Category: OS X

Apple Releases Airport Utility 6.0 for Mac OS X Lion

Apple has released an update to the Mac OS X Lion version of the Airport Utility.  Version 6.0 is now available for download from the Apple Support website. Also made available for download are the Airport Base Station and Time Capsule Firmware (7.6.1) and the Airport Utility 5.6 for Mac OS X Lion.  The 5.6 update includes a fix for an issue with netowrk passwords being stored in the keychain. For more information or to download the Airport Utility, go…

Karelia Releases Sandvox 2.5

Karelia Software has released an update to their Sandvox Website Creator.  Sandvox is an easy to use website creation package which allows users to create entire websites within a matter of minutes rather than days and weeks. Sandvox 2.5 has included some automatic features allowing notifications to be sent to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even email.  Also included in this version are the following changes: Version 2.5 requires a minimum of Mac OS X 10.6.and now has Full screen mode. …

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 Build 11D50 Now Available to Developers

Apple, Inc. has released another update to the upcoming release of Mac OS X, 10.7.3.  The Build 11D50 is a 997mb download and while there are still questions about what Apple has planned, the laast few builds have been fairly stable.   To download the latest build, you will need a Developer account.   The build can be downloaded at: http://developer.apple.com/

Mac OS X 10.7.3 Just Weeks Away

The latest build of Mac OS X, Build 11D36 is the developer version of 10.7.3.  With this update arriving less than a week after the previous build, it is expected that a gold version will be available to developers within about month or so.   With the normal upgrade of Apple’s line of computing platforms in early 2012, it is suspected that Apple is trying to release 10.7.3 in time to coincide with the upgrade of the product line. The latest…

Mariner Software Releases MacJournal 6

Are you the type of person who has their entire life written down or are writing a book about it?  If so, then you will want to look at the new version of Mariner Software’s MacJounral.  Version 6.0 was released with over 100 improvements and changes to the journaling program.  Complete with new blogging tools, MacJournal allows you to write and entry and share it with the world if that is what your life is about. MacJournal’s efficiencies are the…

Macupdate offering 12 Mac Apps for $49.00

MacUpdate is offering 12 major Mac applications for $49.00 for a limited time. The Applications in this bundle include: Tech Tool 6 Icon Box (only to the first 15,000 customers) Total Finder Postbox 3 Fontpack Pro Master Labels & Addresses Mac DVDRipper Pro 3 Back In Focus NeverWinter Nights 2 Hear iClip 5 FoldersSynchronizer The entire suite of apps would normally cost $741, however for the next 13 12 days, they are selling them for $49.00 for the entire suite. …

Linux Mint 12

This article is presented for those with Intel Macs (and PCs) who choose to have an alternative operating system available. It is possible to install it as a Dual-Boot system, Virtual Machine, or just run it from the live DVD. Late last month (November) Mint 12 was released to the public (free). Mint is a full multi-media distribution of Linux. There has been a lot of extremely positive press about this version. It’s almost as if someone hired the PR…

iTunes 10.5.1 Released by Apple

Apple today released a couple of updates including iTunes 10.5.1.  This update is supposed to include the new service from Apple  called iTunes Match, their matching service which allows imported CDs to also be stored in iCloud.  This service should address many users issues with the lack of cover art and proper titling of their CD’s and seeks to eliminate many of the gaps in most people’s cover flows. iTunes 10.5 also included:• iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes now stores…

Apple Updates Safari as Part of the Mac OS X Update

Many users were likely left wondering what ever happened to the promised update for Safari.  Apple decided it would be best to include it in the latest update for Mac OS X so most people were left oblivious to the update, but a host of issues were addressed.  This includes: Improve JavaScript performance up to 13% over Safari 5.1* Address issues that could cause hangs and excessive memory usage Improve stability when using Find, dragging tabs, and managing extensions Improve…

Mac OS X 10.7.2 Finally Here!

The long awaited update for the Mac OS X Lion operating system has been released by Apple.  Thanks to a bevy of issues in the preceding releases of the Mac OS 10.7 series, many users have been counting the days until Apple released the latest update to resolve those issues. The 10.7.2 update includes the following new items in it: iCloud stores your email, calendars, contacts, Safari bookmarks, and Safari Reading list and automatically pushes them to all your devices….

rsync

This is a command coming from the *NIX world I found to be useful for maintaining a backup for important software. It works either on a single computer or with two computers. The details can be found in the man page for the command. I’d like to thank Mike Doob from the MUUG for reminding me about this command. The simplest way to use the command is “rsync <file list or directory 1> <file list or directory 2>”. All it…

Handbrake: A review

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everybody. This review will be just a quick one. I’m not an expert with this sort of thing and have only dabbled with it from time to time… What is it? Handbrake is simply a transcoder. It converts DVD’s to video files and video files from one format to another. Does it work? Yes. It does what it was designed to do quite well and actually is fairly stable in spite of having not been updated in…

aTunes – a cross-platform music player

A few minutes ago I downloaded and tried out a free music player called aTunes. They had a version update to 2.1.0. My impression is it is a good try. There are a couple of features which iTunes doesn’t have but (on the Mac at least) the interface is a little clunky. For the moment Apple doesn’t have much to worry about. However I can see where this project is going so it may be worth considering in the future….

Using a 720p TV with a Mac Mini

The short response is don’t. The long response is it can be done but… It is  very painful to get the TV to work as a monitor. The resoluton of a 720p TV is supposed to be 1200 x 720 (or fairly close). The aspect is 16:9. Unfortunately up to this point I’ve only been able to get 1024 x 768, which is an aspect of 4:3. To get there I first wasted a couple of hours fiddling around with…

Three E-Book readers compared

The three readers are Adobe Digital Editions from Adobe, Stanza from http://www.lexcycle.com/, and Skim from http://skim-app.sourceforge.net. Each of the three have their strong points and weak points. Adobe is fairly powerful and fast, but lack many of the whiz bang features of other readers.They concentrate mostly on PDF documents (which is no surprise). Apart from formatting, there really isn’t much there which can’t be found in Preview (built into OS X). It has the look of a Windows program ported…

Revew: Jomic

Jomic is another comic book reader. It is written for the PPC, so the Intel folks will need to install Rosetta (allows the Intel machines to run PPC code). The version I have appears to be a demo. Many of the items in the menu are greyed out. However, I found by a bit of experimentation some of these items do function. Since the program was written for slower machines I’ve observed it is very fast on a faster machine….

Add on – Dapplegrey

Dapplegrey is a front end to DOSBox. It is a way to maintain quick access to the features and programs stored within DOSBox. Minimum requirements are OS X 10.3 and a PPC Mac. Access to programs is quite simple. It is a matter of  going to the “Games List” tab and double-clicking on the desired program. The assumption is people running DOSBox are running old DOS (PC) games. In my case this is true. I do everything else in OS…

How to automatically mount an NFS drive (UNIX network) on OS X

This article is a variation/enhancement to a post I found at http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=9289 for a FreeNAS server. Of course purely Mac folks would likely want to stick with the AFP protocol. In terms of generalities the NFS server does not necessarily have to be running FreeNAS. It just has to work. FreeNAS is basically a “Swiss Army Knife” of external storage. I find it does a lot of things very easily. It doesn’t work on all machines (I’ve had a 60%…

Running apps installed via MacPorts (or the others) from the GUI

When an app is installed via MacPorts, or one of the other programs used to bring Linux apps to the Mac, it is stored as a program requiring a terminal program to run. This is fine for some programs such as 7zip but not for others such as pan (a GUI newsreader) and gftp (a GUI based ftp program). I use these programs enough so I’d want them on the dock. After hunting around I found some discussion in a…

Gear Head WC1100 Webcam on a Mac

Most of our readers know I volunteer for an educational charity on Fridays. I install software on computers which are then given out to students. We have a “special needs” married couple who came in about a year ago and took a Linux box. They wanted to get their webcam running on it. After a couple of weeks I managed to get it more or less working. I thought it might be a good idea to pick up one and…