Read what Steve Jobs has to say about Flash.

- decided to edit the whole chunk out as I think SJ’s letter need no explanation.

You know the saying – learn as you grow – that is what we at iHeartApple subscribes to and everyday, we find something new about your favorite Apple products, operating system OS X and the numerous applications available. Here are some of the most interesting ones that we found over the last week.

For most people, there won’t be a need to ever dig into the core of OS X, nor open files that we were supposed to see. But what if you were given instructions to open or edit certain files that is hidden in Finder – usually a file that has its name prefix with a period. Previously to see these files, you will need to use the Terminal, familiar with Unix commands to view them. But with Snow Leopard, you can see those hidden files by pressing Shift-Command-Period at any Open or Save dialog windows and pressing the same combination to hide them.

For photographers, there are many applications out there to help you import, organise and edit your photos. From Apple’s own iPhoto, Aperture to Adobe’s Lightroom, to name a few. In OS X, when you plug in your digital camera, Image Capture will start and then you can import your photos. With Snow Leopard, there is an improvement in Image Capture that besides importing your photographs, but also let you choose what default application opens when you plugin your camera. This is especially useful when your Mac is being used by the family with each family member having their own software preference.

And if you happen to use Photoshop CS4 to edit your photographs, you can improve its performance on OS X with these technical article from Adobe … but if is too in-depth for you, there is always this tip.

App recommendation of the week — ClickToFlash

What it does is to keep Flash files from playing until you decide to do so – thus you click … to Flash. This also keeps irritating Flash ads from running without your permission. You have the options to choose which sites or applications to white-list so that they will play automatically – choose wisely.

The advantages of ClickToFlash are numerous. Since Flash isn’t loaded until you specifically ask for it, your CPU usage will stay at normal levels when browsing the web. This has tons of benefits: web browsing stays speedy, your Mac laptop won’t get as hot, and your Mac’s fan won’t come on as often. In fact, we guarantee* that ClickToFlash will quintuple your battery life and that it will protect those precious parts of your body on which you rest your laptop! (*note: not actually guaranteed)

Try it out – it’s free

Site of the week — Finer Things in Mac

As we stated in the beginning of this post – that we are learning more of our Macs and OS X as we use them and this site – Finer Things in Mac – digs deeper and find out all the little tidbits of information and bugs that is on our Macs. May it be a life-saver, or an irritating bug, this site is worth bookmarking just to learn more about your favorite Mac and operating system.

URL: http://finerthingsinmac.com

It’s a slow news day (weekend for the US folks) for Apple fans when almost every news site wrote on Apple-founder Steve Wozniak appearing on American reality game show Dancing with the Stars.

Though we don’t get to see the show here in Singapore, its interesting to see how Woz performs as he carries the torch of geekdom against the rest of the has-beens (ok, not including Jewel and Denise Richards).

More importantly, is he doing the dance on his Segway?

Valentine’s Day apps hits the App Store

Like Christmas and farts, iPhone developers are quick to produce apps for lovebirds to purchase and download specially for Valentines’ Day. Do a quick search and you will find fanciful named apps with almost zero usefulness.

For example Lovetricity (iTunes Link which aims to determine the level of chemistry by placing you and your love one’s thumb on the screen. Or iLuv Bubbles (iTunes Link which makes bubbles appearing on your iPhone screen turns RED and becomes heart shape when you and your lover touch the screen long enough. Or for the cheapskates, you can always send a photo of yourself carrying a bouquet of flowers (with massive 26 choices!) and email it to your love ones with Send-a-Bouquet (Valentines Edition!) (iTunes Link).

Seriously – which would you think will get you a real date? Buying a real bouquet of flowers or using Send-A-Bouquet?

Let me choose what to Flash

That is the premise of this Webkit-plugin clicktoFlash that was developed to let Safari users control when to load and play Flash contents on the web. After you installed the plugin (make sure you scroll down to where it says Download ClickToFlash 1.x here to download the installer and not the source files), whenever Safari encounters any Flash content, a grey box with the word Flash appears which you can choose to click to load and play, or right click to open a contextual menu that allows you to add the site to a whitelist or edit the whitelist which will automatically allows the Flash to run in future.

With this in place, sites that have Flash content will load faster, including those pesky Flash ad banners that are popping out everywhere. Note that as this is a webkit-plugin, ClickToFlash will also work for apps like NetNewsWire that uses webkit to render the RSS feeds.