Battery life on portable Macs running Mountain Lion improved slightly with the OS X 10.8.1 update, but still generally underperforms the same Macs running Lion. Since updating to OS X 10.8.1 from 10.8, we have conducted several unscientific tests on a variety of different Macs and found there is a minor improvement to battery life between the two versions of Mountain Lion, though most users probably won’t notice a significant change.

The hardest hit Macs tend to be any portable model with a Core i5 and Core i7 CPU from 2011 and 2012, including the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, while, interestingly, Core 2 Duo machines seem to be less impacted with battery performance remaining mostly the same in Mountain Lion as it was in Lion.

MacBook Air 13″ Core i7 (mid-2012)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 4:36
• OS X 10.8 – 4:33

MacBook Air 13″ Core i5 (mid-2012)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 4:48
• OS X 10.8 – 4:31

MacBook Air 11″ Core i5 (mid-2011)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 3:26
• OS X 10.8 – 3:32

MacBook Air 11″ Core 2 Duo (late-2010)

• OS X 10.8.1 – 5:45
• OS X 10.8 – 5:47

Not all Macs have been impacted negatively by Mountain Lion however, a MacBook Pro 2010 model reported no noticeable change in battery life regardless of the version of OS X running on it.

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Though Apple plans to launch the next iPhone on September 12, the smaller 7.85″ iPad “mini” will be released later at an event in October, according to a new report from AllThingsD.

Only after the next-generation iPhone is out the door and on sale will Apple announce the smaller iPad it’s been working on. That device, which is expected to have a display of less than eight inches, will be uncrated at a second special event, which sources said is currently scheduled for October.

This confirms some speculation that has occurred about the timing of the next iPhone and iPad mini events, and AllThingsD suggests the two launches will be Apple’s biggest hardware announcements of the year.

AllThingsD is a sister publication to the Wall Street Journal and is generally viewed as a very reliable source of Apple rumors and leaks.

Little is known about the so-called “iPad Mini”, but piecing together rumors and some common sense suggests the following may be true about the hotly anticipated device:

• 7.85″ display running at 1024 x 768
• A5X CPU from current iPad 3
• Front and rear cameras
• 8GB base storage and up
• Weight of about half the current iPad 3
• Appearance to resemble a larger iPod touch with thin side bezels, similar to picture shown at top according to 9to5mac
• Ships with iOS 6, which is set for a “Fall” release
• $299 price point

All iPad models to date feature a 9.7″ display, and the smaller tablet space is currently dominated by the Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

This weeks awesome Mac setup comes to us from John K., the Director of Software Platforms for an R&D firm. The workstation is primarily used for software development for a wide variety of platforms, including iOS, Windows 7, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Open Solaris, the latter four of which run in VMWare on the Macs. Hardware shown includes:

• iMac 27″ (mid-2011) 2.7GHz Core i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and 1TB SATA HD, running OS X 10.8
• Thunderbolt 27″ Display connected to the iMac
• MacBook Pro 15″ (late 2008) 2.9GHz Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM, 480GB SSD, running OS X 10.8
• iPad 3 64GB with iOS 5.1.1 in a Crux360 keyboard case
• Apple Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Wireless Keyboard

The MacBook Pro looks like it’s resting on an mStand , and if you haven’t seen the Crux iPad case before it basically turns the iPad into a tiny laptop, providing both a Bluetooth keyboard and full protection for the iPad that folds like a clam.

Do you want to have your Mac setup featured here? Send a good picture or two with a list of hardware and a brief description of what the workstation is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com

Safari 6 has a great new way to quickly navigate through open browser tabs using gestures. To access the new tab preview screen, either use a two-fingered pinch inwards, or click the little box on the far right of the tabs:

Once in tab previews, use a two-finger gesture left or right to flip between open tabs. Click on any preview to immediately open that tab.

You can also hit Command+Shift+\ to get to the same tab view, and then use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate between the tabs.

This feature is new to Mac OS X but it’s fairly similar to how Safari on iPhone behaves when you’re switching between tabs and should be familiar to anyone who comes from an iPhone background.

Safari 6 comes with OS X Mountain Lion and is available for Lion users as well.

Auto-fill is one of the more useful features in iOS since it prevents you from having to use the slow touch keyboard to re-enter logins and passwords and contact information like email addresses or phone numbers. The obvious problem with auto-fill though comes with shared iPads (or iPods/iPhones), where multiple people may be using the same device and going to the same web pages, only to find someone else is automatically being logged in or their information is being filled in. Not only can that be annoying, but it can be a privacy issue in some cases, so here is how to clear out the autofill information and then disable the feature:

• Open Settings and tap on “Safari”
• Tap “AutoFill” and then tap “Clear All” under ‘Names and Passwords’
• Next turn “Use Contact Info” and “Names and Passwords” to OFF

Now Safari in iOS will no longer keep that information, and it won’t automatically fill it in when you’re visiting a page with forms for emails, contacts, logins, etc.

A happy medium is to also only disable the “Names and Passwords” feature, but leave Contact Info enabled, making it simple to sign up for new services but not storing the actual passwords.

It’s worth pointing out this feature is disabled by default, so unless you turned it on to begin with you won’t need to do this. For single-user devices, this feature can be extremely useful, but it’s best used in conjunction with a strong passcode to prevent people from accessing websites with sensitive data.

Super Nintendo was one of the greatest game consoles of yesteryear, and with BSNES you can play the SNES classics right on your Mac running OS X Yosemite, OS X Mavericks, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Lion.

While BSNES may not be as full featured as the popular SNES9x alternative that works only on older versions of Mac OS X, but it’s still pretty good and is more than adequate if you’re itching to jump into some retro gaming (you’ll need to find abandonware game ROMs elsewhere).

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Though you can send calls directly to voicemail and mute incoming calls, you can’t really block a specific caller on the iPhone. Rather than keeping your phone on silent all the time, you can selectively mute only specific callers by using a special silent ringtone and assigning it to a Contact you want to ignore.

Here’s how to make a silent ringtone (or download a pre-made one) and then set it to a contact.

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If you’ve been using the Macintosh platform long enough you’ll undoubtedly have fond memories of the classic Mac OS system sounds like Quack, Wild Eep, moof, Boing, Droplet, Monkey, Laugh, and Logjam. Those sound effects from the wee old days of System 6, System 7, and System 8, echoed throughout many school computer labs throughout the world in the 1980’s and 90’s, but now you can add them to modern Macs running Mac OS X if you’re in the mood for a retro blast.

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The first developer build of OS X 10.8.2 has been made available to Mac Developers as build 12C31a, 9to5mac notes. The update focuses on features that will probably arrive in the Fall presumably alongside iOS 6 and the next iPhone, including integrating Facebook into OS X much like Twitter, in addition to updates made to iMessages, Game Center, Safari, and Reminders.

Earlier, the first update to OS X Mountain Lion arrived as 10.8.1 and has been made available to everyone to resolve a variety of bugs and issues that impacted some Macs running Mountain Lion.

Registered Mac developers can download the 10.8.2 build through Apple’s Developer Center.

OS X Mountain Lion has been updated to 10.8.1, the update is a general maintenance and bug fix release which includes assorted improvements.

The OS X 10.8.1 update can be downloaded through the Mac App Store, either launch the App Store directly or access it through the  Apple menu by selecting “Software Update”. The download is fairly small, ranging from 8MB to 30MB depending on the Mac, and you will need to restart the Mac for the Mountain Lion update to finish installing.

The official change and improvements list is as follow:

• Resolve an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit
• Improve compatibility when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server in Mail
• Address an issue playing audio through a Thunderbolt display
• Resolve an issue that could prevent iMessages from being sent
• Address an issue that could cause the system to become unresponsive when using Pinyin input
• Resolve an issue when connecting to SMB servers with long names
• Address a issue that may prevent Safari from launching when using a Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) file
• Improve 802.1X authentication with Active Directory credentials

Though some individuals have reported improvements, there is no direct mention of the wireless dropping issues that some Mountain Lion users have encountered, and there is also no mention of the reported battery life drain that effects some Macs with 10.8.

All OS X Mountain Lion users are recommended to install the update.

Update: The popular “purge” command to clear inactive memory is broken in OS X 10.8.1 update, developers and users who use the command frequently may want to put off updating to 10.8.1 until a fix is available. Running the command issues the following error:
Used “purge” command in terminal and received the following error:
[ERROR] The device-file for this operating system, ‘osx-12.1.0.xml’, was not found. An attempt to revert to a previous revision of the OS devise-file: ‘osx-12.0.0.xml’ has been made. Please file a Radar report with Apple, on the ‘CoreProfile’ component, version ‘X’.

OS X Mountain Lion changed the battery indicator for mobile Mac users, removing the option to show the remaining battery life time and instead displaying only a percentage, like iOS. For those of us who live on the go and rely heavily on battery life, knowing the actual remaining battery capacity in hours is much more meaningful than a percentage.

Rather than clicking on the battery icon every time you want to know how much time you have left before needing to plug in, download a great free (beta was free only) third party tool, appropriately called BatteryTimeApp:

• Get Battery Time App from the Mac App Store for $1

BatteryTimeApp is ridiculously simple and works with both OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Lion for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or MacBook. It’s currently in beta and offers no frills, which is perfect if all you want is to see the estimated time remaining of your portable Mac before you need to connect to a power source again.

Hopefully a future update to OS X 10.8 will bring back the indicator natively and little third party tools won’t be necessary, but until then grab it while it’s free.

Update: The app beta was free but now the developer has uploaded it to the App Store and is selling it for $1. For a similar free solution, you can download SlimBatteryMonitor.

Update 2: Another great free option also pushes battery time remaining notifications to OS X Notification Center, check it out.

If you don’t like the Auto-Save feature of OS X, you’ll be pleased to discover that turning it off system-wide on a Mac is just a matter of checking a settings box within OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Mavericks. This will disable the automatic saving behavior for all files across all documents on a Mac.
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Twitter is deeply integrated into the Mac now with the latest versions of OS X, and that means you can send tweets from just about anywhere once it’s set up and configured. If you went to System Preferences hoping to find a panel to set it up and walked away confused, don’t worry because enabling Twitter is just tucked into a general services panel, and configuring it will only take a minute or two:
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You can make your iPhone life a lot easier by assigning custom ringtones to contacts. This makes it easy to determine who is calling before you even see the caller ID, letting you either rush to answer the phone or continue snoozing and ignore the call.

With how easy it is to make ringtones for the iPhone out of songs or entirely on your own with Garageband, this also provides a great way to differentiate inbound calls from the general device ringtone, and among common ringtones you hear elsewhere too.

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If you’ve been holding out for SSD prices to drop into a reasonable range before upgrading a Mac to the fastest type of hard drive around, wait no longer. Today only, Amazon’s Gold Box Deals offer some of the best prices on SSD’s we’ve ever seen for their size with prices up to 65% off, and as usual with Amazon they all include free shipping:

• SanDisk Extreme SSD 120 GB SATA 2.5″ Solid State Drive – $79.99
• SanDisk Extreme SSD 240 GB SATA 2.5″ Solid State Drive – $154.99
• SanDisk Extreme SSD 480 GB SATA 2.5″ Solid State Drive – $349.99

If you’re not in the market for an SSD drive, Amazon also offers some high capacity USB flash drives at huge discounts today.

• SanDisk Cruzer 32 GB USB Flash Drive – $16.29
• SanDisk Cruzer 64 GB USB Flash Drive – $32

These USB keys are perfect for moving huge files around, creating Mountain Lion boot install drives, or for providing auxiliary storage capacity to smaller drived Macs like a 64GB MacBook Air.

Amazon is also blowing out high capacity SD cards for digital cameras, check the daily Gold Box Deals to see everything available.

Do Not Track is a new privacy feature in Safari 6 that causes Safari to tell certain websites to not track you online as you browse the web. This prevents social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, from tracking you across the web, and it also causes ad servers and analytic services to not follow your browsing history. In some ways this could be looked at like an alternative to ad blockers, but ultimately the no-tracking feature is more useful for those concerned about privacy since ad blockers don’t prevent things like Facebook from following you around the web.
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It seems everyone is overwhelmed by email these days, with every inbox piling up humungous lists of messages that are usually not too important. If you’re tired of the email onslaught and use the Mac Mail app as your email client, you can use the VIP feature to better manage your mailbox. Senders tagged as VIP get pushed to their own VIP inbox, helping you overlook all the crud and get straight to the important stuff. Going a step further, you can also set Mail app to only trigger a notification when a message comes from a VIP sender.

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Field Test Mode is a hidden feature on the iPhone which allows you to see technical details of the device, the most useful of which is the true cell signal strength displayed as a number rather than the traditional signal bars or dots. We’ll show you exactly how to enter Field Test Mode, as well as how to enable Field Test Mode all the time to be able to see the real cellular signal from your iPhone represented as numbers in the upper left corner. Of course, we’ll also show you how to read the numbers so that you can understand what a good cell signal looks like versus a bad signal reception. It only takes a minute or two to complete the process, and it’s easy to revert back to normal signal indicators if you decide you’d rather not see the numbers anymore, so even though it’s a bit of iPhone geekiness, try it out!

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