Mac - page 68

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.

Okay here’s another annoying iOS feature that Mac OS X Lion has adopted. I actually hate this one, but it isn’t the one I hate the most I’ll talk about that next week. It’s smart if you need it, but stupid if you aren’t spending all day using different special characters. If you are a developer you might not like that fact that you cannot enter multiple letter A’s etc. The title of this post is an example of a creative way to use repeating characters that Mac OS X Lion won’t allow you to do by default.

Today, I’ll show you how to fix that.

Late yesterday I reported that Parallels Desktop 7 users were experiencing a mysterious problem that required them to log into and restart their Mac notebooks twice before being able to use the Finder Desktop. Parallels has released an update that resolves this really annoying problem. So if you haven’t installed it yet launch Parallels Desktop 7 and run a Check for Updates from the Parallels apps menu. Install the update and you will be good to go – no reason to log in twice now!

Iomega’s new Helium Portable Hard Drive is a compact little brick of data storage. Encased in a hard aluminum shell, the Helium Drive is perfect for Time Machine backups or supplementing the memory of a MacBook Air.

Whatever it’s used for, the data will always be safe, even if the drive is lost or stolen. The Helium has built-in hardware encryption, which means no one can ever peek at your files. That also makes it a good place to stash files you don’t want anyone to see…

There have been a some reports that followed the release of Mac OS X Lion from iMac users complaining about graphic or video problems.

One user reports that he’s been experiencing video artifacts on his 2011 27-inch iMac configured with a 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. It’s been fairly intermittent and it always disappears for a while after a restart.

Today the problem was so different and a lot worse than usual that they finally decided to call AppleCare.

Apple has included a nice app in Mac OS X Lion that you can use to gather all kinds of diagnostic information from your wireless network. The app provides really technical information about the network that most users might find puzzling perhaps that is why Apple decided to hide it. Today’s tip will show you how to uncover this handy wireless network utility.

MacBook users are reporting that they are experiencing an issue after installing full disk encryption using File Vault. The problem manifests itself by automatically restarting the MacBook after it is turned on and restarted once already forcing the user to login twice before actually reaching their desk top.

It seems that no matter where I go or who I run into one of the biggest complaints about Mac OS X Lion that I hear about is, “Where the #!@#!@# did Apple put those scroll bars?!?!?” This not so subtle change in Mac OS X Lion is driving people crazy.

So if you want your scroll bars and your sanity back pull up a chair, lean in close and I’ll tell you how to bring ’em back.

Here’s the new Blue Screen of Death in Windows 8, which Microsoft is previewing this week at its Build conference.

It’s been transformed into a sad face emoticon.

Reminds me of the old Happy Mac but, well, sadder.

Bigger version after the jump.

Via Arnold Kim’s Twitter stream.

Earlier today Microsoft released updates for the Mac versions of Office 2008 and 2011 that address some issues with security, stability, and reliability. Users of these versions of Microsoft Office should immediately update their software.

Mac OS X Lion now allows you to use Quick Look while viewing files in a stack here’s how. This is something new that earlier versions of Mac OS X didn’t support.

Apple has added a restriction to the Applications folder on your start-up disk that versions of Mac OS X didn’t have before the release of Lion. The new restriction prevents you from moving apps out of the Applications folder, but this tip will show you how to get around that.

Ever since the switch to OS X Lion, there’s been a few little tweaks in the Finder that have annoyed me. Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like change, but either way, I went about looking how to fix these problems. In this video, I’ll show you how to fix little annoyances you may have found with the Finder in OS X Lion.

Steve Jobs is NOT dead — it’s a screw-up by CBS.

The rumor — which is lighting up Twitter like crazy — was caused by an errant tweet from CBS’s “What’s Trending” feed. The tweet said:

“Reports say that Steve Jobs has passed away. Stay tuned for more updates.”

But CBS has now pulled the tweet and kinda apologized:

“Reports of Steve Job’s [sic] death completely unconfirmed.”

So, they don’t know one way or the other.

We’ve called Apple and left messages all over the PR department. The one live person we talked to said they’d get back to us shortly. But there obviously wasn’t a fire drill there, so it’s safe to assume Steve is still alive.

Today the tip is for all you neat freaks out there. I get pretty sloppy when I’m working on a project and I tend to leave a bunch of different files on my Finder desktop. I tend to gather all these up after I complete the  project and later I throw them into a folder. I used to do it the hard way, but not any more.

The Apple Store is currently down. Nothing is rumored, AFAIK, but we all know that Apple loves surprises. Let’s hope it’s something big!

Anyone got any wishes?

Thanks Steven in Settle.

Mac OS X Lion adds a new feature that helps your Mac recover from crashes or freezes. I’m not sure how well it works since my Macs don’t crash all that often, but Apple built it into Mac OS X Lion so I might as well use it.

Voice-to-text speech technology quality has improved over the years and Apple is keeping up with the technology by introducing advancements in Mac OS X to support this technology. Mac OS X Lion doesn’t offer a lot of default voice choices, but armed with this tip you’ll find out that there is lot more for your ear to hear than what your eyes can see.