The end of August can only mean one thing: The beginning of September. It’s true that time’s unceasing march reminds us that at each new moment we’re older than we’ve ever been. But as inevitably as one second follows the next, you know that Macworld’s Weekly Wrap will once again appear come week’s end, offering up pointers to some of our biggest stories from the past seven days. Let’s get to it.
The password is: Advice
If some nefarious miscreant is going to break into your Dropbox account, at least make him work for it. We step you through enabling Dropbox’s new two-step authentication process. It makes you wonder: If someone invents a new dance craze inspired by such two-factor authentication, will it be called the Two-Step Two-Step?
If you store your iTunes music library on a separate drive, you might find that the app sometimes chooses to forget all about where you store your library and instead reset your library location. There’s a solution for that. Besides cursing, I mean.
We figured out how to use your iPad with AT&T’s new Mobile Share plans. At least, we think we did; AT&T called us and said that maybe the customer service representative we spoke to got some details wrong. At least, we think that’s what the AT&T spokesperson said; it was hard to understand, since they called us on our AT&T iPhone.
If you’ve ever been disappointed by Preview’s options when you try to shrink a PDF, this hint might come in handy. Sadly, it does not work for waistlines.
If you want to create events in Calendar more efficiently, make sure to pencil in a time to read our guide to doing just that. And if your Mac-using company doesn’t yet leverage Automator for creating a virtual suggestion box, maybe print out this piece and tuck it into your office’s old-fashioned paper-based alternative.
Software the wild things are
As is our wont—and perhaps your wont too, who can really say?—we looked at a slew of Mac and iOS software this week.
INT. MACWORLD OFFICES, MORNING
Editor: There’s a new Final Draft Writer app for iPad. How do tell our readers about it? How!?
[He begins weeping.]
Serenity Caldwell: Keep it together, man! We’ll reach out to some professional screenwriters for their feedback on the app, and mix in a little hands-on experience, too. Readers will love it! We can make the headline, say, Screenwriters react to new Final Draft Writer iPad app.
Editor: I’ve been dead the whole time.
Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Do any of us like Any.Do? We do!
Other apps we looked at this week included TypeStyler for fancy text, JPEGmini for slimming photos, and Desktop Tidy for investigating fusion. OK, OK, that last one actually helps you keep your Mac’s desktop clear of cruft.
In sadder software news, Tapbots pulled its Tweetbot alpha for Mac because of Twitter’s new, stricter limits for developers, though the company says the app will one day hit the Mac App Store as planned.
And as part of a new series where we’ll look at some of the long-running, most venerable Mac apps around, Glenn Fleishman reminisced about 21 years with Photoshop. By my calculations, that means Glenn started using the software when he was -2 years old.
In other news…
Apple promoted vice presidents Craig Federighi and Dan Riccio to the company’s senior executive team. Of course, if either gentleman ever wants to claim Cupertino’s top spot, they’ll need to find simply-spelled, single-syllable last names at some point.
While Apple isn’t planning on offering you a similar promotion, it is at least willing to spend some money on you in exchange for your iPhone 4S as part of a new buyback program, presumably in advance of the release of the next new iPhone.
And while Federighi and Riccio may now sport golden handcuffs, be careful that you don’t end up wearing more traditional ones the next time you checkout with EasyPay at the Apple Store.
Finally, once you’ve read all the aforelinked stories, kick back and listen to this week’s edition of the Macworld podcast, in which we discuss the Samsung verdict and Twitter’s developer crackdown.
And now, as someone using the Final Draft Writer app for iPad might say:
THE END