You can also buy the Snow Leopard Family Pack for Rs. 2,900 or the Mac Box Set Family Pack for Rs. 13,500.

Snow Leopard Server Edition will retail for Rs. 28,100.

Update (10 Sep, 5:30 PM IST) – Snow Leopard is now available across Imagine stores in Bangalore

Here some tips for working with text in Mail.app.

a.) If you select a block of text while reading an email, and hit Command+R to reply to it, Mail.app will automatically “quote” just the selected text in your reply.

b.) You can paste selected text from a web site or another document into your email in 3 ways:

1. By using Command + V – which will paste the selected text with its original formatting

2. By using Command + Shift + V – which will quote the selected text in your message

3. By using Command + Alt + Shift + V – which will strip off all formatting from the selected text and paste it using your message’s formatting (this is like pasting plain text into your message).

Google Maps now supports  “Get Directions” on its map application both on the web and the iPhone. I have tested a few routes and they are fairly accurate bar a few shortcuts I know of. Please test it in your cities and leave us a feedback if it works for you.

It works well for showing car routes but could not list any known public transport routes.

Google maps on iPhone (driving across multiple cities)

Google maps on iPhone

Google Maps Directions in India

Hope you won’t have to ask for too many directions in new places now!

iWork’09 is also expected to be here on Wednesday and will cost roughly Rs. 4,320 as well.

The refreshed MacBook White is also available in Bangalore now. At around Rs. 56,580, it was always the choice for the buyers on a budget. With the recent upgrade to NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, it is absolutely the best value for money. No wonder then, it is doing quite well in the market here. I wish it still came in Black. Most cities in India tend to be on the dusty side and the White MacBook picks grime in no time.

I recently ran into two programs that come close to Preview’s handling of PDFs – both of them free and open source.

The first one is called ArCHMock and can be downloaded from their google code page.

My current favorite however, is a product called iChm – mostly because it allows me to search the index of a CHM file as well as search for a word within the page I am on. ArCHMock seems to unite these two search paradigms (ironically, much like Preview does for PDF files!).

iChm is hosted on google code too. iChm also has a paid ($6.99) version [iTunes App Store link] for iPod touch/iPhone – handy if you want to study those manuals on your long commute!

Download and install MacFUSE: MacFUSE is a google project that enables 3rd parties to extend Mac OS X’s ability to handle different filesystems.

Once you are done, you can upgrade and uninstall MacFUSE from System Preference panel:

Download and install NTFS-3G: NTFS-3G driver is available as a .dmg from macntfs3g.blogspot.com. I’ll recommend downloading the stable release. You’ll be prompted to restart your machine after installation.

That’s it! Now each time you connect an NTFS formatted disk to your system, you’ll be able to write files to it. The performance for me was a little slow – especially for large files (I tired copying a 30 GB VM disk to an external 5400 RPM USB 2.0 powered disk and it took close to 2 hours). But you’ll probably not notice it during your day-today usage.

As a bonus, the Disk Utility gets an ability to format disks as NTFS!

However, the site also says -

The simplest workaround I’ve heard of for the DFU issue is to copy one or two of the 10.5.5 frameworks files over the newer ones.

But till a definite guide is not released by the iPhone Dev team, we suggest you update to the latest build only if you have to.

Caffeine – does to your machine what caffeine (of the tea/coffee/Coke variety) does to your body – keeps it awake! Imagine you are watching a long-ish video on youtube – just then your screen goes dim and a little later the screensaver kicks in (or depending on your settings the display turns off). Sure you can go to ‘Energy Saver’ settings on your Mac and adjust sleep settings or you can let Caffeine run in your menu bar.

Caffeine’s UI is as minimal as they come. When you run it, a cup icon shows up on your menu bar. When the cup is ‘empty’, your usual sleep settings are active. Clicking on the icon ‘fills’ it with coffee and now your computer wouldn’t sleep.

Backdrop – as the name probably suggests, this application creates a blank window which you can use as a backdrop to take screenshots against. Alternatively, if you have a particularly cluttered desktop, you can use it as a temporary backdrop to help you concentrate on task at hand. You can customize Backdrop to use an image or a different color for your background (I personally prefer a light shade of grey over white).

Smultron – Although I am a dyed-in-the-wool Emacs user, here is one text editor I really admire. I’ve tried several editors on Mac – both free and paid – but this one feels just right. It supports syntax highlighting for practically every language/mark-up I throw at it (including C# and ASP.NET – how many people on Mac would you find working on those for a living ). Its features include a Safari-like ‘find-as-you-type’ mode, splitting a window into two panes, clubbing a set of files into a project, multiple encodings – including robust Unicode support, jumping within a file to function definitions (when editing code files), highlighting matching parans, a nifty fullscreen mode that allows you to edit without being distracted by other windows and numerous others.

In short it is everything that a good Cocoa application on Mac should be and more. Highly recommended!

Clicking on a link in a Web Clip, usually opens a new Safari window with that link. I had a weird thing happen to me after installing the iPhone SDK and the recent Mac OS 10.5.5 update. The links would try and launch Mobile Safari that comes with iPhone SDK’s iPhone emulator, which would crash immediately with the message: “The application MobileSafari quit unexpectedly.”

The same thing then started happening to hyperlinks in my e-mails. It then occurred to me that somehow, my default browser had been set to Mobile Safari. All I had to do was go to Safari’s Preferences dialog and change it to something more reasonable (Safari, Firefox or Opera) and things were fine again.

Minor rant – I find it ironical that to change your default browser, you have to go through the preference pane of another browser (which thereby acts a gatekeeper for other browsers on your system). I think this setting should be a part of the System Preferences pane.

I have been playing this game for almost a month now (can’t say the same for some of the more expensive games I have bought (I am talking to you Super Monkey Ball) and I still go back to Blocked atleast once a day.

Blocked is a puzzle game where the objective is to slide a blue colored block out of the playing area. There are obstacles in the form of other gray colored blocks which you have to move around to get the blue block out. You simply use your fingers to slide the blocks around.

There are 100 levels categorised into Easy, Medium, Hard, Harder and Hardest. I have finished about 80 levels in a month’s time and might take another couple of weeks to finish the game. There is good replay value because you can always pick up an older level and start playing again. If you leave a game in between, it starts of from the point where you left so you can take your time finishing a level.

I have to mention that I was stuck on level 64 for a very long time (almost a week) and also asked a few friends if they could solve it but it turned out to be a really tough level. I finally gave up and googled for a solution but nothing came up. Finally I looked up the creator’s site and in the FAQ section I found this -

• Is it possible to beat every level?

Sure is! I did it again just last week!

• Even level 64?

If you must – The trick is to get the two vertical blocks above the blue block, as seen in this pic. If you can get to the layout below, you’re only a few moves away!

Drop us a line if you like more reviews/suggestions for iPhone/iPod touch applications. We would love to know the apps/games you have been using on your device!