The Mind of Dr. Mac

Sadly, this blog is dead and no longer being updated. Happily, I’ve started a new blog. So if you’re interested, you’ll find it here.

It’s been swell. Thanks for stopping by.

This is Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus signing off.   {{poof}}

Objective Development, makers of such great utilities as LaunchBar (my personal fave) and Little Snitch, are offering their addictive new iPhone/iPod touch game, Pebbles, absolutely free until the end of August. Furthermore, you can get both the Mac version and iPhone/iPod version free!

It’s a great little game, clever and quite addictive. You should definitely check one or both versions out. You just can’t beat the price (both are free).

To download Pebbles for the iPhone and iPod touch (free), click HERE.

To download Pebbles for the Mac (free), click HERE.

If you’ve been reading my Dr. Mac column in the Houston Chronicle for a while you’ve probably noticed that I love music. I love listening to music, and though I’m not particularly talented at it, I love playing music. So this week I have a few music-oriented goodies (namely Chords for iTunes, Chordmaster, Bloom, and iToner) that I’d like to share with you.

To read the rest of the column: click here.

To watch the video of me demonstrating Chords for iTunes: click here.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, I implore you to download Wild West Pinball while it’s still free. It’s one of the best pinball sims I’ve played and I’ve played a lot of ‘em. What are you waiting for? It’s FREE!

Wild West Pinball iTunes @ App Store: Click here.

The Microsoft Mac Business Unit today released Service Pack 2 (SP2), which increases performance and reliability across applications as well as a new utility, Document Connection for Mac.

According to a press release issued this morning, :

SP2 provides several updates across the Microsoft Office 2008 suite for an improved experience. The team incorporated customer feedback received through a variety of channels to prioritize updates and maximize the potential of the suite with increased compatibility and speed. Highlights of the release include the following:

• (PowerPoint) Custom Path Animation adds the ability to author motion-path animations. Users previously could only play back motion paths.
• (PowerPoint) Default Theme lets users define their default theme, including fonts, color scheme and slide layouts.
• (Word) Increased launch and scroll speed.
• (Excel) calculation performance.
• (Document Connection) Enables a more seamless experience for Office 2008 users to save and open documents to Microsoft Office Live Workspace from Microsoft Office applications, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• (Microsoft Office Live Workspace) Expanded Mac browser support to include Safari 4 along with existing support for Firefox 2.0 (required for Mac OS X 10.2.x or later).
• (Document Connection) Improves the SharePoint experience for Mac users, allowing for easier collaboration within a SharePoint environment by simplifying how users can browse, access and manage files online and offline.

To download the 300MB updater, click here.

I love free stuff and I love free music stuff most of all. So I was tickled to discover (via a tweet by my Senior Agent-in-Charge Pat Fauquet) that the nice folks promoting the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago August 7-9 are offering music lovers a free sampler with songs by 15 of the artists playing the festival this year.

If you want these 15 free songs for your very own, just click here: Get 15 Free Songs on iTunes.

*Sorry, but this deal is only available for U.S. fans.

This just in:

Apple’s App Store downloads top 1.5 billion in first year with than 65,000 apps and over 100,000 developers.

I’ve got to get back to work on Mac OS X Snow Leopard For Dummies so I’m going to take the easy way out and just provide you with the press release copy here:

Apple® today announced that customers have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications in just one year from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. The App Store is also growing at an incredible pace with more than 65,000 apps and more than 100,000 developers in the iPhone™ Developer Program.

“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”

The revolutionary App Store has more than 65,000 apps available to consumers in 77 countries, allowing developers to reach tens of millions of iPhone and iPod® touch users around the world. The App Store works with both iPod touch and iPhone including the new iPhone 3GS, the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. Apple has shipped over 40 million of these devices that run apps from the App Store.

That’s all for now.

Touch Arcade has done it again. Here’s a link to their article pointing out four games – Return to Mysterious Island, Galcon, Radio Flare, and Mecho Wars — currently on sale for a fraction of their “list” prices.

The only one I’m familiar with is the adventure game Return to Mysterious Island, which I’m reviewing for iPod Observer and happen to like a lot. I’ve recommended it when it was $4.99; at $0.99 it should be a no-brainer if you like puzzle/adventure style games.

Read about it (with links to the iTunes App store) here: $0.99 Sales | Touch Arcade.

To read all about how losing your iPhone isn’t fun, check out my latest Dr. Mac column for the Houston Chronicle by clicking here.

One of my favorite plug-ins for GarageBand is on sale for 50% off until August 31st.

For more info, click here: NATIVE INSTRUMENTS Tone Up for Summer