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Posts tagged with "lion"

Apple’s Andromeda Galaxy is Missing A Few Stars

Boing Boing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker made a great comparison today between the actual Andromeda Galaxy (which is 2.5 million years away from Earth), and the Andromeda Galaxy representation that ships as the default wallpaper in OS X Lion. Thanks to a reader of the site (David Kaplan, assistant professor of physics at the University of Milwaukee), a GIF shows a comparison between what’s actually in the sky and what Apple shows you — Apple’s representation has of course been photoshopped. With the removal of stars and galaxies, the professor points out that one of Andromeda’s big satellites (M110 for those keeping track) is completely missing.

Apple has once again altered the Universe according to their whim. They moved/removed many stars, and got rid of a whole galaxy. This is M110, which is one of M31’s [Andromeda’s] satellites. The other big satellite, M32, is still there.

Okay, it is purposely done for the sake of art and keeping things pretty, but what I like about Boing Boing’s piece is that it actually gets people to see and learn about one of our galaxies. And normally I wouldn’t plug apps in a post like this, but this would be a good time to check out the Andromeda Galaxy via Qwiki (it’s an audio link). Cool right? See the side by side by comparison at Boing Boing.

Let Auto-Correct Beep in Lion with AutocorrectBeeper

Auto-Correction in Lion is similar to iOS: if the word isn’t automatically corrected, then you get a small notifier allowing you to dismiss the correction before you continue typing. Normally, this happens to me with lowercase abbreviations when typing to friends on SMS or email, and on iOS it isn’t a problem since your typing speed is considerable slower (and more careful) than on a desktop or laptop keyboard, and the pop-up is generally easy-to-see and easy-to-catch. While I think this behavior is backwards (I think tapping on the corrected word should accept that word instead of ignoring it), the same behavior on iOS has been translated to Lion. My typing speed on Lion is significantly faster than on my iPad or iPod touch, and catching the error before I hit the spacebar often results in an auto-correction I didn’t want to make. Whose going to catch a correction when typing upwards of 90 WPM? I don’t necessarily want to turn it off (some corrections can be helpful), but I want Lion to be smarter at helping me make the right corrections.

A user at AskDifferent asked whether a sound could be enabled to better inform him that an auto-correction was about to take place, and a friendly developer quickly whipped up an app to solve the problem. Joshua Garnham of Squared Tiki (Joshua on AskDifferent) created AutocorrectBeeper as a way for Lion to beep you when an auto-correction takes place: the simple app can simple be dragged to the Applications folder at the root of your drive, and running it provides you with simple preferences for choosing between the default sounds available on OS X Lion. As an auto-correct happens, your Mac will beep at you when a correction for a misspelled word is offered. A handy blacklist function is available so you can get beeped in some apps, but not others. The app is free, but donating to the developer if you find the app useful is definitely welcome (available through the app).

Check out the AskDifferent thread here (you can download the app in the middle of the page), and we’ve included a link to the direct download if you just want the app to hit your Downloads folder.

Thanks Joshua for getting in touch with us!

Apple Updates Migration Assistant for Lion

If you still haven’t upgraded to Lion, Apple is continuing to improve how you migrate information from Leopard onto the new OS. In an update posted this afternoon, Apple cites the following changes.

This update addresses an issue with the Migration Assistant application in Mac OS X Leopard that prevents transfer of your personal data, settings, and compatible applications from a Mac running Mac OS X Leopard to a new Mac running Mac OS X Lion.

What’s the issue? The Next Web pinpoints that the updated Migration Assistant will warn users that their Rosetta based applications (designed for older generation macs PowerPC Macs) won’t be available on Lion, which culled Rosetta support in the transition to support 64-bit Intel applications. Rosetta apps, no longer available in Lion, will have to be updated (or you’ll need to find alternatives) for the apps to work. It’s a small change, but one that should help make aware that the applications you rely on may be broken.

Download the Migration Assistant Update for OS X Leopard.

[via The Next Web]

 

Toggle Mac OS X 10.7 Lion New Features On / Off With Lion Tweaks→

Toggle Mac OS X 10.7 Lion New Features On / Off With Lion Tweaks

The latest Mac OS X 10.7 brings a whole lot of improvements along with a dozen iPad inspired UI features and animations. Although these improvements don’t come into conflict with UI design and core features of Mac Snow Leopard, many users hate the idea of bringing the iPad like UI elements and animations to Mac OS X. If you’re amongst those who want to keep Mac OS X 10.7 installed on your system but also want to toggle some of its new features, window options and animations on/off, Lion Tweaks is probably the best Mac Lion tweaking application that you can try.

We’ve posted lots of tips and tricks that require a bit of elbow grease when it comes to taking control of Lion, and we’ve even posted utilities like this one for Launchpad for hiding unwanted folders or apps. With everyone wanting to disable this or modify that, why not just create a utility that puts everything you’d want in one place? AddictiveTips has posted a utility from iFredrik that’ll have you customizing Lion with nothing more than a couple of button presses. For those of you who are fed up with slow window animations or that iCal leather, you can disable it with a simple click thanks to Lion Tweaks.

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eBay Launches a Minimal App Designed for OS X

Tired of logging in on eBay just to get a sweet deal on that gadget you’ve been eyeballing? Check it out — eBay has a shiny new app on the Mac App Store that shares visual similarities with apps like Sparrow or Twitter for Mac, and is designed so you can bid on products right from the comfort of your desktop. The lightweight eBay companion for the Mac is very nice — you can keep track of your watched items, your bidding history, make bids, search for auctions, and do everything in the Mac app you’d generally want to do online. With access to your eBay console, daily deals, and a universal search bar built right in to such a compact interface, it’s a pretty sweet replacement for the website (and much easier to navigate). You can download eBay for the Mac in the Mac App Store, and we’ve posted some screenshots after the break so you can further check it out.

Update: Hearing reports on Twitter (and a comfirmation over at Macgasm) that this appears to be US only for right now.

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Lion Recovery Disk Assistant

This afternoon, Apple is making available Lion Recovery Disk Assistant — an app available for the desktop that allows you to prepare an external hard drive (or thumb drive with at least 1 GB of space free) for recovery. Lion Recovery Disk Assistant will install the Lion Recovery partition to external media so you can create another boot disk. It requires OS X 10.7 Lion with a Recovery HD. Apple says in order to use the Recovery Disk Assistant, you only need to plug in an (empty) external hard drive, then run the assistant to create the recovery drive. This should make lots of people complaining about the lack of external recovery options very happy.

Download: Lion Recovery Disk Assistant (1.07 MB)

Update: Some additional details from the release notes:

  • If the computer shipped with Lion, the external recovery drive can only be used with the system that created it.
  • If the system was upgraded from Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard to Lion, the external recovery drive can be used with other systems that were upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

Screenshots after the break!

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Sparrow 1.3.2: Drag & Drop to Labels, Conversation & Reply Redesigns, and Gradients!

Sparrow has a really sweet Mac update available this afternoon from the Mac App Store, bringing lots of new features and tons of bug fixes to improve its game and interface on Lion. The last update brought full-screen support and a redesigned sidebar that’s significantly improved my workflow, and now that sidebar is getting some additional use thanks to drag & drop. Whether you’re on an IMAP account or using Gmail, you can drag and drop emails into a folder or label to quickly move and archive messages. That alone makes us really happy, but check out what else Sparrow has added past the break.

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Skype for Mac Gets HD Video Calling with 5.3 Update

Have a Mac with a FaceTime camera or own an external HD video cam? Following Skype’s iPad launch, the latest update for Skype for OS X brings it up to speed with OS X Lion (don’t worry — Skype is still compatible with Leopard and Snow Leopard) while giving you HD camera support for those who have 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth available on the upstream. The latest Skype update can be downloaded here — you can expect to find subtle interface improvements and a boost in stability according to The Big Blog announcement at Skype.

[The Big Blog via The Loop]

Fullscreen Safari Trick→

Fullscreen Safari Trick

When using Safari in Lion’s Full-Screen mode, you can grab the edges of the browser and drag inward to reduce the width, making fluid websites easier to read on wide monitors, while keeping a nice clutter free view.

For as much as I’ve used Safari in Full-Screen mode on the Mac, I’ve never noticed that the cursor changes at the left and right edges of the display to signify that you can resize the webpage. It’s a neat effect, and it almost looks a little 37signals-ish when you have a webpage resized to show the light linen in the background. What’s nice is that the width will remain as you navigate the web — there’s no need to resize per webpage, although the new width isn’t shared between tabs. Hat tip to The Brooks Review for pointing out this clever trick from Finer Things in Mac.

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