By Alex Brooks Moscone West in San Francisco ready for WWDC 2014 | Flickr
Things may have been quiet around these parts (the pressures of life) but two things seemingly never change. The first is that I never stop loving the Apple rumour game (and the associated news cycle), and the second is that those that know me, both online and off, never lose the impression of me as the person to go to to find out the latest Apple gossip. It’s a bit like your friends discovering that you’re “that guy” that knows how to fix their Windows PC and never being able to step foot in a house without being pounced upon with a problem—yesterday I visited a friends new house, within 15 seconds of arriving I was staring at the admin panel of their internet router.

So over the last month or so I’ve been discretely jotting down notes of what the people around me ask about the Apple rumoursphere in a hope of forming a short ‘conversation piece’ (think of it like a glorified Q and A) to cover the pertinent elements as we head into Apple’s only conference, and therefore only guaranteed event of the year.
Anecdotally what I do note is that people ask less, people are interested a little less in what Apple is up to. Whether this can be attributed to Apple “losing it’s cool” or not is another wider discussion. And probably something for a wider pool or people.
What is WWDC and why should I care?
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is as of recent years the company’s only headline event. Whilst Apple is almost guaranteed to host other events later in the year, this event signals the start of the busy season but also sits firmly in the calendar—as it has done for years.
Traditionally the event focused on developers and their needs, and in some cases was not a very consumer facing event. But with the demise of Macworld several years ago it’s been the job of WWDC to be a consumer focused event and to be the flashy show off keynote that we all remember Macworld to be (just look at 2007 to see why). But the only part of WWDC that is consumer focused is the opening two hours, what is known as the opening keynote.
WWDC has in the past hosted all sorts of announcements, from nothing of interest to consumers all the way up to iPhone releases, but in recent years has shifted to a software focus—this year is expected to be no different.
Why should you care? I dunno, you’re the one asking me the question.
What happens after the keynote?
Well after the keynote there are two large sessions that happen effecttively behind closed doors. The press are ushered out the building and the next keynote is called the ‘State of the Union’, this is a very frank and detailed look at the current status of Apple’s hardware, software, and services. This is the best insight into Apple’s future direction as an outsider is ever likely to get. Following this event is the Apple Design Awards (ADAs as their affectionately known) which are exactly as you’d expect.
The rest of the week is formed of sessions focused on individual aspects of OS X, iOS, and services. It is after all an event focused on harbouring good developer habits and by extension awesome software.
So the new iPhone (insert other iOS device) is coming out Monday?
In short, no.
Apple hasn’t released (or announced) an iPhone at WWDC since 2010 (iPhone 4) and appears to be firmly embedded into an annual cycle of announcing iPhones in late September. I conveniently wrote this a few years back to explain the relationship between Apple’s software releases and at what point the hardware comes. But in short, you can’t develop major software upgrades without developers testing on it first and Apple’s doesn’t flaunt new iOS hardware without giving it some shiny new software to go along with it.
This is a software only show then?
Now you’re getting it. Don’t discount the idea of some hardware but we’ll come to that.
It’s a dead cert that we’ll see iOS 8 and OS X (Yosemite?) to be shown off on Monday.
What about hardware though? I bloody love hardware.
Tim Cook said earlier in the year that Apple will be releasing products “across 2014″ which is not entirely true so far. There’s also a whole lot of hardware that is due a refresh or going to be refreshed because it happens anyway.
iPhones and iPads will get refreshed in late September/early October. The Apple TV is expected to be refreshed later in the year or early next year and iPods (or should I say iPod touch) usually slot in around the iPhone and iPad releases to coincide with the release of iOS.
Mac hardware is getting overdue in some cases with only the MacBook Air getting a minor refresh so far this year. Which leaves the MacBook Pro, iMac (that’s a WWDC nope), the Mac mini, and Thunderbolt Display as possible options. Traditionally if Mac hardware is in the WWDC keynote then it’s pro focused.
There are of course some outliers such as the long rumoured “iWatch”, a larger iPad, and more recently an ARM-powered Mac. I wouldn’t hold your breath for any of them.
Software then, what’s in store next week?
Well two big announcements as outlined above, we’re expecting iOS 8 which is the software that runs on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and a majorly revamped OS X which runs on your Mac. Think of it as the reverse of last year, iOS got all the attention and this year OS X will get most of it.
I’ve got an iPhone so that sounds good
Last year came iOS 7, you’ll probably remember that because it was the biggest overhaul to iOS since the iPhone was released in 2007. And when you eventually installed it on your phone in September it completely changed everything, and it was a bit buggy.
iOS 8 is expected to be an evolution of 7 with some impressive additional features piled on top. Unfortunately it looks like Monday’s announcement could be a little hobbled by some features not being show ready.
Purported screenshot showing Apple’s upcoming HealthBook App
Healthbook is expected to be Apple’s headline feature. It’s expected to be an app (like Passbook) that aggregates information from lots of sources like other apps and hardware accessories. This data is based around health and fitness and could be setting up future hardware releases based around fitness monitoring (think the Fitbit or Nike Fuel Band).
Healthbook will be capable of tracking data for heart rate, blood pressure, nutrition, blood sugar, sleep, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, weight, and activity
Healthbook will also look at things like steps, calories burnt, miles walked. Something that’s already possible with the M7 in the iPhone 5s, albeit through third party apps.
Maps will also feature heavily in iOS 8. Apple will continue its efforts to compete with Google and will bring a big overhaul to the mapping data presented through the Maps app including the long awaited transit information that has caused the big surge in third parties over the last couple of years. Maps is one of the features that may not be demoed or be ready to ship with iOS 8 when it finally hits the market in September.
Song identification in Siri is an additional feature that’s expected to hit the ever expanding repertoire of Siri features. Ask Siri what song is playing and it’ll come back to you with a song ID, according to sources this feature is being done in partnership with Shazam.
There’s also expected to be further third party integration like there is now with OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha. Think along the lines of being able to reserve a car rental or a hotel.
Notifications will also see a minor overhaul, notably the rather useless ‘Missed’ tab will vanish in favour of just ‘Today’ and ‘Notifications’ with the latter receiving a cleanup. It’s unknown whether Apple will continue to expand the features of ‘Today’, the company has recently acquired a company called Cue who focused on personal assistant features.
Apple is said to be designing iOS versions of Preview and TextEdit that’ll sync over iCloud with their Mac counterparts. It’s currently rumoured that these apps will be view only apps with editing functionality being encouraged by other apps, notably Pages for the latter.
Leaked screenshot of iOS 8
A rather odd rumour but backed by numerous good sources is plan to offer split screen apps on iPad in iOS 8. This would be a feature similar to that of the Microsoft Surface where two apps can be displayed side-by-side. This feature is poised to make it easier to share information between apps and to reference other apps but raises questions about how the mode would be entered (without the existence of windows) and how developers would prepare their apps for half size operation.
It’s now claimed that the feature won’t make it to WWDC.
And finally iTunes Radio is expected to be broken out as a standalone app to help compete with its competitors. The recent acquisition of Beats will play no part in Apple’s current music offering until early 2015 at best so Apple will continue to push the uptake of iTunes Radio as its offering to compete with other streaming services even though recent comments by Apple’s Eddy Cue may have indicated that Apple doesn’t see Radio as a streaming service as such.
That’s not wildly impressive, what about OS X then?
For the first time in a long time it looks like OS X is going to be the centre of attention. The most rumoured update to OS X 10.10 (Yosemite is the best bet for a name) is a brand new look. The best rumours suggest Jony Ive and his team have spread their iOS 7 look over to the Mac and now the operating system will feature bring colours, lots of white space, sharp corners, a lack of depth, and icons and text designed for higher resolution displays.
Apple won’t just leave it at a redesign though, and is also expected to port over some iOS features such as Control Centre, Siri, and cross platform AirDrop.
OS X 10.10 banners going up inside Moscone West this week
The ancillary apps to OS X are also expected to slowly be ported over to the new look with iLife and iWork apps being the usual suspects for demo during a WWDC keynote. Those who watched last year will remember the cringe-worthy demo of iWork’s cloud based features.
That’s it?
Looks like it.
Keynotes follow a fairly set structure, opening with some message about Apple’s current stance (last year was design, previous years were cross of liberal arts and technology) probably something around the ‘Your Verse’ advertising campaign followed by a run down of stats. Then jump through the executives and their related products until a summary at the end.
How exciting, when and where?
Well if you want to see it in person then you’re out of luck unless you’re currently in San Francisco and have splashed out $1500. But luckily Apple will be streaming the keynote online for all to see.
Apple’s WWDC 2014 kicks off Monday June 2 at the following times:
10:00AM – Pacific
11:00AM – Mountain
12:00PM – Central
1:00PM – Eastern
6:00PM – London
7:00PM – Paris
9:00PM – Moscow
2:00AM – Tokyo (Tuesday 3rd)
4:00AM – Sydney (Tuesday 3rd)
World of Apple will provide detailed analysis after the keynote and during the week. Follow myself @alexbrooks on Twitter for regular updates on WWDC goings on and the keynote and follow @worldofapple for major announcements.

Source: World of Apple

I’m running OS X localized in French and recently started using custom keyboard shortcuts extensively. But I’ve come across a few menu items for which I could not create a shortcut. I realized that all these items contained apostrophes. Not the same apostrophe as the one on the keyboard though (‘ vs. ‘ which is a single quote, ascii 39).

I managed to find the right char in a *.strings file inside the Ressource/French.lproj folder of the application package (Teminal.app in this case), which I could then copy and paste in System Preferences

The Finder/Get Info checkmark for preventing App Nap sometimes disappears, seemingly at random. Maybe the app updates itself, or just writes something to the application directory and the checkmark is gone. The next day your overnight render is at 10%. So in Terminal, type:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES

This seems to prevent App Nap completely, looking at the Activity Monitor

I’m not sure if this has been covered sufficiently already, but I’ve heard lamentations by various writers about the lack of a keyboard shortcut to bring up the file-tagging popup in the Finder. While none is provided by default, one can easily be set up.

In previous versions of OS X, the File menu had Label: followed by the row of colored cells. In Mavericks, the row of tags is still there, but the un-selectable Label: has changed to the selectable Tags…, which opens the tagging popup menu next to the selected file.

This process may already be familiar to MacOSXHints readers. Go to System Preferences

I live in China so I have to use VPN all the time if I want any kind of stable connection to sites in the west. Unfortunately the VPN will at times randomly disconnect and then all traffic will immediately start going over chinese Internet again. While this is not a big deal really, I would just prefer not to be logged in to Facebook or Gmail and have my traffic open to be sniffed by the great firewall. It also occurred to me that many people use VPNs in the states in order to safely torrent.

I know some VPN providers have ‘Internet kill switches’ for their VPN that will cut your Internet connection incase of a disconnect and make sure you are not leaking anything. The problem with these is that they are almost all using openVPN, while I use L2TP over IPSec for my VPN. I searched for a long time for a way to do this and could not find one so I thought of a way to do it on my own. The following is how I set my system up. Please keep in mind that I am not an experienced Term …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

Aliases in OS X are identified to the system by an attribute referred to as the alias bit. This hint provides a very simple way to be able to toggle the alias bit of selected files within the Finder.

There may be some need to be able to toggle the alias bit of files from within the Finder. For example, I found that using Bittorrent Sync to keep files synchronized across multiple devices is very useful and a real time saver, but suffers from a bug in the OS X version, that causes aliases to lose their status as aliases. I traced the problem to the alias bit not syncing and though the developers continue to promise to fix it, I got tired of waiting.

So I put together an Automator action that installs as a service in OS X. It adds a Service to the contextual menu that will toggle the alias bit on any file or folder in the Finder. It works on multiple files at once. Just select what you want, right click, and choose ‘Toggle Alias Bit.’ I made it a toggler rather than …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

I frequently want to add multiple URLs to Calendar events. Of course, you can put them in the Notes section, but given that there’s a URL field, it seems a little kludgey. This solution is kludgey too, but perhaps a bit less so.

Drag the additional link(s) to the Finder to create a .webloc file; then drag that file to the attachment field for the event.

You can double-click the file to open the link, which is better than the link being non-clickable in the Notes field, where you would have to highlight and right-click (Control+click). The URL won’t appear in the body of an email when you send an event to someone, but it will be in the attached .ics file.

[crarko adds: I haven’t tested this one.]

Source: Mac OSX Hints

By Alex Brooks Apple’s Quarterly Earnings until Q214
Apple today announced financial results for its second fiscal quarter of 2014 which ran from January 1, 2014 until March 29. Apple posted revenue of $45.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $10.2 billion, or $11.62 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $43.6 billion and net profit of $9.54 billion, or $10.09 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
Gross margin was 39.3 percent compared to 37.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 66 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple reported the following number of shipments for its products during the quarter:
43.7 million iPhones compared to 37.4 million in the year-ago-quarter
16.35 million iPads compared to 19.5 million in the year-ago-quarter
4.1 million Macs compared to 3.95 million in the year-ago quarter
2.76 million iPods compared to 5.63 million in the year-ago quarter.

“We’re very proud of our quarterly results, especially our strong iPhone sales and record revenue from services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re eagerly looking forward to introducing more new products and services that only Apple could bring to market.”
“We generated $13.5 billion in cash flow from operations and returned almost $21 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the March quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “That brings cumulative payments under our capital return program to $66 billion.”
Apple provided the following guidance for its fiscal 2014 third quarter:
revenue between $36 billion and $38 billion
gross margin between 37 percent and 38 percent
operating expenses between $4.4 billion and $4.5 billion
other income/(expense) of $200 million
tax rate of 26.1%

Source: World of Apple

There are many step-by-step guides on the internet that explain how to add an SSD to an existing Mac, and create a ‘Fusion Drive’ that has the speed of an SSD, but also the capacity of a Hard Drive. All these guides fall short in one way that was important to me.

Creating the Fusion Drive the way these walkthroughs say (including OWC’s exceptional guides), destroys the Recovery Partition that exists on the drive. Without a Recovery Partition, you cannot enable FileVault2, and will need some other external boot drive if you ever need to perform maintenance on your internal drives. For a laptop computer that might be far from home, not having a Recovery Partition was unacceptable to me. Also note that if you buy a Mac from Apple today with Fusion Drive, it DOES come with a Recovery Partition, so it is indeed possible to do.

It turns out that Apple’s Core Storage technology is more flexible than these walkthroughs give on. You can enroll an individual partition of a …

Source: Mac OSX Hints

I wanted to use Time Machine on my exFAT hard drive, but turns out that these volumes aren’t supported from Time Machine! There is a very simple way to use Time Machines on unsupported hard drives, as long as you follow these instructions carefully you shouldn’t have any issues at all.

First, connect the unsupported volume (in this case, an exFAT external hard drive.) When it mounts, open the Terminal and type these commands, substituting ‘My External HDD Name’ for the name of the unsupported volume.

cd /Volumes
cd ‘My External HDD Name’

Next, type this code, substituting for your needs:

hdiutil create -size 320g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -fs “HFS+J” MacBook-Backup.sparsebundle
open MacBook-Backup.sparsebundle

Here, a 320GB sparse bundle named ‘MacBook-Backup’ is being made and mounted. You can change these values as you see fit. From herein, I’ll refer to the sparse bundle name as ‘MacBook-Backup’.
…

Source: Mac OSX Hints