Sometimes things aren’t as easy as they could be when you’re using your Mac to plow through the day’s tasks. Cluttered screens and excess clicking become irritating and tiresome. In today’s video, we take a look at five useful Mac shortcuts that can make using your Apple computer even more efficient.
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Ubiquitous cloud storage and editing solutions for your photos are like buses: You wait ages for one, and then two come along at once.
Both Apple and Adobe are going all-in on allowing you to view and edit your photos on any device. Adobe has done this by bringing its Lightroom desktop app to mobile. Apple is doing it by ditching iPhoto and Aperture and starting again with the upcoming Photos app for iOS.
While the approaches are different, they both look rad. And they’ll drive a fundamental shift in the way we manage our photos.
Yosemite is one of the biggest updates to OS X we’ve seen in recent years, bringing fresh looks and a slew of new features. This video takes a look at how Notification Center looks and works in OS X Yosemite, which is resembling iOS 8 more and more.
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With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple is finally showing us its idea of how we’ll compute in the future. Perhaps not surprisingly, this pristine vision of our computing destiny — unveiled after years of secret, patient and painstaking development — aligns perfectly with how we currently use our computers and mobile devices.
The keynote at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month not only showed off a new way to think about computing, based on data not devices, but also silenced pretty much every criticism leveled at the company over the past few years.
Let’s take a look at Apple’s new way of doing things, which fulfills Steve Jobs’ post-PC plan by minimizing the importance of the Mac.
Macs are solid machines, but just like their owners they have a tendency to get lethargic as they age. Launching and switching programs takes longer, simple tasks become arduous, and the dreaded beach ball of doom appears more often than it did when your machine was new. The operating system just starts to feel crufty, and can get worse over time. I see these issues in my IT consulting business regularly.
You may be asking, why does this happen? There are many reasons, but some are more common than others. Sometimes your hard disk (or solid-state drive) gets too full and interferes with normal computer operations. Crashes or misbehaving programs can corrupt the disk directory or application cache files. Remnants from old software may still be running behind the scenes, or you don’t have enough RAM to deal with your OS and workflow.
Is there some sort of tune-up you can do to sort it out? Your tech always tells you to just reboot the computer, but there’s got to be more than that. The good news: Yes, there are some things you can do. And, perhaps, adopt some more-efficient computing practices for yourself along the way.
An overwhelming sense of eagerness overtook me after Apple showed off OS X Yosemite at WWDC. The redesigned interface and accompanying features, like a spruced-up Spotlight and the ability to take phone calls on your Mac, made downloading the beta version too intriguing to pass up.
Little did I know that moments after finalizing the installation, I would encounter a massive problem that would send me on an emotional ride.
Some Apple collectors gather one of every Mac, iPod or iPhone, while others specialize in portables or all-in-ones. Then there are the outliers, the super-collectors who search out the incredibly rare items most people never get a chance to see.
“I’m always on the hunt,” says Henry Plain, a California man who specializes in tracking down impossible-to-find Mac prototypes.
Plain owns some of the rarest, most unusual Apple machines ever produced. These are the speed bumps, works in progress or developer’s editions that the secretive Cupertino company never intended for outside eyes. His vast knowledge of Apple’s production gave him a role in facilitating the sale of the Storage Wars-esque Macintosh collection of Marion Stokes that came to light last month. I like to think of him as Prototype Man.
What’s in Plain’s amazing Apple menagerie? Transparent versions of the Macintosh SE and PowerBook 140. A Mac mini with a built-in iPod dock. Prototypes of the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM), the Power Mac G4 Cube and iDevices too numerous to mention. Even to other collectors — and I have a Mac Museum in my house — his inventory is crazy-impressive.
It’s totally irritating when you’re using your Mac and it slows down all of a sudden. While your computer is obviously doing what you’re focusing on, it can also be working hard on pointless tasks running in the background. In today’s how-to video, find out how to stop this and speed up your Mac in no time.
Despite all efforts to the contrary, email is still the default way to shift files, photos and – yes – mail around the internet. Even when you share a file using Dropbox, the link goes via old-fashioned email. And yet email clients are still awful. They’ve gotten a lot better in the last couple of years, on both iOS and the Mac, but we’re still stuck without a proper task manager that integrates with the native iOS/OS X Calendar and Reminders.
What’s going on?
Cult of Mac Deals has a ton of stellar promotions to offer, and this time around we’re highlighting a bundle that features 10 top apps that will make your Mac happy.
We’re pumped to bring you another The Happy Mac Bundle, one that’s stacked with 10 apps that bring performance, privacy and productivity to your Mac. And we’ve got it for just $39.99 – 86% off the regular price!
The iOS App Store gold rush might be played out for all but the luckiest developers, but there’s another part of the Apple empire where coders can find breakout success: the Mac App Store.
“Compared to iOS, it’s definitely easier to have a hit in the Mac App Store,” says Andreas Hegenberg, the creator of successful gesture-based Mac app BetterTouchTool. “I think it’s still pretty easy to develop a Mac App Store app that can feed you very well. But it all depends on how you define a ‘big hit.'”
While games rule the increasingly cluttered roost in the iOS store — with many unimaginative developers looking to get rich quick with yet another Flappy Bird clone — the Mac App Store is home to more pedestrian offerings like accounting software and productivity tools.
The Mac App Store might not mint a new millionaire each day, but the developers we spoke with said writing this type of bread-and-butter software can provide a reliable source of income. Here’s why.
The Power Mac G4 Cube, introduced in July 2000, delivered a fair amount of Apple computing power in a unique see-through enclosure made of acrylic glass. Designed by Jony Ive, the futuristic-looking Cube offered a glimpse of the sleek industrial design that would come to epitomize Apple’s upscale take on consumer technology.
“I just remember it being this incredibly elegant, sexy machine that looked nothing like a computer,” said Randall Greenwell, director of photography at The Virginian-Pilot and a longtime Apple aficionado, in an email to Cult of Mac.
With Apple recently making OSX Beta Seed downloads available to the general public, Cult of Mac’s Ste Smith shows you how to prep your Mac to install the latest software. Get the latest OSX updates before general release by following the simple steps shown.
Take a look at the video to see what you need to do.
What do you get when you combine several hundred serious geeks, two large rooms, five decades’ worth of vintage computers, and a weekend in New Jersey? The Vintage Computer Festival East, of course!
The ninth running of the VCF East was held April 4-7 at the InfoAge Science Center in Wall Township, New Jersey. Hosted by MARCH, the MidAtlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists group, the 2014 show saw the largest number of exhibitors and attendees for a VCF East yet, with exhibit halls expanded from one to two rooms and three days of lectures and seminars available for attendees. The show featured a wide range of computing history, from a seminal, room-size UNIVAC computer, through the DEC, Prime and HP minicomputer era, to the workstations and home computers of the 1970s and ’80s.
Are you a Mac collector? An Apple investor? Do you like to buy old computers still new in their original packaging? If so, do we have a storage locker for you!
Marion Stokes was a librarian, activist and local access television producer from Philadelphia. Recently she made news for her incredible archive of 35 years of TV news broadcasts, recorded continuously on home videotapes from 1977 until her death in 2012. But Stokes was also a longtime Apple investor and Macintosh fan. Over the same timeframe she acquired nearly two hundred new-in-box Macintosh computers and related Apple gear, and kept much of this equipment sealed for posterity.
It’s another incredible history, about technology and one unique Silicon Valley tech entity. And it can be yours, if the price is right. The whole kit and caboodle is available on eBay, listed for the Buy It Now price of $100,000!
Macs are solid machines, but just like their owners they have a tendency to get lethargic as they age. Launching and switching programs takes longer, simple tasks become arduous, and the dreaded beach ball of doom appears more often. The Operating System just starts to feel crufty, and can get worse over time. I see these issues in my IT consulting business regularly.
You may be asking, why does this happen? There are many reasons, but some are more common than others. Sometimes your hard disk (or SSD) gets too full and interferes with normal computer operations. Crashes or misbehaving programs can corrupt the disk directory or application cache files. Remnants from old software may still be running behind the scenes, or you don’t have enough RAM to deal with your OS and workflow.
OK, so is there some sort of tune up or spring cleaning you can do that sorts it out? Your tech always tells you to just reboot the computer, but there’s got to be more than that. The good news: yes, there are some things you can do. And, perhaps, adopt some more efficient computing practices for yourself along the way.
The first Macintosh clone in the world was not one of the Apple sanctioned systems released in 1995, such as those from companies like PowerComputing, Radius, Umax or Daystar Digital. Nor was it the Outbound laptop in 1989, a hybrid system produced using Mac ROMs taken from working Mac Plus systems.
No, the first Macintosh clone was the Unitron Mac 512, a unauthorized copy of the 512k “Fat Mac” produced by a Brazilian company in 1986. And it was a pretty darn impressive copy. The fallout from that effort nearly help start a trade war between Brazil and the United States; to prevent theft of Intellectual Property, Apple and other companies lobbied Congress to hike import taxes on Brazilian goods like oranges and shoes as a response.
And as we know, nobody messes with Tropicana …
It’s not a widely known story. Pieces of this long-forgotten chapter in Mac history can be found scattered on websites around the world. Here is the fascinating tale of the first Macintosh clone in the world.
Time is running out to get some more Mac apps at a price that only you can name.
Cult of Mac Deals has partnered with 11 of the world’s finest Mac app developers to bring you the fourth-ever Pay What You Want Mac Bundle. You pay what you want for Camerabag 2, Chronicle 5, Folx Pro, and Elite Keylogger Pro and if you pay more than the average price, you’ll receive all the apps in the bundle. And you get to support a charity of your choice in the process!
With popular music streaming apps like Spotify and Pandora already popular and on devices all over the world, any newcomers are faced with an immediate challenge. The makers behind the popular headphones and speakers Beats By Dre are taking their crack at the genre, with their new app and service Beats Music.
Take a look at the new Beats Music app and see how it compares to the competitors.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the iOS application “Beats Music” brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
The famous Macintosh “Picasso” trademark logo was developed for the introduction of the original 128K Mac back in 1984. A minimalist line drawing reminiscent of the style of Pablo Picasso, this whimsical graphic implied the whole of a computer in a few simple strokes. It was an icon of what was inside the box, and became as famous as the computer it represented.
The logo was designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, art directors on the Macintosh development team. Originally the logo was to be a different concept by artist Jean-Michel Folon, but before launch it was replaced by the colorful line drawing. It’s been famous ever since, and the style has endured across decades.
Casado recently attended the 30th Anniversary of the Mac celebration, and emailed Cult of Mac to shed some light on the history of this famous graphic. It turns out Picasso was not the primary inspiration for this after all – rather, it was Henri Matisse!
This Cult of Mac Deals is the perfect software stack for any creative. It’s so perfect, you could even call it a “super” stack.
Cult of Mac Deals has assembled $650 worth of creative resources in one massive package, featuring software that is ideal for the designer and photographer. We’ve even planted an app in there that many bloggers and online writers use. And you can get all of these apps – 9 in total – for just $29 during this limited time offer!
Getting a screenshot on your Mac using the default keystrokes can be adventure in dexterity to say the least. This Cult of Mac Deals offers you a one stroke solution to this dilemma…and at a price that’s tough to beat.
DreamShot uses just one keyboard shortcut to take and send screenshots to all apps, services, and destinations on your Mac that deal with images. Keeping your current system in place, DreamShot is the brain of your screenshot workflow, tying it all together into one seamless experience. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for 50% off – just $4.99.
This week, we’re all about the Mac. Cult of Mac Magazine fetes the 30 year anniversary of the Macintosh, arguably the first Apple product to gain a large (dare we say cult?) following.
To do it right, we’ve got an exclusive cover created by Mac icon designer Susan Kare; the final version you’ll find in Newsstand was picked from the four sketches above by Cult of Mac readers who voted on Twitter and Facebook.
The issue focuses on the impact of the Mac and includes a Q&A by Cult of Mac publisher Leander Kahney with Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki plus recollections straight from the 80s of Macworld founder Dave Bunnell. Along with the birthday celebrations, we’ll also feature our weekly picks from iTunes and the App store along with advice from an actual Apple store Genius.
This week also marks the debut of latest version of our app, brought to you by the smarties over at XOXCO using Packagr, a multi-platform digital publishing tool. We think it’s pretty great. But if you run into any problems downloading the mag, email me directly or hit the “send” tab top right and we’ll sort it out for ‘ya.
Back in 1984, the birth of the Macintosh was not a quiet affair. Among his many talents, Steve Jobs was one of the great orators and inspiring speakers of our time. Part sage, part showman, Jobs combined the wizardry of a magician with the skills of a master salesman. The Macintosh was his baby, the intended salvation for Apple, and he wanted it launched with flair.
Many people have heard about, but not seen, one of the most influential demos of all — the actual unveiling of the Macintosh on January 24, 1984. In front of a group of Apple shareholders and VIPs, and giving a hint of Apple keynotes to come, a tuxedo-clad Jobs and his magical child stole the show. Now you can relive that glorious moment.
It’s the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Macintosh, and we wondered at Cult of Mac what can we do to celebrate? Then we thought, let’s dissect an original Macintosh and see what made it tick! There’s nothing like destruction in the persuit of knowledge.
In full retro spirit, we asked our friends at iFixit if they would help perform a special anniversary teardown of the 128k Mac. How does our silicon hero compare to modern Macs in terms of components, assembly and ease of repair? Of course being true geeks themselves, they jumped at the chance.
There was only one problem: where to find an original 128k Mac.