Last year we published a tip showing how web designers could test their website designs on Apple’s iPhone Simulator. Here is another, simpler, tip along those lines.

Many companies today are creating special versions of their website that automatically display for iPhone visitors. Some examples include Amazon, Google, Bank of America, and even our Creativetechs Tips blog.

Turn on Safari’s Developer Menu option and you can easily tell Safari to impersonate an iPhone (or other browser types) when visiting different webpages. It isn’t the same as a full iPhone simulator, but this can be pretty useful for web designers testing custom site designs.

Mactracker is a free utility that maintains detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made. Including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options. The collection also includes information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, digital cameras, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, Wi-Fi Cards/Base Stations, Newton, and Mac OS versions.

For long-time Mac users, browsing through the history of Mac models can be a fun trip down memory lane. On a practical level, this information can be useful when manually compiling an updated inventory of your studio’s computers.

“How do I copy music from my iPod back to my computer?”

This is one of those common questions we get all the time. Typically a drive fails and the iTunes music library wasn’t properly backed up. Or maybe someone wants an easy way to copy music from a friend’s iPod. This week we’ll take a quick look at a number of tools you can use to move music and videos from your iPod back onto your computer:

» iPodRip ($20)
» TuneAid ($15)
» Backstage ($10)
» YamiPod (Free)

In researching this tip, I found dozens of utilities that do basically the same thing. This is by no means a comprehensive list. But if you need to get your music back onto your Mac or PC, read the full tip for mini-reviews of several utilities that do the trick.