NZMac.com News

News: Tim Cook at D10, new Apple TV OS, Apple's anodisation, and more!

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:08:13 GMT

Tim Cook took the stage at AllThingsDigital's D10 conference just yesterday, and in his interview with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg he had quite a few interesting things to say. For example, he mentioned that Apple would be doubling down of product secrecy, while declining to mention what the company would be announcing at this year's WWDC. He also noted that the Apple TV is a very successful unit, with 2.7 million sales this year.

Boy Genius have an exclusive on the new TV OS from Apple, reportedly set to debut next week at WWDC. They say the new Apple TV OS will be much more feature-complete than the current one that runs on Apple TVs today, and will also be the OS running on the oft-rumoured Apple television. It's rumoured that the new Apple TV OS will feature a ambitious "control out" API, allowing users to control any peripherals connected to the Apple TV.

There's a good video explaining the process of anodised aluminium, the process Apple uses on a frequent basis to colour devices and add an extra layer of protection. The anodisation process explains why it's so difficult to re-colour aluminium iPods, for example.

Logitech has unveiled a new Bluetooth keyboard that is powered by solar energy. They've done something similar before, but this time the keyboard has the ability pair with three different devices simultaneously.

News: WWDC 2012 schedule announced, next-gen MacBooks, Espionage for Mac, and more!

Tue, 29 May 2012 22:37:13 GMT

Apple has confirmed all sorts of things to do with WWDC: they've confirmed that there will be a keynote, released the WWDC app for iOS devices, and have posted the talk schedule for attendees. There's not much else that can be said at this point, because until that keynote starts, we won't really know much about what new products or new software Apple will announce, although it's pretty likely that we'll see a Mountain Lion of some kind.

RBC capital markets expects there to be new models of MacBook sometime later in Q2 2012, which would pave the way for a new iPhone later this year in either September or October. We've been waiting on Ivy Bridge-equipped machines for a little while now, so it's very likely that a MacBook update could happen sooner, rather than later.

Encrypting files on your Mac can be a bit of a hassle, but not with Espionage. MacStories has a review of Espionage for the Mac, which handles the encryption of files just like 1Password handles username and password combinations. It's extremely easy to encrypt or decrypt just about anything.

Macworld has spoken to developers about the imminent Mac App Store sandboxing deadline, and they all say the same thing: sandboxing will disadvantage users due to how it vastly limits the number of things users can do with apps from the Mac App Store.

News: smart TV test batch, 2big NAS review, Automator workflows, and more!

Mon, 28 May 2012 18:27:23 GMT

If you had any doubt about Apple producing their own line of telvisions, rumour has it that Apple are now manufacturing the first test batch of these "smart TVs". One of Foxconn's smaller plants in Shenzhen is producing the smart TVs in a trial run, which means low numbers for design test verification stages at Apple. Provided the test TVs pass Apple's verifications, we could see an announcement in the near future.

Anandtech has published a review of the LaCie 2big NAS. The 2big NAS is an updated version of their previous product, the 2big Network. It features two drive bays for expandability, and comes in either diskless or 6TB versions at US $300 and $649, respectively.

Automator is one of those apps no-one really uses, and perhaps one of the reasons is that it doesn't get as much coverage in the press as other apps. Macworld has a look at Automator, and teach you how to create two useful Automator-based workflows.

Sotheby's is auctioning parts of Apple history, including one of six working Apple Is and a rare memo from Steve Jobs from the time he worked at Atari.

News: Safari in 3D, intelligent address book, Mac OS X processes, and more!

Sun, 27 May 2012 15:48:07 GMT

Patently Apple has quite an in-depth read on what a 3D-enabled Safari might look like, and how it might work. As it turns out, Apple has been filing patents on something called "Safari 3D" for a while now, and they all point to some kind of Safari implementation where users can stack bookmarks, emails, documents, and other apps in a 3D representation. A 3D GUI means a new method of interaction, and Apple has seemingly patented all the right concepts: rotating UIs, presenting and browsing items in a 3D space, and so on.

Cobook has been branded the intelligent address book app for the Mac, and you'll be very pleased to know it has finally been made available. It makes managing your address book incredibly easy and fast, and it is exactly to Address Book what Fantastical is to iCal. It's currently free in the Mac App Store.

There's an incredibly handy website which tells you what different processes are on your Mac. It works by having you upload a file of all your own processes, then giving you back the descriptions of all the processes on your Mac. Alternatively, you can also browse the list of all the currently-known processes.

Because We May is a huge sale for all kinds of games, across all kinds of platforms, either directly from the developers, or from services such as Steam.

News:Tim Cook's Apple, Coda 2 from Panic, creating whole-disk images, and more!

Thu, 24 May 2012 18:03:31 GMT

Fortune has profiled Tim Cook and how he's changing Apple as we know it. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky says that Cook has instigated "subtle but significant changes" at Apple, "leaving an indelible mark on Apple and its corporate culture." The report also reveals how Steve Jobs downplayed the labor issues in China, whereas Tim Cook was one to visit the factories and meet workers. Make no mistake: Apple is changing, and we have Tim Cook to thank for it.

Panic's Coda 2 has been released, and Macworld says it's a dramatic improvement over what was already very good software in their review. Coda 2 is for working with HTML+CSS, and it's currently one of the best software tools for doing so. There are improvements such as the upgraded code editor, a new sidebar panel, and a new way of file navigation using thumbnails.

There are various reasons why you would want to create an image of an entire hard drive, but whatever the reason, OS X Daily points out an easy way to do so using Carbon Copy Cloner. Their method includes step-by-step instructions, should you ver need to back up absolutely everything on your Mac or other hard drive.

HardMac reports a petition has been started by Mac Pro owners, calling on Apple to update the Mac Pro lineup. From what I can tell it's just a Facebook page detailing people needing a new Mac Pro, but maybe this will make Apple listen.

News: Sir Jony Ive, Apple and the e-book conspiracy, hidden iTunes preferences, and more!

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:32:08 GMT

Sir Jonathan Ive is now officially Sir Jonathan Ive, after the ceremony which happened today in London. His title is now Knight Commander of the British Empire, and it gives him the right to be referred to as Sir Jonathan Ive. What's even more interesting is in his interview with the Daily Telgraph, Ive was asked what product he would most be remembered for. His answer was "what we’re working on now feels like the most important and the best work we’ve done, and so it would be what we’re working on right now, which of course I can’t tell you about."

The story of Apple and publishers colluding to fix the price of ebooks has been argued in the courts for some time now, but a US Judge has said that Apple "knowingly joined" the ebook conspiracy. His comments don't mean that Apple are guilty of anything just yet, but it does mean that the class action lawsuit will be moving forward.

ITunes has quite a number of hidden preferences, as revealed by Mac OS X Hints. There are "secret" options to do things like remove Ping, turn-on half-stars for track ratings, and much more.

Spotify has launched in New Zealand, and it means that a whole new world of music has opened up to you — provided you have a Facebook account to use it with.

News: Coda 2 announced, Tim Cook highest paid US CEO, Mission Control mysteries, and more!

Tue, 22 May 2012 11:54:29 GMT

It's been a few years since the original release of Coda by Panic, and when it first came out in 2007, it changed how a lot of web developers worked on the web. Panic has just announced Coda 2, the version of Coda they made better at everything so it can make you better at everything. Coda 2 features a newly revamped interface for switching between open documents, a re-imagined sidebar with even more functionality, and the same quality that you've come to expect from Panic. Coda 2 will be available in both the Mac App Store and from the Panic website on May 24th.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed their top paid US CEOs in 2011, and Tim Cook is at the top of that list with a take-home salary of US $378 million thanks to quite a few shares he was granted last year. His base salary is US $900,000 with annual incentives to the same amount — seeing him beat out runner-up Larry Ellison of Oracle by a few hundred million is quite interesting.

Mission Control was a feature introduced with Lion as a way to get a birds-eye view of everything that was going on in any given desktop. It also somewhat replaced Exposé, and Macworld have all the mysteries of Mission Control de-mystified.

MacStories has a review of MoneyWiz for Mac, letting you track your personal finances. It's also available on other platforms, as Graham Spencer points out.

News: Mountain Lion automatic downloads, the state of IPv6 in OS X, and more!

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:26:21 GMT

A new feature has been revealed in the latest Mountain Lion developer release, and it's automatic downloads. Automatic downloads on the Mac mean that when you buy an app from the Mac App Store on one Mac, you'll get a notification saying you can then have the app automatically downloaded to any other Mac that's signed into the same Mac App Store account. Note that the feature doesn't appear to work just yet — but clearly automatic downloads are something Apple is definitely planning to bring to Mountain Lion.

Ars Technica has a fantastic article on the state of iPv6 in Apple world, covering every aspect of the latest networking protocol. You'll be pleased to know that IPv6 has, in one form or another, been included as a part of OS X dating back to 10.2, but Apple have made various tweaks to the underlying implementation over the years. The article goes into much more detail, but suffice to say, proper IPv6 support in their operating systems is definitely one of their highest priorities.

Apple has revealed they will be powering their data centres with 100% renewable energy, provided by two solar panel installations and one bio-gas-powered installation, giving an total output of 124 million kWh.

For a short period, there was a time when Apple notebooks shipped with what we would now see as an upside-down Apple logo. The Next Web has the full story behind why the Apple logo was upside down.

News: retina MacBook costs, Apple confirms sandboxing deadline, OWC Accelsior SSD review, and more!

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:34:20 GMT

It's estimated that the current LCD panel in any model MacBook currently costs Apple around US $68 per machine. But with retina displays on the horizon for MacBooks in the future, that cost is estimated to go way, way up — up in the vicinity of around US $130, if analysts are to be believed. The only question that remains is: will Apple pass that cost onto consumers in the next revision of MacBooks that include retina displays, or will it simply be absorbed by the company?

Apple has confirmed it will be enforcing the Mac App Store sandboxing policy come June 1. Apple has delayed the sandboxing requirement in the past — twice, in fact — but in an email sent out to Mac developers just a few days ago, Apple confirmed that Mac App Store sandboxing would be taking place as planned on June 1. A few apps, Pixelmator included, have already been updated, but other apps should be following suit very soon.

Macworld has a review of the OWC Mercury Accelsior PCI Express SSD upgrade for the Mac Pro, and they find that it's an impressive piece of hardware, boasting speeds much greater than that of its SATA counterparts.

Windownaut for the Mac is a window management tool that makes it easy to setup the window configurations that you want. You can snap windows by dragging them to various screen edges, and more — Mac AppStorm has the full review.

News: hardware-specific features, Sparrow update, Mountain Lion update, and more!

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:08:03 GMT

There's a Apple program called AppleSeed that seeds copies of unreleased software to a select group of individuals before its public release, separate to those seeds provided to developers. Apple recently sent out an email to members of the AppleSeed program that prompted them to register the different pieces of Apple hardware they owned, saying they needed the information for "exclusive seeds" of future Apple software. This prompted 9to5Mac to speculate about hardware-specific features coming to future Apple products.

Sparrow for Mac has been updated to version 1.6, which adds support for POP-based email accounts, along with unified folders for more than just your inbox. The update includes unified folders for starred and sent items, as well as drafts and trash, collecting all your starred, sent, drafts, or trash items across all your email accounts into the one unified mailbox for easier access.

Apple has updated the Mountain Lion developer preview build to 12A206j. No details on any new features in the build, but with WWDC coming up soon and Ivy Bridge Macs perhaps being released at the same time, Apple are in for a busy few months ahead.

If you're annoyed at the way the Library folder hides itself after every OS X update (even if you un-hid it manually), there's a small little script that can permanently unhide the Library folder for you.

News: more retina display Macs, five antivirus apps, the end of Perian, and more!

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:24:55 GMT

It doesn't look like the MacBook Pro will be the only Mac to get a retina-display upgrade. New evidence has surfaced to suggest that the iMac and MacBook Air will also be getting retina displays in the future. Doubling the resolution of the 21-inch iMac will bring the resolution of it up to 3840x1260 pixels, with the 27-inch going to a massive 5120x2880. Similar upgrades will be coming to the MacBook Air, at least once Apple figure out how to upgrade the display without breaking the power requirements of the ultra-portable.

With Flashback being one of the biggest security threats on the Mac in recent memory, Ars Technica has a look at five of the current antivirus apps for the Mac, with their analysis including antivirus apps from Kaspersky, Intego, F-Secure, Sophos, and Avast. That doesn't mean that there are only those products available for antivirus, for example Norton also has an antivirus product available.

Perian has been around for a long time, and the preference pane that allows QuickTime to play all sorts of codecs will soon be coming to an end. The final release is yet to come, but once it does, that will begin the process of shutting down the swiss army knife of video.

Users who haven't migrated across to iCloud will still be able to access their MobileMe email, says Apple, even after MobileMe goes away. They'll be limited to web access only, but for some, that might just be enough.

News: Kaspersky's Mac security analysis, pending iCloud upgrade, return of the Nvidia GPU, and more!

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:51:41 GMT

Security firm Kaspersky has performed, and is continuing to perform, an independent analysis of Mac security. Original versions of the article that appeared on websites stated that Kaspersky were acting in collaboration with Apple after the Flashback malware saga, but Ars Technica contacted Kaspersky who said that no such collaboration had taken place and that their own security analysis was purely their own doing. Fact of the matter is, Kaspersky are concerned about security on OS X — but that's a given, seeing as they're in the security business.

The Wall Street Journal has it on good authority that Apple are preparing to release an iCloud upgrade that will supposedly add photo-sharing features to the website. Apple are removing MobileMe Galleries at the end of June this year, and so a photo-sharing feature built-into iCloud would be a very welcome move.

New MacBook Pros are rumoured to launch at this year's WWDC conference, and there's good reason to suspect Apple will be returning to NVIDIA graphics chips in the newly redesigned MacBook Pro, after using AMD chipsets for the last two revisions. Apple has used graphics chips from both manufacturers in the past, even when NVIDIA's chips have been quite defective.

Apple has released an update to Leopard which includes a tool to remove Flashback malware. Later versions of OS X have already been updated with the right tools to remove Flashback, so it's good to see Apple doing the right thing and patching older versions of the OS.

News: revamped 15-inch MacBook Pro, Apple television rumours, iCloud beta, and more!

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:41:54 GMT

9 to 5 Mac has the scoop about the newly revamped 15-inch MacBook Pro. According to their trusted sources in Apple's supply chain, the updated MacBook Pro features a "jaw-dropping" retina display, finally bringing some resolution independence to the Mac. The new MacBook Pro also features a similar port layout to that of the MacBook Air, with no optical drive to be found — it's this port layout that means the new MacBook Pro can be thinner than today's models (although still thicker than the MacBook Air. Last but not least, the new MacBook Pro is also reported to feature USB 3: the first Mac to do so. Only time will tell how accurate their predictions are.

The Apple television rumours are flying thick and fast, with Foxconn CEO Terry Gou saying that his company were preparing for the new iTV, even though development or production are both yet to begin. There was also a rumour that said Apple were interested in purchasing German television maker Loewe, but that rumour has since been denied by the company.

A developer-only iCloud beta has been uncovered, which includes both Reminders and Notes web apps in addition to all the ones currently offered. The beta iCloud website also makes references to an as-yet unreleased iOS 6 beta.

GIMP 2.8 has been released, and it features a new single-window UI along with many other improvements. Ars Technica has the full overview.

News: HiDPI icons in OS X 10.7.4, Apple 17th in Fortune 500, RapidWeaver basics, and more!

Sun, 13 May 2012 12:38:00 GMT

Apple has been silently updating icons to their HiDPI equivalents, as evidenced by the OS X 10.6.4 update that was released just last week. TextEdit is one such example, with a 1024x1024-pixel icon also available as well as the usual 512x512, 256x256, and smaller sizes. What's even more interesting is that the 1024x1024 icon size is marked as 512x512 "points", which suggests that retina display Macs as definitely on the way. MacRumors continues on to say that the TextEdit icon itself has been updated to a new design — whereas the previous icon was a shiny white robot, the new design is sports a much more modern look.

Apple now places 17th on the Fortune 500, the list of the 500 biggest companies in America. This is an impressive feat, but not entirely unexpected seeing as Apple has been incredibly successful in the past year. A 17th placing from Apple represents a jump from 35th place in last year's results, but Apple still trails behind companies such as HP, who placed 10th this year.

Apple's own iWeb is now all but defunct, so what kind of apps are there for someone who wants to create websites on their own? RapidWeaver has long been billed as an upgrade to iWeb, and Mac AppStorm has a getting started guide so you can get up and running quickly.

We know a lot about the start of Steve Jobs' life, and a lot about how he returned to Apple (and everything after), but not a lot is known about the middle part of Steve Jobs' life. Fast Company has an article on the lost Steve Jobs tapes, which reveal a lot about what he did during his absence from Apple.

News: Lightroom 4 and the Mac App Store, Apple updates, iCloud photo storage, and more!

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:43:14 GMT

Adobe has released Photoshop Lightroom 4 onto the Mac App Store. Lightroom 4 was released just earlier this year, and now it's available on the Mac App Store for US $150. That said, it hasn't currently hit the Australian nor New Zealand Mac App Stores, so who knows if Adobe will be making that decision down the track. Still, Lightroom 4 is perhaps the most immediate competitor to Apple's own Aperture, so having it on the Mac App Store makes sense.

Apple has released OS X 10.7.4 publicly after multiple developer releases. The OS X 10.7.4 update fixes the bug with FileVault which could expose the user's password if they had previously used an older implementation of FileVault prior to Lion. Also released was an update to Safari, bringing it to version 5.1.7, a version which automatically disables older versions of Adobe Flash if present. And finally, Security Update 2012-002 was also released. You can find all these updates in Software Update or from the Apple downloads page.

ILounge senior editor Charles Starrett says that iCloud needs a new solution for photo storage. He proposes his "iPhoto in the cloud" as a solution to where consumers can store their photos, and with multi-megapixel cameras and HD video recording, there's only so-much on-device storage to go around.

Adam Fields speculates there's something wrong with OS X memory management, leading to seemingly random issues with Lion that feature frequent beachballs, general overall slowness, and poor responsiveness. The solution is to turn off the dynamic pager, something that is only recommended if you know what you're doing.

News: iCloud notifications, Ivy Bridge Macs, Office 2011 updates, and more!

Wed, 09 May 2012 14:57:50 GMT

Apple tested notifications on the iCloud website the other day in a browser-based implementation of notifications similar to ones that appear on iOS. Frederico Viticci over at MacStories speculates on some of the possible implementations. Notifications on iCloud might eventually be useful for notifications about Find my Friends, or perhaps Apple will do something completely different and integrate collaborative editing as part of an iCloud-based workflow.

Alex Brooks from the World of Apple discusses the dilemma behind Ivy Bridge-equipped Macs. Intel has released most of their Ivy Bridge CPUs which bring various performance improvements and better power consumption, but which of those Ivy Bridge CPUs will make it into Macs in the near future? With desktops and laptops requiring different thermal specs, Alex breaks down which CPUs go into which Macs.

After pulling their Service Pack 2 update for Office 2011 a few weeks back, Microsoft has now released an update to the updated version of the second service pack. The Office 14.2.2 update fixes critical issues and and improves security. The update weighs in at 110MB and is available from the Microsoft updates website.

Apple has expanded their after-sales policy in Korea, making it among the world's best. Apple now offers a no-questions-asked replacement policy for any product that develops a fault a month after purchase.

News: lower-cost MacBook Air, Apple Television Set, Microsoft's SkyDrive, and more!

Tue, 08 May 2012 12:14:22 GMT

The rumours say a lower-cost MacBook Air will launch in Q3 2012 for US $799, which will aggressively combat Intel's lineup of Ultrabooks. DigiTimes has been reported as saying that the aggressively-priced MacBook Air news comes from upstream in Apple's supply chain, and speculation says the new MacBook Airs will be priced competitively in order to counter second-generation Ultrabooks from Intel's specification.

New rumours surrounding the impending Apple Television Set include the fact that it may or may not include Siri, the assistant included with the iPhone 4S. Not only that, but Cult of Mac say that it will also include some kind of head-tracking FaceTime mechanism, in addition to looking very similar to the current generation Thunderbolt display, only sizeably larger to accommodate a television-sized display.

Microsoft's cloud storage offering for consumers, SkyDrive, has been around for a while now, but it isn't until now that they have begun actively marketing it to users. To that end, Microsoft has even gone to the trouble of putting together a iCloud versus SkyDrive page in order to educate customers on the differences between iCloud and SkyDrive.

Apple has held patents on antennas as part of a Mac portable enclosure for as long as I can remember, but there's been no indication that Apple are building 3G (or for that matter, 4G) radios into Macs. Mac AppStorm ask the question: when will we see 4G MacBooks?

News: plain-text passwords and FileVault, MobileMe and iCloud storage, MobileMe websites, and more!

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:13:49 GMT

A flaw has been revealed in Apple's FileVault technology that stores the user's password in clear text, after an Apple developer enabled a debug mode. The good news is that this only affects users who used FileVault encryption prior to Lion and then upgraded to Lion and kept using the legacy version of FileVault. Luckily, the fix is simple: start using the whole-disk encryption offered by FileVault2 and remove all previous backups in order to fully eradicate any remaining copies of your plain-text password.

Apple has silently extended the period of expanded iCloud storage for previous MobileMe subscribers. MobileMe subscribers who migrated to iCloud last year were given an extra 20GB of iCloud storage for a total of 25GB, and now Apple has extended that offer to September 30 this year, at which point they will be given the choice to keep the storage and pay, or downgrade to the free 5GB storage tier.

The demise of MobileMe will happen in just a few short months, and if you're currently using MobileMe to publish websites then you may want to re-consider where your website is currently hosted. To that end, Macworld has a guide on re-hosting your MobileMe website with a service you might already have, and their guide on publishing your MobileMe iWeb site on Dropbox is good.

Adobe has now released Creative Suite 6 after its announcement last month. Adobe's Creative Cloud, their subscription-based online offering won't be landing until May 11.

News: tangible file transfer concept, Mastered for iTunes in-depth, iTunes double-billing, and more!

Sun, 06 May 2012 13:18:38 GMT

The Verge shows us a concept video by designer Ishac Bertran for tangible file transfers between a Mac and an iPhone. The devices detect proximity to each other, which triggers a semi-circle to appear on either device, allowing users to swipe photos or other kinds of files and documents across to their iPhone. It's a good concept, and solves the issue of users not knowing how/what to do if they're wirelessly transferring files between devices, and I'm sure it could work between computers too (although arguably AirDrop already does a pretty good job of that).

Ars Technica has an in-depth look at Mastered for iTunes, the new program from Apple that increases the quality of music sold on the iTunes Store. They answer the question of whether Mastered for iTunes really makes music sound better by doing an analysis of the music files. There's quite a bit of technical discussion on how music is mastered and the compression used, so read on if you're at all curious about mastering music.

A man has sued Apple for more than US $5 million in a class-action lawsuit that claims iTunes and other apps double-bill on a regular basis. The man was double-charged for a purchased song and refused a refund after contacting iTunes support, because of the iTunes Store Terms of Sale which stated that all sales are final.

Time Sink is a Mac app that keeps track of what apps you use on a daily basis, and summarises that information for you. It means you can easily see what kind of apps and activities you spend you time on, for better time management.

News: Liquidmetal products, HP regains PC crown, Forstall sells stock, and more!

Thu, 03 May 2012 15:12:11 GMT

Following rumours of Liquidmetal being used in future products such as the MacBook Pro, one of the inventors of Liquidmetal has said that Liquidmetal technology isn't mature enough for such large-scale applications. In an interview with Business Insider, he also said that Liquidmetal was still a technology being perfected, and that he couldn't see it being used outside of small-part applications in the near future.

According to market research firm Canalys, HP has taken back the PC crown as the number one PC maker in the world, taking back the crown from Apple just four months it was taken away from them. HP has managed to ship more than 40,000 units than Apple, even when the latter's unit shipments included those of the iPad. If so, that's a pretty impressive feat by HP.

Apple's SVP of iOS Scott Forstall has sold over 64,000 shares last week that netted him some US $38.7 million. Fortune has a more detailed analysis, but the long and short of it is that Forstall has more shares available, just available as restricted stock units.

It has been revealed the Flashback OS X malware netted its authors around $10,000 per day, due to the way it controlled infected machines as part of a botnet. The trojan generated its revenue by clicking ads in browsers.