Mac OS X
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DevilRobber now "improved", still nasty malware threat
We previously told you about DevilRobber and what sort of unsavory things it can do to (and with) your Mac. (In case you don't click over to read the article, here's the scoop: it's bad. Real bad.) Back in the day (November 1st), it was a Trojan horse and sent a little of your personal info off to some far flung servers. But CNet is reporting the new version has mutated, and now it tries to grab your Terminal history and system logs. This new "improved" version can be picked up by downloading Pixelmator from someplace that is not the Mac App Store (currently the only place to legitimately get a copy). But the fun doesn't end there! It also tries (but does not succeed at) making off with information stored in your 1Password data file. CNet's story makes it sound like DevilRobber can actually do something with that file, but in reality that data is safe, as confirmed by Agile themselves. They have a nice writeup on their site about all of this and the steps you can take to make extra super sure your data is safe. This is also another of those opportunities we here at TUAW occasionally take to remind you that malware is bad but real, and you DO need to protect yourself. Remember "Macs don't get viruses" is just as accurate as "Macs don't have any good games" (which is to say not accurate at all), and protection is ridiculously easy. Get yourself a nice antivirus utility and spend a little time with Little Snitch to make sure nothing suspicious is being sent from your machine, and that should help you avoid a lot of problems.
EasyFind is a free alternative to Spotlight
EasyFind is a free application that helps you find files and folders on your Mac. And yes, it's better than Spotlight. EasyFind is made by the folks at DEVONtechnologies who are well-known for developing powerful search software DEVONthink, DEVONagent Pro, and DEVONagent Express, which is to say that EasyFind is made by people who know a lot about search. Compare that to Spotlight, which was a marquee feature of OS X six years ago but never grew into something great. When you launch EasyFind, you will see several options and choices. Don't let years of Spotlight's simplistic UI overwhelm you; options and choices are a good thing. Take a minute to see what's available, and just start searching. Down the left-hand side of the window are criteria for searching: Files and Folders, Only Files, Only Folders, or File Contents. Next choose to search for All Words, Any Word, a Phrase, or Unix-Wildcards. You can also specify whether or not the search should be case sensitive, whether it should look in package contents, or include invisible files and folders. You can also set the scope of the search to be a specific volume/disk, or a specific folder such as your Home folder. 99% of my searches are for things I know are "somewhere" in my Home, or "somewhere" in my Dropbox. Spotlight only lets you choose "current folder" or "everything" which is almost never what I want. That's far more control and options than what Spotlight gives you (or at least what Spotlight gives you without resorting to byzantine keywords), but what I really love is what you get in the results of your search. Of course you get the filename (and you can expand that column to make it wider, I just made it narrow in the screenshot above), but you also get the creation date, the modification date, the size, the kind and location. If you don't want any of those columns, you can turn them off. If you want to change the order of those columns, or if you want to sort your results by any of those columns, you can do that too. EasyFind can search for the content of files, but it is not using Spotlight's database, it is actually running the search when you enter it. That means that it won't be as fast as Spotlight, but on my MacBook Air it is still very quick (the speed will be determined by the number of files you are searching plus the speed of the disk). I keep Spotlight around for those times when I need it, but in actual practice I rarely even do. In fact, I've reassigned my Spotlight Keyboard Shortcut to launch EasyFind instead. (Aside: I had even disabled Spotlight for awhile on my Mac, but there are many things which just don't work properly if Spotlight is completely disabled, so I ended up turning it back on and just ignoring it. YMMV.) You can download EasyFind from the Mac App Store or directly from DEVONtechnologies. If you download it directly, you can get a version which will work on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher (PowerPC or Intel), which is good news for folks running older versions of Mac OS X. Thanks to the folks at DEVONtechnologies for this cool app. Take a look at their other freeware apps too!
Poll: Which version of Mac OS X are you running?
According to Chitika, an analytics company, Mac OS X Lion only holds 16% of the Mac OS market share, trailing behind Snow Leopard (56%) and Leopard (22%) -- indicating poor adoption of the newest operating system in comparison to previous releases. Even though Apple announced over a million downloads of Mac OS X Lion with in the first day of its release, and in October Tim Cook announced that Apple had sold 6 million copies of Lion since its launch, claiming a massive 80% growth over Snow Leopard, according to Chitika, that pace has significantly slowed down. Chitika cites stability issues (Wi-Fi and MacBook Pro battery performance) and dislike of the iOS-like UI features as reasons for the supposed slow adoption of the new OS. Now we've all had our gripes with Lion, but from where we're standing, we're pretty much happy with what the OS has to offer. So we thought it would be great to see just how many of our TUAW readers are running Mac OS X Lion, as opposed to Snow Leopard, Tiger or another operating system. [Via BGR] %Poll-70868%
Windows 7 overtakes XP globally, Vista found weeping in a corner
According to StatCounter, it's taken roughly two years for Redmond's latest to surpass XP and become the world's most popular operating system. October 2011 marks the first time that Windows 7 has overtaken XP globally, with a 40 percent share of the market versus the latter's 38. As for Vista, it's been holding steady at around 11. Not that it's much of a surprise, as in North America, Windows 7 took the crown back in April of this year. Rounding out the top five, are OS X (though it's not clear whether that captures all of Cupertino's beasts) and Linux, which come in at 7 and 0.82 percent respectively. But don't take our word for it, hop on over to the source links and get your interactive chart on. [Thanks, Pipera]
iCloud now features Find My Mac service
Find my iPhone and Find My iPad have been around for awhile via MobileMe, and we've heard dozens of success stories where people used the service to recover lost or stolen iOS devices. Macs have been reliant on third-party solutions or clever hacking to enable the same functionality -- until now. With iCloud comes Find My Mac, a feature that's essentially identical to what's been offered for iOS devices. If you have a free iCloud account and your Mac is running OS X Lion 10.7.2 or greater, has Wi-Fi access, has a recovery partition installed (more on that later) and has been set up beforehand in the iCloud preferences, you can use Find My Mac to locate your computer anywhere in the world using either iCloud.com or the Find My iPhone app on an iOS device. Find My Mac is not enabled by default (possibly out of privacy concerns), so once you've met all the relevant prerequisites, go into System Preferences on your Mac, navigate to the iCloud preference pane, and tick the checkbox next to Find My Mac to enable it. If you've used Find My iPhone before, you'll be familiar with how Find My Mac works. You can locate your device on a map with a fairly reasonable degree of precision, assuming it's connected to Wi-Fi. You can also "ping" it so that a message of your choosing will pop up on screen (along with a very loud sonar sound alert), or you can remote lock or remote wipe the device. Remote wiping the Mac should be a last resort, though, because after you pull that trigger you won't be able to use Find My Mac to locate it. If Find My Mac can't find your device right away, you can even tell the service to send you an email when it does finally locate your Mac. It's all quite slick, and it should bring peace of mind to MacBook Air and Pro owners in particular. Find My Mac requires your Mac to have a recovery partition installed on it in order for the service to work. If you downloaded OS X Lion from the Mac App Store and did a normal installation, you already have a recovery partition on your Mac, so you don't need to worry about that requirement. But if you're like me and you used a third-party app to clone your Lion installation from an old disk to a new one, you likely missed out on that recovery partition and won't be able to take advantage of Find My Mac until you install one. There are various hacky solutions to this problem, none of them particularly user-friendly, but I found it easiest to simply re-install Lion completely and start fresh. Since Macs don't have built-in 3G or persistent Wi-Fi when they're asleep (in most cases), iCloud is going to have a harder time locating stolen Macs than iPhones or iPads. It's still a very handy feature, and it significantly increases your chances of recovering a Mac that's mysteriously sprouted legs and gone walkabout.
How to enable the FTP server (ftpd) in Lion
Apple decided to remove the GUI for enabling and disabling FTP from Mac OS X Lion. Generally speaking, that's not a bad move, because most times SFTP is available anywhere FTP is, and SFTP is far superior in terms of security. No one should be using FTP over the Internet. However, there are some cases when using FTP is perfectly fine. For instance, transferring large files over your own LAN. I do this all the time when transferring DVD rips from one machine to another. Others have mentioned that they have some devices which only support FTP so SFTP isn't an option. Personally, I prefer FTP on my LAN because, since it is unencrypted, there's no extra processing time needed to encrypt and decrypt the transfer. I'm also willing to admit that there may not be much practical difference in most cases -- that is, I don't know that SFTP is much slower than FTP, but when you're talking about "8 GB at a time" transfers, every little bit matters. Enabling FTP on Lion The good news is that Apple did not remove the FTP server (/usr/libexec/ftpd) from Lion, they only removed the GUI to enable or disable it. The even better news is that there are (at least) two GUI tools for re-enabling it: Lion Tweaks (which also lets you toggle other Lion settings) FTPD Enable App which is an AppleScript app to launch ftpd For those of us who prefer the command line, there are even instructions on how to enable ftpd using launchd. ftpd.sh I wrote a small shell script called ftpd which will let you turn ftpd on or off, or check its current status. Usage is very simple: ftpd.sh --on ftpd.sh --off ftpd.sh #1 will turn it on, #2 will turn it off, #3 will show you whether it is currently on or off. My script is based on Daniel Smith's launchd commands mentioned above. The script must be run as root, but if it isn't, it will automatically re-launch itself using 'sudo' rather than failing ungracefully. It is also smart enough not to try to turn it on when it is already on, or off when it is already off. To use the script, download ftpd.sh and then put it somewhere in your $PATH such as /usr/local/bin and make sure it is executable chmod 755 /path/to/ftpd.sh. (If any part of that previous sentence didn't make sense to you, I recommend using one of the GUI programs listed above. Using the Terminal is one option, but it's not the only option.) Once again I repeat: if you are trying to connect to another machine over the Internet in an otherwise unencrypted manner, use SFTP. The only time FTP should be used is when there is no chance of the password being 'sniffed' by a nefarious third party. You can enable SFTP and SSH in Lion (and previous versions of OS X) by going to System Preferences » Sharing and making sure that "Remote Login" is enabled. When in doubt, use SFTP. But if you need FTP and are aware of the risks, now you have the option of enabling it when needed. ftpd just one time If you want to enable ftpd immediately without downloading or installing any scripts or apps, simply enter: sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist into Terminal.app. If you want to turn it off afterwards, enter the command sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist All ftpd all the time If you use any of the above solutions, ftpd will be disabled again when you reboot the computer. If you want to enable ftpd automatically after every reboot, you will need to edit /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist by looking for the lines Disabled and changing them to Enabled which will tell Lion to enable ftpd on reboot. Use the launchctl load command shown above to enable it without rebooting. Note: I recommend that you do not edit ftp.plist unless you absolutely cannot avoid it. I am firmly against tinkering with anything in /System/ but at the end of the day, it's your computer, and if if your situation requires ftpd to be available at all times, editing the plist is the best way to make sure it is always on.
OWC updates its Mercury Extreme Pro 3G SSD lineup, offers 30GBs for just $68
Say hello to Other World Computing's latest 2.5-inch SSD, the 30GB variant of its Mercury Extreme Pro 3G series (3Gb/s, of course). This SandForce-driven SSD may not have loads of storage, but priced at a wallet-friendly 68 bucks, it's certainly tempting if your optical drive's been gathering dust. Whether you're running an ungodly amount of Firefox tabs on a Mac or Windows machine, you'll be covered with "sustained data rates of over 275MB/s," keeping your tasks speedy. Ready to ditch the beach balls and hourglasses? It's available now from OWC and you'll find more info in the PR past the break.
Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same technique can be used in just about any word processing or text editing application. "Does the app provide any auto-save settings?" The first thing to check is whether the application that you are using offers any auto-save or auto-recover options, even if it doesn't support Versions specifically. Microsoft Word offers two auto-save options. To find them, launch Word, then go to Preferences -> Save and check the options shown below: The middle underlined option is the most important: it says to save auto-recover information every minute. I think the default is every 10 minutes, but a lot can change in 10 minutes. The top checkbox is optional, but creating a backup means that you have another way to recover if something goes wrong. Options never hurt. These backups are stored in the same directory as the original, and the filenames end in "~" which is a long-standing convention for backup file names. The third is also optional, but personally I prefer the older .doc format simply because it's more compatible with other non-Microsoft applications. The XML-based .docx format also got a bad rap previously for compatibility issues with Dropbox, although if you're running the current version of the cloud storage utility you shouldn't have any problems. (That said, .docx is the better format, not to mention the more modern format. I think of the ".doc or .docx?" choice sort of like choosing between .mp3 or .m4a: the newer formats have technical advantages, but not as many applications support them. The difference, of course, is that it's usually pretty simple to convert between .doc and .docx.) "Where does the app store files?" Some applications automatically store files in a certain folder structure, and you can't move them (at least not without getting into creating links, which may or may not work well). Text editors and word processors, however, generally let you choose where to store files you create; Office also has settings for default folders for saving and auto-recovery under Preferences -> File Locations: Note that setting the default for "Documents" does not mean that you can't change it for individual files later, it just tells Microsoft Office where to start when opening or saving new files. You can also change the location of the AutoRecover files. I put mine into ~/Dropbox/Backups/Microsoft Office/ because if the computer I'm on dies completely, I can access the data from any other Dropbox-connected account. Is this an unlikely scenario/edge case? Absolutely. Does it hurt to set it anyway? Nope. "But my application doesn't have those settings!" Check out Default Folder X which, as the name implies, can set the default folder for just about any application (plus other things). Dropbox No doubt you noticed that I suggested using Dropbox to save the files. That's not just because they are available online or on any iOS device. Dropbox also keeps every revision for the past 30 days. That means that every time you hit "Save," a separate version is saved on Dropbox. Browsing Dropbox revisions isn't as visually slick as using Versions on Lion. To view them, select the file in Finder, and then use the Dropbox icon on your Finder toolbar, or Control-click (right-click, or two-finger click) on the file and use the Dropbox contextual menu. That will launch the Dropbox website and show you a listing of all the versions, and give you a chance to download them (some file formats can even be previewed online). While Dropbox only saves 30 days' worth of revisions, Dropbox Pro users also have the option to add the Pack-Rat feature which will keep revisions indefinitely. With every save, you are creating an off-site backup of your latest work, so even if you only use one computer, Dropbox is the place to save your most important and most often changed files. "But what if I forget to press save? My app doesn't have any sort of auto-save functionality!" Don't fret if your app doesn't have auto-save; you can add it to any application very simply by using Keyboard Maestro. It's as simple as creating a macro which says "If I am using {insert application name here}, and there is a 'Save' button, press it every X seconds or minutes." I've created just such a rule for Microsoft Word here: This rule will only run when Microsoft Word is active and there is a menu option for "Save" (which will be disabled if you don't have any files open). If it does find the Save menu item, it will select it. (You could also tell it to press "⌘ + S" but I prefer selecting menu items to keyboard shortcuts.) With this rule you never have to worry about spending an hour on a Word document only to lose it all when the app crashed and you realized that you had forgotten to save it. If the file isn't saved when the Keyboard Maestro macro runs, it will prompt you to name the file. (There are other applications like Keyboard Maestro which support the same kind of features, but Keyboard Maestro is the one that I know and use. If you would recommend others, let us know in the comments.) Versions is great, but there's no need to wait for your app to support it Versions is a great addition to OS X, and I love not having to remember to save, but only a handful of applications support it at the present time. If you want to (or are required to) use another application, take a few minutes to check out your auto-save options. There are few things more frustrating than losing unsaved work, but the good news is that there are fewer and fewer reasons for that to ever happen.
Splashtop Remote Desktop now available for Mac OS X, costs but $10
Not content with creating the possibility of (emulated) Wii gaming on Android tablets, Splashtop continues to spread itself across pretty much anything with a screen, with a Mac-friendly version available now at the Mac App Store. This release allows both Mac OS X 10.6 and Windows to hold hands across the great OS divide -- nice to see Splashtop is still beavering away at its "Bridge to Anywhere." Desktop access to both your most intimate files and programs -- through both local networks and the internet at large -- are but a $9.99 payment away.
iTwin's filesharing USB gets official OS X compatibility, still plays nice with Windows too
Sure, iTwin's USB filesharing drive has had Mac OS X (Lion and Snow Leopard) support in beta for some time now, but things just got official. If you'll recall, the iTwin's a double-sided splittable USB plug that allows you to play James Bond and remotely access files over the web under AES encryption of the 256-bit variety. Whether you're moving files between two Windows rigs, OS X devices or Mac to PC while globe-trotting, the iTwin promises to easily let you get your secure share on. As it stands, the iTwin remains priced at $99, and if you need a refresher on how it works, check out the video and PR just past the break.
Unreal Engine 3 comes to Mac OS X, courtesy of September UDK release
A scant four years after announcing Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 were coming to Mac OS X, Epic has finally renewed its enthusiasm for the Mac with the announcement of native Unreal Engine 3 support, courtesy of the free-to-use Unreal Development Kit. "Every UDK game's potential user base has increased dramatically yet again," the announcement reads, promising a previews of the engine's Mac OS support in the September 2011 UDK release. Considering Epic's high-profile support of Apple's Mac OS X-derived mobile operating system iOS, not to mention consistent Mac support from developers like Valve and Blizzard, Epic's entry in the space is hardly unexpected. But Mac support from Unreal Engine should extend far beyond Epic's own games; as one of the most popular development environments in existence, today's announcement (coupled with viable markets like Steam and the Mac OS App Store) should help UE-based developers reach an entirely new audience.
Lion Ultimatum brings desktop-like functionality and file manager to jailbroken iOS (video)
Sure, OS X Lion borrowed many of its design cues from Apple's iOS platform, but now users of jailbroken iPhone and iPod Touch devices may bring much of the desktop Mac's functionality onto their handset with Lion Ultimatum. In essence, this beta project is a theme for Dreamboard (which is required software), but it's rather far-reaching, with a functional file manager and Finder menus, a scrollable dock and draggable windows, along with Stacks, Launchpad, Mission Control and Dashboard. There's also a customizable lock screen that provides access to the dialer, email and messages. Even the keyboard can be modified to resemble the design of MacBook Pro or the traditional Apple Keyboard, thanks to integration with ColorKeyboard. If you're thirsty for more, hop the break for an extended video preview, or just follow the source for the full install instructions. [Thanks, Adam]
DimScreen simply dims your screen
Once upon a time, I had an application which would dim the screen of my Mac down to 0, and then exit. Somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the app and can no longer find it. Yes, I know I could just hold F1 and do the same thing manually, but I liked having an app that just did it for me. So I did what any self-respecting geek would do: I wrote a shell script. Others did the heavy lifting Let me be clear that my little shell script wrapped in Automator was only a tiny piece of this puzzle. First I'm going to tell you who did all the heavy lifting, and then you can decide how you want to put the pieces together for yourself. (I highly recommend reading to the end before you do anything.) Nicholas Riley wrote a C program called brightness which I found via Matt "Danger" West's website, which I found via Google. Matt includes the source code on his page, or you can download the original 'brightness.c' here and then you can compile it (according to Matt's instructions) using this line: gcc -std=c99 -o brightness brightness.c -framework IOKit -framework ApplicationServices Of course that assumes that you have Xcode installed. If you don't, you can either download and install Xcode (warning: it's 3 GB to download and I think it's somewhere between 7-10 GB when installed). If all of that seems like a lot of hassle, Matt also made a pre-compiled binary available for you to download. Here's what I did I wrote a shell script (dimscreen.zsh) which looks for brightness at $HOME/bin/brightness. If it does not find it there, it will attempt to download it "automagically" from my personal website and then install it to $HOME/bin/brightness. Once brightness is installed, it will dim the screen to 0 and then launch your screensaver. Why does it launch your screensaver? Because otherwise when you went to use your Mac, you might have forgotten that you set the brightness to 0. If you move the mouse or type, you won't see anything. However if the screensaver is on, one of two things will happen: If you have enabled the preference which requires a password to be entered after your screensaver is turned on, you will see that prompt. (Mac OS X is smart enough to automatically turn the screen brightness up a little for you to see that you need to enter your password.) If you do not require a password to be entered after your screensaver is turned on, my script will turn the brightness up as little as possible after the screensaver exits. That should keep you from getting blinded if you are working at night. Then you can adjust the brightness to whatever level you want. I took dimscreen.zsh and made it into an app ("Dim Screen.app") using Automator. I put dimscreen.zsh and the 'Dim Screen.app' and the 'brightness' command (and the source code) all into one nice neat package and put it on my Dropbox as DimScreen. "How do I use this?" 1) If you are the trusting type (or just impatient), download DimScreen, double click it to 'unarchive' it, and then move the 'Dim Screen.app' to /Applications/ (or wherever you keep your apps) and run it. The first time you run it, make sure that you are online so that it can download the brightness utility. (It will only do that once.) 2) If you are trusting to a point but don't want the app to download anything automatically, make a directory called 'bin' in your home directory (that's the one which has the 'Desktop' and 'Documents' and 'Downloads' directories in it). Then double-click the DimScreen.tar.bz2 file, and move the 'brightness' file to the ~/bin directryory you just created. 3) If you pride yourself on your distrust, then by all means, download the source code from the links provided above, compile the 'brightness' command on your own, and move it to ~/bin/ (where ~ is your Home directory). (If you are someone who likes the Terminal.app, you might want to put the dimscreen.zsh script into your $PATH as well, so you can launch it from the command line.) Once you have it installed, launch it via whatever app launcher you prefer. If you want to make it a "one click launch" you might consider Apptivate, a handy little launcher I reviewed previously. There are other ways to do it, of course, but Apptivate is still my preferred "I want to press this key (or "this key sequence") to run this Application/Script/etc" solution. P.S. Yes, I know about Control + Shift + Eject I am sure that some Mac keyboard aficionado will not have been able to wait until the end of the article, and is already writing a comment to tell me that if I press Control + Shift + Eject, then the Mac's screen will turn off. I know. The problem is, I never remember if it's Control or Command, and do I have to hold down the fn key or not. Plus it's really not the same thing, I don't just want it off, I want it dimmed all the way down. I still wanted an (even) easier way. I'm used to triggering all sorts of actions via LaunchBar and wanted to be able to dim my screen that way too. When I read on Apple Stack Exchange about someone who couldn't get that keyboard shortcut to work, I went looking for that old app (mentioned at the beginning of this article) and when I couldn't find it, I decided to just roll my own. Are there other ways of doing this? You bet. If you have a preferred solution, feel free to let us know in the comments.
VMware Fusion 4 brings full Lion support, wants to make Windows act less like Windows
Leave it to VMware to put the spotlight back on Lion when this is, without a doubt, Windows 8's week. The company just announced Fusion 4, the latest version of its virtualization software, and, as you'd expect, it pledges to play nice with Apple's newly minted OS. In addition to fully supporting Lion features like Spotlight, though, it makes Windows look more like, well, a Mac. The software includes improved support for Expose and Spaces on the Windows side, and adds the ability to use Mission Control and launch Windows apps from Launchpad. Additionally, you can run Lion as a virtual machine within Snow Leopard and VMware makes vague claims about improved performance, 3D graphics and resource-hogging. It'll cost $50 through the end of the year, with the price jumping up to $80 in January. Fittingly enough, VMware picked up on the fact that Apple's moving away from optical drives, and instead chose to ship the software with a USB drive (you can also download it and do the whole drag-and-drop installation thing). Oh, and if you bought the last-gen version of the software on July 20th or later, you'll get the new version gratis. Lots of screen shots below, and full PR after the break.%Gallery-133556%
Adobe rolls out cloud-based Carousel photo service for Apple devices
Looking for another way to store your photos that doesn't involve a shoebox in your closet or a hard drive on your desk? Then you now also have Adobe's new cloud-based Carousel service to consider, which will initially come in the form of apps for iOS and Mac OS X Lion later this month (support for Windows and Android is apparently coming next year). The real selling point here is that your photos are instantly synced across said devices (and you can edit them on each), although that convenience comes at a cost -- the apps themselves are free but you'll be charged $60 a year or $6 per month until January, and $100 a year or $10 a month after that. Video is after the break.
Managing your Mac's Address Book
Address Book.app on your Mac offers two options for getting information out of your address book: "Export vCard..." or "Address Book Archive..." but you may not have ever known which you should use and which you should avoid as if it were a swarm of bees. Here's a simple mnemonic: "vCards good, Address Book Archives VERY VERY BAD." Sorry for yelling, but it's true. Address Book Archives can only do one thing: replace your entire address book. Why is that bad? Let's assume you backup every Monday, and then some Friday you realize that you accidentally deleted some contacts. If your only backup is an Address Book Archive, you have to hope that you won't lose any important information that you've added or changed since Monday. If you had an export of your vCards, you could merge it with your existing information: The only real "trick" to exporting vCards is that you have to be sure to select all contacts before choosing File » Export » Export vCard... Also, if you want to see what Address Book is going to do, click the "Review Duplicates..." button (above) and then click "Keep Both" to see the Old vs New information: vCards are also a good choice because they can be used by a variety of different programs, whereas Address Book Archives are only useful for Mac OS X's Address Book app
Mobee intros Magic Numpad for your Magic Trackpad, glittery dust not included
Do you use a Magic Trackpad? Is the act of crunching numbers a daily task for you? Well, if actual keys or a calculator / mouse hybrid just aren't magical enough for you, then Mobee's Magic Numpad may just be. Despite its name, the Numpad is a $29 set of films that allows you to morph your Trackpad into one of three numeric "keypad" layouts, with software for enabling an on-screen calculator and setting macros. Adding Splenda to the strawberries, you'll also get a cleaning kit and erasable marker to customize your films even further. If the left side of your brain is pounding with excitement, the Magic Numpad is available for pre-order now and should ship come this October.
Snow Leopard to get iCloud support in 10.6.9 update?
Apparently those of you who aren't upgrading to Cupertino's latest and greatest desktop OS will be able to sling bits through iCloud with the upcoming 10.6.9 update. The screenshot above comes via an eagle-eyed developer, who's already upgraded his MobileMe account to the service and also happened to open its forebearer's preference pane on a machine running Tiger. No word on when it'll drop (we'd place our bets alongside iOS 5's launch this fall), but looks like those of you running Snow Leopard got some readin' to do.
Mac 101: Don't forget about Hot Corners
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice Mac users. After reading fellow TUAW blogger Dave Caolo's post on Mac OS Lion and Mission Control, and then TUAW blogger Chris Rawson's Additional Tips for OS X Lion's Mission Control, I thought it pertinent to mention a few further words on Hot Corners. With the advent of advanced multi-touch gestures in new Macs, it's easier than ever to get around Mac OS X, and even more so in OS X Lion with Mission Control. But since I don't have a newer Mac with advanced multi-touch gestures, I find Hot Corners invaluable in Lion, as I did in Snow Leopard and previous versions of Mac OS X before it. Even if I did have access to advanced multi-touch gestures, I'm certain I'd still make full use of Hot Corners. Hot Corners are the assignment of certain features to the four corners of your desktop. A Hot Corner is activated by shoving your mouse pointer in the respective corner of your desktop screen. A Hot Corner can be assigned to turn your screen saver on, put your display to sleep, display all open windows or, as Dave mentioned in his post, open Mission Control -- which is useful if you're like me and don't have a newer multi-touch trackpad like me. Personally, I've assigned my bottom right Hot Corner to open Launch Pad, it's a quick and easy way to access all my applications. I find using a Hot Corner much quicker than opening Launch Pad from the dock and then opening an application. My bottom left Hot Corner is assigned to show my desktop. Activating this Hot Corner shoves every open window on my desktop to the left, leaving me free to peruse files and documents on my desktop, and then by activating the Hot Corner again, all my open windows return to exactly the way they were before. My top right Hot Corner opens Mission Control and my top left Hot Corner puts my display to sleep. It couldn't be simpler! To assign a Hot Corner in OS X Lion, go to System Preferences and click on Mission Control. You'll find the Hot Corners button at the bottom left of that window. For previous versions of OS X, go to System Preferences and click on Dashboard and Expose.
OS X Lion 10.7.2 seed 2 now available for developers
Numerous tipsters have advised us that OS X Lion 10.7.2 seed 2 has been made available to developers. Notification of the update was sent to developers yesterday afternoon. According to information sent to TUAW by developers, there are no known issues with the seed, which indicates that 10.7.2 may be released in the near future. Apple has asked developers to focus on the functionality of AirPort (Wi-Fi), AppKit, Graphics Drivers, the Mac App Store, Mail, and Spotlight. The first update to Lion, OS X Lion 10.7.1, was released six days ago and addressed issues with Wi-Fi, Migration Assistant, video playback in Safari, and a problem with audio playback when using HDMI or optical audio out.
