MacMost: Archives

A basic look at Energy Saver Preferences. These can be used to reduce the power consumption of your Mac when you are not using it. You can also schedule shut down or sleep patterns, and set how how Mac behaves while it is asleep.

Dropbox creates a folder on your drive that automatically syncs with a remote server. You can then access these files from your other Macs and iPhone, as well as share them with friends or everyone. It is a good way to keep a set of files in sync if you have more than one Mac.

Both real news and rumors combined this week to give us a potential picture of Apple’s future. In the real news area, Apple purchased Lala, a company that ran an iTunes-competitor, with a twist. Lala allowed you to access your music everywhere, by storing it on the Internet, or “in the cloud.” Theoretically, this could mean that the future of iTunes will look more like a service where you buy a license to hear a song, and then that song is instantly available on any of your net-connected devices.
On the rumors front, several analysts are predicting that an iPhone 4G is in the works, and that it may be available on Verizon in the U.S. next year. In addition, more speculation about Apple’s tablet device place a release date for that at March of 2010 at a whopping price of $1,000.
In third-party software news, Google released a beta version of the Google Chrome browser for Mac, and says they plan to have extensions for this version, unlike the earlier Alpha release.
Adobe announced that the Flash player for Mac will be switching to Intel-only in 2010, leaving PowerPC Mac users with a stable but never-to-be-updated version of Flash. They say this is because new performance enhancements will require Intel processors.

There are hundreds of keyboard shortcuts for Mac users. There are Finder shortcuts, system shortcuts, application shortcuts and more. Many you can find by just looking through the menu bar for that application. You can find system ones by looking in the System Preferences under Keyboard.

But some keyboard shortcuts are more useful than others. And some are harder to remember than others.
So MacMost has compiled a list of our top “power user” keyboard shortcuts. Here they all are on a single PDF page, downloadable and printable: The MacMost Snow Leopard Power User Keyboard Shortcuts. Download it and pass it along!

Instead of letting iTunes update podcasts every hour or in the middle of the day, you can schedule iTunes to check at night. Using a simple AppleScript and scheduling it to run with iCal you can have new podcast episodes waiting for you when you get to your Mac in the morning.

If you want to go beyond the default titles built into iMovie 09, you can create your own titles in a graphic editor. You can bring them into iMovie as titles between clips, or as overlays on top of existing video.

You can customize your Safari toolbar by adding a variety of buttons and re-arranging them. You can also revert to the default set. You can specify which buttons stick around when the window shrinks. Interesting additions include a New Tab button, an Add Bookmark button, Mail and Print buttons and Zoom buttons.

Two major legal battles in the Apple world wound down this week when AT&T and Verizon seemed to call a ceasefire and Apple scored a key victory over clone maker Psystar.
AT&T sued Verizon over its “map” ads that claim Verizon has more 3G coverage than AT&T. AT&T didn’t like how the maps ignore 2.5G Edge networking and seemed to suggest that no connectivity was available outside of the 3G map areas. Verizon did alter the ads to remove a “Out of touch” label for non-3G areas, but AT&T pressed on. However, this week AT&T dropped the suit, and Verizon dropped its countersuit. Perhaps the two companies decided to spend their money improving their networks rather than paying lawyers?
AT&T has since countered with its own ad spots pointing out iPhone features and the ability of its 3G network to handle data and voice at the same time.
Psystar, who makes PCs that come with Mac OS X installed, settled with Apple in their legal case. Apple got them to stop selling their Mac clones and pay $2.7 million. But Psystar’s lawyers say they will appeal the settlement to a higher court, which could take years. An interesting tidbit came from one report stating that Psystar only sold 768 Mac clones since it started.
More iPhone carrier rumors floated around this week as analysts predicted that perhaps both T-Mobile and Sprint may be able to carry the iPhone next year when AT&T exclusivity runs out. Verizon’s involvement seems less likely now, considering their strong anti-iPhone ad campaign for the Droid phone.

Which is better, Mac or PC? Why choose? After all, your Mac is a PC, it just runs Mac OS X instead of Windows. And it looks pretty. But what if you need to run an application that is Windows-only? Like a piece of accounting software, an engineering simulation, a database application, or even Internet Explorer to access an IE-only site. But who’s kidding who — we know you probably just want to run a Windows-only game on your Mac.

So there are various options for running Windows software on your Mac. They come in three flavors: virtualization, a Win32 API or rebooting completely into Windows.

A MacMost poll showed that the two virtualization giants were used by most people, with VMware Fusion beating out Parallels in popularity. Both of these run as an application in Mac OS X and create a virtual PC inside your Mac to host the Windows operating system.

They both work extremely well, allowing Windows direct access to the Intel processor in your Mac so it can run at nearly full speed. And since both are several generations past the first version, they can support advanced graphics required for most applications and game, although they are far from perfect.

To use either of these, you would need a full copy of Windows to install. XP, Vista or Windows 7 will work, as well as alternative operating systems like Ubuntu. The application will then create a large file representing the virtual Windows hard drive and walk you though installing Windows on it.

When you launch the program it would boot Windows, giving you the option to view it as a large Window on your Mac, take of over the entire screen, or mix Windows windows with Mac windows. You can even drag and drop and copy and paste between Mac and Windows.

VMware Fusion weighs in at $80 and so does Parallels, although it seems like the actual retail price of Parallels is often cheaper.

Next in popularity is Boot Camp. This is Mac OS X’s ability to allow you to reboot into Windows using a separate Windows partition. The ability to do this is free with Leopard and Snow Leopard, but you still need to provide your own Windows discs. At present, Windows XP and Vista are supported, although Apple promised Windows 7 soon.
The main drawback to Boot Camp is that you need to shut down your Mac and reboot completely. And then do it again when you are done working in Windows and want to return to Mac.

But the main advantage of Boot Camp is the near 100% compatibility. You are essentially running Windows on a PC when you reboot. The only loose ends are drivers for Apple hardware like mice and keyboards and right button clicks when using MacBooks. But these have mostly been ironed out.

Next down on the list was VirtualBox. Another virtualization application. While not as feature rich as VMWare Fusion or Parallels, it has a better price point: free. You’ll still need to install your own copy of Windows, however.

A few people reported using CrossOver or Darwine. These solutions allow you to run Windows applications without having Windows installed. They contain versions of the parts of Windows that applications rely on to run, so they can run in Mac OS X with that help.
The drawback is that few Windows applications are supported. Application support almost has to be added one-at-a-time, meaning that it is only a viable solution if your application happens to be on the list. And many of those applications are already available in regular Mac versions, so running them with a Win32 API application isn’t very valuable.

Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll here at MacMost.com. We’ve now got a good picture of how people run Windows on their Mac. I should point out that there were also quite a few messages along the lines of “I don’t run Windows at all — that’s why I bought a Mac!”

Here are the complete results of the original poll:

Since Apple switched to Intel processors for Macs, it has become much easier to run Windows applications on your Mac. You can use a virtualization application like Parallels, VMware Fusion or VirtualBox to run Windows while still in Mac OS X. You can reboot into Windows with Boot Camp, and you can run a custom implementation of the Win32 API like with Darwine and CrossOver.

The Mac doesn't come with any drawing tools. Fortunately, two free programs give you some basic ability to draw and edit images. Check out Paintbrush and Seashore for Mac in this excerpt from the MacMost.com Guide to Switching to the Mac.

The new MacMost iPhone and iPod Touch app gives users easily access video tutorials, news, recommendations and other content from the Apple tutorial site MacMost.com.
The free app allows users to view recent episodes of the MacMost Now video podcast right inside the app, without downloading the podcast or using the Web browser. New videos come out several times per week and teach Mac, iPhone and iPod users how to get the most from Apple technology.
Gary Rosenzweig, the producer and host of the MacMost video podcast created the app as an alternative to browsing the site with the iPhone’s Safari Web browser. “I’ve found that some people like to access information from apps rather than the Web, so I thought I’d create an app to accommodate them,” said Rosenzweig.
In addition to the videos, the app also displays a weekly Apple news round-up, syndicated news and rumors summaries, a collection of Web-based games from MacMost, recommendations for other iPhone apps, and the MacAnswers daily audio podcast.
“Because the app draws from content on the Web site, we can continue to expand the app to show more information,” said Rosenzweig.
The MacMost iPhone app is available for free from the iTunes App Store and can be downloaded via iTunes on a Mac or PC or directly on an iPhone or iPod Touch.
You can get the app by going following this link to the iTunes App Store.

Use iMovie 09 to create custom slideshows from your photographs. You can add titles before and between images, as well as text over photos. You can also add transitions, music and audio narration.

It's holiday shopping time again. Here are some good ideas for what you can get Apple fans in your life. Submit your own ideas to https://macmost.com/apple-gift-guide-2009.html

An interesting study by NPD Group shows that Mac desktops counted for about 48% of all desktop retail sales in October. While it may seem that it means half of all computers sold were Macs, some of this can be explained by the fact that Macs are more expensive on average, and don’t have a model that is the equivalent of the low-end PC. It is revenue, not units. But this is a recent record for Apple and it does show that they continue to gain market share.
This increase may continue in November thanks to the new iMacs and a Black Friday sale to be announced by Apple on Friday morning.

If you use MobileMe, then you have an iDisk. It is a virtual hard drive on the Internet that you can use to store files and share them with others. Learn the basics of using your iDisk.

You can create tasks in Automator and then have iCal run them at a specific time in the future, or even as a recurring event. This example shows you how to have thumbnails of new photos automatically sent to an email address every week.

Learn how to use Disk Utility to erase and format an external drive. You can also create drives with multiple partitions.

In case you’ve been skipping commercials with your Tivo, Verizon and AT&T are now at war. It all started when Verizon began an ad campaign against AT&T’s 3G service, specifically targeted at iPhone users. The “There’s a Map for That” ads mimicked the “There’s an App for That” iPhone ads, which are Apple ads, not AT&T. But the point of the Verizon ads is that they have more 3G coverage than AT&T.
AT&T isn’t happy about the attack, and fired back with legal claims against Verizon. The basis for their claims is that the maps Verizon shows don’t take into account the 2.5G Edge network. In fact, the original ads even showed non-3G areas as “out of touch,” which isn’t true.
Of course Verizon’s Droid ads are also a direct attach on Apple and AT&T, using the work “iDon’t” to point out the features that the Droid phone has that Apple’s iPhone doesn’t. And to round out Verizon’s attack, they have an “Island of Misfit Toys” ad which also pokes fun at the iPhone’s flaws.
AT&T is not just striking back legally. They have just launched a new ad comparing “3G Experience” between AT&T and Verizon, touting the iPhone’s 100,000 apps as one reason.
While not really having any immediate effect on iPhone users, this competition may push both networks to add features and better service in the near future. We can hope. It also gives us a clue that perhaps Apple and Verizon are not preparing to partner on future iPhone deployment or a wireless service for tablets or MacBooks. Certainly seems that Verizon isn’t doing anything to please Apple, at least.
Apple’s been busy fighting its own legal battles as the push-and-shove between Apple and clone-maker Pystar continue. This week Apple won a summary judgement saying that Pystar is indeed violating copyright laws in including Mac OS X with its computers.

If you have more than one Mac on your home network, you can share files between them by simply turning on file sharing and browsing to another Mac in the Finder. You can also add additional users and set up shared folders.

Thanks to everyone who voted in the to-do list application poll here at MacMost.com. We’ve now got our top six task managers. While it is impossible to say which one is best for you, this will at least give you an idea of what others are using.

The top spot belongs to Things from Cultured Code. The king-of-all to-do list applications seems to have every feature under the sun: repeating to-dos, due dates, notes, search, tags, projects, plus both iCal and iPhone sync.
It will set you back $50, but can you put a price on productivity? Well, probably. But I bet it is more than $50. Add another $10 for the iPhone app, if you want to sync in that direction too.

Next on the list is a combined entry of iCal and Apple Mail, both which share to-do list tasks between them. Of course this combination of applications comes with Mac OS X, so everyone has it. Since this is an integrated solution that everyone already has, it is not surprising that it ranks so high. But it is perhaps surprising that it is not number one, or even dominating the list completely.
This is most likely because iCal/Mail really lacks any power to-do list functionality. It doesn’t even sync with the iPhone, even though most other parts of both iCal and Mail do. You’d think it would be a no-brainer for Apple to create a stand-along app that uses this data, syncs with the iPhone and also maybe MobileMe. But thanks to them ignoring this software genre, we’ve got all of these other third-party solutions. We’ve got an old episode about using iCal to-do lists if you want to check it out.

Third on the list is OmniFocus from the Omni Group. This is another full-featured application that has everything and the kitchen sink. Plus, if you are already a user of Omni Group applications, like OmniPlan, then you will probably find it nice and familiar. It carries an even heftier price tag an Things, at $80, and then another $20 for the iPhone app.

Next on the list if another comes-with-your-Mac application: Stickies. Now, this isn’t really a to-do list application at all, but its versatility has lots of people using it as such. You can put a single item in a note, or create short lists of items. Hey, if it works, it works. We did an episode on Stickies a while back if you are curious about it. You definitely can use it as a to-do list manager, but it just isn’t made for that.

Tied for fifth on the list are The Hit List by Potion Factory and Evernote. The first is gainign popularity with its fancy and simple-to-use interface. The second is a multi-purpose notes and media tool that is part-of-the-way in the cloud.
The Hit List will set you back $50, and includes a lot of features in a very Mac-like interface. Evernote has a free standard version, and then they hit you with $45/year for a premium service to pay for the use of their net-based syncing. It has a free iPhone app as well, which makes it a great way to share notes between your Mac and iPhone without even having to dock the phone.
Here are the complete results of the original poll:

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Which is the most popular to-do list application for the Mac? MacMost wants to know!
Look through this list carefully and select the to-do list or task management application that you use on your Mac. Some are Mac applications and some are online. This poll is about Mac applications only, not iPhone apps.