The end of the year is fast approaching, and that means it’s time to start thinking about levelling up for the year ahead. Their are several apps available for the Mac that can help you do that, and Cult of Mac Deals has put together a bundle that takes some of these apps and packages them together at a very attractive price.
With The New Year’s Mac Bundle, you’ll get 9 helpful apps for one incredibly low price of $14.99. That’s 90% off – which works out to just over a dollar per app!
Apple has released its first major update for OS X Mavericks today with OS X Update 10.9.1 that promises to fix many of the Mail issues users have experienced since upgrading to the new OS.
After spending over a month in beta the new update fixes issues with Gmail in OS X Mail if you’re using custom settings. Smart Mailboxes and search are also more reliable in the update and it fixes issues with contact groups not working properly along with improvements to Shared Links in Safari.
The free update is now available for Mac users in the Mac App Store or by check for software updates from your Apple menu.
Reminders are delightful thing. Apple’s implementation syncs across the Mac to iPhones and iPads, and if you log in to iCloud.com, you can share Reminders with friends, family, co-workers, and the like. They’re super useful.
Sometimes, though, you might want to single out a specific Reminder for special attention. There’s really no starring system or tagging available within Reminders itself, so you’ll have to get creative.
Sure, you can open up Apple’s Maps app on your iPhone (or iPad, but really, who does that?) and enable live traffic information with a tap or two. It’s super helpful while you’re on the road, and helps you avoid the nasty traffic snarls that might be up ahead.
But what if you’re planning a trip from your Mac running Mavericks? Shouldn’t you be able to access that kind of data on your Mac?
Well, you can! Mavericks makes it super easy to enable, too.
Real-time data released by metrics company Net Applications shows that the latest version of OS X, Mavericks, represents 2.42 percent of the overall desktop operating system market share.
Sure, it’s pretty easy to type an address into the Maps built into Mavericks, but wouldn’t it be even better if you could just click your way to Map nirvana?
In the latest version of OS X, you can send your directions or Map locations right to your iPhone or iPad, so why not make things even easier and more streamlined? Just launch Contacts and you’ll see.
Following last week’s first beta of OS X 10.9.1, Apple has seeded a new version of the beta – Build 13B35 – to developers this afternoon.
The new build of OS X 10.9.1 packs a couple of bug fixes for Gmail integration in the OS X Mail app. There are also some fixes for an emoji bug and improvements to Safari’s sharing capabilities. Developers can grab the new beta from the Mac Dev Center.
Apple also released second beta builds of Safari 6.1.1 and Safari 7.0.1 along with some firmware updates for the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule base stations.
Source: Apple
Sure, we all know that we can embiggen our applications on the Mac, clicking on the little arrows in the upper right corner of any app. That way, we can get fullscreen versions of our apps to utilize all the screen real estate we have.
I like to make my browser and image editing software full screen, placing each one in a separate Desktop Space, switching between them with a keyboard shortcut for easy access.
Did you know, however, that you can do the same with any Finder window? I know I didn’t.
It’s important to keep track of your power consumption on a Macbook Air or Pro, since that will determine how long you can use the thing before you have to plug it in again. Mavericks makes it easy to see the top app or two that uses the most energy on your Mac with a quick Option-Click on the battery menubar icon, letting you know which apps are consuming the most energy.
If you want to know about all the apps running on your Mac, though, you’ll need to dig a bit deeper, using Activity Monitor.
It’s great to be able to keep track of addresses for friends and places around town in your Contacts app. Having all the address info in a ready Contact makes it super simple to launch Maps in Mavericks from the Contacts app when you want directions to a party in town somewhere.
And, while you can easily send directions from Maps app to your iPhone, it’s also helpful to just say to Siri, “Directions to Jill’s house,” or “Get me to the movie theater,” and have your iPhone just pull up maps based on that name in the Contacts app.
Mavericks makes it incredibly simple to put addresses for all the places you might want to go right into your Contacts app so you can do just that.
Unfortunately, Facebook kind of runs my scheduling life. I plan events there, accept events from other folks for parties and recitals and stuff, and–most importantly–keep track of many birthdays that I’ve never really put into my calendar over the years.
The last couple of OS X iterations have required some bit of effort to make the Facebook calendars show up in the Calendar app, though. Mavericks changes that by making it chimp simple to get your Facebook events connected to your Calendar app.
So, one of the great things that iOS introduced back in iOS 6 was the ability to synchronize your text shortcuts across devices.
So, for example, if you set up “@@” on your iPhone to expand to your email address, that same shortcut would show up on your iPad.
With OS X Mavericks, this ability comes full circle to your Mac, letting all iCloud-synced devices have the same text shortcuts on them.
When OS X Mountain Lion came out, we found out that there were 43 hidden high-resolution images included as part of the screen saver system: nature images from National Geographic, aerial images, images of the cosmos, and patterns in nature, to name a few.
It turns out that the same images are hiding in Mavericks, too, just in a different–maybe more accessible place.
According to Reuben Engel over at Tips and Tricks in Mavericks, there’s a potential bug floating around in the latest Mac OS X.
Some folks have been reporting that they have to enter an iCloud password each and every time they open the Mail app. This might be only the folks who used Mail prior to the upgrade, but if one of them is you, here’s a possible solution.
For those of you who might want to listen to a book via iBooks, one option is to load an iBook on your iPhone or iPad and turn on VoiceOver.
That can change the way your iOS device works, though, so it can be tricky to the uninitiated.
Now that iBooks is on Mavericks, however, you have another option: get your Mac to read your iBook to you.
You may know that your Mac can send you notifications via the native Notifications Center, introduced in OS X Mountain Lion. You can get notified via a pop up badge or alert window for various activities, like iMessages, Calendar events, FaceTime calls, or Game Center achievements, just to name a few.
In Mavericks, you can even get these messages when your screen is locked with a password via the Privacy system preferences option. Your notification alerts will show up on top of your lock screen.
But what if you want to preserver your privacy when you lock your Mac’s screen but you don’t want to enable Do Not Disturb mode?
If you’re trying to download the free OS X Mavericks upgrade via the Mac App Store and it’s getting stuck, you’re not alone. As you can see int he image above, some folks are seeing a paused download when trying to upgrade to Apple’s latest and greatest Mac operating system.
Roberto Baldwin over at the Wired GadgetLab has a fairly easy solution, and I figured I’d share it with you.
We’ve been able to change the name of our Mac documents from the title bar since OS X Mountain Lion, and it’s made for an interesting new workflow.
In fact, there was a nice little drop down menu that would let you duplicate, move, and rename the document resulting from clicking on the triangle to the right of the document name in the title bar.
Now, though, in Mavericks, that’s changed.
In the Apple world, records tend to be exponentially shattered. For example, if it took three hours for WWDC to sell out last year, it’ll probably sell out in three minutes this year. Last year, it took five weeks for OS X Mountain Lion to be installed on more than 10% of all Macs. Guess how long it took this year?
Apple may have just released OS X Mavericks and made it available to all for free, but it comes with a major flaw that you may not have noticed: it doesn’t run MacPaint… or MacDraw. But don’t worry — thanks to James Friend, you can run Mac OS 7 (System 7) — complete with MacPaint and MacDraw — right in your web browser.
There you are, sitting in front of your Mac, important work on the screen, when an Update notification shows up. Oh no! Your Mac wants you to update some software, but you really do not have the time.
What’s a busy professional to do? Before Mavericks, you could dismiss the notification, and wait for it to pop up again. In Mavericks, however, you have a bit more control over your Mac than that.
Back in OS X Lion and then again in OS X Mountain Lion, Apple hid access to the user Library folder to prevent neophyte OS X users from messing around in the areas of the file system that could cause some damage to their Macs.
That’s fine, of course, but it took a lot of messing around in the Terminal to get that access back, and who remembers Terminal commands from last year? Not us, that’s for sure.
Luckily, Mavericks has a much easier way to turn Library access on.
The big iPad event might be over, but take heart fellow Apple fans, there are still plenty of great Apple stories to chat about on our all-new CultCast. This episode: the iPhone stops giving motion sickness to the pukers; some of your favorite Apple apps get big redesigns; the new Macbook Pro gets benchmarked; Apple puts your passwords in the iCloud; and more!
Join us for our second CultCast this week! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let baseline roll. And don’t miss episode 96 for our MEGAsode coverage on all that was announced at Apple’s big Oct. 22nd event.
While Apple’s iLife and iWork software suites are considerably cheaper than competing products from rival companies, there’s still a bunch of people who would rather download them illegally than have to fork out the $20 fee for each app. And believe it or not, those who do will get a free upgrade to the latest versions direct from Apple.
When the Cupertino company pushed out its latest OS X apps following the iPad event earlier this week, anyone who had already installed the apps on their Mac was entitled to the latest version for free — even if the were using trial software, or they had downloaded the apps illegally.
Apple knows this, and it says it wasn’t just a bug. It also accepts that it’s easy to pirate its software — but it would rather trust you not to than implement some cumbersome anti-piracy feature.
I rely on the iPhone to get me around most places, even in my current hometown. I just really have a bad sense of direction. But ever since the advent of online maps and the GPS function of my iPhone, I’ve longed for the ability to quickly look up an address on my Mac, hit a button, and have the directions go to my iPhone.
That’s never been possible until now, with the advent of OS X Mavericks and the addition of the new Maps app to the Mac. Ideally, you’re supposed to be able to just launch Maps, get a set of directions, and then hit the little Share button to send those directions to your portable device.
I was super disappointed, then, when I went to send some directions to my iPhone from my Mac today and didn’t see my iPhone or iPad listed in the Share list.
