Latest in Mac OS X

Digital formats are a brilliant innovation let down by one fatal flaw: If anything bad happens - be it theft, failure, or natural disaster - to the physical object housing the data, then a lifetime of work (or more likely your whole music and movie collections) can literally be lost forever. This is why backing up your digital data is so important. This prompted the question in last week's We Ask You querying your methods for preventing that possibly cataclysmic loss happening to you.
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Imagine you want to play your favorite album in Spotify. Naturally, you'll be hooking your computer up to a better sound station. But what if you're lying in bed, or sitting on the couch? Ideally, you'd just stream the music to your speakers. Streaming your content locally, between devices, is where AirPlay comes in. With Apple's latest operating system release — Mountain Lion — it's easier than ever.
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In the age of Yahoo IM!, Skype, Google Chats, instant messaging and video chat are hardly a big deal for most computer and Internet savvy users. But the cross platform application, QuicklyChat aims to make video connections more instant but with a feature for warding off interruptions when users are busy.
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A month after the initial release of Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" Apple has addressed a number of reported issues with the first patch, though some users are reporting certain issues - particularly battery drain - have yet to be addressed. Fixes include the resolution of an issue that caused Migration Assistant to crash, a fix for a bug that caused some iMessages not to be sent and improvements to Microsoft Exchange handling in Mail.
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If you own any kind of digital device - from desktop to laptop, tablet to phone, and more besides - it's important to back up your files on a regular basis. How regular is up to you, but leaving those documents, photos, albums, videos, programs, etc. sitting un-duplicated for too long could result in one of those horror stories.
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As the dust surrounding Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion release settles, it’s time to evaluate whether those killer features announced earlier this year are really that good. For me the most exciting addition when I first heard the announcement was the new Messages app, which brings Apple’s closed iMessage platform to the desktop.
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With Mountain Lion came the introduction to the desktop of the familiar Notification Center, ported from its iOS origins. It’s brought even more unity between the desktop and mobile OS, and essentially replicates functionality that’s been available with third party applications for a few years now. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s surprisingly customizable (for an Apple product).
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When I want to share private family photos, I find in the long run that iPhoto is still one of the most useful ways to manage and share many of my most cherished pictures. iPhoto 9 has a few elegant free options for both sharing photos and making sure they are still around for years to come. If you're not a heavy user of iPhoto, you may not know about its email collage feature, and its built-in integration with Flickr and Facebook.
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iCloud has been most useful for updating email, contact, and calendar data across Mac and iOS devices. But now it includes additional features for document files, for both Apple native and third-party applications. In this article I explain many of the pros and cons of saving text documents to iCloud.
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With music purchased from the iTunes Store, it's not always clear what you can or cannot do. This is largely due to the maze of DRM restrictions, and iTunes' design, which is obviously focused on managing your files in the application rather than in Finder. One of the things you can do - and as it turns out, quite easily - is copying your iTunes Store purchases from one Mac's iTunes to another.
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Set up your media center exactly the way you want it. Aeon Nox 3.5 is the most recent version of what is perhaps the best theme for XBMC, and it is a rare combination: beautiful and customizable. Impressed? Keep reading and I'll show you how this all works – and where you can find it.
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Writing for MakeUseOf means that, as an author, I get through a lot of coffee, a lot of software and a lot of screenshots. Regardless of the operating system I’m using, if I’m reviewing software, rounding up websites or showing off tips and tricks then I’m going to be including screenshots to better illustrate the product or process. I learned pretty quickly that through the wonders of batch conversion that you can save yourself precious time when it comes to image processing.
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Skype, in terms of software design, continues to baffle me. It's beautifully designed, and most of the time it's also charmingly easy to use, but once in a blue moon you discover these little quirks that rain on your Skype parade. It may be how the application masterfully ignores basic interface guidelines. Here are some three very basic tips to make your Skype experience on Mac OS X a more enjoyable one.
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The Terminal is the Mac OS X analogue of the Windows command prompt, or CMD. It's a tool, as you probably already know, that allows you to control your computer using text commands, as opposed to a graphical user-interface. Although using the Terminal can seem a little daunting at first, it will pay off to get familiar with it.
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If you purchased a new Mac recently then you might be pleasantly surprised to hear that you’re entitled to a free upgrade of Apple’s latest version of OS X, 10.8 Mountain Lion. Customers who purchased directly from Apple or from an authorised reseller on or after June 11, 2012 are eligible – and who doesn’t [...]
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