OS X
Full category list for displayed posts: OS X, Opinions, Software, Tips & Tricks, Vintage Tech
9:25 am, November 12th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
So it’s nearly the middle of November, which means that those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year should be almost half-way through your novel. Assuming you’ve kept up the daily word count.
Among NaNo writers there’s a thriving subculture of AlphaSmart users.
“AlphaSmart?” you say. “What on earth is that? Doesn’t sound like a Mac.”
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Posted by Giles Turnbull in OS X, Opinions, Software, Tips & Tricks, Vintage Tech | 2 Comments »
5:12 pm, November 9th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Apple has just released the 10.6.2 update to OS X, which includes scores of bug fixes and improvements, including the nasty bug that can delete your data when using a guest account.
The “Guest Account Bug” was the big one, but Apple says the update fixes sundry issues, from Exchange contacts not showing up inSpotlight search to glitchy four-finger gestures. Full list of fixes after the jump.
The update has been eagerly awaited by Snow Leopard users suffering problems from spotty WiFi to constant spinning beachballs.
The update is available through Software Update or can be downloaded as a standalone installer. It’s available in two flavors:
Mac OS X v10.6.2 Update (473MB)
Mac OS X v10.6.2 Update (Combo) (479MB)
The update’s size when downloaded through Software Update can vary depending on your machine and the previous updates already installed.
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Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, OS X | 7 Comments »
5:22 pm, November 4th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Some readers might remember the fuss a few weeks ago, when Snow Leopard came out and people noticed that it did something screwy to the way files behave.
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Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos, News, OS X, Software | 2 Comments »
4:24 pm, November 4th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Last week’s bombshell that Apple’s upcoming OS 10.6.2 update dropped support for Atom processors seems to be unfounded.
The Atom is the chip of choice in netbook hackintoshes, and many speculated that Apple was trying to kill the hackintosh market.
But Stell, the hacker who first sounded the alarm, now says support for Atom is mysteriously back.
“… in the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.”
Posted by Leander Kahney in Hardware Hacks, News, OS X | 2 Comments »
2:27 pm, November 3rd, 2009, Sayam Aggarwal
George Hotz a.k.a GeoHot has released blackra1n RC3, which is an update to a 1-click jailbreak that adds activation options and an add-on blacksn0w, which unlocks latest iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS baseband version 05.11.07. To use blacksn0w, make sure you have this new baseband (check under Settings –> General –> About –> Modem Firmware) and if not, then update to a stock 3.1.2 firmware.
It is pretty easy to use and worked perfectly with my iPhone 3G. Besides the tool, there’s a blackra1n application that gets automatically installed on the iPhone after jailbreak, which gives you option to install Cydia and some other alternatives like RockYourPhone and the ’sn0w’ option to use blacksn0w unlock solution as well.
Please note that if you have an iPhone 2G, you can still jailbreak using blackra1n but blacksn0w will not unlock for you. You must use BootNeuter available in Cydia for that purpose. Also, if you purchased an iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch (any capacity) in October or later, there is a high probability that you have a new model. Blackra1n currently performs only a tethered jailbreak for these new devices, which means you need to use blackra1n every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped.
Here’s see how it works.
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Posted by Sayam Aggarwal in How tos, How-To, OS X, Top stories, iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S, iPhone Apps, iPod Touch | 34 Comments »
7:45 am, October 9th, 2009, Ed Sutherland
If you’re still not convinced about the need for regular backups, maybe talking with some Snow Leopard users will. The Apple support boards are buzzing with reports of Leopard users finding data zapped.
“Users start their Macs up as normal only to find they’ve logged in as ‘Guests’ on their machine – with all the files and data held on their Mac in their own user account seemingly deleted,” according to 9to5.
About 18 percent of Mac users have upgraded to Snow Leopard since its release August 28, we reported earlier this month.
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Posted by Ed Sutherland in News, OS X | 7 Comments »
1:32 pm, October 1st, 2009, Leander Kahney
About 18% of all Mac users upgraded to Snow Leopard in just a month, new numbers from the online research firm Net Applications suggest.
Snow Leopard was released on August 28. Thanks to its low $30 price tag, Mac users are pouncing on it. But a nearly 20% percent adoption rate is fast — by anyone’s standards.
Net Applications estimates market share by measuring the number of visits to a network of sites, recording things like browser and operating system. According to the firm, about 1% of all computer users are currently running Snow Leopard. The firm estimates that 5% of computer users worldwide are Mac users, which means about 18% of Mac users are running Snow Leopard.
On interesting thing to note is the peak in Mac users during weekends. Presumably, people are surfing on PCs at work during the week, and using a Mac at home over the weekend.
Via MacRumors.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Macintosh, News, OS X | 7 Comments »
3:56 pm, September 28th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
OK, recently exhibited at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. (Huge version of this.)
When does an operating system UI element become a work of art? Is it when Artie Vierkant replicates it many times over and makes it into a huge print? Or was it art in the first place?
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Posted by Giles Turnbull in News, OS X, Top stories | 2 Comments »
3:07 pm, September 16th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Snow Leopard can give your Mac a 50% performance improvement when running optimized software, a developer has found.
Running a Mac Pro from 2007, programmer Christophe Ducommun compared Snow Leopard to Leopard while encoding and decoding video with his MovieGate software.
Ducommun is optimizing MovieGate to take advantage of two important new technologies in Snow Leopard: Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. While OpenCL allows powerful graphics processors to perform work for applications, Grand Central Dispatch takes advantage of multiple cores, distributing work among all the available cores.
Together, they apps a pretty big speed bump, according to MacBidouille, which published Ducommun’s results:
Snow Leopard
150 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
70% CPU load for decoding
130% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)
Leopard
104 frame/s for encoding in MPEG-2
165% CPU load for decoding
100% CPU load for MPEG-2 encoding (ffmpeg)
Overall, the optimizations give an overall performance increase of about 50%. Ducommun’s Mac Pro is a 2.66 GHz Quad Core machine with a GeForce 8800 GT video card.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, OS X | 1 Comment »
12:03 pm, September 8th, 2009, Giles Turnbull
Apple has introduced a new system for controlling the way files are opened in Snow Leopard, and some users are very upset about it.
“Apple has made a huge, dumb mistake,” says Ross Carter, a developer whose application, Pagehand, is affected by the change.
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Posted by Giles Turnbull in News, OS X | 23 Comments »
1:01 am, September 5th, 2009, Leander Kahney
All the icons for folders and apps in Snow Leopard are now drawn in glorious 512 x 512 pixels. It’s a step toward making the operating system resolution independent, and perhaps also to make Snow Leopard a touchscreen friendly OS.
But it’s also obviously done just for the art of it. These icons are real beauties. They are full of great details and little surprises. One icon contains the words to a song, visible only if you blow it up to its full size.
Hit the jump for a gallery of hardcore icon porn.
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Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, OS X, Top stories | 69 Comments »
10:20 am, September 4th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Adobe’s Flash is fixed in the Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard update that’s in the hands of a limited number of developers.
The seed updates Adobe Flash to version 10.0.32.18. Snow Leopard shipped with version 10.0.23.1, which is known to be insecure and needs to be patched to close various security holes. (If you’re running Snow Leopard and haven’t updated Flash, follow this link to download the latest version).
Apple seeded the update less than a week after shipping Snow Leopard on August 28. The other fixes seem to be relatively minor. According to World of Apple, which has published the seed notes, the 71MB update includes:
- compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
- an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
- some printer compatibility drivers not appearing properly in the add printer browser
- an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
- instances where automatic account setup in Mail might not work
- an issue where pressing cmd-opt-t in Mail brings up the special characters menu instead of moving a message
- Motion 4 becoming unresponsive
It’s not unusual for Apple to continue working on the operating system after the launch of a major OS update. In the past, the first update has typically been released in a couple of weeks.
Posted by Leander Kahney in News, OS X | 3 Comments »
11:57 pm, September 3rd, 2009, Leander Kahney
You just installed Snow Leopard. Now what?
Here’s the best 10 tips and tricks we found for putting the beast to best use.
Posted by Leander Kahney in OS X, Tips & Tricks, Top stories | 28 Comments »
10:45 am, September 2nd, 2009, Leander Kahney
The British security firm Intego has published a security memo that provides a clear and detailed view of Apple’s new XProtect anti-virus system in Snow Leopard.
There are several interesting tidbits: Apple’s new XProtect system cannot recognize all the variants of the Trojans it is supposed to protect against, for example.
Also, the XProtect system does not spot Trojans hidden inside .mpkg files downloaded from the internet, a major weakness, according to Intego. (Apple’s installer recognizes two types of files — .pkg files for simple packages, and .mpkg files that contain multiple packages to be installed.)
The memo is patently self-serving — Intego sells several anti-virus and privacy packages for the Mac — but nonetheless provides a clear and detailed view of what Apple’s new XProtect system does — and doesn’t do.
The full memo after the jump.
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Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Macintosh, News, OS X, Software | 4 Comments »
1:45 am, September 1st, 2009, Leander Kahney
The more I play with Snow Leopard, the more it looks like it’s designed to run Apple’s upcoming tablet.
Look at Expose in the Dock — the new feature that reveals all an application’s open windows when you click and hold the application’s icon. It’s tailor-made for fingers. Even more convincing is Stacks in the Dock. Hit a folder icon in the dock, and up pops the folder and all its files. Each icon is a big target for your finger, and the window has a big, fat slider for scrolling up and down (no more fiddly little arrows at the top or bottom). Both of these UI tweaks scream ‘touchscreen.’
And then today I discovered an unheralded feature that the minute I saw it, I thought, “Game over! Here’s rock-solid proof that Snow Leopard is designed for touchscreens. This is a tablet operating system.”
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Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, OS X, Opinions, Top stories | 86 Comments »
