Year: 2011

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Uncategorized

Productivity Combo: Stickies and Spaces

There are times when Apple releases a new feature, and you think, “Wow, this is really cool!” Then there are other times when you think, “This looks cool, but how the heck would I use it?” Spaces, first introduced in OS X 10.5 Leopard, felt more like the latter. Grouping applications to virtual desktops looked promising, but its usefulness felt questionable.

Stickies has been around since OS 7, but even that one didn’t feel too purposeful. All the notes just litter the desktop until the app is closed or you right click on the icon in the dock to hide. Creating the notes with the Stickies widget in Dashboard isn’t much better.

But combining Stickies and Spaces leads to something different.

Open System Preferences and click on Expose & Spaces. Select the Spaces tab and then check “Enable Spaces.” After you select the “+” symbol, select Stickies and assign it to Space 1. Done. But from there, you can customize Spaces further, adding or taking Spaces away or adding other apps in to the mix.

Hit F8, the Spaces icon, or Expose, and bam! Stickies. Done looking at them? Just go back to your first space.

From there you can add the functionality of the way Stickies works with any highlighted text by clicking and dragging it on to the Stickies dock icon (in Safari, Command-Shift-y eliminates the need for click and drag). Color-coding is as simple as selecting Color from the menu, text can be put in bold to show importance, or images can be added.

The features of OS X never cease to amaze. Apple has spent so much attention to user friendliness with intuitive functionality that applications can work together to create a greater effect.

Now, if I could only wrap my head around how to use Automator. I guess I’ll make a note to look into that.

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Categories
Reviews

Crossover Review

Having a Mac has ups and downs, it’s awesome for music, business, and school. One thing Mac is definitely lacking are games. All those awesome titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and others are usually only on Windows and occasionally iOS, but there is always an answer and in this case it is called CrossOver. CrossOver brings all those great applications made for Windows to your Mac and even Linux. It comes in three different versions to fit your needs: CrossOver Standard, CrossOver Games, and CrossOver Professional. Here is a quick summary of how it works. It emulates windows, but there is no dealing with virtual machines or full reboots. CrossOver simulates a reboot within the application if one is needed. CrossOver beats virtualizing games on your Mac in VMware Fusion or Parallels by not having to run unnecessary processes.

It also works with Wine, which pretty much ports or brings over the important files from Windows and allows your Mac to run the applications in CrossOver. It works very well with CrossTie games, but I have found that games that are not supported by CrossTie directly have a slight amount of lag, but for gaming on a Mac, the graphics and speed are on par. However, you also need to take into account that the lag might not be from the application, but the hardware of the Mac.

Above I talked about CrossTie, which helps you by supporting certain games that can be found on the CodeWeavers website’s compatibility page. CrossTie has everything you need, and downloads everything you need. Even if your software isn’t supported, almost all the time you can get your software to work. Also, if your software isn’t supported by CrossTie you can pledge for it, and get it supported by CrossTie.

My final thoughts of CrossOver are that it works extremely well when you think of all that CrossOver is doing. It is very fast, and being an avid game, I have found that games are just amazing on the Mac thanks to CrossOver.

Categories
News

Apple’s Mac OS X Lion out by summer?

What is Mac OS X Lion? It is Apple’s latest operating system. Apple is going to take the best features from the iPad and implement them into the Mac with the new Mac OS X Lion. The Mac App Store, which is also available on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, will also be a feature on Mac OS X Lion. The Mac App Store will allow you to purchase apps and they will appear right on the new Launchpad that is also a new feature. The Launchpad is similar to iOS devices because it allows instant access to your apps. The Launchpad icon is on your Dock and with one simple click on the icon, a full screen display of all your apps appears. You can arrange your apps anyway you like by dragging them onto different locations or even into folders.  Mac OS X Lion gives you the opportunity to use your apps on the full-screen. You can also swipe the trackpad to switch to another app’s full-screen window or back to the desktop. Mission Control is another feature on Mac OS X Lion that allows you to view all programs running on your Mac and even click it to get to that program. Multi-Touch is also more responsive.

Other new features include Auto Save, which automatically saves your work by saving the changes made on the document, Versions, which lets you revert to older versions of a document, and Resume, which lets you restart your Mac and return to exactly what you were doing before you restarted your Mac. For checking your email, Mail 5 allows you to view messages in your inbox and let’s you see a preview of it. It also introduces Conversations, which groups emails together of the same conversation. AirDrop allows you to send files to other people nearby that are using AirDrop also. Your Mac is also more secure with XTS-AES 128 data encryption at the disk level. FileVault encrypt your external drives too. Lion Server is also a new feature that helps you set up your Mac as a server and enjoy the many benefits that it has to offer.

Apple is currently getting ready to release a Mac OS X Lion update to developers that may be called “GM1”.  “GM” typically stands for “Golden Master”. This means that the product is complete, but there can be a lot of bugs and performance issues that Apple has to work on. The launch of Mac OS X Lion will be released sometime in the summer, but it depends on how fast Apple can get rid of the bugs and other issues.

Feel free to leave a comment.

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Uncategorized

Jailbreak iOS 4.3 Released

Monday night, after weeks of waiting, redsn0w 0.9.6rc9 was released. This is the first untethered, stable jailbreak of all iDevices running 4.3.1, except the iPad 2. For those of you not familiar with Redsn0w, it is a popular Jailbreak tool created by the iPhone Dev Team, a team of talented hackers who devout their time to jailbreaking every iOS on every device, the team that geohot (the maker of limera1n, another popular jailbreaking solution) was originally apart of. Redsn0w 0.9.6rc9 uses the exploit found by Stefan Esser, or @i0n1c on twitter, who hacked iOS 4.3, but felt that releasing the exploit to the public would just result in Apple removing it in 4.3.1. With the release of 4.3.1, this was no longer a problem, and redsn0w was released to the public.

 

Redsn0w is very simple to use, just update your device to 4.3.1, then open redsn0w. It will prompt you to find the ispw file, which, if you updated through iTunes, can be found in users/yourname/library/itunes/iPod Software Updates. It will build a custom ispw for you, and, after following the directions to put your device in DFU mode, you just have to sit back and watch your device be jailbroken.

The official version of Redsn0w can be downloaded here.

If you having trouble finding the right software to jailbreak with, try this interactive guide.

*Note: The Real Mac Genius.com does not condone illegal uses for jailbreaking (i.e. installing cracked apps), nor is responsible for any damages or loss of data that may be caused by jailbreaking.

Categories
News

Rumor Roundup: iPhone 5

There are many people who are looking forward to the new iPhone 5. With a new Apple product on the look out, rumors are spreading like wildfire. One of the first rumors is that the new iPhone 5 will be made of metal, instead of the aluminosilicate glass used in the iPhone 4. Using metal for the back of the iPhone 5, added to the stainless steel band on the iPhone 4 would make the iPhone 5 completely metal based. Making the new iPhone 5 have a metal back would be much better than using the aluminosilicate glass for the back. The metal is more durable then the glass and wouldn’t shatter. The glass back would also add more weight to the phone and had stress-fracture issue due to sliding cases for the iPhone 4. With a metal back, the new iPhone 5 will be more durable and resilient. It would be similar to how Apple makes its Mac computers with a metal unibody. The metal would be thinner than the glass, so you can have a lighter feel to it. The iPhone 5 is most likely to follow the iPhone 4’s design and continue to have a flat back. There have been some iPhone 5 cases that were leaked to confirm this design.

There have also been some rumors that the screen will be 4 inches instead of 3.5 inches. The camera may also improve from a 5-megapixel to an 8-megapixel. Some other rumors are that the iPhone 5 will most likely be available in white, which is highly probably. The iPad 2 has dual-core A5 chips, so the iPhone 5 should also have it. One rumor that is very interesting is that the iPhone 5 will have NFC Technology, or near field communication technology. The iPhone 5 will use NFC to make your iPhone 5 act like a credit card. With all these rumors going around, you have to wonder, which rumors are true and which are false. You have to wait until the iPhone 5 launches to find out, which is rumored to be near June — September.

Feel free to leave questions or comments.

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