Pair your remote with your Mac

If there are multiple Macs around when you’re using your remote, you’ll find that pressing a button once will perform the same action on every nearby Mac. To solve this problem, you can pair the remote specifically with a single target Mac. Open System Preferences, and then open the Security & Privacy pane.

At the bottom is a button labelled Pair…. Click this button, then follow the instructions that appear by holding the remote near your Mac and holding down the Menu and Next buttons on the remote. (Next is the button on the right-hand side of the ring at the top of the remote.)

Once you’ve done this, your remote and your Mac will be paired, meaning that using that remote will only control that one Mac.

Send your Mac to sleep with the remote

When using your Mac as a media center, you may wish to put the computer to sleep once you’re done. To do this quickly, you can use your remote. All you need to do is hold down the Play/Pause button on the remote. After a few seconds, a graphic will appear on the screen and your Mac will go to sleep.

Set up custom actions for your remote

By downloading the free utility BetterTouchTool, you can set up custom actions, which will be performed when you press specific buttons on your remote. This is great if you don’t use your remote for controlling iTunes or FrontRow, since you can override the default actions (play, next, pause, etc).

Once you’ve downloaded BetterTouchTool, you can add custom actions (called Gestures in BTT) by clicking its icon in the menu bar and choosing Preferences. Click Gestures at the top, then Apple Remote and other.

Next, click Add new gesture at the bottom of the screen. You can then select a ‘gesture’, i.e. a button on the remote, from the drop down in the lower left. After that, choose an action from the other drop down in the bottom right corner, or type a keyboard shortcut in the box.

For instance, you could set up an action which locks your computer when you hold down the Menu button on the remote by setting the gesture to Menu, Holding and the action to Show Loginscreen. (Note that since OS X doesn’t have an explicit ‘lock’ feature, this is the next best thing since it requires you to enter your password to get back into your Mac afterwards.)

Change the startup disk and eject CDs

As your Mac starts up, if you hold the Menu button on the remote, you’ll see the same menu as if you hold the Option key on the keyboard – a list of available startup disks. You can then use the remote to select a disk, and boot from it using the Play/Pause button.

In the same menu, you can also use the Volume Up button to eject a CD or DVD after selecting it.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why the Mac is infiltrating the enterprise
• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• A clouded view of Google Music

The big choices

General. Most choices here are purely cosmetic, like changing the highlight color, or how many items show up in the recent menu. In OS X Lion, however, you can make one important choice: whether or not to restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps. Unchecking this will stop applications from opening up the last-used files or web pages. This cannot be set on a per-app basis. Leaving this checked is good if you want to get back up and running quickly after a system reboot, bu bad if you’re giving a presentation and the last file you had open was a video of your bachelor party in Vegas.

Mission Control. The main choice here is if you want Dashboard to launch in its own space. Leaving this checked will keep it default (own space). Unchecking it means when you open the Dashboard it will work like it did in Snow Leopard, which is as an overlay on your main screen. I would have set it back to the Snow Leopard setting, but I’m using Josh’s excellent tip to map my Dashboard key to the Launchpad.

Language and Text. If you don’t like Lion auto-correcting words as you type, you can disable here. Or, you kuld just lrn to spel. For obvious reasons, I quite like this setting.

Security and Privacy. This is where you can turn Filevault encryption on. Previous versions of Filevault were fairly useless, but Filevault 2 (the one that’s included with Lion) is actually quite handy. For one thing, it’s a disc-level encryption that needs to be unlocked for your Mac to boot. I’d check this if you’re ever concerned about someone getting data from your Mac without your say-so. Also, you can turn your Mac’s firewall off and on from this preference pane.

Trackpad. Until Lion, I hadn’t realized the way I’d been scrolling was “unnatural,” but I’m glad Lion set us right in that regard. If the reverse scrolling drives you nuts you can set it back to unnatural, err, normal, err, the way it used to be, here. That said, I’d encourage you to give it a try for a few weeks. I wasn’t thrilled with it at all, but after a few days I quite liked it.

The little things

Desktop and Screensaver. This is where you can go to change your wallpaper and screensaver, as you may have guessed. But it’s also the place you can go to turn off the translucent menu bar.

Time Machine: Sadly, you can’t turn off Lion’s Autosave and Versioning features, assuming an app supports them. However, what you can change in Time Machine is the length of time before a file is locked. The default is two weeks after the last save.

Energy Saver: Here’s where you can change how often your hard drive and screen go to sleep. I’ve unchecked the setting to dim my display when using the battery, because I like my screen set to maximum brightness. However, leaving it checked is a good way to find out in a hurry when someone accidentally unplugs your laptop if you like to work in high-traffic areas.

Those are some ways you can customize your Mac without needing to use a third-party utility. Feel free to share your own suggestions about third-party preference panes that make things even better in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities

New owners of the latest Air and Mac mini will find fixes for issues related to flickering screens, booting problems when the power cord is attached, and slow running SD cards. Specifically, Apple says the update will:

• Address an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari
• Resolve an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out
• Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections
• Resolve an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings, and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion
• Resolve an issue where MacBook Air may boot up when MagSafe Adapter is attached
• Resolve an issue causing intermittent display flickering on MacBook Air
• Resolve an issue that causes the SD card slot in Mac mini to run at reduced speed with SD and SDHC media

If you have Lion, but not on one either the Mac mini or the Air, you’ll get a separate update that only pertains to the first four issues listed above.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• The rise of tablets in the enterprise

Lion’s system information

Right in your computer’s Apple menu (under ), the first item in fact, is the “About This Mac” utility. Clicking on it will bring up a small window that prominently says which version of Mac OS X you’re running, which processor your system has, how much RAM, and the name of the startup disk (the drive the computer boots from). There are two clickable buttons in this window: one takes you to Software Update, and the other, which we’ll be using, is labelled “More Info…” and takes you to the System Information app.

The System Information app provides you with the type of Mac you’re using (iMac, MacBook Pro, etc.) and also the specific size and original release timeframe of the computer. In the screenshot below, you can see that I’m using a 27-inch iMac from mid-2011 here.

Other information provided on the “Overview” tab of the System Information app includes your processor speed and type, the amount of memory or RAM installed on your system, the graphics card your computer has, and the machine’s serial number and operating system version.

Listed along the top of the System Information window are different tabs where you can find out more. “Displays” shows you the number and type of screens currently being used by your Mac, including the built-in display and any external monitors you have connected.

“Storage” provides a breakdown of any drives either connected to or built-in to your Mac, including a visual breakdown of what type of content and how much of it can be found on each drive.

“Memory” tells you how much RAM you have installed, and lets you know if you have any free slots available for more. You can also access Memory Upgrade Instructions from this tab for your specific model of Mac, if the memory is user-upgradeable.

Also available from the System Information app are Mac OS X and Mac hardware support resources, under the “Support” tab listed in the far right upper corner of the window. These provide useful links to Apple’s online help database, support contact information, and user manuals and specifications.

You can also check whether your Mac is still eligible for service, and check your authorized repair options under the “Service” tab.

Back under the Overview tab, you can click “System Report…” to get a more detailed look at your system and the hardware installed, but for most users, what you need to find should be listed in one of the tabs mentioned above.

Mactracker and EveryMac.com

If you’re still curious about your Mac or any other Mac out there, then there are a couple useful resources you can check out. Mactracker is an app on the Mac App Store that’s available as a free download. You can use it to browse or search for any Mac model ever built, as well as Apple-made peripherals, iOS devices, servers and even discontinued product like the Newton. It’s like a virtual Apple museum that’s both searchable and customizable.

EveryMac.com offers similar information, but in a website instead of in an app. It’s a little bit harder to navigate, but once you find what you’re looking for, it provides much more detailed information, including lengthy contextual descriptions of the Macs themselves, as well as Geekbench performance comparisons, and links to helpful articles about specific components and their uses.

Knowledge is power

For a lot of people, the motivation for moving to Mac can be that users simply don’t want to think too much about the system they’re using — hence Steve Jobs’ affinity for the phrase, “it just works.” But knowing at least the basics about the system you’re using means you’re that much likely to be able to handle problems well when they do occur. For most people, all that means is opening System Information once in a while to refresh your memory. For others, though, the deeper dive provided by Mactracker and EveryMac.com will be a rewarding experience.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

Note that for Screen Sharing to work, you either need to be on the same network as the Mac you’re trying to access, use Back to My Mac with MobileMe, or use a VPN client like Hamachi.

Per-user and Apple ID login

You can now log into other Macs on your network not only with an authorized user account on that machine, but also with an Apple ID. Plus, you can also specify individuals manually, or add them from your Address Book, who are also allowed to login remotely on a per-user basis, and provide each with a unique password of your choosing. That eliminates the need to create a separate user account just for remote access, since you can just add your son or daughter from your Address Book and send them a password, allowing them to gain remote access if you need tech support, for example.

To add users, go to the Sharing pane in System Preferences, make sure Screen Sharing is turned on, and hit the “+” button to select people from your Address Book contacts. Hit the “New Person” button to authorize people manually.

Observe mode

In previous incarnations of Screen Sharing, you could take over control of another computer, but if you wanted to step back and watch what was happening on said computer, it was fairly tricky. Basically, you had to make another window active and just not touch anything. Now, you can switch to Observe mode, which is perfect for those times when you want to watch what a user is doing in order to provide them with accurate tech support help.

To switch to Observe mode, you can add an icon to the toolbar (pictures, via View > Customize Toolbar…), or go to View > Switch to Observe Mode in the menu bar.

Virtual Display mode

If you want to just change a setting or start a download without interrupting someone else currently using the computer you’re accessing via Screen Sharing, there’s a new Virtual Display mode designed to do just that. It will provide you with your own desktop that doesn’t interfere with what’s currently being shown on the Mac’s actual connected display. This is perfect for running application updates on your parents’ computer while they browse uninterrupted, for instance.

Virtual Display option greyed out here because Screen Sharing is in Observe mode.

If you’re logging into another Mac with per-user permissions, as described above, you’ll be asked whether you want to view the hardware or a virtual display. You can also access Virtual Display mode by going to View > Switch to Virtual Display in the menu bar, and change back to the hardware display by going to View > Switch to Hardware Display.

I find I’m already using these new features quite a bit. How are you finding Screen Sharing in OS X Lion?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

Enable three-finger swipe for back/forward

In Snow Leopard, swiping three fingers on the trackpad moved you back or forward in Safari and the Finder. In Lion, however, that gesture has been changed to two fingers, with the three finger gesture reserved for Mission Control. In effect, any apps that used this gesture for back/forward are broken and need to be updated to use the new gesture. Until then, you can get the old gesture back by going to Trackpad in System Preferences, and under the “More Gestures” tab changing the option for “Swipe between pages” to “Swipe left or right with two or three fingers”. If you do this, you’ll have to switch between full-screen apps with four fingers.

Enable tap dragging and disable inertial scrolling

Apple moved these preferences to the Universal Access pane in System Preferences. To tweak them, enter the Universal Access area, go to the “Mouse and Trackpad” tab and click “Trackpad Options.”

Turn off automatic file locking

Due to the addition of Auto Save, Lion automatically locks files after two weeks if they haven’t been edited. You can change this by going into System Preferences > Time Machine > Options and unchecking the option to lock files.

Take Dashboard out of Mission Control

With Lion, Dashboard is now a space in Mission Control. If you don’t want it taking up the room, or if you want Dashboard to act as an overlay, the way it did in Snow Leopard, you can go to Mission Control’s System Preferences pane and uncheck the box next to “Show Dashboard as a space.”

Show the Finder’s status bar and hide All My Files

The Lion Finder has a couple of annoying changes. First, the status bar is hidden, so you can’t see the extra information it provided, such as how much space is left on a volume. You can show it again by going to View in the Menu bar and clicking “Show Status Bar.”

Second, the Finder has a new sidebar item called “All My Files.” Basically, this is a smart folder that shows a full list of every kind of file on your system. While this may be useful for people who don’t have a lot of files, for me, it’s pretty worthless, as I have to scroll for ages to find anything. You can get rid of it by simply holding down the Command (⌘) key and dragging it out of the sidebar.

What other annoyances have you found in Lion? Tell us in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• Infrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentum
• A field guide to cloud computing: current trends, future opportunities

1. Full-screen apps. Especially on a notebook, the ability to quickly switch to full-screen mode and navigate between apps that are using it has absolutely changed how I use Macs for the better. It definitely helps you focus on one thing at a time, and it makes great use of Macs with limited screen real estate. It just feels like something we should have been doing all along.
2. Launchpad. Despite my complaints about aspects of it in my last post, Launchpad itself is a welcome addition to the Mac. I’m using it most on my iMac, where the large icons and full-screen navigation make it much easier to find that one seldom-used app I’m looking for. I also think Launchpad is the first stage of an evolutionary tale that will only see it improve dramatically with future iterations of Mac OS, with feature additions like greater control over app arrangement, and maybe even live icons that display dynamic info at-a-glance.
3. AirDrop. Before AirDrop, copying files from my Mac to a visiting friend’s machine was sometimes so much of a chore that we wouldn’t even bother. Now I never have to have that “Hey, you still haven’t given me that file” conversation again, at least so long as everyone involved is packing the right equipment.
4. Hold key for special characters. I’ve never been able to remember the character codes for Macs, and using the special character palette from the Menu bar still requires more steps than the classic Google, copy, paste method. Holding keys down to produce special characters, as you can do on iOS devices, actually makes my life a lot easier, even though I don’t use them all that often.
5. The price. I recently had to install Windows 7 on a Boot Camp partition for my sister’s Mac. Price of the OS (even after it’s been on the market for nearly two years)? $220. The price of OS X Lion (which I was able to install on all four of my Lion-compatible Macs)? $30. Pricing may be Lion’s most appealing asset.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

1. Dashboard as a Space. Dashboard is one of the most useless additions ever made to OS X in my opinion, and Apple didn’t make it any better by now making it a mandatory Space all its own. Swiping left from your primary desktop could do so many useful things (activate a better full-screen Spotlight search interface, for instance), but instead it presents you with a bunch of widgets that do things Menu bar apps can handle, but with far less efficiency.
2. No simple clean install option. Every six months or so, I like to completely wipe and reinstall OS X on my Macs. It’s great that Apple is doing away with physical media in many ways, but it’s also aggravating that there really isn’t an easy way to do a complete erase and reinstall of OS X. At least there are workaround options, like reinstalling from Apple’s servers or formatting a bootable Lion flash drive, but both require extra steps.
3. Managing Launchpad. Launchpad in Lion suffers from some of the same usability issues that home screens in iOS used to have. Specifically, it’s quite a chore to reorganize apps and folders in Launchpad. Just give us a utility that lets users make the same kind of macro-level changes you can make in iTunes and this problem goes away.
4. Multi-touch quirks. Apple introduced new multi-touch gestures in OS X Lion, which means a lot of the gestures third-party apps were using for basic navigation are now broken, like back and forward in Chrome. Also, I’ve had more trouble using gestures like two-finger back and forward in Safari than I ever had in Snow Leopard, because the gestures appear to be more sensitive.  I love swiping between full-screen apps, but why isn’t that a four-finger action by default, leaving three-finger gestures to manage back/forward actions system-wide (especially in Finder)?
5. App window restore everywhere. Restore and Resume features are useful in OS X — in some applications. In others, like Preview, they tend to be more annoying than helpful. I would have liked to see some more judicious decision-making about which native apps got window restore features and which didn’t, or at least a central Preference pane where you can manually pick and choose which apps make use of the behavior.

These are my gripes so far with Lion, but in another article to come shortly, I’ll talk about the things that keep me using Apple’s latest OS, despite these problems. What are your top five (or any number, really) problems with the king of the operating system jungle?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

Specs and stats

The Mac mini I’m reviewing here is the $799 model, which comes with 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor and a dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics card with 256 MB of RAM. Connection options include 4 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800, a Thunderbolt connector, HDMI, Ethernet, digital/analog line in and line out ports and an SDXC card slot. It also has 802.11n Wi-Fi networking, and the new low-power Bluetooth 4.0 specification.

The new Core i5 series processor pushes a lot of weight compared to previous generations. Running it through Geekbench revealed scores of 6902 on average in my tests, compared to 3627 for the Mac mini released in 2010 (higher is better). Geekbench measures the maximum theoretical performance, but those higher scores should translate to noticeable speed improvements in overall performance.

While all the new Mac minis are much better at CPU-intensive tasks, the $799 model should really excel when it comes to graphics. Thanks to the dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6630M card, which marks the first time the Mac mini has had a dedicated card (maybe made possibly by dropping the optical disk), tasks like video editing and gaming go more smoothly on this mini than on any before it.

Performance

For me, the new Mac mini is replacing a much older model (2007, the first Intel Core 2 Duo version) that acted as the nerve center of my home theater setup. Compared to that machine, the new Mac mini offers many advantages: The larger stock 500 GB drive means I can depend less on external storage; HDMI out provides a single cable connection option that doesn’t require any adapters when used with an HDTV; SDXC support means I should have no problem viewing home movies or vacation slideshows from the cameras of visitors; and Thunderbolt promises to eventually make it possible to use huge, fast external storage media libraries a possibility, thanks to devices like the Pegasus RAID array.

On the other hand, the new Mac mini does away with the built-in optical disc drive, so users looking to play back their DVD movies either have to pony up an additional $79 for the MacBook Air SuperDrive, or set about converting their existing media library. Personally, the DVD drive removal is a welcome change; I long ago abandoned physical media for the convenience and reduced clutter of digital purchases and rentals. But if you have an extensive DVD movie collection you aren’t eager to part with, look at Apple’s deals on previous-generation refurbished Macs for a media center PC that will better suit your needs.

If you’re looking to use the new Mac mini as a workstation or traditional PC, this update has a lot to recommend it. I found that — like the MacBook Air I reviewed last week — it deals well with the load caused by using multiple open apps simultaneously, including demanding apps like Photoshop CS5 and iMovie. What it doesn’t do as well as the MacBook Air is load apps quite as fast, or handle shutdown and startup with the same lightning speed. That’s due mostly to the spinning disk drive which the Mac ships with by default, but Apple does offer a (fairly expensive) SSD customization option.

There’s one area where the new Mac mini has quite a bit of unique niche appeal: it’s road-readiness. With just a couple of input devices and the Mac mini itself, which has just a power cord with no heavy and unsightly brick, it actually gives Mac notebooks a run for their money in terms of physical footprint. Frequent travellers could easily pack one for use with the HDTVs now common in most business hotel rooms. And if they want a device that’s a desktop at home and offers more screen real estate than a laptop on the road, it’s quite a bit cheaper than a MacBook.

Verdict

Apple’s newest Mac mini is the best yet, thanks to a lower price tag and processor updates that deliver big CPU performance boosts with even lower power consumption. If you’re looking for a fairly future-proof home theater PC, or a low-cost, moderately powered workstation that can follow you wherever you need to go, this is the Mac for you.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities

Not every Lion is part of the AirDrop pride

Unfortunately, just because you have OS X Lion installed doesn’t necessarily mean you can use AirDrop. While AirDrop doesn’t require any Mac to be actively connected to a Wi-Fi network, it does require that each Mac have a wireless card turned on — and not just any wireless card –only certain models of Macs are equipped with the sort of hardware necessary to participate. You could check your hardware version and see if you have what it takes, or just look for AirDrop in your favorites list in the Finder. If it’s listed, then you have what it takes.

Identifying other AirDrop users

At first you’ll think AirDrop isn’t working, or that it’s really, really slow.  Even though you may be in the middle of a slew of Macs running OS X Lion that are all AirDrop-capable, your screen will still be blank. That’s because in order to use AirDrop, you must opt-in by selecting AirDrop from your favorites list in the Finder. Once another Mac does the same, you will see the user show up in the Finder. As soon as either of you navigate away from AirDrop in that Finder window, it will be turned off.

If you happen to be a MobileMe user, and you’re logged in to your MobileMe account on your Mac, and all of the AirDrop Macs near you have all done the same, AND you all happen to be in each other’s MobileMe contact list, then you’ll see each other’s real names instead of just the computer nicknames of your Macs.  That makes it sort of like sharing files peer-to-peer over IM networks. The major differences are that you don’t have to be friends, you don’t have to be using the same service, and you don’t have to be connected to a Wi-Fi network. You don’t even need to have Wi-Fi turned on. All you need is the right Mac with Wi-Fi powered on, and someone to share with.

AirDrop a file from one Mac to another

It’s very easy to share a file once you can see someone to share with in AirDrop. Simply drag your file and drop it on the AirDrop recipient in the Finder, confirm when asked “Do you want to send…” to the recipient, and wait for the user to accept the file.  Once the file transfer process has begun, you don’t have to keep AirDrop open in the Finder. AirDrop will continue the file transfer in the background, and notify you when the process is complete. To be clear, no one using AirDrop can see any files you have on your Mac via AirDrop. Only files you drag and drop on specific recipients will be transferred. There’s no setup, no configuration; it just works.

Alternatives to AirDrop for your Snow Leopard friends

The ability to transfer files in much the same way actually existed before AirDrop. Granted, it wasn’t as slick or polished, and there was some initial setup and configuration involved, but the ability to transfer files from one Mac to another in an almost identical peer-to-peer fashion has been in place for quite some time. In fact, if your Mac can’t participate in AirDrop, it’s all you’ve got.

Send file in iChat via Bonjour. Enabling the Bonjour account in iChat is one of the slickest features on the Mac many don’t realize they have. It’s like a private instant messaging service for all Macs on the same network. You can use this ad-hoc network of IM buddies to transfer files back and forth quickly. You don’t need an IM account, just the user account you use to log on to your Mac. Transferring files is about the same as with AirDrop. You must all be participating in iChat, and you must choose so transfer a specific file to a designated recipient. It’s not quite as easy as AirDrop, but it’s close. The one advantage here is that the range is greater.  You aren’t dependent on the Wi-Fi radio signal reaching directly between Macs; you just need to be on the same network.

Bluetooth file transfer. In theory, transferring files from Mac to Mac over Bluetooth is exactly the same as AirDrop.  The big difference is in the setup. You must first enable Bluetooth Sharing in the System Preferences; make sure that Bluetooth is turned on and that all Macs involved are discoverable. You even have to pair your Macs before the file transfer can begin. Once everything is set up and ready to go, you can use the Bluetooth File Transfer agent to send and receive files. I’ve used this technique in the past, but have found it to be unreliable and a pain to set up and configure, so I’d use this as a last resort.

AirDrop’s only flaw is its hardware dependency. Most households will have a mix of old and new Macs that are actively being used. That being said, when you do have the right hardware in place, nothing beats the simplicity of transferring a file from one Mac to another that comes with AirDrop.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities