MacMost: Archives

Mountain Lion, Mac OS X 10.8 coming later this year, will include a new feature called Gatekeeper. It divides all third-party software into three categories: from the Mac App Store, not from the Mac App Store but digitally signed by an official Apple developer ID, and anything else. By default the user will be able to only install software in the first two categories. But the setting can be adjusted to allow all three, or only the first one. The second category allows developers to create anything not allowed in the Mac App Store, like system tools, but still take responsibility for their work and allow Apple to take action if something malicious comes to light.
What do you think of this new feature of Mac OS X?

In previous versions of OS X you could find links to lists of recent items on the left side of the Finder window. You can add those back in Lion if you like them. You can create smart folders and place them in the sidebar to help you find files in ways that fit how you use your Mac.

Here's a look at some of the common email etiquette mistakes that people make, like typing in capital letters, including unnecessarily large attachments, quoting all of the previous message and forwarding unwanted emails. Many of the same mistakes are made in forums and message boards.

Attention peaked this week on working conditions at Chinese factories where Apple products are built. ABC’s Nightline took a look inside the Foxconn factory on Tuesday night’s episode. You can see the video here.
While talk about how Apple and other electronics companies manufacture their products has been going on for years, renewed interest started last month when the New York Times published an article looking in to the human costs of the process. Apple CEO Tim Cook will be commenting on this issue at today’s shareholder meeting.
In other news Apple is planning on building a new data center in Oregon. The new center, likely years away from completion, will use solar power like Apple’s North Carolina data center. It will also take advantage of the cool central Oregon climate to keep energy use down.

“I need a backup drive, the photos on my Mac are priceless!”
“Here’s one for $100.”
“Do you have anything cheaper?”

iCloud makes it easy to share calendars with others. You can create a public calendar that is read-only to others and anyone can subscribe to it. You can also create shared calendars that can be viewed and/or updated by a list of others you invite.

There are many rumors surfacing about an announcement and release of a new iPad next month. What new features would you like to see in the iPad 3? Post your wishes and ideas here below.

OS X 10.8 will arrive late this summer. Apple has given us a preview of new features and is providing an early release to developers. See what is in store for us with the next release of the Macintosh OS.

The Image Capture app that comes with every Mac is a good alternative to scanner manufacturers' custom software. You can use it to scan images from most scanners and it will adjust its features depending on the scanner's capabilities.

A new version of Mac OS X was announced this morning, named “Mountain Lion.” The new Mac OS X 10.8 was released for testing to developers. General release is scheduled for late this summer.
New features will include new apps and more: Messages, Notes, Reminders, Game Center, notifications, Twitter integration and AirPlay mirroring. All of these features mirror or tie in to similar features in iOS.

“I can’t believe those losers wait in line for hours to buy an iPhone when there’s absolutely no one in line to get this new Samsung phone!”

You can put solid colors, textures or animatics in your iMovie timeline for a variety of reasons. Use them to allow your audio to play when there is no video to show. Or, use them to plan your movie.

Twitter was buzzing last week when a Singapore-based iOS developer, Arun Thampi, posted a note about Address Book and privacy. It seems the issue did not travel far up the media pipeline to most of us, but a number of industry insiders commented on it, most notably ZDnet. Gizmodo republished the post and thousands of users showed concern. That’s thousands of users, while Apple reports that they sold 37.04 million iPhones in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012. This is an issue that concerns all of us that use iOS devices and we should be acutely aware of who takes our personal data and how they use it. Further, what safeguards does a company use to protect our data against potential misuse.
It all started with the reposting of Thampi’s notes by ZDNet Jason O’Grady and others that the popular Path social media app copied your Address Book data to its servers. Path claimed it needed your data to help you connect with friends across multiple social media sites. Once this news became public, Path addressed the issue, first by offering to remove your data if you emailed them, but later the company replied that they had removed everyone’s Address Book data from their servers. Path was updated on 2/13 and now prompts you to opt in or out of sharing your Address Book with their servers. While this one company responded to user complaints and reacted favorably, it is still unclear how many other apps may be storing your personal contacts on their servers.

Your short user name is both your account name and the name of your home folder. You can't really change it. But you can create a new user account and move everything to that account if you are willing to put a lot of effort into it.

With the 10.0.3 update of Final Cut Pro X you can now use multiple camera angles of the same scene. Final Cut Pro will use timecodes or audio to sync two or more videos and then you can switch fluidly between these shots.

The release of iBooks Author brought criticism several weeks ago that the license agreement forbade users from exporting PDFs to be sold outside of Apple’s own store. But Apple clarified things this week by stating that the restriction is only for the iBooks format, which can only be used in iBooks anyway. iBooks Author can be used to produce PDFs that can be sold anywhere, and even iBooks-formatted files that can be distributed freely anywhere.
Apple continues to push the new feature of Lion Internet Recovery to more Macs. Many 2010 models received a firmware update this week that allows them to boot using firmware, connect to Apple servers and install Lion onto an empty hard drive. This functionality is needed as Lion does not come on a DVD like previous operating systems.

Every time a format dies, he has a bonfire and holds a little ceremony. He did it with vinyl records, video tapes, CDs and now DVDs. But in the future I wonder how he’ll burn “the Internet.”

Learn how to take multiple RSS feeds and view them all on one page in Safari. You can create your own custom page of news from sources you like to read. You can also search this page to find articles to read.

As a new iPad 2 owner I was rooting around the Web to see what help resources are available. I looked at cases, software reviews, and hardware accessories. What I found are a lot of photos of people with their heads bent down in an odd position while using their iPads. I thought that doesn’t look comfortable!
As I mused on ways to hold the iPad in a more comfortable position, I wondered if anyone had noticed the odd way people hold their necks while using the iPad. Lo and behold, I found a Harvard study quoted on the LA Times web site. The study, “Touch-screen tablet user configurations and case-supported tilt affect head and neck flexion angles” found that positions that users engage in while using any tablet contributes to excessive head bending which results in large muscle strains. These large muscles involve the neck and upper back and affect posture while sitting or standing.
The small study notes that the position in which you hold your iPad does affect how you feel:
Higher display locations lead to decreased head and neck flexion that approach more neutral postures; while lower gazes lead to increasingly flexed postures which are associated with an increase in neck extensor activity.

You can use QuickTime Player in Lion to edit audio files as well as video. You can trim down the audio, getting rid of unwanted sections at the beginning and end. You can also use the same technique to divide an audio file into several parts.