Mountainlion Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Extract App Resource Icons with AppleScript

by Ben Waldie (Apr 22nd, 2013)

Whether I'm preparing for a demo or writing an article, blog post, book, or technical documentation, I often find myself performing the same set of repetitive steps. I need to navigate into an app's packaged resources folder, find one or more icon files, occasionally convert them to PNG and scale ...

Triggering AppleScripts from Calendar Alerts in Mountain Lion

by Ben Waldie (Mar 18th, 2013)

AppleScripts are great tools for increasing your daily productivity. They're even better when they can be set to run unattended, at night, on weekends or during downtime. In Lion, iCal included a handy option for attaching a script to a calendar event. Just create an event, add a Run Script alarm, ...

OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.3, Security Update 2013-001 now available

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Mar 14th, 2013)

Apple has released OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and the first security update of 2013. The update includes a number of good improvements including: The ability to redeem iTunes gift cards in the Mac App Store using the built-in camera on a Mac. Boot Camp support for installing Windows 8 and ...

Tips for Troubleshooting Automator Workflows

by Ben Waldie (Mar 4th, 2013)

Automator's great for streamlining time consuming and repetitive tasks on your Mac. It's easy. Just launch it, find a few actions, and string them together to form a workflow. Then, run your workflow anytime you want to perform that series of tasks again. What happens if your workflow doesn't ...

AppleScript Productivity > Create OmniFocus Followups from Contacts

by Ben Waldie (Feb 25th, 2013)

As an OmniFocus for Mac user, it's important that I can quickly create tasks at any time, in any app. OmniFocus makes this pretty easy, by providing integration with OS X Mail, a keyboard shortcut for clipping content in apps such as Safari, a system-wide Quick Entry window and a Services menu ...

AppleScripting Dates > Elapsed Time Calculator

by Ben Waldie (Feb 11th, 2013)

Since Valentine's Day is this week, I thought I would take this opportunity to share an AppleScript I wrote to calculate how long my wife and I have been married. With this baby, I'll never be accused of forgetting how long it's been when our anniversary rolls around. The script determines the ...

AppleScripting Notification Center > Scheduling Do Not Disturb

by Ben Waldie (Feb 4th, 2013)

Mountain Lion's Notification Center is great for keeping you in the loop, but it can be a huge distraction when you need to get stuff done. Sometimes, a little peace and quiet is all you need to stay productive. As you may know, iOS 6 includes a handy Do Not Disturb feature, which can be turned ...

Obscure OS X Mountain Lion bug makes many apps crash

by Erica Sadun (Feb 3rd, 2013)

TUAW reader Don McC pointed us to this Next Web write-up about an obscure Mountain Lion crash. If you type File: followed by /// in many apps, they will crash. There are 8 characters in total and the F must be capitalized. I tested this and managed to crash a bunch of apps. Echofon, ...

20" iMac G4 updated to Ivy Bridge

by Steven Sande (Jan 18th, 2013)

Apple's iMac went through several design permutations before the company settled on the current "all-in-one computer and display on aluminum arm" configuration. One of the most iconic designs was that of the iMac G4, which held the electronics of the device -- including an optical drive -- in a ...

Mountain Lion is king of the OS X jungle

by Michael Grothaus (Jan 4th, 2013)

As noted by Macworld UK, Apple's OS X Mountain Lion has clawed its way to the top of the OS X jungle. It was released on July 25, 2012 and as of this past December it's installed on 32 percent of all Macs online. That percentage is according to Net Applications, a web-measurement firm that ...

Preparing high-res icon files with Automator

by Ben Waldie (Dec 31st, 2012)

This week's post is for all those Mac app developers out there. If you're not an app developer yet, it's a new year, and I'm sure becoming an app developer is at at the top of your resolution list. In any case, if you plan to develop apps, then you need to prepare icons for those apps. Apple ...

Send Keynote presenter notes to Evernote with AppleScript

by Ben Waldie (Dec 10th, 2012)

We've all been there before. You've prepared a Keynote presentation on the Internet phenomenon of cat videos for your local Mac user group. You've finished editing your slides. You've added presenter notes. Next, you want to extract the notes from your slides and bring them into Evernote so you ...

Setting up Mountain Lion: 12 geek setup tips

by Erica Sadun (Nov 28th, 2012)

After I recently wrote about how I often set up new Macs from scratch rather than taking advantage of migration, many people asked me to share my action logs. While I can't do that specifically because (1) my logs are extremely long and cryptic and (2) they contain tons of personal activation keys ...

Radeon HD 7000 series support in 10.8.3 beta points to new Mac Pro

by Randy Nelson (Nov 27th, 2012)

Here's another possible piece in the puzzle that is the long-hoped-for Mac Pro refresh. When digging around in the recently posted OS X 10.8.3 beta, a user on Netkas.org found that Apple had included video card drivers for AMD's top-end Radeon HD 7000 series, pointing to its possible inclusion in ...

Apple announces Fusion Drive

by Mel Martin (Oct 23rd, 2012)

Apple has pulled one unexpected rabbit out of its hat today, the Apple Fusion Drive. It's a combination of SSD and HDD technology. Fusion Drive is part of the new iMac just announced, and is a technology supported by Mountain Lion. In concept, it's similar to auto-tiering that is used in ...