Apple’s line of MacBook Airs never shipped with an optical drive and now the Mac Mini has joined the party. The new Mac Mini, released this week, no longer includes one of these drives either. If you want an optical drive to use with these Macs you have to purchase an external USB SuperDrive. Now the arrival of the new MacBook Air and Mac Mini herald the death of the USB thumb drive.
You might be surprised to find out that neither these systems ship with a set of  DVDs or a USB thumb drive that you can use to restore, repair or reinstall Mac OS X.
Apple’s new 11-inch MacBook Air is simply incredible. Of course you probably already knew this puppy was light, and gorgeous, but the power that this tiny machine packs is truly breathtaking. Optimized for speed and portability, the new MacBook Air improves on its predecessor to prove that it’s the best notebook computer Apple’s ever made.
Here’s a little known fact about the OS X Lion installer — it self-destructs after it completes the OS X Lion installation and if you are on a limited or capped ISP data plan that sucks. Especially if you plan on upgrading more than one Mac in your home or office. Luckily, you don’t need to download the OS X Lion installer on each computer and waste precious data or time.
You only need to download it once if you follow this quick and easy tip before installing OS X Lion the first time.
Apple’s development tools for OS X and iOS are  joining the OS X Lion launch party today with the release of  Xcode 4.1.  The new version of Xcode is now available as a free download in the Mac App Store or through the regular Apple developer website.
Apple announced Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on June 6th and shortly there after renamed it to OS X Lion. If you are using either the client or server version of OS X Snow Leopard and you purchased a Mac on or after June 6th you are eligible for a free OS X Lion update under specific circumstances.
Editor’s Note: This post has been stickied to top of the front page. If you scroll down there is probably new content below it.
Intro
OS X Lion is the eighth major release of Mac OS X, and it brings to the table several ideas from iOS, like Launchpad (a matrix display of installed applications, similar to the iOS Home Screen — and the Mac App Store) which is being used to deliver the new OS.
Despite the iOS inspiration, Lion’s not a huge shift from previous versions, and it won’t turn your Mac into a faux iOS device. Rather, it borrows some of iOS’s best ideas and uses them to polish the core Mac experience, making Lion the most attractive, cohesive, user-friendly and idiot-proof OS X yet.
It’s a big accomplishment overall. Lion not only looks cleaner and nicer, it fixes a surprising number of long-time niggles. But it also adds some nice new features, and while there are some changes that will cause consternation, like reverse scrolling, almost everything added is for the better.
The question isn’t whether you should spend $29 on Lion, because that’s just a no-brainer. No, the real question is: now that we’re in the post-PC age, how will Lion change the way you use your Mac, and how does it set the stage for the Mac of the future?
Feeling a little dazed by the pace of change these days? Perhaps a little wistful for simpler computing times gone by? Then feast your eyes on Wozniak’s Conundrum, a wonderful – and working – steampunk marriage of a 1991 era Macintosh and an 1897 Remington typewriter.
The release of Mac OS X Lion culminates a decade-long software development process. Back in 2001 Apple introduced a new (and long awaited) replacement to the Classic Macintosh System Software, Mac OS X. How far we’ve come in ten years. As Lion goes on the prowl, we present a brief look back at Apple’s Big Cats over the years and review the Evolution of Mac OS X.
Using multiple monitors with your Mac can greatly increase your productivity and workflow. There are many ways to boost the usefulness of secondary monitors, as I will show you in this video.
Today Parallels announced the release of Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac Enterprise Edition. The new version of the popular Parallels Desktop 6 virtualization program gives enterprise IT departments support for deploying Windows-based business applications for Mac users. It is a configurable policy compliant solution that easily fits into existing business processes.
It isn’t a secret that Apple is killing support for Rosetta in OS X Lion 10.7 the first version of OS X that won’t support the PowerPC platform and apps designed to run on it.  All applications requiring Rosetta support turn into “tombstones”  that can no longer be executed after upgrading to OS X Lion. Here’s what they look like and information on what to do about it.
If you are planning on using Target Disk Mode to boot your Mac equipped with Thunderbolt ports you’ll need Apple’s special Thunderbolt cable in order for it to work. This is required even when connecting two Macs or a Mac to an external Thunderbolt equipped disk drive.
Here’s a good resource to take a look at if you plan on upgrading to OS X Lion this month. Roaringapps.com is a crowd sourced application compatibility database for OS X Lion. The site depends on user input about the compatibility of existing applications running on Snow Leopard or whether or not apps will need Rosetta.
Hot on the heels of the OS X Lion Gold Master release is the release of Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 7 for Lion. The world’s best developer tools are only getting better. Kudos to Apple on this new release. But what’s new in the seventh version of Xcode 4.1?
Hot on the heels of other recent updates Apple has released updates for Java on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 Â and Snow Leopard 10.6. Â The updates improve compatibility, security, and reliability.
Recently, I was asked about the custom “bin” overlays that I have on the Applications and Documents stacks in my dock. These bins are cool tweaks that you can apply to any Dock stack to not only customize the look of them, but to also keep things organized and identifiable at a glance. In this video, I’ll show you how you can set up your own Stack bins.
Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.8 last week while I was traveling and I managed to find a nice Wi-Fi connection to use to update my 13-inch MacBook Air. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the new OS release until today. I found something nice while looking through the System Profiler for any changes. Mac OS X 10.6.8 had added TRIM support to all Macs that have SSD drives installed — a feature that will benefit my MacBook Air.
I picked up a Magic Trackpad this weekend, and while browsing Apple’s instructions printed on the box was struck by the similarity between the tagline and photo of the hand with the trackpad, and the original ads for the Macintosh and its revolutionary mouse back in 1984. As well as how much simpler the directions for use are today.
If you’re like me, chances are that you have at least one older computer lying around the house. Maybe you just bought a shiny new Mac and your old, not so shiny one is now sitting unused in the corner. Before you throw it away, you may want to take a look at ScreenRecycler, an application designed to help you use your old computer as a secondary monitor. In this video, I’ll show you how to set it up on both computers and get everything up and running.
Macworld magazine has given Apple’s controversial update of Final Cut Pro X a cautious thumbs up.
The new version of Final Cut Pro rocked the video editing world with its ruthless embrace of the new at the expense of the old. Lots of veteran FCP editors are outraged by the update, which has a whole new code base and workflow. The new software can’t even open old FCP projects!
But Macworld says that’s the price to pay for progress. The new software has been rewritten for a tapeless, metadata-based video workflow, and though incomplete, it’s a huge imporvement:
With Final Cut Pro X, Apple is once again out to completely re-invent the video industry. This is a truly groundbreaking release for a 1.0 software version, and I hope that the professional features that many video editors currently use will be made available soon.
UPDATE: I totally screwed this one up. When my contact, TuneUp founder Raza Zaidi, told me iTunes in the cloud has only 20% of the all the music listed in Gracenote’s big database of music, I interpreted it to mean that the upcoming iTunes Match service would mirror only a fraction of most music libraries. What I failed to realize was that 20% of music in iTunes represents the most popular 20%. The remaining 80% is all the music in the long tail. So when Apple rolls out iTunes Match in the fall, it will indeed likely mirror most music libraries, just as Apple claims. In a clarifying note, Zaidi says matches will likely be 95% or higher. In addition, the Get Album Artwork feature in iTunes isn’t powered by Gracenote, as the post implies. Sorry for the mistakes. Teach me to post before my morning coffee.
When iTunes Match goes live in September, Apple promises to instantaneously match any of the tracks in your iTunes library to the iCloud… as long as it already has your music in its mega music library. What Apple hasn’t said is that as much of 80% of your music might not be recognized by iTunes Match… and the only way to get that music into the iCloud will be to spend days manually uploading gigabytes at a time.
When it comes to monitoring your Mac’s status,such as the CPU or RAM usage, you have a couple different options. You can use menu bar applications which are often costly, or Dashboard widgets that are inconvenient to access. If neither of these sound like good options to you, monitoring your system with Activity Monitor might be a good option. It’s free, (after all, it’s built into Mac OS X), and it lets you display handy information right from the dock icon. In this video, I’ll show you how to set it up.
Apple has just released an update to its flagship video editing application, Final Cut Pro. The new version, now known as Final Cut Pro X, has some of the audio editing features of Soundtrack Pro and a simplified the user experience, but will potentially alienate pro film makers and audio engineers.
On the Mac App Store page for Final Cut Pro X, Apple has coined the phrase, “Everything just changed in post.” Unfortunately, it seems not for the better.
