OS X Mavericks
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Here's what our readers think of OS X Yosemite
The public beta of OS X El Capitan might be out now, but plenty of users will continue using OS X Yosemite through the fall and beyond. And at first glance that's just fine: In our own review we called Yosemite "a solid update for Mac users" that offered a "clean new design" and close integration with iOS devices. However, quite a few of our readers disagreed. Almost 30 of you chimed in on Yosemite's product database page to give this iteration of OS X a user score of 4.8 out of 10, possibly making it the most contentious product on our site. What is it about Yosemite that makes it more shaky than solid for many users?
Apple releases OS X bash Update 1.0
If you've been worried about the recent discovery of a security flaw called Shellshock in the bash UNIX shell, you can rest easier. Apple released OS X bash Update 1.0 to fix the issue, which made it possible for a remote attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands. According to the release notes for the update, "an issue existed in Bash's parsing of environment variables. This issue was addressed through improved environment variable parsing by better detecting the end of the function statement." The update incorporated a suggested change that resets the parser state, and also added a new namespace for exported functions. Versions of the patch are not only available for OS X Mavericks (see link in first paragraph), but also for OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Lion Server. TUAW also posted instructions on patching OS X for the bash/Shellshock vulnerability last week.
How to make OS X Mavericks re-run the Setup Assistant
I recently loaded OS X Mavericks on an old (2007) 20" iMac, and to check that everything was fine I ran the machine through the full Setup Assistant -- setting up a user with my name in the process. Rather than reloading Mavericks on the iMac to clean it off, I did a quick Google search on how to get Mavericks to re-run the Setup Assistant, and I was lucky to find this post by Mark Boszko where he referenced an earlier Mac OS X Hints post on the same topic. If you're command-line averse, you may wish to just reload OS X, but if you know your way around the CLI, here's how you clean up a Mac and get it to re-run the Setup Assistant: Boot into single-user mode by holding down Command-S on the keyboard during startup At the command-line prompt, type mount -uw / rm -R /Library/Preferences rm -R /Users/YOURUSERNAME/ <-- replace YOURUSERNAME with whatever your user name is cd /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default ls (to list the files) Delete the file that is named after your user account with a .plist extension. For example, for user name "stevesande" you'd type rm stevesande.plist rm /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone reboot At this point, OS X restarts and the Setup Assistant launches automatically, initially asking you what language you want to set up the Mac in. Since you're going through this entire dog-and-pony show to set up the Mac for a new user, you don't want to run Setup Assistant again, so just press Command-Q at the language screen, then click the Shut Down button. When the new owner boots up their shiny "new to them" Mac, they're greeted with the Setup Assistant just as if they'd picked up the device at their local Apple Store.
How Contacts in OS X Mavericks speeds data entry
Over the past week or so I've been doing a lot of maintenance on my OS X contacts, primarily because I had literally hundreds of names and addresses that I no longer needed. At the same time, I realized that there were some addresses missing, so I've queried some friends for their current address info and created some new contacts. I was surprised to find that Contacts does some data parsing to help speed things up when you're entering addresses. Previously, when entering addresses into OS X I would copy the street address of a location, paste it into the street address field, copy the city name, paste it into its proper location, and so on. It was time-consuming and occasionally the addresses would be truncated because of a mistake in copying. Well, I was surprised to find out that if you copy a full address, Contacts parses the information when you paste it into the address field and separates all of the information into the proper sub-fields. For example, copying this: 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino, CA 95014 USA and pasting it into the address field of a contact card results in the following on the contact card: Each of those fields that makes up the address, including the street address, city, state, zip and country, is now populated with the correct information. Likewise, Contacts also nicely formats phone numbers when pasted into the phone number fields. Take this string of text and numbers -- +13035551212 -- and paste it into the phone number field, and when you press Return on your keyboard, the number is nicely formatted as follows, complete with country code. Frankly, I don't know if this parsing capability was in OS X before Mavericks, but it's made life so much easier for me this week that I thought it merited passing along to TUAW readers. Do you have any other tricks for Contacts that you can pass along to readers? Let us know in the comments.
Security breach may be reason for Gatekeeper app signing changes (Updated)
A discussion has been brewing on Twitter today regarding the recent app signing changes that could leave some apps blocked by Gatekeeper if developers don't re-sign the apps. Apple had let developers know that "With the release of OS X Mavericks 10.9.5, the way that OS X recognizes signed apps will change." According to Twitter user @SomebodySW, the change may actually be a response to a security breach in the Developer Portal, not just a change in the method of recognizing signed apps. Update 11:54 AM 08/19/2014: TUAW received separate confirmation of the breach from a second source via IRC, stating that Apple's certificates may have been compromised and that the company's changes to Gatekeeper are in part intended to mitigate the risks of those breaches. We have still not received any confirmation or denial of the Dev Portal breaches from Apple. @marczak @cabel @danielpunkass @mikeash The keys used for Gatekeeper* were stolen in that Developer Portal breach a while back. Consider thi - Somebody Somewhere (@SomebodySW) August 18, 2014 @marczak @cabel @danielpunkass @mikeash s your heads up. *and many other keys for many other things - Somebody Somewhere (@SomebodySW) August 18, 2014 How plausible is a security breach that resulted in the theft of not only Gatekeeper's keys but "many other keys for many other things"? Plausible enough that we reached out to Apple for confirmation. At this point, no response has been received. Ben Doernberg, a security and bitcoin expert, has also pinged Apple, saying in a recent tweet that: Just talked with Ryan James at Apple, says he'll look look into if device signing keys were stolen last year, no confirm or deny @SomebodySW - Ben Doernberg (@BenDoernberg) August 18, 2014 According to @SomebodySW, "Other keys were stolen too: The Enterprise Signing Key, a key that could be used (and was) used to sign Activation Tickets (bypassing iCloud locks) and several developer ID related keys also some keys iPhone 4/4s/5 hardware 'knows', used to authenticate the OS installed as being from Apple/unmodified". @SomebodySW notes that he received an offer to buy the device signing keys from the person who performed the breach of the Apple Dev Portal shortly after the theft occurred. While this still isn't definitive proof that the Gatekeeper and other security keys were stolen, TUAW received separate confirmation from a second source. We'll keep on top of this story and let you know how it develops.
Monitor OS X network, CPU and disk activity in the Dock
For those Mac users who love to push their hardware to its limits, the OS X Activity Monitor (found in Applications > Utilities) can be a handy tool. I often use it to find out if one process or another has suddenly decided to take over my iMac, to figure out if I'm redlining my network bandwidth, and to see if adding one more app while editing video is going to cause issues. This fun tip puts an updating icon into the Dock so you can keep an eye on one parameter while you're doing work. Simply launch Activity Monitor, and you'll see the usual list of processes and what percentage of CPU cycles, RAM, energy use, disk input and output, and network traffic each process is using (the image below shows what you'll normally see when running Activity Monitor). Now, click and hold on the Activity Monitor icon in the Dock, and select "Hide" to remove the window from your Mac screen. Next, press the Control and Option keys and then click and hold on the Activity Monitor Dock icon. On the menu, you'll see an item for Dock Icon. Select it and several choices appear (see image at the top of this post) -- Show CPU Usage, Show CPU History, Show Network Usage, and Show Disk Activity. Selecting any one of these items turns the Activity Monitor Dock icon into a constantly updating graphic view of that specific parameter. Should you decide to go back to the original app icon, that's the final selection under the Dock Icon menu item. All in all, this is a very useful and no-cost way to keep an eye on certain aspects of your Mac's operation. There are also handy apps like StatsBar (US$3.99) that you can add to your Mac menu bar to keep an eye on similar parameters.
How to see the names, passwords, and credit cards Safari saves
Safari makes it very easy for you to store usernames, passwords, and credit cards that you've entered into websites on your Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks or iOS 7 device. If you use iCloud Keychain syncing, you can even share that information between your different Apple devices. Personally, I don't store credit card info or important passwords there because I am one paranoid person, but I do use Safari and iCloud Keychain to keep track of usernames and passwords for non-critical sites and services. Here's how to review what you've asked Safari to store for you. On a Mac running OS X 10.9 Mavericks On the Mac, launch Safari and then select Preferences from the Safari menu. Click on the Autofill button -- unsurprisingly, that button looks like a pencil hovering over an empty form. Click on the Edit button next to User names and passwords, and a long list of passwords that you've let Safari store for you appears. The list shows the website you visited, the User Name you used to log in, and the password is shown as a series of dots. You can also go directly to this list from the Passwords button (looks like a key). If you've forgotten a password and want to see what it is, click on a website to select it, then check the "Show passwords for selected websites" box at the bottom of the Passwords pane. You'll be asked to enter your admin password, after which the password will be displayed. If you've stored a credit card number and other information, you'll need to go back to that Autofill button and then click the Edit button next to Credit Cards. You can add credit cards in this dialog -- simply click the Add button and type in the card name, number, cardholder name, and the expiration date. It doesn't save the CVV number ... yet. On an iOS 7 device iOS 7 does this a bit differently. Tap Settings > Safari > Passwords & Autofill, and a screen similar to the one seen below appears: To look at saved passwords and credit cards, you'll be asked to enter your passcode. This is one place where Touch ID does not come in handy. Once the passcode is entered, you'll see a list of website addresses and the username used to log into each site. Tap the arrow on the right side of the listed website, and the detailed information including the password is displayed. For credit cards, you can not only enter new cards into the stored list, but actually have your iOS device capture the cardholder name and card number by using the camera. You'll still have to enter the expiration date and a description, but most of the hard work is done for you as it automatically enters the name and number.
How to set up continuous OS X Mavericks dictation
My fellow TUAW editor Dave Caolo got his right index finger pretty well mashed in a car door the other day, which is making it painfully difficult for him to type. Fortunately, he's been able to use dictation in OS X Mavericks to make up for his typing disability, but I've noticed that most of his dictation has been for short messages in our IRC chatroom. As a noble gesture to get Dave back up to top productivity as soon as possible, I'm showing him -- and you -- how you can bypass the usual 30-second dictation limit and also dictate offline. I'm assuming at this point that you're somewhat familiar with OS X Mavericks' ability to let you dictate text into any text field on your Mac. That can be in Messages, the TUAW content management system, Pages, Mail, or anywhere else you'd normally type. If not, fire up System Preferences on your Mavericks machine and click on Dictation & Speech. As you can see in the image at the top of this post, Dictation can be set up easily by just selecting a microphone (usually the built-in mic), clicking the On radio button next to Dictation, selecting a language, and setting up a keyboard shortcut to invoke Dictation. You'll also notice a checkbox titled Use Enhanced Dictation. When checked, your Mac will download additional speech recognition software and install it behind the scenes. This not only gives you continuous dictation capability -- meaning you could talk for hours, and it will still be typing what you say -- but it also gives you live feedback. You'll see the words being typed as you speak and can jump in and fix 'em with the keyboard, although I prefer to just go back and fix the inevitable misunderstandings afterwards. There's one other benefit to Enhanced Dictation -- the ability to use it when you're not connected to the Internet. That can be very useful if you want to use the feature while on an airplane without Wi-Fi service, although if you talk for very long, your fellow passengers might want to toss you bodily from the plane... Have any OS X Dictation stories or tips you want to pass along? Let us know in the comments.
OS X Yosemite beta adoption rate almost 4X that of Mavericks
The excitement in the air at Moscone Center West for the Apple World Wide Developer conference keynote was palpable, especially when Apple's Craig Federighi began demoing OS X 10.10 Yosemite. The new OS offers much tighter integration than ever before with Apple's other devices, and the user interface changes are stunning. Well, developers apparently have a lot of interest in Yosemite, as research firm Chitika is reporting that the beta versions are being adopted by developers at a rate almost four times that of OS X Mavericks. Now, neither of the operating systems really gathered all that much usage during testing -- at 30 days past the release of the initial beta, OS X Yosemite is only generating 0.20 percent of North American OS X web traffic. But that's four times the rate of OS X 10.9 Mavericks 30 days after initial beta release. As Chitika points out, "users of the now nine-year old OS X Tiger still generate more Web traffic than Yosemite users." In other news, Chitika figures now show that OS X Mavericks is at the top of the OS X usage heap, generating a whopping 45.7 percent of all North American OS X web traffic, followed by OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (17.5 percent) and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (17.1 percent). You can see how your favorite legacy OS X version fared in the pie chart following this post. Chitika's final word on the subject? "...with the increased level of developer activity thus far, along with the success of the similarly no cost OS X Mavericks, it's very probable that OS X Yosemite adoption will outpace that of any other previous Mac desktop OS when it is released publicly later this year."
The TUAW Daily Update Podcast for June 30, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some 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 player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
Apple releases OS X 10.9.4, iOS 7.1.2, and Apple TV update
Apple today released an update for OS X Mavericks, bringing its desktop OS to version 10.9.4. This update is recommended for all OS X Mavericks owners and includes the following changes: Fixes an issue that prevented some Macs from automatically connecting to known Wi-Fi networks Fixes issue causing the background or Apple logo to appear incorrectly on startup Improves the reliability of waking from sleep Includes Safari 7.0.5 The update is available to Mac owners via the Software Update feature in the Mac App Store. At the same time it updated OS X Mavericks, Apple also released iOS 7.1.2 with improvements to iBeacon, Mail and other underlying bug fixes. According to the release notes, the latest iOS update includes the following changes: Improves iBeacon connectivity and stability Fixes a bug with data transfer for some 3rd party accessories, including bar code scanners Corrects an issue with data protection class of Mail attachments You can download the update over-the-air via Settings > General > Software Update or install it via iTunes by connecting your phone to computer using a USB cable. Last but not least, Apple updated its Apple TV to version 6.2 without any noted major changes.
WWDC 2014: OS X by the numbers
Here's some quick numbers that Tim Cook shared at WWDC 2014 this morning regarding OS X Mavericks and its adoption. 12% Mac growth in the past year versus a negative growth for the industry overall. More than 40 million copies of Mavericks installed since October, most in Apple's history. More than 50% of install base working on latest OS. Cook says this is the fastest adoption ever. By comparison, only 14% of Windows users have adopted the latest version of Windows. We'll have more updates from WWDC 2014 all day.
The TUAW Daily Update Podcast for March 7, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some 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 player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
I tried this one crazy trick for a translucent Mavericks dock and it worked
I love OS customization. Don't you? Ever since OS X Mavericks debuted, I've been complaining about the nearly solid dock. Finally, I stumbled across a system setting that enabled me to restore my dock to its pre-Mavericks more-translucent look. As with many tweaks, the solution depended on a Unix command-line directive to the defaults (that's Mac for "settings") system. You enter this at the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal), specifically: defaults write com.apple.dock hide-mirror -bool true After updating the defaults database, you need to restart the Dock: killall Dock The screenshots on the right of this post show the results. Using the normal settings, you can barely see through the dock at all. Once you apply the mirror hiding override, the dock becomes far more translucent, enabling you to see more of the desktop below it.
TUAW video tip: Enabling and configuring Do Not Disturb in OS X Mavericks
Way back in October of 2013, when iOS 7 was still fresh in our minds and discovery of new features was a joy, TUAW presented a video tip on how to use Do Not Disturb in iOS 7 to keep your device from waking you at night. But did you know that OS X Mavericks has a similar capability? If you're like me and keep your Mac going 24/7, turning Do Not Disturb on during those nighttime hours can spell the difference between a restless night or an undisturbed bedtime. As with all of our other TUAW video tips, this video can be set to view full-screen.
How do I dislike iBooks for OS X? Let me count the ways...
I banged the drums for OS X iBooks for years. Now, finally, Apple delivered. OS X Mavericks includes a desktop version of Apple's signature e-book-reading app. And after finally getting the iBooks I asked for, I've discovered that it's sadly not the iBooks I wanted. If anything, the desktop iBooks feels like an afterthought rather than a destination. It's slow and laggy, with awkward interaction and unsatisfying preferences. There's nothing there that feels like it adds to the reading experience, and a lot that detracts. Between clunky interface choices and poor rendering results, iBooks for OS X has been a huge letdown. Take interaction, for example. Unlike with Adobe Digital Editions, I cannot use my keyboard's Page Up and Page Down keys to navigate through books. iBooks assumes you want to navigate "bookishly" rather than "appishly," so left and right arrow keys are the shortcuts Apple has designed in. I've ended up using Keyboard Maestro, a key-remapping program, to restore my expected interaction styles rather than retraining my fingers. I know it doesn't make as much sense for a "book" metaphor to use page up/down, but this is the way I've grown used to and I'd rather the app do what I expect rather than adhere to metaphorical correctness. Worse, I cannot use the scroll wheel on my mouse in iBooks the way I can in Digital Editions. This is hugely frustrating when reading reference books -- especially if there's a bit of code I need to examine. I don't want to have it cross between pages. Some interaction is incomprehensibly fussy. Consider what it takes to turn a page. When tapping on my iPad, I can hit just about anywhere near the right or left margin and the page will turn according to my wishes. OS X iBooks is far less flexible Only about half the width of these margins causes the next page indicator (a circled chevron) to appear, enabling you to move on by clicking. Consider these two examples. The first shows a cursor position that allows me to click forward. In the second, the cursor is just slightly too far to the left. A click here does nothing at all. So frustrating! With iBooks, a lot of the text rendering can get downright unreliable when you adjust or reshape the page. This happens particularly when viewing material that goes beyond simple headlines and paragraphs. While the following sample renders perfectly in Digital Editions, no matter how I reshape the page, it takes just a few window tweaks to get iBooks to screw up. Until OS X iBooks debuted, most of my on-Mac reading was done using Preview for PDFs and a variety of e-book readers like Adobe Digital Editions for other formats like EPUB. Since none of these could handle Apple's DRM scheme, when it came to purchased items, I tended to limit my selections to the Amazon Kindle store. A few months with iBooks on OS X Mavericks has reinforced that rule of buying Kindle-only. Digital Editions may be ugly and unrefined, but it gets the job done and it currently does it a lot better than iBooks. I would never have expected to view that software abomination with anything approaching affection. How surprising it is, then, that I now do.
This is the most important Mavericks keyboard shortcut you'll discover all day
Mavericks' new Control-Command-Space bar shortcut came up once again during conversation in the TUAW chat room this morning. Once again, I was surprised that this cool little trick isn't universally known. As a public service announcement, we'd like to continue to spread the word about this delightful shortcut. Get yourself over to any text entry field on your Mavericks Mac and give it a try by pressing Control and Command together and then tap the space bar. The resulting pop-up provides easy access to smilies and emoji that you can drag to your favorite app. To Emoji and Beyond There are a few really cool (and not immediately obvious) additional uses for this that you might not be familiar with, even if you're already using the pop-up. See the up-arrow at the top-center of the pop-up? Pull the dialog away from the text entry and the entire window switches to a free-floating Character entry palette, like you see below. This allows you to move the palette out of the way, but keep it on-hand for repeated use. Very handy, especially when sending an iMessage to your BFF. Searching for Characters Now see the button at the top-right of the palette? A single click converts the palette into the more classic form of the Characters window you might be familiar with from OS X Mountain Lion and earlier. Use the search field to find exactly the kind of pictograph you're looking for. Keep your search phrase as general as possible. A search for "triangle," for example, returns a lot more possibilities than "left triangle." Once you've found the item you wish to insert, just drag it from the center pane within the Characters window to whatever text you're editing. Adding Favorites You can click the Add to Favorites button for any pictograph to add often-used symbols to the main display of your Characters palette. Once added, these items appear beneath the most recently used items list. To add or remove items from your favorites list, you need to be using the old-style Characters window, which you access from that top-right button. Use the Add to Favorites and Remove from Favorites buttons when you view individual items. After defining at least one favorite, a complete list of favorites appears at the top-left of the Characters window, just below the Recently Used list. All favorites edits are reflected in the pop-up, but there's one more step you need. To return to the pop-up, don't forget to revert from the classic view by once again clicking the button at the top-right of the Characters window. Unicode Information for Programmers But wait! There's more! If you right-click (or control-click) the character, you can copy the character info to the system pasteboard. Then just paste it into TextEdit or your notepad. 😁 GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES Unicode: U+1F601 (U+D83D U+DE01), UTF-8: F0 9F 98 81 From there, you gain easy access to the exact Unicode information for the symbol, which (if you're a developer, who needs this kind of thing) is an absolute gift for programming. As promised, here's that most important tip for today: Search the Character Editor for "PILE OF POO" and favorite it for easy access. You'll be glad you did.
OS X Mavericks adoption reaches 2.42%
About a month and a half since it's initial release, OS X Mavericks has already amassed a 2.42% share of the worldwide OS market. The data comes courtesy of Net Applications (via The Next Web) which measured OS marketshare for the month of November. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that November 2013 was a big one for Mavericks, which gained 1.58 percentage points (from 0.84 percent to 2.42 percent). All other OS releases lost share: OS X 10.8 fell 1.48 points (from 3.31 percent to 1.85 percent), OS X 10.7 lost 0.22 points (from 1.56 percent to 1.34 percent), OS X 10.6 slipped 0.07 points (from 1.60 percent to 1.53 percent), and OS X 10.5 dipped 0.01 points (from 0.33 percent to 0.32 percent). All told, it's still a Windows world (assuming we're not counting the iPad as a PC) as various iterations of Windows account for 90.88% of worldwide OS marketshare. All iterations of OS X, meanwhile, account for 7.56% of worldwide OS marketshare. Impressively, Net Application's data indicates that 56% of all Macs are currently running either OS X 10.8 or OS X 10.9. In other words, most Mac users are running a version of OS X that is, at the most, only one and a half years old. As a reference point, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was released in July of 2012.
Daily Update for November 27, 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
Tweetbot for Mac updates to 1.4, but doesn't gain slick interface the iOS version has
If you're hoping the updated version of Tweetbot for Mac will include the interface overhaul that recently graced its iOS sibling, you'll be disappointed. There are several items in the 1.4 build of Tweetbot that will be useful to OS X Mavericks users, however. There's smoother scrolling and the ability to reply to tweets and direct messages from the app's notifications. Tweetbot now will correctly recognize computers being on WiFi when location services are turned on. Other fixes include squashing various bugs involved with using secondary windows, timeline searches and more. But I was hoping to see Tweetbot get updated to the slicker interface that's now in Tweetbot 3 on the iPhone. Developers most likely will port that out to the iPad before overhauling the Mac version. I am curious to see how Tapbots will handle such a major upgrade for the Mac client. With major versions of the iOS apps, users have been asked to purchase the upgrades to 2.0 and now 3.0. But with a US$19.99 price point for the Mac, I find it hard to believe that users would swallow that price tag twice. Would you pay another $20 for Tweetbot 2 on the Mac? Let us know in the comments.
