Apple has pushed out another update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3, as the anticipated summer public release of OS X 10.8 nears. The new build is 12A206j and can be downloaded through the Mac App Store by any registered Mac developer running 12A193i or later of Mountain Lion.

The latest build includes noticeable changes to Notification Center, Notes, Share Sheets, and several other prominent OS X 10.8 features. 12A206j also features many bug fixes though it continues to have a handful of prominent issues that are yet to be addressed. Additionally, some 2007 MacBook Pro models are currently missing support in the new version, though that is expected to be resolved in a future update.

Automatic termination is a feature of OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion that comes from the realm of iOS, the idea is that after an app is unused for a period of time and becomes inactive, it will automatically terminate to free up resources for other tasks. With the help of the new auto-save feature, the user should theoretically never notice any of this going on and they can continue on with their work as usual when they need to, letting Mac OS X manage processes and resources for them without quitting apps or manual interaction through Activity Monitor.

For the vast majority of users this is a good thing and most are probably completely unaware of the features existence, but not everyone is thrilled with the prospect of dormant applications being quit without their command and some find it really annoying. If you fall into the second category and want to turn off automatic app termination in OS X, here is how to do it. Don’t worry, we’ll also show you how to turn it back on.

Disable Automatic Termination in Mac OS X
Launch Terminal and enter the following defaults write command:

defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool yes

Relaunch apps that use auto-termination for changes to take effect.

Re-Enable Automatic App Termination in Mac OS X
You can always reenable the default behavior of OS X and turn auto termination back on:

defaults delete NSDisableAutomaticTermination

Or by reversing “yes” to “no” and running the original command again:

defaults write -g NSDisableAutomaticTermination -bool no

Again, relaunch apps for the changes to take effect and to have auto-terminate enabled again.

This is something that Mac OS X and iOS handles fairly well, and if you’ve never been annoyed by the feature it’s recommended to leave it enabled and let OS X manage tasks itself.

Thanks to qwerty for finding the tip in a StackExchange thread.

By using a custom URL inside of an anchor tag, you can place a link on any website that will initiate a new iMessage conversation. Anyone clicking the link will then launch the Messages app in iOS or iMessages in Mac OS X to begin a new conversation with the specified Apple ID. Even if you have limited knowledge of HTML the link structure is easy to use:

Mac OS X: imessage://your@appleid.com

<a href="imessage://your@appleid.com">Send iMessage to a Mac</a>

iOS: sms://your@appleid.com

<a href="sms://your@appleid.com">Send iMessage to iOS</a>

Replace “your@appleid.com” with your own Apple ID that is configured to use with iMessage. Note that the iOS link uses “sms” as the identifier, meaning some users may send you an actual text message rather than iMessage if they are not set up to use Apple’s messaging protocol.

Because iOS and OS X use different URL schemes, you’ll need to use two different links by default. This could have advantages, if you only wanted people from iOS to reach you for example, but if you don’t like that idea there’s a nice workaround to the dual links by using the short PHP script offered by Beuagil.es. This script will detect the user agent and determine which link to use based on that, effectively combining the two iMessage links into one intelligent link:

<a href="<?php
$useragent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
if(preg_match('/Macintosh/',$useragent)) $os = 'imessage';
elseif(preg_match('/iPhone/',$useragent)) $os = 'sms';
else $os = 'sms';
echo $os;
?>:your@appleid.com">Send an iMessage</a>

Obviously you’ll need a PHP capable website for the above script to work, otherwise you’ll have to use the HTML snippets offered at the top of the post.

You can also use similar URLs to initiate FaceTime calls from the web.

While you can immediately access a dictionary definition by three-finger tapping on a single word in Mac OS X or double-tapping in iOS, the Mac also provides another instant dictionary option: Spotlight.

Yup, the good old Spotlight desktop file search also doubles as a full fledged dictionary access point, this is perfect for when you quickly want the definition of a word that is either in your head or just not written on the screen to access from the tap method. To use the Spotlight dictionary:

1. Hit Command+Spacebar to bring up Spotlight
2. Type the word you want to define and it will show up in the Spotlight search results labeled as “Look Up”
3. Hover over the word to see a Quick Look window including the definition

If you click on the word or hit the Return key you will launch the Dictionary app with the definition, though that isn’t necessary as the hover option is very fast.

This isn’t just a Lion and Mountain Lion feature though, it even works in Mac OS X Snow Leopard though the nicer Quick Look hover option doesn’t exist and instead you’ll see an older style popup.

Many Mac users have an external hard disk for Time Machine backups or other media storage purposes, and if you leave it connected to the Mac all the time you’ve probably noticed an annoying side effect: the drive will spin down when it’s not in use, only to be spun up again unnecessarily at random during unrelated operations.

That drive spin up time is waking the disk from its sleep state which can lead to some pretty serious system dragging even on the fastest Macs, and as a result you’ll often encounter a lengthy beachball cursor that slows down a Mac as you wait for the external drive to arise from sleep. There are a couple possible remedies for this problem, read on to understand the pros and cons of both choices.

Option 1) Stop Hard Disks from Sleeping

By checking this option the external (and internal) hard disks will not spin down to sleep while not in use, this will completely prevent the drive waking lag time and beachballs, however it can also reduce the lifespan of traditional spinning hard disks. For that reason it’s best to use this option sparingly unless you don’t mind the possibility of a shorter drive life for both the internal and external hard drives. If you leave your computer turned on all the time rather than sleeping or shutting down, this is probably not the best option to use.

Option 2) Unmounting Hard Disks When Not in Use

Another solution is to simply unmount the external hard disks when they’re not in use, this will also prevent them from spinning up at random or when a open/save dialog box appears. The downside to this approach is you’ll have to manually mount the drive when you do want to use it, and Time Machine backups will not take place when the drive is unmounted.

Unmounting Disks
You can unmount a hard disk without physically detaching it by either:

1. Dragging the external disk to the Trash
2. Or, using Disk Utility to unmount the drive

Remounting the Hard Disks
If you choose this option, you can remount the drives again using the Disk Utility app to regain file system access. Remounting is just a matter of doing the following:

1. Launch Disk Utility and select the unmounted drive from the left side, unmounted drives will be grey
2. Click the blue “Mount” button in the toolbar to remount the drive
3. Exit Disk Utility

You can also physically disconnect external disks which has an added benefit of providing for a faster boot time, but that’s a pain and really isn’t a valid fix.

None of the solutions outlined above are particularly ideal and hopefully a revision of Mac OS X will change the behavior of how external hard drives are accessed so they are only spun up specifically when they are selected or used. I have encountered several individuals who mistakenly think this drive accessing behavior is their brand new Mac somehow being slow, which tells me this is a problem that should be addressed in a better fashion.

If you’ve found a better way to handle this speed problem, chime in with your thoughts or solutions in the comments.

If you find yourself adjusting things in System Preferences often enough, it’s helpful to create a universal keyboard shortcut to quickly launch into the control panels. Here is how to do that in Mac OS X:

1. Open System Preferences and click on the “Keyboard” panel
2. Click “Keyboard Shortcuts” and select “Application Shortcuts” from the list
3. Click the [+] plus button and choose “All Applications” from the pulldown menu, then alongside ‘Menu Title’ enter “System Preferences…”, and then click into “Keyboard Shortcut” to set your hotkey. For this walkthrough I chose Control+Command+, as the hotkey
4. Click “Add” and close out of System Preferences
5. Hit Control+Command+, or whatever your shortcut was set as to instantly launch System Preferences from anywhere

It’s important to select a keyboard shortcut that won’t interfere with other actions or apps, as far as I can tell nothing else reserves Control+Command+Comma and so it works perfectly for this purpose. Once set, you’ll notice the keyboard shortcut is now attached to the System Preferences item within the  Apple menu.

Without setting anything extra, you can also launch directly into select System Preference panels by using Option and the various function keys like Audio and Brightness.

This helpful tip comes by way of one of our readers, Esaruoho.

If you have a group of pictures that are orientated incorrectly that you need rotated, you can do that in Mac OS X without any third party apps with the help of the bundled Preview app.

1. From the OS X Finder, select the collection of images you wish to rotate and hit Command+O to open them all into Preview
2. In Preview, click an image thumbnail in the sidebar and then hit Command+A to “Select All”
3. Now hit Command+R to rotate the picture 90 degrees clockwise once, hit Command+R again to continue rotating until you find the desired orientation of the pictures. Notice while this is happening that all thumbnail images are rotating.
4. Hit Command+S to save the changes to image orientation

This assumes your default image editor is set to Preview. If not, launch Preview separately and then drag the group of images into Preview to perform the same task.

Preview is a fairly powerful app that is often underutilized for batch photo processing tasks, I use it frequently to batch resize images for wallpaper posts and other purposes, it’s quick, lightweight, and much less demanding on resources than Photoshop for such tasks.

Along the lines of vocally announcing task completion within the command line, you can also have Mac OS X speak the output of any executed command.

This is really easy, all you need to do is pipe the output of any command directly to “say” like so:

uptime | say

In that example, this will speak the output of uptime using the default OS X text-to-speech voice, though you can change the voice to anything else with the -v flag:

uname -a | say -V Samantha

Taking this a step further, it is possible to export the spoken command output to an audio file. Here’s a pointless example of saving the spoken output of the openssl manual page as an m4a file:

man openssl | say -v Samantha -o "talkopenssltome.m4a"

If you want to get ridiculous, you can use one of the singing voices to, well, sing the output of a command. And who doesn’t want an audio file of of the robotic Cellos voice or the awfully perky Good News singing the output of a manual page? Put it on your iPod for the drive home.

man openssl | say -v Cellos -o "serenadingmanpages.m4a"

If you don’t like the bundled voices you can always add new voices to OS X for free through Speech preference panel.

Get creative, because the ultimate utility of this is entirely up to you.

Thanks to Greg P for pointing this out in the comments

Ever since Mac OS X 10.7, the Mac has included the same elastic over-scrolling that exists in the iOS world. Frequently called “rubberband scrolling”, it kicks in as an overscrolling effect that runs out of the scrollable region revealing the linen background before snapping back into the scrollable region. Scroll up quickly with or without inertia in virtually any window since OS X Lion to see the effect in action. Rubberbanding makes for good eye candy and makes the Mac feel familiar to those coming from the iOS world, but some users are annoyed with it and will appreciate the ability to disable the scroll elasticity completely.

Launch Terminal found in the /Applications/Utilities/ directory and enter the following defaults write command exactly:

defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -int 0

Apps will need to relaunch for the changes to take effect, though disabling rubber band scrolling does not work in every app.

To undo the change and get rubberband scrolling back, use the following defaults command:

defaults delete -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding

This is a great tip that has long been wished for by many users, heads up to MacWorld for the post.

Mac OS X 10.7.4 Update has been released by Apple, the update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all OS X Lion users to install. Two of the most significant changes are a fix to a restoring windows bug and a patch for a potential security issue with FileVault passwords, though there are a handful of other changes and fixes that are listed below in the changelog. An update to Safari is also bundled within the software update.

OS X Lion users can download the OS X 10.7.4 update directly via Software Update from the  Apple menu, the update weighs in around 730MB. Direct download links are below, though most users should upgrade through Software Update to keep things simple.

OS X 10.7.4 Direct Download Links

These are direct download links from Apple servers, each file is a DMG.

• OS X Lion 10.7.4 Client – 693mb
• OS X Lion 10.7.4 Client Combo – 1.4GB
• OS X Lion 10.7.4 Server Combo – 1.5GB
• OS X Lion 10.7.4 Server Client – 739MB

The complete change log for 10.7.4 client is as follows:

• Resolve an issue in which the “Reopen windows when logging back in” setting is always enabled.
• Improve compatibility with certain British third-party USB keyboards.
• Addresses permission issues that may be caused if you use the Get Info inspector function “Apply to enclosed items…” on your home directory.
• Improve Internet sharing of PPPoE connections.
• Improve using a proxy auto-configuration (PAC) file.
• Address an issue that may prevent files from being saved to an SMB server.
• Improve printing to an SMB print queue.
• Improve performance when connecting to a WebDAV server.
• Enable automatic login for NIS accounts.
• Include RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras.
• Improve the reliability of binding and logging into Active Directory accounts.
• The OS X Lion v10.7.4 Update includes Safari 5.1.6, which contains stability improvements.

All Mac users should perform a backup before installing system software updates, initiating a manual backup with Time Machine is just a matter of right-clicking a drive.