OnLive is a company that has been claiming to do the seemingly impossible -- they plan to set up a sort of "cloud gaming" console, where instead of hardware in individual houses (like we have now; you buy a console for your home), they'll have hardware over the Internet, and stream your game to you like watching television. All of the processing and coding will be done on a remote server, but with signals flowing from your controller, it'll seem like you're just playing Xbox at home. It all works in theory, but in practice, Internet connections aren't solid or stable enough to send commands and full HD video back and forth without enough lag to make things unplayable.

Still, without actually releasing a product so far, OnLive claims they can do it, and now they're claiming to do it on the iPhone as well. AppleInsider reports that at a recent event in New York, OnLive showed off the same game service running on "2 iPhones, a tv, and a computer" simultaneously, with gamers on all the devices able to communicate and watch each others' gameplay. CEO Steve Perlman admits it's a "tech demo," but doesn't go into detail on what that means (it could simply be a demo running separately on the devices, to show what it would be like, or I've heard of OnLive events where the server is sitting in the room next door). And of course, there's no date or information on an actual release yet.

OnLive's service definitely sounds possible someday -- as Internet connections get faster and hardware gets even cheaper, it's not a stretch to think we'll eventually move the heavy processor lifting to another location, leaving much tinier consoles and PCs taking up space on our desks and TV stands at home. But so far all it seems they've got is an idea (and the money that excited financiers have put into the project). We'll have to believe it works when we see it.

From time to time we have shared hidden settings in applications which can be used to "tweak" an app's behavior, such as forcing Snow Leopard's dictionary to reuse the same window or make the print dialog expanded by default. These settings are normally changed using the Terminal.app which can be daunting to some.

Secrets is a (free!) preference panel which has collected a bunch of these settings and made changing them as simple as checking a box or choosing from a drop-down panel of possible choices. It includes settings for about 40 different applications, from Apple applications such as Mail, iCal, iChat, Finder, Front Row, Keynote, DVD Player (and more) to third-party applications including Adium, Audio Hijack Pro, BBedit, EyeTV, VMware Fusion, and TextMate (just to name a few). Some applications have a lot of hidden settings, and some have only one or two.

If you see a setting but don't know what it does, click it and Secrets will show a brief explanation (these are also available on the Secrets website, but they are easier to read in the preference panel). If you change a setting which requires you to restart the application, Secrets will tell you, and even give you a "Quit This" button. (It's usually best to make these changes when the app isn't running.)

Unfortunately at least one of the secret settings from 10.5 doesn't seem to work in 10.6. That is, the setting to turn HelpViewer into a regular (instead of floating) window. There may be others.

I'm off to explore and see what new goodies Alcor (the developer of Secrets, who you may also know as the creator of Quicksilver) has uncovered.

Thanks to the recently-revived Hawk Wings site for bringing this to my attention. If you use Apple's Mail.app, Hawk Wings is a great site for tips and information.

Update: We seem to have taken down the Secrets website (oops!) but you can download the preference panel from a mirror (zip) (166kb).

The folks behind the popular Aurora Feint series of iPhone games have decided to share their work creating a "social MMO" system on the iPhone with other developers. They've just announced a system called "OpenFeint," which other devs will be able to license and use in their own games. OpenFeint will supposedly allow a developer to put together a multiplayer community in an iPhone app, complete with profiles, news boards and chat, in under an hour. They're also providing a server for developers to use, so devs won't have to host their own server software -- they'll just have to make their client work with the existing system.

Wild. It sounds like they're just making the systems they've already developed in their own games available to anyone who wants to use them. Right now, they're looking at a private beta (interested devs can sign up on their site), and eventually the service will be free for a limited number of users, with certain costs as the userbase grows.

The cynical side of us wonders if there's a catch in there somewhere -- presumably, all of the users in OpenFeint will keep their information on the Aurora Feint-owned server, so we'd guess there's a chance that at some point in the future, they could use that list for less-than-honorable actions (Steve Demeter's Onyx Online plan is another service that aims to be platform-wide, which seems to have similar risks). But that's just us being paranoid -- taken at face value, this just seems like one team of indie developers opening up what they've already done to help other devs. Very cool.

Wherefore art thou, Push? Macworld has gone in search of the much-awaited iPhone feature that would let applications get their own notifications even while not necessarily active (so apps like Twitterific could have a little red number on them showing the number of unread tweets, and so on). But the Push system was "pulled" (still makes me laugh) from the 2.1 firmware during the beta phase, and as you probably know by now, it's still not on your iPhone.

Unfortunately, there's no official news on the subject (Apple hasn't canceled the service completely, as far as we know, but would they really tell anybody if they did), but Macworld has a few ideas: it could be that Apple has abandoned the system, thinking that it didn't really help as much as they thought it would, or Apple is still working on it, or Apple is working on something even better. Which one of those you decide is true probably depends on what you think about Apple in general, so we'll let you make your own guesses on that.

But we will say this: we're near the end of the known roadmap for the iPhone, and people are already talking about a new version of the hardware. If we don't see an update on Push in the next refresh, it's probably likely that the only thing the notification system will be pushing is daises.

Apple released Security Update 2008-007 for Mac OS X Leopard and Tiger users today. The update addresses many specific areas of the Mac OS, including: Apache, ClamAV, CUPS, Finder, and more. A full list of the areas affected by the update can be found on the Apple support website. The update is available for the following systems:

• Client systems running Leopard
• Server systems running Leopard
• Client systems running Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Intel)
• Client systems running Mac OS X 10.4.11 (PPC)
• Server systems running Mac OS X 10.4.11 (PPC)
• Server systems running Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Universal)

You can get the update by downloading the installer package from the Apple support website, or by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update).

Continue reading for a change log for this update.

Multiple sources are repeating Stuff.tv's report that Apple is planning to bring the Nike+ system to the iPhone and iPod touch. Nike+ is of course a special kit, originally made for iPod nano, that will record the distance and length of a walk or run -- you stick the little sensor in your shoe, and it works as a timer and pedometer to record personal workout stats.

Stuff also reports that in addition to bringing along the sensor system, the new Nike+ system may also be able to take advantage of the iPhone's and touch's wifi by sending stats from the sensor directly to Nike's online database,where a new "Coach" system will help you schedule runs and activities.

Sounds pretty amazing. Of course, this is only the beginning of the kind of "life management" software that we'll see coming out of the SDK. Stuff suggests that your iPhone will help you know when go to out and for how long, but of course we know that by the time June comes around it'll be able to do a lot more than that.

Chris at Trichech.us has written up a short guide (and included a useful little AppleScript) on how to run GTD in VoodooPad, the get-it-down quick application that we love so much here at TUAW.

Basically it revolves around a series of tags-- if you have a task that needs to be done in a certain context (such as home or office, or even as specific as "at the computer" or as general as "thinking"), you just tag it with @ and then whatever the tag is. When the script is run, it grabs all of the tagged lines, and combines them all on one page, so you have an at-a-glance look at what needs to be done where. And you can even date items, and see them placed on the "Actions" page as well.

The big problem with me and any GTD plan is just that I tend to be so picky-- if a system doesn't work exactly the way I want it to, I tend to get lazy and start ditching it for good old pen and paper again (which causes me to fall back into the same old gaps). But Chris' system looks solid enough to use without a lot of configuration, and yet adaptable enough that I can shape it to my own mind. If you've got VoodooPad (and if you don't, why not) and you're on the hunt for a GTD system, give it a try.

[ via Gus Mueller ]

AppleHound has posted a list of all the (supposedly) reproducible bugs they could find in iPhone 1.0. There's 68 in total, and they range from various system hangs (the Phone app will hang if you start a sync while editing a contact photo) to many different UI/Usability bugs. Some of the usability bugs are a little iffy if you ask me-- many of them, like the "bug" where photo albums with less than 20 images don't display an actual number of images, seem to be "working as intended" (because why would you need an image count when you can easily see how many images are there?), and others have already been shot down according to the Apple HIG.

But on the other hand, I can't really fault AppleHound for being such sticklers. First of all, this is a cell phone that costs $600, and you should get what you pay for-- quibbling about interface quirks now means there's a much better chance of getting them fixed in a future firmware update. And second, this is Apple we're talking about. While other cell phone companies get complaints about call reception and service outages, these are complaints about tiny, half-a-second visual inconsistencies. Heck, I love my Razr, and the screen goes nuts without reason almost daily. There's nothing wrong with holding Apple to a higher standard, and maybe if Apple is kept on their toes with the iPhone, hopefully other cell phone companies will find themselves with their feet held to the fire as well.

Thanks, Leonard Nimrod!

iSlayer has released v4.1 of their killer iStat pro widget for monitoring system performance and statistics right from within Dashboard. In this new version, the team has added a new Fire skin (pictured, and apparently a mod of a much-requested skin from the previous v3), support for monitoring temps of S.M.A.R.T.-capable hard drives, better network change detection, support for 30 new temperature sensors in Intel Macs and even updated fan support for iBook users.

As usual, iStat pro is provided as donationware and should be available via its own update system if you already have the widget installed, or from iSlayer's site.

The crew over at iSlayer have been busy releasing major updates to their killer system monitoring widgets, and not a moment too late for this year's Apple Design Awards (entry deadline is April 23rd). Earlier this month we missed a major upgrade and UI overhaul to iStat nano, bringing the compact system monitoring widget to v2 and adding a ton of new features.

With the release of what almost looks like an all-new version of iStat pro v4, however, iSlayer has brought a consistent, uniform UI to both widgets. While I agree that you should probably sit down and take a deep breath before reading through the extensive list of changes, the big-hitters include: support for the battery meters in bluetooth keyboards and mice, instant update for things like network changes and disk mounting, a choice between memory and CPU usage in the process panel, as well as drag and drop re-ordering of sections inside the widget, allowing you to customize the layout to your heart's content.

That isn't all though - go check out the huge list of changes for either of these widgets and consider showing iSlayer some donation love for all the stellar work they've done on two of the inarguable kings of system monitoring widgets for Mac OS X.

We've mentioned Mac Pilot - a powerful Mac OS X tweaking and optimizing utility - before, as it's a great piece of software for bending nearly every aspect of the OS to your bidding. While Koingo Software typically offers a 15 day trial for Mac Pilot with a license going for $19.95, MacZOT has a 50% off deal today that knocks the price down to $9.95. That's a heckuva deal, but in true MacZOT form, it's today only, so get a move on and try Mac Pilot out if you haven't already.

iSlayer, makers of the istat widgets we're all such a fan of, has just announced 7 new Dashboard system monitoring widgets, as well as a full iStat application (call me crazy, but I think these guys like keeping an eye on their systems). The new widgets more or less cover the same ground their iStat nano and iStat pro widgets do - they just take on the individual tasks of monitoring everything from CPU, memory, wireless, battery and even temperature performance.

The standalone iStat app offers a bit more customization options, as well as the ability to make it float above other applications or even stay at desktop level, so it can't get in the way of anything else you're doing. It also features a more standard Mac OS X preferences window, including a pane which states that Growl support is coming soon (for Growl cliffnotes: it's a system-wide monitoring utility through which 3rd party apps like Transmit, Quicksilver and - soon - iStat can display notifications of things like completed tasks).

All of these widgets and the new app are, surprisingly, donationware, and available now from iSlayer's website.

Unlike Windows, OS X is great at taking care of itself. Built in periodic maintenance such as cron jobs (a holdover from the FreeBSD on which OS X is based) and on-the-fly disk defragmentation of the journaled file system make OS X essentially self sufficient when it comes to keeping itself running smoothly, so much so that many users never even consider running third party maintenance tools.

However, for older systems and systems in special usage cases such as computer labs, the built in tools aren't always enough to stop system slowdown and other issues. That's where programs like Yasu come in. Yasu, standing for Yet Another System Utility, is a donationware utility designed for administrators of large groups of systems and allows easy running and automation of cache and log cleanup, permissions repair, and other similar activities.

YASU 1.3.9 fixes some early issues with Intel/PPC compatibilities, and is availalbe from the developers site.

If you still aren't tired of yet more iPhone rumors, here's a fairly juice one that's fueled by the crafty digital sleuthing of an AppleInsider reader. By dissecting the latest iPod firmware update, the reader found references to "t_feature_app_PHONE_APP" and variables such as "kPhoneSignalStrength", "prPhoneSettingsMenu" and more. To further fuel the fire, it's unlikely that this code has anything to do with the Motorola phones as they use an entirely different operating system. If you're interested in seeing the rest of the findings, including references to an iPod-based search application and an iPod keyboard, check out this AppleInsider forum thread.

Engadget is betting that we could see this now-infamous iPhone as soon as WWDC, beginning Monday August 7th, 2006. I guess time will only tell if Steve pulls an Apple-branded phone out of his jeans any time soon.

Amit Singh (the same guy who hacked the 'book motion sensor), author of the newly released "Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach," has made an expanded version of first chapter of the epic 1700 page tome available online as a free PDF download. Entitled "A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems," the piece covers the entire gamut of operating systems that Apple has ever shown the least bit of interest in since its birth 30 years ago.

Weighing in at 140 pages and 3MB, the chapter delves pretty deeply into the technical aspects of Operating Systems, and might be a bit dense for some less tech savvy readers. I haven't yet read much more than the first few pages yet (other than skimming), but I can tell this will be an interesting and invaluable read that will give me a better grasp on OS X by showing me where it has been.

Via MacUser