Stay up-to-date on the latest Mac news, and tutorials. Get expert tips and tricks to optimize your Mac’s performance and learn about the latest Apple products and software updates. Discover the best Mac apps and accessories to enhance your user experience.
Handoff is one of the flagship features for both iOS and OS X. It allows you to seamlessly continue working where you left off on another device.
In this video tutorial, I'll walk you through making sure that Handoff is enabled for your device, and show you how it can be used. Step inside to learn more.
iCloud Drive is a new integrated cloud storage solution for Apple devices. It’s available on both iOS devices running iOS 8, and Macs with OS X Yosemite installed.
iCloud Drive taps into your existing iCloud Storage to act as a central hub for all of the files stored in iCloud. Watch our video walkthrough after the jump for additional insight...
The Calendar app receives a brand new Day view to highlight a full day’s events in OS X Yosemite. Again, this is a feature that originates on iOS, and has found its way back to the Mac.
If you have a lot of appointments scheduled on a daily basis, then the Calendar App’s new Day view could become an instrumental tool for you. It’s a great way to take in the breadth of the current day’s appointments from a single view.
Step inside and watch our hands-on walkthrough, which showcases the new Calendar view in action...
iTunes has been redesigned completely to coincide with OS X Yosemite’s design enhancements. The result is a much flatter and cleaner looking app that’s devoid of many of the shadows and layers present in previous iterations.
Just recently, the iTunes Store, which resides within the iTunes app, received an update to match the flatter appearance. This has resulted in a more consistent look across the entire app.
Check out our video walkthrough after the break, which highlights some of the changes in the latest version of iTunes— iTunes 12.
The QuickType predictive text functionality found in iOS 8 would be hard to mimic on a desktop interface that uses a physical keyboard, but Apple has come up with a good way to suggest words that you may want to type next in OS X Yosemite. Check out our video walkthrough after the break and see how.
Safari has been given a big revamp in OS X Yosemite, and it's one of my favorite new updates to the operating system as a whole. The team working on Safari took a lot of the elements that makes Safari on iOS a success, and incorporated those into the OS X Yosemite version. The result is a much-improved favorite interface, simplified toolbar, and better tab navigation. Safari for OS X Yosemite is a win all the way around. Have a look at our video walkthrough showcasing these new features inside...
Like iOS 8, OS X Yosemite brings tons of new features to the table when it comes to iMessage. You can now do interesting things like rename iMessage Conversations, add additional participants to a group message conversation, and leave a group iMessage conversation outright.
Have a look at our video walkthrough after the break, which showcases these three new group iMessage features in OS X Yosemite.
Like the Messages app in iOS 8, the Yosemite version of Messages allows you to mute specific conversations by enabling Do Not Disturb. Do Not Disturb ensures that you still receive messages, but you won’t be bothered by notifications when new messages arrive.
Have a look at our video walkthrough explaining the ins and outs of Do Not Disturb after the break.
Translucency is everywhere in OS X Yosemite. In Safari, you can see the subtle colorful translucent glow of a website behind its toolbar. In the Finder, you’ll see apps and wallpaper glow behind your list of favorites, and in the Dock, you’ll see the translucent visuals of any apps that are moved behind it.
Check inside, as we explore OS X Yosemite's translucent effects in our video walkthrough. We'll also show you how to disable translucency if you're not a fan of the effect.
Apple's just-released OS X Yosemite is thus far seeing slightly better adoption rates than last year's Mavericks launch. New stats from the research team at Chitika ad network show Yosemite was installed on approximately 12.8% of Macs in North America in the first week.
Additionally, Chitika notes that OS X Yosemite accounted for more than 1% of all North American Web traffic from OS X users on launch day. That's more than double the first-day adoption rates of Apple's prior Mac OS updates, OS X Mavericks and OS X Mountain Lion.
As soon as iOS 8.1 hit two days ago, I immediately went about checking out a pair of new features I care about the most, Text Message Forwarding and iPhone Cellular Calls.
As a quick reminder, Text Message Forwarding lets me mirror text messages sent to my iPhone in the Messages app on the Mac or iPad. With iPhone Cellular Calls turned on, I can finally make and receive phone calls on my other Mac and iOS devices through my iPhone's cellular connection.
But something was amiss, or so I thought, because I just couldn't get either feature to work. While attempting to enable Text Message Forwarding, the system prompted me to enter a confirmation code my Mac was supposed to generated, but didn't.
Likewise, trying to enable iPhone Cellular Calls yielded a FaceTime error message saying my devices must use the same iCloud account, even though I was using FaceTime without any problems before.
Having spent a few hours restoring my devices as new, reseting network settings, changing settings on my router and checking the status of iCloud services, I eventually came to the same realization as did the other affected users: Text Message Forwarding requires you to use an email address and for iPhone Cellular Calls to work properly, FaceTime must be signed in with your Apple ID.
The Dock in OS X Yosemite has ditched the 3D look and has gone back to its 2D roots. This results in a much “flatter” appearance, which harkens back to the earlier versions of OS X. Icons now appear to be a part of the Dock instead of hovering it.
Check past the break as we break down this and other Dock changes on video.