As the above graph shows, the two operating systems’ web market share almost perfectly mirrored each other during the period from August 2011 to February 2012. This suggests that perhaps OS X lost its web market share to iOS directly. The data for the study was gathered by Chitika, an advertising-centered analytics company. The authors of the study theorize that the simultaneous growth of iOS and decline of OS X in terms of web share may have to do with the lower price point of Apple’s iOS devices compared to their computers. They also suggest that the reversal may be a sign of the increasing mobilization of users’ lifestyles.

What do you think? Do you spend more time browsing on your phone or tablet than on your computer? Let us know int he comments.

Apple also announced iBooks Author, a Mac app that lets users create ebooks that include the full range of iBooks 2’s interactive features. It includes the ability to import videos, Keynote presentations, HTML or Java code, and create widgets like those found on the OS X dashboard. The software also makes it easy to create glossaries for ebooks. Clicking on a word creates a glossary entry for it, and allows the user to enter a definition.

Also part of the announcement was a new project called Life On Earth, an “attempt to recreate the biology textbook” by E.O. Wilson, professor emeritus of biology at Harvard University. The book will be available in the iBookstore chapter by chapter. The first two chapters are available now for free, while other “aggressively priced” chapters will be coming later.

Textbooks in the iBooks store are aimed at the high school market to begin with, and will be selling for $14.99 or less. Apple also announced partnerships with Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which account for roughly 90% of the textbook market. Each company is starting with a range of basic textbooks available in the iBookstore

Apple also announced an app for iTunes U, its program for making university-level curriculum freely available. The service is currently used primarily for delivering lectures. The new app is meant to turn iTunes U into an entire course management platform. The iTunes U app allows users to track assignments, watch or listen to lectures, take notes, and read assigned materials. Six schools, including Duke, Stanford, MIT, and Yale, have had early access to the new iTunes U and used it to create over 100 online courses. What’s more, while iTunes U has, as the name suggests, been primarily focused on higher education, it is now available for K-12 schools as well.

All three apps – iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and iTunes U are live in the App Store right now, and all three are free. iBooks Author is a Mac app, while iTunes U is a universal iOS app. iBooks 2 is also a universal app, just as it has always been, but the textbook features showcased today are only available on the iPad.

Pages has been overdue for an update for awhile now, so a new version of Pages (and iWork in general) is not at all unlikely. Likewise, users have been clamoring for iBooks on OS X since iBooks was announced with the first iPad in 2010.

Whatever Apple has in store is bound to be interesting, though. The announcement is scheduled for 10 AM Eastern time. Check back soon for more details.

This weekend I was wondering if it would be possible to sync my Nokia 6680 with Microsoft Entourage. Back in my Windows days, I used to sync my phone with Microsoft Exchange using the Nokia PC Suite. Unfortunately, that suite is Windows only. Now, it is possible to run Nokia PC Suite on a Mac using Parallels, but I found that method too much of a workaround, there must be more elegant ways to do this.

Luckily, Apple equips OS X with a syncing tool called iSync. This software supports a lot of mobile phones and other handheld devices, including my Nokia 6680. That’s good news. Now, how to get appointments from Entourage on my phone? This requires a number of steps:

1. Get appointments from Entourage into iCal
2. Connect phone and computer using Bluetooth
3. Do the actual syncing

Let’s start off with step number 1. This step is needed because in the end we will be using iSync to communicate to the phone. Events in iCal are in a format iSync understands, it has no native support for Entourage.

• In Entourage, enable ‘synchronise events and tasks’ with iCal (under prefs > sync services)
• A new calendar will be created in iCal called Entourage, which will contain all Entourage appointments. Note that I needed to restart both Entourage and iCal before iCal was actually updated.

We now have our appointments in iCal, which is a format iSync understands. Next, we need to make our computer aware of our phone. We will be using Bluetooth for this.

• First of all, make sure Bluetooth is on on your phone and it is set to de ‘discoverable’, otherwise your computer won’t be able to find it.
• We will also need to enable Bluetooth on our computer (click the Bluetooth icon under ‘System Preferences > ‘Hardware’ or directly in the system menubar).
• Next, you can either ‘pair’ your computer and phone using the Bluetooth preference panel, or by using iSync. I used the first option, by clicking ‘Set up Bluetooth Device…’.




• Add your phone to the known Bluetooth devices by following the on-screen instructions. somewhere in the process, you will be presented with a number you have to enter on your phone, which is required to enable future communication between the two devices.
• You can also add your computer to the ‘authorised’ devices on your phone, so you won’t have to click ‘yes’ on your phone each time a synchronisation is started. Consult your phone’s manual on how to do this.
• After communication has been set up, you probably have to install the iSync agent on your phone. This is simple ‘click-yes-and-next-a-few-times’ process.

After these steps, a new ‘phone’ icon will be added to the list of devices iSync knows. Click this icon to see what and how will be synced between your phone and computer.

You should now have a working setup, where iSync connects to your phone and syncs the events from iCal to your phone and vice versa. You may need to click ‘allow’ when presented with a security dialog asking you if Entourage is allowed to update iCal.

Now that your phone and computer know each other, you can set Bluetooth on your phone to be ‘non-discoverable’ (but not ‘off’).

If you want to sync Entourage and your phone, launch iSync and click ‘Sync Devices’, making sure Bluetooth on your computer is on.

You can use AppleScript to further simplify this task. There’s a nice script that does just that on macosxhints – don’t just use the one mentioned at the top of the page, but scroll down a little to find a script that utilises a simple utility to enable Bluetooth first if needed, then launches iSync, automatically starts the syncing process and quits iSync afterwards.

Save this Applescript as an application and put a link to it in your dock. Now, syncing your computer and phone is just a single click of the mouse.

It looks like Google finally noticed that making the world’s information universally accessible wasn’t really universal if it ignores a certain percentage of the marketplace. That would be the resurgent Mac platform from Apple.

Like Microsoft and perhaps as equally surprising, Google has a dedicated Mac team working on making products available on the OS X platform. For quite a while, the only nod to the Mac crowd came in the form of the Gmail Notifier for Mac. The utility had just one function – let the Mac user known when a message hit the Gmail inbox.

Gmail Notifier for Mac has been updated since then. That and several applications may be found on a Google portal for Mac software downloads.

“Created by Ryan Brown, an engineer on the Mac team, this site showcases all of the Google applications for the Mac,” Mac product manager Rose Yao posted at the Official Google blog.

Yao also wrote of a new point of presence at Google for Mac devotees:

The announcement there noted how Google now has its Mac team in place. Followers of Google events will recall how Apple named Google CEO Eric Schmidt to its board in August 2006. Perhaps this newfound love and attention for Mac OS X from Google is an offshoot of that event.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Disk Utility

Disk Utility needs to work from a folder, so you first need to create a directory to put your protected files in. I used “secrets” as my directory name, and moved my important files into it. I then invoked (in Terminal):

hdiutil create -encryption -stdinpass -srcfolder secrets foo.dmg

You can also do this with the graphical Disk Utility tool. This will ask for an encryption passphrase, or you could just do:

echo "your passphrase" | hdiutil create -encryption -stdinpass -srcfolder secrets foo.dmg

This creates “foo.dmg” and the passphrase you used is required to open it. If you do that graphically through Finder, you’ll be prompted for your phrase, or you can do it from the command line:

hdiutil attach -stdinpass foo.dmg

Entering the correct passphrase gives you a mounted disk image where you can access your files. By the way, don’t forget to remove the “secrets” directory and its contents.. not much point in encrypting a disk image of a folder and leaving the unencrypted version on the disk.

GNU Privacy Guard

You can download this from http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/. Run the installer, and then at the Terminal command line run:

gpg --gen-key

This asks a few questions, including requesting a passphrase, and generates the files it needs. Generating these will take a fair amount of time – you need patience. You also need your machine to be doing something; I did “ls -lR /” in a terminal window while continuing with my ordinary work. Eventually gpg will finish up:

gpg: /Users/apl/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key 5D604AE8 marked as ultimately trusted
public and secret key created and signed.

gpg: checking the trustdb
gpg: 3 marginal(s) needed, 1 complete(s) needed, PGP trust model
gpg: depth: 0 valid: 1 signed: 0 trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 1u
pub 1024D/5D604AE8 2006-05-14
Key fingerprint = F08A C9DC 53DF AF02 8E50 B683 2A0B 47EC 5D60 4AE8
uid Tony Lawrence (Key for files)
sub 4096g/100D68F5 2006-05-14

For simple use, gpg is very easy. For example, given a file “stuff”:

gpg -e stuff

is all you need. That will ask for a user id (you provided that when you created the gpg keys) and will create “stuff.gpg”. This does not remove “stuff”, so if you are using this to protect files on your disk, remove the original. To decrypt, “gpg stuff.gpg”. For that, you’ll need your passphrase.

For more on gpg in general, see GPG/PGP Basics and for more on integrating GNU Privacy Guard with Mac OS X programs, see Configuring GnuPG (Mac OS X)

*Originally published at APLawrence.com

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A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com