The May issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. We welcome Mark Tennent to the ATPM staff this month. Mark's been providing us plenty of reading material over the past few months, and we felt it only fair to reward him with the glamorous and career-enhancing position of Contributing Editor. Welcome to the team, Mark! Wes notes the Boot Camp roundup from the Mac blogosphere, while going insane with award...er, awarding. Mark gives us a double-blast of his regular column, MacMuser, raising the concern over data composting, how valuable cultural artifacts might be lost to future generations, as well as hoping that Apple's dual boot strategy pays off. Paul scours the web for sites you didn't know existed, so you don't have to. Want to discover new music, solve an online puzzle, listen to the U.S. tax code via podcast, learn how to get to a human operator as quickly as possible in a phone tree, or explore the world of cylinder recordings? Paul's your new hero. Chuck delves in to text parsing with FileMaker this month. Ted shares his thoughts on using ConceptDraw in your outlining workflow, as well as noting how outlining concepts are showing up in myriad applications we don't think of as outliners. This month's desktop pictures selection is brought to us by ATPM jack-of-all-trades Chris Lawson. A prophead with his sights set higher--and I mean that in all of the best ways--Chris took his Canon digital SLR to Oshkosh last year for the annual EAA AirVenture. Aircraft lovers are sure to appreciate Chris's efforts. We learn Cortland is a James Brown fan, and there's a lot more to Brody than meets the eye. Much more. Sylvester opens this month's reviews with a look at Footlights Pro 2.1. Frank Wu chimes in, noting Axio's Hardsleeve lives up to its name. It's the Lee and Lawson show on the fifth-generation iPod, the daring duo bringing you the lowdown on Apple's latest digital media player. Lee also has a solo act this issue, in a look at iTunes Catalog. Finally, yours truly closes out the issue with my analysis of Datadesk's SmartBoard ergonomic keyboard. As always, each issue is available online, or in one of three formats for your offline reading pleasure.

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. You'll notice (hopefully) a new look to the publication this month. Simon Griffee put in time working on the design, and put in time with my and Michael's tweaks. Thanks so much, Simon! As Apple celebrates thirty years as a company, it seems more and more notable online personalities are joining the ranks of the Switchers, and Wes has a complete round-up. He also notes the booting-XP-on-Intel-Mac solutions running around the 'net, but we're not going to allow such blasphemy to darken our door, much less come inside for dinner with the family. Reader Heather Isaacson took advantage of an abundance of offline time to concentrate on her art, and now wants to build a web site to sell it from. Alas, her old Mac wasn't up to the task, but she perseveres in a heartwarming tale of old Mac love lost, and new Mac love found. We feature a double-shot of Mark Tennent this month, as he first delves in to how "Copyleft" software such as Firefox is changing the world's perception of copyright, then does a little ego-surfing via Google. We also have a double-shot farewell from Tom Bridge, who is stepping down as an ATPM Contributing Editor. This would be the part where I'd get all weepy and emotional over a staffer's departure, but I talk to Tom practically every day, and I don't see that changing, no matter how much he might like it to. Tom likes the new calendar creation in iPhoto, and I believe I'll be utilizing this later in the year for the annual family calendar featuring our little phisch. Tom also reviews the TV Mini HD, a ready-for-primetime (provided you get good antenna reception) "Mac TiVo". There are a pair of other reviews, with Paul weighing in on Password Retriever (not impressed), and yours truly getting my backup groove on with SuperDuper! (very much impressed). Consequently I have realized I'm not one of those guys who can really pull off a "getting my groove on" sort of line, but it's late and I don't feel like coming up with anything else, since my muse tucked itself in after a nightcap about two hours ago. Cortland learns there’s no accounting for taste, as desperation sets in for Chad while Angie may find that love is even closer than she thinks. Finally, this month's desktop pictures are of the English Lake District, courtesy of Mac user Andy Bannister. Andy's work is remarkable; I spent hours on the site looking through photos. Thanks, Andy, for allowing us to showcase part of your portfolio. As usual, the new and improved ATPM is available in three fruity flavors for your reading pleasure.

Late last night, I received an e-mail from AutoPairs developer James Walker. James and I had exchanged some messages previously regarding AutoPairs working on Intel Macs. Now, he has discovered a workaround. 1. If you have a PowerPC Mac, which I do in the form of my PowerBook G4, copy the System Preferences application from that Mac to your Intel Mac. In my case, I copied the AutoPairs pref pane from the PowerBook as well, putting it in ~/Library/PreferencePanes. 2. Rename the copied System Preferences application. I renamed my copied app to "SysPref PPC AP config", so I would know at a glance what it's sitting on my desktop for. 3. Launch the renamed application. 4. The AutoPairs pref pane showed up and I was able to click on it to activate it and open its configuration window. Quitting, I switched to BBEdit, and tried out some parentheses and quotes, and it worked like a charm! Thanks, James!

The March issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. Ellyn ponders the notion of just because you can do something doesn't mean you necessarily should do it, especially when it comes to system upgrades. This makes me think about all those people wailing over the new Intel-based Macs; it's not like your two year-old Mac is suddenly obsolete. Is it still running all the apps you were running on it yesterday? Yes? Fine, carry on, and stop sniveling. Wes looks at how February appeared to be an iPod month, and also notes the discussions on Smart Crash Reports and dual-core processors that have been making the rounds in the Mac blogosphere. Ted looks at Dossier, a new-to-ATPO outliner, as well as outliner web interaction. His columns continue to simultaneously fascinate and overwhelm me. The "Attractive Futures" section at the end is not to be missed. Mark Tennent notes Microsoft’s struggles in the European Union, and the potential effect on Mac users. (I wrote the blurb, I can reuse it here.) Sylvester dives in to the world of video extraction, which prompted Lee to note via instant message that he wishes he had this information a couple of years ago. This from a guy who deals with video production on a fairly regular basis, or obviously Sylvester has some enlightening suggestions. Matthew extends the life of his Cube with the installation of a SuperDrive. This month's desktop pictures are still shots of Quartz Composer models created by Futurismo Zugakousaku. I'm partial to the fish (not surprising), and I like the Iron Wave shots, too. Definitely check out Futurismo's work. Frisky Freeware is on a short hiatus, but Cortland finds love with Angie, while Chad ponders life outside of work. Matthew plays with Chessmaster 9000--do these Feral Interactive guys have a time machine or something? Chessmaster 9000?!?! Does chess change that much in 7,000 years?--while Eric cleans his iPod with Newer's Clean and Polish Kit. Paul examines an app that should be in every troubleshooting toolkit, Data Rescue II. Miraz Jordan reviews Path Finder 4.0.2, a Finder replacement I hope to get to know better. Finally, Chris puts the X-Slim EL keyboard through the wringer. As usual, this month's issue is available in a variety of flavors.

Command-Tab switches between applications.
Command-tick (`) switches between windows within an application.
Option-Tab, via Witch, switches between windows and applications.

My favorite spam-killing application has been updated, and now kills spam better than ever. Michael has been rocking on SpamSieve's efficiency with each update; I see very, very few false negatives, and no false positives with the app. One updated feature which should be noted is the improved phish detection. That's phish, not phisch, got it? We phisch are more sneaky...

Rob Griffiths has an excellent piece on Macworld regarding the Leap-A malware which could infect your Tiger-based Mac, if, well, if you're either not paying attention or are just stupid. Mark Allan has what should be the obvious, common-sense approach to not getting infected:

1. Are somehow sent (via email, iChat, etc.) or download the "latestpics.tgz" file
2. Double-click on the file to decompress it
3. Double-click on the resulting file to "open" it

...and even then, most users must also enter their Admin password.

You cannot simply "catch" the virus. Even if someone does send you the "latestpics.tgz" file, you cannot be infected unless you decompress the file, and then open it.

Mark Allan is seeking a Mac developer with an Intel Mac to help with an update to ClamXav so it will run on the the new Intel-based Macintosh systems. The one utility it seems I cannot live without on my new iMac Core Duo is James Walker's AutoPairs. A preference pane, AutoPairs will not run on an Intel Mac. I contacted James, and he doesn't have access to an Intel Mac to do further development and testing. I've offered my services as a tester, but if any developers with Intel Macs would like to give James a hand, please contact him. (From a totally selfish standpoint, if anyone knows of a replacement for AutoPairs that works on Intel Macs, drop me a note.)

When I was in seventh grade, I began computer programming classes. First it was BASIC, on Radio Shack TRS-80 systems (affectionately known as "Trash-80s"). Then it was more BASIC and Turbo Pascal on Apple II computers. Lemonade Stand was a game, along with Oregon Trail, we spent our free time at the end of class goofing around with. When my parents bought a used Apple IIe from one of my high school teachers, Lemonade Stand and Oregon Trail came with it, and much joy was had playing them again, as well as in seeing my younger sister happily plugging along on them. Now, Lemonade Stand is back, and ported to Mac OS X. [Via Erik.]

I received an e-mail notification from the Apple Store just after midnight this morning. It told me they had transmitted the shipping info to FedEx for the pickup of the iMac Core Duo I had ordered. At 1:53 PM local time, the iMac was picked up in Shanghai. Thanks to the beauty of the International Date Line, it arrived in Anchorage (that's Alaska, for the geographically ignorant) at 11:54 AM local time, the same day. It has subsequently departed Anchorage as of 1:13 PM local time, and should arrive here on Friday. Yay!

I was actually kind of surprised by the number of applications listed at Open Source Mac I use. I suppose on some level, they are elegant enough that I don't think of them any differently than the commercial software I use.