This Week's Sponsor:

Direct Mail

Professional Email Marketing Built Just for Mac Users

Posts tagged with "os x"

Assorted Mac OS X 10.7 Hopes & Predictions

So Apple is holding a media event on October 20th and, judging by the invitation Engadget and BGR got, it’s going to be an event focused on MacBooks (October / November is the usual timeframe for new MacBook models to drop) and a new version of OS X, namely “10.7. Lion”. I mean, there’s a lion in there. It has to be a lion.

Tagline debates aside, I’ve been thinking about this a lot: Snow Leopard is state of the art desktop computing, how could Apple reinvent the wheel and introduce us to an even better, revolutionary (and yeah, maybe there’ll be a magical in there too) kind of desktop and portable computing?  Apple constantly iterates, yet sometimes they put a giant milestone in their timeline and they build the next 5 years around it. Look at Leopard: it set the foundation for the huge success of 10.5, and the evolution of 10.6. I think 10.7 will be another milestone, a new OS Apple will use as a foundation for years to come. 10.7 will set the bar really high once again, and it’ll mark the long-overdue definitive integration of the iOS ecosystem with OS X.

I’ve collected some hopes, predictions and expectations for October 20th event that have been floating around in my mind for quite a while now. See you on Wednesday, on the other side of modern computing. Read more

iMac Touch Panel Samples Already Sent to Apple?

I’m pretty sure the iMac Touch rumor is one of the best ones we’ve had to deal recently: Digitimes has played the most important role in this story, reporting about the iMac Touch in January thus starting an all-new rumor chain that extended to websites such as LoopRumors. Then, about a month ago, Patently Apple discovered an actual patent for an iMac computer capable of shifting from a classic desktop configuration to a touch-based, iOS-like interface. Read more

Apple TV Under The Hood→

Apple TV Under The Hood

Looking at an OS dump doesn’t always translate to the final live interaction and exploration experience but it does offer tantalizing hints as to what is to come and what will be possible for those willing to start programming and hacking. In this case, Apple TV’s sneak peak provides two promises. First, that the system itself will be somewhat customizable and programmable for people who wish to extend its use beyond the built-in features. Second, that we’re looking at the future of OS X installs. Apple TV’s iOS shows that non-mobile devices without touch screens can leverage iOS’s newer, more modern frameworks without sacrificing general computability.

10.7 can’t be announced soon enough.

Permalink

Why I Ditched Spotlight for Alfred

Cody reviewed Alfred app for Mac when it first came out in March, but I didn’t really care about the application back then. I was a regular and happy Spotlight user who didn’t need to install a new tool to search my Mac faster. Then something happened over the past months: I started storing lots of files in my Dropbox. Read more

Apple Releases Security Update 2010-006 for Snow Leopard

Time for another security update, folks. Apple has just released the Security Update 2010-006 for Snow Leopard (server and client versions) which is available here or, as usual, in Software Update.

The update addresses an issue where AFP shared folders could be accessed by a remote attacker using an invalid password. Go update. Or, check out the full update description below. Read more

Cyberduck 3.6 Released with Google Storage Support

Cyberduck is a great FTP client I use every day to upload files to Rackspace Cloud Files (actually, it’s one of the few OS X apps that support Cloud Files) and access my iPhone and iPad file system (jailbreak is required). It’s a full-featured application to upload files to the internet, which just got a lot of better and is about to be used by a lot more users.

There’s a Windows version in the works, that’s true, and a beta is launching later this month. You can read the details here and also take a look at the first screenshots; for what it’s worth, the Windows UI looks pretty clean. Down to our Mac business, the new version introduces support for Google Storage (go sign up here), a refined dashboard interface with awesome new icons, support for S3 Bucket versioning and new Google Docs features.

Check out the full press after the break. Read more

Want iTunes 9 Look Back? There’s A Mod For That.

I haven’t covered OS X graphical mods here on MacStories for a long time, but this one’s good. It didn’t take long: if you hate iTunes 10’s new UI or you simply want the old colorful iTunes back, give a try to Damien Erambert’s iTunes 109.

The download comes with an easy to setup installer package which lets you choose if you want to change the entire application UI or just the sidebar icons. You can also get rid of those odd vertical buttons and change the application icon. I applied the mod on my new iMac, and it worked perfectly. Take a look at the screenshots below, and go download the mod here.

Read more

Courier: Great New Mac App from Realmac Coming Soon

Courier is an awesome new app from Realmac Software (which I’m lucky enough to have already tested) set to come out on OS X “in about a week”. Or at least that’s what the teaser website says.

I can’t really say what the app does yet, but as you can see in the video (embedded below, together with the final icon) support for websites like Youtube, Vimeo and Flickr will be part of the application. All I can say is that Courier is great, and will probably turn out to be one of the best apps released on Mac this year.

Check out the video below, follow @courierapp for exclusive news and stay tuned for a review on MacStories as soon as the app will be available.

Read more