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 mentioned on this blog before that I’ve experimented with using Guitar Rig to produce guitar tones through my MacBook. Setting up such a rig is pretty straightforward but I ran into an interesting problem when it came to routing sound from the input jack on my laptop to the Guitar Rig application. With some research and tinkering, I found a solution that works perfectly. If you can’t figure out how to get your guitar input into Guitar Rig, this tutorial is for you.

Evidently this problem doesn’t happen to everyone. In most cases the software installs and just works—not for me. I had to Google up a storm and do some thinking. My search led me to a relatively unknown feature in OS X’s handling of MIDI devices: aggregate devices. In order to pipe sound into Guitar Rig, you have to create an aggregate device.

First, I’m going to explain how it works and what it really means, then I’ll show you how to do it. You can skip this part you don’t care.

How it Works

The input comes into your aggregated device and immediately passes through and out that device’s “output”. Guitar Rig sees this “simulated” device as a real device and allows you to access it inside the program. Guitar Rig actually thinks this device is one of the Guitar Rig Kontrol hardware devices that you have plugged into your computer.

How You Do It

Although it’s not very prominent, there is an application that came with OS X for managing MIDI devices. That’s what we’ll be using here. It’s called Audio MIDI Setup and you can find it in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder—or better yet use Spotlight to find it (Cmd+Space, then type “Audio MIDI Setup” and press enter).

Once you’ve opened the program you’ll need to select “Open Aggregate Device Editor” from the Audio menu at the top of your screen. Click the plus sign (+) to create a new device and then click the check boxes next to “Built-In Input” and “Built-In Output”. Do not click the checkbox next to “Built-In Microphone”!

Click “Done” and close the program.

Now all that’s left to do is go into Guitar Rig and set your Output Device to your new device (whatever you named it). Once you’ve done that, you’ll see your device show up as an option for the “Input”.

In Conclusion

I hope this helped somebody out there out. Have fun messing with all Guitar Rig offers you—which is quite a lot! Keep on rocking. I’d love to hear any of your recordings, just comment me a link.