Mac OS X now lets you rename a file directly from the application it’s opened within. This feature is supported in most bundled Apple applications, including TextEdit, Pages, Preview, and many others, including a fair amount of third party apps too. This is a cool renaming trick that’s easy to use, let’s discuss it further.
The Mac Mail app received a wonderfully understated change with how it handles deleting mail in new versions of Mac OS X, from Mountain Lion, Mavericks, to Yosemite and beyond.
With the new version, deleting emails works more like Outlook; you delete an email and it then selects the next oldest email rather than jumping to the next most recent message. It’s a subtle change, but it makes a worlds difference when you are clearing out a cluttered inbox, letting you start at the top of a mail inbox and working your way down deleting as you go.
If you need to use Java, installing the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in OS X Mountain Lion is necessary even if you had Java previously installed in OS X Lion or Snow Leopard and just performed an upgrade to 10.8. That’s because Mountain Lion uninstalls Java during the upgrade process, this is to insure the newest version of the runtime is installed on the Mac for those who need it and leaving it out for those who don’t, theoretically preventing some potential security problems with Java like the old Flashback trojan.
Installing Java in OS X Mountain Lion is easy enough and can be done two ways:
The command line installation is fast and likely preferable for many advanced users since it can be initiated at any time, here’s what to do:
java -version
Many Mac users won’t ever need to use Java and for the average person it may be best left uninstalled. Disabling java or leaving it uninstalled remains a decent security tip to protect a Mac against some of the rare trojans and viruses floating around out there.
Thanks to Josh Penn for the great tip!
Notification Center is a great addition to Mac OS X, but the alert sounds coming in with each banner notification from a million and one different Mac apps and updates can be pretty annoying fairly quickly, particularly if you have a lot going on.
Rather than muting all system audio to hush the constant chiming, you can directly silence notifications on a per-app basis in MacOS and Mac OS X. This is done through the System Preferences.
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The native and already powerful Wi-Fi Diagnostics Tool in Mac OS X got a redesign in modern versions of Mac OS X, and with it came some new features that make the utility better than ever. One of the best new additions is the built-in Wi-Fi scanner tool, which is a full-featured wifi stumbler to find and discover nearby Wi-Fi networks – even those that don’t broadcast their network names.
This is really an advanced feature that has a wide variety of potential uses beyond just locating access points, most users would be best off just using the Wi-Fi menu to find available wireless networks to join. For those that want a wireless stumbler, here’s how to find and use it.
Mac OS X has a handful of features that are dependent on a constant internet connection, and one of those is the new automatic update feature. Undeniably convenient, Mac OS X and all apps installed from the Mac App Store will automatically download and update themselves, but if you have metered internet or are using Personal Hotspot you’ll probably want to save the bandwidth and stop those updates from downloading themselves in the background.
This tutorial will show you how to change your Mac OS system software update settings to prevent automatically downloading of apps and software updates.
Apple will launch the next iPhone on September 12, according to a rumor from the typically reliable AllThingsD. Citing sources, they say Apple has an event planned for an unspecific topic for the second week of September, and suggests the event will be for the new iPhone launch.
Pictures of what is claimed to be the next-generation iPhone have surfaced several times now, indicating components are being manufactured and leaked through various parts of the supply chain. Speaking of components, AllThingsD also posted a chart demonstrating substantial prepayment of component supplies by Apple, further suggesting an upcoming product launch:
The actual release date of the next iPhone remains unknown, but the device will likely ship with iOS 6 pre-installed, and Apple has said iOS 6 is set for a “Fall” release. Fall officially begins on September 22 of this year.
Update: Other media outlets including Bloomberg and the New York Times are now confirming the “iPhone 5” September 12 launch date, with Bloomberg reiterating an earlier rumor that Steve Jobs worked closely on the redesign before he passed away.
Update 2: The Wall Street Journal is also chiming in to confirm the September 12 date, saying the Apple event will discuss “new products” – note the plural, and then mentions the iPad mini:
The company is expected to hold an event on Sept. 12 to discuss new products, according to a person familiar with the matter. A new iPhone is expected later this year and Apple has also been working with suppliers on a new smaller cousin to the iPad.
iPad mini and a new iPhone launched on the same day? That would be something.
Autocorrect in iOS is pretty smart and usually gets things right, it also learns your habits and frequently typed words and will start autocorrecting what you type to the words you have used in the past. This can be a blessing and a curse, because if you accidentally corrected a word to a wrong one or a typo, the iPad/iPhone dictionary will want to use that new erroneous word as the correction. The solution to that problem is to reset autocorrect by clearing out the keyboard dictionary.
Resetting the auto-correct keyboard dictionary is the same on all versions of iOS and on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Here’s what you will want to do:
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The hosts file maps hostnames to IP addresses, it’s present in virtually every OS in some form or another and in Mac OS X it’s stored at /etc/hosts, which requires administrative privileges to modify and generally a jump to the command line. Editing the hosts file allows you to do a variety of things like set local test domains, block websites and IP’s, downgrade iOS, troubleshoot weird iTunes errors, and much more.
If you need to edit your hosts file but you’re not savvy with Terminal and you’d rather avoid the command line entirely, check out the free Hosts preference pane. The third party Hosts panel lets you add, edit, and remove host files easily. If an item is checked, it’s stored in the hosts file, if it’s unchecked, it’s removed rather than commented out but continues to be stored in the preference panel for future use. Simple, easy to use, low maintenance, and should be perfect for anyone who needs to modify /etc/hosts but doesn’t want to get their hands too dirty with nano or vi.
Hosts works with most new versions of Mac OS x, including OS X 10.6.8, 10.7+, and 10.8 Mountain Lion.
Ideally the Hosts preference pane would include the management and multiple hosts file juggling that GasMask provides, but perhaps that’ll come in a future version.
Update: if changes aren’t taking effect, manually flush dns cache with dscacheutil.
With OS X Lion, Exposé merged with Spaces and became Mission Control, as a result the behavior of one of many peoples favorite window management features changed; you could no longer see all windows from all apps in a single screen. Instead, app windows were grouped by application and stacked atop one another. That incredibly useful old Expose feature of seeing all windows is back in OS X Mountain Lion though, and you just have to enable it to see everything from a single screen again:
With Mountain Lion, you can also continue to perform the app-specific Expose style window view by hovering over the apps Dock icon and performing a three-fingered downward swipe.
Mission Control is very powerful, check out 9 great tips for Mission Control or view our archives on the topic for more.
Pictures claiming to be an assembled next-generation black iPhone have surfaced through Japanese mobile repair shop iLabFactory (their website is currently down, but 9to5mac has posted all images).
The device shown has similar styling to an iPhone 4/4S but with an elongated chasis to accomodate the larger 4″ screen, and what looks like a dark aluminum backplate rather than glass. The photos closely match the appearance of past images discovered a few months ago, and also demonstrate the rumored smaller Dock connector and the headphone port relocated to the bottom of the device.
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Removing app icons from the Dock has been the same since the very beginning of Mac OS X: grab an icon and drag it off the Dock into a poof of dust, whereby the icon is no longer displayed in the Dock. That behavior has changed slightly with OS X Mountain Lion and carried through to OS X Mavericks, presumably to prevent accidental deletion of Dock apps. There are still two easy ways to remove Dock icons in OS X 10.8 and 10.9 though, pick either approach that works best for you.
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Apple has started airing three new Mac ads that focus on an Apple Store Genius who is called upon in three unusual circumstances. The TV spots started during the Olympic games and are quite unlike other ads Apple has put out recently.
This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Claus F., an art director from Denmark who uses all the Apple hardware for creating commercials, leaflets, tickets, DVD art, magazines, ads, and other graphics work.
Hardware shown from left to right includes:
Not shown is an iPhone 4.
It’s good to see some of the original Intel MacBook Pro hardware still around and kicking despite not supporting the latest two OS X releases, it’s really a testament to the build quality of Apple hardware. The iPad stand looks like a miniature easel, I haven’t seen one of those before but it looks quite nice and raises the iPad to a perfect level for something like AirDisplay.
Want your Mac setup featured? Send in a good picture or two with a list of hardware and a short description of what the gear is used for to osxdailycom@gmail.com
Mac OS X defaults to preventing applications from unidentified developers or sources from being launched. You’ll discover the message in Mac OS when you try to launch a Mac app that didn’t come from a verified source or from the Mac App Store, and you’ll get an alert dialog that says “[App name] can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”.
One Apple fan didn’t take kindly to the office message of “PLEASE DO NOT PRINT LARGE JOBS” (all in caps of course!) and decided to take on the note quite literally, printing an enormous rasterbatored image of the classic Steve Jobs portrait.
The original message was obviously aimed at preventing ginormous print jobs that hog printer queues office-folk are all too familiar with. This is completely stupid, but this is office rebellion and humor at its finest with an Apple twist, and though it probably belongs on Passive Aggressive Notes more than here, it’s too funny to ignore for a Friday.
Dictation is available to the Mac with newer versions of system software, but despite being one of the major features of Mac OS you may find that it’s not enabled by default on some Macs.
It’s easy to enable Dictation on a Mac though and it’s even easier to use, let’s get started to learn how to enable this handy voice-to-text feature and then how to use it in Mac OS.
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