Intel is reportedly investigating a compatibility issue involving the iPhone and certain chipsets, according to CNET News. A number of users have reported that iTunes 9 for Windows is able to recognize the iPhone, however the device cannot sync with certain machines utilizing Intel’s P55 chipset and motherboards from certain manufacturers….

The mailbags were full this week, folks, and John and Dave do their best to tackle everything that came in. Voicemail, email, and Twitter messages lead your favorite geeks through fixing Mail.app sounds, opening files with different apps, sleep and battery advice, what locum is, and more Mac and iPhone Tips than you can shake a stick at! Subscribe today, it’s free!

Thursby Software Systems has announced ADmitMac 5 and DAVE 8, two updates in the company’s line of Mac networking products. The apps are designed to connect Macs to Windows networks, enabling bi-directional file and printer sharing. The latest versions of both ADmitMac and DAVE provide multi-processor and multi-threaded optimizations for Appleís newest Snow Leopard operating system, in both 64-bit and 32-bit modes, along with continued support for the older v10.5 OS….

In this week’s episode of The Apple Context Machine, Jeff and Bryan discuss Microsoft’s retail store opening in Scottsdale, AZ, the turf war between Apple and Palm Pre over third-party iTunes support, and the iTablet as an Ebook reader.

Filed under: Software, Snow Leopard

Most of us here at TUAW jumped aboard the Snow Leopard bandwagon immediately after receiving our upgrade disks — and I mean immediately. We didn’t bother to check out what apps would or wouldn’t run, and could have cared less about compatibility with scanners and printers or anything else important like that. No, we just dived into the lake before determining whether or not it was shallow, full of piranhas, or contained hydrochloric acid. That’s just us, though — we like to be able to tell TUAW readers what to expect, good and bad, when a new OS version is delivered. Our friends at Download Squad, however, must still be a little queasy about making the leap, since they posted a quick app review today for SnowChecker.

SnowChecker is a free Mac application that does one thing — it tells you whether or not your applications will run under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. SnowChecker performs a scan of your hard disk for apps, then compares the list of found apps against compatibility info stored at snowleopard.wikidot.com. It displays the the results, noting which apps are OK, which might have slight compatibility issues, and which will be totally hosed under Snow Leopard. SnowChecker uses a simple green, yellow, red color scheme to pass along the information to you, and often provides quick notes telling you about workarounds or updates that will help get all of your apps working smoothly.

If you’re a bit on the shy side when it comes to doing upgrades, SnowChecker can make you feel a lot better about making the jump to Snow Leopard.

TUAWSnowChecker will help you make the jump to Snow Leopard originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Following the recent release of Tweetie 2.0, developer Loren Brichter is almost ready to launch the next update, v2.1, which adds a variety of bug fixes and several new features. The app will support the new-style retweets, along with geolocation information, according to a preview posted by TechCrunch. Both features will only work with the select accounts Twitter has enabled for the additional functionality….

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Irene’s Spirit [US$1.99, iTunes Link] puts a fortune telling spirit into your iPhone or iPod Touch (with the exception of the first generation iPod touch) as long as you’re running OS 3.0.

Forget the Magic 8 Ball or Ouija Board. That’s kid stuff. Irene doesn’t use a 20-sided die or easily pushable planchette to give you an answer. Her answers come from the other side. The other side of what I’m not so sure, but who cares when she is dead accurate. She will make you wonder if ectoplasm will void your warranty.

I had my son ask Irene a question and he totally lost it when she told him the name of his dead grandfather. After two more passes, he got skeptical and figured out what was happening. I should have stopped while I was ahead.

Yes, it’s an illusion.

I was very impressed with the best tutorial system I’ve seen in any app. Being an instructional designer, I know that chunking instruction and requiring feedback periodically is the best way of transferring information. Irene’s Spirit is a textbook case of how to get it right.

With a bit of practice, operating the illusion is easy and distracting your audience is helped by lot of vibration noise and weird looking scrolling screens that look like something out of The Matrix.

I thought that it was a well designed, easy to learn trick that will be a hit at birthday parties, but only good for one or maybe two questions before we more skeptical grownups get wind that something’s up. I had a good time with it as a casual app, and really think it’s worth a look.

Take a look at this video and see Irene in action.

TUAWWho you gonna call? Irene’s Spirit haunts your iPhone or iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the iPhone platform has proven attractive to game developers, e-books have begun to dominate the latest apps, according to data collected by Flurry. From August 2008 to August 2009, most of the new apps were released into the Games category. Starting in September, however, the Books category took the lead for the first time in the App Store’s history….