer a note that it will look into multi-user support for the iPad. You know, for a family. Apple's response is not the first indication that the company may be working on multi-user support for the iPad. In 2010, before the iPad was officially announced, The Wall Street Journal reported that an early prototype of the device was designed to be shared by and customized for multiple family members.

So here’s the details.

The highlight of the day, though, is news about the latest Lion updates, Safari 5.1.7 and Mac OS X 10.7.4.

Safari 5.1.7 takes action to disable your old Flash plug-ins and get the latest Flash plug-in. Adobe praised Apple for doing so.

With regard to 10.7.4, you have to look down in the grass, as they say, to find the significant changes. One was a 1024 x 1024 icon for TextEdit. What’s the big deal, you say? Higher resolution displays.

When Apple introduces new models using Intel’s new “Ivy Bridge” family of microprocessors, those microprocessors can support a screen resolution of 4096 x4096. It appears Apple wants to move toward “Retina Displays” across the board.

That’s all for now. See you this afternoon.

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager

Interesting speculation on the $799 MacBook Air

Michael Simon at MacLife speculates on why Apple would introduce a low-priced (for them) $799 MBA:

“The Web lit up yesterday with reports that Apple will be putting even more pressure on the so-called ultrabook market with a $799 MacBook Air, the first ready-to-use Mac priced that low since the days of the Indigo G3 iMac. It may sound unreasonable--given the source (DigiTimes) and Apple's penchant for profits--but this rumor's not as far-fetched as it seems (you know, assuming Apple ever updates its Macs again).Back in 2010, when the $999 11-inch MacBook Air hit the market, Apple's estimated margin was about $280--a healthy 28 percent, according to Computerworld's Gregg Keizer, who interviewed analyst Brian Marshall of Gleacher & Co. at the time--meaning Apple could have sold the Air for $799 and still made a profit (albeit a minuscule 10 percent). At the time, however, the 64GB solid-state drive alone cost the company $80 (about $1.25 per gigabyte), "putting that component in a tie with the Intel Core 2 Duo processor as the laptop's second-most expensive part (behind the $18- display)," according to Keizer.A report last week by X-bit Labs has that price dropping considerably: Component manufacturer OCZ Technology Group has cut price points of its SSD drives to approximately $0.65 per gigabyte, and expects "recent declines in NAND flash pricing to make SSDs more attractive to mainstream applications such as SANs, network appliances, ultrabooks and mainstream servers." Even if Apple pays a few cents more for drives from Samsung, a 64GB SSD drive would cost less than $50, boosting Apple's profits on a hypothetical $799 Air by about 5 percent. (Apple CEO Tim Cook, it should be noted, is an expert in supply chain and manufacturing minutiae, and has no doubt spent many a night and weekend working on getting the rest of the costs down, too.)But what's worth more to Apple than those precious profit margins is the expansion of the Apple base, which a $799 Air is certain to do. Much like the free iPhone 3GS, a low-priced high-class notebook would bring a new class of users into the Apple fold. Even if Apple has to sacrifice its 20-plus-percent margins, a few million new users will certainly pay off in the long run.”

Well, would Apple sacrifice its healthy profit margin just to bring in some more customers? The Apple Stores are “bulging at the seams” by some reports.

I’d wait until the school supply buying season begins in August. That’s when I think Apple would bring out this MacBook Air. It would also have the advantage of beating Microsoft to the punch. All speculation is that Microsoft will bring out Windows 8 in October of this year.

Til Tomorrow

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley User Group

MacBook Air vs UltraBook, with a possible little brother ipad

On May 2nd, we enjoyed a great presentation by Elena-Beth Kaye on the topic of buying stuff on the Internet. Even us guys were caught up in the pursuit of a better deal on Little Black Bag.com

Our next presentation on June 6th will cover the new iPad. The presenter will be me, your Editor and Media Manager.

I will show off AirPlay, which allows you to display your iPad on your Apple TV or your Mac or even your PC (if you don’t mind beta ware). Several applications are available to do this on a Mac. I will show off Air Server. I will show off doing a presentation from my iPad using Keynote for iOS. I will show off games, such as Angry Birds Space. And I will show off Paper, the great drawing program.

Now on to rumors and aspersions. Appleinsider reports that Apple will bring out a $799 MacBook Air to compete against the slew of Ultrabooks (will Ultraman use an Ultrabook?) coming this year.

Intel, the main instigator behind the Ultrabooks, hopes to see 30 million Ultrabooks this year. The company designed the Ultrabook specification after Apple found great success with its new MacBook Air, which features only solid-state storage, instant-on capabilities, and super-thin design thanks to the lack of an optical drive.

Not to get too geeky, but I’m waiting to see tony max os x 86’s blog on Hackintoshs. Could you save a few bucks by buying a cheap Ultrabook and installing OS X 10.7.4 on it? Or 10.8? We’ll have to wait and see, but could be fun.

This may be a more reliable rumor. An 7 inch iPad mini may be on the way. Cnet reports on the rumor, but disputes its validity. Still, an iPad in the $250-300 range could bring in more customers.

Finally, if you’ve wanted to transfer old cassette tapes (I’ve got boxes and boxes myself) to your Mac, here’s a videoand slideshow display on how to do it. It uses the Audacity audio editing program and walks you through the options to pick.

Til Tomorrow,

Tom Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley Users Group.

Elena-Beth Kaye's Shopping Tips on the Web Saves Everybody Big Bucks! And How!

We had an absolutely great meeting last night. Elena-Beth Kaye's presentation of how you can save 50%, maybe even 90% on clothes, jewelry, and lots of other stuff -- well, it was just great. Even the guys in the audience were sitting there thinking, "I wonder where I can find myself some fishing gear at those prices. Or some new summer shirts. Or..."

There has never, ever been another presentation like this anywhere. A great big boxful of really nice tops and pants for $35. And the jewelry was amazing. I want to know where Elena-Beth got herself that Navajo turquoise jewelry for $40 or thereabouts. Who in the world ever heard of such a thing? Not in today's world. But all this stuff is right there. It's online. And it's -- like -- Wow!

Congratulations to Elena-Beth on a really fantastic presentation.