All posts by mactips

Ahead of Apple’s iPad Event

By Alex Brooks iPad Air 2 with Touch ID | Image from video of dummy model
Unlike Apple’s September it sure feels like the October 16 event that Apple has planned has snuck up on us all. This has nothing to do with the fact that Tuesday this week has sailed past and the event is in fact being held on a Thursday, a very rare occasion indeed (Wednesday’s are common for iPad events, Monday the default for WWDC but Thursday I’ve never known). In fact it’s fair to say that neither the rumour mill or the general public is hyped up about tomorrow’s Apple event, so will they in fact sneak in any big surprises?
Information so far would suggest not. Apple has however used the phrase “It’s been way too long” on the invites it sent out to the media, so this does pique interest a little. Here’s what we know so far.
Invite send to media from Apple featuring original Macintosh rainbow logo colours

iPad Air 2
There’s no escaping the inevitable, the main show will be dominated by the updated iPad Air, and it’s such a dead cert that Apple even accidentally announced the product and its basic hardware features more than 24 hours ahead of the show—an accident of course.
The new full-size iPad will be much thinner than previous models and pack in the new Apple A8X, indicating that the iPad will likely pack more power than the iPhone 6. Alongside a considerably faster processor it seems that the new iPad will include 2GB RAM, an upgrade from the 1GB currently in the iPhone 6 and original iPad Air.

As confirmed by Apple, accidentally, the iPad will finally get Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which ties in nicely with the imminent launch of Apple Pay. Along with this inevitable upgrade, expect a gold colour option and storage options between 16 and 128GB.
With less certainly the iPad may also pick up some of the camera improvements that made their way into the iPhone 6, with an expected upgrade to an 8-megapixel camera. It’s always difficult to tell ahead of the launch what kind of aperture will feature, and whether the lens with have digital or optical stabilisation.
There have also been rumours surrounding the display, the discovery of image assets in the iOS 8.1 beta labelled ‘3x’ has led to rumours that the iPad Air 2 will feature a so called “Retina HD” display, something that would catch Apple up with some other tablet competitors on the market. The display could also feature an anti-reflective coating which could make outside usage easier.
A long standing software based rumour suggested that iOS 8 would bring split-screen multitasking to the iPad, if this is to debut then this event would be the place to do it.
Retina iPad 2
Unsurprisingly the upgrades to the new iPad mini with Retina Display are going to be very similar to that of its big brother, although details are fairly sparse.
Guaranteed is an upgrade of the home button to include Touch ID, other updates such as the inclusion of the Apple A8X and 2GB of RAM are less likely and less known. It’s worth remembering that the iPad mini usually lags behind its bigger sibling in terms of hardware upgrades due to space requirements and battery limitations.
For the above reason it’s unlikely that the rumoured boost to the resolution of the iPad Air 2 will make its way over to the mini.
All in all it looks like this is a very minor update to the smaller iPad.
Retina iMac
21.5- and 27-inch iMac (late 2012) | Image courtesy of Apple
An update to a Mac, could this be what Apple is alluding to when it says that it has been too long? Apart from a few minor updates earlier this year, it sure has been a long time since Apple let a Mac take centre stage. However, Thursday’s event looks set to change that.
We’ve had a retina MacBook Pro on the market since later 2012 and been used to the super high pixel goodness on our tables and phones for some time. It now looks like it’s time for desktop computers to get the same treatment.
For a retina iMac to get to market, there were a few technical jigsaw pieces that had to fall into place. Way back in 2012 bloggers were furiously crunching numbers in an attempt to work out what would count as retina when applied to an iMac. But as Marco Arment points out, in 2012 the graphics cards aren’t up to scratch to push that many pixels and more notable there’s no connection that can carry enough data. Fast forward to modern day and we have DisplayPort specification 1.3 which is capable of pushing about 26Gbps of uncompressed video, allowing for computers to drive 5K displays (resolution: 5120 x 2880) and plenty of graphics power knocking around.
Rumours suggest that Apple will pack 5K resolution into the 27-inch iMac, whilst keeping the 21-inch model at a modest 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution.
Other than this and a suspicion that the new iMac will get upgraded to Intel’s Haswell range of processors, it’s unknown what else will change with the iMac.
It’s been way too long
Apple is hosting an event on October 16 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time at its own campus headquarter in Cupertino. Apple will offer a live stream of the event starting at the following times:
10:00AM – Pacific
11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
1:00PM – Eastern
6:00PM – London
7:00PM – Paris
9:00PM – Moscow
2:00AM – Tokyo (Friday 17th)
4:00AM – Sydney (Friday 17th)

Source: World of Apple

    

10.6: Trim Music Files in ITunes

[Original Article: 10.6: Trim Music Files in QuickTime X • comment by: Noelle]
Got it! Trimmed the song for my phone!
– Open ITunes
– right click on song and select “Get Info”
– Select “Options” tab
– Select start time and end time
– Click OK
– right click on song and select “Create AAC version”
And it makes a copy. You can then copy that onto your phone (that is connected to your puter).
This was done using a MAC OS v10.8.5 …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

    

Alkaline vs. NiMh batteries in a nutshell

[Original Article: Mighty Mouse battery life indicator is very conservative • comment by: iKarith]
More than you probably ever wanted to know about batteries…

Part of the reason why people see that Apple’s battery charge indicator is … well, let’s just say MORE than conservative … is that Zinc-Carbon, Alkaline, and NiMH batteries all function differently. Let’s first dispense with carbon-zinc because even if you could find them anymore, they totally suck for Bluetooth devices which are meant to be low-power. They’re older tech than the typical alkaline batteries sold by Energizer/EverReady (same company!) or Duracell. If you stumble across them, they’ll say “Heavy Duty” instead of “Alkaline” and the only reason they still make them is because alkaline cells die faster in high-current applications. You might find them in like D cells, but but probably not AA/AAA.

Alkaline are “nominally” 1.5 volts. Actually, fresh out of the package and not connected to anything, they may read as high as 1.65v, but they’ll drop just as soon as you start using them. And they’ll keep dropping, linearly over time at a constant power usage level, until they reach 0.9v (which is where they’re basically dead. Dead alkaline batteries still having power drawn from them tend to eventually leak, and most devices won’t work on less than 0.9 volts anyway, so … replace ’em at this point OK?)

NiMH batteries have a lower nominal voltage of 1.2v, as others have noted. This is why a freshly charged set of rechargeable batteries will tend to report back like 85% capacity in your Bluetooth menu. Yeah, they start higher than that and taper off, but they tend to spend most of their usable life between between 1.2 and 1.0 volts. Their discharge voltage isn’t linear given a constant power draw like alkaline cells, and so the voltage warning thresholds for “buy new batteries if you need to”, “replace them soon”, and “could die any time now” are lower than alkaline, even if the “it’s dead, Jim” voltage of 0.9v is the same either way. NiCd batteries work the same way, though … why are you still using NiCd? They’re like carbon-zinc batteries—yes, there are still reasons to use them, but you don’t need or want them.

The problem with NiMH/NiCd is that they drain (self-discharge) whether you use them or not. Within a month, they’re flat. Enter the Low-Self-Discharge (LSD) NiMH cell! These are your Sanyo Eneloops, your Apple NiMH batteries (which are probably Sanyo), and some others made by TEnergy and a few other companies you maybe haven’t heard of. They will last a YEAR or more in storage. Gen 2 Eneloops last longer than that. But they will eventually die, and if allowed to stay dead they tend not to come back to life when you put them in a charger. LSD NiMH cells are good. I wouldn’t use anything else anymore.

Note NiMH cells are sometimes physically bigger around than alkaline cells. They’re within tolerances, but sometimes the things you put batteries into … aren’t. I’m thinking of a couple of headlamps I’ve owned for example… And for best results, don’t use “quick” chargers on the batteries if you can help it. They tend to cut the lifespan of the batteries by as much as half! Apple’s is basic but gets the job done. Sanyo’s own work well enough. Maha and LaCrosse make the super awesome tweak knobs and charge odd numbers of batteries chargers. I’m gonna assume you’re using the Sanyo or Apple chargers with your Apple or Sanyo batteries and call it good enough.

New kid on the block: Lithium AA/AAA made by Energizer. These aren’t better for bluetooth devices than alkaline cells, and they’re not rechargeable. These are gonna replace the carbon-zinc cells eventually and are meant for power-sucking applications. They’re more expensive, though, for a disposable battery cell. The only reason I buy them is because if you can keep them dry, they have lower self-discharge than alkaline cells do, so they’re good to have in earthquake-preparedness kits and the like, which is TOTALLY off topic.

FWIW, if you came to this hint looking for a means to tell the bluetooth menu that you’re using NiMH batteries and to stop harassing you about replacing batteries that are nowhere near dead yet, sorry I haven’t found it yet. …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

    

Also…

[Original Article: iTunes 11: Keyboard shortcuts for switching between different types of content in iTunes library • comment by: ra5ul]
Cmd + 0 = iTunes St …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

    

A script to sort the Downloads folder by download date

[Original Article: A script to sort the Downloads folder by download date • comment by: nateb]
And then save the script in ‘script’ format in the directory ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts (you may need to make this directory if it doesn’t already exist).

(Per http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/58145/how-to-add-folder-actions-in-mountain-lion …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

    

App or applet?

[Original Article: Getting Java client apps to run the way you want • comment by: RMo]
Is this about a Java app or a Java applet? They are different. I wasn’t aware that Oracle planned to disable support for Java applets, so I’d like to see a document from them about that if it’s true, but I *do* know they are eventually requiring them to be signed (and are requiring it by default as of recent versions of the JRE, though this can be reconfigured).

On a related note, personally, applets have always been a bit awkward, and I much prefer standalone applications if I have to use Java, anyw …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

    

Getting Java client apps to run the way you want

I sometimes find the Java setup on my various Apple devices to be a mystery.

Recently, I was trying to get a Java applet to run in the same way on 2 iMacs and my MacBook Air. The applet is a simple vpn client from Juniper that lets me access a Citrix Desktop from any Mac that I can install the Citrix receiver client on so I can work on ‘Company stuff’ from a large screen iMac when I’m sat at home or from my MacBook when I’m on the road (it works fine over 3/4G).

The first thing is that you have to do some configuring of both Java and Safari to get the applet to run at all.

Once that was all done, I could log in from all my Macs, fire up the applet and establish a secure connection.

On two of the Macs, as soon as I fired up the Citrix app, the Java vpn window would show ‘error’. The console showed a Java crash. But on the third Mac, everything worked fi …

Source: Mac OSX Hints