What you’ll need

You’ll need an iPhone 4S with Siri turned on to get started, of course; TouchPad by Edovia from the iOS App Store ($4.99); and Alfred running on your target Mac, which you can pick up for free from Alfredapp.com. You’ll also need to make sure Screen Sharing is enabled on your Mac, which you can set up by going to System Preferences > Sharing and then checking the Screen Sharing box.

How it works and what you can do

Alfred basically allows you to quickly accomplish tasks through typing queries, application and filenames, instead of having to use the mouse to navigate through folders and your Launchpad application manager. With TouchPad, you can dictate text instead of typing it, which, if you’re operating a media Mac from your couch, for example saves you a lot of time and potential for improper entry via your iPhone’s software keyboard.

To get started, make sure Alfred is running (after the first run, it should be configured to launch at Login). Then, using TouchPad on your iPhone 4S, select the target Mac as the server, and use the software keyboard to type “Alt (⌥) + Space,” which calls Alfred up. Then, tap the microphone icon on your iOS device’s virtual keyboard within TouchPad, and simply say the name of any application you want to find. It should then transfer the text to Alfred, which will show if it found a match, and you can hit “Return” on your iPhone to launch it.

You can dictate any text you like, and options for searching the web will pop up, including Amazon, Google and Wikipedia by default. In Alfred’s preferences under the Features tab, you can also set up a custom search for any URL of your choosing, such as Facebook for instance.

Under the Features tab, you can set keywords to trigger actions related to certain files. By default, saying “Find xx” will locate files in Finder that match whatever term you use; “Open” followed by a keyword launches the file using its default associated application; and using “in” will find specific instances of a term within a file. Keywords allow you to control system features like shutting down your Mac, restarting or emptying the trash.

Even more possibilities

With the paid Alfred Powerpack for £12 ($18 USD), you can add more features to your Siri-enabled voice commands, including the ability to launch and control iTunes, email a contact or open Address Book, and enter specific URLs that launch automatically in your default browser.

Of course, this is all about Siri basically replacing typing, and you still have to hit the software “Return” key to make the magic happen, but it’s a lot easier than fumbling with VNC or virtual trackpad software when trying to navigate a Mac set up as a media center. If you’ve found other neat ways to use Siri on your Mac, please share them in the comments.

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First, BusyCal doesn’t have that annoying faux leather iPad style interface. It retains an unadorned look more in line with older versions of iCal. There are hacks to return your iCal to classic mode, but sensible good looks isn’t the only thing BusyCal is offering.

BusyCal supports direct syncing of calenders between computers, and if you desire, can bypass the cloud altogether. Otherwise the app supports syncing to any CalDAV service such as MobileMe as well as Google. Setting up Google Calendar sycning is a breeze. You put in your credentials and away you go. Your calendars instantly appear. Lion’s iCal requires a few additional steps to add multiple calendars, which is both annoying and unnecessary.

In iCal for Lion, the calendar list floats on top of your calendar, making it near impossible to view both it and your calendar list. BusyCal retains a unique column for your entire calendar list, as well as a month at-a-glance view (mini-month). Although BusyCal doesn’t have iCal’s yearly view, it does have a list view of all your upcoming events, regardless of when they fall, and can integrate daily events into an optional icon on the menu bar. This is a handy feature to answer the basic question of where you have to be today.

Other nice features in BusyCal include the ability to add graphics to an event, as well as sticky notes and custom banners. These features will even sync with other BusyCal users, but won’t sync with your iPhone or Android device. Best of all is that BusyCal will show you the daily forecast with highs and lows right on the day in question.

Although Lion introduced some great new features, iCal is one giant step backwards in my opinion. BusyCal on the other hand retains great features from Snow Leopard’s iCal, while adding some new ones as well. BusyCal is sold directly for via the Mac App Store for $49.99 ($79.99 for a family pack), which is more than Lion costs as a whole, but the price of entry may be worth it to users that once relied on some iCal features that are no longer there.

Disclosure: Busymac provided a copy of BusyCal for review purposes.

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If you’re not familiar with iChat, it’s Apple’s multiprotocol IM client that comes preinstalled on every new OS X computer. Users can enter AIM, me.com, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber account credentials to use those services, and they can sign in to more than one account at a time. Like Mail for OS X, it’s a flexible tool that can centralize much of a user’s IM-based communication needs.

Code discovered by developer John Heaton (via TUAW) in the most recent iOS update includes mentions to those services that iChat works with out of the box. Of course, Apple doesn’t yet let you sign in to IM services from AIM or Jabber natively on iOS devices, though there are a wealth of third-party options that do in the App Store.

Still, if Messages continues to grow into something that allows access to multiple IM services in one central location, in addition to text messaging and iMessage services, that will expand its usefulness quite a bit. Of course, I’m still hoping iMessage makes it to the desktop first, but this would be a nice small feature update for iOS sometime down the road.

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A tale of two iClouds

I have a respectable library of around 15,000 songs, or about 100 GB of music from a mix of iTunes and CD purchases. With iTunes Match, I decided to ease into things using an account that has a respectable number of iTunes Music Store purchases, but on a machine that started off with zero ripped tracks in its music library.

While the activation of iTunes Match on this account from this particular Mac was rather quick — since the library was small — it wasn’t painless. After activating one of my iOS devices, I noticed right away that a little over half my music wasn’t added to my iTunes Match iCloud music library.  I made the mistake of assuming that iTunes Match would add my purchase history to my Match library, when it actually just uses your locally stored iTunes content. In the end, iTunes Match did recognize all of my iTunes music (once it was all downloaded to the computer I was using), but it would be in Apple’s interest to clarify this point.

Adding ripped music to iTunes Match

About 20 percent of my music library comes from just one artist: the Grateful Dead. I took the first ten albums in the infamous Dick’s Picks series and ripped them to my Mac’s iTunes library to see if I could have them matched.  iTunes Match performed well (assuming that’s because all the albums are available in the iTunes store), and started to match my ripped tracks as soon as they were added to my local iTunes music library.

I also added music I’d ripped previously by dragging the files to my iTunes library. As I was doing this, I checked the iCloud status of each track using the iCloud Status column, which you can enable in the View > View Options… menu.  Valid iCloud Statuses include Waiting, Error, Removed, Duplicate, Ineligible, Matched, Uploaded and Purchased.  You can create a Smart Playlist to keep track of which of your tracks fall into which iTunes Match category, as pictured above. Note that “Purchased” tracks, which are bought through iTunes, don’t count against your 25,000 song limit.

As each music file was added, I watched the status change from ‘waiting’ to ‘matched’.  This was the outcome I was hoping for. Six of the ten albums I matched has one or more tracks not matched, but they were uploaded instead, and thus still available via iCloud.

I tried everything to get iTunes to match all of my music, but there are some music files that it flagged as ineligible.  These are files that are either larger than 200 MB in size, have DRM from another music store or account, or were ripped at either a lower bit rate or to a format that iTunes doesn’t recognize.

To try to reduce ineligible tracks and increase matched vs. uploaded ones, I tried re-ripping problem songs from their original CDs to a higher bit rate. Despite my efforts, certain songs (which were available in the iTunes Store) just wouldn’t match. Hopefully the service’s ability to match tracks improves over time. In my opinion, 11 out of 189 songs being uploaded rather than matched isn’t a very good ratio, especially since the high bit rate of matched tracks is such a selling point of the service.

One last observation was that my album artwork wasn’t making the leap to the cloud immediately.  I’m kind of fanatic when it comes to album art, so at first this was troubling, but as time passed, I noticed that some of the covers started appearing.  I probably just need to be a little patient as iTunes Match catches up with demand. It’s good that Apple is prioritizing music uploads over artwork, too, if it comes down to a choice between the two.

Deleting, then downloading matched music

I recall a time when you could pay a company to rip your music collection for you. Apple’s iTunes Match is sort of like that, in that it takes your existing collection and provides you with a better, more usable version, which is exactly why I wanted to delete my source library and rebuild it using Apple’s higher-quality cloud-based tracks.

To test out how it would work, I went to a single album that had all of its tracks matched in my iCloud library, and deleted them.  I was careful not to delete the music from iCloud, too. Rather, I deleted the music from my local iTunes library without ticking the box next to “Also delete these songs from iCloud.”  The music was not actually removed from my library, but the status of the tracks I removed changed to reflect their presence in the cloud but not in local storage. Upon re-downloading, all of my 128 Kbps music files had been replaced with a collection of 256 Kbps music files.

Two conclusions

If your library is composed of mainly iTunes-purchased music, then I think you will enjoy what iTunes Match has to offer. Beyond simply keeping your music files in the iCloud, you’ll also be able to manage and share a set of playlists. This is a value-add feature that you can’t get by just downloading your previously purchased music from the iTunes Store. Plus, if you have a lot of legacy iTunes tracks with DRM, this is a good way of getting rid of that protection without having to pay per track to upgrade with iTunes Plus.

If, on the other hand, you have a substantial music library built mostly through ripping, then you may find yourself having to do a significant amount of pruning to get it in good enough shape to take full advantage of iTunes Match. After getting past the initial ordeal, however, I think most music fans will enjoy the cloud-based convenience features that iTunes match has to offer.

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• facetime://myfriend
• facetime://myfriend@somewhere.com
• facetime://5558675309

OS X Lion FaceTime desktop and Dock icons

The useful trick is to create a clickable desktop icon that will launch FaceTime for Mac and connect to your friend automatically.  One way to do this on OS X is to type the URL into Safari’s address bar, and before hitting return, drag and drop the typed URL onto the desktop.  Once it’s on the desktop, you can edit the icon’s image, replacing it with a photo of your contact if you want. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Launch Safari in OS X Lion and enter your contact’s FaceTime URL (as described at the beginning of this article) in the address bar.
2. Before hitting return to launch to the URL, drag and drop the URL onto the desktop.
3. Right click on the desktop shortcut you just created and select “Get Info.”
4. Use preview to copy the image you want to use into your clipboard.
5. Select the default image in the Get Info dialog until it is outlined blue.
6. While the default image is selected, use Command + V to paste the image.

As an added bonus, the shortcut you just created can even be added to the Dock.  You just have to add it to the far right side of the Dock, where all of the folders are located. You can’t move it to the side of the dock left of the divider, which is reserved for applications.

iOS FaceTime Bookmarks and Favorites

Things get a little more tricky when it comes to iOS Home Screen icons.  The problem is that Safari needs to be viewing the URL in order to save the URL to the Home Screen. This isn’t possible in this case, because Safari launches FaceTime immediately once the custom URL is entered.

But all is not lost. You can always add a contact’s FaceTime ‘number’ to your list of Favorites in the Phone app. But it’s also possible to create a list of Safari Bookmarks with URLs for your FaceTime contacts.

1. Launch Safari in OS X and select “Show All Bookmarks” from the Bookmarks menu.
2. Manually type in the FaceTime URL(s) to your list of Bookmarks.
3. Use iCloud to sync your OS X Safari Bookmarks with your iOS device.
4. Alternatively, use iTunes to sync your OS X Safari Bookmarks with your iOS device.

This can be handy if you prefer to manage your list of favorite FaceTime contacts separately from your list of favorite Phone contacts. Something else to keep in mind is that since this is a valid URL to Safari, anywhere you embed or type this URL can become a launch point for FaceTime. So you could keep a list of FaceTime URLs in a document stored in your Notebook, or even add your own FaceTime URL to the signature of your email. Pasting your FaceTime URL into iMessage will also give the person you’re chatting with a quick and easy way to start a FaceTime with you.  You can go one step further by creating an iOS keyboard shortcut for “ftm” (short for FaceTimeMe) which will expand to your FaceTime URL. So now through FaceTime, everyone has their own dial-in number for quick and easy video chat.

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Dragon Express’ main selling point is its price; right now, it’s available for $49.99 in the Apple App Store, which is listed as a limited-time introductory price. The full Dragon Dictate, by comparison, retails for $200. And for most users, the less-feature-rich Dragon Express will probably be a much better option, anyway, since it still allows you to dictate to your computer and then use the resulting text in any app of your choosing, which is likely the function most are after.

With Dragon Express, you dictate directly into the program, which you can call up any time by clicking on the menu bar item that serves as the main hub for the app. You can then start dictating, check the resulting text and tell Dragon Express to send it to the active app you are currently using. You can also search Spotlight directly to find files in Finder, search the web right from the app (opens a search in your browser of choice using Google, Yahoo or Bing, depending on what you choose) and post to both Twitter and Facebook once you supply your credentials.

Two caveats to keep in mind when using this tool: First it works much better with a USB headset, and it is pretty hard to use without, unless you’re in a nearly soundproof environment. That’s actually one of the benefits of the more expensive Nuance product, since Dragon Dictate ships with a USB mic. Second, there’s a training process you go through at launch, in order to get the best results from the speech-recognition engine. This takes between 2 and 10 minutes, depending on the quality of the mic you’re using.

Also, this is an express version, and it doesn’t contain the fancy whiz-bang abilities of its big brother, including extensive voice command libraries that let you launch apps and control commands within them. But the ability to paste to an active app and perform a select few oft-used functions like tweeting and searching is plenty for me.

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The program has three major components: Calendar Cleaner, Contacts Cleaner and Sync Tune-Up. If you want just one of the components, you can purchase the first two separately at the Mac App Store. However it’s likely you’ll need all three so I recommend the buying the full package.

Contacts Cleaner looks for issues that could cause errors such as invalid characters, malformed phone numbers as well as duplicate information. What I like about this program is that it not only finds the errors, but tells you why it thinks they represent a problem. For example, I’d often put “husband and wife” in the First Name field, but Contacts Cleaner warns me “This contact has a space in the first name. In some cases these names can become transposed after syncing with Google.” Sure enough when I went into Google, I noticed that problem.

Calendar Cleaner does similar checks for errors that can occur with your various sync destinations. My calendar was fraught with malformed recurring events that wouldn’t sync, and a pass by Calendar Cleaner fixed those in no time.

Both programs give you the option of opening the item within Address Book or iCal in order to make sure you know what kind of change is being made before you authorize it. Apple’s Address Book application looks for merged items itself, but doesn’t give you options to control what is merged. iCal users have no built-in options to search for duplicates and merge events.

Finally, Sync Tune-Up (only available as part of the bundle) gives you a front end for more fine-grained control over fixing your sync-related issues, such as de-registering individual devices and software, or the “nuclear” option which rebuilds the entire sync database. If your sync is taking extra long or you’ve made a bunch of changes with your devices or accounts, a nice reset can do you a world of good. A good indication of problems can be found by looking at your console logs and looking for mentions of the “truth” and too much vacuuming.

The more you sync, the more likely it is that problems will occur. To prevent or repair these problems, Spanning Tools is a great option.

Disclosure: Spanning Tools provided a copy of the software for review purposes.

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1. Disable zooming in mouse preferences

If this is really annoying you, simply disable this feature entirely. You can do this by unchecking the Smart Zoom feature on the Point & Click settings in the Mouse section of System Preferences.

2. Install a better preference configuration tool

On the other hand, if you do want to use your touch sensitive mouse to its fullest potential, consider installing either MagicPrefs or BetterTouchTool. Even if you’re not having problems, you may find either of these two tools very handy.  Both tools are free and have recently been updated to allow the user to take much more fine-grained control over their touch experience on OS X Lion.  For example, with BetterTouchTool, you can control the sensitivity of the Magic Mouse, and how it registers touch events.

3. Replace your mouse with a Magic Trackpad

Finally, it may be time to just get rid of that antiquated input device called a “mouse” and get a Magic Trackpad.  Even if you have a MacBook, you may find the location of the Magic Touchpad to either side of the keyboard more ergonomically comfortable than to have it sandwiched in the middle front of the keyboard.  Personally, I’ve found that I use my Magic Trackpad far more often in OS X Lion than I use my Magic Mouse, even though the situation was reversed when I was using Snow Leopard.

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Big features headline frequent updates

With their extensive, near-constant beta testing schedule and early looks at upcoming features in both minor and major point iOS releases, Apple does a good job of keeping up hype even when what’s new isn’t all that flashy from an end-user perspective. The key is in highlighting a few big, noticeable changes, and making sure they stay both in and out of view thanks to “closed” developer access.

Then, make those updates more frequent than the releases we currently see for OS X (even if they’re arguably less dramatic) and include major feature additions and changes even in some big minor point upgrades. As it stands, only big cats make big splashes with OS X; doing away with that kind of update nomenclature altogether and more closely mimicking the simple iOS system would make event-caliber updates a much more frequent occurrence — and help OS X feel as nimble, dynamic and anticipatory of user needs as its mobile cousin.

All rides included in the admission price

At $29.99, OS X costs remarkably little as it is, especially compared to the competition (which makes sense, since Windows doesn’t make money from primary hardware sales). But why not take it one step further, and offer OS updates free for the life of the product, the way they are with iOS? Admittedly, that would carry costs; but Apple can offset those costs by driving more users to the Mac App Store (where it gets a 30-percent cut of all software sales), which should be energized by more frequent feature additions and new APIs for developers to take advantage of, if OS X takes the path outlined above of more frequent, feature-driven updates. The App Stores accounted for $3.6 billion in revenue since the iOS version was introduced in 2008 according to figures from July; the Mac App Store, which debuted in January, could probably still be doing more to contribute to that total.

Free updates would also have the benefit of making for an even more unified user base, in terms of the software version they’re running on their Macs. That would help keep the user experience more consistent across the board, and result in fewer dollars spent on software support and customer service for legacy software.

Expand the warm glow of the halo effect

IOS has had a very positive effect on Mac sales, something dubbed the “halo” effect. Apple’s iOS user base continues to grow at an astonishing rate, and bringing those customers into the fold for OS X will be easier if the relationship between hardware and software on the one platform more closely mirrors that of the other. Apple is still selling a record number of Macs, too, but the growth of its mobile division is still outpacing that of its traditional computers.

For many, the idea of a device that you buy that’s then provided with frequent, free software updates for basically the life of the product (or at least the two to three years many own a smartphone for) is now standard practice. If that becomes the norm for owning a Mac, too, it will be a great advantage Apple’s computers have over other Windows-based PCs that are available. Removing the financial impediment to being current is going to be a huge advantage with younger device owners, who prize cutting edge tech.

When software stops intruding

iOS has done something very well that the competition hasn’t yet been able to master: Make software as invisible as possible. Part of that has to do with how its updates are handled and distributed. OS X paved the way for iOS (it even was called OS X in its early days, somewhat confusingly), but now that relationship should be reversed, to help the Mac keep growing as Apple’s mobile efforts take up more and more of the spotlight.

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Credit: teehan+lax

While Apple delivered an overwhelming batch of features, updates, new features and new software in recent weeks, there are still some loose ends it could stand to tie up. For the most part, the following list includes features that exist on iOS and not on OS X, or the other way around, and wouldn’t require a hardware update to implement. Take a look, then see if you have any additional Apple oversights of your own to add to the list.

Siri on iPad and Mac. It may surprise some to know that Mac already has voice recognition built-in. OS X has been able to answer simple questions for quite some time, but it’s no Siri. Many have also been asking why the iPad 2 update for iOS 5 didn’t include Siri. Some have speculated that there is a chipset difference on the new iPhone 4S that allows it to understand spoken words better than the current iPad 2. Others think it will be coming in the next iPad release and will be one of the must-have reasons to upgrade. However Siri gets to the Mac and iPad, I hope it gets there soon.

iBooks and Newsstand on Mac. My Mac has no idea what to do with the ePub files in iTunes that I purchase from the iBook store. I can access my Kindle purchases from my Mac using their online Cloud Reader or native Mac app, yet I can’t say the same for my iBook purchases. And it just feels weird sitting in front of my 27″ LED Cinema Display reading a magazine on my iPad.

Delete and share photos from Photo Stream. Being able to selectively delete individual photos from Photo Stream is definitely important, but I’d also like to be able to share picked-through photos in organized sub-galleries with certain family and friends — basically exactly what MobileMe Galleries does today, and will do until Apple shuts them down next June.

Multiple Photo Streams on Apple TV. You can actually add MobileMe Galleries from different MobileMe accounts to your Apple TV and choose which one you want to view. MobileMe galleries can also be organized into Albums to allow you to further filter out which photos you do and don’t want to view at any given time. But you can only associate your Apple TV with one iCloud account, and therefore just one Photo Stream. This limitation also extends to the iPhone, and Aperture on the Mac. Would love to see a little more flexibility here to account for families and people with multiple individual Photo Streams who share common devices.

AirPlay to a Mac. Many prefer having a little more power in their home theater than the Apple TV can provide. The Mac mini has an HDMI connection that makes it a great candidate for home theater use. Unfortunately the Mac mini (or any Mac) doesn’t allow you to stream content from your iOS devices using AirPlay. Especially annoying if you’re living in a small space like a college dorm room where your 27″ iMac is your home theater.

AirPlay Mirroring from a Mac. The exact opposite of using a Mac as an AirPlay receiver is sharing a screen from a Mac to the Apple TV. Think of the Apple TV as an external wireless display or second monitor that can be detected when Detecting Displays on your Mac. It would certainly expand the usefulness of Apple’s $99 home theatre hub.

iCloud file access from OS X. Documents in the Cloud is definitely part of the overall iCloud strategy and should start showing up in more third-party apps. But it’s also almost guaranteed to make it to iWork on OS X. Apple has turned the file system inside out and seems to be trying to make folders and paths obsolete, and bringing iCloud document syncing to the desktop is a key step along that path.

AirDrop access from iOS. Related to document access in the iCloud is the ability to quickly and easily share documents to and from various Apple products. With OS X Lion, AirDrop introduced the ability to quickly transfer a file from one Mac to another. But to be honest, I need to get files from my Mac to my iPad more often than I need to get them from one Mac to another. And when I’m out and about, I’d also like to be able to share files from my iOS device to someone else’s. Messaging them a link to a shared Dropbox access URL works, but is less than ideal.

iMessage on OS X. We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Apple needs to get iMessage working on the Mac. It spared little time porting FaceTime from the mobile realm to the desktop, so hopefully we see the same kind of turnaround for getting the much more generally useful iMessage there, too.

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1. Cards (Free, iPhone)

Apple put it front and center at its “Let’s talk iPhone” event at the beginning of October, and now the Cards app is officially here and open for all to use. As we covered in detail in a previous post, Cards lets you create and send custom letterpress cards to friends and loved ones, with a fee of $2.99 each in the U.S., or $4.99 worldwide. The app looks good and works well, and once our first greeting arrives, we’ll let you know how it turns out.

2. Find My Friends (Free, iOS Universal)

Not content to just provide the location of all your own devices on a map, Apple now offers the ability to find your friends, too. This app plugs into your iCloud account, and lets you invite friends to share their locations. One of the drawbacks/advantages of this app is that you have to manually add contacts; it can’t parse your Facebook friends, Twitter account or any other source. It’s a plus because it means you can keep your sharing tight; it’s a disadvantage because if you want to share with a lot of people, it’ll take a long time to build your list.

3. Movie Trailers (Free, iOS Universal)

Want to watch movie trailers on your iPhone? There were plenty of third-party apps that let you do that, like Flixster, or you could use Apple’s website, but now there’s an official appified version of the same content found on that site. It looks good, is much easier to navigate than Apple’s website on both iPad and iPhone, provides HD quality video and is also free. What’s not to like?

4. AirPort Utility (Free, iOS Universal)

Just like AirPort Utility for Mac OS X, but tailored to your iPhone or iPad’s screen. If you’re a network admin at an Apple-equipped business, or just the admin for your own household, this is a very welcome addition. So convenient, Apple should market this as a reason to buy an AirPort, Time Machine or AirPort Express.

5. iWork for iOS ($9.99 each, iOS Universal)

Apple’s iWork suite for its mobile devices got an update today which brought iCloud syncing. It’ll keep your documents constant across iPhones, iPads and iPod touches, but not yet for OS X, until updates arrive for those versions of iWork. Other updates include footnote and endnote creation in Pages, iPhone 4S dictation support, improved interface options for Numbers and wireless presentation via Apple TV for Keynote.

6. iPhoto and Aperture ($14.99 and $79.99, respectively, OS X)

Updates to these apps brought Photo Stream support. The new feature of iCloud allows you to automatically sync pictures taken on your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone with other iOS devices or with your Mac. So long as you don’t take a ton of screenshots like me (or even if you do), this is a very useful feature that should really appeal to mobile photographers.

7. Remote, Find My iPhone and iMovie (Free, free and $9.99, respectively. iOS Universal)

These all got small updates today, with mostly bug fixes and iOS 5 compatibility updates. Apple’s mobile video editing software did get some actual improvements in terms of better support for external cameras for iMovie, however. I mostly included these just to point out the sheer volume of software Apple dumped on us today.

8. NHL, Wall Street Journal Live for Apple TV

Apple TV got a ton of new features with its iOS 4.4 update today. We chose to highlight NHL live streaming games and Wall Street Journal live streaming news updates because they constitute proper apps, at least as far as apps are allowed on the device. Also included in the update was Photo Stream compatibility (see above) and AirPlay Mirroring capabilities.

9. Xcode 4.2 (Free, OS X)

Developers and aspiring developers now have a new version of Xcode to play with. This one includes SDKs for 10.7 Lion and iOS 5, as well as a storyboarding feature, and iCloud hooks.

Users are reportedly having trouble getting through to Apple’s servers to complete their iTunes update. Looking at the list above, is it any wonder?

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I tested these three games using my 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro under OS X: Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest 2, and Age of Conan. Of the three, Lord of the Rings Online ran the best, Age of Conan ran the worst, and EverQuest 2 ran “just ok.” Parallels 7 still does just Direct X 9, so games like Lord of the Rings that take advantage of Direct X 11 won’t run perfectly.

For benchmarks, I used my current Windows-on-a-Mac gaming setup, which involves both Apple’s own Boot Camp utility (which lets you run Windows natively) and CrossOver (which lets you run Windows apps in OS X without actually installing the Windows OS itself).

The good

The last time I looked at Windows gaming on the Mac, Parallels’s performance noticeably lagged behind the frame rates I got in CrossOver. With Parallels 7, frame rates in both were much closer, getting around 50 FPS in LotRO and 35-40 in EverQuest 2. And since you’re running games in basically a native environment, unlike in CrossOver, you can get games up and running with a minimum of fuss. CrossOver often requires extra configuration and patience to get games running. Also, if you’re close to filling up your Parallels drive, it’s easy to resize it.

I didn’t notice any obvious performance differences between Parallels accessing a Boot Camp partition or Parallels running off its own .pvm file (Parallels’ own native Windows installation container). Both seemed to give me the same frame rates and load times. Even when I put Parallels into a position for it not to succeed, like playing a game while using Handbrake to convert a video file, my MacBook didn’t come to a girding halt. While it was slower, I could still play the game.

The bad

I noticed one consistent issue in playing all the games: right-clicking with the trackpad to look around was uncontrollable. If I plugged in an external mouse, its right button worked just fine. I could get around this problem by adjusting my keybindings in-game to something funky like pressing alt-contol-arrow button, but that’s really a pain to get used to.

Also, you’re going to take a performance hit running in a virtual environment. Running the games in anything other than Full Screen mode (you can still alt-tab or Mission Control back to your OS X apps) in Parallels seemed to cause problems. I had numerous issues loading games past their login screen in Coherence mode; the same problems didn’t crop up nearly as often in Full Screen.

If you play any game or in any situation where reflexes or timing really matter, like a multiplayer shooter or during a raid in an MMO, I can’t recommend a virtualized solution at all. In those cases, you’ll need to be running the game in Boot Camp (or, OS X if you’re lucky and that’s an option).

The ugly

The bane of my computing existence is Windows’ activation process. Given the nature of my freelance work, I’m often blowing my activation limit and need to call Microsoft to get it reset. If you use Boot Camp and create a Parallels virtual from that, you’ll use up two activations.

Also, of all the games I looked at, Age of Conan ran horribly on Parallels, averaging out to about 8 FPS. I was getting 25 in Boot Camp, so it’s not like it’s a stellar performer anyway. I also noticed the avatars in Conan weren’t smooth, as I could see the polygons that made up their shapes under the skinning when running the game in Parallels.

Final thoughts

I’m pretty happy with Parallels 7 for gaming. Having current hardware has a lot to do with it, but Parallels seems to at least come close to the performance I’m used to from CrossOver, without the hassles. After a week or so of testing, I’m going to delete my CrossOver game installs and instead use Parallels for Windows gaming, and Boot Camp when I need to get really serious.

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What you’ll need

• A Mac with at least 2 GB of RAM and at least 20 GB of free hard drive space.
• A disc burned using the ISO of the Windows 8 preview, available to download here, with a burning program such as Toast.
• A hard drive backup, in case everything goes pear-shaped.

Method

1. First, open the Boot Camp Assistant, which can be found at Applications > Utilities > Boot Camp. Once opened, you’ll see a screen explaining what Boot Camp does, and warning you to make a backup.
2. After clicking Continue, you’ll be asked whether you want to download Windows support software or if you have it on a CD or DVD. Make sure to select the second option; you won’t actually be installing the support software, since it won’t work with the Windows 8 preview. Then click Continue again.
3. The next step is to choose how large to make the Window partition on your hard drive. A Boot Camp operating system must be installed on a partition of your internal drive; it can’t be used on an external drive. The partition you create should be at least 25 GB in size, so there’s enough room for the OS and anything extra that might end up there, like files or applications. Next, click Partition.
4. Once your drive is partitioned, it’s time to install Windows. Again, the Windows 8 preview needs to be burned to a disc in order to install. Boot Camp should detect the disc once it’s inserted and allow you to continue installing. Click Start Installation. Your computer will now restart and boot from the Windows disc.
5. Follow the instructions on screen. When the installer asks you where to install Windows, select “Disk 0 Partition 3 BOOTCAMP” and then click Drive options (advanced). Choose Format from the options that appear to format the partition to NTFS, the file system Windows requires.
6. Follow the onscreen instructions again. Once Windows has installed, your Mac will automatically restart into Windows.

Since the Boot Camp support software for Windows won’t work with the developer preview, you won’t be able to install the Boot Camp tools on Windows. That means that to boot back into your OS X partition, you’ll need to restart your Mac with the Option key on the keyboard held down. You’ll be shown a list of available startup drives, from which you can choose your main partition where OS X is housed.

Remember this is a developer preview version of Windows 8. That is, it’s essentially alpha software, so things could go very wrong when you use it. Just as Apple suggests when using developer previews of OS X, you might not want to install Windows 8 on your main computer, and make sure to back up before you do any installations.

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For those who haven’t been following iOS 5, iMessage is an instant messaging service that works a lot like texting and MMS, but with added features like delivery and read receipts, and without the need for a texting plan from your cellular service provider. It will be available automatically for all iPhones, iPod touches and iPads that can run iOS 5, and you can receive messages at the email address of your choosing.

That means that when I receive a text from another iMessage user, it’ll show up on my iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, so that I can respond with whatever device happens to be closest. The catch is that only iOS users can play; iMessage isn’t cross-platform, and so far doesn’t extend to Apple’s desktop operating system, OS X. But uncovered in Lion’s iChat are two new unused lines of code that suggest we may see that change soon.

Specifically, the code makes reference to “timeDelivered” and “timeRead” fields, yet iChat doesn’t currently support either delivered or read receipts. iMessage, on the other hand, does. With OS X support, you could theoretically receive iMessages on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac, making it even easier to read and respond wherever you happen to be working.

OS X support for iMessage is a logical next step, and one which I pointed out as a notable omission back when the service was first announced. User experience design firm teehan+lax posted an interesting conceptual look at how iMessage on the Mac might work, but simple iChat integration makes even more sense, since the iOS messaging app is based on the same UI to begin with.

FaceTime made the leap from mobile to desktop, and it seems unlikely Apple would have failed to notice the potential in iMessage doing the same. Let’s hope this makes the leap from small to big screen soon, like ideally right around when iOS 5 drops.

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Welcome to another instalment of Tips and Tricks, the series which aims to teach you something useful about one of your Apple products. This time, we’ll be focusing on Mail 5, the new version that ships with OS X Lion. There a few new tips that apply specifically to Mail 5, and also some existing tricks that should come in handy no matter which version you’re using.

Show your own messages in Conversation View

The new Conversation View (View > Organize by Conversation) in Mail 5 is great for keeping up with, well, a conversation. However, by default, it doesn’t show messages you’ve sent in reply during the conversation, which makes it harder to follow exactly what is being said and why.

To show your own messages in the thread along with those you receive from others, open Mail’s preferences, either under the Mail menu in the menu bar, or by pressing Command-comma. Then go to the Viewing tab, and under the ‘View conversations’ header, check the Include related messages option. Your sent messages will now show up in Conversation view.

Use Rules to color emails from certain people

If you’d like to highlight emails which came from someone important, like your boss, perhaps, Mail has a perfect way to do so. Using Rules, you can set the background color of an email in the list.

To do this, open up Mail’s preferences again, and this time open the Rules tab. Click the Add Rule button on the right, and a sheet will slide down with some options. Set the condition to From is [the person's email address]. Then underneath, set the action to Set color of background to [the color you want to use]. Click OK, and your rule will be added. From now on, whenever an email arrives from the address you specified, the message will be colored.

Show an unread counter in the Menu Bar

This tip will be useful to those of you who keep the Dock hidden, or have turned off the Dock unread count for Mail. This does involve downloading an extra piece of software, since Mail doesn’t support a menu bar item natively. The software is called Mail Unread Menu, and can be downloaded from MacUpdate. Once downloaded, all you have to do is run it, and you’ll have an unread count in the menu bar. There are also quite a few customization options available, such as the ability to choose the icon displayed in the menu bar for Mail, by clicking the menu item and choosing Preferences.

Change the names of Mail’s flags

In Mail 5, you can assign a colored flag to each message. There are seven colors to choose from, and they can be used for organising messages, since Mail automatically creates Smart Mailboxes for each flag you use. By default, the flags are named after the color of the flag, which isn’t very useful. There is a way, however, to change the names of the flags.

To change a flag’s name, first select a message and add the flag to it. Without adding the flag to at least one message, you can’t change its name. Once you have done so with all the flags you want to rename, you’ll see a new Flagged section in the Reminders area of the sidebar.

To rename a flag once it shows up there, right click it and choose Rename Mailbox from the menu. Then type the new name for your flag and press Enter.

Once you’ve pressed Enter, the flag’s name will change not only in the sidebar, but also in the drop down list of flags in the tool bar. This makes it much easier to remember what each of the colors means.

Flags also remember their names even if there are no messages with that flag applied to them.

Got any other tips and tricks regarding Apple’s default Mail app to share? Let us know in the comments.

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Nyan Cat, if you’re not aware, is a cat made mostly of pop tart that travels endlessly through space and has spawned iOS games and countless spin-offs after first appearing on LOL-COMICS in April. It’s bizarre and adorable, and now you can see its smiling face and pink-frosted body every time you open Software Update or copy a file in Finder.

To install the Nyan Cat loading bar, just go to creator Michael Buckley’s GitHub page and follow the instructions he provides there. It takes a minute or two at most, and is easy enough to reverse. Maybe you want to surprise a loved one with some unexpected space kitty action the next time they go to see if there’s an iTunes update available, or you’re just tired of Apple’s rather plain aqua loading bar. You’ll have to supply your own background music.

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