Lasting Value – On the Future of Our Older Macs

April 14, 2012 by

There is no denying that the world of Mac is changing. The dramatic success of iOS first had a significant impact on Mac OS X back in the days of Snow Leopard.

Snowy was always billed as a release not focused on features, but on stability, and it took a little while longer to arrive than was originally announced. We waited 22 months for it to grace the Apple Store shelves, but at the time, this made a lot of sense — we accepted that Apple’s teams were working hard on their iOS products. Snow Leopard may not have brought us ‘shiny’, but I for one was quite happy to settle with ‘stable’.

Since that time, that narrow focus on iOS has broadened back out. Lion brought some iOS concepts back to the Mac, as well as introduced iCloud. We now await OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion. Scheduled to be released a mere year after Lion, we are promised even more features ‘inspired by iPad’.

Wait a second. What was that? It is due to arrive this summer. Just one year after Lion was released.

A new release of OS X hasn’t come so quickly since the operating system was very young and was still being established and stabilised.

This strikes me as quite a shift, and it brings me to an important issue — how does this affect the lifespans of the Apple products we buy?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , , , ,

For Mac Eyes Only – A Big Week for Updates

February 5, 2012 by

Episode #248

This week on For Mac Eyes Only: Mike and Eric discuss upgrading older Macs to Lion…and making Snowy imitate Lion, 10.7.3 Released, Security Update Snafus, Final Cut Pro X Grows Up?, Converting FCP7 to FCPX, iBook Content Yours Not Apple’s, Donkey!, Gary’s News and Views from Across the Pond, iCloud on Snowy, Mac Security Cams.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Weekly Show Tagged With: , , , , ,

How To: Downgrade Lion’s Preview and TextEdit to Snow Leopard Versions

November 25, 2011 by

My least favorite new feature of OS X Lion is its AutoSave functionality — most especially with two apps I took advantage of all the time under Snow Leopard: Preview and TextEdit.

Well, after having my documents, PDFs, and images helpfully overwritten by Lion one too many times, I decided to see if I could get Snow Leopard’s TextEdit and Preview working under Lion.

This How To is the result of that experiment.

[Read more…]

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Taming Lion: A Few Months On

September 30, 2011 by

With the release of Mac OS X Lion, many of the fundamental Macintosh concepts to which we have grown accustomed began to change. We were released from the heavy burden of having to click ‘Save’ periodically (in some apps at least), with Auto-Save and Versions. We welcomed in Launchpad, the iOS-inspired way of firing up our favourite apps. We even had the scroll direction reversed.

In the first few days of using Lion full-time, I found myself struggling with some of these changes. It took some time re-learning which way to swipe my fingers to move down a document, and I often found myself puzzled by some of the dialogue boxes inviting me to ‘Unlock’ or ‘Duplicate’ my files.

Several months into using Lion, have things got easier? How has the transition gone? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: ,

For Mac Eyes Only – In Medias Res

August 7, 2011 by

Episode #228

This week on For Mac Eyes Only: Not your typical episode of For Mac Eyes Only, this week Mike is joined by Barry and Eric (and earlier Dan) to discuss OS X Lion, the iPhone and iOS, Google’s mistakes with Android, the Macworld experience, Apple’s Campus, and anything else Apple that came to mind during our TeamFMEO meet-up which took place the afternoon of Saturday, August 6th.

Apps We Discussed:

> OS X Lion Server
> Default Folder X
> Pathfinder
> BetterTouchTool
> Moom
> Growl
> Yahoo! Widgets (née Konfabulator)
> Final Cut Pro X
> Premiere Pro
> InDesign

CONTACT US:

> Meet TeamFMEO
> Contact Us

Subscribe to our Podcast Feed or
Download the show here!

Running Time: 1:27:37

Filed Under: Weekly Show Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

For Mac Eyes Only – A Bunch of Kool-Aid Drinking Fan Boys

July 23, 2011 by

Episode #226

This week on For Mac Eyes Only: Mike is joined by Gary, Barry and Eric to discuss the release of OS X Lion including our favorite new features, installation issues we’ve encountered, and even a few things that disappoint us a bit with Apple’s latest cat.

LINKS:

> OS X Lion
> MacBook Air Updated
> Mac Mini Updated
> Can Your Mac Run AirDrop?
> Adobe’s KB: Known Issues with Lion
> Dropbox Cache Cleaner (discontinued)
> DropCopy
> Skinning Lion’s iCal

For Mac Eyes Only is brought to you by Audible.com:
Please visit http://audiblepodcast.com/fmeo for your free audiobook download.

CONTACT US:

> Meet TeamFMEO
> Contact Us

Subscribe to our Podcast Feed or
Download the show here!

Running Time: 1:47:21

Filed Under: Special, Weekly Show Tagged With: , , ,

FMEO.TV – Part One: How To Create a Lion Install DVD

July 23, 2011 by

FMEO.TV Episode #004

In this episode of FMEO.TV, Mike shows how to create an installation DVD from the Mac OS X Lion Installer.

Subscribe to our Podcast Feed or
Download the episode here!

Running Time: 4:56

Filed Under: FMEO Plus, FMEO TV, How To Tagged With: , , , , ,

For Mac Eyes Only – Reaction Time: WWDC Keynote (Part Two)

June 9, 2011 by

Episode #220

This week on For Mac Eyes Only: Join Mike and Eric as they provide first-hand reactions to Apple’s WWDC Keynote Event as it unfolds.

NOTE: This is Part Two of the episode. Due to technical difficulties, we were initially unable to release the entire conversation Eric and I had during the keynote, but I was able to recover the rest of the recording, so this part picks up approximately 10m30s BEFORE Part One left off.

NEWS:

> OS X Lion
> iOS 5
> iCloud

With Special Thanks to the live-blogging skills of:
> Engadget
> Gizmodo
> Wired

For Mac Eyes Only is brought to you by Audible.com:
Please visit http://audiblepodcast.com/fmeo for your free audiobook download.

CONTACT US:

> mike AT formaceyesonly.com
> eric AT formaceyesonly.com
(Remember to replace the “AT” with “@”)

> FMEO Hotline: +1(815)981-4224

Subscribe to our Podcast Feed or
Download the show here!

Running Time: 1:25:19

Filed Under: Special, Weekly Show Tagged With: , , , , , ,

For Mac Eyes Only – Reaction Time: WWDC Keynote (Part One)

June 7, 2011 by

Episode #220

This week on For Mac Eyes Only: Join Mike and Eric as they provide first-hand reactions to Apple’s WWDC Keynote Event as it unfolds.

NOTE: Due to some technical difficulties, at this point I’m only able to bring you Part One of the conversation Eric and I had. I’ll look to bring Part Two to everyone as soon as possible. Thanks!

NEWS:

> OS X Lion
> iOS 5
> iCloud

With Special Thanks to the live-blogging skills of:
> Engadget
> Gizmodo
> Wired

For Mac Eyes Only is brought to you by Audible.com:
Please visit http://audiblepodcast.com/fmeo for your free audiobook download.

CONTACT US:

> mike AT formaceyesonly.com
> eric AT formaceyesonly.com
(Remember to replace the “AT” with “@”)

> FMEO Hotline: +1(815)981-4224

Subscribe to our Podcast Feed or
Download the show here!

Running Time: 1:03:23

Filed Under: Special, Weekly Show Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Chronicles Of Macintosh

January 15, 2011 by

The Lion, The Air, & The App Store

The Future Of The Mac & Computing

Image Copyright Apple Inc.

In October of last year Apple held their “Back To The Mac” event and made several announcements. Chief among them was a new MacBook Air, a preview of the next version of OS X, and a new App Store for the Mac. Though by the time you read this, the Verizon iPhone will have been announced and that will be the story on everyone’s lips, I got to wondering if we won’t look back at this October event and see it as far more pivotal than we first realized. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , ,