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While there are a number of media players and audio programs that can be used to play music through your Mac, iTunes being a library and content manager as well as a player that comes preinstalled on Mac systems makes it the most popular option out there. The program offers simple controls for sorting through music, generating playlists, and playing your music, but in addition there are some settings that can be used to greatly improve sound quality during playback.

The first of these is the Sound Enhancer setting in the iTunes preferences, which is activated by going to the … Read more

Nearly three months after its debut on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Google has updated its standalone YouTube app for the first time, adding compatibility for the iPad and iPhone 5.

As part of an update today, the app is now universal and works on the three different screen sizes.

Other additions include support for video streaming over AirPlay, support for URLs within video descriptions, and what Google says are "videos that start faster and play more smoothly."

YouTube was once a built-in application on iOS from the very first iPhone. Apple removed it, along with Google Maps … Read more

Time Machine is Apple's built-in backup solution for OS X that creates hourly backups of all files on the system. Unlike a clone of the drive, the backups are not directly bootable, but they can be used to restore any instance of your OS installation and file structure to the drive. This makes it convenient for restoring data to a recently repaired system, migrating to a new one, or undoing a recent configuration change that is causing problems.

This backup solution is quite useful to have and is easy to set up, but there may be instances where Time … Read more

Security company Intego is reporting the discovery of a new malware package for OS X. The package is a Trojan horse called OSX/Dockster.A, that appears to have keylogging features to record what is being typed on an infected system in addition to remote-access features for backdoor access into the system. When installed, the Trojan attempts to contact the server "itsec.eicp.net," likely to receive instructions for allowing remote access to the system.

As with other recent malware for OS X, Dockster is a Java-based threat that will not run unless you have Java installed on … Read more

Last week Apple released the much anticipated, and delayed, update to iTunes. iTunes 11 has a new look and feel, as well as some new features such as "Up Next." Along with the new look and feel comes new methods of interacting and accomplishing once familiar tasks in iTunes. One of those tasks, managing downloads, isn't as obvious as it used to be.

When iTunes 11 was first released I had a few apps with updates available, so I started the downloads. In the previous version(s) of iTunes you could manage active downloads in the sidebar, … Read more

I love audiobooks. Nothing makes a car ride faster or more pleasant than a good spoken-word book piping through the speakers.

That's why I've routinely championed smartphone-powered services like Audible, Audiobooks.com, Simply Audiobooks, and Tales2Go.

Now there's another app worth adding to your audiobook arsenal: Audiobooks HQ, which gives you access to more than 5,000 public-domain titles -- all for a measly $1.99.

The app connects you with two catalogs: the Globe Radio Repertory and Librivox. The former contains just four works (including "Don Quixote" and "Madame Bovary"), while the … Read more

Apple and Google are very nearly in the same spot as they were six months ago when it comes to Web traffic, a new study says.

Advertising and analytics company Chitika today put out new numbers from a six-month study of U.S. and Canadian Web traffic collected from ad impressions by iOS and Android devices. The main finding is that both mobile operating systems are still very nearly in the same spot as where they started, despite major product launches on both sides.

Apple closed in on 67 percent of the overall Web traffic that Chitika recorded, ending on … Read more

Apple's first big iOS 6 update is one step closer to a public release.

Today the company quietly released the third beta version of iOS 6.1 to developers, another step on the way to sending it out as an update to the general public.

Today's update, which includes "bug fixes and other improvements," comes 21 days after the last beta.

All three beta versions, made available to developers for testing ahead of a public release, have been light on major new additions to the software. Apple typically saves such additions for major releases, but has … Read more

The new iPhone has given Apple a slight lead over LG in U.S. mobile market share, according to new data from ComScore.

For the three months ending in October, Apple stole second place from LG by grabbing a 17.8 percent share of the entire U.S. cell phone market, up from 16.3 percent in the prior three months. LG trailed with 17.6 percent, a drop from 18.5 percent.

Released at the end of September, the iPhone 5 undoubtedly gave Apple the boost it needed to rise up the mobile phone charts. Over the past year, … Read more