512 Pixels

Boom 3D, the popular audio app for macOS & Windows, offers an enhanced audio experience system-wide, with all kinds of media like movies, music, games, and more. A zero-distortion volume boost, and instant enhancement of ordinary stereo to 3D Surround Sound, features that can be considered auditory marvels in sound engineering are just basics in Boom 3D. Unlike Apple’s spatialized audio, Boom 3D works with ANY stereo or surround sound content.

The award-winning app that had been introduced to the tech world a decade ago is one of the most popular apps around the globe. Creating the perfect sound profile for any audiophile, the intuitive interface carries many audio functions that are fully adjustable and easy to use.

Boom 3D is equipped with an assortment of features to improve the audio experience on your Mac or Windows PC:

• The 31-Band Equalizer offers an extensive list of equalizer presets along with controls that allow the most serious audiophiles to curate audio with utmost precision.
• The Volume Booster feature lets users increase audio levels past the device defaults.
• The 3D Surround Sound feature obtained from Global Delight’s patented sound staging tech converts any ordinary stereo audio into 3D surround audio. And it works with absolutely any kind of headphones.
• The app also offers personalized volume controls for individual apps allowing users the freedom to adjust volume levels of different apps in one place.
• Some incredibly powerful audio effects that make your music, gaming, or cinematic experience unique and more intense are available on Boom 3D.
• The intensity slider is another feature that provides a precision control over the bass and treble.
• Boom 3D also packs a highly advanced audio player that supports all lossless audio formats.
• Access 20,000+ local and international radio stations & podcasts from within the app.

Boom 3D comes with a free 30-day trial, so you can try it before you purchase a License!

This week on MPU, David hung out with Jay Miller, who shared some knowledge about the best workflows for video meetings, getting more out of the emerging Craft app and even more uses for a Mac mini.

My thanks to our sponsors this week:

• 1Password: Have you ever forgotten a password? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.
• TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MPU to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.

Paul Kafasis, writing on the Rogue Amoeba blog:

For almost twenty years, we’ve sold our software directly to our customers via our online store. Our fast and secure purchase process has served our customers very well. Since the Mac App Store opened in 2011, we’ve also experimented there. However, despite a decade of feedback from countless developers and users, Apple has made scant few changes and the store remains beset with issues. When you couple the many shortcomings and issues with Apple’s restrictive polices that preclude most of our software from appearing there, the Mac App Store is clearly a poor fit for us. With the removal of Fission, we no longer have any products in the Mac App Store.

Will the last good application in the store turn off the light on its way out?

As The One True John has written up over at MacStories, Reminders is getting a big overhaul with macOS Monterey and iOS 15. Like Notes before it, Reminders is becoming a powerful application for those who want more than just the basics.

I’m all for it; I think these additions are just fantastic. I really just have one last low-hanging fruit: I’d like the app to be able to show a badge for tasks due Today and not just Overdue ones.

If you work on the Reminders team and want to make it way more tolerable for people like me, check out FB9162936.

My thanks to Thord D. Hedengren and his newsletter, Switch to Glass, for sponsoring the site this week. Switch to iPad isn’t just for those who have made the switch from a traditional computer to a more versatile one. It’s a newsletter — and a website! — about getting the most out of your iPad.

Supporting Switch to iPad costs $5/month or $50/year, but 512 Pixels readers can try it free for 14 days, no strings attached, using this link. The site, however, is completely free, so do check that out too.

Last week, I wrote about the first email sent from space, and how there was a discrepancy in what date has been reported for the event:

So where’s the mystery in all of this? Well, according to NASA, Apple, and Guinness Book of World Records this message was sent on August 9, 1991. STS-43 took place from August 2 to 11 that year, so I feel confident the date the message was sent is indeed August 9.

Despite this, I’ve seen it reported several times that August 28, 1991 is the date in question, including the Computer History Museum. I suspect this is the source often used, leading to the wrong date being published in multiple other places. I’ve contacted the museum with my research and will update this post if they get back to me with clarification.

I am happy to report that the Computer History Museum responded to my email containing my research, and have updated their entry for this event to reflect the correct date: August 9, 1991.

This is the power of investigative journalism, I suppose.

This week on Connected:

September is here, and that means iPhone and Apple Watch rumors are heating up. Stephen and Myke go through what’s new on that front, cover some cool new Mac accessories, share regrets about Nest and kick off National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code CONNECTED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code CONNECTED to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.
• Hullo: A simple, natural pillow designed for comfort. Try it for 60 days.

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you already know that St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital holds an important place in my heart. My oldest son Josiah is the reason:

In a couple of months, he’ll be turning 13. Many parents of pre-teens will tell you that’s probably a miracle in and of itself, but Josiah is special. When he was just six months old, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

To be honest with you, his diagnosis feels like it was several lifetimes ago. It’s hard to keep track of how much he’s been through between surgeries and physical therapy and chemo and MRIs and feeding tubes and speech therapy and on and on and on. Cancer doesn’t give a rip about what you had planned; when dealing with a tumor, you’re on its turf most of the time.

Josiah made it through. He’s no longer a cancer patient; he’s a cancer survivor.

That’s thanks to the work being done at St. Jude.

When we first arrived, they already had all of his case files from our local children’s hospital. They had a plan to beat his brain tumor, and that’s what they did — without charging my family a single dime for any of it. In fact, in the 12 years we’ve been a St. Jude family, we haven’t paid anything for his care. They saved his life, and they did it without putting financial stress on what was at the time a very young family.

This work is possible thanks to donors from all around the world, and that’s why each September, I talk and write about St. Jude. I can’t help myself; when you’re given such an amazing gift, it must be shared.

This month, you’ll hear about St. Jude across the Relay FM family of podcasts, and from 12-8 PM on September 17, Myke Hurley and I will be co-hosting the third annual Podcastathon for St. Jude on Relay FM’s Twitch channel.

We’ve set our goal for this year’s campaign at $333,333.33, and are already at over $80,000 raised! If you can give anything, I’d love for you to donate to this amazing mission.

As always, thank you.

This week, an old Q&A-style Apple Support document:

Are there problems with connecting an external SCSI hard drive to the Macintosh Portable? I have a Macintosh Portable with an internal 40MB drive. When I tried to connect a 45MB external drive, the Macintosh Portable refused to boot. The “Sad Mac” icon came up with the error code: 0000000F 00000002.

The Macintosh Portable can access and use any external SCSI device that a Macintosh Plus can access. There may be an issue with the SCSI driver on the hard drive and compatibility with the Portable boot ROMs, but we do not have any information on this problem.

Ron Amadeo has written a real tale of woe for Ars Technica:

Google Talk, Google’s first-ever instant messaging platform, launched on August 24, 2005. This company has been in the messaging business for 16 years, meaning Google has been making messaging clients for longer than some of its rivals have existed. But thanks to a decade and a half of nearly constant strategy changes, competing product launches, and internal sabotage, you can’t say Google has a dominant or even stable instant messaging platform today.

The iPad is a truly magical piece of glass. It’s the primary computer for many. That’s why Thord D. Hedengren started Switch to iPad, a weekly newsletter about making the switch to a better computing life.

Switch to iPad isn’t just for those who have made the switch from a traditional computer to a more versatile one. It’s a newsletter about getting the most out of your iPad.

It isn’t just a newsletter anymore either; Switch to iPad now has a new home on the web. The website is free and updated by Thord several times a week.

So far, Thord has discussed things like note-taking, developing and designing on an iPad, email apps, games, and a lot more. At the time of writing, there are over 60 issues of Switch to iPad sitting in the archive. That’s more than 60,000 words about the switching to the iPad.

Many of those words are free to read, but the majority requires a paid subscription. Supporting Switch to iPad costs $5/month or $50/year, but 512 Pixels readers can try it free for 14 days, no strings attached, using this link. The site, however, is completely free, so do check that out too.

Take a look at Switch to iPad, read a couple of issues and if it’s your cup of tea, consider a subscription.

Starting with a pet project for Steve Jobs, all the way to a modern, web-infused set of applications across multiple platforms, iWork has expanded into a suite of tools more than capable of meeting almost anyone’s needs. This week on MPU, David and I talk through Keynote, Pages and Numbers, giving tips and comparing them to office suites offered by other companies.

My thanks to our sponsors:

• TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
• Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MPU to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.
• Electric: Stop stressing over scattered devices. Get a free pair of Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones when you schedule a meeting.