Posts tagged with "mac"

Iomega’s “Mac Companion Hard Drive” Combines USB, FireWire, and iPad Charger

Iomega today announced a new Mac Companion Hard Drive which incorporates a large capacity desktop hard drive (2 TB or 3 TB models are available) with two USB ports to connect a printer or another external drive, two FireWire ports and an additional high-powered USB charging port for an iPad or iPhone.

With the new Iomega Mac Companion Hard Drive, Mac users now have a convenient and stylish way to quickly charge their iPads with the bonus of plenty of new storage capacity for their Mac computer,” said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega Corporation. “With more than nine million iPads sold in the last quarter alone, the new Mac Companion Hard Drive is the perfect complement for all those iPad owners.

Iomega has made special effort to make a device that matches and suits Macs, which is most notable in the design and stylings of the device – not only is it sleek with its metal enclosure but the very shape of the Mac Companion Hard Drive has been sculpted so that it sits perfectly on the iMac or Thunderbolt Display stand, tapering out at the back. The whole device is fairly simplistic but stylish in design and it hides all but the high-powered USB port at the back of the device. Iomega has left the three visible sides with nothing but the high-powered port on the right hand side of the device and four LED lights on the front panel of the device to indicate HDD capacity.

The charging port is a high-powered 2.1 Amp hookup that makes it easy and convenient to charge your iPad and other portable Apple devices so they’re ready to go when you are.

The hard drives are also pre-formatted as HFS+ so that they are compatible out of the box with Mac OS X, and whilst the lack of Thunderbolt is a little disappointing, this device looks like a solid option for anyone looking for an external hard drive for their Macs. The Iomega Mac Companion Hard Drive will initially be exclusive to Apple online and retail stores at a cost of $195 for the 2 TB model and $295 for the 3 TB model.

Jump past the break for some more pictures of the device.

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Mockups Show Lion Inspired Changes For Future Firefox

Like Google’s Chrome browser, Mozilla announced earlier this year its intention to move to a fast release cycle for new major versions of its popular browser for Windows, Linux and Mac, Firefox. Following the launch of Firefox 4 in March – which brought major design changes from Firefox 3 – Mozilla moved up its schedule and released Firefox 5 in June, just three months after the previous upgrade, adding a “Do not track” feature for all browsers and platforms, as well as other HTML5 and CSS improvements, although the UI design remained largely unchanged from Firefox 4. As part of Mozilla’s new channel-based alpha and beta testing, Firefox 6.0 is already available as beta, whilst Firefox 7.0 has been made available as early developer preview (or alpha) in the Aurora channel. You can read more about Mozilla’s new “every six weeks” policy here.

While waiting for the future Firefox 6.0 and 7.0, Mozilla’s Product Visual Designer with the Firefox team, Stephen Horlander, has posted some mockups of what the future Firefox could look like on Windows and OS X machines. The images, posted as a presentation on Mozilla’s website, don’t necessarily reflect any upcoming feature in the next versions of Firefox, but they provide some kind of insight into the kind of discussions the team is having in regards of what could come next.

As you can see from the image above (more here), the proposed solution unifies Firefox’s top bar to accomodate tabs, a Home button, a new tab button, as well as integrated add-on manager that has its own tab (much like Google Chrome opens its settings in new tabs, rather than windows). The mockups have been built on top of OS X Lion, as you can tell from the window texture and the traffic lights in the upper left corner. Speaking of which, Horlander has also played around with Lion’s monochrome and popovers, implementing monochromatic icons for cut/copy/paste, bookmarks and tab controls inside a settings popover accessible from a gear icon next to the address bar. Another screenshot shows native full-screen support with minimal chrome when browsing a website. On the PC side, the proposed changes are similar, but based on Windows’ default theme.

It’ll be interesting to see whether these Lion-inspired changes for Firefox on the Mac will evolve into an actual release in the coming months. Meanwhile, Windows users can install this fan-made theme that takes some of Horlander’s UI elements, and applies them to the current version of Firefox.

Alfred for Mac Gets Extensions, Growl Support, New Lion Theme

Alfred, the application launcher for the Mac, received a fairly substantial update today which brings important new functionalities such as extension support, Growl integration for action outputs, a new theme inspired by OS X Lion, and several bug fixes. Personally, I’ve been a big fan of Alfred since its first release last year, and I’ve followed the development closely as I switched from Quicksilver (which came back from a long hiatus a few months ago) and started looking into the customizable search and launch environment offered by Alfred. In the past months, in fact, Alfred evolved into a minimal, yet powerful application launcher capable of doing a bunch of other things such as filesystem navigation, clipboard management, AppleScript launching and dictionary. I was particularly impressed with the 0.9 version, which allowed users to assign a keyboard shortcut to any AppleScript on your machine, similarly to how the popular FastScripts lets you pair a shortcut with a script.

Whilst the developers are still planning a major 1.0 release that will likely see the Powerpack (a set of premium additional features) become available as in-app purchase on Lion’s Mac App Store, Alfred 0.9.9 has been publicly released today and, in spite of what the version number suggests, it is a milestone release that sets the path for future Alfred versions and the kind of integration with the system the developers are willing to bake into their application launcher . Read more

Sidekick Automates Your Mac’s Settings Based On Your Location

Last week, I ordered a new MacBook Air from Apple’s website. My MacBook Pro was getting old, so I decided it was time for an upgrade – and the new MacBook Airs looked like a worthy upgrade. As with the Apple online store’s tradition, the computer showed up at my doorstep in roughly three days. As soon as I got it, I opened it up, set up my personal information, and connected it to the Internet to start downloading my first apps. I was at my office, and in less than two hours I had my new MacBook Air up and running with my favorite applications, Dropbox, work documents, and so forth. A few hours later, when it was time to go home for dinner, I took my MacBook Air, got home, and placed it on the desk in my room. Thirty minutes later, I opened the MacBook’s lid again, fired up Spotify and Google Chrome, launched MacStories’ internal chat URL, and opened iTunes to check for app updates. Sure, the computer was new, but the pattern of actions that followed the opening of the lid wasn’t uncommon: this is what I do every day after dinner. I fire up some music, talk to my co-workers overseas, and browse iTunes. My laptop may be changing location travelling from my office to my house and everything in between (usually a coffee shop downtown), but the workflow is the same.

Sidekick, a new app by Oomph, aims at automating the tedious process of changing your Mac’s settings basing on the location of your computer. Read more

Screens for Mac Makes VNC Easy and Organized

I’m a big fan of Edovia’s Screen VNC client for the iPhone and iPad. Whilst I still use LogMeIn when I need to access my computer’s filesystem remotely and I enjoy the service’s social features and network-recognition capabilities (when combined with Hamachi), my basic VNC needs can be easily satisfied with Screens, which provides a very intuitive interface to set up new computers, connect to them, and use them. I don’t recall a single time I haven’t used Screens at least once a day in the past few months to quickly connect to my iMac while I’m on the couch, and fire up some Spotify through the room. For quick connections, Screens is a great app – it even works on 3G and remote Wi-Fi networks thanks to a companion desktop app that will make your Mac available outside your local network.

In my overview of the improved Screen Sharing app in OS X Lion, I detailed how Apple enhanced the system utility with new clipboard features, per-user login, and possibility of grabbing a screenshot of the connected machine. With Screens for Mac, released last week, Edovia offers an alternative to Apple’s default Screen Sharing app that doesn’t have new breakthrough functionalities, but dramatically improves the organization of your remote desktops, and gives you more control over what you’re connecting to. Read more