Brand: MacNews

Apple has posted the spoof video that opened this week’s Worldwide Developer Conference on YouTube.

Dubbed “Backstage,” it features Saturday Night Live alumnis Bill Hader as a director tasked with producing an opening musical number for the developer event. The parody features celebrity cameos, an elevator full of Tim Cook look-a-likes, nodes to popular apps such as Angry Birds, and more.

In a blog post (http://tinyurl.com/nbmog2s), Twitter says it will be effectively removing the character limit on Direct Messages between users sent through the social network. Previously DMs shared the same character limit as tweets which max out at 140 characters.

Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today. However, direct messages have a character limit of 10,000 starting next month.

Synium Software (www.syniumsoftware.com) has launched MacFamilyTree 7.5, an upgrade of their genealogy application for Mac OS X. The new version allows you to create Family tree books, browse places of your family history in Apple Maps or access original documents through FamilySearch.

You can now create, share and print family books. Family books include all important data contained in your family tree and supplements it with informative and graphically impressive charts, statistics, and reports. Numerous templates and styles are available to help you create family books quickly.