Looking to play some new games? Both Civilization V and Portal 2 are on sale for $29.99 this weekend, one is through MacUpdate and the other is from Amazon:
Civilization V from MacUpdate is a digital delivery, but you’ll have to wait for the Amazon Portal 2 bundle to arrive via free shipping. These are two of the hottest games that are playable on the Mac platform right now, so if you’re a gamer and you’ve been holding out, get on it at a great price!
Lion Developer Preview 3 brings some nice new UI changes to the lock and login screens. Now when you lock your Mac screen in Lion with Control+Shift+Eject, you’ll see a small login window over the current background wallpaper like the screenshot up top. What you can’t make out in the screenshot is a small HUD in the upper right corner showing the current time, battery life, and wireless signal strength.
There’s also a new login screen on system boot. The login screen is pretty plain, it’s all grey with a few controls and the same HUD in the upper right corner, as you can see in the following picture:
This Mac setup features a 27″ iMac and a 13″ MacBook Air. What’s worth pointing out is that this setup replaced the users previous machines: a Mac Pro connected to a 30″ Apple Cinema Display, and a MacBook Pro 15″. If you’re thinking it’s silly to replace a Mac Pro with an iMac as a powerhouse desktop, check out the new iMac benchmarks and you might change your mind.
If it was mine, I’d throw a stand under the MacBook Air and I’d use a mouse because I just can’t get used to the inaccuracy of a trackpad, but to each their own. If you were wanting the cool wood wallpaper too, it can be downloaded here from InterfaceLift at a variety of high res sizes.
Mac OS X Lion Dev Preview 3 was just released to developers and along with it came a new bunch of beautiful high-res wallpapers at 3200×2000 resolution.
Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3 is now available for developers to download. The release is labeled as another update to Developer Preview 2, but MacStories notes that Apple’s Mac Developer Center indicates the release is in fact Lion Developer Preview 3.
The update is available through Software Update and weighs in between 1GB and 1.2GB depending on the Mac you are installing it on. As usual with Lion Dev Preview updates, the installation notes are brief, nothing simply that it is recommended for all users of Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2.
Along with the Dev Preview 3 comes the release of XCode 4.1 Dev Preview 5, which is necessary to install after updating Lion if you plan on using the XCode development suite.
“According to our industry checks, the device should be called iPhone 4S and include minor cosmetic changes, better cameras, A5 dual-core processor, and HSPA+ support,”
Most of this information is nothing new, but this is the first time the device has been called “iPhone 4S” rather than iPhone 5. These claims also back up several rumors from earlier in the year that the next iPhone would be an incremental hardware upgrade and not feature any dramatic cosmetic changes.
Other interesting news out of the Forbes piece is that the iPhone will pick up some new carriers, notably Sprint and T-Mobile in the USA, in addition to the largest cell provider in the world, China Mobile.
“industry checks indicate Apple will likely announce Sprint, T-Mobile, and China Mobile as new carriers.”
Gaining access to China Mobile’s 600 million strong subscriber base could be a significant gain for Apple. China Mobile has a substantial offering of prepaid phones and SIM cards, and past reports indicate that Apple is interested in the prepaid market, although there is no certainty that these items are related.
For those wondering about LTE service in the new iPhone, the report indicates this won’t be happening this year due to issues with the required chipset. Instead, MacRumors notes that LTE likely won’t make it to the iPhone until 2012.
The top command is a great way to get a quick overview of how your system is performing and how apps are using your resources. If you are unfamiliar with it, it’s basically a command line task manager like Activity Monitor and it shows processor usage, memory usage, disk activity, load average, and other helpful system resource details. A common complaint with top is that by default the apps settings don’t sort processes by CPU use, which for many of us is one of the most useful ways to detect an errant process or to keep track of system resources. Fortunately, thanks to a few easy customizations to the top command, you can quickly run top to monitor all processes from the command line and sort them by CPU use from top to bottom.
If you’re an Apple fan and you’re looking to geek out your front porch in a fun way, grab one of these iOS inspired “Slide to Unlock” doormats for your front door! Or the back door, or the office, or anywhere, that’s OK too. It’s just like the screen you’ll find on a locked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, except, of course, it’s a door.
There’s a few variations of this thing snazzy doormat floating around, the two of the nicest ones are black or brown and made of natural fibers like a traditional doormat, the other is black and a bit hardier made from rubber. Like most great things online, you can get your hands on one of these great Slide to Unlock doormats right now from none other than Amazon and have it shipped to you ASAP.
Once apps are in the sidebar, if you click on them they will launch, which makes desktop windows serve a dual purpose as both file manager and a quick application launcher.
An upcoming iteration of iOS may include further abilities to respond and react to environmental stimuli, according to a patent granted to Apple. The patent describes sensors that make a device aware of its speed, direction, temperature, and orientation on Earth, in addition to utilizing a microphone and camera to detect changes in the surrounding environment, and more importantly, adjust items on display based on these factors.
The patent was discovered by PatentlyApple, who describes the feature as “Chameleon-like” and suggests these adjustments could be geared towards fashion, of all things:
Apple’s patent covers systems, methods and computer-readable media for displaying dynamic tags or screen savers that change based on detected characteristics of the user’s environment. In particular, the patent covers dynamic tags that could serve as a fashion accessory by changing based on characteristics of the user’s environment.
PatentlyApple then elaborates on how the camera could detect colors and then adjust items on the screen accordingly:
…the electronic device could dynamically change the appearance of the tag based on the evolution of the sensor outputs. For example, if the electronic device determines from the camera that the color schemes of the user’s room have changed, the displayed tag could adjust to reflect the new detected colors.
The patent goes on to provide a description of the technology in use, describing a raindrops screensaver that adjusts its behavior based on environmental factors. The patent drawings clearly show a device that looks like an iPod nano (on a side note, this indicates that future iPod nanos may include cameras) but PatentlyApple says that other devices are clearly specified (emphasis mine):
It should be noted that while Apple’s patent illustrations are all related to a future version of an iPod nano, the fact is that the patent states that their invention will also apply to the iPhone, iPod Touch (PDA), iPad (tablet) and other devices which includes a laptop, gaming device and even medical equipment.
Can you imagine these kind of reactive features being used in future screen savers, apps, and games across Apple’s entire portable lineup? Some apps already take limited cues from things like the microphone, and many apps use the built-in accelerometers to adjust behavior on screen, but this looks like it has the potential to expand on these reactive concepts dramatically.
PatentlyApple is on a roll today, first finding a patent for futuristic virtual Apple keyboards that puff air to emulate the feel of pressing buttons, and now with this. Pretty impressive stuff, assuming Apple ever implements this technology in upcoming products.
Apple has patented a very unique keyboard design that uses micro-perforations to shoot air at the users fingers upon touch, providing tactile feedback to whoever is typing. What makes this patent even more interesting is that not only could it apply to standard keyboards, but also virtual keyboards on iOS devices, as PatentlyApple elaborates:
flowing of air could also be implemented in a virtual keyboard, wherein each key location is merely a defined region on a solid surface, where contact with that surface region will generate a defined input signal.
Such virtual keyboards may have no moveable surfaces. In such configurations, notwithstanding the absence of a moveable surface, the flowing of air through apertures in the surface may be used to provide a tactile resistance to a user’s actuation motion and/or to absorb at least a portion of the actuation force.
In other words, typing on future Apple touch screens may actually provide a sensation of typing on a real keyboard, thanks to little puffs of air hitting your fingers as you touch the display. Other interesting aspects of the patent indicate that the tiny perforations could also be used to illuminate the keyboard with LED backlighting, and that the entire system could also apply to deformable, flexible keyboards and surfaces (future mouses?).
How amazing is this, even as a concept? One of the biggest gripes about virtual keyboards are the lack of tactile feedback, making it much harder to touch-type at any speed with much accuracy. This patent looks to be trying to solve that problem.
As always with Apple patents, don’t get your hopes up, this could be a long ways out if it ever makes an appearance at all.
Twitter developers have a compelling new reason to update to Twitter 2.1 for Mac: the developer console!
You can enable the developer features through Preferences > Developer tab > “Show Developer Menu”. Unfortunately for tinkerers and those just looking to casually poke around, you’ll need Twitter apps API keys to actually use and access the dev console.
Other notable changes in Twitter 2.1 are some significant UI tweaks, font size adjusting, AppleScript support, the ability to spin tweets off into new windows, and of course various bug fixes. It’s a worthwhile upgrade, even if you aren’t a developer. You can download Twitter for Mac directly from the Mac App Store, it’s free.
If you’re a Safari user, you can also play the new full featured web version of Angry Birds for free directly from your browser. This is because both Safari and Chrome are based on WebKit, which allows Chromes web store free version of Angry Birds to, theoretically at least, play on any other webkit browser.
Ironically, several users are noting that problems with graphics or audio in the Chrome version are resolved when playing in Safari. I tried it out and everything works fine in Safari 5, so give it a go… if you’re curious like I was, it does not work on the iPhone or iPad, because the game requires the Flash plugin for audio, otherwise it’s mostly HTML5 goodness.
Don’t want to dig out the Terminal or Activity Monitor to relaunch the Finder? No sweat.
Hold down Option and then right-click on the Finder icon in the Dock. You’ll now see an otherwise hidden “Relaunch” option, select it and Finder will quit and relaunch. It only takes a few seconds to reload.
Relaunching the Finder is sometimes necessary for troubleshooting reasons, but it’s also required for many Mac OS X interfacetweaks to take effect, including many defaults write commands.
On the other hand, if you’re already in the Terminal with a defaults write command, maybe it’s easier to just type the standard:
killall Finder
This also causes the Finder to relaunch, as does killing it in the Activity Monitor… but if you don’t have to leave the Finder, why bother?
Whether you’re just trying to update iOS firmware, downgrade, or jailbreak, it’s not terribly unusual for an iPhone to get stuck in Recovery Mode. You’ll know you’re stuck because the phone displays the classic USB to iTunes logo, and iTunes gives you the Recovery Mode detected message. Sometimes you can escape just by hardbooting the phone, but if that doesn’t work you can use a tool like RecBoot.
If you’re video chatting at night or in an area with limited lighting, you can brighten your face by opening up a blank white web browser window. This is obviously a really simple tip, but it’s kind of fun to see how surprisingly useful blank browser windows can be (like speeding up Safari on the iPhone 3G).
The simplest way to create a blank browser window is to open up about:blank which works in every modern browser.
The idea is probably taken from Photo Booth, which uses an all white screen as a virtual flash of sorts to brighten your mug when you take a picture (you can disable that by holding down the Shift key). I’m guessing it won’t be long until some developers start creating wrappers for FaceTime, iChat, and Skype to have this in some form of native app.
Sick of Angry Birds yet? Too bad, because now you can download and play Angry Birds completely for free with the Chrome web browser. This was just released at Google IO 2011, and the game should run on any OS with the Chrome browser. If you somehow avoided downloading Angry Birds, Rio, and the 56,000 other variations for Mac, iOS, Windows, Android, and whatever else, now you have no excuse to not be assimilated.
You’ll need to be using the Chrome (or Safari!) web browser to download and play this. The game is practically the same although there’s an extra set of Chrome specific levels for some new gameplay. Angry Birds Chrome plays reasonably well although sound doesn’t appear to work (in Mac OS X at least) and if you have more than a few browser tabs open the gameplay gets choppy, but for a web game it’s pretty good and it does make sense to exist in a browser. Happy gaming.
You can run multiple instances of any application in Mac OS X with a little command line magic. Using the ‘open’ command to launch GUI apps from the Terminal, we can run a new instance of any app, even if it is already running.
(40% off via Amazon)
