This weeks featured Mac setup is the home desk of Matthew M., an IT Systems Administrator who has a great personal workstation. Let’s jump right to it and learn more about this setup, the hardware, and how it’s put to use:
Apple has released a small supplemental update to OS X El Capitan Public Beta. The small update is available now from the Mac App Store Update mechanism and it fixes an issue that may cause some 32-bit applications to quit unexpectedly.
Apple has started to run two three new commercials for iPhone, one titled “Hardware & Software”, “Amazing Apps”, and the other titled “Loved”.
Apple has released the first public beta version of OS X El Capitan (10.11). Any Mac user with an Apple ID and compatible Mac can choose to download and install the public beta, though due to the nature of beta system software, this is generally only recommended for advanced users.
Apple has made the first public beta of iOS 9 available to users who are interested in testing the the new operating system before widespread public release later in the year. iOS 9 runs on all devices able to run iOS 8, but beta software is notoriously buggy, unreliable, and finicky, making the usage of public beta system software best reserved for secondary iPhone and iPad devices or for more advanced users.
Apple has released the third beta version of iOS 9 to users registered in the Apple Developer program, arriving as build 12A4293f. Separately, WatchOS 2 beta 3 is also available to developers.
Apple has released the third developer beta version of OS X 10.11 El Capitan to registered developers.
Many Mac users arriving from the land of Windows PC keyboards will notice that the Apple keyboards as well as those included on a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro do not have the standard “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys. This does not mean you can’t page up and page down on a Mac, however, and, similar to the Home and End functions, there are two distinct ways to accomplish the equivalent of paging up and paging down on any Mac keyboard with Mac OS X.
Let’s quickly review the keystrokes to accomplish paging on Mac keyboards.
In 1987, Apple came out with a conceptual forecast video of sorts imagining what the then future year of1997 would be like, and how Apple and technology would permeate our lives. The (very retro) video outlines all sorts of amusing concepts, some of which came to fruition – like instant access to networked databases and virtual assistants running on computers, and many ideas which have not yet come to be – like projected holograms streaming out of a computer screen into a meeting, or an Apple satellite.
If you’re shopping on the web from Safari with iPhone, you can make your check-out time faster and much easier by using a great built-in scanning feature to scan credit card details. This uses the iPhone camera to pull info directly from the card, preventing you from having to manually enter the sixteen digit number, card name, and expiration date.
Some Mac Mail users have discovered that Mail app misbehaves after updating to OS X 10.10.4 (and some with OS X 10.11 El Capitan) particularly with Exchange and Gmail accounts, but it can happen with other email provider services as well. Typically the problem manifests in one of a few ways; eMail logins suddenly stall or fail, Mail app fails to check for new email, Mail app fails to send emails, or Mail app just doesn’t do anything at all and will basically hang on launch as a never-ending server connection is attempted but fails to establish.
We’ve shared some tips to take great pictures of fireworks with iPhone before, but fireworks are obviously in motion, so perhaps the best way to capture a firework show is with some great video. Fortunately, the iPhone and iPad have a wonderful video recording camera built right in, and with a few tricks, you’ll be able to capture stunning video of a firework reports, explosions, or even the entire show, using nothing but the iPhone and it’s built-in feature set.
Force Touch (or 3D Touch) is an impressive haptic feedback technology that is rolling out through updated Apple hardware, with all of the newest model Mac laptops having a Force Touch trackpad included. The basic click functionality of Force Touch is often not even noticed by MacBook users, but one thing that is frequently discovered is Force Click, which is the secondary firm press that happens once a user has initially clicked on the trackpad but then presses a little harder. That second firm press Force Click functionality performs a variety of functions on the Mac, ranging from data detector lookups like dictionary and thesaurus, to Quick Look, to scrubbing video, it’s multi-use and what exactly it does varies throughout different aspects of OS X and its applications.
Most Mac users like Force Click and it can be very useful once you master it, but if you’ve found the Force Click secondary firmer press to be a nuisance with the data detector lookups popping up when you weren’t necessarily expecting it, you can disable that feature completely.
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The Apple Watch notification system is often at it’s best when allowed notifications are somewhat limited to what’s really important. Nonetheless, even if you’ve narrowed down the notifications allowed on the Watch, the notifications can still add up.
Some users who are trying to install OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 or iTunes 12.2 have discovered the Mac App Store will freeze, with an endless spinning wait cursor and the updates never showing up. Investigating further reveals that a process called ‘softwareupdated’ simultaneously goes haywire and consumes 99% CPU for an indeterminate amount of time if left unattended. If you encounter either of these issues when trying to install the aforementioned updates, there are several possible resolutions to this, but you’ll have to temporarily circumvent the App Store in either case.
Mac users on OS X Mavericks 10.9.5 and OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5 will find two important software updates available to them, labeled as Security Update 2015-005 and Mac EFI Security Update 2015-001. The updates include patches and fixes to significant potential security issues and are therefore recommended for all Mac users running Mavericks and Mountain Lion to install. For Macs running Yosemite, the OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 update includes the same set of security fixes, and a separate update is not required.
iTunes 12.2 is available to download for Mac OS X and Windows users. The update predominately focuses on the inclusion of the Apple Music service and the Beats 1 Radio station, and arrives separately from the freshly released OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 update and iOS 8.4.
Jailbreak fans who updated to iOS 8.4 may be excited to learn that TaiG has released an updated version of their jailbreaking app to work with the latest version of iOS for compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
