Every Mac sold since the launch of OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has had a copy of Apple’s backup software, Time Machine, included.
And thank goodness for that, because backups were the elephant in the computer industry’s room. Everyone knew it was essential to keep backups, and everyone knew that most people just didn’t bother.
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.
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.
I liked this photo, which Sameli Kujala posted to the Cult of Mac Flickr pool.
On the right, Mac OS 8 on CD-ROM, packaged in its huge cardboard box. Vintage 1997 stuff. In the centre, today’s diminutive Lion USB stick – which you don’t even have to use if you download direct from the Mac App Store. And on the left, a bottle of champagne, adding suitably classy balance to the whole scene.
If you have a great photo of your smart Apple stuff – retro or modern or both together – and you’d like to share it with your fellow Cult of Mac readers, do send it in: [email protected]
(Photo used with permission. Thanks Sameli!)
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.
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.
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.
Hands up if you love iCal in Lion.
Anybody? Any hands up there at the back? No? Oh.
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.
On Friday Apple posted an announcement on their News and Announcements for Apple Developers RSS feed asking developers to get their apps ready for iCloud backup and restore. The announcement is yet another clue that Apple is getting closer to releasing iCloud and iOS 5 to the public.
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.
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.
Have you ever wanted to change the default screenshot format in Mac OS X? The default PNG files can end up being huge, especially with higher resolution displays. In this video, I’ll show you how to change the format to anything you’d like, even a PDF.
Bean is one of OS X’s little treasures. It’s a lightweight rich text editor that’s nimble, fast and offers just a teeny tiny bit more than Apple’s own TextEdit. And does all this for free.
Mac OS X Lion now allows you to add personalized text to your Mac lock screen. In earlier versions of Mac OS X this feature was only available through third-party apps or hacks. You can use this feature to add your contact information to the lock screen which might help you get your Mac back if you lose it.
Minimalist email client Sparrow continues to grow apace, thanks to some updates over the summer. We last looked at it back in March, but there’s a lot of new stuff since then.
I like the full screen mode that apps can run in on Mac OS X Lion, but if you are just now experimenting with this new feature you may feel a little lost. The reason you might feel lost is because while apps run in full screen mode a lot of navigations elements are missing. Today you’ll find out that they aren’t missing just hiding.
People can spend a lot of time surfing the web in Safari and sometimes we get to a page that we cannot read. The reasons you cannot read the page might include having misplaced your reading glasses or perhaps you just want a better look at some fine print before buying something online then this tip is for you.
Here is another good Mission Control(MC) tip for all you MC junkies out there. You can do more than just move applications between spaces. You can even drag the application and all its windows to whatever desktop space you choose in one easy step.
Apple provides a password reset utility that is very handy when you really need it. In versions of Mac OS X before Lion you accessed this utility by booting your Mac with the included restore DVD. Mac OS X Lion can still reset passwords, but for unknown reasons Apple decided to hide this ability.
Today’s tip will show you how to discover the hidden password reset tool in the Mac OS X Lion Recovery HD Utility.