CUPERTINO, California—August 24, 2009—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X v10.6 Snow Leopard™ will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard® users for $29.

With pre-orders being accepted it’s just a matter of days before the world has its hands on the latest iteration of Apple’s much acclaimed operating system.

Snow Leopard

Instead of bringing a boatload of new features, Apple chose to instead rewrite most of the operating system to improve user experience and performance. On the surface to the untrained user there will be little noticeable differences from Leopard to Snow Leopard but under the hood performance is vastly improved. This improves performance of applications significantly.

Snow Leopard also comes with support for Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2007, a first for a consumer oriented desktop operating system.

There are a lot of things to like about Snow Leopard, from faster performance, a totally new Quicktime application all the way to Expose being integrated to the dock. However, the thing I like most is the price. With a $29 price tag for current Leopard users, upgrading is dirt cheap. You won’t even have to think about it. Apple said they want all Mac users to upgrade to the new operating system hence the low price. Power PC users though won’t be able to experience Snow Leopard as it is only available to Intel Mac computers.

With all the good things that comes with Snow Leopard the only thing I probably don’t like about it is the box cover design. Oh well, nothing is perfect.

Read the complete press release here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Snow Leopard Roars On The 28th

Name Changer App

Of the apps listed, the most recent one I tried even before I read the article was Name Changer. That’s a simple yet useful application for me. I process photos from my digital camera through Light Room but when I export them, I still need to rename some files. This app makes it a whole lot easier.

Quicksilver is a main stay on my Mac. I can’t live with out it. I’ve also tried Paparazzi but somehow forgot to reinstall it when I reformatted my Mac the last time.

Most of the apps mentioned in the article are quite useful and best of all free. Go check it out.

Post from: EveryJoe

Get Productive With 25 Free Mac Apps

Edited screen shot of PC vs. Mac commercial

Perhaps not so much anymore. Viruses may have a notch on their Apple belt now that researchers with Symantec have discovered what could be the first Mac and OSX based zombie machines executing denial-of-service attacks on a network.

They describe this as the “first real attempt to create a Mac botnet” and notes that the zombie Macs are already being used for nefarious purposes.

The researchers pointed to this blog entry that describes a a PHP script, running as root, launching attacks against an unknown Web site.

I’m not a Mac hater, I just hate the blind zeal that most Mac supporters have for their systems and machines and the thought that they’re absolutely impervious to any malicious activity or problems with crashing. I do enjoy seeing news about a chink in Mac’s armor, shiny and white as it is.

Post from: EveryJoe

Zombie Macs and Unicorns

Screenshot of Scribbles

Scribbles won’t be challenging software like Sketchbook Pro but for amateur sketchers or doodlers, it’s ok. The interface is simple and intuitive. There’s not much clutter to distract you. There’s good eye candy when you play with the various tools. Some great features include an infinite canvass, 3D interface and 1-click sharing.

One neat feature I like is the “Tracing Paper”. When you switch on this option, it makes the window translucent, thus allowing you to trace what ever’s beneath. Acting like, well a tracing paper. Pretty nice.

I’ve only been using it for awhile, there’s still a lot to explore. Unfortunately as the article image shows, I’m not really that good of a sketcher or a doodler. Oh well. That’s life.

Check out Scribbles here. Download a trial copy and see for yourself.

Post from: EveryJoe

Scribbling Made Simple

Overall, though, Mac OS X beats Windows. There, I’ve said it. And lightning hasn’t struck me yet.

These words came straight from Preston Gralla, a Contributing Editor to Computerworld.com. He’s a Windows expert with a lot of articles and books about PCs and Windows under his belt. So you know this isn’t just some PC user. This guy KNOWS windows. Yet, at the end of the day he admits after having spent 2 weeks with the Mac OS X, he says it is better than Windows.

Image: Mac

Mr. Gralla was given a MacBook Air to try out Mac OS X with. He used it for two weeks and tried most of the tasks he normally does. Mac OS X passes with flying colors. Of course nothing is perfect, he has some things that he does not like about OS X such as the menu of the application is separate from the application window itself. If you minimized an application the menu is still visible on the top of the screen. Small things really.

For a Windows expert to concede and say that OS X is better says a lot. I’m not writing this to gloat about OS X being better, etc.. Rather I wrote about this because I wanted Windows users to know that it’s ok to try OS X. A Windows user can make the transition. There’s nothing to be scared of.

While Mr. Gralla won’t be totally switching anytime soon, he has said that he will be ordering a MacBook Air.

Read his entire column here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Windows Expert Says OS X Beats Windows

However, when we were updating the OS and the computer asked for a password, it would not work. It kept saying that the password was wrong. Uh-Oh….

Good thing that there’s a reset utility found in the installation disc that ships with your Mac. For the times that you forgot your account password, you can use this utility to reset the account password. It’s fairly simple.

1. Boot up with your install disc by restarting your Mac and holding the “C” key on your keyboard until the Mac boots up using the install disc.

2. There’s a Utilities menu found that will appear during the install prompt. Select that and choose Reset Password. Select the startup hard disc volume of your Mac. Choose your original account and enter a new password. Hit save and it’s good to go. *Important! Don’t choose System Administrator (root).

For the original Apple support article, click here. Make sure to also check out this article that will help you solve Keychain issues that will come up as a result of the password reset.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tip: Resetting Account Passwords

Apple is poised to release it’s latest version of OS X, dubbed Snow Leopard. While it won’t have any new whiz-bang features, it will still be a major upgrade as it focus greatly on performance improvements.

Snow Leopard is a 64-bit operating system which in theory will support up to 16TB or RAM. The OS will also take advantage of two new technologies, Grand Central and Open CL who will make significant improvements in speed and performance.

This is not to say that the technologies will make apps that much faster out of the box. Significant speed improvements will be seen as developers optimize their codes for Snow Leopard.

While there will be no new features to be included in Snow Leopard, the significant performance improvement may be a compelling reason to upgrade. Especially for pro users who can’t get enough speed and performance.

Read the complete article here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Speed: The Reason You’ll Upgrade to Snow Leopard

This courses teaches IT professionals how to deploy Mac systems on an enterprise level. This is especially useful for people administering large Mac labs or offices.

This signals the acceptance of the Mac platform in the business environment.

A great sign indeed.

Read the complete story from CNET here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Macs Are Really Going Mainstream

While technically it’s not a Mac topic, I decide to blog about this because it does run on Macs.

Google just added video capabilities to it’s chat software. From within Gmail you can now talk face to face with your friends and family from across the globe. The browser based video chat requires installation of additional software which is downloadable from Google.

I tried it on my Mac and chatted with my dad using his Windows laptop. The quality was good. I’m amazed that it worked so well.

For those who don’t have a video cam, voice chat is a great option as well.

Check out the entry from Google’s official blog. Download the plugin for the video chat here.

Post from: EveryJoe

Gmail Ads Video To Gtalk

Defrag on a Mac is known as optimization. Files on your hard drive can become fragmented over time. Due to the way OS X is built, there’s little need to optimize your HD. As such it hasn’t been really a practice for Mac users to do this. However if you’re really OC about these things, you can use apps such as Onyx to help you with your maintenance.

Here’s a good read from Apple’s support site regarding optimization.

Post from: EveryJoe

How Do I Defrag On A Mac?