Apple Steals & Deals: Sunday, August 31, 2014: Mac minis Are Back and MacBook Airs Are a Great Deal

by Tom Nelson

The refurb store’s shelves are filling up once again. There’s already a good stock of Mac minis, in both server and desktop models.

The only items missing in the store are Mac Pros, which seem to be getting more and more difficult to find. Well, we warned you that if you want an older, easily expandable model of the Mac Pro, you should act quickly; now they’re becoming harder to track down.

Screen shot © Coyote Moon, Inc.

Deals of the Week

Our deals of the week are for portable Mac models, with both a 13-inch MacBook Air and a 15-inch MacBook Pro making our deal list because of great pricing.

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WhiteHat Aviator Browser: Tom’s Mac Software Pick

by Tom Nelson

My fellow About expert, Scott Orgera, who covers browsers, tipped me off to the WhiteHat Aviator browser. Aviator is built on top of Google’s Chromium project, the browsing engine used in Google’s Chrome browser.

Image courtesy of WhiteHat Security

WhiteHat Aviator was designed by the people at WhiteHat Security, a well-regarded security firm. It was originally designed for their in-house use, but WhiteHat decided to make the browser available to anyone who values their privacy, and who wants additional security against the many malware and adware threats online.

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Mac News: The Week in Review: August 29, 2014: iTunes Festival, iPhone 6 and iWatch Top This Weeks News

by Tom Nelson

Weekly Mac news roundup for the week of August 29, 2014.

Image courtesy of Apple

iPhone 6 and iWatch press event planned for September 9^th, iTunes Festival London 2014 starts September 1^st, and rumors that the iPhone 6 may include an NFC-based payment system.

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Apple Officially Announces September 9th Media Event

by Tom Nelson

Apple finally got around to sending out media invites to journalists, asking them to attend a special September 9th media event in the Flint Center for the Performing Arts at De Anza College in Cupertino. The location is interesting for two reasons; first, Apple generally makes its press announcements at its own auditorium on the Apple campus, or in San Francisco, usually at the Moscone Center. And second, the Flint Center is where the original Macintosh was taken out of its bag by Steve Jobs, after which it proceeded to introduce itself to the world.

Image courtesy of Apple

So, what’s the significance of choosing the Flint Center? Is Apple banking on a bit of nostalgia, and hoping that what’s revealed at the event will be as dramatic and important as the introduction of the Mac oh-so-many years ago? Or is it just a conveniently sized facility that happens to be within walking distance of Apple’s Cupertino campus?

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Tom’s Mac Tips: Use Disk Utility to Create a Bootable OS X Yosemite Installer

by Tom Nelson

OS X Yosemite is a free download that comes to your Mac from the Mac App Store in the form of an installer that starts up automatically. If you follow the onscreen instructions, you’ll end up with an upgrade install of OS X Yosemite on your startup drive. The process is quick, easy – and has a minor flaw.

Screen shot © Coyote Moon, Inc.

What if you want to perform a clean install, completely erasing your startup drive? Or perhaps you’d like to have the installer on a bootable USB drive, so you don’t have to keep downloading it every time you wish to upgrade one of your Macs?

The answer is you can’t, at least not if you follow the onscreen instructions. The problem is that the installer is deleted as part of the upgrade process. This means you can’t upgrade another Mac without downloading the installer again. It also means you don’t have an easy method of performing a clean install, because you don’t have a bootable copy of the installer.

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iTunes Festival London Lineup and Schedule Announced

by Tom Nelson

Apple has added more performers to the iTunes Festival London 2014, with just a few days to go before the music begins to play. This year’s month-long music festival will kick off September 1 from the Roundhouse in London.

Image courtesy of Apple

Featured entertainers include deadmau5, Beck, Tony Bennett, Robert Plant, Ed Sheeran, Kylie, Jessie J, and many more.

Trying to get free tickets to the Roundhouse is probably pretty much a lost cause at this point, but Apple will once again stream the event live over the web via iTunes on the Mac, the iTunes Festival App for iOS devices, and Apple TV. Don’t worry if you miss an artist you wanted to see; Apple keeps the streams available for quite a while after a specific show is over.

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Tom’s Mac Tips: Troubleshooting Safari: Slow Page Loads Caused by DNS Prefetching

by Tom Nelson

Safari, along with just about every other browser, now includes DNS prefetching, a feature designed to make surfing the web a speedier experience by looking at all of the links embedded in a web page and querying your DNS server to resolve each link to its actual IP address.

Screen shot © Coyote Moon, Inc.

When DNS prefetching is working well, by the time you click on a link on a web site, your browser already knows the IP address and is ready to load the requested page. This means very fast response times as you move from page to page.

So, how can this be a bad thing? Well, it turns out that DNS prefetching can have some interesting drawbacks, although only under specific conditions. While most browsers now have DNS prefetching, we’re going to concentrate on Safari, since it’s the leading browser for the Mac.

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Apple Steals & Deals: Sunday, August 24, 2014: Mac minis Return to the Apple Refurb Store

by Tom Nelson

Well, that didn’t take long. Last week, we noted the return of Mac minis to the refurb store; this week, the minis once again proved how popular they are: they were quickly scooped up by enthusiastic Mac users.

But there are still great deals to be had, including our first sighting of a 2014 model of a MacBook Air in the refurb store. I’m guessing this will be just the first, and that more 2014 models will start making their way to the store.

Screen shot © Coyote Moon, Inc.

Deals of the Week

This week’s best deals include a 13-inch MacBook Air and a 15-inch MacBook Pro. Both get the deal label because of their exceptionally low prices for relatively current Mac versions.Read more on About: Macs.

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Microsoft Remote Desktop: Tom’s Mac Software Pick

by Tom Nelson

Many Mac users occasionally need to use a Windows PC, either at work or at home. There may be a Windows application or two that you need to run, or perhaps there’s a peripheral connected to a Windows PC that you want to use. No matter the reason for connecting, the Microsoft Remote Desktop app provides an easy way to connect to a Windows PC and run any application while you’re comfortably using your Mac.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Pros

• Works with most Windows versions.
• Makes connecting to remote PC resources easy (once configured).
• Brings your Windows desktop to your Mac.
• Free.

Cons

• Setup can be a bit confusing unless you have an understanding of Microsoft networking.
• Documentation is limited and help is only available via a Microsoft forum.

I’ve always liked being able to connect to a remote Mac or PC and take control of its desktop. This is a great way to remotely assist someone who is having problems with their computer, or show someone how to use features of a new app. It’s also a pretty good way to manage a remote computer to which you don’t have ready access. In fact, I use the Mac’s ability to screen share to connect to and manage our home servers.

But screen sharing isn’t limited to your Macs; with Microsoft Remote Desktop you can share a Windows PC screen with your Mac.

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Mac News: The Week in Review: August 22, 2014: iPhone 6 Delays and iWork, iMovie, and Yosemite Updates

by Tom Nelson

Weekly Mac news roundup for the week of August 22, 2014.

Image courtesy of Apple

HealthKit initiative, iWork and iMovie updates, iPhone 6 display issues causing manufacturing holdups, and Yosemite Beta and Developer Preview updates.

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