Apple has released iTunes 7.7.1, a minor update to the media playback/purchase and iPhone/iPod sync tool, through Software Update. Apple’s release notes state only that the update ” includes fixes to improve stability and performance.”

Typical problems after iTunes updates include:

• iTunes cannot locate music files, fixes When the issue manifests, any attempts to play some songs are met with error messages indicating that iTunes cannot find a specified file.
• Freezes when connecting an iPod/iPhone If this problem manifests, try deleting the following files from ~~/Library/Preferences/ (your user library preferences folder):

com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist
com.apple.iTunesHelper.plist
com.apple.iTunes.plist

There is a great number of applications that make controlling iTunes even easier like Coversutra…

CoverStream is one of them, it uses shortcuts to bring a small window to control iTunes, but the great thing is that it integrates a small Cover Flow on it!

It has other features like Last.fm integration, showing the currents playing song right on the Desktop and/or your Dock and Apple Remote integration.

CoverStream is available here and is worth trying.

This free application, Stacks In Da Place, is the easiest way to make your Stacks lokk cool.

All you have to do is to drag and drop a Stack Icon, like one of the great creations available here, and it will create a real box with a stack of files in it!

I was waiting for this update so much 10.5.3 was buggy.
The dock used to crash every hour or less sometimes.
The update is available from your Software Update menu.
I’ve heard there are problems with the iDisk, didn’t mount it yet so I can’t confirm.

Tiger users were able to use and download the widget from MacAmour.
But it seems it stopped working.
So here’s the how to fix it, then you’ll never get the “invalid zip code” error message again.
Recently the Leopard Movies widget, which Steve demoed along with Leopard, stopped working in Tiger. Leopard’s built-in Movies widget continues to function, while in Tiger, it gives an error of “invalid zip code.” You can make this widget function once again in 10.4.

Navigate to /Library/Widgets and find the Movies widget. Control-click on the widget and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Then open parser.js in your favorite text editor, and replace all occurrences of A99D3D1A-774C-4914-9E3B-18645117428A with DE7E251E-7758-40A4-98E0-87557E9F31F0 and save. Close any open movie widget in Dashboard, then re-open it. Now it works.

Source: Mac OS X Hints

I was wondering why this time Apple decided to “officialize” the release of an OS X version a year before…
Snow Leopard… The official page is here.
As you can read: “Core Innovation”, the word “innovation” would make you think of new features, but it’s core innovation, so, Apple (most innovative company for many years) used in a very smart way the word innovation to tell us the OS will be the same (”Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard”), but it will receive a lot of improvements (”Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality”).
Then Apple reminds us of the innovation the company bring since 2001 and then “Mac OS X changes more than its spots, it changes focus”, it makes me think that Apple will now focus on Intel processors only.
Another sentence that makes it more than probable that Snow Leopard will only work for Intel based computers: “Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.”
How will OS X give you back valuable hard drive space? By taking of the Universal applications for the system, and replacing them by Intel (only) ones.

So the aim of that page is to officialize the fact there will be a New Operating System; no more PPC support; no new features; optimized system.

A website just revealed the first Snow Leopard’s images.
No new features for this version it seems, the only change that may lead to speculation is a new “32-bit” phrase in the System Preferences Title Bar.

You will also notice Safari 4 beta and the Boot Camp 3 Assistant.
The various applications are listed as Universal - this means PowerPC is still supported!!

Screenshots here.