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BusyCal 2 adds new views, menu bar quick entry, gives up Sync Services
It was already among the leading Calendar/iCal replacement apps for productivity aficionados, and now BusyCal has received a boost of new functionality with the release of BusyCal 2. The update includes improved iCloud functionality, and is also compatible with Google Calendar and other services based on the CalDAV standard. It requires OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion; users of Leopard and Snow Leopard can still use BusyCal 1.6 to sync over the local network with 2.0 users. BusyCal 2 adds natural language support for event entry, a live 10-day weather forecast and even a new heat map view that gives you a glimpse at how busy the next 12 months will be. The updated app also works hand in hand with new Mountain Lion features like Notification Center for updates and alerts. A new menu bar applet (similar to Fantastical and Today) lets you browse the day's events without opening the full BusyCal application, and you can also use it to create new events and to-do reminders. In addition to the cloud service calendar access it offers, BusyCal retains its popular ability to sync calendars between instances of the app running on different Macs on the same LAN... with a caveat or two. Users of BusyCal 1.6 should note that there are several functional changes from 1.6 to 2.0. As Apple's Sync Services framework is deprecated in Mountain Lion, features in BusyCal that leveraged it (crossover synchronization with iCal/Calendar, Outlook or Entourage; direct calendar sync via iTunes to iOS devices) are no longer available. Since BusyCal 2.0 doesn't sync with calendar apps that support Exchange, the BC 1.x "hack" that allowed Outlook users to replicate their work calendars onto Google Calendar isn't possible in the new version. In fact, BusyCal 2 doesn't publish calendars to Google at all; they need to be created on the web side, then you can subscribe to them in the app. Another consequence of the rebuild is that LAN-shared calendars (not iCloud or Google hosted calendars) cannot be synced to iTunes devices or published to the cloud services; they are local network only. BusyCal 2 carries over the same clean, accessible aesthetic of its predecessor, letting you view the upcoming days, weeks, months or even years without being overwhelmed. The app is available for US$29.99 via the App Store, but you can take it for a free 30-day test drive via the official website.
TweetBot for Mac reaches the Mac App Store, keeps the 3rd-party Twitter client flame alive
When Twitter put out its strict new API guidelines, there was some doubt as to whether or not third-party clients like Tapbots' Tweetbot for Mac would even make the cut -- the user caps and other curbs on unofficial apps potentially made it tough to develop competition around a different (and possibly better) experience. That makes today's official appearance of Tweetbot in the Mac App Store as much symbolic as it is practical. While there won't be many significant shocks for those who've been participating in Tweetbot's alpha and beta stages, the finished version gives everyone running OS X Mountain Lion a major and sometimes more advanced alternative to official choices, such as TweetDeck, as well as existing third-party options like Twitterrific. A $20 price doesn't make Tweetbot the cheapest way to buck convention by any means, but it might be worth the investment if you're already committed to Tapbots' iOS apps or want to make a statement on the value of third parties in an ecosystem.
Mountain Lion 101: Assign keyboard shortcuts to Mail outgoing accounts
Making its appearance again in Mountain Lion is the ability to assign a keyboard shortcut that'll enter an outgoing email account for a message you are composing in Mail. This feature was available in earlier versions of OS X, but was removed in OS X Lion. Now that the shortcut is back in Mountain Lion, it's time to revisit this feature and show you how to set it up. You can use these instructions below to assign the shortcut and use it when composing an email. Before you get started, you need the name of your email account as it appears in the Mail application. If you don't know these details, then you should open Mail, compose a message and click on the From field to see the available email accounts. The syntax should look something like this: To set the keyboard shortcut, you must open the Keyboard panel in the System Preferences and click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab as shown below. You can set shortcuts for a variety of apps from this menu, but we are going to focus on Mail. Click on "Application Shortcuts" on the left and look for the + icon at the bottom center. Click on this + and select "Mail" from the Application menu. Type in your email address (don't forget the formatting shown above) into the Menu Title and enter your Keyboard Shortcut combo. As noted by Kirk McElhearn in Macworld hints, the keyboard combo should be easy to remember and ideally related to your email account. I used this suggestion in the example below and selected command-option-control and the letter T for my TUAW account. You can click Add when you are done. The next time you are composing a message, it'll be extremely easy to select the correct email address for the From field. All you have to do is type the shortcut command and Mail will enter the email address you assigned in the shortcut. You can setup shortcuts for a few email address or all of them, if you prefer.
OS X 10.8.2 Supplemental Update 1.0 live in App Store
Do you have issues with certain Japanese characters not appearing in Mail? Are you frustrated by Safari's inability to access secure sites when parental controls are turned on? Or is your system having trouble starting up with more than 64 GB of RAM? If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you may be interested in the OS X 10.8.2 Supplemental Update 1.0, currently downloadable from the App Store. This 27 MB Mountain Lion 10.8.2 patch fixes the three specific issues listed, and does require a restart. Macworld notes that there's also a 10.7.5 Supplemental Update in the wild, which addresses a Time Machine issue and a problem with Developer ID-signed apps failing to launch.
Apple releases OS X 10.8.2 update for Mountain Lion: Facebook integration, iMessage fixes and more
Looks like one major software update wasn't enough, as Apple is following its push of iOS 6 with OS X 10.8.2. Weighing in at 697.54MB, it's a pretty substantial update for Mountain Lion users, with that long-awaited Facebook integration chief among the changes. As Twitter presently operates within the OS, Facebook will now too enjoy single sign-on simplicity, and all of OS X's sharing portals will now include Facebook as an option. You'll get Facebook notifications in Notification Center, and you can share Game Center scores with your Facebook pals. It's also being reported that this build restores laptop battery life levels to those seen with Lion. Other new features include the addition of Power Nap for the Late 2010 MacBook Air, a few iMessage tweaks (iMessages sent to your phone number will now appear on your Mac), a new shared Reminders list and the ability to receive FaceTime calls initially sent to your phone number. Passbook users will also enjoy the newfangled ability to add passes right from Safari and Mail, and Dictation now understands Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Korean, Canadian English (!), Canadian French and Italian. We're installing the update now, and you can peek the full changelog after the break. Feel free to toss your post-install impressions in comments as well.
Zorro Macsk review: instantly add touchscreen functionality to your 21.5-inch iMac
Over the years we've come across a few signs that pointed to the possibility of touchscreen-enabled iMacs, but Steve Jobs had already dismissed this as a possibility for current Mac form factors. Quoting the man at the "Back to the Mac" keynote from two years ago: "It gives great demo, but after a while your arm feels like it's going to fall off. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal." So perhaps our fantasy's still stuck in the "research project" phase. Luckily, the more adventurous touchscreen lovers can look to third-party solutions. For MacBooks you have Axiotron's Modbook, except you lose the keyboard and you can't perform the modification yourself. As for iMacs and Cinema Displays, we've been following Troll Touch for its resistive touchscreen replacement panels, but they aren't exactly affordable and most of them have to be installed by the company. Even its user-installable SlipCover series starts from $899, anyway. This leaves us with the Zorro Macsk, a cheekily named iMac accessory hailing from TMDtouch of Shenzhen, China. The 21.5-inch model is priced at just $199 on Amazon with no modifications required. Plus, it supports multitouch -- a glaring omission from Troll Touch's Mac lineup. So is this truly a bargain? Or is it just a case of "you get what you pay for?" Follow past the break to see how we got on with the Zorro Macsk.%Gallery-165013%
7 million upgrades to Mountain Lion sold so far, the fastest-selling version of OS X yet
Kicking off its huge San Francisco event Apple CEO Tim Cook told the packed auditorium that Mountain Lion OS X is the fast-selling operating system it's ever had. He added that the company's family of notebooks have now ranked number 1 in the US for the last three months, grabbing a 27 percent market share. This equates to an additional 15 percent of growth since last year, compared to a slightly more modest two percent growth in the PC sector -- Apple has outpaced the PC industry over the last six years. Check out all the coverage at our iPhone 2012 event hub!
Chitika research: Mountain Lion on 1 of every 10 Macs
In news that really should surprise no one, Chitika Insights used web impressions to determine that a little more than a month after its release, OS X Mountain Lion has been installed on one out of every 10 Macs. Most of those installations took place within the first week of release, with an additional spike in downloads within the past week. With the low upgrade price and the ease of installation through the Mac App Store, the fact that a lot of Macs already are running it isn't a shock. Previous studies by Chitika showed that the adoption of OS X leaped a bit in the month after Lion was released in 2011, and that Mountain Lion downloads accounted for 3% of web traffic in the week after it was released. [via GigaOM]
Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac: Retina Support, Dictation, Instant switching and 30 percent faster performance
Parallels 8 has arrived with a raft of tweaks that makes running Windows on your Mac that much easier. The newest version lets you use Mountain Lion's dictation feature in Windows, open any website in Internet Explorer with a single click and you can even add Redmond-hewn apps to Launchpad. Retina display support is now included, offering you eye-popping detail no matter your operating system and the company's claiming performance has been boosted by up to 30 percent. It'll cost you $80 for the full version, while students get it for $40, and if you purchased Parallels 7 after July 25th, you're eligible to upgrade for free. Meanwhile, if you're more into running Windows software on your iOS device, Parallels Mobile is available from the App Store for $5.
The Engadget Show 35: EVs in Portland, hacked bicycles and a Tesla Model S test drive
With a transportation themed episode, it only seemed natural to take the Engadget Show out of our traditional digs -- it was also a great excuse to visit one of our favorite cities in the world: Portland, Oregon. We drove Mitsubishi's i-MiEV EV around the Northwestern green mecca, stopping at some great PDX spots along the way, including the amazing Ground Kontrol arcade, Hand-Eye Supply and the hackerspace, Brain Silo. We also took the time to speak to some PDX residents, including Core77 co-founder Eric Ludlum and some local modders showing off their homebrew projects. Also, Brian travels out to Boston to ride along with a gang of bike hackers, Myriam takes the Tesla Model S for a spin around the streets of San Francisco and Michael does his best not to fall off the DTV Shredder in the California desert. And, as always, we got a pile of the month's latest and greatest gadgets, including the Google Nexus 7, Hasbro's new Lazer Tag guns and a quick trip around OS X Mountain Lion. Also: comic books, donuts and plenty of EV road trip shenanigans. Click through the break to tune in!
How to get Notification Center to show you what's playing in iTunes
OS X's Notification Center was introduced in Mountain Lion and is now your one-stop location for all alerts. Besides the customary notifications for incoming emails and reminders, you can also use Notification Center for other content like the title and artist of the current track that's playing in iTunes. As showcased by OS X Daily, Now Playing uses AppleScripts and Terminal-Notifier to display the current iTunes track and the artist's name along with your other notifications. The app also works with streaming services like Spotify. Now Playing can be downloaded from Mediafire and installed on your OS X Mountain Lion machine. Another alternative is iTunification from Onible. Inspired by Now Playing, iTunification lets you display the current track and artist in Notification Center and has the added benefit of Growl support. Besides the track and artist name, the Growl option also allows you to display cover art and setup custom alerts. Both of these apps are scaled down versions of GrowlTunes which adds playback controls your menu bar and displays the current track and artist as a Growl notification.
Apple releases Mountain Lion 10.8.2 build to devs, focuses on Facebook, iMessage and more
Shortly after letting the 10.8.1 Mountain Lion out of the bag, Cupertino's now released the next dotted version of its feline OS X to members of the developer community. According to the seed note, this early release will be focusing on a slew of social areas as well as other handy applications, including Facebook, Messages, Game Center, Reminders and, of course, the company's own web browser, Safari. As is usually the case with these young builds, Apple suggests you install it on a machine "you are prepared to erase if necessary," though something tells us you were already well aware of that. But in case you do want to install v10.8.2, you'll find the rest of the deets at the Apple Developer site linked below.
Apple posts OS X 10.8.1 update, mends your Mountain Lion
There's a special moment in every operating system's life when it loses its innocent .0 status and grows up. It's OS X Mountain Lion's turn to mature, as Apple has just pushed out the 10.8.1 update for early adopters. Most of the fixes are for issues that plague specific use cases, such as audio output from a Thunderbolt Display or crashes in Migration Assistant. There are a few remedies that a wider audience might appreciate -- a fix for iMessages that don't send and an improvement to Exchange compatibility in Mail, for example. We don't yet know of any surprises lurking underneath, but it can't hurt to have a smoother-running Mac while we investigate.
OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.1 update now available
Apple has released OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1, and the update is now available in the Mac App Store under the Updates tab. A manual installer is also available for download. In the support notes about the update, Apple recommends backing up your system before running the installer. A reboot is required in order to complete the update. The update includes a number of fixes: Resolves an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit Improve compatibility when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server in Mail Address an issue playing audio through a Thunderbolt display Resolves an issue that could prevent iMessages from being sent Addresses an issue that could cause the system to become unresponsive when using Pinyin input Resolves an issue when connecting to SMB servers with long names Addresses a issue that may prevent Safari from launching when using a Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) file Improves 802.1X authentication with Active Directory credentials If you are updating today (and please back up first!) let us know your results. Last week, we rounded up our top Mountain Lion gripes; hopefully some of them were addressed in this update.
VMware announces Fusion 5 with support for Windows 8
Mac users that run Windows on their machines will be happy to know that VMware just updated its Fusion software to support Windows 8. The new Fusion 5 is also optimized for OS X Mountain Lion, so you can run the best of both desktop platforms when Windows 8 debuts later this year. The latest update adds more than 70 new features including support for USB 3.0 devices, better memory management on devices with 16 GB or more of RAM and improved power management. You can also now use AirPlay with the software as well as run Mountain Lion or Mountain Lion Server in a virtual machine. The standard version of Fusion 5 is available for $49.99. Customers who bought version 4 since the release of Mountain Lion are eligible for a free upgrade. There's also a professional version available for $99 that'll let IT administrators deploy Fusion in a corporate environment. [Via Engadget]
VMware intros Fusion 5 virtualization software with support for Win 8, integration with Mountain Lion
With Mountain Lion newly available and Windows 8 on the verge of shipping, now was a pretty good time for VMware to update its Fusion virtualization software, dont'cha think? The company just announced Fusion 5 with 70-plus new features, including support for Win 8 and tight integration with OS X 10.8. For instance, you can now view Windows programs in Mountain Lion's Launchpad, while VMware software updates pop up in the Notification Center. Fusion also supports AirPlay for the first time, and you can also run either Mountain Lion or Mountain Lion Server as a virtual machine. The company also added support for Retina Display MacBook Pros, so that everything looks crisp on that 2,880 x 1,800 screen. Also of note: Fusion now supports USB 3.0, and Linux users get some love in the form of Open GL 2.1 graphics support. The standard version of Fusion 5 is available now for $49.99, but people who bought Fusion 4 since the release of Mountain Lion can upgrade for free. There's also a professional version ($100 for one license), which includes all the above features, and also lets IT departments lock down settings for employees' virtual machines.%Gallery-163118%
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion gripe list
To be sure, I think OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is the best OS Apple has ever released. It feels like a completed version of what Mac OS X 10.7 Lion should have been. It's fast, it's clean, it melds some iOS concepts to OS X and, for the most part, it just works. That being said, no OS is entirely perfect and there are some gripes my colleagues an I have about Mountain Lion. We've compiled them into the list below. Now, most of these gripes are minor and they'll probably be corrected in future updates like 10.8.1 -- at least, we hope so. After reading through the list (which may grow) feel free to add your own gripes in the comments. And please, don't let this list of minor gripes put you off the OS. It really is the best one Apple has ever released. Mail Wobbly scroll on external monitor. No "Reply to sender." Signature sticks when changing accounts (Exchange only). Calendar Accepts invitations in the top calendar, not the default Exchange calendar (and not the account that received them). Displays menubar Mirroring only. Notification Center @mention tweets don't show from people you don't follow. Notification Center/Mail Clicking on an email message in Notification Center should take you to that specific email's inbox in Mail, NOT the universal inbox for all your different email accounts. Safari Under Safari>Preferences>Passwords the list of websites and your usernames should probably be hidden until you enter your administrator password. The passwords are already hidden by default but it seems like a security problem when anybody using your computer could see what websites you go to and what your usernames for the websites are. Knowing your usernames gives them one less thing to hack. Not to mention it tells people exactly which sites they should target you at since they know you're a member of the sites by looking in Safari's preferences. Safari JavaScript bugs render some websites unusable. Loss of RSS button in Safari means users have to jump through several hoops to subscribe to feeds. They also have to spend money to buy Reeder for Mac (or another RSS reader). Stock Widget You can no longer rearrange the order of stocks. Stocks don't sync with Stocks app on iOS devices (they never did, but they should). General: Numerous graphical "tearing" issues throughout the OS on the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Most prevalent in TextEdit and Mail. "Open Recent" has disappeared from opening dialog splash box in many apps, most notably iWork apps. No "share" button in TextEdit. "Save As..." behaviour is completely contrary to how it worked pre-Lion. MacBook Pro with Retina Display has serious wake-from-sleep issues. Requires hard reboot more than 50% of the time. 3rd party apps: Microsoft Office apps refuse to hide. Sandboxing (or something else) seems to be preventing the iStat Menus Dashboard widget from delivering data on CPU processes.
Microsoft has no plans for Retina display Office apps (updated)
There's someone who's kicking sand out of the Retina display sandbox, and that company appears to be Microsoft. Even though Microsoft boasted that Office for Mac is ready for OS X Mountain Lion, Macworld is reporting that users with Retina display MacBook Pros are describing a less-than-stellar experience when using Office for Mac on one of these machine. This isn't a surprise, as about the only current OS X Mountain Lion feature that Office for Mac supports is Gatekeeper, which I think is largely a move to keep the average user from thinking that Office isn't working with Gatekeeper turned on. Other yet-to-be-delivered features include iCloud support (no surprise), auto-saving, versions (though there is a workaround) -- the last two being Lion features that the Office for Mac team was supposedly working on. In the blog, an Office for Mac team member claimed that Outlook does support Retina display. "Outlook for Mac 2011 already supports Retina Display and the remaining apps will have the same viewing quality as on any non-Retina device. Unfortunately at this time, we cannot comment on any future updates regarding supporting Retina on Word, Excel or PowerPoint," the person said. The same isn't holding true for other software. Adobe's Creative Suite also lacks Retina display support, but told Macworld in an email that it would be coming later this year, and the same goes for AutoCAD. But the support is coming, as Photoshop and AutoCAD were demoed during the MacBook Pro with Retina Display announcement. The installed base of Office for Mac users that own Retina display MacBook Pros might not be big enough to justify adding the support right now. As more Retina display machines are adopted in the business industry, Microsoft might eventually come back to the Retina display issue and other Lion and Mountain Lion features that it's neglected. But, I suspect that given Microsoft's laissez-faire attitude toward the Office for Mac suite, those features might come some time in 2016 ... maybe. Update: As one of our commenters pointed out, Office for Mac is written in Carbon while Retina display supports requires Cocoa API. The current Outlook was written in Cocoa.
SlimBatteryMonitor a better menu bar battery monitor
One of the annoyances of Mountain Lion has been the loss of the option to have the remaining battery time shown in the menu bar. Fortunately I can offer you not only a solution, but a better option, all for the low, low price of $0. I have used SlimBatteryMonitor instead of Apple's menu bar battery monitor for several years, because it is much more flexible than what Apple has ever offered. For example, I have never liked using "Time Remaining" while I'm on battery power, because I find that the estimate has always been unpredictable. So when I am using the battery, I prefer to have the "Percentage Remaining" displayed. However, when charging the battery, I like to have the "Time Remaining" shown, because I want to know about how long it will take before the battery is fully charged. If the battery is fully charged and I am using AC power, I don't really need to see the battery status in the menu bar at all. Even before Mountain Lion, those various options would have been hard to maintain using Apple's battery menu bar item. Sure, I suppose I could have gone into the settings and changed the preferences each time I went from battery to AC to fully charged, but we all know that was never going to happen. SlimBatteryMonitor has separate preferences for each of the three states I mentioned above: on battery, charging, and charged. Here's how I have mine configured: You can have it show the time or the percentage (either with or without a battery icon), or just have it show the battery icon (which you can assign different colors for each state). When the battery is charged, SlimBatteryMonitor can even "hide" itself, meaning that it will not show any menu bar icon at all. (Because it is still running, it does stay in the menu bar, there's just nothing shown and the width is reduced to a few pixels. You probably won't even notice it unless you look for it.) The developer has a very detailed page explaining configuration options. The app is free. Donations are accepted but there's no limitations or nag screen. The current version (1.5) hasn't been updated for a few years, but I've used it on Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion with no problem. Those of you still hanging on to Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4 can even use the 1.4 version of SlimBatteryMonitor. Download from Orange-Carb.org. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
OS X 10.8.1 seeded to developers
Version 10.8.1 of OS X Mountain Lion has been seeded to developers. There aren't any known issues listed in the release notes, just a short list under "Focus areas": Active Directory Microsoft Exchange in Mail PAC proxies in Safari SMB USB Wi-Fi and audio when connected to Thunderbolt display These changes must be minor, as the delta update clocks in at a svelte 38.54 MB in size. This is the first developer seed we've seen since the release of Mountain Lion on July 25. This update is available at Apple's developer site under "Additional Downloads." As Ars and MacRumors pointed out, 10.8.1 made a cameo appearance in Geekbench results earlier this week -- but more interesting than the OS version was the machine ID it was supposedly running on, a possible hint of a 13" Retina display MacBook Pro.
