With more than half of new Mac purchases going to those new to Apple, one app developer has taken the challenge of teaching the novices. Available now in the Mac App Store, Learning the Switch to Mac from "It's About Time Products" is a comprehensive overview of basic (and a few more-advanced) functions on the Mac.

Learning the Switch to Mac offers guided courses in performing many of the simple tasks that escape users coming over to Mac from the PC environment. You can learn how to utilize your Address Book, including printing labels; take advantage of the Dashboard, including how to download more widgets; as well as how to effectively use your Dock, including the Downloads folder.

Other topics include iCal, Keyboard Shortcuts, Spaces, Mail, Safari, Spotlight, System Preferences, and setting up your Network and Time Machine.

Each lesson is lead by a friendly looking dude who gives you several tasks to complete within each function. Completing these tasks will help novice users get the hang of their new Mac. Though the tutorials do not yet cover things like basic troubleshooting, many of the basic usability questions we receive here at MacFixIt are covered.

"It's About Time to Learn the Switch to Mac" - Demo from ItsAboutTimeProducts on Vimeo.

Learning the Switch to Mac is available for a limited-time launch price of $.99 in the Mac App Store.

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Originally posted at MacFixIt

Last.fm is introducing a charge for the streaming functions in its mobile app. We had a chat with Matthew Hawn of Last.fm to find out what the change means.

The various versions of the mobile app stream a personalized music feed of your favorite music and related recommendations. Up until now, this has been free, but it will soon be chargeable. The ad-free subscription costs $3 a month.

The radio service will become a paid feature on February 15. The Web and desktop versions of the radio will still be free. It will also be free on Xbox Live and Windows Phone 7 phones. New subscribers also get a free trial, letting you stream 50 songs before you have to pay.

Read more of "Last.fm to charge for mobile app" at Crave UK.

Originally posted at Crave

Want to back up your iTunes library and/or transfer it to another PC? iTunes itself has a backup option, but it requires blank CDs or DVDs. Bleh.

CopyTrans TuneSwift will back up your iTunes library to the media of your choice (including network folders, flash drives, and external hard drives), or let you transfer it to another machine--Windows or Macintosh.

(Just to clarify, TuneSwift itself is for Windows only, but it includes an option for transferring iTunes libraries to Macs. Pretty neat!)

The program will cost $20-30 when the next version is released, but right now you can get TuneSwift free of charge. Just download and run the CopyTrans installer, then choose TuneSwift from the list of available programs (it's the fourth one down). Once it's installed, click the Activate tab and paste in TUNESWIFT-FOR-CNET.

The program couldn't be much simpler to use. Just choose what you want to do--transfer, backup, or restore--and it walks you through each step of the process. (See the video below for a walk-through of the transfer process.) It even supports incremental backups, a nice perk. The only time-consuming part is the backup itself, which in my case took nearly two hours. (My iTunes library turned out to be a whopping 132GB, a shocker to say the least.)

For me this couldn't have come at a better time, as I'm just getting ready to do a system wipe/restore--and iTunes is always a tricky part of the restore process. Now I can easily put iTunes back the way it was.

This freebie offer ends March 15. After that, TuneSwift will continue to function--but only until iTunes gets updated again. After that, you'll have to pay up if you want to keep using the software. Based on what I've seen so far, it might just be worth it.

If you know of a better iTunes backup/transfer solution, talk it up in the comments!

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Mozilla has a new plan for Firefox in 2011: Turn the crank faster.

The organization is set to deliver Firefox 4 in coming weeks. And according to a draft Firefox roadmap, Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, proposed releasing versions 5, 6, and 7 in 2011, too. This fast-release ethos, pioneered in the browser world by Google's Chrome, means smaller changes arrive more frequently.

For comparison, Firefox 1 arrived in 2004, Firefox 2 in 2006, Firefox 3 in 2008, with Firefox 4 slipping past a hoped-for 2010 ship date and likely to slip past another date set for the end of February.

The faster schedule is designed to make Firefox more competitive by getting new features into users' hands faster. According to Beltzner:

We succeeded in re-energizing the browser market, creating competition and innovation which benefits Web application developers and users alike. This newly competitive market has presented challenges for the continued success of Firefox, and in 2011 we must ensure that we can deliver a product that is compelling to users in order to continue to be able to demonstrate our vision for the Web. To do this we must:

• provide a browser that is stable and responsive,

• build a product for modern desktop and mobile hardware,

• provide a simple set of features and experiences to help users get the most out of the Web,

• support Web technologies that are desired most by application developers and users,

• deliver those technology improvements quickly to our user base.

It's not easy turning the crank faster, though.

"Changing the way we ship products will require the re-evaluation of many assumptions and a large shift in the way we think about the size of a 'major' release," Beltzner said. "The criteria for inclusion should be no regressions [new bugs], well understood effects for users, and completion in time for a planned release vehicle."

Firefox's share of worldwide browser usage has remained largely flat, with Chrome and Safari steadily picking up usage in recent months. Chrome, which often serves as a vehicle for Google to promote favored new technologies, moved last year from a quarterly release cycle to an even faster one with twice that pace.

Originally posted at Deep Tech