MacMost: Archives

“Now with the Mac App Store I’ve got awesome games too.”
“Dude, I played all of those games back in 2004.”

Hidden in your Applications/Utilities folder is the complex graphing program Grapher. You can use it to plot 2D and 3D equations on your Mac. You can also export 3D animated graphs. Very useful for math students or those who use complex equations in their work.

There are many ways to share music between computers and user accounts with iTunes. The one you choose depends on with which devices and computers your are sharing. iTunes Match may be the ultimate method for a single person, but iTunes Home Sharing allows you to share music with other people whom have separate iTunes accounts.

With AirPlay and the help of the Mac app AirServer, you can bring your iPad or iPhone's screen to your Mac. You can then capture the screen using your favorite video capture software. This new method replaces the old method of using expensive HDMI cables and capture hardware.

Once again Apple’s quarterly report wowed investors, causing the stock to surge on Wednesday. Apple announced a profit of $11.6 billion on $39.2 billion in revenue. It sold 35.1 million iPhones, 11.8 million iPads and 4 million Macs.
In a conference call after the announcement, Apple confirmed again that Mac OS 10.8, Mountain Lion, will be out in late summer. In the education market the iPad outsold Macs two to one. iCloud now has 125 million users.
On Wednesday Apple announced the dates for its annual Worldwide Developer Conference: June 11 to 15. Tickets sold out in two hours.

“This app warns you when guys are nearby who use apps to see when girls are nearby.”

With Preview in Lion, you can record your signature in Preview and then apply it to PDF files and other documents. Use your Mac's camera to take a picture of your signature. Add a variety of signatures and other stamps to your Preview preferences and use them with the annotations feature.

There are many things you should be doing with your Mac. But one is the most important of all: backing up. Any computer can have a hard drive failure, suffer from a user mistake or simply be stolen. Backing up is the most important thing that every Mac user should do.

There are many tips and tricks you can use to make it easier to type on the iPad. You can hold down keys to bring up special characters, ignore apostrophes and learn to tap-hold-release to get to some characters with less effort. Also learn about splitting and undocking the keyboard on the iPad.

Reports indicate that Apple is now offering MobileMe users free upgrades to Snow Leopard to help them transition to iCloud before the June 30 deadline. MobileMe users who are still using Leopard have been getting notices of the free offer. Previously $30, the Snow Leopard upgrade would give these users the Mac App Store, which is required to then purchase Lion, which is in turn required to get a free iCloud account. MobileMe is schedule to shut down on June 30.
For users of older Macs, there is no upgrade path. Both Snow Leopard and Lion require Intel processors. The transition from PowerPC to Intel processors began and was completed in 2006, making all PowerPC Macs at least 5 years old. However, some of the earliest Intel Macs do not support Lion as it requires at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

“Man, I had a nasty Flashback this morning.”
“LSD?”
“No, Mac trojan.”

Multicam editing can be used to combine multiple angles of the same shot. But it can also be simply used to combine a video show with separate audio. You can record video from one device and audio from another and easily combine the two in Final Cut Pro.

In addition to some standard shapes, you can create your own custom shapes in Pages using a series of points. These custom shapes can be used to wrap text around images in creative ways.

Learn how to arrange your app icons on the Home screen of your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. You can also put apps in app folders or along the bottom of your screen. You can launch hard-to-locate apps from the search screen instead of finding the app's icon.

The U.S. Department of Justice will take Apple and publishers to court over their pricing system for ebooks. Apple and the publishers use the agency model in which the publishers set the prices for the books and the retailers, like Apple and Amazon, cannot sell below those prices. The alternative would be wholesale pricing, which lets the retailers sell the books at any price they wish. The DOJ sees the agency model as illegal price fixing. But there is much debate about which model is better for consumers, retailers and publishers.
The threat of the Flashback trojan malware is waning as more people update their Macs and become aware of the threat and how to easily thwart it. Apple is reportedly attempting to take legal action against those responsible, and is also working on a removal tool according to this support note.

“Ever since the iPad got a retina display, my wife insists on having a model take my place in photos.”

Spring-loaded folders are a part of OS X that many people may not know about or use often. You can drag and drop files onto folders and the folders will open for you to continue to place the file in the place you want. This lets you drag items in the Finder without first needing to set up a destination.

With the recent increased threat from the Flashback trojan malware, a new spotlight is shining on Mac anti-malware security. Flashback usually appears in as a downloadable trojan, requiring the user to download, run and give permission to install. But for a few days there was a Java exploit that installed it on some Macs without requiring permission. Apple then issued a patch to prevent that.
Some believe that you should use 3rd-party security software as protection. But that software needs updates to remain effective as well. MacMost has always taught that keeping updated, informed and watching what you download is all that is required for protection.
What do you think? Do you use third-part software for protection? Has the recent issue changed your mind one way or the other?

Learn how to compress an image to create a small file for uploading to a web site or sending via email. You can use iPhoto's export function for this. If the image is not in your iPhoto library, then you can also use Preview to create a compressed version without buying any new software.

Check out this useful Dictionary app for the iPhone and iPad. You can look up words, hear pronunciations, and even look up words by speaking them. There is also a thesaurus.