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Getting Ready for Mountain Lion: Dictation
Mountain Lion is about to debut one of my favorite features ever: Dictation. With built-in support for speech-to-text, OS X Mountain Lion allows you to talk instead of type in nearly every app on the system. You'll be able to access dictation using a simple keyboard shortcut, a double click on the Function (fn) key. And if your keyboard doesn't have one available, or if you prefer another choice, System Preferences allows you to customize that shortcut. Dictation will be integrated with many system features, including Contacts, so it will more accurately recognize your colleagues' names. You don't have to worry that "Victor Agreda" will transform into "Vic tore a gray dar". (Although, truth be told, I'm still struggling to make my iPhone 4S realize that "call Mike Rose's phone" isn't "call microphone", and it uses the same speech-and-contacts integration as Mountain Lion.) If you're using Mountain Lion on a Mac without a built-in microphone (like my 2009 Mac mini), you'll need to hook up one in order to use the dictation features. You can use headsets as well as stand-alone mics. Mountain Lion dictation follows the same rules as Siri. You can dictate punctuation and capitalization as you talk. For example, you can say "hello world exclamation point" and Mountain Lion will type "Hello world!" Other handy meta-items include new line, period, comma, and question mark. Dictation is smart. Say, "Twenty two dollars and 32 cents" and it's automatically transformed into "$22.32." It handles dates, too. Say, "Thursday July Fourth Seventeen Seventy Six at Three P M" and it types "Thursday, July 4, 1776 at 3 PM." You can even say "smiley" and "frowny face" to add emoticons, namely, :-) and :-(, which may or may not please you as the hyphen noses are not exactly standard. Once you start working with dictation, you'll find that it can solve a problem you didn't know you had. Unfortunately, Mountain Lion offers dictation and only dictation. You can't ask a virtual voice assistant to shoot off an email or send a message ... at least not yet! Dictation supports English (U.S., UK, and Australia), French, German, and Japanese. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and Erica Sadun wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Google announces iOS Notification Center support for Gmail
Google has announced some good news for prospective Mountain Lion users on its official blog: The company will tie Gmail notifications into Apple's Notification Center, which means you'll be able to know at a moment's notice when you've got emails to read. The integration will support banners, full alerts, and options for the lock screen, and Google says its notifications will be up to five times faster as well, so you'll know right away when that important message comes in. Google's also offering a few other improvements (including sending from multiple addresses, as well as longer login periods), but that Mountain Lion notification note is the most pertinent for us. Mountain Lion comes out in July of this year. In other news, can it be July yet? [via The Loop]
Getting Ready for Mountain Lion: Share sheets
One of Mountain Lion's most exciting features comes straight from iOS. If you're a mobile user, you're probably familiar with the "Share" button with its curved arrow shape. In iOS, you use this to redirect data to other apps. For example, you can tweet things, mail them, and so forth. In iOS 6, you'll be able to post them to your Facebook wall as well later this year. Now this sharing capability has come to Mountain Lion. You'll be able to send links, documents, photos, and videos with just a click without having to drag your files around the way you used to. Click on the Share button and choose how you want to send a file. The share menu automatically presents those services that make sense in the context of the app you're using. Each app is allowed to add its own services as well, so the menu you see is always application-appropriate. For example, in Safari, you'll be able to add bookmarks and save the current page to your reading list. If you're worried about authentication, don't be. Once you've signed into your standard services (these include Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, and Flickr), you can tweet, post, and upload with the sharing menu without having to worry about re-entering credentials. Mountain Lion provides system wide access to your account. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and Erica Sadun wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
MacTech and TUAW talk WWDC
Neil Ticktin and I sat down last week to talk about the announcements coming out of WWDC, and take a look at MacTech's iPad app that intelligently allows you to read their content with ease.
Getting ready for Mountain Lion: Backups
Although most Mac OS X upgrades go smoothly, there's always a chance that something can go wrong. Hundreds of thousands of files are changed during an upgrade, so there's a possibility that one or more of those changes can cause your Mac to decide to not boot up properly. Without a backup, your data might be gone forever. Before you purchase Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store in July and begin the process of upgrading, make sure you back up your Mac! To begin with, you'll need an external disk drive that is at least twice the capacity of the drive that's built into your Mac. USB drives are surprisingly affordable; a glance at Amazon.com today showed a number of 2 TB drives for US$120 or less. Backups don't have to be difficult, thanks to Apple's Time Machine utility. Just plug your external drive into your Mac and OS X will ask if you wish to use that drive for Time Machine backups. Answer in the affirmative, and backups begin immediately. I'm personally a fan of bootable backups, meaning that if the primary hard drive in your Mac fails, you can boot right off of the backup copy. To create these backups, I use SuperDuper! ($27.95). Every night, the app performs some file maintenance, then adds changed or new files to a full backup (SuperDuper! includes a scheduling tool for setting up backups at regular intervals). To make sure that the backup is indeed bootable, I test it once a month. Another amazing app for bootable backups is Carbon Copy Cloner (Free, but $20 recommended). To test your bootable backup, go to System Preferences and click on "Startup Disk". Click on the backup drive icon to select it, and then click the Restart button. If all is well, your Mac should boot from the backup drive. Daily backups should be part of your Mac OS X routine already, but if they aren't, then the move to Mountain Lion should provide your impetus to start backing up now. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and Erica Sadun wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Growl 2.0 and Mountain Lion Notification Center: working together
Growl (US$1.99) is a favorite tool for many of the bloggers at TUAW. For those of you unfamiliar with Growl, it's currently the notification tool of choice for a lot of Mac users. When someone updates a shared Dropbox folder, for instance, or uses my name on the Colloquy IRC client, Growl lets me know by showing a floating window noting which app wants my attention and why. Sounds like Notification Center in Mountain Lion, doesn't it? Well, the developers of Growl announced yesterday that they'll be coexisting with Mountain Lion's Notification Center rather than suffer the fate of being "Sherlocked" by Apple (a term meaning that Apple builds functionality into an OS release or app that usurps the need for a third-party app). Growl's Chris Forsythe drew a roadmap for users and devs in a blog post yesterday, noting that "For Growl 2 we're simply going to add a Notification Center action display as well. This is going to make it easy for anyone who wants to see notifications in Growl, and also in Notification Center." A new architecture will let Growl 2 handle visual notifications and actions separately. Forsythe says "You could have a Smoke display, and the Mail Me action fire from the same notification if you want." Notification Center will only work with Mac App Store apps, while Growl 2 can allow apps that are sold externally and approved through Gatekeeper to enable desktop notification. [via MacStories]
Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me watch and work at the same time
Dear Aunt TUAW, Ever since I upgraded to OS X Lion, I've been unable to use dual monitors if I have an application running in full screen on my iMac's display. I would love to be able to fire a movie up on the second display, make it full screen and still make use of my iMac, rather than turning it into a 21.5" television that can do so much more... Any ways to accomplish this? Your loving nephew, Josh, aka Single-Display in Columbus Dear Josh, Lion's inability to properly handle full screen apps across multiple displays is truly an irritating feature, although it's one that Mountain Lion will apparently address. Instead, she recommends using QuickTime's "Fit to Screen" (Command-3) for that television watching instead of "Enter Full Screen" (Control-Command-F). Yes, this leaves your desktop wallpaper visible. So if you are really concerned about these things, hop into System Preferences and set your desktop to a solid black (System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop > Apple > Solid Colors > Black). Auntie has found one exception to the full screen dilemma: Aperture. According to Uncle Rich, Aperture will use the second monitor when the primary one is in full screen mode. It doesn't do it by default but you can turn it on after entering full screen. This is probably because Aperture's full screen mode predates Lion, though; Aperture has always worked this way. Want to let Apple know how you feel about dual-full-screen issues? Drop them a note at their bug reporting site. Hugs, Auntie T.
Getting Ready for Mountain Lion: Checking your Mac's vintage
Will your Mac actually run OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion? Depends on its vintage. If you're new to the Mac, Apple's use of "vintage" identifiers (the introduction date for a model of Mac) can be a little startling to those used to actual model numbers. For example, you might own a Mac Mini from July 2011, or a MacBook Air from October 2010. You'll see these dates when you shop for hardware and when you need to upgrade. Here's a listing from Apple's store, highlighting the release date of the laptop's model. That vintage information is used in various ways to support your unit and helps identify what features the hardware can provide, since each generation of Macs brought a certain cluster of capabilities to the table. To look up your Mac's vintage, do the following. Select About this Mac from the Apple menu, then click the More Info... button. This brings you to a system overview screen, like the one at the top of this post. Here, you'll find the name and generation of your Mac. Some users like to know the model name as well as the vintage, although this is not needed for Apple compatibility charts. To find out the exact Model Identifier in use, then click the System Report button. In the Hardware Overview screen, you'll find your exact model name (e.g. Mac mini) and identifier (Macmini3,1 for the Early 2009 minis). Once you know a model's vintage, you'll be able to use that information when checking compatibility at Apple's website. Here is a screen shot from the Mountain Lion technical specifications page, which details which models you'll be able to install OS X 10.8 on. By knowing your Mac Mini is from early 2009, for example, you'll be assured that you're good to upgrade it to Mountain Lion. Your Mac's vintage provides an essential way you can identify your unit to look up information on Apple's site or when talking to any of Apple's technical support branches. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and I wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99. Thanks, John Jellema #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Some of the awesome, lesser-known new features in OS X Mountain Lion
The big new features of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion like iMessage, Notification Center, Dictation, Facebook and Twitter integration, and AirPlay are getting all the attention. However, for me, the coolest stuff in major releases of OS X are always the little things one might not notice right away. And OS X Mountain Lion, with over 200 new features in all, has a lot of cool "little things" to look forwards to. Here's a few of them: Rename documents from their title bar: Rename a document without leaving the app. Just click the filename in the title bar and choose Rename from the document menu. Calendar sidebar is back: Click the Calendars button (in iCal) to keep a list of all your calendars accessible in a sidebar. Address Book Groups column: Contacts includes a new groups column, which always gives you quick access to your contact groups. Inline progress for downloads and file copies in Finder: When copying a file from a server or connected drive, you'll see its progress in the file's icon in the Finder. You can also cancel a copy in progress. Automatic download of app updates: The Mac App Store automatically downloads app updates and OS X software updates so they're ready to be installed. Inline find in Mail: Easily find a word or phrase in a message. As you type, Mail instantly highlights all occurrences of the text you're looking for in a specific message while dimming the rest of the message. The Find banner displays the number of results. Use the arrow keys to browse matches. Fill out PDF forms in Preview: Preview lets you quickly fill out forms. It detects areas that are intended for text entry, such as underlining and boxes. Just click to add your text. And click to select checkboxes. Search notes and highlights in PDF's: In Preview, search notes and highlights in a PDF document either by author or by content. High-performance H.264 encoding: When you select a standard HD export setting, QuickTime Player takes advantage of hardware video encoding for optimal performance (dependent on which Mac you're using). Do Not Track: Safari supports an emerging privacy standard called "Do Not Track." When you turn on Do Not Track or surf the web with Private Browsing, Safari asks the websites you visit not to track you online. Improved scroll bars: Scroll bars in Mountain Lion expand when you hover the cursor over them, so it's easier to scroll a web page or document. Go full screen on any display: If you have a secondary display connected to your Mac, you can take an app full screen on either display. Drag the window to the desired display and click the full-screen button. Game Center-enabled Chess: Chess in Mountain Lion includes Game Center support so you can go head to head with your friends. Sign in to the Game Center app to see your achievements and track your progress. As is often the case with Apple's hardware and software, it's the little things that make its products truly great (Come on! Game Center-enabled Chess.app?). The examples above are just a few of the ones taken from Apple's Mountain Lion Features page. Click on over to see the complete list of all 200+ reasons Mountain Lion is going to be the best OS X yet.
Getting ready for Mountain Lion: checking for compatibility
Does your Mac qualify for Mountain Lion? Not every system does, although if you're already running OS X Lion, chances are good that you'll be able to upgrade. Still, you'll want to check. The following hardware models will support Mountain Lion, according to Apple's specifications page: iMac (Mid 2007 or newer) MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer) Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer) Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) Mountain Lion requires 2GB RAM or more (we recommend putting in as much RAM as your computer can hold; it's probably the most cost effective high-value upgrade you can give your system) and 8GB of free hard drive space (we recommend 15-20 GB at least, preferably more). You can upgrade from OS X Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) as well as Lion (OS X 10.7). Make sure you update to OS X 10.6.8 first, the latest Snow Leopard release. From there, you can purchase Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store and install it to your computer. Upgrading will not wipe away any user accounts or user data you have installed on your computer. For the most part, you can upgrade, and then pick up working wherever you left off. You may find that some apps won't make the leap, but most will -- although that's a topic for another post. Not all Mountain Lion features work out-of-the-box on all systems. To use AirDrop, the feature that lets you share files between computers using configuration-free drag-and-drop, you need a fairly recent system: MacBook Pro (Late 2008 or newer), MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer), MacBook (Late 2008 or newer), iMac (Early 2009 or newer), Mac mini (Mid 2010 or newer), Mac Pro (Early 2009 with AirPort Extreme card, or Mid 2010). My personal 2009 Mac mini doesn't support AirDrop. AirPlay Mirroring, which lets you transmit your computer's screen to Apple TV, requires mid-2011 hardware or newer for the most part. You can work around both of these limitations, if you have a mind to. We posted directions on how to enable AirDrop on older systems. You can use a third party solution like AirParrot to add your own screen mirroring to nearly any Mac, including those running older operating systems. For many new Mac owners, your move to Mountain Lion represents your first major upgrade. To help users prepare to make the jump, Steve Sande and I wrote Getting Ready for Mountain Lion, an Amazon/iBooks eBook. It's aimed at first-time upgraders and people looking for hints and tips about smoothing the transition. We're sharing some of our tips on TUAW in a series of posts about the 10.8 upgrade. OS X Mountain Lion will be offered for sale in July 2012 for $19.99. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Apple releases Mountain Lion Preview 4 and iOS 6 for developers, iTunes 10.6.3 for everyone else
Looking to tame Apple's Mountain Lion? Step right up, Cupertino's latest build of OS X is ready for consumption -- assuming you're a registered developer, of course. Following WWDC's reveals and teases, Apple has released an updated preview of its desktop and mobile operating systems, serving up Mountain Lion Preview 4 and an iOS 6 beta to developers. The rest of us will have to console ourselves with iTunes 10.6.3, which adds support for the mobile and desktop OS' those fancy devs are getting their hands on. Don't worry, the updated music management software will be able to make full use of Mountain Lion next month, but you'll have to wait until this fall to sync with iOS 6. Hit the source link below to get your update.
Apple's WWDC keynote video is up, play along at home (update 2: video for everybody)
Next-generation MacBook Pros? iOS 6? The new Maps app? Sure, you watched the whole thing live, but is that really enough? Apple's tossed up the Tim Cook-led WWDC keynote, so now you can experience the magic of liveblogging the whole thing all over again. Check out the video in the source link below. Update: Looks like it's only Safari users who get a peek at first: if you're on Chrome, Firefox or another browser, you'll have to sit tight for a little while longer. Update 2: The keynote video now looks to be working for most, so stream away.
Apple introduces Power Nap at WWDC 2012
Apple introduced Power Nap, a new feature of OS X during today's WWDC 2012 keynote. Available on the MacBook Air (2nd gen) and MacBook Pro with Retina Display "Mac laptops with flash storage," this feature runs backups and "keeps data up to date" while the computer sleeps. Apple notes that Power Nap is silent and power efficient. It's supposed to get mail, update calendar entries and more -- including backing up to Time Capsule, if you've got one.
Apple announces Mountain Lion will be available in July for $19.99
Apple announced that Mountain Lion will be available in July for US$19.99. Upgrades to Macs purchased as of today will be free. Any system going back to Snow Leopard can update at this price. Several of the new features for the upcoming release of Mountain Lion revolve around iCloud, including Reminders, Messages and Notes. There will be Document-based apps as well, with document libraries available and updated across all Apple devices. This includes Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Preview and TextEdit. The notification center also will be added with a number of changes from the version currently in iOS. The Mac is gaining dictation in Mountain Lion, which can be used in third-party applications. Safari will have Twitter and other sharing options built into it, along with a unified search tool and syncing of tabs among all Apple devices. A new feature called Power Nap will update your Mac while it sleeps, but it's only available on certain models. Other features include AirPlay Mirroring, the GameCenter and several features were added specifically for Chinese markets including new input messages and support for Chinese social networks such as Baidu. We will have a full look into these Mountain Lion features throughout the day.
OS X Mountain Lion: arrives on Macs next month, priced at $20
You got it. The latest version of Mac OS X is coming in a matter of weeks, and will set you back just shy of twenty bucks. If any of those new beastly, Ivy Bridge-decked machines made you reconsider your bank balance, breathe a (small) sigh of relief -- you'll be treated to a free upgrade if you decide to buy one before Mountain Lion arrives in July. For more coverage of WWDC 2012, please visit our event hub!
Apple unveils new features for Safari: unified search, iCloud Tabs multi-device syncing and more
Apple's fresh new hardware may have gotten the headlines thus far during Apple's 2012 WWDC keynote, but there's also some good news for browser aficionados, too. Safari has taken a page out of Chrome's book by offering unified search for the web, your history and bookmarks. Additionally, Safari now syncs your web-browsing info across all your devices. Called iCloud Tabs, the feature lets you see the tabs you have open on any device simultaneously. That means you can surf the web on your iPhone while you're out and about, and continue your web session seamlessly on that shiny new MacBook Pro when you get home by clicking the new handy dandy iCloud button. Not only that, Safari's picked up some new multitouch tricks, letting you swipe all the way out to tab view, then pinch on the page you want to dive back in. Safari's Mobile version has also gained the ability to upload images directly and it now has an Offline Reading List that downloads and caches anything you add. Furthermore, Safari can now provide a notification if there's an app for the website you're browsing. Tapping the notification brings you to the App Store, and once downloaded, the browser pushes the URL to the app so you can pick up the content right where you left off. %Gallery-157904% For more coverage of WWDC 2012, please visit our event hub!
Messages in Mountain Lion brings conversations to your Mac
Messages has been in beta for a bit, but today Apple showed off what's coming in Mountain Lion, and I think it finally fixes a huge problem with our devices: conversation fragmentation. You may start a conversation on your iPhone, but then continue on your Mac later. In applications like Skype, or web services like Campfire, these persist across devices. With Mountain Lion, your conversations in Messages will transfer across Macs and iOS devices. It's about time! I hope Apple provides some mechanism for allowing/disallowing conversations, however. As a parent who often allows his kids to play with my first generation iPad, it would be a bit silly to have them join in my work conversations.
Apple brings Dictation to the Mac, tells Siri to stay in the car
Apple has just announced that it's bringing new iPad-style dictation to Mountain Lion. In the same way that you can tap the button on the digital keyboard, hitting the microphone button will allow you to speak directly into native software, websites like Facebook and even third-party applications like Microsoft Word. For more coverage of the WWDC 2012 Keynote, check out our liveblog!
Mountain Lion update includes automatic Mac app downloads
Apple is set to bring automatic app downloads to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion when it debuts later this summer. As noted by 9to5Mac, the latest build of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion only has a partially working Automatic Downloads feature, but users can expect to see a finalized working version when OS X 10.8 ships. Automatic Downloads is currently a feature of iOS which allows the same app to be downloaded instantly on all a user's devices (iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad) no matter what device the user chooses to download the app on. The feature is an easy way to keep all your devices in sync with any new apps you may have purchased. Automatic Downloads in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion could work in a similar manner. When you first download an app from the Mac App Store a notification will appear asking if you want to enable Automatic Downloads. Doing so will install any app purchased on the Mac App Store to any Mac that is logged in with the same Mac App Store account (provided those Macs are also running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion). Automatic Downloads in Mountain Lion is just another way Apple is bringing the user experience of OS X and iOS closer to parity.
Apple slips out new OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion beta, leaves 2007 MacBook Pro in a momentary lurch
Apple looks to be stepping up the frequency of OS X Mountain Lion beta updates after initially keeping the pace slow and steady: it just posted a new, unceremoniously titled 12A206J build for developers. What the update fixes in the Developer Preview isn't clear, but there are still glitches with Fast User Switching, Java applets, sharing menus and Notes syncing with iTunes, among a handful of other showstoppers. There's also a major heads-up for those who own mid-2007 MacBook Pros, as they can't properly run Mountain Lion at all until another update. We wouldn't be surprised if there's another fix in store ahead of WWDC next month, and there's still all of the summer left for Apple to put the final polish on the OS and make its release target.
