Tag Archives: Lion

08.02.12
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Mountain Lion – Worth The Upgrade?

First off, you’ll be wanting to know whether it’s worth the upgrade. Sconce Wednesday I have spoken to several people who were umm-ing and ahh-ing about making the jump. Well let me say this, for £13.99 ($19.99 in the US) there isn’t really an excuse not to!

Mountain Lion

Yes, it may be another incremental update to the OS, just like Snow Leopard from Leopard and even like Lion but I prefer it this way, it’s cheaper to upgrade and Apple fine tune features over a longer period of time. Meaning less bugs with each overhaul of OSX.

Apple’s desktop OS hasn’t had ‘Mac’ in the title for some time now and the lines running between the iPad and Mac get even blurrier with this iteration. It’s worth the upgrade if just for the little features, if you have a Mac which was purchased in 2011, there’s an even better reason to upgrade…

That’s AirPlay Mirroring.

It’s also the one feature I can’t benefit from. Since selling my MacBook Air, my only mac is my 2010 iMac which isn’t quite powerful enough, even though the phone in my pocket and the iPad I’m typing this on IS.

If you’ve used AirPlay on an iOS device, it works the same way in Mountain Lion. Audio can be streamed to any AirPlay devices you have (AirPort Express, Speakers or Apple TV) but the greatest feature is Mirroring, which allows you to stream your desktop over wifi to your Apple TV (2/3rd Gen) sharing photos, music, your desktop and any video, whether it’s YouTube, ITunes or even a generic flash player!

I haven’t been able to test this but I’ve heard that it works perfectly and is a much needed addition to the OS.

The best new features are all little things,

Safari’s new tab viewer (below) is found by using a two-finger swipe, almost zooming out when in Safari. This gives you a view of open tabs reminiscent of the iPhone’s view.

Safari

Whilst we’re on the subject of swiping…

If you have a trackpad (who still uses a mouse?!) take two fingers and swipe from the right edge… Quick access to Notification Center is granted!! Here you’ll see any notifications you haven’t acknowledged and a quick way to tweet or post to Facebook.

Speaking of which, you can now share things to twitter/Facebook from pretty much everywhere in the OS. Safari let’s you share the page you’re viewing, Finder lets you share images with a simple right click too! Have a play around and see what else you can share!!

Those are just a few new features and there are plenty more for you to find so I’ll leave the rest for you! Enjoy Mountain Lion!!

08.28.11
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MobileMe to iCloud. Making the transition…

Last night I decided to bite the bullet and complete the transition from MobileMe to iCloud. In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I have a complimentary MobileMe subscription from Apple but everything detailed below should be the same for when you have the chance to move to iCloud.

In theory it should be simple. You sign in using your new iCloud details, follow the instructions and Apple should do the rest. Here are the main points which Apple want to make clear.Can Do...

First Apple make it clear what you can still use and how long you can use it for. All MobileMe memberships are being extended to June 30 2012. So you can continue to use iWeb and the such until you find yourself an alternative.

The other benefit Apple are giving MobileMe members is 25GB of iCloud storage! iCloud provides 5GB of free storage for new users and after the date above, I believe this will revert to 5GB.Can't Do

So the things you can no longer use are also highlighted and to be honest, I hardly use any of these. You can still sync most of these manually but no loss for me here.

OK, then you’ve gotta update all other devices to make sure you get it all up to date.

Update Your Devices!

That’s it, iCloud will start to migrate your information over… Or so I would hope.

Starting...

Finishing...

Unfortunately, when it had finished all my data was missing. Now I may have mis-read some instructions as I was eager to move everything over but essentially, I had to revert back to MobileMe; Keep my data on my machine, then login to iCloud to allow my Address Book to sync. It worked after that, so no biggy!

08.20.11
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Twitter Integration in Mac OSX Lion

I thought I’d share a couple of tidbits I found in Mac OSX Lion. As well as integrating Twitter with iOS and allowing you to share photos and videos, Apple have added extra functionality to their Mac operating system too!

Simply highlight any text, pretty much anywhere in Lion, right-click and you’ll see a new option… Tweet!

Tweet

As well as this, you can also highlight a word or name, right-click and select Open as Twitter Username!

Twitter Username

If you have Twitter.app installed, Lion will open this and complete the desired action. If not, I guess it would open twitter.com in Safari.

06.19.11
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OS X Lion – Preview [Part 1]

I don’t know where to start with Lion, it’s the simple changes which make all the difference. Some features I find pointless on my iMac but some are amazing on my MacBook Air and to start, I’m just going to talk about the little things which make OS X Lion special.

Keyboard Accentuations

First off, something which is a long time coming. If you need to type café and want to put the accent over the letter you simply hold down the letter on the keyboard and you get several options! Simply hit the relevant number and you get the accented letter.

It works for pretty much all languages and if you need more options, simply add more languages to your Keyboard Settings. Greek, French, Spanish, Latin, you name it they’re all there.

The next handy feature I’ve found is Spotlight Previews – When you search for a file using Spotlight, sometimes it’s hard to find the right file.

Spotlight Preview

Now, simply hovering your mouse over the search results will show live previews of each of the documents, images and files. Kinda like ‘Quick Look’ but right from the search results!

Good eh?

More will follow as I start collating all the new stuff I find and I will do an iCloud specific post talking about iOS and Lion’s use of the new iCloud service.

06.05.11
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Apple – WWDC Rumour Roundup

Well, here we go… It’s that time of year again and this year, Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference kicks off tomorrow with a keynote from Steve Jobs to talk about (at least) three special little things. Lion, iOS and iCloud.

WWDC 2011

As usual, there is a LOT of speculation around what’s gonna be discussed. So I thought I’d share my thoughts and the rumours I mostly agree with. Not to mention the things I’m hoping for…!

iOS5

iOS 5.0 is going to be the biggest change in the UI since 2.0 and the introduction of apps! (I remember being happy with iPhone 1.0 and thinking, this is it. My life is complete. How things change in just four years!)

Here are some of the new features which I’m sure will be announced.

  • Automatic App Updating – Apps will update in the background (if you so wish) and there’s a hint that Apple may ‘push’ updates for iOS itself.
  • iCloud App – Whatever it is, there’ll be an app for it.
  • Twitter Integration – Rumoured to be more than just sharing links and photos, there’s murmurs that twitter will be integrated into the core of iOS. Who knows what that could mean…
I honestly don’t think we’ll see anything about the iPhone, iPod or iPad  - Remember, this is a developer’s conference. It’s all about the platforms these guys in attendance are writing for.

OS X Lion

Which leads us nicely to the latest flavour of OS X, Lion. Now most of the features have already been announced as Apple previewed the OS in January and I’ve been using it ever since.

It’s got pretty stable so I’m certain the Gold Master will be announced tomorrow. Allowing developers to test the GM before the release date which will be the end of June. Apple may surprise us and release it on the day, but I doubt it.

The App Store will be used to deliver the OS, you can purchase your upgrade from your desk and Lion will install over your current Snow Leopard installation. It’s so easy to install and update, you’ll be rebooted into Lion in about 20 minutes!

App Store will now auto update your apps if you wish, as well as the main OS. Which means you don’t have to be bugged and that future MacDefender-style updates will be seamless. Apple want to look after you.

iCloud built in – Again, whatever that is – It will be built right into the system. Not like dropbox, but very much like MobileMe.

iCloud

iCloud

I’m just gonna throw everything I’ve got at you now, I haven’t chose a side as to what iCloud is going to be. Is it a music streaming service, a cache of your most important/used files, app updating system/cache… Who knows?!

Well, I guess we will in a number of hours. There’s one thing for certain… Apple has a HUGE-ASS data centre which is ready to be opened and petabytes and petabytes of server storage ready to be used and abused.

Word on the street is that iCloud is primarily going to be a ‘cloud’ storage system for your iTunes Music Library. Essentially allowing you to play your music from any device, wherever you are… (Providing you have an internet connection that is!) You may have to upload all your music to iCloud or Apple may scan your library and recognise the music you have. Everything purchased in iTunes will be there automatically, but what about those CD’s you ripped years and years ago? The jury is out on that one…

There could be more to iCloud, such as file syncing, Time Machine backups and the such but to be honest, I’m so happy with Dropbox and Google, I’ll be happy with iCloud either way.

Costs: Who knows how Apple is going to price this, it could be yearly subscriptions just like MobileMe is now; Or they could change things and go monthly. That would mean they have the option to tier tariff’s – $5 for basic, $10 for pro, £20 for fanboy – You get the idea.

So there you have it. Here be my predictions. Shame I won’t be in London as there’s a pub hosting a macparty streaming the keynote live! I’ll be doing my usual though, so find me on twitter during the keynote for the latest announcements and here later to either gloat or reflect on these predictions made here.