Apple has yet to provide an official list of OS X 10.9 compatible Macs, but as we mentioned before regarding the first Mavericks Developer Preview, most Mac hardware that supports OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) should be able run OS X Mavericks (10.9) without any issue. This has been confirmed apparently by AppleInsider, who notes that Macs can even upgrade to Mavericks directly from OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 without having installed 10.7 or 10.8, assuming they meet the system requirements. Read more »
OS X 10.9 Mavericks Developer Preview 1 is now available to download directly from Apple. Registered developers can access the installation from Apple’s Developer Center. Much like prior OS X betas, installation of OS X Mavericks is done through the Mac App Store, and it is highly recommended to back up OS X with Time Machine before beginning installation of any beta operating system.
The first developer release of iOS 7 has arrived and is now available to download. iOS 7 beta 1 has a build number of 11A4372q, and can be installed onto any compatible iOS device, including iPhone 4, 4S, 5 and newer, iPad mini, and iPod touch 5th gen. Currently, iOS 7 beta does not yet support any iPad model, but that is expected to change in the coming weeks as Apple continues to create new image assets for the major interface overhaul for the larger screened iPad, which it will be compatible with for nearly all versions post 1st gen.
OS X Mavericks (10.9) will be out later this year, but you don’t have to wait that long to get the sweet new wave wallpaper that will be the default desktop background on future Macs and OS X releases.
Obviously iOS 7 looks incredible enough that virtually every single iPhone, iPad, and iPod owner on the planet is going to want to run the amazing new iOS on their devices… leading to the big question on everyones minds being, what devices does iOS 7 support? And what new features work on which device? The full lists are below, but it’s safe to assume that basically any semi-new iOS device has full support, though not all devices compatible with iOS 7 will get every single feature (like AirDrop).
Here is what we know so far, courtesy of Apple: Read more »
iOS 7 is the most significant update to iOS since the original iPhone debuted, and Apple executives are describing installing iOS 7 as “like getting an entirely new phone”. Packed with tons of features and a beautiful new interface, with tons of animated interface elements that respond to movement of the device and provide a 3D appearance, it really must be seen to believe. Let’s review some of what was shown today at WWDC 2013, covering some of the major features and, of course, some screenshots too.
Apple announced a significant MacBook Air update today at WWDC alongside the all new Mac Pro, and the new Air includes dramatic battery life that lasts all day. Read more »
Apple gave a sneak peak of the all new Mac Pro at WWDC 2013, setting very high expectations for the release later in the year. Professional users will be extremely excited with the new Mac Pro, which looks like something out of the future that has been somehow transported to our era, and the specs are equally as impressive.
The next version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.9, is officially labeled as OS X Mavericks. Mavericks, named after an epic surfing spot in northern California, has a lot of new features, but also represents a change in naming conventions away from the familiar cat themes. In future versions of OS X will follow the same naming convention and all be named after inspirational places throughout California, where Apple is located. Read more »
Need to securely delete a file, group of files, or an entire directory, insuring that it’s quite literally never recoverable by any known possible means? You can do this easily from the command line with the help of an incredibly powerful tool called srm. srm, as you may have guessed, stands for ‘secure removal’, and is a secure version of the commonly used ‘rm’ command that exists in virtually every flavor of unix, Mac OS X included. Be advised this utility is not for everyone and certainly not for novice users, srm should be considered an advanced tool, and it’s best used by those who are comfortable with the command line and understand the data repercussions of secure delete functions.
How secure is srm? Well, the default for secure remove is the incredibly secure 35-pass method which uses the “35-pass Gutmann algorithm”, that basically means that first the data is removed, then written over 35 times using randomly generated patterns, making recovery quite literally impossible. For some comparison on how secure that is, srm also has a “medium” option setting which uses 7-pass security, and 7-pass meets the US Department of Defense standard for securely erasing data… thus, theoretically at least, the 35 pass method is 7 times more secure than what the US DoD accepts as their standard for secure data removal. We’re not going to focus on the medium option though, we’re going to use srm as it was intended to be used, with full 35-pass data removal. Read more »
Though most of us are accustomed to the default QWERTY keyboard layout, iOS does provide options to toggle between QWERTY, AZERTY, and QWERTZ. The latter two options are generally used in Europe, but you can enable them on any iPad or iPhone regardless of which region you’re in, the only requirement is that a Latin alphabet keyboard is the default. These new software layouts work whether the keyboard is docked or in the split keyboard mode, but other layouts like Dvorak are dependent on external keyboards and will not impact the iOS virtual keys.
Just about everyone knows that you can get basic weather details, temperature, and forecasts through Siri just by summoning the virtual assistant and then asking one of a few basic questions:
Mac OS X includes an excellent command line network utility called “nettop” that allows users to monitor all network activity, traffic, and routes from a Mac to the outside world, both through local (LAN) and wide area (WAN) connections. If you’re unfamiliar with networking tools like this, you can think of nettop as a network centric task manager, displaying active networking connections, sockets and routes, their respective names and process id, the state of the connection and whether the connection is established, waiting, or listening, and information about individual process data transfer. It’s a bit like the standard ‘top’ and ‘htop’ commands which show process and resource information, but rather than showing CPU and RAM usage, it will show live network transfer information like packets sent and received, packet size, and total data transferred. Read more »
The Finder window sidebar can hold apps and function as an application launcher, making it an excellent place to keep apps that are almost exclusively used alongside the file system, or for apps that are reliant on general filesystem access, but that aren’t necessarily used enough to warrant a place in the Mac Dock when not in use. Read more »
Many of us have found a situation where an iPhone just won’t turn on. Pressing the power button causes literally nothing to happen, the iPhone just displays a black screen. Fortunately, this is usually just a simple problem to resolve, because either iOS has suffered an unusually severe crash and needs the device to be hard rebooted, or the iPhone is just dead and needs the battery to be charged for a while before it can be used again. Of course there are some more severe situations that could be causing the trouble as well, but before you’ll know if that’s the case or not, you’ll want to try these two troubleshooting tricks. In the vast majority of seemingly dead iPhone problems, they will resolve the issue and the iPhone will become usable again.
And yes, while we’re emphasizing the iPhone here, these troubleshooting tricks will apply universally to the iPad and iPod touch as well. Read more »
Have you ever noticed how some apps will have information pulled from your iOS Contacts list, like peoples names, numbers, and contact information? Or, contrarily, how some apps should have access to your address book, but don’t, and are then feature limited? Though this happens by choice, it’s fairly easy to overlook these settings during initial setup of many apps, or to forget which of the “Allow” or “Don’t Allow” setting you chose. Fortunately, this is very easy to see, and change in either direction. Read more »
iTunes 11.0.4 has been released, the update is fairly minor and focuses on fixing a few prominent bugs. Notably, a bug that caused users to have to frequently re-login to the iTunes Store has been squashed, and the update also resolves an issue that caused iTunes to quit after switching between wired and wireless syncing for iOS devices.
As of now, the releases notes accompanying the download are the same as those that came with iTunes 11.0.3, with a small addition to the bottom which discusses the two aforementioned bugs.
iTunes 11.0.4 can be downloaded now from the Mac App Store, or by going to the Software Update option from the Apple menu. A direct download weighing in at 188MB is also available from Apple’s website for both Mac OS X and Windows users, that can be downloaded from here.
Mac users can now update to OS X 10.8.4. The software update includes a new version of Safari versioned as 6.0.5, but otherwise focuses primarily on bug fixes.
The most notable bug resolution resolves the problem for when iMessages displayed some messages out of order of when they were sent and received, which has been a substantial complaint for many Mac users who use the messaging service to communicate. Other significant improvements pertain to Wi-Fi networking, an improvement for Microsoft Exchange interacting with Calendar app, a fix to allow FaceTime calls to certain foreign phone numbers, a resolution to a scheduled sleep issue for Boot Camp users, and improved VoiceOver support with PDF files. There are many other networking improvements and bug resolutions included in the 10.8.4 update, and a complete list of those changes can be found in the full release notes printed below. Read more »