This is a small collection of software updates that has occurred over the past week that might be of interest to genealogists using Macs as their primary genealogy platform.
It includes security, ebook management, ebook reading software, as well as software that allows those transitioning from Windows to easily work within an OS X environment.
Every Friday or Saturday, I’ll be posting a list of software updates that might be of interest to genealogists.
1Password ($49.99)
Password manager/secure wallet, that allows you to create different (and very strong) passwords for every website as well as working with credit cards, notes, bank accounts, and more. It’s cross-platform (including iOS) and supports iCloud and Dropbox. Version 4.4 brings several major changes:
– Integrates 1Password Watchtower service, which can inform you of when a website is at risk. It will flag your login to that website as vulnerable. You can also check for websites that are known to be at risk through the Security Audit section.
– Improved conflict resolution during syncing
– Other bug fixes and improvements, including Greek localization
Requires: OS X 10.8.4 or later, 64-bit CPU
Download: Mac App Store or main website.
Calibre 1.35.0 (Free)
e-book library manager. Very extensive manager – it lets you convert ebooks between various formats, as well as create ebooks. It also lets you manage ebooks on the various major ebook readers (Kindle, Nook, etc.).
– Improvements/new additions involving spell checking
– Improvements in editing books
– Numerous bug fixes, including in the edit book features
– Improved news sources
Requires: OS X 10.5.2 or later
Download: Main Site
CrossOver 13.1.3 ($49.95)
CrossOver allows you to run Windows applications (and even some games) on yoru Mac. A lot of genealogists using OS X for the main platform, may find themselves needing to run a Windows genealogy application or utility, and this is an easy way to do so.
– This is a minor update – it adds support for some videogame features, fixes a bug in the self-updating feature, and improves the Russian and Romanian language locatlizations.
Requirements: OS X 10.6 and later
Download: Codeweavers (trial version available)
Firefox 29.0 (Free)
This is a major upgrade to the popular web browser (see the website for full information)
– New customization mode
– New menu for browser controls
– New/sleek tabs that fade when not active
– Firefox Sync through Firefox accounts
Requirements: OS X 10.6
Download: Mozilla.org – Firefox
Kindle for Mac (App is free, some content is not)
– An app for reading Amazon’s Kindle ebooks on a Mac (including the extensive genealogy collection of ebooks available on Amazon.com).
– Support for Retina Display
– Miscellaneous bug fixes / performance improvements
– Support for China’s Marketplace
Requires: OS X 10.6 or later
Download: Amazon.com or through Mac App Store
Apache OpenOffice 4.1.0 (Free)
Open source office suite, with a spreadsheet, word processor, presentation manager, and drawing program. This is a maintenance release, and considered a minor feature release, with the following changes (see the full release notes https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ooousers/aoo+4.1+release+notes ):
– WriteR: comments/annotations are now possible on text ranges instead of just text positions (per the Open Document Format (ODF).
– Support for iAccessible2 (for screen readers)
– Writer: In-place editing of Input Fields
– Draw: Interactive crop feature for selected Graphic Objects improved
– Loading/Importing of 3D Charts improved
– Improved graphic modifications/filters for vector graphics
– Other improvements for graphic data/content
– Outdated Mozilla code replaced with more modern/secure Network Security Services (NSS) libraries.
– Support for Bulgarian, Danish, Hebrew, Hindi, Norwegian Bokmal, and Thai
– Updated dictionaries in some languages (Egnlish, German, Gaelic)
Requirements: OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit CPU
Note #1: Support for OS X 10.6 and below as dropped.
Note #2: Mac users need to be aware that it may trigger Gatekeeper
Download: OpenOffice.org