News - page 1885

Imagine yourself at an Apple keynote event. A special, one-off launch for the newest version of Mac OS X. You see the familiar format: Phil Schiller and a couple of other Apple execs run through the successful sales numbers. Then they announce the new product, and then they work their way through a deck of pitch-perfect keynote slides.

It seems familiar, right? Only now imagine that you are alone. This presentation is for one person: you. This bizarro scenario is just what happened to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber last week when Apple briefed him on Mountain Lion.

AirPlay Mirroring is one of the iOS features that Apple is bringing to the Mac in Mountain Lion. It’s a feature that offers a lot of potential for mobile professionals and educators in addition to being a great supplement to a family’s living room.

AirPlay Mirroring works the second generation Apple TV. The Apple TV itself as a small and easy to carry device that can plug into any HDTV or modern projector. That simple setup combined with a Mac running Mountain Lion makes for a perfect portable presentation solution.

Hey, developer kiddies! OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Mountain Lion server are now available to registered Apple developers over on the official Mac Dev Center. Both are downloaded through the Mac App Store after a redemption coupon.

We’re already at work downloading our copies of Mountain Lion. Keep tuned for Cult of Mac’s first look at the latest version of OS X, coming later today.

In addition to Mountain Lion, Apple is also making a number of other resources available to developers, including guidelines for developing apps for Mountain Lion, GameKit and GLKit programming guides for developing Game Center compatible games, and more. There is also a new version of Xcode, version 4.4, available to program Mountain Lion apps.

Apple’s new version of OS X, 10.8 Mountain Lion, bakes in a lot of new features that may make existing third-party apps obsolete. Notification Center, Reminders, Messages and Twitter all step on the toes of independent developers. And worst of all, these apps come from some of the most popular categories in the App Store.

To explain OS X 10.8’s many incredible new features, Apple has released an official sneak peek at the features you’ll find in Mountain Lion. We’ve embedded it above. Watch it and tell us what you think in the comments!

One of the big threads in the Mountain Lion features that Apple has posted is much deeper integration with iCloud that Lion offers. That isn’t a surprise given Lion began a trend of bringing iOS functionality to the Mac, but it may raise some concerns for Macs in the workplace.

In Mountain Lion, Apple is bringing the iOS document syncing feature to OS X along with Mac versions of the iOS Notes and Reminders apps. There’s also a Mac version of the iOS 5 Notification Center. These are all tremendously valuable features for business users, but the fact that they function by passing business content to Apple’s iCloud servers and onto the devices of employees and their family members is likely to be a big concern for CIOs.

Hey China! Apple loves you. To prove it, there are a whole bunch of China-specific features built into OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Tim Cook has shared his thoughts on what Mountain Lion means for the future of the Mac, and has hinted Apple may be considering a grand unification of iOS and OS X somewhere down the line.

One of the big headline features in Apple’s new Mountain Lion OS is Gatekeeper, designed to keep malware and other nasties away from your computer. So is this another step towards App Store-only software on Macs?

The short answer is yes, it is. But it doesn’t have to be. Gatekeeper gives you the choice: do you want to stick to App Store-only apps, or be able to install anything from anywhere?

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion won’t be available for most users to play with this summer, but if you’d like to try out a little slice of it already, you can already download the Messages beta for Mac, which replaces iChat and allows you to send unlimited free messages to any Mac, iPad, iPhone or iPod touch through the iMessage protocol!

In our review of OS X 10.7, we wrote that Lion was the first great PC operating system of the Post-PC age, and that any future update of OS X would continue to blur the lines between the Mac and the iPad.

Looks like we were more right than we could have imagined. Apple has just apparently announced Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, which will make its first appearance as a developer preview today ahead of an official debut this summer.

Apple’s designs constantly prove that beauty and practicality can exist in the same place, but that’s clearly not the only way to do things. Take a look at the AQUA TEK S, which manages to be possibly the most practical and the most ugly iPhone case ever. It bills itself as “the first ever battery powered, solar charged, rugged under water iPhone 4/4S case on Kickstarter.”

Every Cult of Mac reader should know the name Ken Segall. Leander interviewed Ken back in 2009 about naming the iMac and making Apple’s ‘Think Different’ ad campaign. Ken now runs the hilarious Apple parody site called Scoopertino and his personal blog, Observatory.

As a man that worked with Steve Jobs personally, Ken has first-hand knowledge of what drives Apple as a business, and his insights into the creative marketing and branding industry are profound. He’s got a new book coming out called Insanely Simple, and you should be excited to get your hands on this one.

Scott Hurff, a founder of video sharing site Chill, has put together the most comprehensive list of Steve Jobs videos we’ve ever seen. The Ultimate Steve Jobs Collection contains interviews, keynotes, and other gems featuring Apple’s late co-founder. With more than 100 YouTube videos ranging from the days of NeXT to the famous Standford commencement speech, this library is full of the best Steve Jobs moments.

Apple has announced some changes to the iBookstore today in an iTunes Connect letter to content publishers. Like the App Store, promo codes for iBooks can now be offered to iTunes users. Screenshots can also now be submitted for iBooks titles. This change follows the release of iBooks Author and Apple’s entrance into the digital textbook industry.

Realmac‘s Clear todo app is the talk of the Macosphere today, earning glowing reviews pretty much everywhere (including here at Cult of Mac). And rightly so: it’s totally different to everything that’s gone before, and cute and sexy and gorgeous too.

But there’s more to it than colorful todo lists. Oh yes. It makes a pretty neat colorful poetry writing thingummyjig too.

A new jailbreak app called AssistantConnect claims to bring Siri to non-4S iOS devices without needing a proxy. Unlike previous ports, AssistantConnect lets you email your Siri data between jailbroken iOS devices to enable the digital assistant. It’s a much simpler process than having to setup your own network voodoo and rely on a server that may not even work anymore.

Sound too good to be true? There’s one catch…

Earlier this week, Centrify launched an open beta of the company’s DirectControl for Mobile service. The service, which supports managing iPhones, iPads, and Android devices in business and enterprise settings, currently includes a subset of the features typical in other mobile device management (MDM) systems. Centrify, which is known for providing enterprise integration technologies for OS X as well as various Unix and Linux distributions, plans to maintain the current selection of controls as a free solution when the product emerges from beta while adding further management capabilities to a commercially licensed version.

Most MDM solutions are of the bolted-on variety – they run on a dedicated server or cloud offering that can pull information from enterprise systems like Microsoft’s Active Directory but use a separate management interface and data store for management profiles and other information. Centrify’s DirectControl does offer a cloud management system, but it uses Active Directory itself as the primary interface and data store, an approach that has several advantages including a very minimal learning curve for experienced systems administrators.

I’m always looking for new wallpapers. There’s something about a nice, clean background that makes the iPhone more enjoyable to use.

Writer and designer Chris Herbet has created a beautiful collection of minimal wallpapers for the iPhone. His new collection was put together using designs from Subtle Patterns and a little secret sauce. It’s beautiful magic.

I’m always looking for ways to enhance my music listening experience on the Mac. For the last several months I’ve been using Bowtie to control iTunes with keyboard shortcuts, and Ecoute is another great alternative for managing iTunes in a minimal, simplified way.

When the developers of Skip Tunes contacted me, I was intrigued by the app’s menu bar interface. For quick access to simple music playback controls, it doesn’t get much better than this.

The guy in the picture above is named Bill Flora, and according to the caption accompanying his smiling face from this CNET article, Bill’s a key leader on the team that created the Metro interface that Microsoft will be using for all desktops, laptops and tablets running Windows 8.

Looks like a nice guy, right? Now take a look at Bill’s work desk, and notice that he is designing Windows 8 using exclusively Apple products, including an Apple Cinema Display, a MacBook Pro, an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and what appears to be a Magic Mouse.

Good taste in hardware, Bill! Windows 8… good enough to be designed on a Mac. Hey, that should be Microsoft’s new tagline!

[Thanks for the tip, Paul!]

Update: Apparently Bill is no longer with Microsoft. Here’s hoping Apple snatched him up!

Apple has officially responded to the contact sharing debacle that was highlighted by the Path iPhone app last week. After it was discovered that Path secretly uploaded a user’s entire contact database to its own servers, the controversy sparked more discussion about how Apple needs to enforce its user privacy guidelines more to protect customers.

Third-party apps will have to ask for permission to access contact data from a user, according to Apple. The issue will be remedied with an upcoming iOS update.

Maybe I’m just a greedy bastard, but if I found a shiny new iPod wedged in between couch cushions at a hospital waiting room, I might ask around if it belonged to anybody, but I probably wouldn’t make the effort to return it to someone who lives thousands of miles away. Dalton Williams is 14 years old, and he’s also a better person than I am because he didn’t just make a weak effort to return a lost iPod to someone nearby, he tracked down the owner who was living 6,000 miles away in Iraq.

You might have suspected that the right music – whether it’s thrash metal or Mozart – keeps you more focused or relaxed.

Now a trio of brain researchers have studied the effects of playlists on the brain, resulting in a nifty little book called  Your Playlist Can Change Your Life. In the book’s 200-or so pages, they explain how to use specific playlists to alleviate anxiety, promote concentration, get happy or move into a flow state thanks to Brain Music Treatment or BMT.

If you can’t make it to New York for BMT therapy, for $9.99, you can also download a Common BMT File. Created from more than 2,000 people’s brain waves with the help of evidence-based BMT tech, they say it acts as a kind of aural “first-aid” before you get your own playlists together.

Intrigued (my current nightstand read is Mark Changizi’s excellent Harnessed about music and the brain), I talked to author Dr. Galina Mindlin about what playlists have the most impact, cleaning up your music collection and her current heavy rotations.

A week ago, it was discovered that the popular social networking app Path uploads users entire address books to their servers. They’ve since apologized and nuked the data. But Path’s not the only ones doing this: other high profile companies like Twitter are also doing it. And Apple’s letting them.

Not so surprisingly, Congress isn’t liking what it’s hearing about the address book security issue. In fact, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Commerce Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Chair G.K. Butterfield have written Apple a letter asking some hard questions about how Apple has allowed this to happen, and “whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts.”