Mac - page 75

Just as we exclusively reported last year (and no one believed us), Apple will build one of its biggest retail stores yet in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.

Apple signed a 10-year lease with New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build a whopping 23,000-square-foot store on the upper balcony of the iconic train station, the New York Post reports.

The store will fill Grand Central’s north and northeastern balconies, displacing Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant. It will be among Apple’s largest stores, about 3,000 to 5,000 square feet larger smaller than Apple’s biggest stores in London and on New York’s West 14th Street.

The MTA is offering Apple a special move-in rent of $800,000 (a cool half-mill more than Charlie Palmer’s restaurant is currently paying). Then it will up the rent to $1 million annually. Apple will pay to refurbish the space, and the MTA estimates it will make $5 million profit on the deal, and revitalize retail at the popular station.

Migration assistant is one of Apple’s most valuable utilities. I’ve used it frequently over the years to migrate my user accounts, applications, etc.  between two Macs and I’ve never had any problems with it until now.

I picked up a new 13-inch MacBook Air this week and tried to migrate my data from my 2010 13-inch MacBook Air to the new one. Both of my MacBook Airs were running Mac OS X Lion. I wasn’t able to get Migration Assistant to work over a Wi-Fi connection.  It just flat-out refused to work, but here is the work around that finally got my data moved to the new MacBook Air.

Apple has announced that a “very small number” of 1TB Seagate hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems may fail under certain conditions. The problem only applies to systems that were sold between May 2011 and July 2011. My own 27-inch iMac purchased in June 2011 is affected by this recall.

For complete information about the recall click the read link.

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.

Instead Apple has come up with something new.

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?

There’s a lot of truth in these Organizational Charts for various tech companies from Bonkers World.

Via Laughing Squid

Hot on the heels of other recent updates Apple has released updates for Java on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5  and Snow Leopard 10.6.  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 has released Thunderbolt Firmware Update 1.0 for Macs that ship with the new Thunderbolt interface.

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.

Look familiar?

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.

Macworld: Review: Final Cut Pro X