Thanks to listener Jakob we may now know how “Beggin’ Strips” dog snacks keep showing up on the grocery list you created in AppleWorks.

I was looking at the AppleWorks software page on Apple’s website, and saw something peculiar, along the lines of not eating the iPod Shuffle. It mentions in the first paragraph you dog using AppleWorks to remind you to feed her and has a “disclaimer” on the bottom.

See [ Screenshot 1] and [Screenshot 2]. from the AppleWorks web site.

Listener Jeff just discovered that Tiger now supports PDFs as desktop pictures.

I ran across a feature of Tiger that I thought your listeners might like.

When changing the Desktop background on Mac OS 10.4.1 you can now select .pdf files and Tiger will set your desktop background to the first page in the .pdf document.

On the Saturday cast I mentioned a new product, Amnesty Widget Browser from Mesa Dynamics. This software allows you to run 3rd party (non-Apple) Tiger Dashboard widgets on the desktop under Panther. Well I just received an update directly from the developers (they are apparently MacCast listeners) and it will also work under Tiger!

Just for your further information: Amnesty Widget Browser also runs on Tiger (and on Tiger it does run Apple’s default widgets) for users who want to run widgets outside of their dashboard directly on their desktops with extra abilities (e.g. choosing the window layer to run in, setting opacity, etc.). We are trying to provide the same experience for Panther users, but due to legal issues, cannot support Apple’s default widgets under Panther.

So are you addicted to Widgets? Have you downloaded to many and are now overwhelmed? Do you need a better way to remove Widgets? Well in addition to Widget Manager, listener Mihkel advises adding one more widget to your collection, Imagery Media’s Widget Deleter. This is a Widget to delete widgets. Just find that pesky widget and hit delete.

A number of Mac Geeks have recently sent in this link to a Flikr site featuring a mini image history of Apple’s homepage. Enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernelpanic/sets/283374/

Our friend Craig over at the Behind the Scenes Podcast ran across this book and felt it was a good read for anyone wanting an overview of new features found in Tiger.

This is an excellent book for anyone looking for an overview of all the new features in Tiger without going too far in depth. It’s a 4-color book throughout with plenty of screenshots and written by Robin Williams, who has an excellent reputation for making tech information accessible. It may not be for hardcore geeks, but for switchers and other people new to the Mac, or anyone else who wants an overview of what’s there without having to wade through a 600-page book it’s worth looking at. Peachpit has the Spotlight chapter available for download so you can get a feel for what it’s like:
http://www.peachpit.com/content/downloads/peachpit/promo/TigerPLS.pdf

New MacCast listener David is a switcher from a year ago and had written a great series documenting why he has decided to make Macs his platform of choice.

You can find his series of articles here:
http://www.atpm.com/11.03/segments.shtml
http://www.atpm.com/11.04/segments.shtml
http://www.atpm.com/11.05/segments.shtml*

* this article was linked to the official website for worldwide Macintosh User Groups, and made its way across continents.

Maybe this will help some others who are considering taking the plunge. Enjoy!

I received this great email from listener Scott. I think it proves once you give a Mac a try you’ll be convinced it is a better experience.

I was a PC person for a little over 20 years starting with the Commodore 64 and working my way up. I have spent hundreds of hours working on my own computers and helping others with theirs and it never really gets old.

I just recently bought my first Apple product, the 40gig ipod photo and totally fell in love with it. I work in aerospace on the graveyard shift and I get to listen to audiobooks all night and that helps a lot. After finding out how awesome the ipod was I decided to take the plunge and buy my first Mac. I got the new 15″ Powerbook 1.67GHz model with a gig of RAM and the extra 64MB of RAM (128MB) on the ATI Radeon 9700 so now I am REALLY REALLY in love.

I still have a really high end PC that I mostly just keep around for gaming now but use my Mac for everything else. I only wish I had given Mac a chance years ago.

Christopher sent in this info about a new System Preference pane to help you manage your Widgets.

Adam-I just wanted to drop you a line and tell you how much I love your show and tell you about a little app called Widget Manager. This application installs into your system preferences pane and allows you to ‘manage’ your widgets meaning that you can remove, disable, or enable all of your widgets. The app is free and here is the link to the download site. Hope this is helpful and keep up the great work

[ Widget Manager from Downtown Software ]

MacCast listener Clark sent this warning for PGP users who are considering moving to Tiger:

A note for those using PGP 8.x and Tiger. This combination also
causes problems, especially with Mail.

Symptoms are things like loosing your mailboxes and loosing your POP
entries. Literally you enter the POP information. After attempting
to connect
you will receive a message indicating that new attributes are
available for synch. You are asked if you would you like to save
them. If you select yes,
your POP entries and usually your mailboxes are toast! They are
still available in Library/Mail, but now you really need to be a geek
to rebuild your entries.
Solution: Dump PGP for now. Stability will return and life will once
again be like having a crisp Granny Smith’s on a warm summer day!

There is a note on the problem at http://www.pgp.com/products/tiger.html

So if you are using PGP, quit for awhile.

I do not know if this affects the GNU version of PGP (PGPFree) yet.