Don’t look now, but summer’s kind of winding down. Now’s the time to go outside with your laptop or iOS device, and catch up on both the sun’s rays and Macworld’s biggest stories from the past week. Don’t forget the sunblock. Or the Wi-Fi.
Oh, and if you’re travelling a little further than the front stoop, don’t miss our guide on which tech to take with you on your journey.
Mountain Lion bugs, tips, and tricks
This week, we reviewed Safari 6. Whether you love or loathe the browser’s new unified search and location bar, one thing is certain: It’s tougher to copy the URLs for search results now than it used to be. Luckily, we can help you with that. Even more luckily, you could always just tell your friends what to search for in a pinch.
Mountain Lion’s Save As functionality isn’t what it used to be, but we’ve got a workaround until Apple fixes what it broke. We also find a couple Mountain Lion crashing bugs.
Not all the Mountain Lion news is bad news, though: Did you know that you could encrypt any disk in Mountain Lion? Now no hacker will ever find your stash of cat pictures.
The hack attack
Speaking of hackers, boy, did former Macworld staffer Mat Honan get hit hard. In light of the brutal hack on his accounts that ended with his attackers wiping out his Mac’s hard drive, we offered up some thoughts on security in the iCloud age.
Honan reported that he wouldn’t have been hit nearly as hard, had he enabled Google’s two-step authentication. Too bad he didn’t read our guide to configuring Google’s two-step authentication, right? Of course, it’s also too bad that he didn’t have a time machine, since we only wrote it after he got hacked, but whose fault is that, really?
In fact, in light of the hack on Honan, Apple temporarily suspended some unsafe phone policies it had in place, and told Macworld that it would be making permanent changes.
We spoke with Honan himself on the latest edition of the Macworld podcast. At least, we think that was Honan.
All things iOS
We found that the Apple Store will sell you for one a little cheaper than it used to.
On the app side of things, well, there are new versions of Things. As you greet Things, though, you’ll need to say farewell to Mixel.
And, of course, we reviewed plenty of iOS apps, too. Among them:
- SpellTower—which put a spell on us;
- SloPro—which is not a no-go;
- Flick Champions World Edition—for those who are into heavy medal;
- Personal Capital—an app we’d like even if it were lowercase;
- Solar—an app whose future may or may not be bright; and
- Bucketz—a game that’s kind of beyond the pail. (Editor’s note: Zing!)
If you’re trying these apps and others on your iPad, and looking for a good way to prop the tablet up, but keep feeling stumped, you might consider the Stump. Of course, if one of the apps you love is the built-in YouTube app, we have some tough news about iOS 6.
Miscellany
Let’s talk about photos. A picture is worth a thousand words, although my editor never accepts that excuse.
This week, we offered advice on achieving Retina display-worth photos for the new iPad.
And when you want to edit photos on your Mac, consider Pixelmator, which this week added Retina display and Mountain Lion support.
If you could appreciate photos on your iMac more if only the screen weren’t so darn glarey, you may well benefit from this story from the Macworld Lab.
On the Mac
GemFest 2012 continued with looks at great apps like Battery Status, ImageOptim, Dropzone, TrackSift, and Radio Silence.