You might read this and think that this site has become a marketing arm for 1Password. No, it’s not but yes, I love this application that much. It integrates so well with OS X and I use it every day to keep track of all of my passwords, frequent flyer clubs, etc.

I was browsing through the iTunes store last night when I discovered that the 1Password folks are giving away the Pro version of 1Password for the iPhone (iTunes Link). This is a temporary offer good only until December first so, if you have an iPhone and want to keep your passwords sync’d between devices download this application today.

Alfredo Padillia over at The Apple Blog have begun a discussion around whether or not web based software will lead him away from a Mac. I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few months and I used to think the same thing. Now I’m not so sure.

Cloud computing, the idea of running all of your applications on the web, sounds like a great concept. The author’s notion of cloud computing is that all of the applications he uses are browser based. His examples are GMail, Google Reader, Remember The Milk, etc. While these applications are indeed running “in the cloud” I think it’s the wrong way to look at things.

The problem with web applications is not that they aren’t powerful enough to get the job done, it’s that they don’t operate efficiently together. I tried using the Google suite of applications. They are nice, but god forbid if you want to integrate them into anything else. I tried for months to come up with a solution for synchronizing my Google Address Book, GMail and GCal to my iPhone. There are some hacks to do it but in the end, I settled on using Spanning Sync with Address Book and iCal to keep my Mac client apps in sync and iTunes to sync those to my iPhone. Another great example is bookmarks. If I need to go to a specific website, am I going to go the the delicious website first or will I use the delicious plugin for Firefox. The plugin has a much tighter integration.

Where cloud computing shines is the idea of a ubiqitous data store. I like that I can drop ont a friends PC and in a pinch, check my calendar, or email. It doesn’t mean I still miss the convienience of interoperability between these applications. Standards based data formats will give me the best of both worlds and when we get there, cloud computing my finally get some legs.

Everyone running Snow Leopard should start seeing their System Update notifications popping up. Yes, it’s time for an update.

From the Apple Support Website:

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

• an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
• a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
• Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
• a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
• issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
• the reliability of menu extras
• an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
• an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
• Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
• a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
• an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
• Safari plug-in reliability
• general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
• an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

Has everyone made the switch to Snow Leopard? I’m still holding out. If you are too, we’d love to know why.