mountain

Apple's World Wide Developers Conference starts on Monday, and while the main focus appears to be on updates to iOS (read my iOS 7 wish list here) and various Mac hardware, it's highly likely we'll get an update for Mac OS X 10.9 as well. At this point, we don't know what will be announced and we don't even know which "cat" will be associated with the release. Even the picture above (a giant banner currently displayed at Moscone Center) is suspiciously free of any cats at all, so it's hard … Read more

Yesterday Apple released the OS X 10.8.4 update for Mac users, which brings a number of fixes for network connectivity, VoiceOver, Boot Camp, and online services like FaceTime and Exchange.

While the update has been relatively smooth so far, a few people are experiencing problems in which the update does not properly install. In some cases the update will download and then give an error when running; in other instances the update will appear to work properly but then the system will reboot to OS X 10.8.3.

If you experience these or similar problems when attempting … Read more

Apple released what is likely to be the last round of fixes to 10.8 Mountain Lion ahead of a look at the next major version of OS X at next week's Worldwide Developer conference.

10.8.4 -- which has been in developer testing for months -- went out Tuesday and fixes a handful of bugs while promising "improvements' in other areas.

Key among them is a fix for a bug in Apple's Messages software that would display messages out of order, an issue that could make the app's conversational style useless and confusing.

On … Read more

Starting with OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple introduced Auto Save and Resume features that make it so the system will continually save your ongoing work, along with each program's current set of opened windows. This feature allows the system to maintain your workflow in the event of a power failure or crash, or even if you simply quit your program without saving.

To see this feature in action, open TextEdit, Pages, Safari, or another program that is built to work with these services, and create a new document without saving it. Make modifications to it and then choose &… Read more

An ongoing issue for some people who have installed Mountain Lion is the inability to access their systems' internal optical drives. Once installed, inserting a disc results in a couple of noises before the disc is ejected. While this can sometimes happen for burned discs that are no longer readable, it appears to happen for all discs, be they home-burned or commercial.

If this is happening on your system, first try testing the problem with multiple operating systems to see if the problem is hardware or software based. If your system came with gray boot discs, try inserting them and … Read more

Since its move to online purchasing and distribution of its operating system software, Apple has no longer included gray recovery DVDs with its Mac systems. Instead, if you wish to reinstall OS X you simply reboot to the OS X Recovery HD and use the tools there to format your hard drive (should you choose to), then run the installer to download OS X from Apple's servers.

While convenient for those with fast broadband connections, sometimes you may find yourself in a location without fast Internet and would benefit from having a way to reinstall OS X from scratch. … Read more

Lack of maintenance will most likely lead your Mac to become sluggish or less responsive. Maintenance (Mountain Lion) for Mac allows you to maintain the basics of your system without much hassle; but without a scheduling function, you'll have to remember to run it manually.

The installation of this free application is quick and easy. Maintenance (Mountain Lion) for Mac also offers a rather basic but quite intuitive interface. The application displays a single window divided into sections where users can select which tasks they wish to run. Users can select a single or multiple options by checking the … Read more

As Mac's OS becomes more complex and customizable, inexperienced users may have trouble accessing appearance options. Deeper (Mountain Lion) for Mac displays many potential customizations in an easy-to-use and effective menu.

Available as a freeware program, no payments or subscriptions are required for full use. Download and installation completed quickly and without any problems. When initializing the program for the first time, you must accept a licensing agreement. Deeper (Mountain Lion) for Mac then begins automatically as a small bar in the display screen. Detailed instructions also popped up separately and were well thought out and comprehensive. This is … Read more

There are gaps in my TV consumption history. Of the big TV dramas in recent memory, for example, I have watched "Lost" and "The Sopranos" in their entirety, but I have caught only a half a season of "Mad Men," only three-plus seasons of "The Wire," and nary an episode of "Breaking Bad."

For the singular purpose of watching Walter White's meth adventures on a big screen, this week I purchased an Apple TV. From what I've heard about this show, it merits being Netflixed on an HDTV … Read more