lion - page 3

The first thing I disliked about Mac OS X Lion was the way it changed the Dashboard display. It’s nice to be able to see behind the widgets to the stuff I’m working on in the background. Especially if I’m using a widget like the Calculator, or the Weather, or the Conversion widget to see how much that import from Europe might cost me in US dollars.

Mac OS X Lion, however, puts the Dashboard into it’s own separate space, complete with opaque background that looks like an odd mix of linen theme and bubble wrap. Or maybe a non-skid floor tile from a spaceship? I dunno. Regardless, not being able to see through the background was an issue, until now. I no longer have to launch the stand alone Calculator app to do a quick sum, and can go back to enabling the Dashboard, using the Calculator widget, and dismissing it just as quickly.

Were you one of the people who freaked out about OS X Lion not shipping on DVD? Did you get outraged that the cost of a OS X Lion USB thumb drive cost $69.00, more than double the price of Lion through the App Store? Well, prepare to be incensed, because when OS X Mountain Lion ships, it’ll be a Mac App Store exclusive. That means it won’t even ship on a thumb drive anymore.

Enjoying the Messages beta that Apple released yesterday? It’s fantastic, isn’t it? But don’t get too attached to it, because unless you plan to upgrade to Mountain Lion this summer, you’ll lose the application when the beta ends.

Apple has been introducing high-resolution artwork in preparation for Retina Display Macs since last July, when the company released OS X Lion. And it continues to do so, with artwork from its new Messages beta available at double its normal size.

Apple has seeded a pre-release of Safari 5.2 to registered developers. Following the release of the OS X Mountain Lion developer preview this morning, a new beta of Safari has been made available with browser features from Apple’s upcoming desktop OS.

Namely, Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion introduces the unified, Google Chrome-like address/search bar. There are some other minor cosmetic changes that mirror the Safari version from the Mountain Lion developer preview.

Mountain Lion’s GateKeeper feature is designed to improve Mac security by harnessing the power of the Mac App Store and through a new developer program in which Apple will offer Developer IDs to members of its Mac Developer Program. Those IDs will let developers digitally sign their applications so that Mountain Lion Macs can verify an app’s authenticity and security before running it.

While this may seem like a new approach and an extension of the Mac App Store model, it’s actually based on technology that has been part of OS X since the release of Leopard.

With a quick thumbing of Command+Tab, the built-in OS X Application Switcher is a great way to navigate apps for when your hands are just too busy to leave the keyboard.

One annoyance, though, is that no matter what, Finder is always listed in the Application Swticher, which you may not want to constantly have to be navigating against to go from, say, your e-mail and iTunes. Luckily, for advanced users, removing it from the Application Switcher for good is only a terminal command away.

OS X Lion’s new Launchpad feature isn’t exactly known for its customizability. The whole point is to give Mac noobs more familiar with iOS than OS X a way to effortlessly interact with their Mac, with little drama or tweaking. One of the few things in Launchpad you can tweak, however, is the way your desktop background is displayed on it. By default, Launchpad defaults to blurring it, but if you want to deblur it (or even turn it into a nearly black-and-wite), it’s just a short keystroke combo away.

Apple has issued a set of firmware updates for more of its Macs that were introduced during 2010. These updates bring Lion Internet recovery to the early 2010 MacBook Pro, the mid 2010 iMac, and the late 2010 MacBook Air.

Apple has issued an update to its AirPort Utility application for the Mac, introducing a new user interface that looks a lot like its AirPort Utility app for iOS. It has also updated the firmware for its AirPort base stations, and the Time Capsule.

Now here’s a bizarre headscratcher. A reader’s Mac Pro was upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, then refused to subsequently boot off the Snow Leopard DVD to reinstall the older OS on another drive. Despite many different attempts, for this one Mac it appears perhaps you can’t go home again…

I use Bryce occasionally to produce art for friend’s projects. I just discovered it crashes under Lion. DAZ, the manufacturer acknowledges the problem but has no date when the fix will be made. Thinking I could install Snow Leopard and run Bryce under it, I set up a partition on an external drive and attempted to install SL. Lion was having none of it. I also attempted to boot from the SL install disk. It was also rejected out of hand.

Thanks for any help you can provide,
Mike

Developers have already received several pre-release builds of Apple’s OS X Lion 10.7.3 software, and we had expected last week’s release to be the last one before the update goes public. But it seems there’s still some testing to be done. Apple has seeded yet another build to developers through the Mac Dec Center, this time with the build number 11D50.

Remember that amazing interactive iPhone we posted about a while back that was made up of nothing but CSS 3 + Javascript, with absolutely no image files used for rendering at all?

Yeah, that was pretty impressive. But you know what’s even more killer? How about Roman web designer Alessio Atzeni’s spiritual followup, which emulates Mac OS X Lion’s boot, login and desktop screens using only CSS3 properties, and no image files at all.

Amazing. Check out the full demo here. Steve Jobs was right: who the heck needs Flash?

[via iClarified]

Apple has issued an EFI firmware update to its mid-2010 13-inch MacBook Pro which enables Lion Recovery over an Internet connection, allowing users to reinstall the latest OS X operating system onto their machine without the need for physical recovery media.

If you thought there would be little interest in an Apple event that didn’t include new hardware, think again. Following the unveiling of iBooks 2 with support for textbooks last week, Apple saw an incredible 350,000 textbook downloads in just three days of availability.

Apple’s education event in New York City this morning may see the launch of a new version of the company’s Pages word processor which will feature support for iBooks publishing, and an iBooks application that will allow us to read our favorite titles on our Macs. Furthermore, we could also see the launch of textbook rentals.

I’m with Shawn Blanc. I miss “Save As” too.

With the death of the venerable XServe blade server at the beginning of last year, Apple has essentially abandoned the market for corporate servers. If you want to run a Mac server, Apple recommends the Mac mini with Lion Server, which is only really a viable option for small businesses.

Over at MacMagazine, reader Joseph Arthur had a great idea: why not redesign the Mac Pro slightly so they are stackable?

It’s a cute idea, and I get a kick out of the visual, but two problems: the Mac Pro looks like it’ll be killed off sooner rather than later, and the Mac Pro solution leads to the same problem the Mac mini solution had, in that centers can’t fit the machines in their existing blade racks. Still, pretty ingenious.

As 2011 comes to a close, it’s interesting to look back on Apple’s accomplishments throughout the year.

In this video, Cult Of Mac takes a look back at the top Apple events of 2011.

Wow! 2011 has been one of the most interesting years in recent memory for Apple Inc. Of course the death of Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, stands out as one of the most important events of the year for Apple, but there have been a load of other stories too that have made 2011 a very memorable year for the fruit company. From one controversy to the next, to record-breaking earnings, and new products, Apple has plowed through 2011 with a steady determination to be the best technology company on the planet. Only one device underwent a redesign (the iPad), while other form factors stayed the same. Instead of focusing on making pivotal leaps forward with hardware, Apple’s main focus of 2011 was to fortify their strong foundation in the software game.

Here’s Cult of Mac’s look back on the Apple in the year 2011.

Intuit has announced that its popular finance application, Quicken, will be updated with Lion support in “early spring” of next year. The 2007 version of Quicken for Mac will be updated with Lion compatibility and Intuit promises that it will focus more on Mac development in the future.

Quicken for Mac doesn’t work on Lion because Apple discontinued support for Rosetta apps that are based on PowerPC architecture. The updated version of Quicken for Mac 2007 will finally run natively on Intel hardware.

We’ve been seeing references to HiDPI display modes in OS X Lion for a while now, which has helped cement rumors that Apple will release a Retina Display MacBook Pro, at least, in 2012.

As such, today’s report that Apple left a big reference to HiDPI mode intact in developer builds of OS X 10.7.3 isn’t a big surprise. The functionality can be seen in Finder’s “Get Info” window, and allows you to open a file or app in HiDPI mode, which (while non-functional right now) would presumably user higher-definition fonts, graphics and other UI elements. Retina Display Macs seem like a shoe-in in 2012 at this point, don’t you think?

Sick and tired of seeing the same old linen wallpaper on the login screen every time you boot up your computer? It can get pretty boring after a while. In this video, I’ll show you how to change Lion’s login screen wallpaper to whatever you’d like.

If you’re using your Mac to give a presentation, you might not want everybody to see your messy desktop! If so, you can run a quick command that will hide your desktop icons.

Here’s a neat and simple trick that will slow down scrolling to a nice, leisurely pace — great if you’re trying to read while scrolling.