Enjoying the Messages beta that Apple released yesterday? It’s fantastic, isn’t it? But don’t get too attached to it, because unless you plan to upgrade to Mountain Lion this summer, you’ll lose the application when the beta ends.
Apple has been introducing high-resolution artwork in preparation for Retina Display Macs since last July, when the company released OS X Lion. And it continues to do so, with artwork from its new Messages beta available at double its normal size.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAEH1H-4Siw
Following our handy video roundup of new OS X Mountain Lion features, InsanelyGreatMac has published a video walkthrough of AirPlay, which allows you to mirror your Mac’s display on a television hooked up to the Apple TV.
As you can see, the feature works in much the same way as AirPlay on an iOS device, sending both video and audio from your Mac to your TV over a wireless network.
While registered developers have already been testing iOS 5.1 betas for some time, it seems the firmware holds several new features that Apple is yet to release to developers. A leaked “pre-GM” build has reportedly been obtained by a Brazilian iPhone blog, which reveals a new camera slider for the lock screen, and support for the Japanese language within Siri.
This is Pinwheel, a new iOS app for leaving and finding virtual notes anywhere in the real world.
It’s in private beta right now, but you can join in if you ask nicely and leave your email address in the box of the Pinwheel home page.
Avid Apple fans will undoubtedly remember The New York Times’ series on supply chain worker abuse overseas. The Times published a piece looking at Apple’s effect on the global economy followed by a second article titled, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.” The probing look into worker abuse at Foxconn, Apple’s largest supply chain partner, sparked a firestorm of reactions from the media.
Since the report from the Times, Apple has made every effort to reassure the world that it is leading the industry in terms of supply chain accountability. CEO Tim Cook recently stated that Apple does more than any other company to provide fair working conditions. While that may be the case, it seems that The New York Times has now be given the cold shoulder for uncovering the issue originally.
A new jailbreak app called MultiTunes lets you sync with multiple iTunes libraries on your iOS device. Apple limits you to one iTunes library at a time by default, and while iCloud and iTunes Match make it easier to access your music from anywhere, some would still like to sync with different libraries without deleting all locally stored music first. That’s where MultiTunes saves the day.
If you’re as excited as I am about OS X Mountain Lion, you’ll want to check this video out. Since only developers have access to the Mountain Lion beta at this point, I put together this quick video for all of Cult Of Mac’s great readers detailing 30 of the best new features of Mountain Lion, all jam packed into just two minutes. Check out the video after the break.
Apple has seeded a pre-release of Safari 5.2 to registered developers. Following the release of the OS X Mountain Lion developer preview this morning, a new beta of Safari has been made available with browser features from Apple’s upcoming desktop OS.
Namely, Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion introduces the unified, Google Chrome-like address/search bar. There are some other minor cosmetic changes that mirror the Safari version from the Mountain Lion developer preview.
Today a German court ruled that most of Motorola’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent with the only exception being the slide-the-circle gesture used in the Motorola XOOM. This ruling allows Apple to enforce a permanent injunction against the Motorola products found in violation. Motorola can still appeal the decision therefore Apple would be taking a very big risk enforcing such an injunction at this time. Should the ruling be overturned, Apple would have to reimburse Motorola for any lost sales due to the injunction. Regardless of Apple’s decision, one thing is for sure: Motorola will now have to make changes to their UI.
Nowbox is a slick iPad app that allows you to waste spend many hours watching YouTube.
Nowbox was co-founded by Thomas Pun, who worked at Apple for six years, including stints as technical manager for the team responsible for the H.264 encoder technologies that shipped with QuickTime 7 and on the first video iPod.
When Apple announced iMessage for iOS 5 last summer we were excited to finally have a universal messaging app that sought to free our cellphones from the slavery of wireless carrier texting plans. Today with the announcement of Messages for OS X it looks like Apple is serious about creating a messaging service that supplants texting and chat services by providing a one size fits all solution that works well on every screen. The new Messages app is pretty awesome and it’s a needed step forward that finally unifies iChat, iMessage, and Facetime, but it is not without its flaws.
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re a big fan of HipChat, a phenomenal team calibration tool based around group chat and IM, which works on any platform with dedicated apps for Mac and iOS. In fact, it’s how we keep in touch with each other throughout each work day. The app is a mainstay in our docks.
So when we woke up this morning and found out Apple was announcing a new version of OS X including a brand new Messages IM app, the first thing we thought was: “Hey! That icon looks familiar!” Very familiar.
Chances are, you’re already salivating to download the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, when it’s released later this summer. For a fair number of Mac owners, though, installing Mountain Lion is going to require buying a new machine, as Apple has abandoned support for Intel’s GMA 950 and x3100 chipsets.
Here’s a list of the machines that can run Lion that can’t run Mountain Lion.
Apple has included a more subtle, yet very important, change in OS X Mountain Lion that points to the company’s focus moving forward. If you open the “About This Mac” window in the Mountain Lion developer preview, you’ll notice that “Mac” has been dropped for a simpler “OS X.” The prefix has also been dropped from promotional materials on Apple.com and the Mac App Store.
Why the change to just “OS X Mountain Lion?” Apple is continuing to blur the line between hardware and software. It’s about the unification of iOS and the desktop experience.
With Mountain Lion, Apple has finally tied iCloud to the Mac desktop. While iCloud has worked seamlessly on iOS since launch, moving documents between iCould and your Mac was embarrassingly awkward, involving web browsers, dragging and dropping.
Now, it has been shoved deep into the heart of the OS, in the form of a kind of alternate Finder.
Not a huge change, but we just noticed that in OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has changed the way adding widgets in Dashboard works to be more akin to Launchpad, with a full screen of equally spaced widgets being selectable instead of Lion’s approach, which puts available widgets at the bottom edge of the display.
In case you hadn’t already noticed, Apple announced OS X Mountain Lion earlier today, its latest operating system for the Mac which will make its public debut this summer. Mountain Lion will further increase the iOS influence on Apple’s desktop operating system, with the arrival of features like Notification Center, Messages, and Notes.
But for gamers, undoubtedly the most exiting new feature will be Game Center’s arrival on the Mac. With promises of cross-platform multiplayer and the ability to rack up achievements on both your Mac and iOS devices, this is set to create a new bridge between mobile and desktop gaming that will revolutionize cross-platform play.
In OS X Lion, the Mail, Contacts And Calendars systems pref pane allowed you to choose accounts between iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo, and AOL… but check out how many more options you have in Mountain Lion! We know that Twitter is integrated into Mountain Lion, but you can also log into video sharing site Vimeo and photo sharing site Flickr, presumably to make sharing photos and videos online easier. However, we have yet seen any functionality taking advantage of this deeper integration. There’s also support for a host of new Chinese sites and more.
This is interesting. With OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has ditched Software Update as a standalone application, and instead baked its functionality into the Mac App Store’s “Updates” panel. Now if you hit Software Update, the Mac App Store loads and all of the integral software updates are found under a drop-down box under OS X Update.
Mountain Lion’s GateKeeper feature is designed to improve Mac security by harnessing the power of the Mac App Store and through a new developer program in which Apple will offer Developer IDs to members of its Mac Developer Program. Those IDs will let developers digitally sign their applications so that Mountain Lion Macs can verify an app’s authenticity and security before running it.
While this may seem like a new approach and an extension of the Mac App Store model, it’s actually based on technology that has been part of OS X since the release of Leopard.
Have you ever wondered how Apple gets such beautifully clean, crisp product shots for its various devices? Are they real photos at all? Or are they just computer-generated images? The truth is somewhere in between, and shows that Apple’s obsessive attention to detail carries over to everything.
Like most OS X updates before it, with Mountain Lion comes a new default wallpaper. Like Lion, Mountain Lion’s wallpaper keeps with the galaxy theme, but we think this one’s far more beautiful, with a softer blue tone that is quite calming and peaceful to look at. Anyone know which galaxy this is?
Here’s a link to the high-resolution, 3200×2000 pixel wallpaper. You can download the Mountain Lion High-Res Galaxy Default Wallpaper (2.3MB) here.
GateKeeper is one of the big new features in Mountain Lion. It’s designed to protect against malware by limiting what kinds of software gets installed on your Mac. GateKeeper offers Mac users three levels of security: Mac App Store purchases (which have been fully vetted by Apple), Developer ID apps purchased outside the Mac App Store that are digitally signed so your Mac can verify their authenticity via Apple, and apps from all other sources.
The GateKeeper model looks great from the perspective of an individual user or family – easy to understand and use while being fairly effective at leveraging Apple’s developer program as a security solution. How it will stack up in business and enterprise environments, where mass deployment are commonplace, may be a different story.
One of the big marquee features of Mountain Lion is deeply-baked Twitter integration, built right into every Mac apps. If there was any doubt about it after iOS 5, erase it from your mind: after some aborted experiments like Ping, Apple is doubling down on social networking, and the horse they’re backing isn’t Facebook… it’s Twitter.