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Apple selling $20 Lion and Mountain Lion redemption codes for older Macs
Apple has begun selling redemption codes for OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on Apple.com. Each code costs US$19.99 and allows the buyer to redeem that code inside the Mac App Store so they can download the OS. At first, the move may seem an odd one since anyone can download OS X 10.9 Mavericks for free, but as TechCrunch notes, the sale of the older OSes compensates for the lack of availability of those versions of OS X on the App Store: We did some asking around about the thinking behind this particular arrangement and the nut of it is that Apple only offers one version of OS X at a time for purchase on the Mac App Store: the current one. But OS X Mavericks, though it does support some devices as far back as 2007, still has a lot of compatibility gaps for old Macs. If you've previously purchased either Lion or Mountain Lion, these are freely downloadable from the Mac App Store, but this new arrangement allows customers who may not (for some reason) have owned either one to purchase new copies. This will also allow users who have old Macs running Leopard or Snow Leopard to upgrade to 'new-er' versions of OS X. After a buyer purchases a code, they will receive it via email. Buyers can then copy and paste that code into the Redeem section of the Mac App Store and their download will commence.
Tim Cook: 28 million copies of Mountain Lion shipped, more than any other Mac release
Cupertino has been known to share a stat or two during its WWDC keynotes, so it's hardly a surprise that the company just dropped some sales figures for its Mountain Lion. According to Tim Cook, 28 million copies of the OS have shipped, making it the best-selling Mac release of all time. Cook also said that about 35 percent of users have updated, compared to less than five percent for Windows 8. And Apple wasn't just talking Mountain Lion to brag; those numbers were part of a build-up to announcing the latest desktop-based software: OS X Mavericks. Hit up that link for more info. Follow all of our WWDC 2013 coverage at our event hub.
Extract App Resource Icons with AppleScript
Whether I'm preparing for a demo or writing an article, blog post, book, or technical documentation, I often find myself performing the same set of repetitive steps. I need to navigate into an app's packaged resources folder, find one or more icon files, occasionally convert them to PNG and scale them, and add them to my document, Keynote presentation, etc. Fortunately, this doesn't need to be a manual process each time, thanks to the following AppleScript. Creating the Script 1. Launch AppleScript Editor (in /Applications/Utilities) and create a new script document. 2. Enter the following script into the document. NOTE: If you have any trouble following along, you can download the completed script here. 3. Run the script from AppleScript Editor, save it as an app, or add it to your script menu. Running the Script When you run the script, you're first asked to select an app from which to extract icons. Make your selection and click Choose. The script looks inside the app's /Contents/Resources folder for any files with an extension of .icns. If multiple files are found, it allows you to select the ones you want to extract. The default is all of them. Next, the script gives you the option to extract the .icns files themselves, or PNG versions. Click the button to make your choice. If you click the PNG button, then you're given a choice of sizes to create. You might not need the full sized icons, for example. You might only need 256x256 icons. Depending on the options you chose, the script extracts the .icns files, or it converts the .icns files to PNG and scales them, as needed. You're notified when the icons have been extracted, and they're displayed in the Finder for you. Now you can simply drag them to your document, presentation, file, etc., and you're good to go! Happy Scripting!
Triggering AppleScripts from Calendar Alerts in Mountain Lion
AppleScripts are great tools for increasing your daily productivity. They're even better when they can be set to run unattended, at night, on weekends or during downtime. In Lion, iCal included a handy option for attaching a script to a calendar event. Just create an event, add a Run Script alarm, point it to the desired script and you're good to go. Things changed in Mountain Lion, though. Presumably for security reasons, the Run Script alarm option was removed from the Calendar app. Despite its removal, however, there are still some ways you can trigger scripts from Calendar events. iCal event alarm choices in OS X 10.7 Lion Calendar event alarm choices in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Use Automator to Trigger Your AppleScript Although Apple removed the Run Script alarm option in the Calendar app, Automator's ability to save Calendar Alarm workflows wasn't removed. And, since Automator workflows can trigger AppleScripts, they offer a quick and easy workaround for scheduling scripts. Start by launching Automator and creating a new Calendar Alarm workflow. To schedule an Automator workflow, choose the Calendar Alarm template. To Trigger an AppleScript App If your script is an app, you just need to set the workflow to launch it. Add the Launch Application action to the workflow. From the application popup menu, choose Other... and navigate to your saved AppleScript app. The Launch Application action can be used to launch an AppleScript app. To Trigger AppleScript Code If you'd rather not create an app (an app + your Automator workflow means more files to manage), you can embed compiled AppleScript code right within your workflow. Find the Run AppleScript action and drag it to the workflow. Then, insert the desired script code into the action. The Run AppleScript action can be set to run code embedded in your Automator workflow. To Schedule the Script Once you've got your workflow configured, go ahead and save it. Automator automatically adds it to an Automator calendar (which is created if it doesn't exist yet) in the Calendars app. An Open File alarm is added to the event and set to run the workflow. Now, adjust the start date of the event as needed, put it on a repeating schedule, etc. Open File alarms are used to trigger Automator Calendar Alarm workflows. Use AppleScript to Create a Scheduled Event If you create an event in the Calendars app and add an Open File alarm, you should find that you're unable to select a saved AppleScript app. You can select a compiled AppleScript file, but this is essentially useless because when the event triggers, the Open File alarm simply causes the compiled script to open in AppleScript editor. Not what you need. What you really need is to open a saved script app. AppleScript to the rescue. To work around the limitation, just run the following script. It asks you to select a saved AppleScript app. It then creates an event at the current date and time on an AppleScripts calendar, which it creates if it doesn't exist already. The script then adds an Open File alarm to the newly created event and sets it to open your selected script app. Yep, that's right. Although you can't manually set an event to open a saved AppleScript app, you can script the process. NOTE: You can download the complete script below here. So, there you go. A number of workarounds for triggering scripts from Calendar events in Mountain Lion. So, schedule away! Happy Scripting!
OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.3, Security Update 2013-001 now available
Apple has released OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and the first security update of 2013. The update includes a number of good improvements including: The ability to redeem iTunes gift cards in the Mac App Store using the built-in camera on a Mac. Boot Camp support for installing Windows 8 and Macs with a 3 TB hard drive. Various fixes for issues that cause a URL to quit apps unexpectedly, that might cause Logic Pro to become unresponsive and stuttering audio on 2011 iMacs. The update also includes Safari 6.0.3. The update is available via Software Update or through the Mac App Store. You can find the full support document on Apple's support site.
Tips for Troubleshooting Automator Workflows
Automator's great for streamlining time consuming and repetitive tasks on your Mac. It's easy. Just launch it, find a few actions, and string them together to form a workflow. Then, run your workflow anytime you want to perform that series of tasks again. What happens if your workflow doesn't run as you expect, though? Finding and solving problems in Automator is often easier said than done. Suddenly, the simple tool that's supposed to make your life easier has become a real pain in the neck. This week's post covers some things you can do to troubleshoot a finicky Automator workflow, track down the problem, and hopefully solve it, so you can get back to work. 1. Run Saved Workflows in Automator Automator workflows are saved and run in a variety of ways - as apps, iCal alarms, print plugins, and more. When a saved workflow encounters a problem, however, it may be next to impossible to figure out what went wrong. This is because saved workflows don't really include any diagnostic tools. In some cases, the workflow may even fail silently, without alerting you that something is wrong. Your only indication of a problem may be a lack of the end result you were expecting. Not very helpful, especially in a longer multi-action workflow. When you encounter a problem with a saved workflow, your best bet is to open up the workflow in Automator, and try running it there. By doing so, you'll gain access to some of the techniques described below. 2. Fake Workflow Input When you run a workflow app or plugin within Automator, you may see an alert indicating that the workflow will not receive input. An Automator Input Alert for a Text Service Workflow This is because, often, saved Automator workflows expect input for processing. For example, a workflow app may expect dropped files or folders as input, a service workflow may expect text as input, or a print plugin may expect PDF files from the print system. In any case, just dismiss the alert and add an action to the beginning of the workflow to retrieve the required type of input. If your workflow processes files, for example, add a Get Specified Finder Items action. If your workflow processes text, add a Get Specified Text action. Whatever you add, just be sure to remove it once you're finished troubleshooting. Get Specified Text at the Beginning of a Text Service Workflow 3. Check Action Results Automator works by passing information to actions for processing. Most actions perform a very specific function. As such, they accept specific types of information as input. And, they produce different types of output. The New TextEdit Document action, for example, wants text as input. It then adds this text to a new TextEdit document, and passes the document as output for further processing. Often, when a workflow fails or produces an undesired result, it's because actions aren't receiving or producing the expected types of information. To diagnose this problem, click the Results button beneath each action in your workflow. Then, when you run the workflow, you can see exactly what information is being passed from action to action. Suppose, for example, I have a workflow that should take the contents of a text file and add it to a new TextEdit document. I may try creating my workflow with the following actions: Get Specified Finder Items - Configured to get a text file Filter Paragraphs - Configured to look for non-empty paragraphs New TextEdit Document All the actions appear to link up properly, and the workflow may even run without an error. But, the result is not what I want. Rather than the content of the text file being added to the new TextEdit document, the path of the document is added. A Misbehaving Text Workflow An Undesired Workflow Result By displaying the result area of each action in the workflow, I can see that a file path was passed to the Filter Paragraphs action as input. I can also see that the same file path was output by the action, rather than the paragraphs I was expecting. This tells me that there's something wrong with the Filter Paragraphs action. Action Results Indicate Potential Problems Checking the action's description area provides additional clues. It tells me the action expects text as input, not files. Action Descriptions Specify Input and Output Types So, in this case, the fix is to insert an action that outputs text, rather than files, before the Filter Paragraphs action. NOTE: Surprisingly, Automator doesn't include an action for reading text from a file. There are third-party actions available that can do this. Or, as a workaround, you can try using the Combine Text Files action, which receives one or more files as input and outputs their text content. 4. Check Automator's Log Checking the results of an action doesn't always tell you what went wrong. You may glean a little more information by consulting Automator's log area. Press Command+Option+L or choose View > Log to display it. When you run a workflow, the log area tells you which actions ran, and often indicates problems that were encountered along the way, such as an action that wasn't supplied with the appropriate type of input. Automator's Log Area Indicates Successes and Failures Sometimes, the log tells you that information was converted from one type to another. This is because, in some cases, Automator tries to make incompatible actions work together. This doesn't always work, however, and can result in an error. So, be on the lookout for failed conversions. 5. Step Through Workflows Running a workflow and checking action results is great, but it's even more useful to check the results of each step of your workflow as it happens. You can do this by stepping through the workflow step by step. Click the Step button in the workflow's toolbar or select Workflow > Step from the menu bar. Automator's Step Button The above techniques may not resolve every problem you encounter with Automator, but they will certainly help you to more easily identify solutions for some. Happy Scripting!
AppleScript Productivity > Create OmniFocus Followups from Contacts
As an OmniFocus for Mac user, it's important that I can quickly create tasks at any time, in any app. OmniFocus makes this pretty easy, by providing integration with OS X Mail, a keyboard shortcut for clipping content in apps such as Safari, a system-wide Quick Entry window and a Services menu item. One feature OmniFocus lacks, however, is direct integration with the Contacts app. Suppose I am in Contacts, for example, and I need to schedule a followup phone call or email to one of my clients? Sure, I could bring up the Quick Entry window and enter the task, but I want something a bit more streamlined. I can accomplish just what I need by writing some custom AppleScripts. The following two examples demonstrate how to write AppleScript-based plug-ins for the Contacts app, which add OmniFocus followup options right into the email and phone number popup menus of your contacts. Note: If you have any trouble following along, you can download both of the scripts outlined in this post here. Creating the Email Followup Script Plug-In 1. Quit the Contacts app. 2. Launch AppleScript Editor in /Applications/Utilities and create a new script document. 3. Insert the following code: 4. Save it as a script named Contacts > Email Follow Up with OmniFocus.scpt into the ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins folder in your home directory. If this folder doesn't already exist, go ahead and create it. Saving the Script into the Address Book Plug-Ins folder The Address Book Plug-Ins folder in ~/Library Creating an OmniFocus Email Followup Task To give your new plug-in a try, launch the Contacts app and go to a contact. When you hover over the email address field, it becomes highlighted. Click it and choose Follow Up with OmniFocus from the popup menu that appears. The OmniFocus Quick Entry window appears, and it contains an email follow-up task for the contact, including a note with a clickable email link. Creating the Phone Call Followup Script Plug-In The process to create phone call followup plug-in is essentially the same. 1. Quit the Contacts app again. 2. Create another AppleScript Editor document. 3. Insert the following code this time: 4. Save the script as a script named Contacts > Phone Call Follow Up with OmniFocus.scpt into the ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins folder in your home directory. Creating an OmniFocus Phone Call Followup Task Launch the Contacts app again. This time, click on a contact's phone number field and choose Follow Up with OmniFocus from the popup menu. Again, OmniFocus' Quick Entry window is displayed. This time, it contains a phone call follow-up task and a note containing the phone number. Voila, you now have quick OmniFocus integration with Contacts, and you can use it anytime you need to schedule a follow-up. Until next time, Happy Scripting!
AppleScripting Dates > Elapsed Time Calculator
Since Valentine's Day is this week, I thought I would take this opportunity to share an AppleScript I wrote to calculate how long my wife and I have been married. With this baby, I'll never be accused of forgetting how long it's been when our anniversary rolls around. The script determines the elapsed time between now (the current date and time), and a prior date and time (such as our anniversary). It then displays the result in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Note: If you're into the whole "traditional anniversary gift" thing (I'm not), you can find a list of gift categories on Wikipedia. Creating the Script Note: If you have any trouble following along, you can download the complete script here. 1. Launch AppleScript Editor in /Applications/Utilities and create a new script document. 2. Insert the following code: Some notes about this script... * I used some of the number calculation handlers in the Essential Subroutines section of macosxautomation.com, although, I made some slight modifications to them for the script. If you're interested in learning more about AppleScript, there are some other useful handlers there, as well, and I encourage you to check them out. * The final display dialog sets as its icon the FavoriteItemsIcon icon file, which is embedded in the CoreTypes bundle in /System/Library/CoreServices. It is, coincidentally enough, a heart. Using the Script To use, just run the script within AppleScript Editor, or save it as an application to be launched and run whenever you wish. First, the script asks you to enter a date and, optionally, a time. Next, the script does its calculations and displays the result. Just take a screenshot of the dialog and send it along to your significant other. Until next time, Happy Scripting and Happy Valentine's Day Week!
AppleScripting Notification Center > Scheduling Do Not Disturb
Mountain Lion's Notification Center is great for keeping you in the loop, but it can be a huge distraction when you need to get stuff done. Sometimes, a little peace and quiet is all you need to stay productive. As you may know, iOS 6 includes a handy Do Not Disturb feature, which can be turned on to disable notifications. It can even be set to automatically enable/disable itself at scheduled intervals. Mountain Lion also lets you disable Notification Center. Just open Notification Center and drag down to access a Show Alerts and Banners toggle switch. Note that this is a temporary setting, and disabled notifications automatically re-enable at midnight. Unlike iOS 6, though, Mountain Lion doesn't give you an option for enabling/disabling notifications on a schedule. At least, it doesn't provide a built-in option for this. With a little customized help from AppleScript, Automator, and the Calendar app, it is possible. In this post, you'll create two Calendar Alarm Automator workflows, which can be configured to run at scheduled times to enable or disable Notification Center alerts and banners. Note: If you have any trouble following along, you can download the completed AppleScripts and Automator workflows here. Building a Workflow to Enable Do Not Disturb (i.e. Disable Notification Center Alerts and Banners) 1. Launch Automator (in your /Applications folder) and create a new Calendar Alarm workflow. 2. Search the action library for the Run AppleScript action and drag it to the workflow area. 3. Replace the pre-filled AppleScript code in the Run AppleScript action with the following: The script writes to Notification Center's property list file and enables Do Not Disturb mode. It then quits and relaunches Notification Center in order for the change to go into effect. 4. You're finished building the workflow, so go ahead and save it as Enable Do Not Disturb. 5. When you save the workflow, Automator puts it where it needs to go (the ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Calendar folder). The Calendar app launches and a new event is created in an Automator calendar, which Automator creates if it doesn't already exist. The event should be configured with an Open File alarm that's set to run the workflow. Schedule the event for the desired time, such as every weekday morning at 6 AM. Now, every time the event occurs, the alarm should launch the workflow and Notification Center should be disabled. As I mentioned earlier, Notification Center automatically re-enables each day at midnight. So, if you plan to schedule Do Not Disturb overnight, then you'll need to create an additional event that disables it again at 12:01 AM. Building a Workflow to Disable Do Not Disturb (i.e. Re-Enable Notification Center Alerts and Banners) Now that you've got a workflow to disable Notification Center, you probably want one to re-enable it. 1. Create another new Calendar Alarm workflow in Automator. 2. Search the action library for the Run AppleScript action again and drag it to the workflow area. 3. This time, replace the existing placeholder script in the Run AppleScript action with the following code: This code updates Notification Center's property list file to disable Do Not Disturb. Then, it relaunches Notification Center for the change to take effect. 4. The workflow is done, so save it as Disable Do Not Disturb. 5. The Calendar app should launch again and another event should be added to the Automator calendar. This event should be configured with an Open File alarm that's set to open the Disable Do Not Disturb workflow. Set it to run on the desired schedule, such as every weekday morning at 9 AM. If everything has gone according to plan, you should now have Do Not Disturb workflows that disable and re-enable Notification Center alerts and banners at the desired times. Use your alert-free time wisely. Until next time, happy scripting!
Obscure OS X Mountain Lion bug makes many apps crash
TUAW reader Don McC pointed us to this Next Web write-up about an obscure Mountain Lion crash. If you type File: followed by /// in many apps, they will crash. There are 8 characters in total and the F must be capitalized. I tested this and managed to crash a bunch of apps. Echofon, QuickTime, Safari, and Notes all fell before the 8-character text, although Firefox did not . Most amusingly, when I attempted to open the crash logs in TextEdit, the logs killed the app! So what's going on? Here's what my system log reports: Feb 2 22:18:37 Esopus-Spitzenburg.local TextEdit[8417]: assertion on /SourceCache/DataDetectorsCore/DataDetectorsCore-269.1/Sources/PushDown/DDResultExtraction.c:1576 "CFStringHasPrefix(urlVal, CFSTR("file://"))" failed :wrong extraction: File:/// As the Next Web explains, it's an issue with a built in assertion. Assertions allow programmers to mandate expected behavior, validating input to assure its correctness. In this case, automated data detectors see what appears to be a malformed URL and send off an application exception reporting the internal inconsistency. The exception crashes the application because there's no built-in handler. I tried out the recommended solution (disabling spelling correction and symbol substitution) but it didn't work for me personally. TUAW submitted a bug report to Apple.
20" iMac G4 updated to Ivy Bridge
Apple's iMac went through several design permutations before the company settled on the current "all-in-one computer and display on aluminum arm" configuration. One of the most iconic designs was that of the iMac G4, which held the electronics of the device -- including an optical drive -- in a desktop half-sphere with a 15-, 17- or 20-inch LCD panel suspended on an arm. Modder "Dremel Junkie" (Jonathan Berg) has been bringing classic iMac G4s up to date with new hardware for a while, and his latest work brings a 20-inch iMac G4 into the Mountain Lion era with an Intel Ivy Bridge CPU. The system uses an Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) system neatly implanted into the heart of the iMac G4. It's not just as simple as plugging the Intel NUC into the base of the iMac; Dremel Junkie goes through detailed descriptions of all of the steps taken to make sure that this device remains true to the exterior lines of the iMac G4 while providing the latest in high speed I/O. Of course, since the Intel hardware isn't "official Apple," the device is incapable of running Mountain Lion without resorting to a Hackintosh solution. Dremel Junkie used an off-the-shelf copy of Mountain Lion and tonymac's Unibeast/Multibeast install method to get OS X running smoothly. If you have an old iMac G4 sitting around collecting dust and you're handy with a soldering iron and Dremel Moto-Tool, this may be a fun winter project to work on. Two videos are embedded below (about 30 minutes total) that explain the project.
Mountain Lion is king of the OS X jungle
As noted by Macworld UK, Apple's OS X Mountain Lion has clawed its way to the top of the OS X jungle. It was released on July 25, 2012 and as of this past December it's installed on 32 percent of all Macs online. That percentage is according to Net Applications, a web-measurement firm that tracks operating system usage by analyzing visitors to 40,000 websites. That number represents a 3 percent increase for the OS from November, when 10.8 was running on 29 percent of all Macs online. That gain came mostly at the expense of OS X 10.7 Lion, which sank from 30 percent to 28 percent. Mountain Lion also stole one percentage point from OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which is now actually in second place, accounting for 29 percent of all Macs. Interestingly, Computerworld has compared Snow Leopard to Windows XP, noting its strong staying power. They attribute this to the stability of the OS and the ability of Snow Leopard to run PowerPC apps. Net Applications doesn't expect any future Mac operating system to ever crack a 50 percent share. That's due to Apple's new annual OS X update cycle. If OS X 10.7 and 10.8 are any indication, Apple should announce the 10.9 beta some time this spring with the official release coming in July.
Preparing high-res icon files with Automator
This week's post is for all those Mac app developers out there. If you're not an app developer yet, it's a new year, and I'm sure becoming an app developer is at at the top of your resolution list. In any case, if you plan to develop apps, then you need to prepare icons for those apps. Apple provides very specific requirements for generating high resolution icons, which you can find listed on the Apple Developer Connection website. In the past, Xcode came with a tool named IconComposer, which could be used to generate icon files. This tool, however, didn't generate high res icon files, so Apple now discourages its use. Instead, Apple provides instructions for generating icons using an iconset, a folder of image files that can be converted to an icon file using either Xcode or the iconutil command line tool. There are, of course, other ways of creating icons. In this post, however, we'll focus on an iconset. To manually generate an iconset folder, you start by creating a square image to serve as your icon. Next, you generate versions of the image scaled to 16x16, 32x32, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512. These scaled versions are to be named as follows: icon_16x16.png icon_16x16@2x.png icon_32x32.png icon_32x32@2x.png icon_128x128.png icon_128x128@2x.png icon_256x256.png icon_256x256@2x.png icon_512x512.png icon_512x512@2x.png You place all of these images into a folder named FolderName.iconset. Then, you can process it with iconutil to generate an icns file. Sure, creating scaled images and processing them isn't too difficult, but it's a lot of repetitive work. If you create icons regularly, it can get tedious. You're probably thinking, surely, Automator can be used to streamline the process. It can. Here, we'll create an application workflow you can run anytime you want to convert an image to an icon file. Let's get started... Note: If you're an iOS developer, feel free to adjust the workflow below accordingly. Creating the Workflow Launch Automator and create a new Application workflow. Next, insert and configure the following actions. Note: This workflow is pretty long and repetitive. It's easy to get lost. If you get stuck, don't worry, you can download the complete workflow here, along with a sample icon image. 1. Ask for Finder Items - Set this action to ask for an image file at least 1024x1024 in size. 2. New Folder - Set this action to create a folder named MyIcon.iconset on your Desktop. 3. Set Value of Variable - From the popup menu in this action, choose New Variable and create a variable named iconset folder. 4. Get Folder Contents 5. Change Type of Images - Set this action to convert images to PNG format. 6. Scale Images - Set this action to scale the image to a size of 1024 pixels. 7. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_512x512@2x. This represents a 1024 image (i.e. a Retina display ready size) when the icon is created. Note that this action's title changes in the workflow to reflect the type of naming, in this case Name Single Item. 8. Duplicate Finder Items 9. Scale Images - Set this action to scale the image to a size of 512 pixels. 10. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_512x512. 11. Duplicate Finder Items 12. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_256x256@2x. 13. Duplicate Finder Items 14. Scale Images - Set this action to scale the image to a size of 256 pixels. 15. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_256x256. 16. Duplicate Finder Items 17. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_128x128@2x. 18. Duplicate Finder Items 19. Scale Images - Set this action to scale the image to a size of 128 pixels. 20. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_128x128. 21. Duplicate Finder Items 22. Scale Images - Set this action to scale the image to a size of 64 pixels. 23. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_32x32@2x. 24. Duplicate Finder Items 25. Scale Images - Set this action to scale the image to a size of 32 pixels. 26. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_32x32. 27. Duplicate Finder Items 28. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_16x16@2x. 29. Duplicate Finder Items 30. Scale Images - Set this action to scale the image to a size of 16 pixels. 31. Rename Finder Items - Set this action to name a single item's basename only to icon_16x16. 32. Get Value of Variable - Set this action to get the iconset folder variable you created way back at the beginning of the workflow. You also need to set this action to ignore its input, so it doesn't continue processing the 16x16px image from the previous action. Select Action > Ignore Image. 33. Run Shell Script - Set this action to pass input as arguments. Then, enter the following command: iconutil -c icns "$@" Preparing the Run the Workflow Before you begin running the workflow, you need an image you can convert to an icon. Note that iconutil requires this image to be square. So, make sure it is. If you really want to be sure it's square, you can insert a Crop Images action between steps 5 and 6, and configure it to crop to 1024x1024, scaling to the shortest side before copping. However, if your image contains transparency, this action will remove it. So, it's best to prepare your starting image as a square. Running the Workflow When you run the workflow, you're first asked to choose an image. Select the desired image and click Choose. The workflow runs, an iconset folder is created on your Desktop and passed to iconutil, which generates an icns file. You're ready to plug your icns file into your app. Now, any time you need to generate an icon, just create a square image and trigger your workflow. Happy New Year and Happy App Developing!
TUAW Best of 2012 Personal Picks: Michael Rose
At the start of 2012, Apple customers and employees were emerging from the initial mourning period for founder and chairman Steve Jobs. Twelve months later, with the first full post-Jobs year in the books, Apple is (mostly) on track with some remarkable successes and only one or two noticeable calamities. Here's my highly idiosyncratic list of pleasant surprises from the year that was. You can browse my colleagues' lists here. Best Free Upgrade: Hulu Plus on Apple TV. There's nothing better than getting new tricks out of an old dog, and with July's unexpected addition of Hulu Plus to the Apple TV, I found new delight in my little black hockey puck. The other subscription, purchase and streaming services on the Apple TV are all worthwhile, but I was already a Hulu Plus subscriber. I'd jumped through several hoops to get VGA and audio from my MacBook into my TV for those instances when I wanted to screen a Hulu show in larger format; it was enough of a pain to discourage me from getting the most out of my subscription. Hulu's ad-supplemented service might not be a perfect all-you-can-eat TV option, but it certainly makes cord-cutting a more appealing possibility. Having it on the Apple TV gives Apple's "hobby" more credibility as a true living room reformer. Whether or not the hypothetical "Apple television" debuts in 2013, the current offering (including the March hardware upgrade to 1080p) has some legs. Honorable mention: We had to wander through the wilderness for a few months -- quite literally, in some cases -- before finding our way to a better navigation and mapping solution on iPhone. Not everyone rejected Apple's new Maps app. But for those who had issues, the problems were real and really annoying. Never mind the 3D views, Siri integration and free, fast turn-by-turn directions that we'd been waiting years to get; if point A to point B ends you at point nowhere, that's no good. Thanks to the introduction of Google's new app in December, we have something close to the best of both worlds. An improving, imperfect on-board solution that's still offering next-gen functionality as the underlying POI database catches up; plus another free, sleek and easy Google-powered app that's delivering more (TBT navigation! Voice!) than the old app ever did. Best Hardware Milestone: MacBook Pro with Retina display. Six months in, and some days I'm still not sure I made the right choice in going for the Retina 15" MBP over a fully souped-up MacBook Air. But then I spend a week away from my desktop, absorbed in the so-sharp-it-might-cut-you screen of the MBP and the remarkable performance of the all-solid-state architecture, and the extra weight in my backpack doesn't bother me so much. Apple's great leap forward in portable displays comes with a steep sticker price, and there are still a few rough edges with naïve screenshot tools and key un-Retinized apps that show up as blocky as refugees from MacPaint Mountain. (I'm looking at you, ScreenSteps 2.) But Apple's willingness to push the envelope on HiDPI display technology -- and customers' comfort level with buying in -- once again puts the company's portable computing offerings at the top of the heap. Honorable mention: No word yet from Thor's lawyers, but the mobile-to-Mac revamp of Apple's peripheral connectivity with Thunderbolt and Lightning has caused less pain than I expected and delivered more benefits than I hoped. The pace of Thunderbolt peripheral releases has sped up from a stall to a modest trot, and Mac support for the fast USB 3 standard has also helped ease the aggravation of dealing with dongles and adapters for legacy FireWire gear. On the iOS side, the Lightning connector delivers more mechanical reliability while maintaining solid compatibility with docks, clocks and chargers via the 30-pin adapter lineup. Of course, the Lightning adapter wouldn't have anything to connect to without the handsome iPhone 5, fourth-gen iPad and iPad mini. Worst Surprise: For anyone who was hoping to cash in on resale of an iPad 3rd generation, it's got to be the "early" introduction of the Lightning-equipped fourth gen iPad. You live and you learn. Best OS Overhauls: iOS 6 and Mountain Lion. Neither of Apple's big OS releases this year escaped criticism and controversy. iOS 6 faced the aforementioned Maps migraines, and Mountain Lion's Gatekeeper app security and Facebook integration. But the benefits of the new systems outweigh the drawbacks. Mountain Lion's on-board Dictation support, Notification Center and baked-in AirPlay mirroring helped make 2012 easier than 2011. iOS 6's panorama photos, improved Siri, Passbook, expanded Open In menu, the indispensable Guided Access and even Maps brought the mobile platform forward. Honorable mention: This was the year the Mac App Store came into its own as a valid, vibrant channel for Mac software. Many of my favorite Mac apps have found a home on the MAS; several more, unfortunately, have backed off the store as the sandboxing restrictions proved too challenging or detrimental to core functionality. Here's hoping that the 2013 MAS delivers some of the flexibility these apps need to thrive. Favorite Mac Apps: It took too long (really, way too long) for Cultured Code's Things to deliver cloud synchronization of tasks -- but now that it's here as part of Things 2, it's made my daily routine a lot easier. All my iOS devices and my Mac have the same to-do list instantaneously, with no fuss. (Yes, I could get some of the same mileage out of iCloud and Reminders, but I need more categorization and tagging options in my crazy register of things that are overdue.) Likewise, the newly streamlined BusyCal 2 delivers a solid and reliable calendar for anyone who needs more than Apple's Calendar or Microsoft's Outlook can supply. Honorable mention: The dead simple screenshare/remote meeting tool join.me, from the fine folks at LogMeIn, works great on the Mac and surprisingly well on the iPad. It's so much easier than most meeting tools, it's almost unfair. Bonus points for the feature that lets you hand off control and sharing to one of your attendees, then reclaim the mouse for your own; as a last-ditch, low-fi remote support tool (when Messages screensharing and Back to my Mac falls down) it's a delight. Favorite iOS Apps: I never imagined that a third-party "killer app" would revitalize an iOS baked-in feature, but I stand corrected. Loren Brichter's Letterpress is that app, and it's singlehandedly made Game Center cool again. I was also excited to see the official Khan Academy iPad app make its debut, for all your math video needs. Readdle's Calendars app is a must-have for anyone wrangling multiple Google calendars and reasonably priced at $6.99; I've dinged Readdle in the past for some questionable UI choices in its apps, but Calendars is clean and clever. Finally, for maintaining my inner serenity (to say nothing of my multiple time-zone sleep patterns), I depend on the library of Andrew Johnson relaxation apps. You can get a taste of Johnson's gravelly Scottish tones in the free Relaxing Holidays app, or browse his entire hypnotherapy catalog on the App Store and in the audiobooks section. (Bonus points for one of the best app names of all time, if you imagine it being shouted by an angry spouse as you head out to the pub.) Favorite Accessories: Speaking of behavior modification, the Fitbit activity tracker has given me insight into my sleep and fitness level in 2012 (spoiler alert: it's not so good), and the motivation to step it up in 2013. Fitbit's Ultra pedometer, my model, has been discontinued in favor of the One tracker; the new unit adds direct wireless sync to Bluetooth 4.0 iOS devices. Since I do quite a bit of flying, the automatic noise cancellation in the Fanny Wang 3000 Series headphones makes a big difference in podcast and music listening onboard. The FW 'phones are somewhat oversize for everyday use, but in noisy environments they're exactly what the ear doctor ordered. Also in the road warrior category, I spent a lot of 2012 looking for the perfect iPad keyboard/case combo. I may not have found the ideal fit, but until I do the Adonit writer keyboard and case has made my iPad a more effective writing tool. The keyboard is leagues better than the cheap Bluetooth options from some other vendors (ahem, Boxwave) and the easy-clip frame lets me quickly transition from convertible to standalone iPad use. Best Raging Against The Dying Of The Light: Macworld | iWorld. When Apple made its last official appearance at Macworld Expo in early 2009, the conventional wisdom was that the tradeshow and conference would not survive much longer without the imprimatur of the mother company. So much for the conventional wisdom, I suppose. While smaller and scrappier, the show continues to draw an audience of eager Mac and iOS fans, developers and creative pros. For last year's event, Paul Kent and his team at IDG rebranded the show as Macworld | iWorld, acknowledging the shifting platform emphasis toward mobile while making the show's name much harder to print correctly. The upcoming fourth post-Apple edition will be kicking off on January 31 and running through February 2. TUAW will be there, and after a one-year hiatus, so will I -- and I'm looking forward to seeing many of you there, too.
Send Keynote presenter notes to Evernote with AppleScript
We've all been there before. You've prepared a Keynote presentation on the Internet phenomenon of cat videos for your local Mac user group. You've finished editing your slides. You've added presenter notes. Next, you want to extract the notes from your slides and bring them into Evernote so you can look them over and maybe use them as the basis for your forthcoming newsletter article. You open your presentation in Keynote and select File > Export. Then, it happens. You remember that Keynote doesn't have a feature for exporting presenter notes. Sure, you could copy them one by one into Evernote, but that will take a while. Fortunately, you know this can be done quickly and easily with AppleScript. Here's how you'll do it... Creating the Script First, you need to write a script. NOTE: If you have any trouble following along, you can download the complete script here. 1. Launch AppleScript Editor (in /Applications/Utilities). 2. Create a new script document, and enter the following code: 3. Save the AppleScript Editor document in Script format to your Desktop as Send Keynote Presenter Notes to Evernote.scpt. AppleScript Editor documents can be saved as Scripts or Applications. Save your document as a Script. Enabling the Script Menu Next, you need a quick and easy way to trigger the script. You can use the handy system-wide script menu. If it's not enabled on your Mac already, here's how you can turn it on. 1. Choose AppleScript Editor > Preferences... 2. Ensure that the Show Script menu in the menu bar checkbox is selected. Once enabled, you should see a script icon appear in your menu bar. The script menu is turned on in AppleScript Editor's preferences window. Installing the Script Next, you're ready to add your newly created script into the script menu. This way, you can quickly trigger it whenever you're in Keynote with an opened presentation. 1. Go into Keynote. 2. From the script icon in your menu bar, select Open Scripts Folder > Open Keynote Scripts Folder. The script menu provides quick and easy navigation to your scripts folder. 3. Copy the Send Keynote Presenter Notes to Evernote.scpt file from your Desktop into the ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Keynote folder that opens. The Keynote Scripts folder is created automatically if it doesn't already exist. Running the Script Now that your script is installed, it's ready to run whenever you need it. 1. Open a Keynote presentation containing presenter notes. The presenter notes area is located beneath your slides. If this area isn't visible, choose View > Show Presenter Notes. 2. From the script menu, choose Send Keynote Presenter Notes to Evernote. Application scripts are contextual and automatically appear in the script menu when the target app is frontmost. 3. When prompted, specify whether you would like to extract slide content, in addition to the presenter notes. The AppleScript can extract presenter notes and/or slide content. The choice is yours. The script extracts the slide titles, presenter notes, and, if necessary, the slide content from your opened Keynote presentation. Next, the script reformats the extracted content as HTML, brings Evernote to the front, and creates a new note. An Evernote note containing extracted Keynote notes. Your notes are now ready for review in Evernote on your Mac. Assuming you've got Evernote's iOS app too, your notes are also synced to your iPhone and/or iPad. As you ride the train to work and excitedly begin working on your newsletter article, feel free to share your knowledge of cat videos with the person next to you. Happy scripting!
Setting up Mountain Lion: 12 geek setup tips
After I recently wrote about how I often set up new Macs from scratch rather than taking advantage of migration, many people asked me to share my action logs. While I can't do that specifically because (1) my logs are extremely long and cryptic and (2) they contain tons of personal activation keys and serial numbers, I decided to share a few setup tips to help stem the tide of emails. What follows is a dozen setup tasks that I picked out from my normal techniques, which I thought might be useful to others. Here are some of the things I do to my new systems, to make them shinier and happier and ready to use. 1. Copying my Solid Black desktop pattern I don't know why Apple doesn't provide a ready-built black swatch, so I just add my own. I grab the version from my old system and install it into /Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/Solid Black.png. So why do I do this? Simple. Because I hate QuickTime's full screen playback. By adding a black-colored background, I can play QuickTime movies on my secondary monitor using Command-3 ("Fit to Screen"), with a black background that doesn't distract me. I have a little AppleScript to help. tell application "System Events" set d to last item in desktops -- Standard Swatch Paths set whitepath to "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/Solid White.png" set blackpath to "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/Solid Black.png" -- Toggle if ((picture of d as string) = ("Esopus Spitzenburg:Library:Desktop Pictures:Solid Colors:Solid White.png" as string)) then set picture of d to POSIX file blackpath else set picture of d to POSIX file whitepath end if end tell 2. Disable Window Zooms I don't know which Apple Engineer came up with the idea that OS X should include a window zooming effect but I bear nothing but animosity for this person. Fortunately there is a solution. defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO Death to zooming windows! 3. Update my Hosts I think it was either TJ Luoma or Rich Gaywood who first introduced me to somebodywhocares.org and its custom hosts file. In the words of the providers, "This is an easy and effective way to protect you from many types of spyware, reduces bandwidth use, blocks certain pop-up traps, prevents user tracking by way of 'web bugs' embedded in spam, # provides partial protection to IE from certain web-based exploits and blocks most advertising you would otherwise be subjected to on the Internet." I regularly download updates to /etc/hosts/hosts.withlove, then install it into place. Note that this requires administrator privileges. % sudo cp hosts hosts.original % sudo cp hosts.withlove hosts Once installed, you'll find that your surfing experience improves, your breath becomes more lovely, and the world transforms into a gentle place full of unicorns and love. 4. Establish my Terminal Preferences There is no shell but tsch, and .cshrc is its master. I always set up my system to use /bin/tcsh. Plus, Ryan Paul got me set up with a rocking Ubuntu Mono 13pt font for all my fixed width needs like...nethack and fortune, must-have basics. One's command line quirks are highly personal. Obviously, mine indicate that I'm stuck roughly in 1992. 5. Set up QuickTime Pro Remember QuickTime Pro? I still use it. I bought my license ages ago, and will keep dragging around the app and the registration information for as long as I can. QuickTime 7, the app behind QuickTime Pro, still offers some of the best and most effective video editing tools out there. I make installing QT7/Pro a part of my normal Mac install routine. QuickTime Pro lets me add, separate, or delete tracks, build overlays, trim media, and do ever so much more than iMovie. Sure it's ugly, creaky, and seriously odd, but it's a great tool and one I don't want to lose. [Ed.: Some of us still record our podcasts with it.] 6. Install Perian If you love being able to watch AVI movies from inside QuickTime, Perian is the answer. We own several cameras that record in AVI format and without Perian, we woudn't be able to do that. Sure, the utility may not be supported any more but it still works and is dear to my heart. This is also when I generally install the latest version of Handbrake and libdvdcss. 7. Add Dropbox Who doesn't love Dropbox? That doesn't mean you can't tweak your system. After installing the latest build, make sure to hop into Network > Bandwidth and set Don't Limit for uploads. It's nice to have your shared files finish uploading before the next century. 8. Install Vuescan Remember Vuescan? It's another old app that keeps working and working. I bought my license way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and it still allows me to keep using my archaic flatbed scanner (perfect for school forms) using my 2012 Mac mini running Mountain Lion. Well worth the license fee, it's a great solution for connecting your OS X system to old hardware. 9. Set up Github, etc. I always like getting my dev tools in order, and establishing my keys at Github is one of those essential steps. It's also a good time to install command-line git, update my Xcode find options (via the little magnifying glass in the search fields), disable build notifications (whether Xcode succeeded building or not, I don't want to see them pop up in notification center. I'm sitting RIGHT HERE compiling.), and link to the simulator from my home folder: lns ~/Library/Application\ Support/iPhone\ Simulator sim 10. Copy over my provisions and certificates As an iOS dev, an hour without working provisions is an hour without sunshine. Export from the old system as a password-protected package using organizer (Command-Shift-2 > Devices), and move them to the new system. Easiest way to get up and running with development on your new machine. 11. Tweak Mail There's a lot of stuff that Mail does that I hate. Plus, I'm still getting over the fact that I can no longer use Eudora 6 after 10.6, so every mail task I have to do takes approximately 3x as long or worse. Regardless, now that I live in a Mail world, I disable all sounds (including new mail), enable BCC, and make sure to bring ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Mail Downloads along for the joyous ride. If anyone has created Rosetta for Mountain Lion, please let me know. 12. Set up TextEdit In my life, there's no room for fussy rich text. First step out of the box is to switch TextEdit to plain text mode across the board. Then, I hop into System Preferences > iCloud > Documents & Data and get my machine the heck out of using cloud data. This has three effects: 1. It speeds up TextEdit. 2. It stabilizes TextEdit from all those unexplained crashes, and 3. Keeps my data safe. Apple still has a lot of work to do when it comes to net services. I trust iCloud just about as far as, well, not far at all. -- So there you have it, a dozen ways I tweak my new systems. Are there several dozen more? Certainly. I doubt, however, you want to see my logs about: "Call Adobe. Yell at Adobe. Plead with Adobe. Beg Adobe so I can keep using Acrobat and Photoshop." Do I have a dozen more to share? Yes, but only if you find this kind of list useful. Happy new systems, everyone.
Radeon HD 7000 series support in 10.8.3 beta points to new Mac Pro
Here's another possible piece in the puzzle that is the long-hoped-for Mac Pro refresh. When digging around in the recently posted OS X 10.8.3 beta, a user on Netkas.org found that Apple had included video card drivers for AMD's top-end Radeon HD 7000 series, pointing to its possible inclusion in the expected 2013 update of the tower computer. For those not familiar with the Radeon HD 7000 series, it features the first 28-nanometer GPU and tops out at a whopping 3 GB of RAM in the Radeon HD 7970. By comparison, the current Mac Pro is available with the older Radeon 5870, a 1 GB card introduced in 2009 as the first DirectX 11-compatible GPU. Of course, Apple's inclusion of HD 7000 series drivers could simply mean that the next OS X will support the cards for current Pro owners. Outfitting its next top-of-the-line machine with one of these powerful GPUs out of the box would certainly go a long way towards justifying the "Pro" in its name, though. [Via Apple Insider]
Mac Pro owner crafts an example Fusion Drive, shows the fearless how it's done
Mac fans not keen on picking up a new iMac to get that best-of-all-worlds Fusion Drive might not have to consider a full-on system swap if they're brave enough. Knowing how Apple's approach unites an SSD and a spinning hard drive in a single logical volume, developer Patrick Stein has used command line code to do just that inside his Mac Pro and prove that it works. His series of experiments with organized data shows the effect on storage speeds and that the pseudo-Fusion should even work with less common ZFS formatting. The publicly available instructions could well be tempting to Mac fans who want speed and storage all at once, although we might personally take a pass -- there's more than a fair share of risk in using an unofficial hack to recreate a storage technique that Apple hasn't even shipped.
MacBook Pro with Retina display review (13-inch, late 2012)
Look down the aisles at any Apple launch event, across the laps of dozens of journalists liveblogging or in some other way documenting the goings-on, and it's inevitable that you'll see MacBooks. A lot of MacBooks. And, since many of those laps are irrevocably linked to owners who spend their days jetting around the globe to other companies' events, those laptops are quite often the travel-friendly MacBook Air. So, while we were excited to see a thinner, lighter 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display unveiled earlier this year, many of us were left asking one question: "Where's the 13-inch version?" Now, a little over four months later, here it is. Why the wait from one to the next? That's for Apple to know and us to speculate about (supply chain concerns? engineering issues?), but the important thing is that it's available now and it is, in many ways, an uncompromised, slightly smaller rendition of the 15-inch version that came before. It's thinner and it's lighter than the current 13-inch Pro but promises better internals and the same battery life as the 13-inch Air. Perfect portions of portability and performance? Let's find out.
Apple announces 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display: 2,560 x 1,600 resolution, Thunderbolt and HDMI starting at $1,699
If the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display was feeling lonely up there on its high-resolution pedestal, it needn't any longer. As expected, Apple just announced a 13-inch version to keep it company. The 2,560 x 1,600 resolution means that 13-inch screen offers a ppi of 232, marginally more than its larger brother's 226. As well as that lovely new display, there's a pair of Thunderbolt ports, and a full-size HDMI port to let you make good use of it with, as well as a pair of USB 3s. While this might not be the primary focus of the day, it will definitely be one of the more hotly anticipated reveals from the company's San Jose event this afternoon. The base model will run you $1,699 and comes with a 2.5GHz i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of flash memory. At the top end you can expect 768GB hard drive, atop a Core i7. And, like last time, to top it all off, all the new goodies come in a slimmer, desire-stoking design -- weighing a whole pound less than the 2011 13-incher and at just 0.75-inches thick, 20 percent thinner. Already full of want? Then don't hang around, as it ships today! In the meantime, keep your retinas locked right here for our hands on. For more coverage, visit our Apple Special Event hub!
