After upgrading to the OS X 10.9 Mavericks Developer Preview, we proceeded to install one of our favorite everyday OS X apps: SizeUp. This neat little app, which we’ve used for years, allows you to quickly snap and position windows on your screen using keyboard shortcuts. SizeUp uses OS X’s GUI scripting control features to work its magic, and it requires you to “enable access for assistive devices” in System Preferences each time you install it on a new computer.
It’s the Little Things: Our Top Two Favorite Features in iOS 7
Now that the iOS 7 Beta has been in the hands of developers for a few weeks (and has even received its first update), we’ve learned about most of its new features and secrets. The new OS is full of great stuff, but after seeing it action, we’ve found that the absolute best new features are relatively small additions: the flashlight and the built-in level. In Apple’s quest to quash the developers of certain single-function third party iOS utilities, the
Review: Ceton Takes HTPCs To a New Level With the InfiniTV 6 ETH
Television tuner products for personal computers have come a long way over the past 15 years or so. What began as complicated add-on cards with temperamental single tuners evolved to plug-and-play USB products and finally to whole-house networked solutions. These products promise consumers the ability to watch and record cable (and sometimes over-the-air) television without the fees and restrictive user experiences of cable company-provided set-top boxes. Many companies inhabit the TV tuner market, but perhaps the most innovative is Ceton.
How to Find Your MAC Address in Windows & OS X
After moving the TekRevue office and replacing some equipment this week, we needed to reconfigure our network and our DHCP reservations. There are a few ways to do this, but we wanted to use each computer’s MAC address to create the reservation (note that MAC stands for Media Access Control, a unique identifier for each network interface, and is unrelated to Apple Macintosh computers). Here’s how to quickly find your MAC address in Windows and OS X. Windows There are
How to Create a USB or DVD Installer for OS X
UPDATE: Apple has changed the process for creating a USB installer with OS X Mavericks and the method below no longer works. For OS X Mavericks, see this updated process. With the release of OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011, Apple officially abandoned physical media for its operating system installations. Instead of a traditional disc, customers could now purchase and download OS X directly from the Mac App Store. This approach brought many benefits, such as not having to keep
How to Integrate Dropbox into Office 2013
With Office 2013, Microsoft added the ability to save documents directly to the cloud via built-in links to the company’s SkyDrive and SharePoint platforms. While SkyDrive in particular is a great free service, users of other cloud platforms, such as Dropbox, are left out by default. Dropbox can still be accessed with Office 2013 by manually navigating to the user’s folder via a “Save to Computer” action, but thanks to the Dropbox community, however, there is a workaround that will
Microsoft Reverses Xbox One DRM Strategy
In a dramatic turn of events, Microsoft has changed course on its controversial and potentially fatal DRM policy for the Xbox One. As explained by Xbox chief Don Mattrick today on the Xbox Wire blog, the company is abandoning the 24-hour check-in requirement and lifting all restrictions on the ability to play, trade, or resell disc-based games. You told us how much you loved the flexibility you have today with games delivered on disc. The ability to lend, share, and
Will Microsoft’s Servers Be Able to Handle the Xbox One Load?
Picture It It’s an early morning in November. Thousands of eager gamers from all over the United States and many other countries have just returned home from overnight campouts at local electronics and big-box stores and tens of thousands more are unboxing a recently-delivered package. The cause of this commotion? Microsoft’s Xbox One gaming and entertainment console. All of these gamers quickly connect the Xbox One to their televisions and press the power button with excitement. The familiar Xbox logo
Subscription-Only Updates for Adobe Creative Cloud Now Available
After previewing them in May, Adobe on Monday released the latest versions of its Creative line of applications. Now dubbed “Creative Cloud,” the update brings several major new features to key apps such as Photoshop and Premiere but, for the first time, they are only available as part of a Creative Cloud subscription. While a more detailed debate over Adobe’s shift to a completely subscription-based lineup has been held over the past few months, the reality is that customers who
Xcode 5 Simulator Shows What iOS 7 Looks Like on the iPad
When Apple released a beta version of iOS 7 to developers last week, the company only made available versions for the iPhone and iPod touch, while promising that the iPad beta of the software would be available within “a few weeks.” Thanks to some investigation into the new Xcode 5 beta, however, users can get a taste of what the next version of iOS will look like on Apple’s tablet devices. German tech site ApfelPage has posted screenshots from Xcode’s
First Look: 2013 802.11ac AirPort Extreme
Apple on Monday announced a major redesign of its AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule routers. Now featuring 802.11ac and a sleek tower design, the new routers promise to offer significantly increased speed, range, and signal robustness for 802.11ac compatible devices. We just received our test unit and we have some “first look” images and impressions to share with you. A more detailed review and testing will be ready next week. UPDATE: Our performance testing of the new AirPort Extreme revealed anomalous
NewerTech GripStand mini & GripBase Bundle from OWC
iPads are inherently portable devices; thin and light, they allow users to get work done and consume content almost anywhere. But iPads are also very useful in more stationary setups. Apps enable users to use the iPad as a secondary display for their Mac or PC, and the wide variety of iOS applications can make the iPad a great desktop companion for keeping tabs on email, weather, stocks, or virtually any other bit of information. It is toward this second