to the current iPad we know and love.

Angry Birds, Carcassonne, Flight Control, Instapaper, and Reeder all make my personal hall of fame choices.

What are some of your favourite apps?

Be sure to have a complete backup (Time Machine or something else) of your photo library before doing any sort of upgrade, but especially this one it seems.

There’s a tip on Macworld involving correcting the permissions on your iPhoto library that seems to fix the problem until Apple issues a bug fix.

But of course, every AboutThisMac.com reader already does at least one, if not two, regular backup of their Mac right?

This allows anyone to publish an ePub document that can be read in the iBooks app on an iPhone/iPod touch/iPad. Check out the support document for details on how to export it properly.

Via Macrumors.com.

For the person that’s new to Mac/iPhone, hopefully there will be a few nuggets of information that you didn’t know before. If you’re an experienced Mac user, then there will likely be nothing new to you there — though you’re welcome to submit a quick tip of your own if you’d like.

Indie+Relief is not only a great way to help out with the relief efforts in Haiti — it’s also a great list of the huge variety of indie software available for the Mac. If you’re new to the Mac and haven’t dipped your toe into the huge ocean of great independently developed software, this is a great place to start.

Buy any of the software listed today (January 20th, 2010) and help out the relief efforts in Haiti.

Here’s a few of my picks:

• Acorn is a great alternative to Photoshop and stands on it’s own as an image editor
• Billings is a great app to do any sort of billing out (freelancers) in just about any field, not just web/design work.
• Birdfeed is an iPhone Twitter client that I’ve heard good things about.
• Delicious Library 2 is an amazing cataloguer of your stuff: DVDs, video games, books, toys, etc. It comes with a web cam barcode scanner that is so fun to use.
• Ego is a great looking web analytics app for your iPhone that I’m trying very hard to resist buying.
• Fetch is one of the better FTP clients for Mac. If I wasn’t already a card-carrying Transmit fanboy I’d be all over this one.
• iFart Mobile — just kidding. I can’t recommend this one. (What is that smell?)
• Instapaper Pro for the iPhone. I’m so close to buying this but haven’t used the free version enough to justify it. Yet.
• Marsedit is a desktop blogging app. If you’d prefer to write your blog without having to worry about the internet until you’re ready to publish, this one is for you. Haven’t used it in awhile but continue to hear great things about it.
• Nota is a tool for musicians, like me, who can’t remember the major-4th chord of the 5th pentatonic scale when inverted in G-minor 7. Or something like that. Haven’t bought it yet but only just heard about it.
• Postbox is an alternative to the Mac’s built in Mail program. I tried this out in Beta and loved the look and feel of it, I just couldn’t bring myself to switch.
• Soulver is, according to Marco, a great calculator replacement for either your iPhone or desktop calculator.
• Tapedeck is almost worth the $25 just for the user interface. It’s a great, simple audio recording tool for your Mac.
• Tweetie is my personal favourite iPhone Twitter client. Set the bar with version 1 and raised it again with version 2.

Any of your favourites that I’ve missed? Leave a comment with your feedback!

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And if you find it interesting and helpful, I’d highly recommend you look into becoming a full fledged member of Don’s community. Lots of great tutorials and information to help you on your way to becoming a Mac genius!

Currently these are the benefits Apple lists to having a MobileMe subscription:

• Mail, Contacts and Calendar syncing from your Mac(s) to your iPhone to the web
• MobileMe Gallery that allows you to show off your photos in a very nice looking online photo gallery
• iDisk storage online — store or backup files with 20GB of storage. You can also access this through an iPhone app designed by Apple
• Me.com web apps including email, contacts, calendars, photos and files. Used with the syncing mentioned previously, this allows you to login from any web browser (Mac or otherwise) and access your information. Any changes made Me.com are synced back to your iPhones/Macs. The web apps themselves perform remarkably similar to their desktop counterparts.

For a Mac desktop, these are some additional benefits:

• Back to My Mac is a feature that has gotten mixed reviews. For me personally, it’s worked as advertised. For others, it’s been hit and miss. It’s definitely a nice idea: wherever you are, you can access information back on your home Mac. On the road with your MacBook Pro and forgot a presentation on your home iMac? Just log in and grab the file without having to worry about VPN settings and having someone at home to send you the file. It works well — when it works.
• Syncing system preferences, dock items, Dashboard widgets and more is another feature, though it’s also hit and miss as to it’s usefulness. For example, syncing preferences from a desktop iMac with a 24″ display to a laptop with a 13″ display doesn’t always work but there definitely benefits to be had.

In addition to that, there are added benefits if you own an iPhone or iPod touch:

• Find my iPhone is a killer feature that is nearly worth the price of admission alone. If you lose your iPhone you can simply visit the MobileMe website and using either the GPS built into the iPhone or the last known WiFi access point of an iPod touch allows you to see on a Google Map where your device is. You can then play a sound and display a message to alert someone nearby to your iPhone’s location. Neat!
• If you lost your iPhone and can’t find it, or someone stole it you can also remotely wipe the iPhone and all it’s data, restoring it to factory settings. Combined with Find my iPhone, these two features make a strong case for MobileMe subscription for iPhone owners

The case for MobileMe is very similar to the case you would make for buying a Mac or iPhone in the first place: it’s simple, easy to use and just works as advertised for the most part. Where it breaks down is you can configure your Mac/iPhone with a lot of free software to do similar, if not exactly the same, things as MobileMe offers you for a yearly subscription. The question for you is whether it’s worth it to pay for that or look after it yourself. I won’t list all the options out there here (watch for an upcoming article or see the comments on this post from AboutThisMac.com readers), but the main one would be using Google’s suite of services (Gmail, Calendar, etc.) and their Sync services. This is what I’ve switched to since letting my MobileMe account expire.

It’s been almost two weeks since making the switch and I can’t say that I’ve really missed much. I didn’t really ever use the Me.com web apps and my use of Back to My Mac was fairly minimal — nothing that can’t be done with a free VNC setup. The syncing ability is something I will come to miss as I make more changes on my MacBook Pro that aren’t reflected on my home iMac. For example, any new FTP sites added to Transmit used to be automatically synced to both computers along with the appropriate user name/password. Now I’ll have to remember to add them manually or look at other syncing options. Two of which I’d heartily recommend are Dropbox and 1Password. When used together, these two apps create a great alternative to MobileMe password syncing.

I’d have no problem recommending MobileMe to people if they actually will make use of the services. Take a look at the features and honestly think about whether you’d use them. There’s alos a 60 day free trial that you can use to see if you like it — though I’m sure once they’ve got you hooked in, you’ll be much less likely to stop using it.

I don’t currently have an iPhone so using Find my iPhone or remote wipe aren’t necessary yet. I have a feeling if I do upgrade to an iPhone I’ll probably end up using MobileMe again — just for the insurance of being able to wipe it remotely and/or find it. Other than that, I can live with using a few 3rd party services to keep everything running.

How about you? Do you think MobileMe is worth the yearly subscription?

Meet Genius Mixes. This new feature searches your iTunes library, finds songs that go great together, and creates multiple mixes you’ll love. All automatically. These mixes are like channels programmed entirely with your music. You may discover songs you never knew you had — and rediscover forgotten favorites.

But after upgrading to iTunes 9, I didn’t see the Genius Mixes in my playlist bar. I found the (now obvious) answer over on MacOSXHints.com:

If you update to iTunes 9 and don’t see the Genius Mixes (even though you have the Genius enabled), simply select Store » Update Genius.

Once the Genius update is complete, the Genius Mixes entry should show in the sidebar.

I’m comforted to note that even Rob Griffiths — THE Mac expert behind OSXHints.com — was stumped by this one as well.