Mac|Life Snow Leopard RSS Feed

Microsoft Manager Slips That Apple Had Some Influence

Florence Ion — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:53:05 -0600

If Windows 7 looks like a copycat, that’s because it’s not that far from the truth. Microsoft Partner Group Manager Simon Aldous spilled the beans about where the new Microsoft operating system may have picked up some of its aesthetics.   

Aldous is not a designer, nor is he a developer—he’s actually in sales. His quotes, however, lead us to believe that he might be on to something. “What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7…is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphic.”

While Windows 7 and Snow Leopard may share some similarities in user interface, there are hardly any similarities in either Snow Leopard or Windows 7 that might warrant this quote as scandalous. “We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface,” continued Aldous. “But it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance”.   

Well, okay.

The Day The Hackintosh Netbook Died: 11-09-09

Cory Bohon — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:52:02 -0600

You can almost hear the words echoed by Hackintosh netbook owners around the world: "We are here today to celebrate the life that was the Hackintosh netbook."

It's official: Apple has indeed killed support for the Intel Atom processor, as leaked before the ill-fated 10.6.2 Snow Leopard update was released yesterday.

OS X Daily reports that many Hackintosh netbook owners found that after installing the update their tiny computers wouldn't even boot past the Apple logo without hanging up.

It goes without saying, but if you have a Hackintosh netbook, you will not want to install the latest update if you wish to keep your machine in working order.

For Macintosh owners, however, the 10.6.2 update does provide some important bug fixes. You can read more about the Snow Leopard update here.

Mac OS X 10.6.2 Now Prowling The Streets

Cory Bohon — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:53:22 -0600

Apple has finally released Mac OS X 10.6.2, the update that might be ill-fated for Hackintosh netbook users.

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system patches that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
the reliability of menu extras
an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
Safari plug-in reliability
general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

For more information about this update you can visit Apple's website. If you are a netbook owner, you might want to consider holding off on updating until we get confirmation that this update kills support for the Intel Atom processor, as previously reported.

Apple To Kill The Hackintosh Netbook Dream?

Cory Bohon — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:01:05 -0600

According to developer rumblings, the Hackintosh netbook could be a thing of the past if Apple has anything to do with it.

The Hackintosh netbook has flourished as OS X users fill the netbook gap left by Apple. Sure, they might have violated the DMCA, and ended up with cramped keyboards, but they brought a dream to life.

According to OS X Daily, Apple could be killing support for the Intel Atom processor (the small processor that makes many netbooks tick) with the next Mac OS X 10.6 update (10.6.2).

If you have a Intel Atom Hackintosh netbook, we'd advise that you not update to the next iteration of Snow Leopard until this information can be verified. Or you could just wait until the Hackintosh community comes up with a new way to boot your netbook with Snow Leopard.

OS X Daily via Engadget

69 Awesomely Free Snow Leopard Compatible Apps

Mac|Life Staff — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:53:48 -0500

The word free gets thrown around quite a lot lately. Cell phone carriers offer "free" phones that are tethered to a two-year contract. Those free rooms in Vegas come at the price of three hours of your life spent listening to a time share pitch. Even Steve Jobs said the new camera in the iPod nano was free. If you're still paying money, it's probably not free.

To help get free back to its rightful place of, well free, we've compiled a list of apps and services that are indeed free and won't require you to sit through a pitch about how great it is to be a foster parent to a monkey. We do want to note that some of these items are services or system preferences. But hey, they're free, so stop complaining and enjoy.

We would also like to note that some of these apps are donationware. If you find that an app you find here is the greatest thing ever and you plan on using it all the time, consider donating some money to the developer. They'll appreciate being able to buy food for the monkeys they're currently playing parent too.

Adium - Talk to anyone

The go to chat app on Macs for years. Connects to AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Facebook, ICQ, Bon Jour, Google Talk and more. If there's a chat, chances are, Adium can handle it.

Alarm Clock - WAKE UP!

Versatile alarm clock app can wake you up to your iTunes music, and even wake up your computer first if it happens to be sleeping. Supports the Apple Remote for snoozing.

Anxiety - So much to do

Lightweight to-do list that syncs with iCal and Mail.

AppCleaner - Clean your virtual room

A small application that helps truly delete applications when you move them to the trash.

Audacity - Sound off

Cross-platform audio editor.

Bean - You want how many words by when?

Word processor with live word count, autosaving, and other features.

Boxee - Reply to emails or watch It's Always Sunny in Philedephia?

Turn your Mac into a multimedia powerhouse with this free open source app. Hulu may have put the kibosh on Boxee support, but the media player still rules the TV.

Burn - Burn it all!

Burn CDs and DVDs of just about anything: music, data, DMGs, etc.

Carbon Copy Cloner - Making copies.

Create a clone of your drive ready for installation on another drive. A great backup tool for those that value their data.

CyberDuck - Ducktales, wooohooo.

Robust FTP client with plenty of cool features. Plus, how can you deny the cute factor of a duck controlling your data transfers. Utility

doubleTwist - Sync your Palm Pre.

Sync your random non-iPod device to your iTunes library. Oh, did we mention you can buy music from Amazon.com from within the app?

Dropbox - Files to go.

Your files, anywhere you need them. Sync, backup and store your data with Dropbox.

Evernote - All your notes in one place, all over the place.

Sync your notes, webpages, snippets of text and photos with Evernote on to your Mac and iPhone. Get a free account with 2GB of storage.

Firefox - Maybe you've heard of this already

The mozilla-based browser boasts impressive download numbers. There's a reason for that.

Flip4mac - Play those scary Windows Media.

Play windows media files in quicktime.

Fluid - Make an app for that

Creating native Mac apps from your favorite Websites and Web apps.

FreeDMG - Image is everything

Easily handles disk-imaging tasks: Create, resize, encrypt, burn disk images, and more.

Gawker - Make a video of a flower blooming or your roomate lounging around.

Uses your iSight to make a time-lapse video you can watch in QuickTime.

Gimp - I'm making purdy pictures.

Powerful open-source image editor. The Photoshop of the open-source world.

Google Earth - I can see my house from here

Fly around a 3D model of the whole world, get directions, and view satellite imagery, building models, and more.

Google Notifier - Google wants to tell you something

Sits in your menubar to alert you to new Gmail messages, and remind you of events in your Google Calendar.

Google Quick Search Box - Search it all

Search tool and application launcher searches your Mac as well as the Internet as you type in a query.

Growl - Yakitty yak, apps talk back

Allow your applications to notify you when something exciting happens.

gTuner - Are you ready to rock? OK, I just have to tune this thing.

Tune your guitar with your Mac.

HandBrake - Tag your media

Video transcoder lets you rip DVDs and convert lots of video formats.

Hulu Desktop - Oh hai, The Office is on.

Watch your favorite shows on Hulu in an app.

i Love Stars - Fast acting critic

Rate your iTunes music from the menu bar.

Inkscape - What's your vector Victor?

Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor that bring Illustrator-like capabilities to your Mac for free.

iPhone Explorer - I can see its insides

Using the supplied USB cable, darg and drop files from your Mac to your iPhone and iPod touch.

iProcrastinate - Download today, or maybe tomorrow

Task management app that lets you break items down into smaller step.

iTweax - Tinker away

Optimize and tweak the OS X Finder and other OS X bundled apps like Safari and Mail.

KeePassX - What's the password?

Password-generating utility and secure-information database.

LEGO Digital Designer - Be like Zack, the LEGO maniac

Build your LEGO dream house, or car, or starship with rocket cannons and jacuzzi.

Minitube 0.7 - YouTube without the browser

Native YouTube client. Watchin your favorite videos with taking up a browser tab.

Mint.com - I spent how much on that?

A handy budgeting tool, beware it may make you think about what you are buying though. Not an actual app, but it's going to help you save money.

Miro - All your favorite video memes in one place

Video player supports RSS feeds, downloads Bit Torrents, searches and downloads from YouTube, and supports lots of file types. video

Monolingual - Adios Español

removes unnecessary language files from your computer.

Name Mangler - From this point forward, you shall all be named George

batch file renamer with the ability to create droplets for saved configurations.

NeoOffice - Who is this Ms Office you speak of?

Open-source office productivity suite featuring a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation, and drawing. Based on OpenOffice.org but runs natively on the Mac, looking and feeling more Mac-like.

NetNewsWire - It's robo-Katie Couric.

RSS reader can archive articles to your hard drive, plus sync with Google Reader and integrate with Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Growl, Twitterific, and more.

OnyX - Stand back, I'll fix it

OS X maintenance tool. Verify your start up disk, run system maintenance, configure system parameters.

OpenOffice - Open up and say ahh

Replace Microsoft Office and Apple's iWork with the free OpenOffice suite.

Perian - Play anything, well almost anything

Give QuickTime the native support needed to play almost any video format.

Picasa - One more cog in the Google take over of your machine

Google photo manager that integrates with your Picasa account

Poladroid - Cheaper than the film that's making a comeback

Create polaroid like pictures from your digital photos.

Quicksilver - Shazam! Thats what we yell when we use Quicksilver.

The ultimate Finder extender continues to rule the lives of those addicted to its speedy ways.

Quinn - Come on column piece, come on.

Free Tetris game for the Mac.

ResizeIt - Resize all the avatars you need quickly

Batch change the size and format of multiple images without spending a bunch of cash.

Seashore - Selling images by the sea shore

Image editor based on GIMP technology but in a native Cocoa framework for the Mac.

SelfControl - Must. Stay. Away. From. Facebook.

Block yourself from time-wasting sites for a predetermined amount of time.

Shadow - We were going to write, "The Shadow knows," but that seems lame

Clipboard manager that uses Bonjour to let you copy and paste from one Mac to another.

Simplify Media - Keep on rocking in the free world

Stream your music anywhere for free.

Sketchup - 3D for you and me

Create, modify and share 3D models.

Skype - Talking heads

Audio and video chat with other Skype users, or make low-cost phone calls overseas.

Solitaire Greatest Hits - The offical game of your mom's computer

A collection of solitaire games ready for those lonely nights.

Spark - Take the shortcut

Powerful shortcut manager for those that would rather stay away from that pesky mouse.

SuperDuper - It's super

It's billed as "heroic system recovery for mere mortals". A quick, easy--and yes free way to make bootable backups of your hard drive. Hooray!

TextWrangler - Yehaw!

Text editor that writers, html monkeys and Coders should have in their arsenal. Far more powerful than the OS X bundled TextEdit app.

Thunderbird - Thunder, thunder, thunderbird HO!

Mozilla-based email client.

Tilt2Joystick - Your MacBook as a Wii Remote

Use the motion sensor on your MacBook as a joystick for your favorite games.

Time Machine Editor - H.G. Wells would be proud

Allows you to change the scheduling of time machine from every hour, to a more pleasing schedule.

Tooble - YouTube to go

Download YouTube videos and save them to play on your computer, iPod, or iPhone.

TweetDeck - The columns, the beautiful columns

Versatile Twitter client supports multiple accounts, updating Facebook, user groups, syncing columns between the Mac and iPhone versions, and more.

Tweetie - Multi-account Twitter magic

The incredible iPhone Twitter app on your Mac. Handle multiple accounts and shoot video directly from your iSight camera. Get it for free with ads popping up in your stream.

Virtual Box - Guest OSs playing nice

Open-source virtualizer. Run Windows, Linux, etc on your Mac. For FREE.

VLC Player - Play it all

an open source video and audio player. Capable of playing MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac.

Vuze - Stream your legally-aquired media

Bit-torrent client that doubles as a media server to your favorite video game consoles.

xBench - Just how fast is your Mac?

Benchmark your machine and test it against the giant database.

Xmarks - Bookmarks anywhere you need to be.

Sync and search your Bookmarks.

Did we miss your favorite free app? Drop it in the comments.

Thanks to all the readers that helped us with this list.

Apple Offers Leopard/Snow Leopard Performance Updates

Cory Bohon — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:46:42 -0500

Today Apple offered up an update to fix hard drive problems that some Mac users were reporting. The Performance Updates for both Leopard and Snow Leopard are supposed to, "[Address] intermittent hard drive-related stalls reported by a small number of customers."

A few Mac users were experiencing these hard drive-related problems, and these problems have been reported for a while now.

You can download this update by visiting the Apple Support Downloads page for Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) or Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), or you can open Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update). Apple has also created a page detailing the steps needed for installing this update.

Not all Macs need this update. The Macs affected are:

MacBook Air (Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009), iMac (20-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008), MacBook Air (Late 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008), iMac (24-inch, Early 2009), iMac (20-inch, Early 2009), Mac mini (Early 2009)

Snow Leopard Bug Could Menace Your Data

Andrew Villa — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:10:29 -0500

Snow Leopard bug could menace your data

There is a bug floating around that seems to be threatening users' data. When users start up their machines as normal, some are finding themselves logged in as a Guest on their machine and their files are supposedly gone. 9 to 5 mac, has sifted through much of the information and discussions and has compiled a list of links to discussions on their site. CNET also has a report, which could help users experiencing this problem.

As for a patch? The bug has yet to be noted in Apple's most recent 10.6.1 update, but we can hope that this problem will be taken care of as soon as possible.

The Snow Leopard Promo Video That Could Have Been

Roberto Baldwin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:03:51 -0500

When Apple finally announced the release date for Snow Leopard, some people found the use of stock photography on the retail box a bit out of the ordinary for a company that prides itself on design.

Well kids, it could have been, well odder. We stumbled upon a video of model/entertainer Alex Kovas. Alex uses body paint to transform himself into various animals and it just so happens he has a video of himself as a snow leopard.

You can check out the video below and Alex's YouTube channel here. Shine on your crazy diamond.