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

Here’s a quick look at news over this Lunar New Year holidays.

iLife’09 begins shipping

Apple is shipping the popular iLife’09 application suit from today. The latest version which was announced at this year’s Macworld has some new features which will make managing and creating multimedia projects a joy.

iLife’09 is available at Apple Store Online (SG) at S$138 for a single license and S$168 for 5 License Family Pack. Customers who purchase a qualifying new Mac computer or an Apple Certified Refurbished computer on or after 6 January 2009 that does not include iLife’09 can also upgrade to iLife’09 for S$18 (offers ends 28 March’09).

iLife’09 is also available in the Mac Box Set that comes bundled with iWork’09 and OS X 10.5 Leopard at a price of S$288 (S$388 for 5 License Family Pack).

Another Trojan appears, again via pirated software

Intego sent out another alert about another Trojan that is bundled together with pirated copies of Adobe Photoshop CS4. The package that is being distributed contains a clean Photoshop installer, however, the malicious Trojan stays within a crack application that serializes the program.

According to the alert:

After downloading this version of Photoshop, users will run the crack application to be able to use it. The crack application extracts an executable from its data, than installs a backdoor in /var/tmp/, a directory which is not deleted when the computer is restarted. (If the user runs the crack application again, the Trojan horse creates a new executable with a different name; these random names make it harder to ensure safe removal of the malware.) … Since the malicious software connects to a remote server over the Internet, the creator of this malware will be alerted that this Trojan horse is installed on different Macs, and will have the ability to connect to them and perform various actions remotely. The Trojan horse may also download additional components to an infected Mac.

Just take note – you can prevent yourself from all this hassle if you #1 – download and execute files from trusted sources and more importantly #2 – don’t pirate softwares.

A few Software Updates

A few Software Updates is available via the Software Update app:

• iDVD Update – 7.0.3 (29.3MB) (details here and download link)
• iLife Media Browser Update – 2.0 (3.8MB) (details here and download link)
• NVIDIA Graphics Update 2009 (3.21MB) – improves cursor movement with DisplayPort enabled Macs, and HD playback quality on machines using newer NVIDIA cards (details here and download link

Local 9-year old writes iPhone app

Meet the world’s youngest iPhone developer. Lim Ding Wen of Singapore, who recently turned 9 (not a typo), has written an iPhone app called Doodle Kids that allows you to paint on the iPhone using shapes like triangles, circles, squares made up of random colours and sizes.

More on Ding Wen at the The Singapore iPhone Guide