So… In a shock announcement to all the Apple fans out there, it looks like this weeks release of OS X Lion was just a pipe dream. There has so far only been rumours of tonights release, non of which have ever been confirmed. As the night draws to a close it’s looking more and more lightly to be a no-show on the OS X Lion front.
Just as this post suggests, OS X fans the world over are somewhat disappointed by the news. Lots of us stood round questioning – why??
Which countless pre release versions doing the rounds on the numerous torrent sites – and the developers Gold Master now in use by all the developers. There seems no logical sense to delay the release. No doubt there will be a reason, however you have to bear in mind that Apple never did confirm the actual release date. As frustrating as that may be, that’s technology for you!
The latest is, OS X Lion should be available to purchase before the end of next week.. Unless, of course, it suddenly appears int the Mac App Store at 01:00 on the 15th July GMT… Until then – we will just have to wait and see!!
So – thanks to one of my work colleagues I have now managed to get an invite to Google+, and intern I have been given invites to hand out too..
Now – I have no idea how many I have to dish out, so these may well go pretty quick. However if you want one, comment below and I’ll send one over.
Google+ is set to leap frog straight over the top of Facebook, overing the social aspects, minus the chaff of Facebook’s apps or games.
Google+ features include:
Circles - You share different things with different people. So sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself – just like real life.
Hangouts - With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let specific buddies (or entire circles) know you’re hanging out and then see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until teleportation arrives, it’s the next best thing.
Sparks - Tell Sparks what you’re into and it will send you stuff it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something cool to watch, read, or share.
…. and much more besides!
If you would like to find out more about Google+ click here to take the tour.
EDIT: Carly Bond is also giving away Google+ invites over on her blog:- http://www.carlybond.co.uk/google-invite-anyone/
Today’s quick tip to in my edition of performing tasks without third party tools, this one is based around getting rid of the .DS_Store files.
.DS_Store files are created when you use Mac’s finder to browse folders. When you browse a new folder the .DS_Store file is automatically created, and stores information of the folders view settings etc.
Although these files are generally tiny, transferring them to web servers can expose information about your file structure.
For those of you who prefer to avoid terminal windows, check out ‘Tom Xs‘ AppleScript
For the more tech savvy out there, the following will essentially perform the same task:
- Open Finder
- Open the Utilities folder
- Open a terminal window
- Copy and paste the following line in:
sudo find / -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} \; - Press return
This will sweep your drive and remove all .DS_Store files. Personally, I think this tip only really applies to the OCD OS X users, and serves little purpose if you are going to continue using Finder to browse folders.
So, Time Machine decided it would blankly refuse to back up today.. It seemed to think that the SparseBundle file was still in use, despite the fact it was a fresh install and it was the very first backup! Turn’s out it’s quite a simple issue to fix (at least it was in my situation)
- Open Finder
- Open the Utilities folder
- Open the AirPort utility
- Double click on your Time Capsule
- Select the ‘Disks’ tab
- Click the button to disconnect all users
- Launch the Time Machine preferences
- Click ‘Backup Now’
What is a SparseBundle?
Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) introduced the concept of the sparse bundle. Instead of a monolithic file, a sparse bundle is a bundle (directory) that stores the disk image as banded data files. When the content of the image changes, one or more band files is changed, created, or deleted. This allows backup software (such as Time Machine) to operate more efficiently. You may use a tool such as rsync to keep your disk image(s) consistent across various systems
So, prior to my upgrade to OS X 10.7 all of my OS related hacks where done using third party tools such as Secrets Prefpane. However, I have decided to try and avoid third party apps as much as possible, and actually try and keep my Lion install as slim as possible. Although this article was originally written for OS X Lion, the command has been tested and proved to work in Mountain Lion as well
So here’s my first of what will soon be many OS X terminal commands to do what the third party apps do, without the bloat/overhead.
To enable hidden files/folders in finder windows:
- Open Finder
- Open the Utilities folder
- Open a terminal window
- Copy and paste the following line in:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
- Press return
- Now hold ‘alt’ on the keyboard and right click on the Finder icon
- Click on Relaunch
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
