Apple’s new ‘Behind The Mac’ Campaign

Apple has recently launched a new four-part campaign focusing on the creative prowess of the Mac, called “Behind the Mac”. The series of ads highlight people who use Macs as part of their creative process, from Photographer and disability advocate Bruce Hall, Musician Grimes, and App developer Peter Kariuki.

See below, if only to get your creative inspo’ juices flowing!

Happy Summer Solstice!

Salute El Capitan! OS X 10.11

After last year’s OS X Mavericks named after the beach break south of the Bay, Apple introduced us all today to OS X El Capitan, named, of course, after the stunning, big a** rock found in Yosemite.

El Capitan brings with it a few cool things that will probably make your life easier.

* Split view! Work in two apps at the same time on the same screen!

*Less exciting, but still useful – when you lose your curser, shake your finger back and forth on the trackpad or give your mouse a shake, and the cursor gets bigger so it’s easy to spot.
*A new pinned feature in Safari lets users keep websites listed at the top of the window, similar to a bookmarks bar. There will also be a mute feature that will function even with several tabs open.

* The Notes app gets the same updates as in iOS 9, with checklist ability, and ways to add a photo, video, URL, or map location to a note. All your notes are kept up to date across all your devices on the cloud.

* The new Mail app features enhancements to its full-screen mode, tabs in the compose window, the ability to hide in-progress messages and go back to the main Inbox. There are also new gestures built into Mail for archiving and deleting — simply swipe on the trackpad.

* The Photos app will come with support for third-party editing extensions and tools that will be available from the Mac App Store and accessible right in the Photos app.

* Spotlight search goes deeper into our souls with a higher level of understanding, contextually aware search results from a greater number of sources.

* Metal for Mac has arrived, with 50% improvements in rendering with 40% less CPU processing power required for graphics. Metal on OS X El Capitan offers better battery life and improved graphics performance for both games and professional apps. It will also make it up to 1.4 times faster to launch an app, up to 2 times faster to switch in-between apps, up to 2 times faster to display email addresses and up to 4 times faster to open a PDF in preview.

OS X 10.11 El Capitan is available to registered developers today. For the rest of us, it will be available in public beta in July and will publicly launch in the fall. For FREE! Yessir!

OS X Yosemite Available on Beta today!

OS X Yosemite is Apple’s new update to their Mac operating system, and as per usual it will be released in the Fall of this year. What is not as per usual is that this year, Apple will be giving the public the opportunity to be a part of the OS X Beta program and try out Yosemite before the Fall. 

That’s right Kiddies! All that exciting stuff we talked about here, will be available at some of your very lovely fingertips as of… um.. when was that again…. oh yeah…today!

This is the first time a major version of OS X will be available to you guys, members of the public, before it’s actually released, so a lot of people are awfully excited.

So here’s the deal –  Beta means that the software is working, but needs some more testing before it’s formal release. It could just be in need of some polishing, or it could need a little more than that. There will most definitely be bugs and although almost all of the features will be there, some of them will not have full or even some functionality.  The idea behind releasing it to the public is basicallly to give us a sneak peak, make us feel special, and then use us as free testers so we can tell Apple any of the glitches that we encounter. Then, they fix all the problems, and OS X Yosemite is PERFECT come release day.

The number of people that are being accepted to take part in the Beta program is limited to 1 Million. To sign up and be 1 in 1 million, go to the OS X Beta sign up page  and follow the steps. It’s really easy. You will need a valid Apple ID and you will, of course, have to agree to the terms and conditions. (Duh.) Oh, and it’s free.

You will be able to find out automatically if you’ve been accepted as one of the million. Go! Go now! And…. congratulations!

Now here’s the slammer. We are part of the Beta program, but as such, we cannot talk about anything we see there that’s awesome and not yet publicly disclosed unless the person we’re talking to is part of the program also. So.. uh, you guys? Go join. But make sure if you do, you actually test it. We want Yosemite to be as good as it can be, so, therefore, we want the testers to be as good as they can be.

Yay for Yosemite! Oh! And also? Talking of slammers reminds us, Happy Tequila Day! Our tip for all of you over 21’ers out there today ( drinking responsibly of course) – if you’re doing shots of tequila, try orange and cinnamon instead of lemon and salt. You’re welcome.

OS X Yosemite

Welcome to the new OS X Yosemite. Available for free in the fall, the updated Mac operating system has some quality new features that look to make the Mac and Apple device user experience more seamlessly integrated and an overall better user experience. The new design may take a while to grow on some people, and there isn’t a lot of really new stuff, but snazzy additions like email markup and multi platform sharing, or ‘continuity’, is enough to make us want to ride the OS X Yosemite train.

Here’s what we can look forward to.

 Notification Center

The new ‘Today’ feature in Notification Center gives you a concise and summarized look at everything you need to know — upcoming events, reminders, stocks, weather, and more. You will also have the opportunity to add widgets from the Mac App Store to customize whatever else you might like to see.

Design

The updated user interface design is aiming for bolder and cleaner, with more white and brighter, poppier colors. Rounded icons and button shapes, a new font, streamlined toolbars and window translucency make up the new look.

If you’re not a fan of all things bright, you will also have the option to use your Mac in ‘dark mode’ .

The close, minimize, and maximize window buttons are now close, minimize, and full screen, eliminating the extra full-screen control which we know a lot of people will be happy about.

Even though some people are complaining about it looking cartoonish, we especially like the extra smiley finder icon – we think he might be our new best friend. Craig Federighi himself was most impressed with the Trash can icon. And it’s pretty cool, for a trash can.

Email

A nice new feature of Mail is  Mail Drop, which lets you send super large attachments through the cloud without worrying about your service provider’s limitations or the recipients’ email service.

One of our favorite features of all from Yosemite, mainly because we like doodling so much, (but also because it looks insanely useful)  is the new Markup feature. With this you can quickly annotate an attachment you receive and send it back — without leaving Mail. You can fill out forms, add shapes or text, and add your signature by signing with your finger or capturing it with the camera on your Mac.  You also have the option to zoom. And everyone loves a good zoom, are we right?

Cross Platform interactivity or Continuity

If you have an iPhone with iOS 8, Apple has introduced a way to seamlessly integrate it with your Mac – something they call Continuity. With it you will be able to make and receive phone calls, iMessages, and SMS messages on both your Mac and your iDevices. We’re excited, because we’re lazy.  And just like in iOS 8, messages in Yosemite will now include audio and video capabilities. We’re excited, because we love Karaoke.

Another sweet deal is that with Yosemite (and iOS 8)  you will be able to use your iPhone as a personal hotspot for your Mac and connect to the internet that way if WiFi is unavailable. Something that wasn’t shown at WWDC but is expected to be an active feature of Yosemite when it’s released is a screen sharing feature in iMessages so whomever you’re messaging can see exactly what you see.

As a part of Continuity, the new iCloud Drive feature will give you the ability to to store any type of file in iCloud and access it on any device.  A Dropbox-like service that syncs documents across Macs, iOS devices AND Windows ( WHAT!),  it offers an iCloud storage folder directly within Finder.

Apple has introduced new pricing for iCloud with the debut of iCloud Drive. The first 5GB of iCloud storage is free, while 20GB costs $0.99 per month and 200GB costs $3.99 per month. Tiers of up to 1TB are also available.

The best part of Continuity is Handoff.   A super nifty new feature, it will let you seamlessly switch from your Mac to your iOS device and vice versa no matter what you’re doing. For instance if you’re on a web page, writing an email or finishing a document on your Mac, you will be able to pick up your iOS device and continue without missing a beat. It’s almost like they don’t want us to stop using their products or something…

Spotlight

With a new search window and scrollable previews of your results, Spotlight now finds information from Wikipedia, Bing, Maps, movies, sports, and heaps of other sources. It pops up in the center of your desktop and will give you more a stack more options for what you want to do with the results, such as read a document,make an appointment, save a phone number,  send an email, or make a phone call.

Safari

Safari will have new ways to view what you do. For favorites, click the smart search field and a grid drops down, revealing the icons of your favorite websites. Click an icon and off you go. For your Tabs (on all your devices, because CONTINUITY) you can click ‘Tab View’ to see all your tabs in a nicely organized view.

When you search for something, Safari provides Spotlight Suggestions from sources like Wikipedia, Bing, Maps, news, and iTunes, along with suggestions from your search engine.

Yosemite will bring advanced JavaScript engine optimizations to Safari. Sweet right? Yeah, that just means it’ll be faster. It’ll also be more energy efficient, so, apparently we can do things like watch Netflix for up to 2 hours longer. Because not watching enough Netflix was purportedly a big problem for a lot of people. (We’re being sarcastic. Back away from the Netflix. YOU CAN CONTROL IT. YOU DON’T HAVE TO WATCH THE WHOLE SEASON OF ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK AT ONCE!)

There are also more privacy options  in Safari.  A little late to the party, but you will be able to open one Safari window in Private Browsing mode — which doesn’t save your browsing history — while keeping others in regular browsing mode. AND you can also now search the web using DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn’t track you. Kudos to the naming team on that one, by the way.

So there you have it folks, OS X Yosemite. The future of your Mac and integration with all your Apple devices, and changing the way we communicate and all that good and weird stuff.

OS X Yosemite is available today to registered developers and will be launched to the public this fall as a free upgrade for all users. There will also be an public open beta program launched later this summer.

You can sign up for the OS X Yosemite beta program here: https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/

If you guys have any questions about OS X Yosemite, please let us know and we’ll endeavor to find answers for you!

Skype group video calling now free! (For some).

The long beloved video calling company Skype has now made itself even more lovable by making it’s group video calling feature FREE for users on Windows desktop, Mac and the Xbox one- with the promise of support for additional devices coming soon.

Straight from the sauce:

“Skype is proud that, since our beginning, we’ve created opportunities for people to communicate freely and easily, no matter where they are; from keeping in touch with remote family members or calling home when traveling to chatting daily with your close circles of friends. While Skype is known for one to one video calling, we know it’s also essential to connect with the groups of people who matter most, whether friends, family or colleagues. For the last few years, we’ve offered group video calling to Premium users on Windows desktop and Mac and more recently Xbox One. Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re making group video calling free – for all users on these platforms. And, in the future, we’ll be enabling group video calling for all our users across more platforms – at no cost.”

How sweet is that!

We love free things! Especially free things that makes it so we can see all of our lovely friends/colleagues in one place even though they may be in, like, 5 places! The world’s a changin!

If you don’t haveSkype yet, all you needs to do is hop on over to their website and download it! It’s free! ( You’ll also need a webcam, a microphone & OS X Snow Leopard or above for Macs. )

Images courtesy of Skype & memegenerator