Mad Man Builds Ridiculously Cool 40-inch iPhone

Benjamin Bachmeier turned a 40-inch LCD Full HD display into a perfect giant iPhone replica. It doesn't run iOS but Mac OS X, but it's gigantic buttons are fully functional. It's computer, a display, a table and completely ridiculous.

He calls it the iTableous. It's not even a Mac, but a Hackintosh running Mac OS X and Windows 7. Funnily enough, I think this is the only time that I've actually liked the white iPhone 4. [Benjamin BachmeierInsanely Mac]

Apple Releases Public Beta Of FaceTime For Mac

by Ray Willington

from: http://hothardware.com/

 

Apple hosted a huge event in California this week, and it was all centered about the Mac. We figured by the look of the invite that software would be a huge part of the discussion, and indeed it was. One of the major introductions at the event surrounded FaceTime. That's Apple's own video calling software, and while it's definitely not new (Skype has enabled video chats for quite some time), it's one of the more fluid implementations. But there's just one major problem: it's only available between iPhone 4/iPod touch users.

No longer. Apple today introduced the public beta of FaceTime for Mac, which is a standalone app that is separate from iChat and enables Mac users to video call iPhone 4 and iPod touch users as well as other Mac users. The app Mac automatically uses your Address Book contacts, and it works seamlessly with the built-in camera and mic on Mac notebooks, iMac and Apple LED Cinema Displays.

It's available to download today for free, but OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is required. Give it a shot if you have been meaning to speak to your folks back in Canada. Or wherever they are.

Apple Brings FaceTime to the Mac

Macs Can Video Call Over 19 Million iPhone 4 & iPod touch Users

CUPERTINO, California—October 20, 2010—Apple® today announced the public beta of FaceTime® for Mac®, an entirely new application that allows Mac users to video call iPhone® 4 and iPod touch®* users as well as other Macs. Featuring an easy to use interface, FaceTime for Mac automatically uses your Address Book contacts so there’s no need to create special buddy lists, and it works seamlessly with the built-in camera and mic on Mac notebooks, iMac® and Apple LED Cinema Displays.

“FaceTime makes video calling to or from mobile devices easy for the first time,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve sold more than 19 million FaceTime-ready iPhone 4 and iPod touch devices in the past four months, and now those users can make FaceTime calls with tens of millions of Mac users.”

FaceTime for Mac requires Mac OS® X Snow Leopard® and is easy to set up with an Apple ID. The public beta is available immediately as a free download at www.apple.com/mac/facetime. 

The 7 best features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Apple's under-the-hood update includes some surprisingly nice changes for users

by: Galen Gruman

if (!self.ord) { ord = Math.random()*10000000000000000; } document.write('

August 24, 2009 (InfoWorld) When a new OS upgrade costs $29, you can be forgiven for thinking of it as a service pack. Such may appear to be the case with Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, which Apple has positioned as an under-the-hood upgrade whose new capabilities won't be so obvious to users, and thus not worth the usual $129.

I agree with that price assessment (if only Microsoft had made the same judgment about Windows 7), but I don't agree that what Snow Leopard offers resides merely under the hood. Instead, it provides many enhancements and some new features that Mac users of all persuasions will really like. (Note: The $29 upgrade price is for Leopard users; if you have an older Mac OS X version, it'll cost you $169 to upgrade.)

[ Get all the details on the new Mac OS X features in InfoWorld's "What's new in Mac OS X Snow Leopard" slideshow trio: new features for all users, new features for office users, and new features for power users. | Follow InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. ]

Much of Snow Leopard's focus has been internal. For example, Apple has revamped the kernel, included apps, and much of the OS itself to be 64-bit (to allow virtual addressable memory of 16 exabytes and physical addressable memory of more than 32GB).

But until apps are rewritten for 64-bit and the new Mac models support that kind of memory, there's little immediate benefit. Ditto for multicore enablement in the Grand Central Dispatch engine. But the revamped QuickTime X and Java engines should result in faster processing of streaming media and Java applets (such as on Web sites).

Putting aside these important but long-term changes, here are Snow Leopard's most immediately beneficial new features and enhancements.

1. ActiveSync and Exchange 2007 support

Following in the footsteps of the iPhone, Snow Leopard makes these Microsoft technologies native to the OS. That means Apple's e-mail, calendar, and contacts apps work just peachy with Exchange 2007 server, giving users the same capabilities as Microsoft Entourage but with the better-designed, less-memory-intensive apps -- Mail, iCal, and Address Book -- included in OS X.

2. Exposé integration in the Dock

The Mac OS X Dock makes it easy to access applications, open documents, and common folders, a concept Windows 7 is stealing in its retooled taskbar. Open documents are even more easily accessed in Snow Leopard, thanks to the integration of Exposé.

Now when you click and hold an app icon in the Dock, you get preview windows for each of its open documents, allowing you to switch easily among them or to close them, all without having to clutter your screen with document windows. I never cared much for Exposé in its traditional role (providing hot corners and shortcuts to open application windows), but I love the Dock-integrated Exposé functionality that Snow Leopard adds.

3. Automatic location detection

When you travel, it's easy to get mixed up as to when your appointments are, since your computer is still in your "home" time zone, and you have to mentally calculate the current time when looking at the calendar or clock. Sure, you can change the time zone in the Date & Time system preference, but it's easy to forget.

So Snow Leopard changes the time zone for you automatically (if you set that as the default behavior), using Wi-Fi mapping to figure out where you are -- you will need to be connected to a Wi-Fi access point or router. iCal can also be set to adjust the times to the current time zone automatically, so your calendar always reflects the current times.

4. The new Preview: More like Adobe Reader

I have nothing against Adobe Reader, but I love that Preview now can open multiple PDF documents, display their contents as contact sheets, and show thumbnails of pages in a sidebar for easy navigation. In other words, it works a lot like Adobe Reader. That's one fewer app to launch -- and since Preview loads much faster than Reader, I can get to my PDFs' contents much faster now.

[ Get all the details on the new Mac OS X in the "Snow Leopard Bible," by InfoWorld's Galen Gruman and Macworld U.K.'s Mark Hattersley. ]

5. Movie and screencast recording

Snow Leopard takes the formerly $35 QuickTime Pro and makes it a standard, free app in Mac OS X. That means you can record movies and -- great for many marketing, education, and Web professionals -- screencasts from your Mac with no additional software.

6. Systemwide automatic text replacement

Automatic text substitution as you type is nothing new; Microsoft Word has had it for more than a decade. But Snow Leopard lets you specify such substitutions via the Keyboard system preference, so you have a common set of substitutions available to all applications. Right now, only TextEdit, Mail, and various Apple apps use this common auto-text service, but if other software developers adopt it, you may finally get all your text-oriented apps to autocorrect the same way.

7. No more gesture segregation

I have a late-2006 model MacBook Pro at home, and it's frustrating that its gesture-capable trackpad supports only the first generation of touch gestures (one- and two-finger moves), not the second-generation three- and four-finger options. Snow Leopard fixes that, so gesture-capable trackpads now support all gestures, no matter what Mac model you have. (Of course, your Mac has to have a gesture-capable trackpad, so models before 2006 aren't helped out by this update.)

The Ultimate Mac Setup for Photographers (50 Apps)

Photography David Appleyard

OS X is a popular platform for professional photographers, and offers a huge range of software which can help to take better photos, streamline post-processing, sell images, and publish them for others to view. Whether you’re a complete amateur or a seasoned pro, this roundup will have something new to show you.

We’ll be covering 50 fantastic applications for various areas of photography: organizing, post-processing, geo-tagging, panoramas, HDR images, uploading/sharing images, and more.

Organizing & Editing Photos

• iPhoto - The basic photo program shipped with OS X, iPhoto packs a wide range of features and integrates brilliantly with all the other software on your Mac.
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - A professional photo organization tool, complete with powerful editing features. You can quickly import, process, manage, and showcase your images — from one shot to an entire shoot.
• Aperture - Having improved a great deal in recent versions, Aperture now offers a good way to cull through shoots, enhance images, manage massive libraries, and deliver stunning photos.
• Capture One Pro - The choice of seasoned professionals, Capture One works well for tethered shooting and offers a solid tool for a RAW workflow.
• Picasa - Google’s free photo management application, Picasa is friendly and simple to use. It lacks the innovative features found in recent versions of iPhoto.
• Bibble - Another RAW workflow tool, useful for organizing photos with a wide range of editing functionality.
• Shoebox - A solid solution for organizing all of your photos by content, with an interface well suited to widescreen displays.
• JetPhoto Studio - An easy-to-use photo management app with a range of publishing features (including the automatic creation of Flash web galleries)
• Photoshop Elements - Step-by-step editing, compositing tools, and it’s built on the solid foundation of Adobe Photoshop.

Post Processing

• Adobe Photoshop - The de-facto photo editing application, Photoshop has been an industry leader for many years. It’s incredibly powerful, but comes at a price.
• Pixelmator - An incredibly fast photo editing tool for OS X, which uses various speed-enhancing features of Leopard. Definitely worth taking a look at.
• Seashore - A native application built upon the core of GIMP, offering a well-rounded, free photo editing solution.
• Corel Painter X - Taking a slightly different angle, this app tries to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance of traditional media associated with drawing and painting.
• Acorn - A remarkably uncluttered and simple photo editor for OS X, with a great in-built brush designer.
• Picturesque - Useful for adding the finishing touches to a photo, such as borders, shadows, perspective, reflections etc.
• PhotoComplete - Similar to Acorn, PhotoComplete is a basic image editor which excels on account of a simple and easy-to-understand interface.
• Prizmo - This app allows you to easily change the perspective of a photograph, and essentially “scan” using a digital camera. Fascinating stuff.

Batch Processing

• Automator - The built-in automation app from Apple, which can perform a range of photo manipulation actions and be easily extended with a range of plugins.
• iMagine Photo - Another tool for automating your image processing workflow. You can scale, crop, blend images, apply filters and rotate.
• EasyBatchPhoto - Allows you to process hundreds (or thousands) of images with a single drag-and-drop, with a simple looking interface.
• PhotoDrop - A simple utility that allows you to create small, customized droplets that turn the tedious task of modifying a folder of images into a simple drag-and-drop operation.

HDR Photography

• Photomatix - A widely popular HDR app with tone mapping and exposure fusion. It works as a standalone app, or as a plugin for Photoshop or Aperture.
• Qtpfsgui - Despite the horrendous name, this tool is completely open source and offers a free way to start a HDR workflow.
• Hydra - A user-friendly interface, automatic matching of images and an Aperture plug-in make Hydra definitely worth a look.
• Silverfast - Whilst starting to look at little dated, Silverfast seems to offer a fairly large set of advanced features. Not too user-friendly.
• Bracketeer - A front-end GUI for Enfuse, which offers an auto-align feature and can supposedly create far better looking images than Photoshop. You can be the judge!
• FDRTools - Another similar tool for combining images, tone mapping, and exporting in a variety of different formats.

Panoramas & Stitching

• Panorama Tools - A page crammed with technical information seems to suggest that this is a very proficient set of tools for stitching and viewing panoramas. Also available as a Photoshop plugin.
• Double Take - A very simple, user-friendly interface make this a good choice for when you can’t get far enough away to fit everything in the viewfinder.
• PhotoWarp - Capable of producing some fascinating circular warps and panoramas, PhotoWarp is something a little different.
• Flexify - Allows you to bend and stretch a photo into seemingly any shape, creating some really impressive effects.
• Panorama2Flash - Support for batch conversion and Flash export make this app a full-featured alternative to those previously mentioned.

Uploading & Sharing

• Flickr Uploadr - A fantastically simple app for uploading your photos to Flickr and ensuring they remain organized as you’d like.
• Facebook iPhoto Plugin - A simple plugin for uploading images straight to Facebook, supporting tagging and organization within the app itself. Far better than the web based tools.
• iStockPhoto Aperture Plugin - If you sell images through iStockPhoto, this plugin can be a real time-saver. If you use another stock site, check around to see if a different plugin has been created (you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised).
• iWeb - Apple’s basic website design app can be very useful for creating quick, good looking photo galleries and slideshows from images already contained in iPhoto or Aperture.
• PictureSync - Offering a central app for tagging and organizing photos for upload to a wide range of different online services.
• Smilebox - A fun and friendly service for scrap-booking, creating cards, and quickly sharing photos.

Geotagging

• Geophoto - See your pictures from a new perspective and start tagging by location. It can import photos directly from iPhoto or Aperture and share them on Flickr.
• PhotoLinker - A professional solution than can integrate with GPS tracks, attempting to automatically put your photos in precisely the right location.
• GeoTagger - A droplet for inserting GPS coordinates into your photos that integrates with Google Earth.
• HoudahGeo - Catering for both geotagging for archival purposes, and for publishing to Google Earth, Flickr or locr. Also capable of matching photos to a GPS track.
• PhotoGPSEditor - An easy to use meta-data editor for photo files, plus it can match data from GPS (gpx or NMEA) files. Completely free.
• Trails for iPhone - If you have an iPhone, Trails is a fantastic way to track exactly where you’ve been for later geotagging. It doesn’t require an internet connection - great for when traveling.

Backup & Recovery

• CameraSalvage - Retrieve your photos from corrupt or formatted flash cards or other digital camera media. It can recover data from digital camera media cards, hard drives, CD-ROM, external devices, Apple iPods, and much more.
• Salvage - Salvage is a tool for recovering digital camera pictures from corrupt removable media.
• ImageRecall - And another. ImageRecall will do it’s best to recover any photos from a corrupt or accidentally deleted card.
• Time Machine - The OS X Leopard backup solution. All that you require is an external hard drive, and to keep a copy of your website locally.
• Dropbox - I use Dropbox as a means of keeping an off-site backup of important website documents and files (though it’s also great at keeping multiple computers in sync!)
• SuperDuper - If you’d like to keep a bootable backup of your Mac hard drive, SuperDuper is an excellent solution.

Conclusion

A huge selection of software is available for photographers, from direct tethered capturing right through to uploading images to a stock photography website. It’s always worth trying out a few options before settling on one in particular (especially when considering major software choices such as Aperture vs Lightroom).

Which pieces of photography software could you not do without? I’m interested to read about the applications that fit into your workflow.

Windows 7 Versus Mac OS X Leopard: The Feature-by-Feature Showdown

By Gina Trapani

Now that we know Windows 7 will go on sale October 22nd and the feature-complete release candidate is available as a free download, it's time to put it through its paces: as compared to the current state of the Mac.

Oh, I know: the Mac versus PC debate is so played out. Perhaps, but dumb commercials aside, if you're deciding between buying a Mac or a PC in the coming months, it helps to know what you're getting from one or the other. I use both a Mac and a PC every day of the week, and both systems have their strong and weak points.

Note that I'm basing my observations on the Windows 7 Ultimate Release Candidate 1 (Build 7100) and Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7. You could argue that I really should be comparing Windows 7 to the upcoming Snow Leopard, and you'd be right. If I had a copy of Snow Leopard to run I'd do that. Alas. As always, take all comments salted with a few grains of "this is all one person's opinion" and "what I should get depends on what I need." Also, remember to breathe. Let's do this.

Mac Finder versus Windows Explorer—A Draw

I've always thought that the default interface for dealing with files in every major operating system could improve, and given both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Leopard, I still feel that way. Both Finder and Windows Explorer offer pretty much the same features, with a few exceptions (like Finder's Sidebar and Places, and now Windows 7's Libraries). Still, I want a tabbed interface and Quicksilver-y file manipulation built into my OS, and neither Explorer or Finder offers that. Since I'm pretty "meh" on both of these, we're calling this one a draw.

Leopard's Quick Look versus Windows File Preview—Winner: Quick Look

The one feature of Leopard's Finder which is super-useful for most common document types is Quick Look. Select a file, tap the keyboard, and bang, you're peering into the contents of a file, whether it's a Word document, PDF, or image. In Windows 7 Explorer you can hit the Alt+P keyboard combination to preview the contents of a file in an embedded panel inside the Explorer interface (too small). This preview feature doesn't support nearly the amount of filetypes that Quick Look does and lacks Quick Look's separate window resizing and paging capabilities.

Windows Taskbar versus Mac Dock—Winner: Windows 7 Taskbar

The new Windows 7 taskbar is no doubt the best improvement interface-wise to your system. Now you can pin programs to your taskbar (ironically, Dock-style), but you've also got jumplists and Aero Peek rollover previews (which work for multiple windows AND tabs) and the ever-handy Show Desktop button that pulls the taskbar ahead of Mac's Dock. In the Dock's defense, the Windows 7 taskbar does lack a Stacks equivalent.

Windows System Tray vs Mac Menu Bar—Winner: Windows 7 System Tray

The Mac menu bar is an odd bird: it's fixed to the top of your Mac's screen with no easy way to hide it, and programs affix their icons there without asking you (or by burying the option to hide them somewhere in the individual program's preferences). The default date and time display isn't that informative, either. Compared to Windows 7's one-click full calendar, and your ability to easily customize what icons live there in one place, Windows 7 takes this one. (See more about that icon customization in item #6 in the top 10 things to look forward to in Windows 7.)

Leopard's Time Machine vs Windows Backup—Winner: Leopard's Time Machine

Not too much has changed with Windows 7's built-in backup utility: it's a plain old wizard that asks you to choose a backup drive, choose the files you want to back up (along with an option to make an OS system image), and set the schedule. It's buried somewhere in the Control Panel and the whole business of using it is boring and easy to ignore. But Leopard's Time Machine? Nothing beats its dead-simple setup and over-animated but really-fun restore interface.

Windows 7 Aero Peek versus Exposé? (Not Quick Look or Stacks)—Winner: Aero Peek

I admit it: I'm currently deep in a love affair with Windows 7's Aero Peek feature, which does all this beautiful thumbnail previewing and window clearing and docking—but not in an overwrought, show-offy way, more in a smooth, utilitarian, why-doesn't-every-computer-do-this way. Currently Mac OS X doesn't offer a feature that one could compare to Aero Peek. Update: Reader OMG! Memez! (Dafrety) rightfully points out that you could kinda-sorta compare Aero Peek to Leopard's Exposé. Even doing that, Aero Peek still wins, hands down.

Update: Here's a quick screencast of Aero Peek in action when you're using Windows 7's Alt+Tab feature.

We Could Go On...

We've hit on the biggies already, but the list of items one could compare between Windows 7 and Leopard goes on. There's Safari 4 versus Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player 12 versus iTunes/Front Row, Leopard's Boot Camp versus Windows 7 XP Mode (though that's not exactly apples to apples), Windows User Account Control versus Leopard's user security, and Windows Search versus Spotlight, update: as well as Bonjour versus Windows Homegroup (thanks mynamesafad).

Also, both operating systems boast more features that don't have direct parallels, like Leopard's extra utilities (e.g. Preview and iChat), Spaces, and Windows 7's themes, built-in software uninstaller, games, and multi-touch support. Of course, no Mac versus Windows article would be complete without mentioning that more games and viruses exist for Windows than for Mac.

Clean Up and Revive Your Bloated, Sluggish Mac

By Gina Trapanito draft, Slurp)

Copy this whole post to another site

cancel

select site advertising consumerist deadspin defamer fleshbot gay fleshbot gawker gizmodo idolator io9 jalopnik jezebel kotaku lifehacker valleywag artists gawkershop

A few years back you dropped significant cash to switch over from the virus-laden world of Windows to a shiny new Mac, but over time it's gotten slow and crufty. Let's clean it up.

Before you get started uninstalling this and deleting that, do yourself a favor: hook up an external drive to your Mac and back everything up with Time Machine or any other free alternative. The last thing you want is for your "clean up" to turn into "holy crap where did all my Documents go."

Ready? Let's get started. (PC user? You want this article.)

Find the CPU and Memory Hogs in the Activity Monitor

First things first. If your Mac is acting like a petulant three-year-old, dragging its feet, crossing its arms, and refusing to do what you ask in any reasonable amount of time, it's time to fire up the Activity Monitor (in Applications > Utilities). Here you'll see a list of running applications and processes. Sort the columns shown in the screenshot to find out what apps are hogging the most CPU time (Firefox, in this case), what apps are for Intel or PowerPC (it's a good idea to use Intel-only apps on Intel Macs), and what apps are running at all. If there are processes running for software you don't need, note them down. Also, if an app is a runaway CPU and memory hog, quit it and restart for immediate relief.

Clean Up Your Startup

Whether or not the Activity Monitor is showing processes you don't recognize, it's a good idea to audit what programs start up automatically when you log onto your Mac. In System Preferences, Accounts (I know, unintuitive placement), click on the Login Items tab. From there, make sure each and every app listed is something you need and use. If it isn't? Just select it and click the minus (-) sign. (Rule of thumb: Generally you want to keep things called "SomethingHelper" where Something is an app you use, like iTunes or Growl, as shown.)

Uninstall Unneeded Apps (and Related Files)

Just like your Login Items, you want to cruise through your Applications folder and trash anything you don't need or use any more. To be clear, this won't speed up your Mac, but it will reclaim hard drive space.

Before you get to dragging and dropping unneeded applications to the trash, though, it's a good idea to install a, well, uninstaller program. Strangely Apple still hasn't shipped a proper uninstaller with Mac OS X, but a few free and pay-for apps will clear out related files when you send an application to the Trash. While the irony of having to install something in order to uninstall something isn't lost on us, keep in mind: your Mac will be fine if an extra plist file gets left behind by an app you once used.

But, in case you're a neat freak, you want to check out the likes of AppTrap (free, our review), AppDelete (used to be free, now requires a minimum payment of $5 after a few uses, our review), or AppZapper ($13, our review).

Personally I prefer Hazel, which will set you back $22 for a license—however, in addition to clearing away application files on uninstall, Hazel can make your Mac self-cleaning, too, which makes it worth the cost.

Do Some Maintenance

Now it's time to make sure your disks are in tip-top shape, and luckily, you can do this without any extra software. Simply run Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities) to verify and repair disk permissions (which determine what apps can do what with what files on your Mac) and verify and repair the disk itself. These operations take some time, and you can't do them while other applications are running, so set 'em in motion before you head out to lunch or to grab coffee.

To run some more hardcore and detailed maintenance tasks, download the free OnyX (our review). While OnyX does lots of fun Mac customization (see the Parameters tab for that stuff), you want the Maintenance and Cleaning tabs. There you can do things like manually run your Mac's daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts (which don't on their own if you shut down your Mac at night), and clear out log files and system caches. You can also fix system application-specific issues, by rebuilding Spotlight's or Mail's index, if those apps are acting particularly wonky.

Reclaim Hard Drive Space

While you're on a cleaning spree, figure out exactly what's taking up all that space on your Mac with a visual tool that maps what's what. Disk Inventory X (free, our review), is your best bet in this area: it creates what's called a "tree map" of your hard drive usage that will unearth things like 10 gigabytes of video files you just don't need any more.

To get down to the unneeded-megabyte level, Macworld has some detailed advice for where to find redundant system files and Dashboard widgets. You can also reclaim space taken up by unneeded language files using the free Monolingual (our review).

Care for and Troubleshoot Your Battery and Memory

If you've got a Mac notebook and you're having trouble with your battery, a few troubleshooting techniques might help. First, to get the longest life out of your battery, calibrate it to make sure your life-o-meter is giving you the right readings.

If your Mac's battery is cutting out before issuing the "You're running out of power" warning, you want to reset the SMC or PMU, which cleared up that very problem on my MacBook.

Finally, some problems can be resolved by resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM—but this is generally a last-resort just-short-of-the-Genius-Bar troubleshooting technique for that inexplicable problem your Mac's having.

Beef Up Your Memory and Get the Latest System Updates

This should go without saying, but the more memory your Mac has, the snappier it will be. If you're thinking about an upgrade and you've got a MacBook, check out Adam's guide to adding RAM to your Mac.

Also, it's generally a good idea to stay up-to-date with OS X patches and versions—and normally Software Update runs on its own and does just that. (Note: Yesterday the 10.5.7 update came out, and while I had no problems with it, Gizmodo reports that some people are having issues. As always, back up your stuff continuously to avoid disaster.)

Got any tales of victory or defeat when it comes to cleaning up and speeding up your Mac? Tell 'em in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, has a MacBook Pro that's a bit snappier today than it was yesterday. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.