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Rob LeFebvre - page 74

Remove Those Pesky Default Apps From The Dock For Fun And Profit [OS X Tips]

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OK, maybe not profit.
OK, maybe not profit.

After I wrote a tip on removing icons from the new Mountain Lion Dock a while back, I got a few questions from readers who weren’t quite able to make it work.

Cult of Mac reader, Diane, emailed and said, “well, it sounds good…..But none of your suggestions work on my computer. when I let go, it still zooms back. when I trash it, it still zooms back. when I right click there is no option to remove it from the dock.”

Without knowing the specifics,of course, I cant diagnose the problem perfectly. I do think, however, that I might have an answer to this.

Injustice: Gods Among Us Gets New Characters, Lobo, Red Son, To Beat On Each Other With

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251778-Lobo1

Injustice: Gods Among Us, developed by NetherRealm and published by Warner Brothers, just updated on iOS today with new characters, including fan-favorite Lobo, the main man alien space-biker with an attitude and a huge cigar, along with Red Son characters Superman, Wonder Woman, and Solomon Grundy.

The fighting game is one of the few that gets it right on touch-based devices, bringing the console game (available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) in fairly close form to Apple’s mobile operating system.

Quickly Create New Items In Evernote 5 For The iPhone, iPad [iOS Tips]

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QuickNotes

The latest version of Evernote for iOS includes a new Home screen and Quick Notes buttons, both of which make creating a new note in Evernote super quick and easy.

Now, you can create notes with the Quick Notes buttons, which helps bypass the typical way of tapping into a notebook, hitting the plus button, and then filling out the details.

Here’s how to jump right in with these new buttons, creating new notes right on your iOS device quickly and efficiently.

Customize The Way Stacks Look And Behave In The Dock [OS X Tips]

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Stack Dock Customize

If you’re using Stacks in the Dock, either the built-in ones for Documents and such, or your own, like the Recent Items Stack, you might want to customize the way the Stack looks and behaves.

In Mac OS X Mountain Lion, at least, and very likely earlier versions of OS X, you can have your Stacks appear as a grid, a list, or a fan. You can also have OS X choose the best view for you, depending on how many items are in the Stack.

Here’s the quick way to change the view of any Stack in your OS X Dock.

Tim Cook Cheers Apple And Avoids Product Details At D11 [Roundup]

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I really have nothing to share with you, but Apple is awesome!
I really have nothing to share with you, but Apple is awesome!

Apple CEO Tim Cook’s interview this year at AllThingsD’s D11 conference started off with a cheerleader vibe, who said that Apple was not in trouble. He re-iterated that Apple continues to be a market leader, sold 85 million iPhones and 42 million iPads last quarter, and has seen drops in stock prices before.

“From my point of view, over my long tenure at Apple, not as CEO,” said Cook, “we’ve always had competent rivals. We fought against Microsoft-still fight against Microsoft, particularly in the PC space.”

He continued to address the question of Apple stock declines.

“If you look at the stock,” he said, “which is a lot of what people focus on, the stock price has been frustrating. It’s been frustrating for investors and for all of us. This too is not unprecedented.”

Talk quickly turned to Apple TV, a topic Cook avoided as much as possible, saying that of course Apple was still interested in the space, that there was a “grand vision,” and that he didn’t want to say much else.

Tim Cook: Apple Should Be The Catalyst For Tax Reform, ‘We Don’t Use Gimmicks’

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Seriously, the IRS lets us do all sorts of things.
Seriously, the IRS lets us do all sorts of things.

In his interview today at the AllThingsD D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded to questions from Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg about Apple taxes. Relating his time with the congressional subcommittee this past week, Cook, said that he felt strongly about how the company was portrayed by lawmakers.

Cook said that he wanted to be a catalyst for a discussion, coming to the hearing with a proposal rather than a defense, one for a revenue-neutral and major overhaul of corporate taxes nationwide.

Cook said that he felt simplicity was good, and how Apple approaches everything. The current tax system, he said, results in a two foot high tax return every year. When asked what he would like to do with it, he replied, “I would suggest we gut it.”

Tim Cook To Be Interviewed At D11 Conference Tonight

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Tim Cook at the D conference last year.
Tim Cook at the D conference last year.

Tim Cook’s appearance at the AllThingsD conference (D10) last year was his first as the main man in charge of Apple. He talked about Apple’s role in the invention of the tablet form factor, the increaseing relevance of the Apple TV, and cleverly avoided other topics. The highlights of his chat can be found online, as well.

This year, he returns to D11, kicking off the conference with another interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.

Create and Manage Evernote Reminders On Your iPhone Or iPad [iOS Tips]

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Evernote Reminders

I really enjoy Apple’s own Reminders app, especially as it integrates with Siri. Recently, however, Evernote has added its own Reminder system. As I use Evernote for a ton of my daily tasks, I thought it might be something to try out.

If you’re looking to remind yourself of the things you keep in Evernote, or are just looking for an alternative to the Reminders app in iOS, here’s how to create and manage them in Evernote for iOS.

Add Recent Or Favorite Items Stack To The Dock [OS X Tips]

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Dock Stacks Recent Apps

The old rainbow Apple menu had a function that let you find recent documents, along with the ability to place folders in it for quick and easy access. This was replaced in Mac OS X with stacks, a visual way to do a similar thing, but from the Dock. You can drag a folder into the right hand side of the Dock and have it open as a Stack, of course, but did you know you could get a list of Recent Apps, Documents, or Servers, as well as Favorite Volumes or Items as a Stack, as well?

You can, with a little Terminal magic. Here’s how.

Apple Seeds Yet Another Pre-Release OS X 10.8.4 Build To Devs

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Rather seedy of Apple, don't you think?
Rather seedy of Apple, don't you think?

Apple has just posted a new pre-release developer seed for upcoming OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4, Build 12E55.

In the notes accompanying the seed release, which includes Combo (comprehensive) and Delta (just changes) update installers, Apple notes the same focus areas as the last few seeds: Wi-Fi, Graphics Drivers, and Safari. This seed, though, also has Windows File Sharing, a new addition to the list since the last seed, build 12E47, which was released at the beginning of this month.

Could this rapid release schedule mean that 10.8.4 is getting closer to actual release to consumers? As this is the sixth developer release of 10.8.4, and 10.8.3 went through 13 different seeds, the answer may be a qualified no, as Apple tends to iterate on its dot releases fairly often and consistently.

Source: Apple Developer Center

Grab Five Bucks And Play ‘Skyward Collapse’, A 4X Strategy God Game That Fights Back

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Build and manage a floating continent while everything fights against you. Sounds like a good weekend.
Build and manage a floating continent while everything fights against you. Sounds like a good weekend.

God games tend to be pretty similar: build a little city, tell the inhabitants what to do, and watch them do it. Not in this game, though.

Skyward Collapse is a fantastic mashup of a 4X strategy game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) with a god-game (Spore, Black & White, Civilization). Your task is to create and populate a floating continent called Liminith. You get to create gods, creatures, and artifacts from Norse and Greek myth, and keep them from killing each other off until you’re summoned home by The Master. This will definitely be harder than it sounds.

Frugal Readers Can Access Free Sample iBooks On The iPhone And iPad [iOS Tips]

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apple_edu_ibooks_video_heading

With iBooks on your iPhone or iPad (or iPad mini, my favorite reading device), you can download electronic books from the convenient privacy of your very own iOS device. You never need to enter a bookstore again (sorry, Barnes & Noble!), making purchases of guilty pleasures and important intellectual tomes equally simple.

A real bookstore, though, lets you browse through the books before you buy them. Heck, you can pick one off the shelf, riffle through the pages, and even (gasp!) read some of it without paying for the book. iBooks has a way to allow you to see inside a book before purchasing it, as well, and I can’t believe I keep forgetting that the feature is there.

If you’re like me, and constantly forget about sample iBooks, here’s your reminder.

Make Your Mac Send Sound Output To Your Giant HDTV [OS X Tips]

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Audio through HDMI

At work, I use a big Acer monitor connected to my Macbook Air via an HDMI dongle from Moshi and an HDMI cable. For quite some time, I was content with having the sound come out of the Macbook Air, which I have set up just to the left of the big monitor as a second screen.

But the other day, since I have the huge TV in my office, the rest of the staff came in to preview a promotional video we’d done for our agency. The tinny sound of my Macbook Air speakers wasn’t enough. I wanted to hear it out of the TV.

This is what I did.

Matchmaker Added To Tinder, A Real-Life Social Networking Introduction App

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Tinder

Have you ever wanted to introduce two super interesting people from different circles of friends, but never really knew how to go about it? Tinder, a new app that helps you discover new people around you in real time, has just updated with an added feature: Matchmaker.

“Introducing two people, whatever the purpose, can be time consuming and often times socially awkward,” says Sean Rad, CEO of Tinder. “Matchmaker gives you an extremely easy and socially acceptable way to make that introduction, while furthering Tinder’s vision to be the platform people use to meet new people.”

Slide On The Dotted Line To Riffle Your Way Through An iBook [iOS Tips]

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Riffle me this.
Riffle me this.

When reading an iBook on your iPad or iPhone, you typically tap the right side of the page to go forward, and tap the left side of the page to go backward, right? If you want to skip to a different part of the iBook, you can tap on the table of contents button in the upper left and tap to the chapter you want to go to.

How do you quickly navigate more than one page forward or backward, though? With a real book, you just flip through the pages until you find the one you’re looking for. In iBooks, you don’t riffle through pages, but you can navigate quickly and visually to other portions of the book.

Easily Open A Second Finder Window From The Same Folder [OS X Tips]

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Second Finder Window

Typically, when you hit Command-N while you’re in the Finder, you’ll get a window for the folder you have set in the Finder’s Preferences dialogue. But what if you want to open two copies of the same folder on your Mac, to move stuff around in sub-folders when in icon view, for example? If you want to open two copies of the same folder on your Mac at the same time, simply do the following.

Analyst: Don’t Plan To See An iWatch Until Later In 2014, But It Will Probably Use Biometrics

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Not a real product, yet.
Not a real product, yet.

Hoping to see an Apple-branded smart watch this June at WWDC? How about next March at MacWorld/iWorld?

Don’t hold your breath, says Ming-Chi Kuo, a KGI Securities analyst.

Kuo tells investors that Apple might not have enough resources to make an iOS compatible with such a new form factor, especially given Apple’s probable current iOS 7 efforts.

Categorize And Manage Your Larger iBooks Library With Ease [iOS Tips]

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iBooksCategories

Is your iBooks library starting to outgrow those beautiful skeuomorphic wooden bookshelves that Apple provided for you? Have you purchased way too many Star Wars novels, only to find them crowding out your beloved Jane Eyre collection?

Well, there’s a simple way to manage an epic, ever-growing iBook collection, of course (why else would I be writing this), and here’s how.

Take Over The World From Your Mac To An iPhone Or iPad With Conquist 2 [OS X Tips]

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Conquist 2

I’m a long time Risk player, with a penchant for grabbing up Australia or South America first, then blockading the heck out of them while I focus my expansion to the rest of the map from these well-fortified positions.

While there is a fantastic Risk game for the iPhone, there’s not one for the Mac, let alone one that plays on both platforms. Checking out Conquist 2, then, a Risk-style conquer the world game, seems like a no brainer, since you can purchase it for Mac and/or iOS, making it the perfect cross platform multiplayer game for fans of Risk.

Check it out.

Microsoft Needs To Hire Jonathan Ive, Because The Xbox One Is Just Plain Fugly

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Where do I put the betamax?
Where do I put the betamax?

Ok, so if you’ve been paying attention to the gaming space today, you’ll know that Microsoft unveiled its new gaming console, the Xbox One. This next generation console is going to play video games, control your TV (sort of), and act as a DVD/Blue-Ray player. It’s got a Kinect motion sensor box on top, which can not be disconnected, and the console won’t play Xbox 360 discs.

This is all well and good, and represents a step forward in Microsoft’s quest to own the living room, even though a lot of us don’t have the time, space, or extra cash to spend on a huge entertainment hub these days, anyway. That’s really not what bothers me, though.

The Xbox One is just uglier than anything I could have imagined.

Heck, my ten year-old son, not a maven of design in any way, saw pictures of the new Xbox, and chuckled. “Why is it bigger than the Xbox 360?” he asked. “It looks the same, just more square.”

Which really made it all hit home for me: design matters. The case design of the Xbox One is firmly rooted in the past. Which makes a lot of sense if you consider the reveal today, full of the same games and the same brands with better graphics.