I love food. In most cases, I don't eat to survive, I only do it for the pleasure I can get, and best thing is when I cook something myself. Well, this may be almost outdated, but here's a weekend offer you shouldn't miss - MacGourment Deluxe, only for $34.95!

Usually, this program can be purchased for $44.95, so having a 30% price cut ain't that bad, after all, don't you think? I know for some of you MacGourmet Deluxe may sound like something new, so here's what the official page is saying about it...
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"MacGourmet Deluxe helps you create and edit recipes, make wine and cooking notes, easily browse your entire recipe collection and build your own custom lists for categories like appetizers or desserts. You can even publish your recipes to your .mac account or your own blog. Find recipes on the web and easily download them to your collection. Like the “feel” of a recipe card? MacGourmet can print on index cards too. Export shopping lists to your PDA or plan your meals through iCal integration. Even make a cookbook! Tiger and Leopard compatible. EXCLUSIVE MARINER PROMO - $34.95 UNTIL 1/31/09!"

You got that, right? If they would only come up with a version able to cook your meals for you, that would be awesome, but until then... I guess you should hurry up and grab it now, with or without the price cut. After all, eating is something we all gotta do, crisis or not, so why not make it all with style, like a true gourmet? :)

First of all, I have to tell you that I got it all a bit wrong - today, we're going to talk about one software update for the iPhone, and one for the Mac. Anyway, everyone's going social these days, so I think my little mistake will be forgiven. After all, iPhone user or not, you must have heard - at least - about Facebook and Twitter, right?

Speaking about the first one, it's enough to say that the iPhone Facebook app, available freely via Apple's App Store has been updated to version 2.2, with major bug fixes including:

1. Timestamps - While the 2.1 update claimed to fix this, it didn't. This time I had users from the UK and the east coast of the US help me out and confirm that they are actually correct now.

2. Chat now allows you to go offline or back online if you have chosen to go offline from the web. This should resolve the problem many users experienced where they were not able to send chat messages.
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3. Duplicate friends should no longer appear. The 2.1 update also claimed to fix this and didn't, but I have put in place a much better solution this time.

4. Notifications - for many users the app crashed when tapping the notifications tab. This has been fixed, and also the appearance of the Notifications tab has been fixed so it includes all of the details again.

5. After deleting messages from the Inbox, they will no longer come back when you restart the app.

6. The Quotes section of profiles will no longer bug out when the quotes were really really long.

7. Hitting "See All" in the photo browser should no longer cause the app to crash so frequently.

8. The photo viewer is much less flaky, so it is not as easy to accidentally tag a photo.

At last, we have a new version of Twitterrific, a Twitter desktop client for Mac from the notorious Iconfactory. Version 3.2 "has undergone extensive user testing and we’re pleased to report it is now ready for prime time," and features the following major additions:

- Old tweets are marked as read on launch
- All communications with Twitter now encrypted with HTTPS
- Reply IDs added to messages for more accurate conversations
- Fixed several accessibility problems including VoiceOver audio
- Up to 200 tweets are loaded into your timeline

Unfortunately, Twitterrific is ad-supported, so if you want to remove those ads, you'll have to register for $14.95. Well, not all good things in life are free, after all...

When talking about software updates, not necessarily from Apple, I got used to see them showing up, and then being replaced by new ones. After all, that's the way things go, right? Well, not this time, and not for Apple, because only a few days after coming up with a new NVIDIA graphics update, they decided to remove it. Why? That's what remains to be seen...

...if we'll ever find out the real reasons, of course. Anyway, just as a small reminder - about 4 days ago, Apple released the NVIDIA graphics update I mentioned above, and then they made it disappear, 2 days ago. Now, that's a short life for a software package!
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One of the reasons, as far as I can tell, is that the patch didn't manage to solve the blinking/flickering problems various users experienced when using the 9400M graphics processor of the MacBook Pros, but not limited to them. The proof is available right on the official forums, where user volvr wrote "Just installed the new nvidia.patch from yesterday....but flickering goes on!"

At last, here's another serious problem,reported by the user allanlance - "I downloaded the update today and regret that I did. The problem for me is now worse. I cannot use my external samsung 22inch monitor on extended desktop mode, only mirror mode, and that is not helpful to me. In extended mode it goes black for extended times, flicking on occasionally to remind me that its there still."

If only Apple would step forward and say the truth about all this... After all, it's easy to make mistakes, somehow easy to fix them, but it's not that easy to admit the truth.

As most people agree, Apple is a company leading the herd into new realms, discovering new technologies and new civilizations, boldly going where no company has gone before..ehem, I was just getting heated up a bit too much, but here's the story - while Apple is usually ahead of the industry, when it comes to the worsening global economy, they were a few steps behind.

Unfortunately, it seems not even Apple could escape recession completely, since their cooldown has started already, despite the excellent results shown by some of the latest sales reports. After countless years of pure ownage, Apple's retail outlets are finally coming down to earth, when compared to the other retail chains - or what's left of them, considering the recent events...
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According to AppleInsider, "Apple's retail segment represented 17.1 percent of the company's total revenues for the three-month period ending December, down just 0.6 percent from the first quarter of fiscal year 2008. Non-Mac revenues (software, iPods, iPhones, accessories, service) helped offset lower Mac ASPs, rising 11.5 percent."

The above is not that interesting, since the operating margin of Apple's stores went down 17.4 percent year over year, despite the fact that 20.3 was almost the highest in their history.

Just as a final note - as long as estimations go as high as 12 million switchers from Windows to Mac since 2004, I am sure that, for Apple, recession will be almost sweet. After all, there are still plenty Windows users ready to take the big step, and if Microsoft's Windows 7 blows it...

If Nostradamus would see how people are looking at current firmware versions to predict future products, I am sure he would have been amazed. In fact, I don't think we're that far from the day when somebody will dream about some future phones, maybe even the next-gen iPhone. Hmmm, if I recall it well, I had a dream last night, but I can't exactly tell you what was it all about. Anyway, until I will dream about the next-gen iPhone, here's what hidden strings in the latest iPhone firmware revealed...

OK, so here's what to do when you don't have enough rumors to be happy with - mess with some firmware/drivers, you never know what hidden treasures you may find! Look, this time, MacRumors found that Apple's latest firmware release has a tag simply saying "iPhone2,1," and since the original iPhone is labeled "iPhone1,1," while the 3G iPhone is also referred to as "iPhone1,2," things should be pretty obvious... or not.
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Even more, the iPod Touch was introduced as "iPod1,1," while its second generation was internally labeled "iPod2,1." Anyway, the interesting part is that the new iPod Touch came with speaker, volume controls, microphone support and a much powerful processor than the previous model, while the iPhone 3G didn't manage to show up with so many important changes.

To make today's future iPhone rumor complete, here's what "rumor specialists" are expecting - multi-core CPUs, first of all, and maybe even multi-core GPUs! Since I am not crazy about rumors, here's what I would like to see featured in the new iPhone - copy-paste, Apple, pretty please!