OS X has a neat text-to-speech engine that'll read back what you write. You can start and stop TTS from the contextual menu or launch it using a keystroke that you set up in the Speech section of the System Preferences. Most of the settings for TTS are buried in the System Preferences which is inconvenient when you want to change a setting on the fly. If you need more flexibility than what OS X offers, you should take a look at Text2Speech. Text2Speech is a no-frills utility that uses OS X's underlying engine to read your text back to you.

The app gives you fine control over OS X's TTS engine in an easy-to-use UI. Once you paste your text into the app, you can change the voice that's speaking, change the speaking rate in small increments, and toggle the speech on and off with ease. It also tells you the character count of the passage, which is useful if you're writing a paragraph for a character-limited text box.

Text2Speech works well, with one caveat. When you start the TTS, it always starts at the beginning which is a minor annoyance. It would be useful if the app would let you choose the starting position. It would also be helpful if it remembered your position when you stop it in mid-passage. Despite these drawbacks, I still use Text2Speech every day. I find the convenience of being able to change settings on the fly outweighs these detractors.

If you want to try it yourself, Text2Speech is available for free in the Mac App Store. There's also a Pro version for US$3.99 that'll export your text to iTunes as an audio track or to your drive as an MP3 or AIFF file.

Daily Mac App: Text2Speech lets hear what you write in record time originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Daily Mac App: Text2Speech lets hear what you write in record time originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Slidevana is a curious thing. This US$69 bundle offers a set of professionally designed slides. These templates map out the kinds of data most speakers want to communicate, providing specific elements you can customize. Called "Dark," this first release includes a clean presentation style that would feel at home at any boardroom or conference.

From tables to bullet lists to key point images, Slidevana offers a unified design that easily translates into high quality presentations. It's like a Keynote version of those graphic design and color harmony cookbooks you can purchase at art school bookstores. But instead of general graphic layout, Slidevana focuses on the most common presentation challenges.

Slides are self documenting. They tell you what they do and how you use them in the presentation. It's then up to you to add your content and match it to the various tasks in your talk. There are slides for describing the talk's takeaway, slides for providing the current section context within a whole talk overview, slides for presenting related points in a single overview, and slides for factoring before and after comparisons.

From tables to pyramids to Venn diagrams to phased cycles, Slidevana has many of the most common discussion flows covered. There's a real wealth of coherent elements, all of which fit together by design.

Slidevana includes over 130 slides in its template. A fair number of those introduce sections, and there's a bit of redundancy such as 4 charts worth of duplicate shapes, all presented with distinct key colors. Even so, there's enough useful content here to satisfy anyone looking to create a slick presentation.

Slidevana's templates work on both the Mac and iOS versions of Keynote, although I think they are more easily used on the Mac side of things. The purchase price includes both, so you do not have to choose when buying. A PowerPoint version is promised for the near future.

At $69, Slidevana is clearly targeted towards business purchasers. What you get for that price is a smart collection of slide design that goes way beyond any of Keynote's built-in templates.

Slidevana provides pro design templates for Keynote originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Slidevana provides pro design templates for Keynote originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Although discontinued for consumer sales last July, the plastic MacBook remained available for sale to educational institutions as a (relatively) low-cost option for schools seeking portable Macs for students. If you were wondering how long that would last, wonder no longer; seven months later, Apple has ceased distributing the MacBook to educational institutions, according to Mac Rumors.

Apple has notified resellers that the plastic MacBook is now classified as "End of Life," meaning it will no longer be produced or sold to anyone. Production of the old model may have ceased as long ago as last July, with Apple selling through surplus inventory to educational institutions over the subsequent months.

Considering its recent focus on using the iPad as a digital replacement for textbooks, it seems likely that Apple will start pushing the iPad to fill the educational niche the MacBook once satisfied. Even the most expensive iPad is still cheaper than the MacBook was, and the iPad has several other potential advantages over the old MacBook.

This represents the end of the road for the plastic MacBook. First introduced in May 2006 as a replacement for the iBook, the MacBook spent most of its life as Apple's top-selling notebook. The low-cost versions of the MacBook Air started stealing some of the MacBook's thunder in the past couple years, and the 64 GB version of the 11-inch MacBook Air now fills the $999 slot the MacBook once occupied.

If it's your thing, pour one out for our dearly departed MacBook, the last vestige of Apple's decade-long fling with devices made out of shiny white plastic.

White MacBook reaches end of life, education sales to cease originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

White MacBook reaches end of life, education sales to cease originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS developer David Stanfill of Napkin Studio has been looking for a better way to demo his iOS apps during online meetings, as well as to record live videos of the UI as the apps run. (We've rigged up various hardware approaches to do this, although none of them reach the highest quality standards.)

Well versed in video compression, protocols, and so forth, Stanfill decided to roll his own AirPlay mirroring client for the Mac. This would allow mirroring-capable iOS devices to push their screen display over to a Mac window (just as they can now to an Apple TV).

It wasn't an easy journey. He had to put in a huge effort getting the technology working, to build his first mirroring prototype.

I got a chance to play with this prototype, and the video that follows demonstrates it in action. It's still early days but the mirroring quality is phenomenal.

So what comes next?

Stanfill has to try to convince Apple to approve his Mac app based on its value to the iOS community in general and the developer community in particular. If that turns out to be a no-go, he'll be looking at distributing it outside the Mac App Store.

If you're interested in following the development of this app, keep watching the Napkin Studio website, or drop him a note at his email.

FAQs:

What platforms are supported in the prototype? iPhone 4S and iPad at the current time.

How far away is this app from public release? That's up to Apple.

Do you have to jailbreak your device to use this utility? Nope. All you need is a Mac and an iOS unit.

Will Apple approve this app? Possibly not.

Is audio transmitted as well as video like on Apple TV? Yes, but you don't hear it yet. David writes, "Audio is transmitted using the regular Airtunes protocol. I'm actually listening for it, but I'm not doing anything with the FairPlay negotiation or stream processing on that end because I didn't want to mess with the PTS/DTS (presentation time/decoding time) synchronization with the video."

Hacksugar: Live AirPlay mirroring to Mac from iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hacksugar: Live AirPlay mirroring to Mac from iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released three EFI Firmware Updates for 2010-model Macs, including the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. This update enables Lion Internet Recovery on those older Macs. Introduced in OS X Lion alongside the mid-2011 updates to the MacBook Air and Mac mini, Internet Recovery enables access to disk repair or OS X Lion installation options via a broadband internet connection. This is intended for use on a failed hard drive or a blank drive that's never had OS X installed on it.

Together with a series of earlier firmware updates, all Macs introduced from 2010 onward now have access to Internet Recovery features -- with just one notable exception. Even the newest Mac Pro is still excluded from the support list for Internet Recovery.

For both Mac Pro owners and those of you running Lion on a 2009 or earlier Mac, not having access to Internet Recovery isn't the end of the world. If you have a spare external drive, you can either build a recovery disk, or you can roll your own full Lion installer disk.

EFI Firmware Update brings Lion Internet Recovery to 2010-model Macs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

EFI Firmware Update brings Lion Internet Recovery to 2010-model Macs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For Mac repair shops, enterprise tech support teams, and consultants who need to wipe all data off of hard drives before selling or recycling old Macs, there's now a fast way to erase those drives without tying up a machine for a long time. WiebeTech has a new device called the Drive eRazer Ultra (US$249) that promises to make cleaning those pesky drives a fast and easy process.

WiebeTech provided a Drive eRazer Ultra to TUAW for testing and review, and the device does an amazing job of wiping all of that private or corporate information off of hard drives. In this review you'll read about what makes the Drive eRazer Ultra such a useful device.

To start off with, erasing a computer's hard drive completely usually means that you remove the drive from the computer. Sure, you can boot a computer off of an external drive and then run a utility to do the dirty work on an internal drive, but that ties up the computer for the entire time that the drive is being erased. Using a multiple-pass erase to ensure that your drive is completely unreadable can literally take days if you're using Apple's Disk Utility to do the job, and other software-based erasure methods take equally as long.

The Drive eRazer Ultra erases drives at their maximum write speed, so the job is done faster. WiebeTech says that new drives are erased at 7 GB/minute while older drives will putt along at 7 GB/minute. No computer is required -- you just remove the hard drive, then use the included cables to connect it to the Drive eRazer Ultra. The device has a rocker switch and two-line LCD display for selecting the erase mode and showing how long it will take to the erasure to complete.

Gallery: WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra

There are ten different erase specifications that are supported by the device: a quick erase that just does a single pass writing all zeroes on the drive, a custom erase that can run 1 to 99 passes overwriting with zeroes or a user-selected pattern, Secure Erase N or E that initiates a drive's built-in Secure Erase normal or enhanced function, US Department of Defense "Clear" or "Sanitize" standards, NIST special publication 800-88 "Clear" or "Purge" standards, the Canadian CSEC ITSG-06 data sanitization standard, Great Britain's HMGIS5 "Baseline" or "Enhanced" drive erasure standard, and the Australian government's DSD ISM 6.2.92 data sanitization standard.

If your job requires you to print out labels that describe the details of the erasure (for audit reasons, for example), there's a serial port for Zebra brand label printers. Those labels can then be attached to the drives or to a box or bag used for disposal of the drive.

The Drive eRazer Ultra supports 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives, 3.5" IDE/PATA drives, and other drives using optional adapters. If you're erasing a 3.5" drive, there's a metal protective plate included that you can screw onto the drive to protect the drive electronics and help dissipate heat.

For my testing, I grabbed a 160 GB Hitachi drive that had previously resided in a MacBook and that was loaded with about 100 GB of video backups. To use the Drive eRazer, you need to plug in a power brick that's about the same size and weight of the unit itself, grab the correct cable (SATA in this case), and make both power and data connections to the drive. Flipping the power switch on the box powers up the drive, and the display shows a command for doing a quick erase.

I chose to look at the drive information screens first, which provide data on the capacity of the drive, the number of bad sectors on it, the number of times that the drive has been powered on and off, the number of times the drive has been stopped and started, and an estimate of the time to do a Secure Erase (enhanced or normal).

The user interface is really quite simple to use, and it took very little time for me to set the default erase specification to "DOD Sanitize." The device warns the user that it will erase all data -- which I thought was silly since that's what the device is supposed to do -- and then estimates how long it will take to perform the erasure.

Sanitizing is "the removal of sensitive data from a system or storage device with the intent that the data can not be reconstructed by any known technique," according to Wikipedia. The DOD Sanitize specification (DOD 5220.22-M) recommends that you "Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify" to sanitize information on writable media.

To complete this process, the Drive eRazer Ultra took about 2 hours and 16 minutes. As soon as that was done, I took the same drive and ran it through the "Most Secure" erase option in Disk Utility, which also complies with DOD 5220.22-M. That method took slightly over 8 hours to complete.

This isn't a device that most Mac owners are going to rush out and buy, but for those who are constantly erasing drives, the Drive eRazer Ultra can pay for itself quickly in terms of sheer convenience and time saved wiping data. For those teams and individuals, this is an indispensable device.

WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra provides super-secure drive wiping originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra provides super-secure drive wiping originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That didn't take long. Only a few weeks after Apple's iBooks Author app debuted, template publisher Jumsoft began shipping Book Palette (US$2.99), a collection of ten professionally designed templates for iBooks Author.

I had an opportunity to try Book Palette, which is packaged as a Mac app. Once installed from the Mac App Store and launched, the app displays ten textbook templates. To start using a template, you can either select it and click the Open in iBooks Author button, or just double-click the template. In either case, iBooks Author launches and the template opens right up.

If you've modified your own iBooks Author templates before, they're saved in the /Application Support/iBooks Author/Templates/My Templates folder. You can choose to save the templates into that folder so that they appear with all of the rest of the standard templates in the template chooser.

Like the other templates that are included with iBooks Author, Jumsoft provides layouts for textbooks only -- remember, that's the focus for iBooks Author at this point at this point in time. The templates include Biology, Cookery, Decision Making, Dental Hygiene, Environmental Design, Interior Design, IT Strategy, Managing Change, Psychology, and Team Building.

All of the templates include the standard iBooks Author attributes, including a title page, a place for introductory media, a table of contents, and a glossary. The templates also follows the Chapter / Section format of the Apple-provided templates, and pages in a variety of layouts (one, two or three columns, and blank).

Gallery: Jumsoft Book Palette

Of all the templates, I thought that Cookery was probably the most unique and least like a textbook template, but I now fear of a future of poorly written and self-published cookbooks that all look identical.

On the other hand, the Biology and Dental Hygiene templates uses the Chalkduster font for call-outs, an unfortunate design decision that can be fixed by simply changing the font in those areas where it shows up. I also found the use of Didot Italic as the standard text font in the Interior Design template to be a nightmare, as it's hard to read a lot of text in such a flowery font. Most of the other templates were well-designed and very readable, and wouldn't require much (if any) change to create good-looking electronic texts.

Jumsoft plans to release additional templates as app upgrades in the future, so book designers will have plenty of base templates to start with. For those who are currently beginning to work with iBooks Author, Book Palette is an inexpensive way to add to the paltry selection of six templates provided by Apple.

Daily Mac App: Book Palette adds ten new templates to iBooks Author originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Daily Mac App: Book Palette adds ten new templates to iBooks Author originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The design wizards at Twelve South have come up with another unique and useful accessory for Apple gear. This time, they're introducing the HoverBar (US$79.99), a mounting clamp and flexible bar that floats an iPad 2 (or several) next to your iMac or Apple monitor.

The HoverBar can be clamped onto the upright of an iMac or Apple display, to a tabletop, or any other surface up to an inch thick. Your iPad 2 sits in a plastic clip that's mounted on a swivel ball so it can be turned to any angle. In the video below, one idle youth taking time out from doing his homework uses the iPad / HoverBar combo as a steering wheel for Real Racing. That's a different use case!

Many people will want to use the HoverBar-mounted iPad as a communications device, displaying email or providing a way to do FaceTime conferencing without the dreaded "nose vision" view. Used with an app like Air Display ($9.99), you can even have a Mac window displayed on your iPad.

We hope to get a HoverBar soon for a full review. Until then, enjoy the video and visit the Twelve South website.

Twelve South HoverBar a unique way to marry iPad and iMac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Twelve South HoverBar a unique way to marry iPad and iMac originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Soon after the 10.7.3 update to OS X Lion, people started finding subtle differences in the pointer icons for OS X (hat tip to Daring Fireball). Specifically, the link, grab, copy, and screenshot pointers have all been updated with slightly new iterations for the first time since OS X 10.2, released in 2002.

The link pointer features a slightly angled index finger rather than the traditional straight finger that's been a staple of the icon since even before OS X, and the grab pointer has been updated to more closely match the "Mickey Mouse glove" appearance of the link pointer. The copy pointer features a more pronounced green gradient beneath the "+" symbol. The old pseudo-SLR camera icon for the screenshot pointer, which comes up after hitting Command + Shift + 4 and then tapping the spacebar, has been replaced with an icon that matches the icon for the Image Capture application.

Old icon, new icon, Image Capture app icon

Apple has also updated all icons with high resolution versions for Universal Access purposes, so the pointers no longer look badly pixellated when super-sized via the Universal Access settings in System Preferences.

Beware of comically large pointer

"The simplest explanation is that Apple only just now got around to increasing the resolution of these elements for the benefit of users who use the cursor-zooming Universal Access feature," says Daring Fireball's John Gruber. Indeed, these OS X pointer icons hadn't been updated in nearly ten years. Gruber further speculates that this may be an initial step toward higher resolution "Retina Display" Macs, though he admits that we should "take my conjecture here with a grain of wishful-thinking salt."

Many blogs must have skipped that last sentence, because overnight speculation over possible "Retina Display Macs" has been rampant since the updated pointers gained wider attention. But the simplest explanation that Gruber himself cites is the best one; the pointer icons are a very minor detail in OS X and a feature that remained completely static for close to a decade without anyone noticing or complaining. The updated icons aren't terribly likely to have anything to do with forthcoming updated hardware.

OS X 10.7.3 includes new high-res pointer icons, rampant speculation ensues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

OS X 10.7.3 includes new high-res pointer icons, rampant speculation ensues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you want to share files easily and quickly? Then take a look at Droplr, which has been around for some time and recently hit the Mac App Store in an improved version 2.

Droplr is free and easy way to share images, documents and other files. You can run it from a web browser or the Mac app which lives in your menu bar. To share a file, simply drag it onto the menu bar item and it's uploaded to Droplr's servers. When the upload is complete, it copies a short URL to your Mac's clipboard, which you can give to anyone you like.

There is a 25 MB upload limit for individual files, and storage is free up to 1 GB. There is a paid plan in the works, but no details are being offered yet. The app also supports plug-ins so you can quickly share from apps like iPhoto, Photoshop CS5, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, your address book and even PhotoBooth.

Things I'd like to see include a favorites list of contacts for sending files so I don't have to go through pasting the URL into mail, and I think the 25 MB file size limit is too low. I have some Photoshop files that easily exceed that.

There are some similarities to Dropbox, another excellent file sharing utility that gives you 2 GB for free and doesn't limit individual file size. On the other hand, Droplr is simpler to use and aimed primarily at sharing with other people. Dropbox can be used to share files, of course, but is more about storage and sharing across machines.

Droplr offers support for Windows machines and has an iOS app in development. Of course any computer can use it via the web, with no app needed.

I've had no problems with using Droplr, and when I asked a question at the support site it was instantly answered. If you like to share files, give Droplr a look. It will be interesting to see how the service progresses and improves.

Daily Mac app: Droplr originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Daily Mac app: Droplr originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The latest build removes the patch to the ImageIO code that was included in the original version; this, apparently, was the cause of the breakage. 10.6.8 users can download the new version from Apple's site or via Software Update.

[via MacDailyNews]

Snow Leopard security update revised to fix Rosetta issues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Snow Leopard security update revised to fix Rosetta issues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Password was able to recover data from FileVault 2 encrypted drives regardless of the length and complexity of passwords. Fortunately for Mac users, however, not only does the cracking require a relatively expensive piece of software, but it also requires that certain conditions be in place for the software to be able to extract the FileVault keys.

The Mac must be powered on and logged in; in other words, the FileVault keys must be in memory for Passware Kit Forensic to extract them. Passware can't extract encryption keys on static data, nor can it determine what the keys are before they've been requested as part of the log-in process.

That means that as long as you turn off automatic login, you should be safe. To turn off automatic login on your FileVault 2-encrypted Mac, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options and make sure that "Off" is selected from the drop-down. The other tip to keep you safe? Turn off your laptop while traveling so that the Passware software cannot be used to hack into it.

There's one other good piece of news; hackers need to get to the contents of memory through a working FireWire or Thunderbolt port, so the Passware process does not work via remote access. Likewise, those older MacBook Airs that only have USB ports are safe from this method -- commenter Thomas Brand on the Brooks Review notes that "Thunderbolt and FireWire access data directly from the system bus allowing the exploit. USB goes through the CPU."

Yes, FileVault 2 encryption is vulnerable. But with a few easy, common-sense steps, mobile Mac users can keep their data safe anyway.

Apple FileVault 2 encryption cracked, but don't panic originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple FileVault 2 encryption cracked, but don't panic originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An incremental release for iBooks Author has been released with changes to the program's EULA. The update is 143.50 MB, which seems pretty hefty for a EULA change.

The change is an important one though, clarifying that Apple has rights over the format a book is in, not the content. If someone wants to charge a fee for an .ibooks formatted file, that document can only be sold or distributed through Apple, and that work will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. The restriction does not include works distributed in non-.ibooks formats (such as the Kindle), as TUAW's Erica Sadun previously discussed.

iBooks Author 1.01 out with updated EULA originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iBooks Author 1.01 out with updated EULA originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I would like to run Mac OS X 10.6.7 off a RAM disk, for better performance/security while browsing the World Wide Web (I don't want to save the image with all those gnarly cookie crumbs to disk).

I understand that a family living down the street from me is able to run Linux from a RAM disk -- can you help me out?

Your loving niece,

Emily

Dear Emily,

Auntie immediately consulted with Unkie Mike after receiving your letter. He responded as follows:

Running OS X off a RAM disk isn't supported (and hasn't been on the Mac for a long, long time -- since Mac OS 9, in fact). Linux is a different beast.

You can run a browser in private or 'incognito' mode if you're concerned about security, or use a virtualization tool like Parallels or VMware to run a virtual Mac on your Mac. However, to run 10.6.7 virtualized you'd need the server version (expensive).

You can get most of the performance benefits of a RAM disk with an SSD boot drive, which we've covered on the site.

Further, Unkie uncovered the following information from a post on the MacRumors forum. Attributed to a "former Apple Employee," this seems to describe why RAM disks are a poor match to OS X.

That thing is snake oil, as are the vast majority of ramdisk products on OS X. Designing a ramdisk that works well on OS X is remarkably difficult because backing a block device into wired memory causes the contents to be double buffered above it in the Unified Buffer Cache.

For transient data on systems with no VM pressure, what will happen is the file is created, the object backing it sits in the UBC, it might get synched to disk, but unless you are running low on ram it stays in ram as well. That is why you see no speed increases, all you are doing is eliminating the background asynch writeout, and you are wasting a lot of ram to do it. More importantly, if you are actually creating a wired ram disk you are eating a ton of kernel address space which can be an issue if you have a lot of memory (large page tables) or several video cards.

Getting back to your actual issue, it sounds to Auntie as if you're looking for a secure browsing solution rather than a RAM disk boot solution. For that, take a look at this Macworld hints post that shows you how to store your Safari cache on a RAM drive.

Hope this helps.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Can I boot from a RAM disk? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Can I boot from a RAM disk? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I almost didn't bother telling you all about this, because the circumstances around this release really rub the wrong way. But for gamers who've been waiting to play id games' latest, Rage, on the Mac, the Campaign Edition of the title is now available on the Mac App Store, for US$39.99. The Campaign Edition includes all of the extra equipment from the original Anarchy Edition of the game, along with a whole bunch of extra missions and content to play. If you've wanted to play Rage on the Mac, this is it.

So why am I so annoyed by this release? Because it's a port of the game, done by Aspyr Media. I don't have anything personally against Aspyr, but why has it taken us this long to get this game ported over to the Mac? Why can't we run the game natively? id games made a big show of the title being able to run cross-platform originally, and in fact the company released a version of this game on iOS, using the native engine, even before the main title was out. Yet here we are, five months after the game's PC release, getting a second-class version of the title on Mac.

Even worse, the game isn't compatible with Steam -- it's not available as a SteamPlay title (which means PC owners on Steam won't have access to the Mac version), and the Steamworks cloud save service doesn't work with the game either. However, Aspyr will be happy to tell you that Rage is available on its proprietary GameAgent store if you'd like to buy it there.

In short, while getting Rage and all of these extras for $40 might seem like a good thing for players, id games is doing this all wrong by going with Aspyr. This game should have been running natively on the Mac on day one, and it should be available on Steam. Having it available through the Mac App Store is nice, but seeing it released as an Aspyr port this late in the game doesn't say much for what id thinks of Mac gamers.

Rage Campaign Edition now available on the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Rage Campaign Edition now available on the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I'm a Mac IT professional, and often find myself configuring, troubleshooting, and optimizing wireless networks.

In the past I used AP Grapher to graph wireless strength and find competing Wi-Fi networks as I walk around my clients' offices. This allows me to pick the best channel to use with the least competition, troubleshoot wireless strength, and find the optimal location for my hardware.

In Lion, AP Grapher has gone from unstable to unusable. I've found that it hasn't been updated since 2007.

I have tested other Mac stumbler applications, but have yet to find one that works with Lion. Most crash on launch and others don't reliably detect wireless networks.

Can you recommend a Mac application for graphing my wireless strength and recording info about competing wireless networks?

Thanks!

Your loving nephew,

Aaron

Dear Aaron,

Auntie asked around and it looks like iStumbler will be your best bet. Note that it's currently at its 100 GM Candidate 3 beta stage of development. Another suggestion is the open source KisMAC.

You might also want to try out the Wi-Fi diagnostics app that's bundled with Lion's Core Services.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Special thanks to Fraser Hess, Adrian Burgess, Alex Patsay, Harris Kleyman, Alex Sebenski and Julian Kussman.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me find a WiFi stumbler app for Lion originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me find a WiFi stumbler app for Lion originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the past few weeks, I have run into a problem with links to Apple.com coming up 404 "not found." Specifically, these have all been links to pages on http://support.apple.com/. For example, this morning I did a Google search for 10.7.3 combo. One of the first results was a link to http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1484 which came up 404.

Here's where it gets interesting: the link is only 404 in Safari. It works in Google Chrome and Firefox. If you reload the page in Safari (⌘ + R), it will load as usual. As if that wasn't strange enough, once it has loaded correctly, subsequent visits to pages at http://support.apple.com/ work fine... for a while. Then I will see the "We're sorry" page again.

Several TUAW staff members have been seeing this bug for a few weeks with Safari in 10.7.2; unfortunately, it is not fixed with 10.7.3. Fortunately the "workaround" is fairly simple: if you get a 404 page on support.apple.com, try reloading the page, or just use a different browser. You'll need to do so if you're downloading the combo update to fix install issues with 10.7.3.

Safari users seeing random '404 not found' on valid support.apple.com pages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Safari users seeing random '404 not found' on valid support.apple.com pages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's not a good thing when a simple point release of Apple's desktop OS causes a flurry of error reports with a central theme of "I just installed the 10.7.3 version of Lion and now nothing works." Last night and this morning, threads began popping up on Apple's support forum and elsewhere indicating that a flaw in the 10.7.3 delta updater is resulting in app crashes with a characteristic "CUI CUI CUI" overlay on some interface elements.

While it should be noted that there are plenty of reports of users updating with no issues whatsoever, there's no denying that for those affected this is a painful and unfortunate bug. It's especially awkward for users who don't have a bootable backup or another machine to help the recovery process, because it leaves your Mac pretty much unusable.

The good news (mostly) is that it should not be necessary to resort to Time Machine or other data restores to get back into working condition. Tipsters on the Apple boards and a helpful walkthrough at OS X Daily recommend using the OS X 10.7.3 Combo Updater to resolve the problem. (If that link comes up 404, it's a Safari quirk; just reload.)

If you can boot your Mac into Safe Mode -- just hold down Shift during startup until the desktop or login window appears -- then you should be able to download and install the Combo Updater and proceed normally. If you can't get running in Safe Mode, you have a few options; with a second Mac running Lion or a visit to the Genius Bar, you can mount your machine in Target Disk Mode and install the combo update directly.

You also can take advantage of Lion's Recovery Partition, which should be present on any machine where 10.7 was installed by the conventional process. Holding down the R key at startup will boot you into Recovery, where you can then reinstall Lion. The 10.7.3 combo update should be downloaded and installed normally as part of the recovery cycle. Do not erase your drive or restore from Time Machine, it is not necessary. The only thing that you should need is a fresh install of the OS X system, which will not impact your data or applications.

While Lion is a lot more 'recoverable' than past versions of OS X thanks to the Recovery Partition and the ease of retrieving purchased apps from the Mac App Store, a self-inflicted foulup like this one reminds us all that Apple makes mistakes (sometimes really bad ones -- remember the iTunes version on Windows that ate music files?) and that the only sane pre-upgrade policy is to have solid, tested backups.

The other point that bears repeating is sometimes harder for us to internalize, but it's equally valid. If your livelihood depends on your Mac (or your iPhone, or iPad, or PC) working as expected, installing any updates in the first day of availability is just plain dumb. Production machines need to be boring, predictable and unsurprising -- so leave them alone for days, weeks or months if necessary to make sure that any patches and 'improvements' you want to make don't leave you twisting in the wind on a deadline, or tearing your hair out over data loss.

Thanks to Matthew and everyone who sent this in.

OS X 10.7.3 causing CUI errors for some, Combo Update recommended originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

OS X 10.7.3 causing CUI errors for some, Combo Update recommended originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The third update to OS X Lion, 10.7.3, has been released and is now available in Software Update. A list of some of 10.7.3's fixes are below. Of potentially greatest interest is the fix that purports to "resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep" -- I know both of my Macs have fallen prey to this bug several times under Lion, and it's been a fairly widespread issue. Hopefully this bug has indeed been squashed once and for all.

The OS X Lion v10.7.3 Update includes Safari 5.1.3 and fixes that:

• Add Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian language support
• Address issues when using smart cards to log into OS X
• Address compatibility issues with Microsoft Windows file sharing
• Address an issue printing Microsoft Word documents that use markup
• Address a graphics performance issue after sleep on some earlier iMacs that use ATI graphics
• Resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep
• Address an issue that may prevent Safari from opening before joining a wireless network
• Fix a potential issue authenticating to an SMB DFS share
• Include RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras

OS X 10.7.3 is available via Software Update, or you can download it directly from Apple's support site.

OS X Lion 10.7.3 released with Safari 5.1.3, Wi-Fi bug fix originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

OS X Lion 10.7.3 released with Safari 5.1.3, Wi-Fi bug fix originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just before I headed out of San Francisco at the end of Macworld | iWorld last week, I met up with a few of the guys from BearExtender, who make an impressive product that will boost the Wi-Fi signal coming into your Mac. The guys were in San Francisco to show off the BearExtender Mini, which will eventually replace the current product.

The reason it will replace the standard BearExtender (so named, by the way, because it was developed for dorms at the University of California Berkeley, where the network is in fact called AirBears) is that it's just better. The standard Bear Extender runs at 700 milliwatts, where the mini is about half the size of the original product, and runs at 1000 milliwatts.

Your MacBook typically receives Wi-Fi at a range of about 200-400 feet maximum. The BearExtender expands that to about 1500 feet, which is a sizable difference. That varies, of course, depending on what kind of building you're in and your line of sight to the core signal. The Bear guys gave me a demonstration using Macworld | iWorld's press Wi-Fi network, which they boosted from a 50% signal all the way up to 100%

The BearExtender Mini should be out sometime in February, and should run about the same price as the current model, or US$49.97.

I also asked the guys about a possible model for the iPad, but they said that because of Apple's restrictions on power usage from the iPad's docking port (likely because Apple wants to make sure battery life is as high as it can be), the BearExtender wouldn't be able to pull enough power to work well. But they had a solution ready to go anyway -- if you need to reach a signal on the iPad and have a Mac around, you can use the BearExtender on the Mac, and then share the connection over to the iPad.

Finally, the guys had one more product on offer. The BearExtender Mini will sell with an optional powered cable that will extend the product out another 10 feet away from whatever USB port you're plugging it into. The power is required in the cable to keep the signal from degrading over that last 10 feet, and the cable will also help as an auxiliary antenna, to grow the reach even farther. There will be an extra charge for the cable, but it's clear the BearExtender team is very serious about making Wi-Fi signals reach where they need to go. If you're in a position (the guys say they've heard from soldiers in Afghanistan, and researchers out in the field as well) where you need to reach as far as possible for a Wi-Fi signal, the BearExtender setup is definitely worth a look.

BearExtender turns its product mini at Macworld | iWorld 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

BearExtender turns its product mini at Macworld | iWorld 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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