Mac Observer Headline News Reader

Apple has offered some of its retail employees early access to OS X Mavericks. Genius Bar and floor staff at the company's chain of Apple Stores have been invited to install, test, and report on their experiences with Mavericks, and Bryan Chaffin argues this…

It was a gathering tech legends, both the computers and the people. History San Jose put together a gathering of Apple I computers that included five of the 50 or so models still considered working. Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and Apple employee #12 Daniel…

Alf Watt attended MacWorld New York in 1999 and saw Steve Jobs launch AirPort in the first iBook and base stations. A geek at heart, he immediately wanted to understand this new technology, and iStumbler for Mac OS 9 was the result.  Later, he headed a team…

Apple released Java updates for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and OS X 10.7 (Lion) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion). The update brings Java SE 6 to the most recent version.

The folks at Flexibits have decided that the world would be a much better place if searching in Apple's Messages and iChat  didn't suck. Their solution is a Mac app called Chatology that not only makes it easier to find old chats, it gives you filtering…

The AluCup from Just Mobile is another inventive product from a company that provides convenience for the users of Apple’s many iOS devices. In this case, it is a small holder that works in different ways with all the iPhones, iPod touches and iPads.

Mavericks testers have reported problems installing the Mavericks Developer Preview in a Parallels virtual machine on Mountain Lion. Parallels has provided some knowledge base articles to assist, including the installation of Parallels Desktop 8 in Mavericks…

Apple gave the public its first preview of iOS 7 last week during its annual World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. A beta version just for iOS developers was released the same day, and it found its way to many people outside of that group who…

With Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference behind us for another year, analysts are looking through the pieces the company dropped in our laps during the keynote presentation for clues as to what might be coming next. Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um…

Adobe began shipping, in a manner of speaking, its new Creative Cloud design application package Monday evening. Creative Cloud was first announced in May and includes Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and more. It does away with traditional…

Sir Jonathan Ive's title at Apple has been simplified—flattened, if you will—from "Senior Vice President, Industrial Design" to "Senior Vice President, Design." By dropping the qualifier, Apple has officially recognized that his role at Apple has greatly…

Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Services, took the stand one more time on Monday in the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust suit against the company. Mr. Cue was questioned by Apple's attorneys about the process of building the iBooks…

Dave's back from WWDC and he and John have a lot of your questions to answer! Discussion includes sending and receiving SMS messages from your Mac, restoring settings for ONE iOS app at a time, creating your own secure, off-site backups, and more. Plus some…

Life at Bjango for Marc Edwards started with OS X widgets, but widgets aren't really a big thing anymore on the Mac. Even so, 30 million downloads provided a sense that something good was going on. Later came iStat Menus and an evolving family of products. But…

Kevin Hoctor was looking for a great money management tool for the Mac.  After experiencing the dreary life of being a Windows developer, he decided to learn Cocoa and Objective-C and discovered the joys of writing for the Mac.  His first major release was…

YouTube user "MrThaiBox123" has posted a comprehensive look at working with multiple monitors—six displays, to be precise—in Apple's new OS X 10.9 Mavericks. The company introduced some changes in multi-display support, including the ability to  access…

You don't interact with your iPhone in the same way that you use your Mac, so why should your mobile email app act like it belongs on your desktop? That's the idea behing Mail Ninja for the iPhone. It uses swipe gestures to reply, delete and archive messages,…

U.S. cell service providers are rolling out support for Wireless Emergency Alerts. The service launched in spring 2012, and carriers have been slowly adding support since then. AT&T iPhone owners started over the weekend that they now have the feature, so what…

When reports surfaced that several large companies, including Apple, were participating in a program that gives the National Security Agency direct access to their servers the iPhone and Mac maker denied any involvement. Now Apple has issued a public statement…

AT&T began pushing an update to iPhone users over the weekend that adds support for Wireless Emergency Alerts. The WEA system sends text messages to smartphone owners alerting them to physical threats like earthquakes and tornados, man-made disasters, AMBER…

The iPad is a great device for kids, for both education and entertainment. But sometimes a toddler and and iPad don't mix! You can keep your iPad kid-friendly with the built in Guided Access feature. Jared Apperson shows you how.

Dave Peck, Peter Sagerson and Nick Robinson were all doing freelance work in Seattle. They would gather at one of the many coffee shops there, getting caffeinated and doing their work. Then one day, Dave Peck realized they were using all these open wireless…

Sandro Cuccia shows you how to use the power of templates in Apple's iWork apps for the Mac to create professional-looking documents and presentations. These techiques will work with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.

In many endeavors these days, outsiders have a louder voice than the people doing the hard work. It's so bad that scientists have to take classes on public speaking.  The same goes for Apple. The employeees inside of Apple, designing and selling great…

Need to tone up? You're in luck. Vern Seward points out three free apps that should help in this week's Free on iTunes. FitStar, Tabata+ Lite, and Sleep Studio.

It's like the company isn't even trying any more. Microsoft has released another iPad attack ad—this time supporting a Dell Windows RT tablet—but as far as attack ads go, this one was phoned in. Maybe they were using a Windows Phone device and were simply…

My sincere thanks go out to Global Delight for sponsoring TMO this this week. Boom, from Global Delight, is a utility for your Mac that solves the problem of low-volume audio. Ever been watching a movie or video on your Mac and been straining to hear out of…

Bruno Virlet started his first iOS app while in college at the University of Illinois. One idea led to another, and now his app, Genius Scan, is a big seller on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Mr. Virlet tells how it all started and how he's feeling about…

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) reversed a "final" ruling from April that invalidated key claims in Apple's "overscroll bounce" patent. The USPTO informed Apple that it would be issuing a reexamination certificate for the patent that confirms four…

Brent Simmons started writing BASIC code on an Apple II+, and later started writing apps, profesionally for the Macintosh. He's famous for a lot of Mac apps that we've all used, and hs latest project, in partnership with John Gruber and Dave Wiskus is Vesper…