Ever since upgrading to Snow Leopard, the one remaining 32-bit niggle I have has been with Growl's preference pane. Today, however,* Growl has released v1.2 of its famous application notification system with, among other things, 64-bit support.

While most of the updates in 1.2 are "behind the scenes," the biggest user-facing improvement is in the upgrade to 64-bit. What this means is that for Snow Leopard users, selecting the Growl preference pane does not require Preferences.app to re-launch in 32-bit compatibility mode.

In addition to the Growl preference pane, GrowlMail and GrowlSafari have been updated to 64-bit and are now Snow Leopard compatible. Further, the Growl framework has been re-written in Cocoa dropping support for the Carbon-based API.

You can see the full list of changes over at Growl's version history page. Growl users should have received a notification to download the update. Alternatively, you can head over to Growl's homepage and click "download" to get your ticket to the notification express.

*Several readers have pointed out that version 1.2, while the current version, wasn't released today but in fact has been out for several weeks. Our apologies.

We've been saying it for years, but everyone thought that we Mac-heads had a chip on our shoulder from the once-sour relationship with Microsoft. Finally, however, the truth has come to light; a group manager from Microsoft has gone on record and admitted the source of some of Windows 7's prettier bits and pieces.

Simon Aldous sat down with PCR for an interview and when he was asked to comment on the agility of Redmond's latest operating system, he had this to say:

"What we've tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it's traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel."

While I am glad that people at Microsoft are finally accepting the superiority of OS X, it still stung a little when Simon started to backtrack saying that Vista was more stable than OS X.

Update: It looks like the Windows team had a few things to say about Simon's earlier remarks, noting that "his comments were inaccurate and uninformed." It is, in my opinion, difficult to deny that the OS X Dock has had a positive impact on how people use their computers -- whether they be PCs or Macs. That being said, I'm glad Microsoft didn't take this one lying down.

[via Engadget]

From time to time we have shared hidden settings in applications which can be used to "tweak" an app's behavior, such as forcing Snow Leopard's dictionary to reuse the same window or make the print dialog expanded by default. These settings are normally changed using the Terminal.app which can be daunting to some.

Secrets is a (free!) preference panel which has collected a bunch of these settings and made changing them as simple as checking a box or choosing from a drop-down panel of possible choices. It includes settings for about 40 different applications, from Apple applications such as Mail, iCal, iChat, Finder, Front Row, Keynote, DVD Player (and more) to third-party applications including Adium, Audio Hijack Pro, BBedit, EyeTV, VMware Fusion, and TextMate (just to name a few). Some applications have a lot of hidden settings, and some have only one or two.

If you see a setting but don't know what it does, click it and Secrets will show a brief explanation (these are also available on the Secrets website, but they are easier to read in the preference panel). If you change a setting which requires you to restart the application, Secrets will tell you, and even give you a "Quit This" button. (It's usually best to make these changes when the app isn't running.)

Unfortunately at least one of the secret settings from 10.5 doesn't seem to work in 10.6. That is, the setting to turn HelpViewer into a regular (instead of floating) window. There may be others.

I'm off to explore and see what new goodies Alcor (the developer of Secrets, who you may also know as the creator of Quicksilver) has uncovered.

Thanks to the recently-revived Hawk Wings site for bringing this to my attention. If you use Apple's Mail.app, Hawk Wings is a great site for tips and information.

Update: We seem to have taken down the Secrets website (oops!) but you can download the preference panel from a mirror (zip) (166kb).

There was a report this week that Mac OS X 10.6.2 will block Atom support, leaving Hackintosh owners stuck at 10.6.1. Intel's Atom processors have been used in netbooks by MSI, Dell and ASUS for their low cost and modest energy consumption. Hackintosh owners were disappointed.

Shortly after that report was published, Electronista noted that a newly-released build of 10.6.2 (10C535) brought it back. Of course, we're talking about "support" for hackintoshes in a developer build of the OS, so keep that in mind.

The moral of the story: Apple can kill this when ever they please, so have fun while you can.

[Via Engadget]

Legal issues? What legal issues?

Psystar has announced that it plans to license its virtualization technology for OS X to third-party vendors despite its continuing legal issues with Apple. The Psystar OEM Licensing Program, designed to allow Intel machines to run Snow Leopard -- actually, certified machines from Psystar running the company's Darwin Universal Boot Loader -- can support up to six operating systems at a time in a single piece of hardware.

"Once a product is certified, consumers can purchase it off the shelf or through standard channels and when labeled Psystar Certified would allow the installation of Snow Leopard simply by inserting the retail OS X DVD," Psystar said in a press release issued today.

The cost of this licensing program is not available at this time.

Apple and Psystar go to trial in January 2010.

[MacDailyNews via Apple Insider]

Hey, we couldn't very well cover Snow Leopard and not spring for the $29 to give one of you good people a copy, right?

As usual, the deal is, you leave a comment, make sure it appears, you are entered. In a few days we'll run the random selection and boom! One of you will get a shiny new copy of OS X version 10.6 to call your own. While you wait, may I suggest our page of comprehensive Snow Leopard coverage?

Just tell us the first version of OS X you started using in the comments. It'll be fun. If you started using Apple computers before OS X, that's cool too, but did you use the 10.0 beta? Chime in and (maybe) win! Full rules below.

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia.
• To enter leave a comment below telling us what version of OS X you first used.
• The comment must be left before August 31, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time.
• You may enter only once.
• One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Upgrade (Value: US$29.00)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules

If you're a relative newcomer to the Mac (read: halo switchers inspired by iPod/iPhone) then chances are pretty good that you and OS X (Oh-Ess Ten) don't have a very long history together. In fact, switchers who were enticed by the iPod/iTunes ecosystem would likely not have any experience with the Mac prior to 2003.

That being the case, and given the ramp up to the release of Snow Leopard this Friday, it might be a worthy use of time to check out TwistedMac's overview of OS X. It starts with the Public Beta of OS X that was released in September of 2000 and flies all the way through to the current, latest release of OS X, 10.5 Leopard.

A brief description and screenshots galore provide ample coverage for many of the features and nuances of each release over the years. If you have only been using a Mac in this millennium you will find this overview quite interesting and informative. Even if you've been on the Mac since the OS 9 days, it is still entertaining to see how far OS X has come in the past 9 years.

As a relative Mac newbie, I will open myself up to public flogging and admit to the fact that my earliest experiences with Mac OS were in the 10.3 Panther days. Truth be told, I didn't even switch until after 10.4 Tiger was released. Now, however, I'm going to hide out until tomorrow morning when I can purchase 10.6 Snow Leopard while the rest of you give up the goods as to when you joined the team.

Tip of the hat to Evan H. for sending this in!

What's that whooshing sound? It's the collective sigh of relief from all of the Mac-lovers who've been wrangled into providing unofficial tech support for friends and family switching to Mac. Parallels today announced their latest offering, Parallels Desktop "Switch to Mac" Edition. It's a three-part tool that makes the switch from XP or Vista to OS X so easy that it hurts to think about the last time you tried to show a recent convert where their Start menu went.

The first tool Parallels is offering is a set of interactive tutorials which cater to any learning style. "Watch Saied" is a collection of over 2 hours of video walkthroughs, narrated by Saied Ghaffari of Parallels (also the man behind the It's Time To Learn products we've posted about before). The tutorials are viewable in a non-linear fashion to allow the user to learn what they need -- or want -- to know at any given point in their transition.

These are accompanied by a full simulation of the OS X environment, with tools which allow you to click anything on the screen to find out what it is, what it does, and/or how it works. The "YouTry" feature is perfect for tactile learners (those who "learn by doing"), allowing you to put lessons into practice within the simulation -- without the possibility of "breaking" anything in your working environment. Once you complete a lesson, it's starred and you can move on... following a lesson plan, or skipping to whatever is intriguing or vital at the moment.

The second tool is a new version of Parallels' Transporter tool, appropriately dubbed the "Enhanced Parallels Transporter." The bundle comes with a high-speed USB cable, and the Transporter automates the transition of PC data to a Mac, including your bookmarks, your photos, your documents, even your applications. The process is simple, but it's documented and simulated in the tutorials, so you really can't go wrong. Mom won't even have to call you to figure out where to plug in the cable.

In the video below I quickly run through the basics of Soundboard, from Ambrosia Software (makers of WireTap Studio and Snapz Pro, but they've made Mac apps and games for years). It's just what you'd think: a series of buttons tied to sounds, just like you'd see at a radio station for live broadcasting.

But Soundboard brings the drag-and-drop ease of desktop computing to the table, and adds several small features that add up. Namely: quick editing and loop controls. Plus, you can route your audio using Soundflower, or just play what you want through speakers. Given the number of crank calls I made as a kid, I'm glad this wasn't around.

Soundboard normally sells for $29, but there's a free trial and you get 25% off if you're a WireTap owner. Also, Ambrosia is encouraging Sound Byte users to switch over with a $19 deal for registered owners of that application. If you've ever wanted a live radio show like Dingo and the Baby, then Soundboard may be just what you need.


Incidentally, the screencast above was made using the excellent site, Screenr.com. If the video won't play on an iPhone, just click here for the Screenr page.

There's been a lot of news circulating around about the upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.6. First, Snow Leopard hit Amazon's pre-order list (and soon topped it) and days later, there were reports that Snow Leopard had finally reached gold master.

Today, Apple's UK store has posted information about Snow Leopard and Apple's "Up-to-Date" program, with an interesting note: Ships by August 28th. If this is true, it would confirm rumors that the next major release of the Mac operating system would be released ahead of the September release date set by Apple.

While the page is public, there's no way to order it yet. This could be a simple error or an outdated page but has Mac fans in a buzz as the release gets closer.

[via MacRumors]

With Snow Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, expected rumored to ship out any week day now, it's worth looking at one thing that can make upgrading to 10.6 a lot easier (at least on an Intel Mac-as most PowerPC Mac users should know by now, Leopard 10.5 is the end of the road for you: Snow Leopard is Intel-only).

Snow Leopard is mostly about optimizing Leopard's performance rather than introducing new features. Part of that optimization is that OS X 10.6 is expected to save users several gigabytes of space on their hard drives versus a 10.5 installation. And part of the reason that Snow Leopard is able to pare down that much space is that Rosetta is now an optional installation.

(Update: as many commenters have noted, the Rosetta program itself doesn't take up much space - only a couple of megabytes. Most of the space savings in Snow Leopard is from Apple stripping out PowerPC binaries from the apps and OS libraries. It's still worth going through your apps and updating the PowerPC-only apps to universal binaries, however, because you will still see a significant boost in performance by doing so.)

Introduced in 2005, not long after Apple announced its transition to Intel processors, Rosetta is a dynamic translator that allows legacy PowerPC applications to run on Intel processors. It was intended as a stopgap measure to allow PowerPC applications to continue to run on Intel-powered Macs until developers were able to update their applications to support either universal binaries or Intel-only code.

Applications which run under Rosetta provide slower performance than their universal binary counterparts because the CPU has to translate Intel instructions into PowerPC, so developers definitely had an incentive to switch to universal binaries. With four years having passed since the Intel transition, almost all applications for the Mac now run under a universal binary, which makes Rosetta largely unnecessary-hence its inclusion in OS X Snow Leopard as an optional installation.

So, why not save some space on your hard drive and leave Rosetta out? Well, if you do that, any applications you have that still have PowerPC only code won't run at all. (Update: Apparently Rosetta will download on demand if you try to run a PowerPC-only application.) Rosetta is absolutely necessary to run those applications. But, before Snow Leopard drops to consumers, you can take one simple step that will save you a lot of trouble.

Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of tips for new and novice Mac users.

In the Mac operating system, the term "menu bar" refers to the the horizontal bar at the top of the screen that generally has a little picture of an apple on the left end, the time of day on the right and words like "File", "Edit", "Format" and so on in-between. Found it? Good, because understanding how this bar works is essential to getting the best out of your Mac.

In this bar, there are two constants: one is the apple, on the far left, and the other is Spotlight on the far right. Clicking the Apple logo on the left gives you access to all the vital functions of your computer, like Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down, as well as the "About This Mac" window and the option to check for software updates.

Save for the apple, the left side of this bar will change depending on which application you have selected. For you switchers, it's similar to the bar that is found at the top of each window in Windows, but cuts down on the space each window occupies by having all applications use the same menu bar. The drop down menus perform the same functions as Windows' menus, but like Windows, will be different depending on which application you currently have selected.

With the success of mobile application stores (led by the iPhone's App Store and then copied by virtually every other mobile platform), it makes sense that the next step would be to try to extend that all-in-one browse/download/buy experience on the desktop. The Linux distribution Ubuntu is working on trying to release an App Store-like AppCenter repository for its next desktop release and many Mac users have suggested or opined that an app store for Mac OS X would be beneficial.

Earlier this week, IDFusion Software released Bodega, an independent attempt to bring an App Store-like experience to desktop Mac users. The free program, offers up a list of applications -- both free and paid -- that users can download, review and buy. If you purchase an app, you deal directly with the developer, but your receipt information is stored within Bodega for easy reference.

You can search for applications (more on that later) and get information on the app, read user reviews and see if there are any press reviews (the press clippings apparently come from Bodega's built-in source list so they aren't complete or exhaustive).

I played with Bodega for a bit and tested to see how it works as both a store and an app discovery service.

Let's face it, contact management is a pain. Address Book in OS X is a good tool, but one often overlooked feature is the "Smart Group" -- a way of quickly organizing your contacts together. If you're familiar with Smart Playlists in iTunes, it's the same but with contact info.

To start a Smart Group, go to File > New Smart Group. A dialog will drop down in Address Book for you to start entering criteria for filtering. For example, you could create a group of everyone whose birthday you have in your contacts by choosing the item Birthday from the first drop-down menu item, then adding the menu item "is set." Note that you can't create a list of people with birthdays in June, which is a bummer. But the Smart Groups have a variety of ways to filter, some more useful than others and several are dependent on the data (dates vs. text, for example).

To delete a group you'll have to make a trip to the menus, as no amount of right-clicking or key pressing will do it. Delete is in the Edit menu, under Delete Group.

One more thing: the notes field in Address Book extends the power of Smart Groups just a bit. After returning from WWDC I added the business cards of people I met and added the note "wwdc" to each one. I then made a Smart Group where the Note contains 'wwdc' and now I've got an easy way to see the group of people I met at WWDC. Think of the Notes field as a loose tag field, if you like.

I've also set up my Address Book to add family members based on a list of surnames, but that may only work if you have an oddball last name like mine!

The Mac OS X 10.5.8 update is now available through Software Update. Among the listed features are resolution for compatibility issues when joining AirPort networks, disappearing monitor resolutions in System Preferences, and Bluetooth reliability.

The update will also upgrade Safari to version 4.0.2, though I'm not sure if that includes those of us still on Safari 3 (I'll find out in a moment!) There are a number of other reliability and compatibility tweaks that are listed here. Security features are available here.

The update is not available through Apple's download site as of yet.

Edit (1:55 PT): I can confirm that this update does upgrade those of you still on Safari 3, like I was, to Safari 4.0.2. The combo update is also now available.