10.7

Apple is bringing Notification Center to OS X Mountain Lion, looking to replace the need for popular notification app, Growl. While developers are able to get a taste of the overall look and feel of the new OS, who's to say those of us without access to Mountain Lion can't as well?

Well, thanks to a creative individual who took it upon himself to create a Mountain Lion Growl style, you can experience the general look of the upcoming Notification Center alert right now.

You can download the Growl style from this Dribbble page. The link … Read more

Yesterday Apple released OS X 10.7.3, but after updating their systems a few people have noticed some errors.

These include not being able to get networks connected, and some difficulties in connecting to displays, such as intermittent black screens or warnings stating that the connection is not supported.

Most of these errors seem fairly sparsely reported so far, but one that is a bit more widespread is applications crashing followed by graphical artifacts in response to user input in various windows.

More specifically, numerous applications crash, and when OS X displays the crash reporter window containing user input … Read more

If open-source freeware has a weak spot, it's the hobbyist thing, and nowhere is that more evident than in media players. "Wait while it updates what? Font cache? I just want to hear 'Surfin' Bird!'" Many people are more than willing to forgo the advantages of open-source players for something easier to use.

MPlayer is an open-source media player optimized for playing movies, but it has a lot of options and capabilities, with more coming all the time. SMPlayer aims to be a unified front end for MPlayer, simplifying access to basic features such as playing videos … Read more

Apple released OS X 10.7.3 Lion today, the third such minor update to the operating system since it was launched last July.

The update, which went out to Lion users earlier this afternoon, includes an update to Safari, bringing the built-in browser up to version 5.1.3. System-wide, the update promises to fix bugs and add new languages, including Greek, Hebrew, Thai and Catalan, among others. It also fixes bugs with authenticating with directory services and what Apple says were "compatibility issues" with Windows file sharing.

The release follows some seven betas of the software … Read more

iCloud and iOS 5 brought with it a slew of new features with them when Apple launched the software duo earlier this month. One of the advertised features was the ability to sync iWork documents (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) using iCloud with the iWork apps on iOS. … Read more

Mission Control was touted by Apple prior to Lion's release as a feature that would increase OS X user productivity by providing quick access to various windows and apps. Instead, many users have found the feature lacking, specifically lacking the ability to rearrange desktop spaces and full-screen apps in their order of preference.… Read more

If you use Microsoft's Lync enterprise messaging and conferencing tool, you may experience crashes with the program if you update your Mac to OS X 10.7.2.

Microsoft is reporting on its Office for Mac blog that OS X 10.7.2 contains some invalid certificates that result in a conflict with its enterprise messaging program that is causing the crashes.

A true fix to this issue will require Microsoft to update its software to properly contend with invalid certificates if and when they arise, but until then if you need to use the software you can implement … Read more

When OS X Lion was released there were a few outstanding bugs that users noticed and emailed me about or described on the Apple Discussion boards. Initially Apple quickly released the OS X 10.7.1 update to address some of these quickly, but this was mainly to fix immediate compatibility and did not address some prominent issues that users were experiencing.

Since the 10.7.1 release in mid-August, Apple has had several months to address some of the major bugs affecting users that we have covered, so let's see what has been addressed by Apple so far:… Read more

After installing OS X 10.7.2 and enabled the new iCloud services that Apple unveiled yesterday, a number of users have found that the system is displaying a Guest User account at the log-in window.

Upon clicking this account, the system will show a warning that states the system will restart into a Safari-only mode for the guest user, and if any accounts are currently logged in then they will be forced to log out and may lose unsaved work.

For people seeing this, if they go to the Users & Groups system preferences, the guest account will be … Read more