MacMost: Archives

In line during the tough economic times of the past.
In line during the tough economic times of today.

Learn how to use multiple layers into Final Cut Pro X. You can place an image on top of a video and reposition, resize and crop the image easily. You can do with same with a second video, and even combine multiple videos and images. This gives you many more options that iMovie's ability to do picture-in-picture and cutaways.

The new Safari Reading List feature allows you to quickly and easily save web pages for future viewing. You can add pages to your Reading List in various ways, and they will be marked as read when you get back to them. They will also sync with iOS 5 devices. They are similar to bookmarks, but could be used in some interesting ways.

The MacBook Air and Mac mini have no optical drives. You can get an external drive for $79, or you can share the optical drive on another Mac on your network. Learn how CD and DVD drive sharing works.

Apple had two interesting announcements this week. The first was the addition of a low-end iMac strictly for the education market. In the past Apple has kept around older iMac models and continued to sell them to students and educators. But this time around they have produced a new version of the 21.5-inch iMac for that purpose. The model comes with an i3 processor, 2GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive for $999. You can buy this low-end iMac from Apple, but only if you qualify for educational pricing. Note that for only $200 more you get the standard low-end iMac which comes with an i5 processor, twice the memory and twice the disk space.
The discontinued white MacBook is also available for educational purposed, but cannot be purchased by individuals from Apple. Reportedly it can only be ordered by educational institutions.
Apple released an add-on to Lion this week in the free Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. It allows a Lion user to use an external hard drive, such as a USB flash drive, as a recovery disk. A hard drive with Lion installed will include such a disk as a separate hidden partition on that same drive. But this method will work even if that internal drive is damaged. It will allow you to boot from the external drive and use tools to repair your disk, restore from Time Machine or even log on to the Mac App Store and re-download and install Lion.
The financial turmoil this week has produced an interesting bit of data. While Apple’s stock price went down with the rest of the market, it didn’t suffer as much as others. Several times on Tuesday, and by the end of the day on Wednesday, by the numbers it was the world’s most valuable company. At the end of Wednesday it was valued at $337.2 billion, ahead of Exxon Mobil which was in the lead previously.

“I gave up chewing on his shoes. He seems to get much more excited when I chew on those new Apple Thunderbolt cables.”

Learn how to use the Censor effect in Final Cut Studio X to pixelate or blur a portion of your video. You can also animate the effect, moving it along a path to follow a moving subject. With this example you will also learn how to use effects and how to animate them, changing their properties gradually over time.

Learn about the basic functions of Final Cut Pro X. This video will help those familiar with iMovie to learn about the general Final Cut Pro X interface, events and projects. See how to import video, add it to the timeline, apply a transition and titles. Then learn how to export your project.

Learn how to use the new Arrange By feature of the Finder in Lion. In addition to sorting your files, you can also group them by kind, size and other attributes. But using Arrange By can conflict with how you want to sort files in list view.

Apple made steps this week toward the eventual release of iCloud. They launched iCloud.com, a test site for some of iCloud’s new features. The site is meant for developers who need to test iOS app compatibility with iCloud. Web-based versions of services such as Mail, Contacts, Calendars and iWork document storage are reportedly all part of the test. This shows that Apple is close to releasing iCloud as other portions of the free service, such as iTunes in the Cloud are already available.
In addition, Apple announced pricing for iCloud storage upgrades. You get 5GB of storage for free. Since music, apps, books and photo storage are not counted against your total, then it is hard to imagine needing more. But if you store a lot of iWork documents, then you can get an additional 10GB for $20/year, 20GB for $40/year and 50GB for $100/year.
iCloud is expected to launch at the same time as iOS 5 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The Apple web site says “Coming this fall.” MobileMe users will be allowed to stick with MobileMe until June 30, 2012, if they wish. Many may choose to wait so they can keep using features like iDisk and MobileMe Web hosting and Photo Galleries.

My brother became a patent troll and he now lives under one of those billion-dollar fancy suspension bridges.

Besides large new features in Lion, there are many small changes. Check out 10 interesting and useful new things in Lion.

Lion Mail's new interface is different from previous versions of Mail. Learn how to use the three-column view. See how you can use the Favorites bar to make the mailbox column unnecessary. Learn about the Archive function and how to use keyboard shortcuts to move messages into mailboxes.

Learn the basics of Versions, a new feature in Lion that saves multiple copies of your documents as you work. Gone are the Save and Save As commands we have been used to for years. Learn how to use the new Save, Save a Version and Duplicate commands that give you a safety net while you work.

Apple’s launch of Lion was a success, even if everyone isn’t completely happy with it. The online distribution allowed for more than a million downloads in the first day, and millions more since. Many have been surprised at the speed of the download, while others have needed to stop by an Apple Store or borrow a faster connection.
Professional reviews of the new OS have been positive, as well as many user reviews. Some users complain of issues with the new OS, particularly when it comes to software that is no longer supported. Lion doesn’t include Rosetta, which was used by Snow Leopard and Leopard to run older PowerPC applications. Others have been caught off-guard by having an older copy of Flash that then didn’t work in Lion. The most recent version of Flash does work, but isn’t fully supported. A new version should be coming soon according to Adobe.
Lion is available now in the Mac App Store for those running Snow Leopard. Apple will be releasing a USB disk version of the OS installer next month that should allow for installation without a download and on Macs running Leopard as well.

“Well, you could always paint it white if it will make you feel better.”

Lion includes Launchpad, a new way to find and run applications. You can view the icons of all your applications quickly by running Launchpad and flipping between pages of icons similar to the Home screens on the iPad and iPhone. You can organize your icons in app folders. Apps purchased in the Mac App Store are automatically added to Launchpad. But using Launchpad is optional as you can still run applications using the Dock and other methods.

The AirDrop feature of Lion allows you to send files between Macs. It works without a shared wifi connection, but requires two Macs that have very recent wifi hardware.

Get to know the new Lion gestures. You can use a trackpad on a recent MacBook or a Magic Trackpad to navigate around in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. You can also do some gestures with a Magic Mouse. See where to enable and customize gestures.

Using gestures is the key to getting the most from Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Knowing them can make you much faster at getting to things and working with your apps. You can find them all by just looking through the System Preferences under Trackpad or Mouse.

But it can be useful to have a printout handy while trying to master them.
So MacMost has compiled a list of gestures for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). Here they all are on a single PDF page, downloadable and printable: The MacMost Guide to Mac OS X Lion Gestures. Download it and pass it along!