zacharytamas

Like hordes of others, today I downloaded and installed the new Kindle for Mac beta.

So far, it’s a very nice app. It is very simple—but this kind of app is perfectly suited for simplicity.

The app took a while to open the first time, but once it loaded I was greeted with a Register screen which allowed me to register the app with my Amazon account and associate it with my Kindle account. The process took only seconds.

Books in your Kindle account are automatically loaded into the “Archived Items” tab, which acts as a sort of bookshelf—books you have access to if you want, but not important enough to be sitting on your desk. When you go to the Archived Items, you download a book to read by double-clicking on your choice. After it has downloaded, the book will automatically be added to your home page and then opened for reading at your farthest read page. As I have been reading a few books on my iPod Touch for a while, it was very nice to have them appear on my MacBook Pro at the exact page I had left in.

Reading in the app is also nice. You can resize the window to get as much text as you want (or don’t want) on the screen at a time. It has support for your bookmarked pages, and the user interface controls are pretty simple. You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard or the scroll wheel of your mouse (or in my case, two-finger scrolling with TouchPad). The mouse/touchpad feature is nice, however it is entirely too sensitive to be used carelessly—you’ll turn five pages before you realize it.

All in all, good job Amazon. There are a few little bugs such as the scrolling problem, but this is Beta software after all. It could be argued that the interface could be nicer, but for what the app is designed for it performs its function well—especially for being beta.

When the Kindle app for iPod/iPhone came out, it opened up the world of Kindle to me. I already owned an iPod which serves so many functions for me—spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated book reader didn’t make financial sense (or cents) for me. However, when the Kindle app was released it was perfect because I was able to enter the Kindle world without any further investment.

And that’s exactly what Kindle for Mac is doing for many more users: opening the world of Kindle up, free of charge, to anyone with an Apple computer.

I’ve written once before about connecting an electric guitar to your computer for recording tracks, and although it’s been popular I think it was entirely too lengthy and complicated for the simple process of plugging in to your Mac. » Read the rest of this entry «

This used to be a hard thing to accomplish. I would copy my entire iTunes folder, complete with XML Library files to another drive for backup, then put them back on the new computer careful to put them back in the same exact location they were before. This worked, but it was tedious. The last time I reloaded my MacBook I noticed a new feature in iTunes.

I’m not sure when it appeared, but in the File menu there is an option which says “Back Up to Disc…” When you click this you are presented with a dialog window:

Insert a blank disc (CD or DVD, I assume) and click “Back Up”. iTunes will then save everything to your disc(s)—including playlists, play counts, podcasts, and videos.

Restoring a Library

To restore a library, simply insert your iTunes backup disk while iTunes is running and iTunes takes care of the rest. Please note you will have to authorize the computer to play anything purchased from the iTunes Store.