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Mavericks And iOS 7 First Impressions, So Far

Wednesday, June 12th, 2013 | Author:

By onthedownlow, Guest Blogger

Well, I have been playing around with both of these betas for a while now and here are some brief, initial thoughts (please feel free to post your thoughts and/or feedback as well):

iOS 7 (on iPhone 4)

  • Beautiful – everything is even sharper somehow on the retina display. The non-Apple app icons even punch and are crisper.
  • The interface is so nice to work with – very refreshing. I wasn’t for sure I would be sold on the visuals, but now I don’t think I would want to go back.
  • My iPhone 4 was jail-broken, so nice to see some JB-app (and normal, 3rd Party app) features are now built-in to the OS.
  • Since this is the iPhone 4, there is no ‘depth’ to the background pictures when moving the phone around. Article Continues…
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Category: Random Thoughts & Topics
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Simple Trick To Customized Scrolling

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012 | Author:

After reading OWC Larry’s article about reassigning the function keys last week, it got me thinking; that’s certainly not the only default setting in Mac OS X that can run contrary to how many people use their computers. Almost instantly, my thoughts went to that frequently-maligned addition to OS X 10.7 and later: Natural Scrolling.

In an attempt to unify interface conventions, Apple changed the default scrolling behavior to mimic the scrolling on iOS devices. So, if you took your scrolling direction “down” (that is, if you moved your finger(s) on your pointing device vertically from top to bottom), it would reveal the top of the document as if you were moving the actual document around.

While this behavior works quite excellently on the iPad and iPhone, many find that it runs completely counter to about 10-15 years’ worth of scrolling mouse usage in which a top-to-bottom scroll reveals the bottom of the document.

Fortunately, this is one of the easier things to adjust to your personal preference, and like enabling/disabling Apple’s F-key functions, you just need to go to System Preferences. Article Continues…

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Category: Tech Tips
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Update on Software Update

Thursday, September 20th, 2012 | Author:

It turns out that Apple wasn’t content to simply release iOS 6 yesterday; Many OS X users were treated to updates as well. Granted, many of these updates added more interoperability with iOS 6, but each of these updates also addressed ongoing problems too, so you may want to update your Mac, even if you’re not planning on moving to iOS 6.

So, let’s take a look at what was updated.

  • iOS 6 – This was the biggie for the day. See yesterday’s article for more info.
  • OS X 10.8.2 – A bunch of little updates, including Facebook sharing integration, Power Nap support for the Late 2010 MacBook Air, and a number of iOS 6 interoperability options.
  • OS X 10.7.5 – Lion users got an actual “point” upgrade, too. The most notable upgrade here  is the addition of Apple’s Gatekeeper security feature.
  • Security Update 20012-004 – 10.6.x Users also got at least a little something; a general security update that covered updates for 10.7.5 and 10.8.2
  • Safari 6.0.1 – This adds some security measures to protect against maliciously-coded Web pages. It’s not a separate download; it’s currently only available when updating to 10.8.2 or 10.7.5
  • Aperture 3.4  - This adds Shared Photo Stream support, along with other functionality and performance updates.
  • iPhoto 9.4  - adds Share Photo Stream support, enhanced Facebook capabilities, new themes, and other improvements.
  • Xcode 4.5 – This added 10.8 and iOS 6 SDKs, as well as other workflow updates.
  • There are also a number of firmware updates. While there’s often a list of what this firmware addresses, there are often other “undocumented bonuses” to a firmware update, so you may want to upgrade anyway. You never know what kinds of extra performance benefits Apple may unofficially add, so if you’ve got one of these machines, it’s probably in your best interest to update:

And while you’re running software updates, if you’ve got Microsoft Office 2008 or 2011, you may want to hit their updater as well, as both versions just got bumped up a little. 2008 consists mostly of stability updates, while 2011 gets Retina graphics support, as well as several updates to Outlook.

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Category: Apple News
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The Other World – Episode 54

Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 | Author:

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Category: The Other World
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Random Mac Pro Memory Slot Utility Popup Returns in 10.8

Monday, July 30th, 2012 | Author:

A little over a month ago, OWC Andy told us about a phenomenon occurring with some Mac Pros, wherein the Memory Slot Utility window would appear at startup, even if a user hadn’t upgraded their memory recently. In the same article, he also described how to temporarily resolve the problem.

Unfortunately, “temporary” is the key term here; every time a software update was released, you’d have to re-do the process until Apple resolved the problem. It was hoped that this would be resolved with the release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

As it turns out, the problem still exists with Mountain Lion. Once you install the new OS, the Memory Slot Utility once again makes unneeded appearances. Luckily, the resolution remains the same as outlined in OWC Andy’s original article.

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Category: Tech Tips
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