[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=098wGRRCnOU]
Love this idea for controlling your Mac – especially for applications which don’t require you to be near your computer. Apple has lots of patents on 3D gestures so it wouldn’t be absurd to see some of this at the OS level in the not-so-distant future.
Download here
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Here is some new stuff within Mountain Lion: Once you enable Documents & Data in the iCloud Control Panel…
You can then start manually uploading documents from your Mac to the iCloud using this screen:
It has been only seven months since Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.7 Lion and today the company announced Mountain Lion—the next major update to its desktop operating system. As 9to5Mac first learned in October, Mountain Lion brings even more popular iOS features to the Mac platform. The notion is shared by those Apple invited to a private briefing a few day ago: Mountain Lion is all about putting even more of iOS into the bowels of OS X. Meanwhile, iOS-ification of OS X continues with Twitter integration in Mountain Lion and new iOS-esque apps, such as Messages, Notification Center, AirPlay Mirroring, Notes, Reminder, Game Center, and deep iCloud integration.
With over a hundred million iCloud accounts now in use, Mountain Lion’s setup assistant will now ask you to set up an iCloud account for the Documents in the Cloud and Find My Mac features, as well as to sync contacts, email and chat messages and calendar entries. You can also access your iCloud storage in Finder and drag and drop documents for manual syncing between iOS apps that support Documents in the Cloud and their desktop counterparts.
AirPlay Mirroring is another welcome addition for those wishing to securely beam a 720p video stream of what is on your Mac to a HDTV through the Apple TV. Share Sheets, a new system-wide feature, is accessible from Apple’s and third-party apps for sharing links, photos, and videos. Like in iOS, Twitter integration means you give your Twitter credentials once and tweet directly from Safari, Quick Look, Photo Booth, Preview and supported third-party apps.
Mountain Lion Beta is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today whilst end-users can upgrade to Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store in late summer 2012. The company also pledged to update OS X once a year from now on. For more information, check out Apple’s new OS X Mountain Lion Sneak Peek page.
The full release, more features and two press shots are after the break.
As part of the Mac OS X 10.7.3 update released earlier this week, Security Update 2012-001 [release notes] for Snow Leopard broke compatibility with several Rosetta Power PC programs. The issue, as described on Tidbits, MacInTouch and on Apple Support Communities threads (here, here and here), causes some third-party programs to crash unexpectedly under Snow Leopard. This includes popular applications such as Quicken, Filemaker 7, Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office 2004 and X. There is a workaround solution that helps alleviate the issue, at least until Apple addresses it with another update, explained right after the break.
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Apple just released Mac OS 10.7.3 via Software update and manual download. Apple released some peripheral downloads today as well:
Release notes are as follows:
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From 9to5Toys.com:
Nova offers its MacSuperbundle Winter Deal for $49. We are picky about our bundles, but Parallels alone makes this one worth noting. There are some solid extras here as well.
Valued at over $470 if purchased separately, the nine software titles and exciting bonus app in the new 2012 Mac SuperBundle are available for just $49, an 89% savings, and offer innovative solutions no Mac user should be without. Nova’s biggest bundle to date and best consumer deal yet features the award-winning and #1 selling virtualization software Parallels Desktop® 7 for Mac, (a $79.99 value alone), and includes essential Mac maintenance tools and organizational apps, plus audio, video and digital creativity software and much more. The Mac SuperBundle launches on January 25th, 2012 and will be available for 14 days only.
Other applications include:
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Apple seeded its registered developers last night with a new version of Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3. The software carries a build number of 11D46 and arrives just a week following the 11D42 build. It has no known issues, indicating that public release is around the corner. Developers are asked to focus on iCloud Document Storage, Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight and Safari. The Delta update weighs in at 996.98MB and combo update is a 1.26GB download. The OS X Lion Server 10.7.3 build 11D46 is also available for download (Delta:1GB, Combo: 1.34GB, Server Admin Tools: 202.59MB). Additional build notes after the break.
(We’re offering a $10 discount/free Parallels MacBook Air contest this week)
If you are not new to Parallels, you will already be familiar with its ability to run Windows in a virtual machine within OS X. You might also be familiar with its Coherence view mode that allows you to run Windows and Mac OS applications side by side, rather than a full-blown Windows 7 in a separate window. However, Parallels Desktop 7 takes it to the next level with some of the deepest Windows/OS X integration yet.
The name of the game for the new Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac is definitely OS X Lion integration. Pretty much every new UI feature incorporated into Lion has been integrated into Parallels, and thus Windows 7. We put the new version to the test with both Windows 7 and Windows 8 developer preview on last year’s iMac with 4GB of RAM.
Apple is hiring dozens of talented people on a daily basis, but this one deserves your attention. Jan-Michael Cart, a mass media arts student from Georgia, is the brains behind a bunch of very insightful iOS interface concepts you’ve likely seen on the web, as noted by iPhoneinCanada.ca. This includes the notification center and application switcher mockup videos below.
As Apple is always on the lookout for young blood, Cart’s work caught the company’s attention and they decided to hire him as an intern, he announced in a blog post:
Soon I will be embarking to California, where I will be interning at a fruit company for seven months. I will be updating this to chronicle my adventures and misadventures in the Bay Area for my family, friends, and followers online. Stay tuned, I leave in less than a month!
“And like that, my time has come — I am now a member of the Apple community”, he confirmed on the front page of his personal web site. Congrats to Cart on his new gig! We sure are looking forward to seeing some of his great concepts implemented in iOS.
Heck, even the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion hired the Astonishing Tribe design shop to make the PlayBook tablet’s operating system aesthetically appealing. Watch Cart’s Dynamic Icons and Speech Recognition user interface concepts right after the break and don’t forget to check out his YouTube channel.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn4wt-6KRI0]
Apple has just seeded iOS 5.1 to developers, a pre-release version of iOS that runs on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. In addition, Apple has released Xcode 4.3 beta to developers, a required version of Xcode for those wishing to develop and test their applications with iOS 5.1 devices. This iOS 5.1 release is crucial. The 5.1 beta brings along an under-the-hood change for alternative interpretations for Dictation input in different apps. We’re looking into this API change.
We’ve also found some references to a new iPad in the code.
iOS SDK 5.1 provides support for developing iOS applications and includes the complete set of Xcode tools, compilers, and frameworks for creating applications for iOS and Mac OS X. These tools include the Xcode IDE and the Instruments analysis tool among many others.
With this software you can develop applications that run on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5.1. You can also test your applications using the included iOS Simulator, which supports iOS 5.1. There are two Xcode iOS SDK 5.1 images, one for installing on a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.6.7 (Snow Leopard) or later, the other for installing on a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
This version of iOS is intended only for installation on devices registered with Apple’s developer program. Attempting to install this version of iOS in an unauthorized manner could put your device in an unusable state.
Along with the release notes, you can also find some new features we’ve found in iOS 5.1 after the break:
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For those who missed out on the Black Friday specials, Amazon still offers the entry level Core i5 MacBook Air for $849.99 plus free shipping. That’s a significant $150 off of retail and the lowest price available. This latest MacBook Air includes an Intel Core i5 1.6GHz “Sandy Bridge” dual-core processor, 11.6″ 1366×768 LED-backlit display, 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD, AirPort Extreme (802.11n wireless), Bluetooth 4.0, Facetime camera, Thunderbolt port, and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
Amazon also still has the lowest prices on the entry level MacBook Pro ($1049). Other price lows (mostly from MacMall) can be found here.
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Apple has just begun seeding OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D16) to developers this afternoon. The set focus areas for this release are iCloud document storage, Address Book, iCal, and Mail. 10.7.3 weighs in at 633MB, and has no known issues right now. OS X Server 10.7.3 is also accompanying today’s update, with the same focus areas and build number.
Release notes after the break:
I was in New York City for a Samsung event focused on SSDs and gaming on PCs last month. There wasn’t much in the way of new information, but Samsung gave me one of their SATA III 256GB 830 SSDs to try out. These are within a few bytes per second of the fastest SATA3 SSDs money can buy, so I was pretty excited to get home and throw it in a Mac.
The problem is that I don’t have a worthy Mac to test it out on. I’ve been using an Air as my exclusive machine for a year and my wife is tired of me testing stuff on her MacBook Pro. We have a bunch of old Macs laying around the house but nothing with a SATA III connection.
Luckily, I’ve been in the market for a new Mac desktop since I replaced my MacBook Pro with an Air last year, but to my surprise, I haven’t really found myself in need of one. The Air drives my 30-inch display pretty well and most of my media has been offloaded to a Gigabit NAS. Since I already have a 30-inch display, an iMac doesn’t really appeal to me. Apple’s headless desktops don’t make sense in my situation either. A Mac Mini isn’t going to be much faster than my Air and the Mac Pro hasn’t been updated in over a year and doesn’t even have SATA 3 on board.
I also have some USB3 and eSATA peripherals that I get for testing and can’t use these products on standard Mac hardware.
I decided to give into temptation and build a Hackintosh…
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2C2oCsrqcM]
Jean-Louis Gassée, Apple’s former head of Macintosh product development between 1981-1990, has commented on Apple’s crucial choice of Steve Jobs’s NeXTSTEP as their operating system back in 1996 instead of BeOS, his own creation. Much of NeXTSTEP code would make possible Mac OS X, later adapted for Apple’s mobile devices.
Speaking at a Churchill Club “Steve Jobs’ Legacy” talk event (which is fantastic the whole way through – above) in San Jose yesterday, Gassée remarked (at about an hour in):
Thank god that didn’t happen, because I hated Apple’s management.
BeOS was pretty good, mind you. Positioned as a multimedia platform, BeOS benefited from symmetric multiprocessing, pervasive multithreading, preemptive multitasking and BFS, a custom 64-bit journaling file system known as BFS. It too was developed on the principles of clarity and an uncluttered design.
So why did Apple side with NeXT and acquired the company on February 4, 1997 for $429 million? In hindsight, even though beOS was pretty good, it was the aquisition of Jobs that was worth to Apple more than the NeXTSTEP software. Or, as Gassée put it, “Jobs’s acquisition of Apple”.
Mac OS 10.8 testers both inside Apple’s HQ and in the surrounding area of Silicon Valley have been spotted in Web Logs by MacRumors. Indeed, looking at our own logs (above), 10.8 users have been hitting our servers since mid-August, though only in numbers that probably could have been faked.
More recently, however, 10.8 testing has grown more abundant, with testers hitting our site every day including on weekends from non-Apple IP addresses throughout October.
Similar patterns emerged in testing OS 10.7 which leads us to conclude that this is still very early testing and it is likely more than a year before we’ll see even public betas of the OS.
Still, very nice to see Apple’s already working on the next big cat.
AirPlay Mirroring shown with an iPad 2 and an Apple TV
Sources familiar with the future of Mac OS X say that AirPlay Mirroring and an iMessage application are currently in development. Although neither project may see the light of day, they are definitely on the table for release in future versions of OS X Lion. AirPlay Mirroring for the Mac will allow a user to wirelessly mirror exactly what is shown on their Mac’s display to an Apple TV connected to a projector, television, or external monitor. AirPlay video streaming is also being integrated into QuickTime X.
This would be a fantastic addition to the conference room for corporate presentations and would sell a few more Apple TVs we would imagine.
iMessage for Mac info after the break:
Apple has just seeded Mac OS X 10.7.2 Build 11C57 for iCloud testers. The 790MB Combo Update comes less than a week after the previous Seed, 11C55.
There are no known issues and the focus areas include:
Announced on the Skype Blog, Microsoft-owned Skype now integrates with (5% Microsoft-owned) Facebook on Mac. With the update, your Facebook friends will be able to see your online status and Skype you without leaving the Skype application. As per usual with Microsoft applications, the Mac version trails behind the Windows version…and as a bonus, non-paying Skype users will now see ads.
Today we’re launching Skype 5.4 for Mac Beta. The launch introduces the same Facebook integration found in Skype 5.5 for Windows. We are excited to finally deliver Facebook integration to our Mac users.
Just like in our Windows client, you will now be able to IM and connect with your Facebook friends without leaving Skype. You will also be able to read and update your News Feed, as well as comment and ‘Like’ your Facebook friends’ posts – all within Skype for Mac. To connect to Facebook, simply sign into Skype, click on the Connect to Facebook tab and enter your Facebook sign in details.
We are also introducing an advertising platform in this new release, but if you are a paying Skype consumer or have Skype Credit, you won’t see any display ads; similar to the model that is currently being used in our Skype for Windows client.
Download Skype 5.4 for Mac OS X Beta. We’re sticking to 2.8, in case the snarkiness didn’t tip you off.
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VMware Fusion was upgraded to version 4 today with “over 90 new features” and low introductory $49.99 price. That follows the release two weeks ago of main competitor Parallels with many of the same Lion and speed improvements but heftier $79.99 price tag.
VMware touts three major areas of improvement:
Release below:
Apple has seeded OS X Lion 10.7.2 build 11C55 to developers today, and it is the first OS X Lion 10.7.2 build to include iCloud for Mac built-in. Previously, developers had to download a separate iCloud for Mac package.
OS X Lion Software Update 10.7.2 is an update to OS X Lion 10.7 and includes support for iCloud beta. Please refer to the seed note for more details and installation instructions. (Mac Developer Program membership is required)
OS X Lion 10.7.2 includes the ability for users to easily enable iCloud Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Find my Mac on their computers. The software release will most likely ship alongside iCloud sometime this fall. Apple’s iCloud service is seemingly almost ready to launch with both Apple and carriers (for the iOS 5 integration) already being trained on the matter.
Let us know if you find anything; tips@9to5mac.com. Thanks Nicholas!
The update addresses a few issues including the Wifi issues we’ve been hearing much about. It also appears to incorporate the recent Migration Assistant update. It is available via Software Update and weighs in at a paltry 17.4MB on our rig.
The 10.7.1 update is recommended for all users running OS X Lion and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability and compatibility of your Mac, including fixes that:
– Address an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari
– Resolve an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out
– Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections
– Resolve an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings, and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion
For detailed information on this update, please visit this website:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4764.
The Mac App store still lists Lion at 10.7 so it isn’t clear if new updaters will always have to do additional updates. We’re also left wondering if this update fixes the “video performance after a sleep” that new Lion Mac users have been reporting.
Update: Interesting there is a direct link (here) for New Mac Mini and MacBook Air users (68MB) which updates a few more issues (below):
In addition to Lion now being available at the App Store (had you heard?) and some new Mac Hardware, today you can also download OSX Lion Server from the App Store for an additional $49.99. Full description below…
Interestingly, Xcode has disappeared and isn’t even available by search. We’ll likely see an update to that in the semi-near future.
Update (Noon EST): Xcode is back (free).
Google Analytics, which is used on millions of sites worldwide to show web publishers who is visiting their sites, today published its first report on Web traffic. Among other interesting tidbits was the above chart showing Windows losing a staggering 5.1% of its market year over year.
At the same time, the Mac OS actually gained almost a percentage point of the market. But the groundswell was in the “Other” category which includes iPads, iPhones, Android and other non-Mac/Windows/Linux machines. That category was up almost 5 %.
The “Post PC Era” seems to be fast approaching.
Google conveniently also found a 1% gain in Search Engine referral traffic, below:
As one might expect, the GM Seed of Lion looks like it is making the rounds in the Torrent sites. This is interesting this time around because Apple is distributing the install via the App Store (for a very reasonable $30) which has tracking codes embedded in the download. That means whoever leaked this is probably going to get in some trouble. We’re assuming most people who choose to download this version will be doing so for the two week head start rather than trying to save $30.
Might be better to just plunk $99 down for a developer account?
