Mac - page 67

If you still haven’t heard the news, last week we launched our new “Deals” hub for Cult of Mac. We’re bringing Apple fans the best deals in cutting-edge software and apps. Right now we have the amazing email-app, Sparrow, on sale for $6. With only two days remaining on this deal, users need to act now before our discount is over. Also, we’re hosting a giveaway for five free copies of Sparrow. The contest ends today at 5PM, so sign up while you still can.

We’ll be offering all kinds of deals: free app codes; 72-hour sales on premium packages; and bundles of the best apps — all at savings of 30% to 90% off retail. Teaming up with StackSocial allows us to bring special expertise to Deals.CultofMac.com We will be using our knowledge of what Mac users want to create highly relevant offers designed to cater specifically to the demands of Cult of Mac’s core readership, the Apple enthusiast. We hope you keep checking out deal.cultofmac.com to join the experience.

Apple’s big media event is Tuesday and you can bet that they will be talking about iCloud their new service which is going to replace MobileMe. So it might be a good idea to get ready by backing up some of your data before making the switch.

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Let’s be honest, typical email clients (like your old corporate buddy Mr. Outlook) are about as fun as a bag full of dead butterflies.  When was the last time you got excited to use Entourage or Lotus Notes? Probably never.

Luckily, Sparrow glided into the app-scene with a singular goal to make emailing fun. It’s lightweight so its zippy, yet packed with features no other email app has.  The love and energy the Sparrow team put into their app has changed emailing from a dreaded chore into something that is pleasurable and fun.

Yesterday, with great excitement, Cult of Mac launched a new software hub called deals.cultofmac.com. Teaming up with the guys at StackSocial, this new feature will bring Apple fans the best deals on cutting-edge Mac Apps at a price you won’t be able to find on the Mac App Store. We’re starting things off by offering Sparrow, the best mail-app for OS X, for only $6.

To celebrate the launch, we’re giving away 5 copies of Sparrow for free to our readers via a giveaway contest on Facebook. Entering the giveaway is simple, but you gotta play to win.

Here’s how to enter:

The tip today is a simple one geared towards people who are new to Mac OS X Lion. I’ll show you how to tweak the settings for your Mac OS X menu bar clock. You can switch between a digital or analog clock, change how the date displays, etc.

Inheriting an old Mac does not always mean it’s ready to go with freshly reinstalled software. The Startup (Boot) Manager might show its friendly face sometimes when a valid boot drive can’t be found:

Recently I have been given a iMac G5 (light sensor). The guy who gave it to me has wiped the HD so I can start again. I intend to give this Mac to my parents for a present but before I go and buy a copy of OSX i decided to try and install a borrowed copy just to make sure the computer still works. As far as I know the copy works. But my Mac won’t have any of it. (don’t worry, I’m not asking you for advice on pirating). All that shows on the screen are two buttons. One has a circular arrow and the other has a straight arrow. Nothing happens when I click on either of them.

I have some exciting news: we’re launching a new software hub at deals.cultofmac.com.

Starting today, we’ll be bringing Apple fans the best deals in cutting-edge software and apps. We’ll be offering all kinds of deals: free app codes; 72-hour sales on premium packages; and bundles of the best apps — all at savings of 30% to 90% off retail.

We’re kicking off today with the smash-hit mail app Sparrow. It’s one of the highest-rated email clients on Mac OS X, and we have it for just $6.

File Vault 2 in Mac OS X Lion is very useful and it has improvements over its predecessor that I really like. One of those improvements is that you can now use it to encrypt external drives this even includes USB thumb drives which are easily lost.

Sharing an iPhoto or iTunes library between two users is a common request, but Apple doesn’t make this easy. Home Sharing will distribute purchased media but does not allow you to manage a single shared library. Here are some Apple recommended options:

I have my iPhoto library located in my /Users/Shared folder. My wife is an Admin and I am an Admin and both login apps are linked to it. I have gone as far as selecting the permissions to read and write for everyone, but there are still videos she can’t watch and when she imports items they don’t save to the library. Importing can only be done from my login.

Can you detail the exact method for sharing?

Tracking shipped packages is fast and easy in Mac OS X Lion due to Apple Mails tight integration with WebKit. It is also one feature that Apple brought to Mac OS X from iOS that I actually like.

I like this tip since it offers you a quick and easy method for viewing the windows belonging to other apps without loosing focus on the current app you are using.

Initially after the release of Mac OS X Lion it looked like Apple had removed the tap-to-drag functionality in Mac OS X. Tap-to-drag activates when you tap your trackpad, release, tap again and then hold to drag items around on the screen.

Well Apple didn’t remove it, but they sure did find a good place to hide it and I’ll show you where in today’s tip.

Although it’s by no means immediately obvious, Mac OS X includes a handy tool built right into Safari that enables you to capture streaming video from most websites.  In this video I’ll show you how it’s done.

More than 300 people camped overnight for the grand opening of Apple’s first store in Hong Kong. Some camped out for two days to be among the first inside the new flagship store.

Here’s what the store looks like, plus a video report of the grand opening:

Using tokens in Finder searches and some other application searches will make searching for files on your Mac a lot easier. It all starts when you press Command+F in the Finder.

If you’ve followed my tips you’ll notice that I like gestures and all the new, revised, or previously existing gestures have a whole new life for me after the release of Mac OS X Lion.  Now I use gestures more often on my Mac than ever before.

I’ve talked about some of my favorites and today I’ll share another one of those with you. I’ll show you how you can look up words in the Mac OS X dictionary with two taps on your track pad.

Apple computers have a unique boot option called Target Disk Mode which allows access to a system’s hard drives via Firewire cable in older Macs and a Thunderbolt cable in newer models. You access Target Disk Mode by pressing and holding the “T” key while the system starts and until you see either the Firewire or Thunderbolt symbol on the screen.

Once you see the symbol appear you can connect your computer to another Mac Or PC and the hard drives on the Mac in Target Disk Mode will mount on the other system with full access. Since you have full access to the startup disk your data’s security is compromised, but here are a few ways to fix that. I’ll show you how in today’s tip.

With OS X Lion, Apple announced a new file sharing feature called AirDrop. While the concept of AirDrop is great, it’s lack of support on older Macs cripples it’s functionality for some users. In this video, I’ll show you how to enable AirDrop on your older Mac as well as use some of AirDrop’s lesser known functionality.

I was checking for new mail in my Cult of Mac mailbox the other day and ran into a new message from Cult of Mac reader Justin Kurian.  He wrote:

…’Apple iMac Users Experience More Graphic Anomalies‘

Hi David,

I was reading your article and noticed the picture of the task switcher in Lion. How do I access that? I hate how they got rid of the swipe function for it.  Thanks!

– Justin

Accessing the Task Switcher in Mac OS X Lion is easy and I’ll show you how to do that today. Plus we’ll look at using swiping gestures while the Task Switcher is active.

Mac OS X Lion came with a new version of iCal an application that people either love or hate. It sports a new look and a new feature called Quick Add. It is a new way to quickly add events to your calendar.

Last week I reported that after the release of Mac OS X Lion iMac users were complaining about graphic or video problems. I was experiencing some of the reported problems too. My particular problem was akin to what others have seen on their 2011 27-inch iMacs configured with a 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and AMD Radeon HD 6970 graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. The problem is intermittent and it always disappears for a while after a restart.  See above for an example of how my problem manifested itself.

I contacted AppleCare about the problem, but no fix was available and they claimed that they had never seen this problem before. On the other hand after I submitted a bug report to Apple I got a completely different answer from Apple engineering.

Microsoft has been showing if its upcoming Windows 8 operating system at its BUILD conference in California this week, and while I may be completely dedicated to my Mac, I can’t help but think Windows 8 looks pretty darn nice.

We’ve already showed you how to install the Developer Preview on a Boot Camp partition on your Mac, but there is an easier method for those of you who just want to play around. In this how-to, we’ll take you through the setup for installing Windows 8 in a virtual machine — in just four simple steps.

VMware released version 4 of Fusion for the Mac earlier this week. Fusion 4 virtualization software will let Mac users run Windows, Linux and now Mac OS X Lion along with the native Mac OS X operating system. VMWare claims that the new version if optimized for Mac OS X Lion and that it offers over 90 new features. The biggest new feature is the apps ability to virtualize Mac OS X Lion.

With the release of Windows 8 for developers, many people have been trying to install Microsoft’s new operating system in a virtual machine with little success. Fortunately, Apple’s own Boot Camp application not only runs Windows 8, it runs it far better than most virtual machines will. In this video, I’ll show you how to set up Windows 8 on your Mac with Boot Camp.

We’re big fans of Belkin’s products, especially the fantastic N750 Dual-Band N+ Router and the Conserve Insight energy meter.

Now you can get these gadgets, and everything else Belkin makes, for 50% off using a simple coupon code.

There’s a lot to like about Iomega’s Mac Companion Hard Drive, an external drive designed for flat-screen iMacs. It’s the fastest way to charge an iPad, for example.

Apple was so impressed by the Mac Companion drive, it ordered the first two production runs exclusively for its stores. It won’t be available anywhere else for several weeks, Iomega says.