OWC Announces RAM Upgrade Kits for New Retina iMac, Up to 32GB for $399 [Mac Blog]

Following yesterday's launch of the new iMac with Retina 5K display, Other World Computing has announced new RAM upgrade kits for the machines.



OWC is offering three separate 1600MHz DDR3L kits to upgrade the Retina iMac's memory to up to 32GB at prices lower than Apple offers. The 8GB kit, priced at $101.99, will increase the RAM of a base Retina iMac configuration from 8GB to 16GB.





The 16GB kit, priced at $197.99, will increase the RAM of a base Retina iMac configuration from 8GB to 24GB, and the 32GB kit, priced at $395 kit will allow users to replace all memory for a total of 32GB of RAM.



When purchased from Apple, upgrading to 16GB of RAM total costs $200, while upgrading to 32GB of RAM costs $600. OWC's 32GB kit is $200 less than Apple's price, and while the 16GB OWC kit is priced the same at $200, it ultimately lets users install 24GB of RAM rather than 16GB of RAM.



OWC is also offering a trade-in rebate for original factory memory, giving customers a credit towards the purchase of a memory kit. OWC's memory kits come with a limited lifetime warranty along with a lifetime advanced replacement program.



Released yesterday, Apple's iMac with 5K Retina display can be purchased from the Apple Store for $2,499. Current orders ship out in three to five business days.

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Posted in 2014 at 11:21PM, October 17

OS X Yosemite: An In-Depth Look at Markup and Mail Drop in the Mail App

OS X Yosemite has brought some major changes to Apple's Mail app, and those changes aren't limited to a simple visual overhaul. Mail may have a new look, but it also has several new features like Mail Drop and Markup.



With Markup, you can annotate images and PDFs from directly within the Mail app. For example, when composing an email message and attaching a PDF, it's possible to use various tools to add signatures, emphasis, and more. The same is possible with an image -- simply attach a file in a message that's being composed and right click on it, selecting Markup.



Markup has a set of tools at the top that allow users to create shapes, write text words, and insert signatures. There are different brushes that can be used, along with a color palette and various font options.





Users can enter various shapes, such as stars, circles, squares, speech bubbles and more, and there's a magnifying glass that will magnify sections of text or photos. A crop tool also allows for simple image edits, and there's a pen tool for free-handed writing or drawing.



Markup's neatest feature is a signature tool that lets users insert a signature using the trackpad of a MacBook or a camera. With the trackpad, clicking begin and then signing a name with a finger on the trackpad will create a signature that's automatically entered into a document.





There's also an option that allows users to write a signature on a white piece of paper and use a Mac's FaceTime camera to import it into the document. It's a little bit finicky getting the camera to recognize the signature, but once it's lined up properly, the feature works well.





Along with Markup, Mail has a new feature called Mail Drop that lets users send large file attachments of up to 5GB using iCloud. Composing an email message and attaching a file that would normally be too large to send will prompt Mail to ask a user if they would like to use Mail Drop to deliver the message.





When the Mail Drop option is selected, the person receiving the email will receive the file attachment as normal if they're using Mail, while non-Mail users will receive a message with a download link that allows them to download the file directly from iCloud. Files are stored in iCloud for several days before being deleted.





MacRumors did not experience any issues getting Mail Drop to function with files ranging in size from 10MB to over 1GB, but some users on the Apple Support forums have been having trouble with the feature. Because Mail Drop works based on a sender's file size limits rather than a receiver's, users have run into an issue where they can send a file that is below their own maximum file size threshold, but above a receiver's file size limits.



For example, sending a 10MB message from an email account that has a 30MB file size limit to an email account that has a 6GB file size limit will not activate Mail Drop and turn the file into a clickable link that can be downloaded from iCloud. Therefore, the person sending the message will get a bounce back reply that the user can't accept a message of that size, even if the receiver also has Mail Drop.



According to Apple, Mail Drop can only be used to send files that "exceed the maximum size allowed by the provider of your email account," which means there is no way for a user to select a custom file size threshold to activate Mail Drop to avoid the above situation. It is not clear if Apple has plans to implement manual size controls for Mail Drop, but for the time being, it appears that Mail Drop may not be useful for all users in certain situations.



Released to the public yesterday, OS X Yosemite can be downloaded from the Mac App Store at no cost. It runs on all machines that were capable of running OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Mavericks, and it requires 8GB of storage space and 2GB of RAM. [Direct Link]

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Posted in 2014 at 10:33PM, October 17

Apple exec: Apple is ‘not that interested’ in building a touchscreen Mac

In an interview with CNET following Apple’s iPad and Mac event on Thursday, Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi, who talked about Apple’s iOS 8 and OS X operating systems during the keynote, said Apple isn’t likely to make a Mac or Macbook computer with a touchscreen display anytime soon.

Continue reading...

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Posted in 2014 at 10:00PM, October 17

A List of OS X Yosemite Apps With Notification Center Widgets, Share Support, and More

Yesterday, Apple launched OS X Yosemite which brought a complete redesign to the OS and a number of features like Continuity, an enhanced Notification Center with widget support, iCloud Drive, and more. A number of developers have updated their apps to take advantage of those new features, and we've rounded up some of the most notable apps for Yosemite below.



1Password ($34.99 for a limited time, usually $49.99) [Direct Link]



Popular password manager 1Password has received a number of new features that integrate with OS X Yosemite including support for Dark Mode, iCloud Drive compatibility for enhanced syncing between devices, and Wi-Fi sync which now works with attachments. The 1Password mini menubar attachment has also been refined, bringing faster access and new shortcuts.





Coinverter (Free public beta) [Direct Link]



Daft Logic Studio brings its iOS currency converter to the Mac with a flat look that is in line with the rest of OS X Yosemite and a Notification Center widget that can display multiple conversions at once. The full version of Coinverter for Mac will launch soon, and interested users can participate in a free public beta.



Wunderlist (Free) [Direct Link]



To-do app Wunderlist for Mac has received an update to 3.1.0 and brings a number of new features for OS Yosemite, including a custom Today widget in the Notification Center, a custom Share extension that works in Safari, and full Handoff support which allows users to edit lists between devices. The app has also received a redesign that allows for quicker access to list elements.





Pocket (Free) [Direct Link]



Read-it-later service Pocket has received an update that now features its own share extension that allows users to save content in a number of apps, and a new design that gives a flat look. The service has also now integrated some of its premium features like full text search and suggested tags, along with a number of improvements like a dark mode for reading.



Deliveries ($4.99) [Direct Link]



Developer Junecloud has launched a Mac version of its popular Delivery Status touch app, and features its own Notification Center widget that allows users to track their packages along with the ability to share a shipment over email, iMessage, or AirDrop.





PCalc ($9.99) [Direct Link]



Advanced calculator PCalc is now compatible with OS X Yosemite and includes its own Notification Center Widget to perform calculations, Handoff support, and the ability to import custom calculator layouts created on iOS via iCloud. The newest version of the app also includes new themes, preferences, bug fixes, and more.





Monity ($0.99 until October 19) [Direct Link]



Monity is a system monitoring widget made for OS X Yosemite which can be accessed in the Today view inside of Notification Center. The widget can monitor a number of OS X statistics including system uptime, app processes, memory usage, battery life, network activity, and more.





CloudApp (Free) [Direct Link]



File and screenshot sharing app CloudApp has received a new update for OS X Yosemite which allows users to record their screen at 60 frames a second and a share extension that allows users to share content from their Mac to the service. CloudApp also supports Dark Mode and contains a number of performance improvements.

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Posted in 2014 at 09:51PM, October 17

Retina 5K iMac Will Not Act as External Display, Standalone Apple 5K Display Unlikely Soon

At Apple's introduction of the new 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K Display, Phil Schiller noted that the machine's $2499 starting price compares favorably with some of the higher-end 4K displays on the market today for closer to $3000, leading some to wonder whether it would be feasible to use the iMac as an external display for something like a Mac Pro.



For a number of years, iMacs have supported a feature known as target display mode, which allows them to serve as external displays for other computers, but as pointed out by TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino yesterday, the new Retina 5K iMac does not support this mode.





The probable reason for this is also likely the reason why Apple did not announce a standalone Retina Thunderbolt Display yesterday: bandwidth limitations. The current DisplayPort 1.2 specification used over Thunderbolt 2 on Apple's latest Macs simply isn't capable of handling the bandwidth necessary for 5K video over a single cable.



As a result, no current Mac, including the Mac Pro and Retina MacBook Pro models that do support 4K displays, can currently drive a 5K external display. Technically, Apple could allow another Mac to output video at a lower resolution and have the Retina iMac scale the content up to fit its display, but this would not be ideal and Apple has apparently elected not to support it as an option.



As noted by Marco Arment, simple plug-and-play support for 5K external displays over a single cable will need the new DisplayPort 1.3 standard, but that won't be an option until Intel's Skylake platform, the successor to the upcoming Broadwell family, is launched.

Doing it right will require waiting until DisplayPort 1.3 in Thunderbolt 3 on Broadwell’s successor, Skylake, which isn’t supposed to come out for at least another year — and Intel is even worse at estimating ship dates than I am, so it’s likely to be longer. [...]



I’d estimate — granted, I’m wrong a lot — that Apple won’t ship a standalone 5K display until at least 2016, and it won’t work with any of today’s Macs, including the 2013 Mac Pro.

Arment points out that Dell's upcoming 5K display uses dual DisplayPort 1.2 cables for connectivity but that no current Macs appear to support the setup and even if they did performance would likely not be ideal.



Another potential product on the horizon is a Retina 21.5-inch iMac likely at 3840 x 2160 pixels, although it is unclear when Apple plans to launch such a machine. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts a second half of 2015 launch for the machine in a similar pattern to that seen with the MacBook Pro, where the larger 15-inch model received a Retina display option a number of months before the 13-inch model followed suit.

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Posted in 2014 at 08:51PM, October 17