macOS

Update: The final builds of 10.8.2 and 10.7.5 were released by Apple on September 19. We have put those builds through the same test and the results can be found here. Last month we performed a series of battery life tests on three Mac laptops: a 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro, 2012 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina…

I downloaded Mountain Lion the day it came out and have been working with it since. I also read a great eBook on my iPad, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Server Review by Wayne Dixon, that has helped me get up to speed on our latest OS. I was also fortunate…

Apple released iMovie 9.0.8 for the Mac on Wednesday with a fix that improves stability when using third-party QuickTime plug-ins. Some users have been experiencing problems where iMovie would crash on launch when plug-ins that add compatibility for video and audio formats that aren't included with QuickTime. iMovie gets a stability update iMovie 9.0.8 requires…

However, I find that most people new to iPhoto, and even many long-time iPhoto users, have stored and organized a substantial number of image files outside of iPhoto into folders on their drives. Typically, the files have resided there for quite some time. iPhoto users recognize that it has it’s own painless method of image organization.…

(Fedora 17 shown left.) Several authors have weighed this week in on the storied path these two OSes have followed. Part of it was defection by talented developers to the Web. Part of it may have been the never ending string of distributions and different GUIs. Part of it was that the Linux community was…

If you know people from many different places around the world, the Contact app’s default country setting may be frustrating. After all, it’s tough to force an address from, say, France into fields meant for the United States. And if you’re printing out mailing labels, you want addresses from everywhere to be properly formatted with…

Thankfully, we have the tools to stop the cycle; all we need now is the will. Creating and managing secure passwords has never been easier, and the risks of failing to do so have never been higher. It was recently discovered that FileVault 2, Apple’s whole volume encryption technology, can be cracked in just a…

The Mountain Lion 10.8.1 update also corrected a problem with playing audio through a Thunderbolt display, fixed SMB server connection issues, fixed a problem where Safari could fail to launch when using Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) files, improved wireless network authentication when using Active Directory credentials, and fixed an issue where the system could stop…

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” — E.F. Schumacher The user interface of Apple’s OS X operating system and its default apps is getting simpler over time. That’s a natural thing…

You’re browsing the web with Safari on your Mac. You come across a page that you want to save for future reference. How do you do this? Or, more to the point, what’s the best way to do this? The answer is not as obvious as you might think. The answer is (as it is…

Just the other day, I had a revelation as I was preparing lecture notes for a class I’m teaching on OS X Lion this coming semester (right as Mountain Lion is coming out. Go figure!). I realized that an alternate view of the Mac System Preferences is actually quite handy. Unlike other user interface features…

I covered using Mail search tokens when Lion came out, but now in Mountain Lion, we can use a similar feature in the Calendar app. (Man, I’m having trouble getting used to not calling it iCal.) This ability makes it much simpler to find appointments using layered searches; for example, you can quickly find all…

The idea behind Power Nap is that there are all kinds of things that may be happening while your Mac is snoozing. You may have new email, iCloud may want to update your contacts, and so on. If the Mac waits until you wake it from sleep, there could well be a flurry of activity…

Last Wednesday, along with Mountain Lion, Apple released updates to the Mac versions and iOS versions of iWork. With this trio of updates installed, any changes you make to an iWork document one device are “instantly available” on the others (a feature I previewed in a Macworld article last month). This is a huge improvement!…

Mountain Lion Downloads: 3 million in four days“Just a year after the incredibly successful introduction of Lion, customers have downloaded Mountain Lion over three million times in just four days, making it our most successful release ever,” commented senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller.Mountain Lion includes several features borrowed from iOS for the…

In any case, there are a bunch of new features to take advantage of. For starters, we can now tweet or use Messages to share cool Web stuff. Also, Mail Link to This Page and Mail Contents of This Page have been combined into one keyboard shortcut and menu item, though you can override this…

iMovie update fixes QuickTime, import issuesiMovie 9.0.7 fixed stability issues related to third-party QuickTime components, improved stability when reviewing MPEG-2 clips in the Camera Import window, and addressed a problem where audio might not be included when importing MPEG-2 content from cameras.The slim release notes for Remote Desktop Client Update 3.6 say Apple added IPv6…

Safari 6 for OS X Lion gets Smart Search FieldAlong with the unified Smart Search Field, Safari 6 also includes Offline Reading List support, Do Not Track support, a new Password pane for managing website logins, and support for the Chinese language Baidu search engine, bug fixes, and more.Safari 6 is available via Apple’s Software…

In the examples that follow, I use Apple’s TextEdit as the prototypical application. Other applications may need to be updated to take advantage of all the new features described here.Documents in the CloudProbably the biggest change to opening and saving documents in Mountain Lion is the addition of “Documents in the Cloud.” For the first…

Mountain Lion hits the Mac App StoreMountain Lion will include several features borrowed from iOS for the iPad such as Notification Center and Reminders, includes system-wide app-level support for Twitter and Facebook, offers tighter integration with iCloud, includes the new iMessages app, Gatekeeper for better app security, and more.The new OS includes system-level iCloud support…

Heads up—I’ve noticed some weirdness if I try to do this when my Terminal window is small enough that the command flows onto multiple lines. If that happens to you, just embiggen your window, and you’ll be fine.Another happy little trick is that you can use Option paired with the left or right arrow key to…

Intego identifies new Mac trojanThe trojan runs on OS X 10.6 and 10.7, and continues to run after system reboots. If the target Mac also has Root access available, Crisis will install additional components designed to hide its presence.“The file is created in a way that is intended to make reverse engineering tools more difficult…

Mountain Lion will support many, but not all, 64-bit MacsAccording to Apple’s Mountain Lion upgrade page, these are the oldest Macs that can make the move: iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) Mac mini (Early…

For those of you who use Chrome or Firefox, this works in those programs, too. This little shortcut is good to remember, as you can use it in other places around the Mac. In document-creation apps (like Pages and TextEdit, and even Mail’s Compose window), those shortcuts mean “jump to the beginning or the end of…