You may not be familiar with the company Tronical but you will know their work because they are responsible for Gibson’s Robot Guitar tuning systems. Well judging by this video it appears that Tronical are about to launch some standalone systems that can be retrofit to pretty much any guitar be it a Les Paul [...]
Tag: Apple
CCleaner Now Released For The Mac
No matter how intuitive and reportedly “trouble free” Macs are to run, believe me, several months after you add hundreds of files, applications, and download thousands of webpages, your shiny new iMac or MacBook Air is going to run slower than when you first booted it out the box. That’s because like any computer, digital junk files pile up in the hard drive; and eventually it just needs to get cleaned out.
CCleaner is one such application utility that can perform cleaning operations for you. It was recently released from its beta version for Mac users, and it can now be downloaded for free in the Mac App Store, or directly from the Piriform website. Windows PC users have been making use of CCleaner for a while, and now Mac users can finally take advantage of it. The interface is similar for both platforms, but the program is of course optimized to address the particular system clutter of OS X.
Apple ranked the most admired company in the world, for the fifth time
Apple has created quite the following over the years worldwide, specifically after the launch of the iPhone. Look at how quickly the news of Steve Jobs’ death spread over social media and to mainstream media outlets — it was a matter of minutes. Everyone loves Apple.
Today, Fortune has posted its list of the world’s most admired companies. And not to anyone’s surprise, Apple has topped the list as the world’s most admired company. Search engine Google and online retailer Amazon follow behind Apple…
(Via iDownloadBlog.com.)
Everything You Need To Know about OS X Lion
The wait is over, you can finally get your digital fingers all up in Lion’s mane. Apple released the latest iteration of OS X in the Mac App Store and the hefty download is ready for anyone with $29.99 burning a hole in their pocket.
While waiting for Lion, you’ve no doubt checked out Apple’s Lion Features page. It boasts more than 250 new features, some of them more featurey than others. Full Screen Apps is one feature, counting it as a separate feature for each app, that sort of seems like cheating.
To help you get the most out Lion, we compiled a list of features and tips to help you conquer your new feline friend.
How To Tame Six of OS X Lion’s Early Problems
Apple finally uncaged OS X Lion in the Mac App Store on Wednesday, and as is typical with most new operating system releases, early adopters are already scratching their heads trying to work around some oddities introduced by the big cat. Here are a few suggestions for taming the new king of your Mac jungle.
How To Use the Screen Sharing Features in Lion
The Screen Sharing application has been around in OS X since the days of Leopard (oh so long ago!), but Apple has added some nifty features to the application and underlying support in Lion. From a new tool bar, to a new per-user screen sharing feature, Lion has you covered when doing screen sharing on your local network between two or more Macs.
How To Use Versioning Control in Mac OS X Lion
With Lion, Apple has included a way for developers to implement versioning control in their apps. So when you’re saving files like documents you’ll have access to both the past versions and current version. With a Time Machine-like interface, you’re able to view all of the changes in your documents and restore past versions if you accidentally delete something in the current version.
How To Use Search Tokens in Lion Mail
Apple has completely revamped the Mail application in Lion. Not only are they going for an iPad-influenced user interface, but they’ve also enabled a searching system that makes finding messages easier through the use of tokens. With tokens, you can search by date, name, message contents, or any combination of these.
How To Navigate, Organize and Delete Apps with Launchpad
Launchpad allows you to organize, manage, and launch Mac applications just like you would on an iPad. The feature show and store applications as immediately as they’re downloaded from the Mac App Store, and they can even delete applications downloaded from the App Store.
Does Your Favorite App Work on Lion?
Want to know if Adobe Photoshop CS5 will work on Lion? What about AOL Radio?
The good people at RoaringApps have put together a wiki detailing which apps have been tested so far on Lion, and if they work properly or not. There are currently seventeen pages of apps on their App Compatibility Table, all listed in alphabetical order, with details about each app.
How to Burn a Lion Install DVD and Create Bootable Thumb Drive
Lion is Apple’s first disc-less distribution of Mac OS X, and as such, is leaving many users with slow or no internet connections without any fun today. We’re going to show you how to easily burn your Lion installer to a disc in order to install the OS on a computer without a network connection, or even as a way to make an emergency backup copy of your $30 investment.
7 Annoying Settings You Can Change in Lion
Lion has a ton of wonderful features, but there are a few new ones that might make long-time Mac users a little crazy. Fortunately, if you’re a creature of habit, Apple has enabled the ability to simply toggle them off in the System Preferences — so yes, you don’t have to live with Lion’s new way of scrolling. Read on to find out which settings you can change in Lion and get back to your normal life.
How To Use Gestures in Safari 5.1 for Lion
Mac OS X Lion ships with a brand new version of the Safari web browser. Version 5.1 of Safari gives many new features, including the much anticipated Reading List. But, Apple has also included some new gestures for Safari that gives the web browser more of an iPad feel.
How To Use Spaces in Mac OS X Lion
Spaces first appeared in OS X Leopard, but in Lion, the feature has been rebranded, along with Expose, into the new Mission Control feature. Mission Control is your one-stop place for viewing all of the opened application windows on your Mac, full screen apps and. Dashboard widgets. It also lets you create multiple desktops, which enables you to organize your windows by the types of applications or by the work you’ll do in each Space. Read on to find out how to best utilize Spaces.
(Via Mac|Life all.)
Clean Install of OS X Lion
OS X Lion is now available from the Mac App Store and we know that many of you are preparing or have already started downloading and installing the new cat.
Because installation takes place entirely from within the Mac App Store, the usual ‘clean install’ option isn’t present. If you’ve followed our guide for preparing your Mac for Lion, you’re probably in good shape to proceed with an upgrade. If, however, you long for the ability to do a clean install without having to first install Snow Leopard and THEN install Lion, Mashable has you covered.
If you want to create a bootable USB stick or burn a DVD of OS X Lion, read along.
Step 1: Download Lion From the Mac App Store
Go ahead and download OS X Lion from the Mac App store. This is a nearly 4GB download, so if your Internet connection isn’t super fast, you may want to plan to get some other stuff done while you wait.
As soon as the download is complete, exit out of the installation prompt. We don’t want to do an install right now.
Step 2: Find The Install Lion App in Finder (in Your Applications Folder)
Locate the Lion installation program.
Step 3: Right-Click on the Installer, Select ‘Show Package Contents’
Right click or control-click on the program icon and select ‘Show Package Contents.’ Now, you want to browse to the ‘Shared Support’ folder inside of ‘Contents’ and locate a file called ‘InstallESD.dmg.’ This is the file we will use to create our bootable Lion image.
Copy this file to your desktop or another folder you have easy access to.
Step 4: Start Disk Utility
Open up Disk Utility (it’s in the Utilities folder in Applications). At this point, you should see the various hard drives connected to your Mac. If you haven’t already plugged in an empty USB thumb drive or a hard drive with an empty partition, do that now.
Step 5a: Insert a Blank DVD
For users that want to create a DVD for installation purposes, go ahead and put it in your Mac.
In Disk Utility, click the ‘Burn’ icon and then select the ‘installESD.dmg’ file that we just copied to our desktop.
Let it burn.
Step 5b: Select the USB Drive You Want to Use
Click on the tab that says ‘Erase.’
If, however, you’d prefer to create a bootable USB drive. Select it now.
In the source menu, select the ‘installESD.dmg’ file we already copied to our desktop.
For destination, choose the partition of the drive you want to use. Be aware that you will erase everything on this partition and replace it with OS X Lion, so be sure you don’t have anything important on that drive or partition.
Click Restore.
After the image is burned to USB or DVD, restart your computer by holding down the option key. You will now be given an option to boot from the DVD or USB drive. Go through the installation, ready to enjoy a new, clean install of Lion.
(Via Mashable!.)
Installing The Developer’s Build Of OS X Lion
Apple will be releasing, perhaps as early as July 9th, its latest version of Mac OS X, Lion. Unlike with previous OS X updates, Lion will be significantly cheaper ($29,00), but getting your hands on a physical disc copy of the Lion upgrade will not be possible. This will be because, for the first time, this OS X update will only be available for download through Apple‘s Mac App Store.
As of this writing, Apple has not indicated that it will provide hard disk copies of Lion. This new method system of updating has its pros and cons, but having downloaded the developer’s build of Lion, I think for many previous users of the Mac App Store, the process should further simplify new system upgrades.
This article does not address all the questions users may have about the Lion upgrade. After the system is fully released, we will address any other major issues (if any) that may arise with the upgrade.
System Requirements
In order to upgrade to Mac OS X Lion, the Mac you want to install it on will need to be at least an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5 or Core i7 processor. I believe most Macs produced in the last five years meet one of these qualifications. To find out which processor your Mac is using, click on the Apple icon > About.
You will need to be running the latest update of Snow Leopard 10.6.6. (See here for more information about the App Store upgrade).
This SL update should include the Mac App Store application in which you use to purchase and download Lion, as you would any other applications in the store.
Download Process
The developer’s build of Lion that I downloaded is over 4GB, and more than likely it will not be any smaller than that in its final release version. So once you pay for Lion, be prepared for a 30 minute to 2 hour download time, depending on the speed of your network.
You will want to make sure you have backed up your existing hard drive onto Time Machine and/or cloned it to another external drive.
If you need to install Lion on other Macs in your home, you can open App Store on those computers and click on your Purchases (located in the App Store menu bar) to download the installer app again to those other Macs.
However, instead of another download through a Wi-Fi connection for your other Macs, you probably should be able to copy the Lion installer app via your networked computers or through a FireWire or Ethernet connection so that process is a little faster.
Installation Process
What’s great about downloading Lion from the App Store is that the process will begin once downloading is complete.
Most users will simply download Lion on top of Snow Leopard, which means that the new system will replace Snow Leopard but all your existing files, applications, songs, movies, and other data will be remain intact, and will appear after you restart your computer with the newly installed Lion upgrade.
There will be a Customize button that you can click to selectively exclude any default Lion apps, system foreign languages and the like that you don’t want installed in the upgrade (in the developer’s build of Lion the ability to customize the installation was not yet available).
After you’re done with the installation app, you can delete it from your Application’s folder, as once you purchase it in the App Store it will always be there for to download again if need be. The big issue with this App Store process is you won’t have an external copy of Lion on disk to plop into your Mac just in case you need to run a fix on a corrupted disk or partition.
Alternative Installations
If you need to, you can install Lion on a separate partition or external drive, so that you can have access to both Snow Leopard and Lion. Why might you want to do this? Well, some applications like older versions of Microsoft Word will not run on Lion, and you’re not prepared to upgrade the software for Lion just yet.
So to create a partition, you will need to make sure you have plenty of internal hard drive space. I would recommend at least 12-20 gigs of space on the partition.
You can create a partition by launching Disk Utility and selecting your hard drive. Click on the ‘Partition’ tab and then click the + button at the bottom of the Volume Scheme. Name the partition ‘Lion’ or any name you like. Set the partition size for Lion to be about 12-20GB. Click the ‘Apply’ button and the partition will be created, similar to how it’s shown above.
Now when you run the Lion installer app, you will be able to select the partition (see the screen in the previous section.)
You can switch back and forth between systems by opening System Preferences and selecting ‘Startup Dist’ under the System category. From there, you can select the system you want your computer to start back up in. Your Mac will boot in the last system you used.
(Via MakeUseOf.com.)
Want an Apple 1 in prime condition? Be prepared to pony up
The listing of a 1976 Apple-1 computer in a Christie’s sale ’caused quite a stir – especially over the estimated price of £100,000 – £150,000 ($US160,300 – $US240,450),’ reports ‘IT Wire’ (http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/home-it/43431).
(Via MacMinute.)
Surf the web anonymously.
Anonym is a tool for surfing the web with Safari using publicly available anonymous proxy lists.
No more need to search the Internet for public proxies. No more need to set up manually the network preferences. No more need to open the browser to check the proxy server. No more need to use the terminal shell ‘whois’ command to get information about physical proxy location. Everything comes built-in in Anonym, with a very simple and clear interface. For free. Download
(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)
Apple Mac OS X 10.6.5 – The latest OS from Apple
Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange.
To create Snow Leopard, Apple engineers refined 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up Mac OS X. Users will notice refinements including a more responsive Finder; Mail that loads messages up to twice as fast; Time Machine with an up to 80 percent faster initial backup; a Dock with Expose integration; QuickTime X with a redesigned player that allows users to easily view, record, trim and share video; and a 64-bit version of Safari 4 that is up to 50 percent faster and resistant to crashes caused by plug-ins.
Snow Leopard is half the size of the previous version and frees up to 7GB of drive space once installed. For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopards support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications.
Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software developers to write applications that take advantage of multicore processors. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics.
WHAT’S NEW
Version 10.6.5:
General fixes and improvements
- Improves reliability with Microsoft Exchange servers.
- Addresses performance of some image-processing operations in iPhoto and Aperture.
- Addresses stability and performance of graphics applications and games.
- Resolves a delay between print jobs.
- Addresses a printing issue for some HP printers connected to an AirPort Extreme.
- Resolves an issue when dragging contacts from Address Book to iCal.
- Addresses an issue in which dragging an item from a stack causes the Dock to not automatically hide.
- Resolves an issue in which Wikipedia information may not display correctly in Dictionary.
- Improves performance of MainStage on certain Macs.
- Resolves spacing issues with OpenType fonts.
- Improves reliability with some Bluetooth braille displays.
- Resolves a VoiceOver issue when browsing some websites with Safari 5.
- Improves Bluetooth pairing with Magic Trackpad.
- Resolves performance issues with third-party displays that use InstaPort technology.
- Add SSL support for transferring files with iDisk.
- Resolves an issue when opening 4-up Photo Booth pictures in Preview.
- Addresses keyboard responsiveness issues in the Dock when Spaces is turned on.
- Resolves an issue syncing Address Book with Google.
- Fixes an issue when replying to a Mail message sent by a person whose name contains certain characters such as é or ü.
- Improves performance for users bound to an Active Directory domain.
- Improves reliability of Ethernet connections.
- Systems with a Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009) installed can now be put to sleep. For more information, see Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009): Enabling system sleep.
- Improves reliability of fibre channel connections, resolving a potential Xsan volume availability issue.
- Adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras.
- Security improvements; for information about the security content of this update, please visit this article.
(Via MacUpdate – Mac OS X.)
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