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A look at OS X Mavericks and tagging
Apple introduced file tagging in OS X Mavericks, letting you assign custom metadata to a file that you can retrieve using Finder. According to our own Brett Terpstra, tagging may be difficult at first, but once we adopt the practice, it may change the way we think about the filesystem of an OS. With iCloud and sandboxing, Apple is distancing us from the folders that hold our data. In this folder-less existence, Tags will become the glue that holds our data together and lets us organize our files. It'll be an iOS-like experience in which you don't have to worry about where files are being stored. You can find files by their tags and don't have to dig through folders and Finder windows to organize your work. You can read more about tagging and OS X in his "Mavericks and Tagging" article on his blog.
OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 3 now being served up
Cupertino's clearly in the mood to churn out beta releases today. Just a few hours after unleashing the third iOS 7 beta, Apple's dished out OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 3. The House that Jobs Built is remaining tight-lipped about what the update contains, but it's safe to say it packs a usual suspect: bug fixes. Devs raring to snap up the latest release can click the bordering source link for the download. However, if you're not of the (Apple-approved) programmer persuasion, you can experience the operating system vicariously through our preview.
Daily Update for July 1, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Mac App Store apps to get subscriptions support in OS X 10.9 Mavericks
Developers will be happy to hear that subscriptions support is coming to OS X apps sold through the Mac App Store in OS X 10.9 Mavericks. App subscriptions have long been possible in iOS apps, but this is the first time they will be available on OS X. As 9to5Mac points out, iOS subscriptions currently come in two flavors: renewing and nonrenewing. Both types of subscriptions will make their way to OS X this fall. Once subscriptions come to the Mac App Store, users will be able to manage them via a "Subscriptions" control panel in their account settings. Best of all, the ability to manage subscriptions on OS X will now allow users to control them from any Apple device, which means that users who use iOS and OS X apps that have subscriptions (like Evernote or Wunderlist) won't have to leave their desktop to enable a subscription through their iPhone. Subscriptions in the Mac App Store will be available in OS X Mavericks when it ships this fall.
Daily Update for June 26, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
The Loop looks at OS X Mavericks
Perhaps this post should have been titled "The Beard looks at OS X Mavericks," since the subject is about an article written by veteran Apple blogger Jim Dalrymple on his Loop Insight blog. Dalrymple's opinions are highly valued by Apple, and he received a 13-inch MacBook Pro and a copy of OS X Mavericks to evaluate for the blog. His blog post is a first look at the beta Mac OS, and he's actually quite happy with what Mavericks has to offer. Dalrymple pretty much decided that he'd use the Mavericks machine as his only work computer, doing his blogging, tweeting and all other work under the beta software, as "this was the only way to truly evaluate what the operating system could do." To begin with, Dalrymple was pleased to find that all of his apps worked under Mavericks. He was happy with the addition of Finder tabs (multiple tabs in one Finder window), and found Finder tags "a lot more useful than website tags." iCloud Keychain -- which syncs passwords stored on your Mac with any iOS device you choose -- was a feature that Dalrymple really finds to have a lot of potential, as it can ease password access from within Safari on iOS. Likewise, Dalrymple is happy with OS X Mavericks' Notifications, which now allow one-click replies without needing to launch an app. But he singled out Maps in Mavericks for special love -- one of his favorite features is the ability to take directions created with Maps on the Mac and send them to an iPhone or iPad with a click. It's a fun post by one of the top Apple bloggers and well worth a read. While Dalrymple can't divulge any new features due to the Apple NDA, he does a great job of explaining how the features that were touted during the WWDC 2013 keynote work in real life.
Developers: OS X Mavericks beta update is available
We're getting numerous reports via the tweets that iOS 7 wasn't the only beta Apple OS to receive an update today. OS X Mavericks is also being treated to a new beta release; unfortunately, there's nothing visible on the Apple Developer Center right now that shows either the download or any release notes. However, our sources tell us that visiting the App Store on your favorite OS X machine that's running Mavericks should show you that beta 2 is now available for download. And let me guess ... it probably contains "bug fixes and improvements." As if updates to iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks isn't enough, Apple is also making updates to Xcode 5 and OS X Server Preview available today. Get thee to the developer center now!
The Daily Roundup for 06.24.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Apple OS X Mavericks 10.9 preview
There was no OS XI at WWDC. There was no plan to reinvent the wheel. The takeaway message at the launch event was simple: Apple is committed to OS X. What that means, in the long run (naming scheme aside) is that changes to the desktop will probably continue to be gradual. New features will be added and things will evolve over time. Like other recent versions of OS X, version 10.9 Mavericks follows the lead of iOS, culling from its most successful features -- though there's nothing on the order of iOS 7's dramatic redesign in store. But while the iPhone operating system seems to have taken the lead in terms of innovation, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of feature crippling in Mavericks, which some feared would come with the mobilization of the OS. In fact, there are a number of welcome upgrades here -- things like folder tabs, tags and a more interactive Notification Center will likely improve the workflow of many Mac users. Built-in apps like Safari and Calendar have gotten nice facelifts, as well. We've spent a few days with the most recent build of OS X and are ready to give you a peek at what you're in store for, come fall. Still, knowing Apple, the company's likely still got a couple of tricks up its sleeve.%Gallery-192205%
Dev Juice: Parallels Desktop 8 update makes OS X Mavericks VMs, hosts possible
Just last week I was bemoaning the fact that neither Parallels nor VMWare Fusion provided an easy way for a developer to create a virtual machine (VM) for testing of OS X Mavericks, so I ended up installing the new Mac operating system on a separate partition. Today Parallels released an update to Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac that not only allows the update of existing OS X VMs to OS X Mavericks, but also allows Mavericks to be a host machine for Parallels. If there's a downside, it's that you still can't install OS X Mavericks on a blank VM; instead, you'll have to install a previous version of OS X on a virtual machine, then acquire the installer from the Apple Developer Center and upgrade the VM. The update can be applied to an existing install of Parallels Desktop 8 by launching the app and selecting Check for Updates under the Parallels Desktop menu. As of yet, there's still no word from VMWare on how they're progressing on OS X Mavericks compatibility, but we'll be sure to pass along any information that we hear about.
So you've been Sherlocked: AirParrot developers respond to new Mavericks features
On Monday, Apple introduced OS X Mavericks, their next-generation operating system for Macs. One feature Apple demoed on stage enables users to use an HDTV as an extra monitor, courtesy of Apple TV and AirPlay connectivity. If that feature sounds familiar, you may already be an AirParrot customer. The US$9.99 app allows you to stream your screen or individual windows to Apple TV and it also offers extra screen support. The app's popular extended desktop features have been around for a while. After Monday's announcement, we contacted Sidney Keith of Squirrels to get his reaction to the Mavericks feature. Today, he provided the following, thoughtful response. We're continuing to innovate and develop at our own pace. Just because Apple released one of our features as its own doesn't mean we quit. We're still striving for quality applications that solve our customers and users needs. Honestly, we're glad Apple finally caught up. It gives us that much more motivation to innovate and create cooler applications that users want and need. Software is about progress, and that's what this is going to give us. Not only do we have the motivation to keep innovating, we now have the opportunity and obligation to help those that can't or won't upgrade to 10.9. We have a large and loyal customer base that we'll continue supporting. We don't plan on dropping support for 10.6, even though we've now seen three major releases since then, and not everyone is as loyal to Apple as we may think. Upgrades can be costly for institutions and businesses that have hundreds of systems that need to be upgraded. We're here for those users, and we're here for the ones that don't trust the first iterations of Apple products. Whatever the reason for not upgrading, we have their back. Apple has a global audience to attend to, and while we also have users all around the globe, our feature set is much more focused. We're able to focus solely on one group of features instead of an entire operating system. While Apple might add a feature, it's likely they'll not change that feature significantly in any future releases. We saw the addition of AirPlay desktop mirroring in OS X 10.8, but that feature hasn't changed since its initial release-roughly a year since the beta. We've got the ability to focus our entire teams attention on that one specific feature if we need to. That's something you'll be seeing over the next few months. We'll be doing a lot of innovation and creation in this area, and while we hope Apple doesn't steal our new features, we know it's inevitable. It's almost an honor. If you want to see what Apple's going to to include AirPlay-wise at WWDC 14, you can probably bet our next few releases will be a preview. Squirrels is also the developer of the Reflector app, which nearly all of us at TUAW have purchased. It allows you to stream AirPlay to your Mac or PC. Note: in case you're wondering what "Sherlocked" refers to, here's a definition. Looking for other examples? Here's another for your delectation. No downeys, millers, cumberbatches, lauries, bretts, etc. were hurt in the preparation of this article.
DevJuice: The easy way to set up an OS X Mavericks test environment
OK, this is going to be a "duh" moment for most Mac developers, but apparently there are some people who are having issues with setting up a test environment in which to run OS X Mavericks. I have to admit that I was one of those who first started asking if anyone was having success running the latest Mac OS in a virtual machine under VMWare or Parallels. There are some people who claim to have OS X Mavericks running fine under one virtual environment or the other, although most are being rather closed-mouth about how they accomplished it. So, tired of waiting, I decided to do what I've done with previous releases and just create a dual-boot machine. It's stupid easy to do this: 1) On your OS X 10.8 machine, sign into your Mac Dev Center account, click on the appropriate tab for OS X Mavericks, and then download the OS X 10.9 Developer Preview (click the button, which launches the Mac App Store, and magic happens). 2) While you're waiting for the download to complete, it's time to set up your Mavericks partition. Fire up Disk Utility, click on your primary disk drive and add a partition. I made mine 64 GB (on a 256 GB SSD MacBook Pro with Retina display), named it Mavericks just so I'd be more apt to select it instead of my main drive when installing 10.9, and then let Disk Utility do its thing. This takes very little time, so go enjoy the outdoors while the download continues and try to get some sun. 3) Once the Installer has finished downloading, it should launch itself; if not, go into Applications, find the app named "Install OS X 10.9 Developer Preview" and launch it. Follow the instructions, select the Mavericks partition you created in step 2 as the target for the beta OS and sit back while the installation continues. 4) Now you have a dual-boot 10.8 / 10.9 machine. To boot into one or the other of the partitions, just hold down the Option key while rebooting and select the appropriate one. Of course, that's not particularly helpful if you just have a single development machine and you don't want the irritation of booting in and out of two versions of OS X several times a day. That's why as soon as things are working smoothly with Parallels 8 and/or VMWare, we'll pass along the instructions for setting up Mavericks virtual machines in both of those environments.
TUAW TV Live: Much ado about WWDC 2013
Welcome back to another hour of mirth and merriment with me and my co-host Shawn "Doc Rock" Boyd! Today we have one topic in particular to discuss -- WWDC 2013 -- and a lot of subtopics dealing with the minutiae that have been leaking out from developers. There are some fascinating things to see in both iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we'll talk about what we've heard from our "feet on the street" in San Francisco. To join in to watch the live feed and participate in the chat, just click here. You'll join us on the AOL On Network. If you can't watch the entire show today, come back to this page within 24 hours to see the video or visit http://tuaw.com/tuawtvlive to see the latest show.
Apple releases Mavericks core technology overview
Apple spent a lot of time talking about the key new features of OS X Mavericks, but the company only glossed over the impressive underlying technology that powers the operating system. For those hardware and software geeks in the audience, Apple has released a document detailing the core technology that drives Mavericks power optimizations and its improved performance. You can download the PDF document from Apple's website. [Via Engadget and Ars Technica]
Apple details OS X Mavericks' energy-saving skills, friendlier network sharing
While we learned many things about OS X Mavericks' feature set at WWDC, there were a few important details hiding in the woodwork. Apple has just revealed a few of them through a new overview of the platform. Among them is a potentially huge step forward in the Mac's willingness to play with others: Apple has switched its default network file sharing system from the ages-old Apple File Protocol to the more universal SMB2. The move gives OS X the same approach to sharing as more recent versions of Windows, helping it slot into the corporate world and mixed-platform households. AFP and the original SMB are sticking around, but they'll now kick in only when needed. The crew in Cupertino has also filled in many of the blanks surrounding Mavericks' vaunted performance and power optimizations. Battery-saving tricks like App Nap and timer coalescing mostly involve heavy task rescheduling and throttling. Memory compression, meanwhile, relies on an old yet largely untapped algorithm to avoid hard drive access. A deeper dive into the new OS X release is available at the source, although it's not for the faint-hearted -- the overview's developer focus doesn't exactly make for casual reading.
Macs compatible with OS X Mavericks
One outstanding question about OS X Mavericks is the minimum hardware requirements needed to run the operating system. There are a lot of older Core 2 Duo machines kicking around, and those owners are wondering it they still have the horsepower to run Mavericks. Apple hasn't released those details, but Apple Insider talked to OS X developers who have access to release notes and other details about OS X 10.9. According to AI's sources, any Apple computer capable of running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will be able to run Mavericks. This includes the following machines: iMac (mid-2007 or later) MacBook (13-inch aluminum, late 2008), (13-inch, early 2009 or later) MacBook Pro (13-inch, mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, mid/late 2007 or later), (17-inch, late 2007 or later) MacBook Air (late 2008 or later) Mac mini (Early 2009 or later) Mac Pro (early 2008 or later) Xserve (early 2009) This early information is promising for Apple owners with hardware that is approaching its fifth or even sixth year of faithful use. Keep in mind that these hardware specs may change when Apple releases the final version of OS X Mavericks later this year. [Via Gizmodo]
TUAW TV Live Special Edition: WWDC 2013
Thanks for joining us today here on TUAW for our continuing coverage of WWDC 2013. I am joined this afternoon by renowned author, developer and TUAW buddy Erica Sadun on a special edition of TUAW TV Live. Here's the archived video for your viewing pleasure!
WWDC 2013 keynote roundup: OS X Mavericks, iOS 7, new Mac Pro, refreshed Airs and iTunes Radio
We know, oh boy do we know. With E3 and WWDC happening at the same time, it's easy to get lost in all the news -- we've got you covered for all the delicious Apple bites right here, though. Today the team from Cupertino delighted its keynote crowd with the official announcements of iOS 7, refreshed MacBook Airs and iTunes Radio. Even more exciting, however, was the sneak peak at the much-anticipated -- and cylindrical -- next-gen Mac Pro and the introduction of OS X Sea Lion Mavericks. Whether you're just trying to recap all the announcements or find what you missed, our full roundup is up after the break.
Apple unveils Keychain for iCloud, confirms 300 million iCloud accounts
Apple today at WWDC announced some changes to iCloud, including a new iWork for iCloud and a keychain feature that'll sync your logins across all your iOS devices. The keychain is a cloud-connected password manager that ties into Safari on the desktop and Safari on the iPad and iPhone. It'll save passwords as well as credit card information and more. Tim Cook also confirmed that iCloud now has 300 million accounts, making it the fastest-growing cloud service ever (even faster than Facebook). More than 300 million iOS owners use iTunes in the cloud and these folks have downloaded their content 35 billion times. Cook also confirmed that 240 million users are on Game Center and blew us away with stats on iMessages that confirm the service has transferred 800 billion iMessages and sent 740 trillion push notifications.
Apple announces Safari upgrades as part of OS X Mavericks
Apple has announced an updated version of Safari at WWDC. The browser update adds a new home page featuring a Top Sites feature that stores all of your bookmarks and regularly read sites. Using a new bookmark bar, you can easily add and remove links to your Top Sites selection. They've also introduced a "Reading List" feature to the home page that allows you to quickly jump from story to story on the sites you read the most. Safari also now has Twitter and LinkedIn integration that allows you to monitor and open links shared in those services within the browser using another sidebar. Enhancements have also been made under the hood of the program, including improved Javascript support. In addition, Safari now uses far less memory and is better at power management than other browsers. To quote Craig Federighi "When you compare [Safari's energy efficiency] to Firefox, it's actually kind of sad."
