Smart Folders in Mac OS X Lion are finally something to talk about. In earlier versions of Mac OS X they were frankly kind of dumb, but not any more. They now act and work just like regular folders in Finder and they are incredibly fast. That is why Apple made a Smart Folder, All My Files, the default folder when you open a new Finder window in Mac OS X Lion.
Mac OS X Lion includes buried “HiDPI” display modes, which brings the possibility of Retina Display Macs one step closer to reality. Essentially, these display modes make user interface elements twice the resolution typically found on Macs, therefore increasing clarity and detail throughout the UI. This is exactly how the iPhone handles graphics with the Retina Display, and provides some insight into what Apple might be planning for future iterations of it’s computers. While not very practical at this point in time, it’s neat to try out. In this video, I’ll show you how to enable these HiDPI display modes in OS X Lion.
I’ve had a few friends experience a problem with their Spotlight search results after upgrading to Mac OS X Lion and at other times for other reasons. They claimed to search for items that they knew were somewhere on their computer, but Spotlight wasn’t able to find them in both cases.
Here’s a down and dirty fix for Spotlight that is useful when Spotlight seems to stop providing the results you expect. It is also useful when you just want Spotlight to re-index your system.
Insider sources are telling The Daily that Microsoft is planning to bring its Office suite to the App Store. Specifically, the Redmond company has an Office business app for the iPad in the pipeline.
Apple offers its own iWork productivity suite on iOS, including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Microsoft apparently wants a piece of the word processing action, and its sights are set on Office for the iPad.
Last week I wrote a few tips about disk encryption, but I didn’t write about what to do with the startup disk on your Mac. I cannot think of any reason you shouldn’t encrypt your startup disk after the release of Mac OS X Lion. Apple has made it just to easy for you to encrypt your drive. It is quick, fast and easy. I’ll show you how today.
Just how popular is OS X Lion 10.7, compared to its predecessors? “Lion’s adoption has been less than stellar,” says one online ad firm. Yet the figures don’t seem to jive with other Internet surveys, as well as Apple’s. Who’s right? As often is the case, it depends on who you ask.
Apple has issued a video update for its 15-inch MacBook Pro that addresses a freezing issue users some users may be suffering with the mid-2010 model. The update also fixes a bug that presented users with a blank screen when they attempted to watch a video on their machine.
Mac OS X developers have been given a few extra months to accept the Mac App Store app sandboxing requirements… or to forget about selling their apps through Apple’s store altogether.
Originally, the deadline was November 1st, but Apple has since uncharacteristically extended the deadline to March 1, 2012. After that, all apps sold in the Mac App Store must use Mac OS X Lion’s new sandboxing framework. That framework is another thing Lion had adopted from iOS and is meant to increase security on the Mac.
With the deadline extended, developers now have about four months to decide on whether they will support sandboxing in their apps. The problem? If they do, some apps will become just shadows of their former selves.
OS X Lion’s Finder is noticeably more drab than its predecessor. The once-colorful sidebar icons have now turned a rather flat shade of gray. In this video, I’ll show you how to restore color to your Finder sidebar icons.
It just got a whole lot easier to install Lion on your hackintosh, thanks to Tonymacx86’s new “UniBeast” bootable USB drive utility. In case you didn’t know, a hackintosh is basically a PC that’s been modified to run OS X, and some people create pretty sweet hackintosh setups for half the price of an Apple-branded equivalent.
UniBeast is a new tool that makes it easy to install Apple’s newest desktop OS, Lion, on your hackintosh. Not only does UniBeast get rid of the need for an iBoot CD, but it also creates a bootable Lion USB flash drive.
This weekend broke news that Apple was already hard at work on OS X 10.8, so it would be natural to assume that in the next version of OS X, Cupertino will bring even more iOS functionality to their desktop operating system: stuff like Airplay and iMessages.
Nope. But don’t be too disappointed. AirPlay and iMessages are reportedly coming to OS X 10.7 Lion, instead.
If you’d asked me to bet on it, I would have said that OS X 10.7 Lion would be the last iteration of the Big Cat family. After all, where else is there to go? All of OS X’s releases have been named after successively bigger cats, and with Lion, Apple finally reached the biggest cat of them all.
Apparently, though, Apple envisions at least one more version of OS X before retiring the Big Cat OS once and for all. MacRumors reports that Apple is already testing OS X 10.8 internally.
Any bets on what the next version of OS X will be called? There aren’t any bigger cats, at least not without dipping a toe into cryptozoology, which would be awesome. I still favor ‘Manticore.’
Apple is pushing out more updates to computers released in 2011 to enable Lion Internet recovery. Initially this recovery feature was only available on the MacBook Air and Mac Mini when they made their debut in July. Recently, however, Apple made it available on certain model MacBook notebooks and this week it was released for early 2011 iMacs like the one I purchased in June.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m surprised that Apple enabled Lion Internet Recovery on my iMac. I thought they’d hold out and only offer it on a refreshed model as an incentive to upgrade.
Apple has released an update to the early 2011 iMac EFI firmware. The new update is labeled version 1.7 and it is available via software update.
The update addresses the following issues:
Apple operates under the philosophy that the latest and greatest OS is what everybody should use, but many of us prefer to try things out first and upgrade a bit more slowly. When you dual-boot your Mac among two different versions of Mac OS X some things will work fine, while others require one system or the other:
I’m running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on a MacBook Pro 3,1 and I just got a new 750GB, 7200rpm drive to put in. Can I create say a 100GB OS X 10.7 Lion partition and share the apps / data from the 10.6.8 partition?
Did you buy an app for your Mac that you later regret having bought? Or did you decide it was so terrible that you don’t want to be reminded about having bought it? Well, you are in luck, because now there is a way to remove purchases now from your Purchased history in the Mac App Store.
Slate’s Michael Agger wrote a nice post this week, musing on the way Apple changed the way we scroll with the introduction of Lion just over two months ago.
It got me wondering: how long did it take people to adapt to the new rules of scrolling?
Following a new trojan threat for Mac OS X that was uncovered last week, Apple has updated its anti-malware tools for the Mac that will ensure we continue to sleep soundly at night, safe in the knowledge our beloved Macs aren’t at risk.
With OS X Lion, Apple announced a new file sharing feature called AirDrop. While the concept of AirDrop is great, it’s lack of support on older Macs cripples it’s functionality for some users. In this video, I’ll show you how to enable AirDrop on your older Mac as well as use some of AirDrop’s lesser known functionality.
Google has updated Google Chrome for Mac with support for features in OS X Lion, like full-screen mode and disappearing scrollbars. This specific release has been available to members of the browser’s developer channel since August, but Google has just now released it as a stable upgrade for everyone.
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.
One of the most annoying features in OS X Lion for me has been the little checkbox on the shutdown dialog box that states, “Reopen windows when logging back in.” Going through the trouble of managing this checkbox every time I shut down is a hassle I’d rather not go through. Fortunately, there is a neat little Terminal trick that will allow you to render this button useless, as I’ll show you in the video below.
Still enjoying Apple’s latest operating system on your Mac? With over 250 new features for $29.99, most of us couldn’t be happier with the upgrade… until we find out that our Macs are now at risk from a major vulnerability in OS X Lion.
While OS X Lion is an excellent operating system, it may not be perfect for some people. Since some applications haven’t been updated to run on Lion yet, some users may need to downgrade to Snow Leopard in order to keep using the applications they need on a regular basis. In this video, I’ll show the best ways to downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard.
I can only guess how much explosive glee AutoDesk Motion FX — a new free app from AutoDesk, the developer behind AutoCAD and the SketchBook line of apps — would have engendered in me as a little kid, because I fostered a deep yearning to run around with a flaming hand or fire leaping from the top my head like some Ghost Rider clone. Good thing my parents kept me well away from matches and gasoline.
