iMac

After teasing the store last month, Apple has confirmed on its website (as noted by MacMagazine) that the store will launch on the 15th of February, in just over a week. The store will launch at 11am local time (ATZ) in the luxurious Rio de Janeiro VillageMall, marking Apple’s debut entrance into the country.

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A tip we’ve received from an Apple Store employee indicates that Apple will be putting up celebratory LED window displays at Apple Stores, showing a stylised ‘3’ and a ‘Happy birthday, Mac’ message. iPhones and iPads in the window will reportedly be removed. The graphic came via special SD card.

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Boxes of special t-shirts have arrived for the occasion (photo below the fold) … 
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In addition to interviews with the press, Apple is celebrating 30 years of Mac with a full-bleed graphic on its homepage, which links to a minisite that plots how the Mac evolved over the years. The message says that Apple made the Macintosh with a promise to get “the power of technology .. in the hand of everyone”. “This promise has been kept.”, it reads. The dedicated minisite depicts a (scrollable) timeline of the major models of Mac since 1984, spanning the PowerBook, the iMac and ending with the Retina MacBook Pro and the brand new Mac Pro.

See the accompanying video after the break.

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Pixelmator have released the latest version of their app today, version 3.1. As usual, it is available exclusively in the Mac App Store for $29.99. Codenamed Marble, this update brings several enhancements to the image editor including specific Mac Pro optimizations such as 16-bit image support.

Primarily, Pixelmator 3.1 optimises for the new Mac Pro’s hardware. Apple has used Pixelmator before to tout the Mac Pro’s performance benefits, and the developers are clearly keen to push this further still.

The “exclusive” support for the new Mac Pro enables the simultaneous use of both GPU’s  for even faster composition and rendering. In fact, the app can compute the autosave data whilst the image is being rendered. This translates to significant speed improvements across the app.

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Preventing unwanted messages from showing up in your inbox can be integral to enjoying email. In this article we will walk you through the process of creating mail rules that will direct messages to other folders or the trash based on conditions you specify. We will also discuss how to update rules to include additional senders or other criteria, and provide some common-sense guidance about effectively using mail rules in general.

Mail rules allow you to direct messages out of your inbox into another folder or trash automatically, based on their sender or other conditions. Rules can be set up on iCloud.com if the email address is the one you use for iCloud (it can end in either @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com).

For your other email addresses, rules can be set up in the Mail app on a Mac. If you set up rules using iCloud.com they are very effective, immediately directing messages to the specified folders on all your devices. If you set up rules using the Mail app, they are effective only after you start up your Mac and open the Mail app.  At the end of this article, I will make some practical suggestions about how to address that, and other aspects of using mail rules.

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Editors Keys today announced the first ever wireless shortcut keyboard for Apple’s recently released Logic Pro X audio suite.  The keyboard sports 150 shortcuts and the company notes it was also able to fit in some extra shortcuts as icons sitting behind the text on each key. Perhaps the best part of the new Logic Pro X keyboard is the fact that Editors Keys used an actual Apple wireless keyboard for the product, which means you’ll be able to swap out your current Apple keyboard without sacrificing the look and feel. The company says it worked with the Logic Pro X community to develop the best experience possible for users: 
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Audiovisual professionals may have had a very long wait for a new Mac Pro, and that wait may not be quite over, but from the early hands-on reviews it seems they’re unlikely to be disappointed.

The real performance of the machine is currently only being seen with Final Cut Pro, which Apple optimized to take full advantage of the dual GPUs, but it’s a near certainty that Adobe and others will follow this example.

With a price tag of anything up to $14,000 if you completely max it out, this is not a machine that will be seen gracing too many living-rooms, but for those earning their living from audio and video and where time is money, the early hands-on reviews suggest that the Mac Pro lives up to its promise … 
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The December supply of Mac Pros?

The new Mac Pro is an awesome machine for those with several thousand dollars to spend on a computer and a need for all the power that comes with that thermal core, but managing to get one is going to be difficult for the next few months even if you have the credit card ready. Yesterday, Apple announced that the Mac Pro would go on sale today, December 19th. The store went live last night with the Mac Pro shipping the very last non-holi-day of 2013, December 30th.

As we noted earlier today, Apple’s customers in its home state of California awoke to Mac Pros being quoted to ship in February. But it gets worse…

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Using GarageBand, you can create a custom ringtone out of any portion of any track you have in iTunes. This article will walk you through the process of making a custom ringtone and syncing it to your iOS devices, as well as assigning it to a certain contact or as your default ringtone.

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OS X Mavericks has numerous features and settings that make text and images more visible. In this article, I will discuss many options and methods to take advantage of those features in different ways. In pointing out many different ways, I hope to help you find a method that will be a good fit for you.

Use System Preferences, Displays Settings:
Access System Preferences from the dock or the Apple on the menu bar, and click on Displays. Then click on the Display tab. Choose Scaled, and the different resolution settings available are displayed. The options available vary, depending upon what resolution your model of the computer is capable of displaying. Adjust the settings by choosing different options—the lower the numbers are in the setting, the larger objects will be displayed. Below are examples of the display setting options you will see on a white MacBook, an older iMac, and a MacBook Pro with Retina display … 
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Using customized labels can help make your holiday cards look more modern and festive. In this article, you will learn how to make a group in your address book for holiday cards and print address labels based on that group in the color and style of your choice, including a photo.
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Filemaker, a subsidiary of Apple, has just announced its 2013 version of its popular database application. The new version focuses on bringing desktop database solutions to the browser. New in Filemaker ’13, projects can now be managed through a centralized web dashboard, with options for partner portals and file hosting. More importantly, data entry can now be taken in a web interface — HTML5 powered forms enable businesses to manage their deployments on any PC or Mac, as there is no longer a reliance on having the native applications installed.

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Apple has finally implemented a maps app in the OS X platform, and it seems to have been worth the wait. After being noticeably missing from the system, Maps (and iBooks) are helping achieve a greater consistency between the iOS and OS X platforms. After running the free Mavericks update, the Maps app icon will automatically be added to your dock.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use the new app for everything from searching for locations to getting turn-by-turn directions set directly to your iPhone.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyX8FfSKg04

Knock uses a combination of an iPhone app (currently offered at an introductory price of $3.99)  and a Mac app (available for free at Knock’s website) to enable unlocking of your Mac, wirelessly, by just knocking the back of your iPhone.

It’s a surreal experience. After a couple of minutes of initial setup, you lock your Mac and rap the back of your paired iPhone twice. Your Mac unlocks. The app doesn’t even have to be forefront on your phone, although it does have to be ‘open’ in the multitasking tray. In fact, your phone doesn’t even have to be unlocked. When it senses the Mac is near, a notification appears on the lock screen instructing you to knock. There are some nice UI touches too. For instance, echoes of the ‘sound wave’ appear on OS X’s lock screen in real time as you knock. It’s a subtle visual indicator that the system is actually working.

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