Lion and Time Machine: Offline backups and document locks

OS X Lion has tweaked Apple’s Time Machine backup app a bit, but the changes are pretty significant. Now, if you’re away from your external backup drive or Time Capsule for a few days, Time Machine actually caches a local “backup” of documents and system changes on your boot drive, waiting for an opportunity to transfer the backups to your full-time safety net.

I first encountered this feature when I was using an early development version of Lion and accidentally clicked on the Time Machine icon in the Dock while going for the System Preferences icon. To my surprise, Time Machine showed a history going back a few days. It appears that Time Machine keeps up to a week of local backups, and once connected to an external drive, those changes are synced to the vast library of items on that drive.

The image at the top of this post shows the Time Machine window as of last night, with the local backups going back to Wednesday, July 13. I was able to recover some screenshots that I took on July 15 with just a click.

Of course, this offline backup capability could backfire if Lion’s Auto-Save capability accidentally saves over a document you don’t want to change. Apple thought of that — in the preferences for Time Machine, there’s a setting to “Lock documents X weeks after last edit” (see below).

The Time Machine local backups aren’t going to help you if you’re away from your backup drive and your hard drive fails, but in those situations where you’re on a trip and accidentally delete a file or two, you’re going to thank the unsung engineers at Apple who came up with this feature.

Lion and Time Machine: Offline backups and document locks originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TUAW TV Live at 5 PM EDT: A live look at Lion (Updated)

Today on TUAW TV Live, there’s only one topic — OS X Lion. I’ve been working with various developer beta versions of Apple’s latest operating system for several months now while writing a book about Lion, and I can’t wait to show off some of the new features of the big cat.

If you’re interested in OS X Lion Server, I’ve got it up and running as well — it’s now a $49.99 app that runs on Lion and provides a simple user interface for most of the major tasks involved in setting up and maintaining a server. For those who have been afraid to set up a small office or home server due to the complexity of doing so, your time has come.

How about those new MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs? The old plastic-body MacBook is no more, and there’s a lot more to talk about in the chat room today.

As usual, I’ll be starting the show at 5 PM EDT (2 PM PDT / 10 PM BST) sharp, and we’ll take a few minutes to chat before the demos start. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you’re unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in iTunes or any other favorite podcatching app. The past shows are also available on the TUAW YouTube channel.

Updated: The podcast subscription link was broken in the original post.

TUAW TV Live at 5 PM EDT: A live look at Lion (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lion: Ten things that bug me

It’s not that I hate OS X 10.7 Lion. It’s an excellent operating system. It’s just that there are a bunch of things that make me throw up my hands and say, “What were you thinking, Apple. Are you trying to make the MobileMe Operating System?” Are there no OCD slave-drivers left at Infinite Loop any more making sure that each OS feature is absolutely perfect?

So I’m going to take a few deep breaths. I’m repeating this mantra: “Lion is meant for iOS-to-Mac switchers.” There’s plenty to love in there, but maybe not as much for veteran Mac users to latch on to.

Now, let’s get on to the complaining.

  1. [*] On Lion, the default behavior for scrollbars is that they disappear when you stop scrolling (check ‘Always’ in General Preferences to show them in perpetuity). It’s cleaner, right? Simpler, right? Not if you do any text editing on a regular basis. GUI elements shouldn’t pop in and out of the screen. It’s disorienting and ugly. Scrollbars give you context — important context, at that. On mobile systems scrollbars may be extraneous, but on desktops they’re not. Whenever you want to ask yourself, “How much of the file does this visible portion represent?” — a scrollbar answers with a glance.
  2. Who killed my “Save As” menu item and what are these odd imposters they replaced it with (check out TextEdit to see what I mean)? Save a copy? Save a version? Export? Duplicate? Did someone design this system after too much Nyquil? What was wrong with the old options? People want to save their work or create a copy. When they move between paradigms, they should be able to export to a new format. Beyond that? Not so much. The new autosave and versioning features may be powerful and snazzy, but Apple might have forgotten to think of the actual user experience here.
  3. [*] I miss choosing “Don’t Save” from the keyboard. You used to be able to use Command-D in Snow Leopard. Not in Lion. It’s the fine touches that got tossed from the OS. Something helpful, handy, and obvious to anyone who does enough editing that their hands want to stay centered on the keyboard without reaching for a mouse. (Thanks to everyone who pointed out Command-Delete. You guys rock!)
  4. I hate Lion’s zooming windows. To get the full effect, jump into TextEdit or Safari and type Command-N a few times in a row. Drives me batty. Brings on migraines. No way to disable it that I have found — and oh how I have tried. Can’t find any good preferences to tweak on that.
  5. In the New and Improved QuickTime Player, you can no longer go Full Screen on just one screen. Instead of turning my second monitor into a full playback device, the way I used to with Command-F on the external, QuickTime Player insists on blacking out both my screens and moving playback to my primary monitor. Yuck. It’s Command-3 for now, I suppose. I miss the automatic black backdrop and full zooming.
  6. [*] Bring back the Lozenge — that small button at the top-right of Finder windows that hides and reveals the sidebar. I miss it. There’s a workaround (right-click/show-hide) but it’s all a matter of recall, not recognition, that key component of user design. A lozenge offers an affordance, an object that invites interaction and provides a helpful feature. Forcing users to remember an obscure menu option is less friendly and more frustrating, especially when condensed windows offer no clues as to why they’re “broken.”
  7. [*] Reversed scrolling is horrible. Bring me a touch-screen Lion and we’ll talk. But for regular Lion installs, especially on iMacs and minis equipped with good old mice vs. touchable trackpads, it just doesn’t make any sense. (To switch to the old scrolling, go to your Mouse or Trackpad system preference and uncheck ‘natural’ scrolling.)
  8. It’s gray. Everything is gray. Gray, gray, gray, gray. Ugly gray scrollbars, ugly gray toolbars, it’s like the entire OS was designed by a Communist-era Soviet committee four years behind on the next five-year plan. Grey linen is *not* the new Aqua.
  9. [*] Autolocking my files, Lion? That’s not cool. I don’t want Lion to prevent me from editing files that I rarely access. Lion does *not* know better than me, so stop protecting me from myself. That’s why I have Time Machine in the first place.
  10. [*] Lion hides my Library folder. I know what the Library folder is and I want access to it, thank you. (chflags nohidden ~/Library/) Again, Lion’s trying to protect me from myself. Not surprising, considering that there are millions of potential iOS-to-Mac halo switchers out there who don’t know better than to mess with the Library’s contents — but not cool.
  11. You cannot access Safari’s new Downloads popover unless you are either actively downloading something or save at least one prior download in the list. As with Snow Leopard, you can still paste a URL in the downloads pane to start a new download — but *not* if you cannot access it. Unfortunately, customizing the toolbar only produces a disabled button unless you have that single prior download. So frustrating.
  12. An angry NYC cabbie doesn’t have as many gestures as Lion. Many gestures contradict each other in various apps/OS areas. And there’s no way to naturally discover them. If there isn’t some natural correspondence between what your fingers do and what happens on the Lion screen, it’s broken.
  13. Farewell to thee, blithe Rosetta. Thou wert too much needed, too easily overlooked, too little loved, too late appreciated. Among all the now-unavailable PowerPC apps, two will be sorely missed… RIP Eudora 6 and Quicken for Mac. I loved you guys.

[*] I’ve managed workarounds for all starred items, and mentioned a couple of the most critical (lack of scrollbars and/or backwards scrolling might actually make you throw your computer out the window, if you’re the irascible type). While some are simple preference settings, other workarounds may involve ugly UI scripting (I used QuicKeys), editing defaults at the command line, and so forth. I’ll be detailing these in upcoming posts.

[**] Okay, so that’s slightly more than 10. I didn’t realize I would be graded on math.

Lion: Ten things that bug me originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lion’s full-screen apps: Some hits, a lot of misses

One new feature of OS X Lion that is sure to win both fans and foes is the ability for apps to go full-screen. Apple teased us with this last year when updates to several of the iLife apps — iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand — brought the ability to take over the entire screen of a Mac with a single click. Now in Lion, more of the standard Mac apps are full-screen apps. After using Lion and these apps for a while, my feeling is that full-screen apps are a good idea, but in the initial OS X Lion implementation they’re inconsistent.

How do full-screen apps work? You can tell when you’re in one thanks to the double-ended arrow up in the upper right-hand corner of the app window. With a click, the app takes over the entire window on your Mac. That’s right — the menu bar and dock are nowhere to be seen. The app also gains its own Space and is accessible through Mission Control. If you need to get to the menu bar, moving your cursor to the top of the screen reveals it again. Want to get back to a normal window? Just press the Esc key on your keyboard and you’re there.

What apps are full-screen enabled at this time? As mentioned earlier, iPhone, iMovie, and GarageBand got the full-screen treatment last year. Safari, Mail, iCal, Preview, DVD Player, QuickTime Player, and Photo Booth have also been updated to take advantage of full-screen.

Using these apps at the same time in full-screen mode is wonderful. You’re focused on the task at hand, but when you need to jump over to another full-screen app, one quick gesture brings you to Mission Control where you can swipe over to the other app; a left-right swipe can switch you as well. It’s quick and seamless, and especially on a small-screen Mac like an 11.6″ MacBook Air, it’s a wonderful way to work.

I love what Apple did with Photo Booth, which of course is probably the most popular app for people who are trying out Macs in Apple Stores. When Photo Booth goes full-screen, the photo window is framed by beautiful wood and a red velvet curtain. It’s much more exciting than the boring windows we’ve seen for years.

So what’s with iWork? At least at the time this post was written, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers were full-screen, but didn’t use the double-ended arrow to jump into that mode. That seems very inconsistent, but it wouldn’t surprise me if an update was on the way to add the Lion-specific full-screen capability to iWork.

Other Apple apps that aren’t full-screen happy include FaceTime, iChat, Address Book, iTunes, the Mac App Store, Chess, Dictionary, iDVD, Image Capture, iWeb, Stickies, TextEdit, and pretty much all of the Utilities. I was only able to find a handful of third-party apps that went full-screen (Pixelmator is a perfect example), but they didn’t properly create their own Spaces. That indicates to me that developers have a way to go to provide consistent support of full-screen mode.

From my point of view, full-screen apps make a lot of sense, as they make the best use of available display real estate. While some apps can seem somewhat absurd on a large 27″ display, it’s nice to be able to concentrate on one application and not have anything else get in the way. When you want to slip over to another full-screen app, one or two quick gestures gets you there easily. As more and more apps become available in full-screen mode with support for Spaces, I think we’ll see full-screen apps hitting their stride.

Lion’s full-screen apps: Some hits, a lot of misses originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac OS X Lion and Mission Control

Lion’s Mission Control represents the evolution of three technologies introduced with earlier versions of Mac OS X: Spaces, Exposé and Dashboard. With Mac OS X Lion, Apple has merged the three into a single interface, called Mission Control. It offers an at-a-glance overview of the applications and documents you’ve got open as well as distinct virtual workspaces (which I’ll call “desktops”). With Mission Control, you can keep applications separated while maintaining a bird’s-eye view of what’s going on. Here’s what you need to know about Mission Control in Mac OS X Lion.

Opening Mission Control

You must open Mission Control to use it, of course, and Lion offers several methods. For many, the easiest will be a multi-touch gesture. However, those without a multi-touch surface, like a trackpad (either built-in to a laptop or Apple’s Magic Trackpad accessory) still have several options, as keyboard shortcut support is extensive. First, let’s look at the supported gestures.

Those with a trackpad have a few options. The default gesture is to swipe “up,” (bottom-to-top) with three fingers. Alternatively, you can opt to use four fingers for this gesture. You’ll find the preference settings by opening System Settings, clicking on Trackpad and then clicking the “More Gestures” tab.

Those with a Magic Mouse can open Mission Control by double-tapping on the mouse’s surface. Note that there are no other options for opening Mission Control via gesture on a Magic Mouse. It’s double-tap or nothing.

If you don’t have a multi-touch surface, you’ve still got plenty of options. For example, you can:

  • Drag the Mission Control app into the Dock and launch with a click
  • Assign it to a hot corner (which I’ll explain later in this post)
  • Press the Dashboard key on your Apple keyboard

That’s really just the beginning. Later in this post, I’ll describe the Mission Control preference pane, which really opens up the launch options. For now, I’ll describe how Mission Control looks and behaves.

How Mission Control Looks

As I mentioned before, Mission Control combines Dashboard, Spaces and Exposé into a single interface. For now we’ll leave Dashboard and discuss Spaces and Exposé. Together, they make up the bulk of Mission Control, in both form and function. Here’s a look at each.

Along the top of the main Mission Control interface you’ll find a horizontal listing of the thumbnail images of your various desktops. This is, of course, the the current iteration of Spaces. By default, there are two desktops available: the Dashboard and the current desktop. Each is labeled (“Dashboard” and “Desktop 1”). As you’ve probably guessed, subsequent desktops are labeled sequentially (“Desktop 2,” etc.).

Below the desktop thumbnails you’ll find the Exposé area. It depicts the applications and documents currently open. Documents and windows are sorted into piles, according to their parent application and each is labeled with the appropriate icon. For example, a “pile” of Word documents will bear a Word icon (bottom center), while Pages files will show the Pages icon. I’ll discuss working in the Exposé area later in the post. For now, let’s look at the desktops.

How it Works – Spaces and Desktops

As I said, you start with two desktops by default: the Dashboard on the left and the current desktop on the right. Each desktop thumbnail shows the frontmost application in the space. When using desktops in Mission Control, you’ll typically do five things:

  1. Add new desktops
  2. Navigate between desktops
  3. Move applications between desktops
  4. Jump to a given desktop
  5. Close unwanted desktops

Here’s now to do each.

Adding New Desktops

The are two ways to do this. The first is to move your cursor to the upper right-hand corner of the Mission Control interface. As you do, a new desktop will partially appear with a “+” on its edge. To create it, just give it a click. It slides into place and receives the appropriate label.

The other method lets you create a new space and add an application to it in one fell swoop. Here’s how.

  1. Click on an application window in the Exposé area.
  2. Drag it to the upper right-hand corner.
  3. The “new desktop” appears. Drop the window onto it.

That’s it! A new desktop will be created, containing all open files relating pertaining to the application you just dropped inside.

Navigating Between Desktops

There are three ways to move between desktops. The first is to simply click a thumbnail image. You’ll immediately leave Mission Control and jump to that desktop.

However, there may be times when you want to review available desktops before jumping into one. To do this, hold down the Control Key while pressing the arrow keys on your keyboard. You’ll move from desktop to desktop (the Exposé area will also change accordingly) without exiting Mission Control.

Additionally, you can use a three- or four-finger swipe on a trackpad (use two fingers on a Magic Mouse) to move between desktops.

The final method is exactly moving through desktops via Mission Control, but it’s sort of the same thing. You can move between open desktops without launching Mission Control by swiping with either three or four fingers (configurable via System Preferences) on a trackpad or with two fingers on a Magic Mouse.

Moving Applications Between Desktops

The whole point of this feature is to keep your current workspace uncluttered. For example, you can keep Mail on one desktop, Twitter on another and TextEdit on a third. Of course, you might want to switch up the order at any time. Here’s how to move applications between desktops with Mission Control.

There’s only one real way to do this, and it’s pretty darn simple. First, open Mission Control and navigate to the desktop containing the app you’d like to move (the Control > arrow key method is best here). Next, click-and-hold on that app’s window (or stack of windows) in the Exposé area, and drop it into the desired desktop. It’ll be moved, but you’ll stay on the original desktop.

Note that if doing so “empties” a desktop — that is to say, leaves it without any applications — it will remain. I’ll discuss closing unwanted desktops later in this post.

Jumping to A Desktop

As mentioned earlier, this couldn’t be easier. Simply click the desktop you’d like to work in. Conversely, use the three- for four-finger swipe gesture to move between desktops without opening Mission Control.

Closing Unwanted Desktops

This couldn’t be simpler. To close an unwanted desktop, you’ve got two options. First, mouse over the thumbnail image and let your cursor sit for a second or two. A black-and-white “X” will appear in the upper left-hand corner. Give it a click and the desktop disappears.

The less-than-patient can press the Option key to bring up the X immediately. Note: you cannot close Desktop 1 or the Dashboard with this method (in fact, you can’t dismiss Desktop 1 at all).

How it Works – Exposé

Along with Spaces, Mission Control has used its Borg-like powers to assimilate Exposé. Beneath the vertical row of desktop thumbnails is the Exposé area. Here’s what to expect from Exposé via Mission Control.

When Mission Control is launched, your current desktop “recedes” into your display and is presented on a linen background. The Exposé shows all of the documents that are currently open. As I explained, these documents are sorted by their parent application. Each “pile” of windows bears that application’s icon for quick reference. To jump to a given app, simply click its pile.

Of course, those piles present a problem…they’re piles! What’s behind the first item? To find out, move your cursor over each item in the pile. You’ll notice that the blue focus border appears over each document in turn. Once that happens, hit the Space Bar to get a Quick Look-style peek at that document. If that’s one you’d like to jump to, click it.

Mission Control Preferences

Unlike some of Lion’s other marquee features (I’m looking at you, Launchpad), Mission Control offers a huge amount of customization via preferences. Here’s what you’ll find.

Open System Preferences and then click Mission Control. The control panel is divided into three sections: general preferences, keyboard and mouse shortcuts and finally hot corners. There’s a lot of fiddling to do in here, so let’s take a look at each section.

General Preferences

Here you’ve got three options.

  1. Show Dashboard as a space. De-select this option to remove Dashboard from the horizontal row of desktop thumbnail images. Those uninterested in using Dashboard or widgets might want to do so.
  2. Automatically re-arrange spaces based on most recent use. This is kind of handy. Mission Control will keep the desktops you’re using most often next to each other, making the back-and-forth even easier.
  3. When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for that application. For example, if you’ve got Word open in Desktop 3 while you’re working in Twitter from Desktop 1, and then select Word with a Command-Tab, you’ll jump right over to Desktop 3. De-selection this option prevents the leap; you’ll select Word but stay in Desktop 1.

Keyboard and Mouse Shortcut Preferences

Prepare to go nuts, keyboard jockeys. There are a huge number of options for launching Mission Control, revealing application windows, showing the desktop and finally showing the Dashboard. I won’t go into detail here because this post is long enough. Suffice to say, if you have a keyboard shortcut or mouse click in mind for producing any of those functions, you’ll probably find it here.

Hot Corners Preferences

Finally, click the Hot Corners button in the lower left-hand corner to assign a corner of the screen to a given Mission Control function. Then, you can simply move your cursor to that corner to produce the desired function.

Dashboard

Finally, a word on Dashboard. Other than a launch option (you can view it as a desktop thumbnail or not), there’s nothing new in Dashboard. So, there you go.

Bits and Bobs

There are a few little things to keep in mind regarding Mission Control.

  • Desktop images appear in the thumbnail images. Some people use certain desktop images to quickly identify workspaces. Mission Control represents each desktop’s image (or wallpaper) in its thumbnail.
  • Two screens = two Mission Control UIs. Those running two displays will find two distinct Mission Control UIs. You cannot move applications from a desktop on Display A to one on Display B.
  • You can’t re-arrange windows, etc. within the Exposé area. It reflects their current position only. Fiddling must be done on the desktop itself.
  • Forget about scripting and other high-level geek stuff. Mission Control is for home users and LaunchBar wizards will want to look elsewhere.

Now, a couple closing thoughts. For the first time, I’m using Spaces. It’s really the swiping that makes it useful. I’m in front of the app I want in less than a second, and no workspace becomes especially cluttered.

As for the Exposé area, yeah, it gets pretty cluttered despite the fact that its very purpose is to prevent clutter. Once you’ve got several documents open across applications, the piles pile up, if you’ll forgive that poor analogy. I also wish I could move apps between desktops on different displays.

Minor quibbles, really. I’ve been using and enjoying Mission Control and suspect that many of you will, too.

The images used in this article are taken from the upcoming Apress book Taking Your OS X Lion to the Max.

Mac OS X Lion and Mission Control originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Xcode 4.1 now free, available for your Lion development pleasure

For all of the developers who were wondering where Xcode 4.1 was this morning, it was just taking a short time out. It’s now available for download in both the Mac App Store and through the regular developer channels.

Xcode formerly had a $4.99 price tag for non-developers; it’s now available as a free download. Get to work writing those Lion apps, folks!

Xcode 4.1 now free, available for your Lion development pleasure originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mini vs Pro: consumer Macs grow up

mac mini grows up

For a cool two thousand bucks (more or less, actually slightly less), you can buy a new Mac system with a terabyte of on-board storage including a generous SSD boot drive, 8 GB RAM, Quad-core Intel Core i7 processors, and Thunderbolt support.

And it’s not a Mac Pro. It’s a Mac mini.

Okay, let’s be fair here. The lowest end Mac Pro in it’s lowest-end configuration can wipe the floor with the highest end mini in a basic chip-off but when you add the other features in as well, it’s not that much of a difference: 2.8 GHz Quad Core 3 GB/1 TB vs the punier 2.0 GHz Quad Core 8 GB/1.5 TB.

It’s as if minis are now big enough, old enough, and strong enough to tag along with the big boys when they go out to play ball. Maybe the mini can carry the Gatorade, or even man the outfield.

Admittedly, if you do some serious video editing or 3D modeling, the latest Mac minis will probably melt on your desk into an ooey-gooey mess of components. But seriously, who does that stuff on a regular basis expecting graphics performance from a mini? My two-generations-out-of-date current Mac mini ably handles Photoshop, Office, Xcode, and a other more serious desktop work and does it with an aging 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB RAM. The latest minis would certainly give my desktop a nice power boost.

The highest end minis bring some pretty decent hardware to the table and do so with a lot of consumer-friendly features like HDMI out and an SDXC card slot. Sure, the graphics are puny compared to Pro graphics, differences are getting smaller and smaller.

And may I point out that the latest top-end $3,700 iMac, with its 3.4 GHz Quad-Core i7, 16 GB RAM (not to mention it’s lovely 27″ display) makes many of the entry-point Mac Pros (no, I’m not talking about the $16,900 fully loaded 64 GB double-6 core Westmere version) look like little girls. Oh, and the mini has Thunderbolt, which the Pro hasn’t added yet.

One last point. About that whole “does not ship with Superdrive” built-in thing? As I’ve said before, disc is dead.

Mini vs Pro: consumer Macs grow up originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Safari 5.1 brings Reading List, gestures, full-screen and more

safari 5.1 availableAnother expected update today was Safari, and right on schedule 5.1 is now available. The new features include Reading List (similar to the venerable Instapaper) and multi-touch gestures beyond what was previously supported (earlier versions of Safari supported two-finger swipes to go forward and back when traversing web pages).

There’s also full-screen browsing like that found in many other Lion apps, better search, a downloads popover, Resume (also found in Lion apps), and some welcome privacy and features like Private Autofill.

You can download Safari 5.1 here. You will need Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or newer.

Safari 5.1 brings Reading List, gestures, full-screen and more originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iWork Update 6 adds OS X Lion features

As we expected, Apple today released iWork Update 6, which adds OS X Lion functionality to the iWork suite of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote and updates the suite to iWork 9.1. The update is a 90.2 MB download.

The update is available immediately through Software Update and provides full support for Full Screen mode, Resume, Auto Save, and Versions. You must be running iWork 9.0 or later for the updater to perform its magic.

According to the notes for this update, the update also adds the Lion character picker feature (holding down a key brings up all accented versions of the letter) and improves compatibility with Microsoft Office. Keynote now has two new builds called Anvil and Fall Apart.

iWork Update 6 adds OS X Lion features originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iTunes 10.4 is available and ready for Lion

itunes 10.4 availableiTunes 10.4 is now available via Software Update, bringing with it full-screen app capability. Plus, iTunes on the Mac is now a 64-bit Cocoa app in Lion. If you’re using some older iTunes plug-ins you may have issues with those (according to Apple). Makes sense, as Lion has shed many vestiges of OS X versions past.

We’ll update this post with direct links when available.

iTunes 10.4 is available and ready for Lion originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lion Mail: Faster, full-screen, and feature-packed

During my testing of OS X Lion during the last month, I decided to take a break from my beloved Sparrow to see if the reboot of Mail.app could bring me back into the fold. I hate to tell the Sparrow team, but I’m heading to back to Mail. In this post, I’ll discuss the features that have made me happy with Mail again.

When you launch Mail for the first time after upgrading to Lion, the database will need to be updated. I chose not to do that, since I use all IMAP server, and just let Mail download the messages into its database. While I didn’t time the process, Mail was able to bring all 40,000+ messages down from eight different mail servers in just a few hours. The process was much faster than it was under Snow Leopard on a more capable Mac.

Adding new accounts has been simplified even more. After entering your name, email address, and the account password into Mail, the app checks to see if it “knows” about the email provider and if so, it automatically configures the settings for you. That’s not all — if your account (Gmail, Yahoo!, whatever…) also includes a calendar, contact, or chat, Mail asks if you’d like those to be set up as well. I added a Yahoo! Rocketmail account that I never read to my list of accounts, and it immediately tried to link me to the Yahoo! equivalents of iCal and iChat.

The Mail UI has changed a lot (below), looking much more like the Mail interface on the iPad than the previous Mac Mail. Mail has been written as a full-screen app, so with one click it takes over your entire Mac screen. That’s somewhat overkill on a 27″ iMac, but perfect on an 11.6″ MacBook Air. Enabling full-screen mode allows the app to be have its own Mission Control window. That may not sound impressive, but that means that with a few quick gestures, you can switch between Mail and other full-screen apps.

The Mail toolbar (below) is slightly different, with a few icons that may be confusing even to seasoned Mac users. Get Mail is an envelope icon, New Message uses the familiar iOS “pencil and paper” icon, Note pops up a small yellow lined notepad for writing reminders or short documents, Delete is a trash can, and Junk is a new “thumbs-down” icon. One new icon is the Show Related Messages icon, which looks like a letter with a line over it. A click brings up any replies or forwarded messages that are related to the currently highlighted message. Finally, the Flag icon lets you apply a rainbow of colored flags to a message so that you can group message by color.


As with previous versions of Mail, it’s easy to customize the Mail toolbar to your needs. For individual messages, there are some new icons for the Message toolbar — the Send icon is now a paper airplane, which has to have the Sparrow folks going berserk. There are also buttons for displaying the new Format Toolbar (used to format the text in a Mail message), the Photo Browser for adding photos, and Showing Stationery. The stationery in Lion Mail doesn’t seem to have changed from Snow Leopard.

Some of the new Message Toolbar icons are useful — Append lets you include information from an existing email in a brand new message, while Lists is used to create numbered or bulleted lists in a message. The Format Toolbar (below) is quite helpful for creating nice looking Rich Text emails, with buttons for changing Font, Font Size, Color, Bold/Italic/Underline, Justification, and the Indent/Outdent of a paragraph.

Reading Mail messages is a bit easier now as well. Message headers appear in default with just three lines of information — the name and email address of the server, the message subject, and the date and time of receipt. Click a new Details link, and the header expands to provide you with extra information.

Conversations (below) is a new feature to help organize chains of emails. At TUAW, we sometimes have emails that have 15 to 20 responses and forwards. Conversations groups together related messages automatically, with each email numbered to help with organization.

One of my favorites is the Hidden Quoted Text in Conversations. If you need to see some of the previous messages to figure out why someone responded a certain way, there’s a “See More from” link that appears in the message. With a click, you see the original text.

Searching is tremendously improved over previous versions of Mail. When you start typing a search into the Mail search field, grouped search suggestions appear in a drop-down menu. There are also search tokens (below), which appear when you type in a person’s name, a phrase, or some specific label. The tokens often have a small drop-down associated with them which shows available options. Search tokes can be combined to create very focused searches of your mailbox.

Attachments can also be searched. Creating a search token for “attachments” looks for messages with attachments, and adding another search word will look for that word in the attachments.

Data detectors have improved in Lion Mail as well. While in the previous versions clicking on a data detector would open iCal, now a mini-calendar pops up so you can see if you have any calendar conflicts. Have a hyperlink in a Mail message? A click on the disclosure triangle near the link brings up a Quick Look of the web page (below).

All in all, Lion Mail brings a much needed facelift to Apple’s built-in Mac email app. Have any questions for the TUAW crew about Mail? Leave a comment below.

The images used in this article are taken from the upcoming Apress book Taking Your OS X Lion to the Max.

Lion Mail: Faster, full-screen, and feature-packed originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lion Recovery restores Mac system software without drives (Updated)

Today, Apple introduced Lion Recovery as part of its OS X Lion distribution. Built into Lion, Recovery allows you to get your Mac back up and running after a catastrophic failure. By holding down Command-R during startup, Lion automatically boots from its recovery partition rather than its primary day-to-day partition.

The recovery partition allows you to run Disk Utility, to erase your primary drive, re-install a fresh copy of Lion or restore from Time Machine. It also offers a built-in Safari web browser so you can search for help information online before applying the recovery tools.

Lion Recovery can handle hard drive failures as well using a feature called Internet Recovery. Built into new Macs, including the newly released mini and MacBook Air, this new hardware feature will download and start Lion Recovery over any available broadband connection.

Mac OS X has long had the ability to boot from a remote disk image via NetBoot, and restore the operating system via NetInstall (both based on the legacy bootp protocol, long present in NextStep and BSD). It looks like the new Macs extend NetBoot to the wide, wide Internet — but Apple’s write-up is pretty lean for the moment.

Lion Recovery and Internet Recovery make physical install discs and dongles obsolete, allowing computers to restore themselves without having to hunt for extra equipment.

[Updated to clarify that NetBoot is the likely underlying tech.]

Lion Recovery restores Mac system software without drives (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Quicken users: Don’t update to OS X Lion until you read this

IGG software, the folks who bring you the iBank personal finance application, sent out a reminder this morning via PR channels that bears repeating. If you use any version of Quicken prior to Quicken Essentials, be sure to export your data from the app before you update to Lion. You’ll need that export file to get you up to speed in Quicken Essentials, iBank 4, or whatever other personal finance app you choose.

If you don’t export the data before jumping to Lion, you won’t be able to run your old version of Quicken, meaning that your years of checking and savings account information are stuck. You won’t be able to open the Quicken data file from a new app, nor will you be able to launch the old Quicken app to export your data. In other words, you’re screwed.

Take the words of the experts at IGG Software and please, please, PLEASE export your Quicken data before you update to OS X Lion. If you are looking for a Lion-compatible alternative to older versions of Quicken or Quicken Essentials for Mac, be sure to look at our report from earlier this month titled “Quicken won’t run on Lion: 10 Mac finance apps that will.” We’ll have another look at financial software later this summer.

Quicken users: Don’t update to OS X Lion until you read this originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mac OS X Lion and Launchpad

Mac OS X Lion introduces Launchpad, an app launcher that borrows heavily from iOS. With the flick of a gesture, you can open Launchpad and have access to your applications. Once Launchpad is running, you can sort, organize and delete your apps. Here’s what to expect from Lauchpad.

Opening Launchpad

To use Launchpad, you must, well, launch it. Fortunately, Apple provides several methods. The easiest is a with a Multi-Touch gesture. Note that you’ll need a trackpad for this, either one built into your laptop or Apple’s Magic Trackpad. Unfortunately, the Magic Mouse does not offer a gesture to launch Launchpad.

To open Launchpad with a gesture, place three fingers and a thumb on the trackpad, slightly spread apart. Gather them all together, as if you’re picking up something small, like a paper clip. As you do, Launchpad will open.

Those without a Multi-Touch surface can either click the Launchpad icon (Lion adds it to the dock) or assign it to hot corner via the Screen Saver preference pane. Then you can move your cursor into that corner to open Launchpad.

Navigating Launchpad

Launchpad displays your apps on pages, much as iOS does. You can move from page to page with a gesture, with a mouse or with your keyboard. Here’s how. Those with a tracked (built-in or Magic Trackpad) can swipe with two fingers. If you’ve got a mouse with a scroll wheel, move the wheel left or right. Finally, the arrow keys on your keyboard also work.

Organizing, Launching and Adding Apps

Anyone with an iOS device will find this familiar. Laucnhpad lets or re-arrange your apps and sort them into folders. To organize things, simply click and hold on an icon, drag it to its new location and drop it in place. You’ll see the surrounding icons scoot out of the way, just like iOS apps. Creating folders also works as it does on the iPhone, etc. Grab an icon and drop it onto another. A folder is created right away. You can accept the suggested name or use your own by double-clicking the title Lion provides and typing over it. When you’re through, click anywhere outside the folder. Finally, folders can be re-ordered with a simple drag and drop.

There are two ways to add an application to Launchpad. The first is to make a purchase from the Mac App Store. That app will “jump” out of the store’s window and open Launchpad. It’s icon will display a progress bar as the app loads an is installed (again, much like iOS). Apps not purchased from the App Sore are added to Launchpad when placed in your Applications folder.

To launch an application, simply give it a click. You’ll exit Launchpad for the desktop as the app launches.

Deleting Apps

You can delete apps via “Jiggle Mode,” another feature borrowed from iOS. Click and hold on an icon to get them shaking. You’ll see the familiar “X” appear in the upper left-hand corner of apps available for deletion. Click it and a confirmation dialog box appears. Click “Delete” and poof! The app is gone.

You’ll notice I said “available for deletion.” Not all apps can be deleted via Launchpad jiggle mode. For example, apps that ship with Lion (like Photo Booth) and those not purchased from the Mac App Store.

What Launchpad Can’t Do

Lauchpad is a capable app launcher, but there are several things it can’t do. For example, you can’t add a folder to Launchpad. Also, documents and aliases can’t be added. Those interested in scripting, file manipulation, etc. ought to consider Alfred, LaunchBar etc. as a supplement to Launchpad.

Thoughts

I can tell you right now that there will be a large, vocal group of nerds who merrily bash Launchpad. They’ll call it underpowered eye-candy, lacking in more advanced features. But really, that’s not what Launchpad is meant to be. Instead, it offers a convenient way to find an app, launch it and then get back to what you were doing. As with iOS, you can put your most frequently-used apps front and center. No more scrolling through the Applications folder, stuffing your Dock to its gills or lining up aliases on the desktop. Launchpad is all about ease and convenience. In this area, it excels.

Sure, it’s for so-called “end users.” But we nerds forget that those folks make up the majority of computer users. I suspect that most of them will love Launchpad.

The images used in this article are taken from the upcoming Apress book Taking Your OS X Lion to the Max.

Mac OS X Lion and Launchpad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW: Help revert scrolling to normal

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I hate Lion’s new reverse scrolling feature. I mean I really really really really really really really really really hate it.

Fix it for me and I’ll buy you prune juice.

Your loving niece,

Sophie

Dear Sophie,

Auntie’s still new to Lion but Uncle Steve was quick to the rescue. He walked Auntie through the steps so she could relay them to you.

In Lion, you can disable that nasty reverse scrolling both for your mouse and for your trackpad. Head on over to preferences and choose Trackpad > Scroll direction:natural > disable or uncheck Mouse > Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating. Both options return your Mac to its traditional “down-means-down” scrolling behavior.

Although Auntie prefers reverse scrolling for touch screens, Apple’s touch-screen Mac line is a little thin on the ground at this time, if you get what she means.

Uncle Steve’s Taking Mac OS X Lion to the Max should hit the shelf by Autumn.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help revert scrolling to normal originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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