Mavericks - page 4

If you asked any Apple fan what they thought of Windows 8, they’d probably laugh and say it was a total dud, the perfect example on why Microsoft is just too hopeless to survive in the post-PC age. And you know what, there’d be something to that argument. After all, when Windows 8 shipped, it was fragmented between ARM and x86 versions from the start, and Windows 8 has been much lambasted from a usability perspective by both pros and casual users alike.

However, to call Windows 8 a total flop is probably going a little overboard. The latest operating system market share numbers suggest that Windows 8 is now installed on more computers than all versions of Mac OS X combined.

Ever end up with a lot of Finder windows floating around your Mac screen? In previous versions of Mac OS X, the choice was to close them all with a keyboard shortcut, Option-Command-W, which will end all your Finder suffering in one short tap.

In Mavericks beta, that still works. Yet Apple has also added another way to deal with multiple Finder windows: merging them. Here’s how.

Apple has released the sixth beta build of OS X Mavericks to developers this afternoon. The update comes a full two weeks after the release of the fifth beta, which brought iBooks to the Mac along with a new version of iPhoto.

Developers can download the new beta build by checking for software updates in the Mac App Store, or directly from the Mac Dev Center. OS X Mavericks is scheduled to release later this fall.

One of the cool new features of OS X Mavericks is the ability to tag files in the Finder, making Finder labels a bit more useful. Want to sort a bunch of files for your upcoming vacation into one place? Make a tag for “vacation,” and then add the tag per file with a right-click as we showed you a while back.

Want to track some of those vacation files with the destinations they pertain to? Go ahead and tag them with a second tag. Can’t do that with a label.

While it’s easy to right-click on a file and choose a tag, it’s even easier to add tags with a simple Mac OS standard move. Here’s how.

Apple has released OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 5 today following the release of the fourth preview two weeks ago. The update is available via the Mac App Store for registered developers already on the Mavericks beta, and a direct download is available in the Mac Dev Center. Apple’s iBooks for Mac app has been included for the first time in this particular beta release. General stability and performance issues have also been addressed.

The eighth beta of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5 was also seeded today. 10.8.5 will likely be the last Mountain Lion update to come out before Mavericks is released to the public this fall.

Apple has been generally sticking to a two-week release cycle for Mavericks and iOS 7 betas this summer, despite the Dev Center outage. Mavericks is continuing to get more stable with each preview release, and the finishing touches are being put on 10.8.5.

Source: Apple

Have you ever lost your user account password for your Mac? You know, the one which lets you get into your Mac at login, or install software, or delete stuff from the Applications folder? You haven’t? Well, you’re a better person than I am, because I’ve forgotten mine (usually on older Macs I haven’t used in a billion years, but still) and had to pop in a Mac OS X CD and go through the recovery process.

While that’s not too big of a pain in the butt, it does take some time. Time which could be better spent drinking beer, or solving a Rubik’s Cube, am I right?

If you’re running Mac OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks, you can assign your Apple ID to your user account, which can help when you need to reset your password. You know, if you forget it or something. Ahem.

On my Macbook Air running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, when I click on the Time Machine backup menubar item, I see the option to browse other backup disks. That’s a pretty cool option, if I need to switch between different disks to backup my Mac; maybe to make a secondary backup for redundancy.

In Mavericks, the Time Machine menu bar icon doesn’t have this option any more, instead only showing Stop This Backup when backing up (or Back Up Now when it isn’t), Enter Time Machine, and Open Time Machine Preferences. If you’re wondering where the option to browse other backup disks has gone, you’re not alone.

My ten year old son has gotten significantly into Civilization V lately, and we bought him his own copy on sale at Steam yesterday. So, he was at his mom’s house, and I was at my house, and he wanted me to invite him to a private match.

In order to do so, I had to enable Assistive Devices, just like Steam has always asked players to do to help enable the overlays and multiplayer invite system. So I headed to the System Preferences, to the Accessibility preference pane, like always. Alas, there is no place there to click the familiar “Enable access for assistive devices” button. I looked high, I looked low. No dice. No enabling access for assistive devices, either.

So then I turned to Google.

Just a friendly note. Apple has so far been releasing new betas of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks every other Monday, like clockwork. But with the iTunes Developer Center, down for almost four days now (because of a hack that might have been committed by a researcher) and no end in sight, if you’re expecting iOS 7 Beta 4 and OS X Mavericks Beta 4 to drop today, you might not want to hold your breath: if Apple can’t get the Developer Center up and running this afternoon, releasing a new beta isn’t likely.

This week on The CultCast: Logic Pro gets Pro’er with new features and iPad controls; Google Maps finally comes to iPad; Apple hunts for iWatch engineers; more iPad Mini retina rumors; Apple slangin’ TV deals with studios to kill commercials; we dish great computing tips on Tips Ahoooy!

Have a few laughs and get caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. 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 the audio adventure begin.

For those of you eager to know whether or not your aging Mac will be able to run Mavericks, the new version of OS X due out in a few months, Aspyr has enlisted the Mac Match feature on its GameAgent site to help you out.

Apple has issued a software update for those running the third developer preview of OS X Mavericks. The release promises to patch a major graphics bug that could cause machines to “reboot without warning.”

Update: Looks like the account wasn’t Apple’s after all, and the videos have been pulled.

Didn’t get a chance to go to WWDC to learn all the new stuff about iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks? Developers have been able to watch all of the WWDC session videos for nearly a month now, but Apple just uploaded them to YouTube as well so even unregistered developers can get in on the action.

Rather than uploading all the videos to Apple’s regular YouTube channel, they’ve been uploaded to a new channel called WWDCVideos channel. Apple hasn’t confirmed that it’s an official channel, but the videos are legit, so head over for a heavy dose of iOS 7 knowledge.

Source: YouTube

Via: MacStories

OS X Mavericks beta, while not quite an overhaul as iOS 7, still carries quite a few new enhancements and features that you might not necessarily see at first glance. There are plenty of hidden features, which we’ve already detailed here on Cult of Mac, but more continue to be found. Lucky you, we’re here to help put them all together in one place.

Here are five of those hidden features for OS X Mavericks beta, each perhaps surprising in their own, special way.

Apple just posted a couple of tiny updates to both OS X and iOS versions of Airport Utility, bringing the Apple-branded router setup and management utility to version 6.3.1. The patch apparently fixes a bug that would keep AirPort base stations from being detected in some cases. It’s a little under 22 M to download, and can be downloaded from Apple’s support site, Software Update, and the iTunes App Store, if the iOS version is the one you need.

If you’re rockin’ OS X Mavericks beta, you’ll also see a new update for the as-yet-unreleased beta software. This should fix some sort of problem with the Recovery Mode, though the details are light at this point as to what, specifically, is being fixed. It will show up in Software Update, too.

Source: Apple Support
Via: MacNN

AutoFill has been a part of OS X and Apple’s browser, Safari, for a while now. When you fill out forms on the web, Safari will prompt you to use your contact info to fill in the form, or to use the form data you entered as your AutoFill information. This is helpful as you fill out a lot of web forms, of course.

Now, in OS X Mavericks beta, Safari has a new trick up its sleeve, with the ability to suggest secure passwords to you, and then saving them for you when you go back to that site. It’s called iCloud Keychain, and here’s how to set it up.

When you’re galavanting about with your MacBook Air or Pro, it’s important to manage you battery power. It just wouldn’t do to show up for an important meeting or interview with a dead battery, let alone not being able to watch a movie on the airplane, now would it?

Knowing which apps are sucking up the most juice is key to this effort, of course, and OS Mavericks beta makes it severely easy to know which ones are the most power-hungry. That way, you can quit the apps that are using up too much battery in order to leave enough power for the important stuff.

Here’s how it works.

One of the coolest things about Messages is the cross-device functionality, in that you can send messages to and from your Mac and your iOS devices. I use it while at work to chat with folks who text me from their iPhone; it’s a really handy way to avoid using a tiny screen while at work, not to mention letting you keep your iPHone in a bag, instead of beeping or vibrating on your desk.

Now, though, you can send an iMessage in the Notification Center in OS X Mavericks beta. Here’s how.

In yet another addition to the OS X Finder in OS X Mavericks, you can now tag your files. This is a wonderful way to keep track of stuff, since unless you’re an obsessive folder and sub-folder maker, tags are much easier to define and apply on the fly, making the dynamic organization of your files easier and less permanent.

OS X Mavericks tags seem a lot like Labels did, with a couple of differences. You can apply more than one tag to a file or folder, and you can sort your files by tag, as well. Here’s how.

The new Mac Pro is looking like it will be an absolute powerhouse, but even regulars Macs should see a major performance improvement running OS X 10.9 Mavericks, thanks to the new operating system’s incorporation of OpenGL 4.

The improved Notifications in OS X 10.9 are great. Not only can you respond to notifications as they appear on your desktop, but the new Notification Center also lets you know when your peripherals are about to die.

Now when your keyboard or mouse is getting low on juice, OS X Mavericks will display a notification alerting you that it’s almost time to change the batteries. The days of getting caught with a dead mouse during a presentation may finally be over.

If you haven’t already watched Apple’s WWDC keynote, it’s probably because you just haven’t found the time. At just under two hours long, it’s not something you can just slip into your day. But you can now watch it at your leisure on any of your electronics devices because Apple just uploaded the entire thing to YouTube.

Testing a beta version of OS X 10.9 can always be risky, but to mitigate the possibility of losing all your data thanks to a crazy bug, you can always try running Mavericks in a virtual environment.

Parallels just announced that developers can install the OS X 10.9 Developer Preview in a virtual machine by using Parallels Desktop 8. To help users get started using Mavericks in Parallels, the Engineering team published the following guides:

As we continue to look at some tips for the new OS X beta this week, remember that OS X Mavericks isn’t a final version—it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that their software will work with Apple’s latest and greatest.

With that disclaimer in mind, let’s continue.

If you need to use Java for any reason on your Mac, and you install OS X Mavericks beta on it, you’ll be sad when you try and run that Java-reliant bit of software.

For me, it was setting up the Minecraft server for my kid after I installed the beta last night to take a look at things. When I went to run it in Terminal, I got an error, saying there was no Java installed. So, even though I’d had Java installed in Mac OS X Mountain Lion, the Mavericks install seems to have taken Java off my Mac. No worries; it was kind of an easy fix.

OS X Mavericks (named after a hot surfing spot in California) was released last week, and even though it may have been overshadowed by the iOS 7 announcement at the same time, there are bound to be some new things in the operating system we can tip you about.

Remember, though, that as with all beta software, OS X Mavericks isn’t a final version–it’s meant to be used by developers to ensure that when it’s released this fall, all the devs with apps on OS X will have had time to make tweaks to their current Mac software, and start integrating Mavericks stuff into their next bits of software.

That said, let’s take a look at how to enable the new Do Not Disturb toggle in OS X Mavericks beta.