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Posts tagged with "os x"

Going SSD On Your Mac

Those who follow me on Twitter know that a couple of weeks ago I upgraded my MacBook Pro (15-inch model, late 2008) to the new generation of hard drives: I bought a Solid State Drive, also simply known as SSD. Many have been asking and sending emails about the best tips to follow while changing a MacBook’s internal drive and upgrading to SSD, but the truth is there is no real “guide” or “tutorial” to follow. Yet another list post of must-read tips would be useless as my experience and setup is different than yours, and I’m not forcing anyone to follow steps and procedures that might just waste time.

So instead of putting together a tutorial, here’s the story of what I did. Read more


Developers Can Now Submit Apps With Identical Names in the iOS and Mac App Store

Two weeks ago we reported several developers were facing issues with Mac App Store submissions, as they weren’t able to register their app’s name in iTunes Connect. At that time it looked like “name squatters” were sitting on popular app names to force developers to pick different ones, but it turned out that a major issue was lying in Apple’s system itself.

Two weeks ago, in fact, developers who had already submitted an app to the iOS App Store with a certain name weren’t able to use that same name in the Mac App Store registering process. Imagine the frustration of developers who already had iPhone apps in the App Store and wanted to submit Mac counterparts to the upcoming store. Read more


Create PDFs From Any iOS Device

Create PDFs From Any iOS Device

I’ve decided to take it a step further for those who want to “print” but remain paperless: Print to a PDF. And not only print to a PDF, but then immediately have that PDF accessible to the same device.

Great tip over at TUAW. Not only you’ll be able to create PDFs inside apps that support AirPrint, you’ll end up having the document available in Dropbox with just one tap.

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360|MacDev Conference, 15% Off Registration Price

The 360|MacDev is a new conference aimed at OS X developers and the whole Apple developer community. Although I won’t be able to attend the event, I have talked with the folks behind it and it’s surely one of this year’s events you don’t want to miss. The conference will take place in Denver, Colorado at the Crowne Plaza Downtown on Dec. 10 and Dec. 11. You can check out the full schedule here.

From the official website:

We’re a conference company, focused on develoepr community. Our goal is to bring the best and brightest in the developer community together for 2 days of incredible sessions, awesome parties, good times, and learning. If you don’t leave Saturday night (Or sunday night if you take in a day of skiing), with more ideas than you know what to do with, we’re not doing our jobs!

This winter you can get your fill of Cocoa development awesomeness, and even some skiing if you’re up for it! We’ll be bringing together the best of the community . Join us in Denver, CO.

The discount code “MacStories15” will take 15% off the registration price. You can also check out the list of speakers here. If you’re a developer and you want to attend a great event to get in touch with the community and fellow OS X developers, the 360|MacDev conference is the perfect place to start.


The iPadification of OS X – Part II

The iPadification of OS X – Part II

iOS and OS X may share some DNA, but irreconcilable differences remain. The two OSs serve two different usage models. As a result, Apple is likely to grow them separately instead of trying to bastardize iOS into a one-OS-fits-all. If we have doubts, we can go back and look at what happened with Windows shoehorned onto a Tablet PC.

So: Now that I’ve taken both sides—Yes, iOS will be the Apple OS; No, it won’t—what do I really believe? I think it’s a matter of numbers and layers of software silt.

Think about it: iOS 5 and Lion could come out together sometime next summer.

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From Apple’s Newton to Evernote

From Apple’s Newton to Evernote

The company was founded by Stepan Pachikov, who was kind of this brilliant mad scientist from Russia. He and his team were behind a lot of the pioneering work that went into the Apple Newton, fifteen years ago. The handwriting recognition engine was built by these guys. They had a company called ParaGraph, which Apple licensed.
So the original idea really started in the Newton days.

Evernote for iOS also got a nice update today with iOS 4.2 support, audio note improvements and printing.

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Microsoft Targets Mac’s Lack Of Blu-Ray Support In Latest Windows 7 Ad

I haven’t really ever felt like needing to watch a Blu-Ray movie on my MacBook Pro, but apparently the folks down at Redmond think it’s worth producing an ad focused on it. In order to promote entertainment on Windows 7 machines versus Mac machines through the support of Blu-Ray disks, the video we’re referring to shows a Mac and a PC on flight, watching Avatar on the PC’s screen.

It’s nice and well-realized, overall. Check it out below. Read more


Activate AirPrint On OS X 10.6.5 With One Click

Even though it is believed that people nowadays don’t print much (I surely don’t), Apple’s removal of support for AirPrint shared printing on the latest version of OS X, 10.6.5, raised a few eyebrows. They had announced the feature, but they didn’t deliver with 10.6.5 – even if previous developer version of the OS update had AirPrint enabled.

It seems like it was too unstable to make it to the final version, but some are suggesting the folks at Cupertino are dealing with patent trolling issues for shared printers in AirPrint. We don’t know. Read more


Hacker Runs Microsoft’s Kinect on OS X

A few days after Microsoft released Kinect (and years later Apple’s interest in the device), a motion-based game controller for the Xbox 360 console, a group of hackers managed to modify the device’s settings, hack it and let it run on Windows 7.

Microsoft of course isn’t interested in this kind of hacks and will never support such efforts – also because there’s not really much you can do with Kinect on computers. It “runs” and  displays the images it captures from the camera, but you can’t do much after all. Read more