Mac

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.

iBooks Author Video Demonstration

Along with our hands-on video of iBooks 2, we've also tackled Apple's latest content creation tool, iBooks Author.

iBooks Author is the free Mac App Store app that allows you to create book content for use in iBooks. What's great is that it's not just for so-called textbooks. No, it's for cookbooks, history books, picture books, and whatever else you mind can come up with.

iBooks Author Now Available for Download

Earlier this morning, Apple unveiled a couple of new applications geared towards revolutionizing education. The first was iBooks 2, an update to the company's digital book store that now includes a host of interactive textbooks.

And the second was iBooks Author, an app that provides all the tools needed to make those textbooks without needing any kind of background in programming or publishing. And it's now available for download...

Easily Pair Your iPhone With Your Mac’s Keyboard

If you are the kind of person who likes to use a real keyboard with your iPhone or iPod touch every once in a while, you'll probably be acutely aware just how much of a pain it can be to have to manually pair your device with the keyboard every time you use it.

Obviously, that situation only crops up if you use your keyboard with a computer as well. But what if you could just plug your iPhone in and have it connect with one keystroke. No pairing, no messing.

A new keyboard from Matias offers just that...

Use Siri to Dictate Text to your Mac with Air Dictate

Everyone loves Siri, or at least everyone that can actually make it work with their less-than-perfect accent does. It may be great to be able to ask your iPhone to do things and dictate messages to it, but you know what would be insanely great?

Yep. Using Siri to dictate content on your Mac.

That's where Air Dictate comes into play, giving iPhone 4S owners a way to harness the power of Siri's dictation feature and have it send the resultant text over to a designated Mac.

Use Your iOS Device as the Controller for Real Racing on the Mac

If you know anything about iOS games, chances are that you've heard of Firemint's Real Racing. The two-game racing series is one of the most popular franchises on Apple's mobile platform.

The developers have really pushed the technological envelop with the title, making it one of the first apps to work cohesively with iOS 5's AirPlay mirroring feature. And now they're taking the game to a whole new level.

Apple Working on Camera-Based Handshaking System For Sharing Data

Patent applications aren't always a sign that something is definitely going to make its way to market, but they can often be a good indication of the kinds of things companies are looking at adding to products.

That said, we have another patent application from the boffins at Apple, and this time it appears to be a new way of sending and receiving data between two devices. The system will use the devices' cameras as a way of establishing a secure connection...

How to Get Siri Dictation on Your Mac or PC [Video]

Earlier we told you about the update to TouchPad, a VNC remote control app for iOS devices. It's a well known app in itself, but this latest update is sure to make a few people ecstatic.

Indeed, Edovia — the highly esteemed developers behind this and other great apps, like Screens — has updated TouchPad to allow Siri dictation between an iPhone 4S and a Mac, Windows, or even Linux machine if that suits your fancy.

Check out our video demonstration inside...

How to Jailbreak iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1 with Ac1dSn0w [Updated]

We've told you about Ac1dSn0w, the new jailbreak tool from the Pwn Dev Team. Ac1dSn0w is a Mac-only app that jailbreaks iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1. The jailbreak is tethered, meaning that you will have to re-jailbreak every time you reboot your iDevice.

Ac1dSn0w is in its first beta, meaning that it has a few bugs and should not be considered as totally stable. We have already heard that it does not jailbreak the CDMA iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0.1. There are probably more bugs to be found.

We've got a full tutorial on how to jailbreak with Ac1dSn0w Beta 1 after the break...

Ac1dSn0w: A New Jailbreak Tool is Here

A new jailbreak tool is here, and it's not from the Dev or Chronic Dev Team. The Pwn Dev Team has released Ac1dSn0w, a new tool for jailbreaking iOS 5 on the Mac.

Ac1dSn0w currently offers a tethered jailbreak on iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1 for users running OS X Snow Leopard or Lion. As an alternative to popular jailbreak tools like RedSn0w, PwnageTool and Sn0wBreeze, Ac1dSn0w is available for free right now.

Use Your iPhone’s Personal Hotspot to Wi-Fi Sync Your iDevices On the Go

While iOS 5 brought many new features that we had all been wanting, Wi-Fi syncing is probably one of the most desired features on the list. Using a white USB cable to sync an iDevice to iTunes is without a doubt one of the most irritating things of the pre-iOS 5 world.

But what if you are out and about and want to sync your iDevice, and you've done away with those syncing cables for good? Well, there is one way to sync your iDevice with a Mac that doesn't require a cable or a Wi-Fi router. You can actually use your iPhone's Personal Hotspot feature...

Type2Phone: Use Your Mac as a Bluetooth Keyboard for Your iPhone

Have you ever been using your Mac, received a text message on your iPhone, and thought, "I wish I could just use my Mac's keyboard to respond to the text?" What about emails or iMessages? Now you can, thanks to the new Type2Phone app.

The software, released earlier this month, allows Mac users to connect to their iPhone or iPad via Bluetooth. The Mac can then be used to type text on the iOS device. Users can even use the app to paste text from their Mac's clipboard to a text field in iOS...