Apple took down that update after users said their systems became unstable and applications began crashing. As a result Apple now would rather have users update with a large 1.3GB file which they will have to manually download and apply instead of using Software Update from the Apple menu with OS X.

A second snafu came about when a security update caused problems with Rosetta, the virtual interface that runs older PowerPC applications on top of OS X made for Intel based Macs. Users can run older software that doesn’t run natively on the Intel compatible version of the Apple operating system. A second version of the security fix came out that shouldn’t break Rosetta.

Apple normally doesn’t send out updates that cause this much trouble, causing the folks at The Inquirer to speculate that Apple moved some quality control people over to the iOS. Apple released financial earnings showing that iOS provides a larger percentage of their earnings, so it would be natural that they would move people to that side of their business, the post says.

That’s highly speculative and we have no evidence this is true. One failure doesn’t make a pattern. It does mean that Apple needs watch their updates carefully if they don’t want to tarnish their previously good reputation for stability.

To get the new full 1.3GB update from Apple, download it or check out the support page with the “client combo” file.

Via The Inquirer

Apple Takes Down OSX Updates Due to Stability Issues is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

Enter AirFoil, an AirPlay solution that lets you stream any audio from your computer to your AirPlay speakers or Apple TV.

AirPlay for the Mac and for Windows computers is the missing part of Apple TV experience, and that’s what AirFoil solves in a simple to use program. I wish it could also handle video, like Intel Wireless Display, but for now I’m just happy to be able to send my Pandora tunes to my home theater when I work in the living room.

AirFoil has a free trial that allows you tor stream your Mac or PC to the Apple TV for 10 minutes, after which they overlay a hiss on your audio. The full program is an affordable $25, and is delivered instantly.

Using AirFoil is incredibly easy. As long as you are on the same network as your Apple TV, which is almost a given if you are at home, you will see it and any AirPlay speakers listed in the app.

To use the Apple TV as your wireless speaker system, click on the music note to right of your item. You can stream to multiple sources at once, which makes it easy to pump music throughout your house. You can install the free AirFoil Speakers app on your Mac to turn in into an AirPlay receiver.

When you want to change your audio source, you just click the dropdown menu at the top. You can pick from any program on your computer, including your web browser. The only thing I don’t like is that AirFoil will need to restart the program to capture the audio, so you may have to save your work if you want to start using Chrome or Safari in the middle of the day. Thankfully you are warned about this so there are no surprises.

Overall this is a great solution for streaming music from your computer to the Apple TV. Hopefully we’ll have a way of streaming video in the near future.

Purchase AirPlay from Rogue Amoeba

AirFoil Streams Audio From Your Mac or PC to Apple TV is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

The new Hitachi powered G-RAID and G-DRIVE external hard drives with Thunderbolt connectivity are aimed at answering this need with a combination of offerings up to 4TB of external storage with a Thunderbolt connection.

G-Technology drives from Toshiba are powered by the 1TB Travelstar 5K1000 and the 4TB Deskstar 7K4000 drives which are packaged into a portable enclosure with a Thunderbolt port and designed to work with Mac products like the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro and MacBook Air.

The drives are ready to go with Macs out of the box, including Time Machine support, and can be used on Windows machines with a short setup process.

The G-RAID is now available with Thunderbolt connectivity.

The new G-RAID and G-DRIVE external hard drive enclosures are similar to the previous models, but thanks to the Thunderbolt connection, Mac users can enjoy much faster file transfers. If you have other ports, don’t worry, you’ll find a full complement of ports including  3Gbit eSATA, FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 via included cable) and USB2.0 ports.

Hitachi shares the following descriptions of the new drives for professional creatives.

G-RAID – The G-Technology G-RAID is a blazing fast, dual drive RAID 0 storage solution with capacities up to 8TB. Ideal for professional content creators, it supports simultaneous playback of multiple layers of HDV, DVCPRO HD, XDCAM HD and ProRes 422 HQ with the leading video editing applications including Final Cut Pro™, Adobe® Premiere® and many more. The G-RAID solution is capable of delivering up to 200 MB/second transfer rate when connected to any Mac or PC via eSATA. Its soft-touch On/Off switch and thermo-regulated “smart” fan keeps the G-RAID reliable, cool and quiet in the editing suite.

G-DRIVE – The G-Technology G-DRIVE is a professional strength external hard drive in a single-drive desktop solution. With capacities now up to 4TB, G-DRIVE is the perfect high-performance solution for storage intensive applications including A/V editing, digital photography, music libraries, and high-speed data backup. The drive features a fan-less cooling system for a quiet operation. The 4TB G-Technology G-DRIVE will be shipping in limited quantities in Q1’12.

Look for the new drives to ship in the first quarter of 2012. The 8TB G-RAID will retail at $899, while the G-DRIVE will retail for $449.99 for 4TB, $349.99 for 3TB, $249.99 for 2TB and $199.99 for 1TB.

Hitachi G-RAID with Thunderbolt Adds 4TB of Snappy Storage to Macs is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

The update to Safari includes the following:

• Addresses issues that cause hangs and excessive memory usage
• Addresses issues that could cause webpages to flash white
• Allows PDFs to be displayed within web content

The update brings the version number of Safari to 5.1.2 and contains 40.2MB of data.

The update to Keynote fixes a problem caused by using rather large Keynote presentations while working in OS X Lion and brings Keynote’s version number to 5.1.1 with the 35.2 MB update.

You can get these updates through the Software Update item on the Apple menu in OS X. The Keynote update will show up on the Mac App Store if that’s where you bought your copy of Keynote. You can also get the update via Apple’s website (Keynote update, Safari Update).

The Windows iCloud Control Panel also got an update. The update brings compatibility with the above Safari update if you are running Windows. It requires Vista or higher and brings the version number to 1.0.1 in a 40.03MB update.

Apple Pushes Minor Updates to Safari, Keynote & Windows iCloud is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

If you’ve used DropBox or SugarSync, then you know of the beauty of putting a file in a folder on one computer and having it show up on another computer without having to do anything other than signing up for an account and installing the software. Now you can get the same functionality in Lion without installing their app or using up the limited amount of storage you have available via those services.

The magic folder resides in your hidden Library folder. You can go one of two routs – un-hide the Library folder to open up some interesting usefulness or just navigate to the folder using the Go menu in Finder. But first, let’s make sure you have iCloud files sync turned on.

Go to System Preferences and click on iCloud. Make sure there’s a check box next to Documents and Data.

Now you have a choice to make. Do you want to un-hide the Library folder? We have a How To on that you can follow. If you don’t want to bother, then open Finder and click the Go menu. Type in the following:

~/Library/

This will open the hidden folder. Find the Mobile Documents folder. If for some reason you don’t see one, you can create the special folder, but not by the traditional means of just making a new folder in Finder. You have to open an iWork app like Pages and create an iWork document. To do that just open Pages, Numbers or Keynote. Create a new document and click the Share menu and choose Share via iWork.com.

After sharing the document, the folder will be created with Apple’s magic sauce for syncing between all of your Macs.

Now, just make an Alias to that folder somewhere. I dragged the folder to the FAVORITES list along the left side of the Finder Window.

Now any file you save to that folder will automatically sync to your other Macs, if they have iCloud Documents & Data turned on in Settings. You may want to repeat these steps on other Macs to ensure they all have the folder setup and an easily accessible shortcut to it configured.

Using this solution in place of DropBox or SugarSync means you don’t get cloud based backup or web browser access to the files from another location. For quick and dirty sync of a file this works better than the woefully horrible AirDrop feature. I can see using this to quickly move a file to another computer that you don’t really need ongoing access to after your done with it.

Thanks to Apple Insider for the idea.

How To Use the Built-in DropBox-Style Sync in Mac OS X Lion is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

The number of visitors that the online advertiser sees in sites displaying their ad network ads shows that 16% of users run Lion, and that is up only 2% since the end of September. According to the figures, the increase of Lion visitors flatlined after September 25.

While I can see that this might be evidence that Lion’s upgrade numbers aren’t growing as fast as early days of the OS release, are these figures really reliable for judging how many people have upgraded, and if so is anyone surprised?

While the number of visitors to a large network of sites might show possible evidence of such a slowdown, what it really says is that the growth of the number of people who visit sites with Chikita ads while using Lion has stalled. By itself the figures do not necessarily lead to such a conclusion without more evidence. We’ll have to wait for Apple to release figures to know.

Now, let us assume the figures represent the larger install base accurately. Is anyone surprised? There are a few reasons why the increase would naturally fall off at this time of year. First, many upgrade only when buying a new computer and, since Christmas is coming, there may not be as many new computers going out the door in September, October and November. We’ll have to wait for sales figures to find out if this explains the flatlined numbers.

Second, I would bet that most operating systems see an initial surge in upgrades followed by a slowdown after the early adopters install the new version. Apple users, like most other brands, include a segment of hardcore users that will install the newest version almost no matter what. I’m one of those. At only $29 OS X was an easy upgrade for users like me who want the “latest greatest” version. Yet, a lot of users are the opposite. They won’t upgrade at all and may not even know there is a new version.

Third, a middle group of people sit on the spectrum between the tech savvy users and the uninterested, and they don’t even know Lion exists. They may realize it is there, but don’t want to bother or are afraid to install a new operating system for fear of losing their data.

“I’ll upgrade when I get a new Mac” or “I’ll do that later,” with later never coming until someone like me asks, “Want me to install Lion for you?”

Finally, the new features in Lion are not that compelling to a lot of users. I never use Launchpad and I’m are little more tech savvy than the average user. Other new toys in the OS like AirDrop, Mission Control, and updated versions of Safari, Mail, Calendar and Contacts are unnoticed. I use Chrome, Gmail (for email and contacts) and share files via DropBox and SugarSync.

I guess I’d be surprised if the number was higher than just 16% at this stage only a few months after the update was released.

Source: Techcrunch

New Lion Installations Down According to Web Stats is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

The Dragon Express app is a new Mac app that brings dictation to your Mac for just $50. This new app is available in the Mac App Store starting today, and can help cut down on your typing and speed up your text entry.

Dragon Express is available only on OS X Lion, for the introductory price of $49.99.

Similar to the Dragon Dictation app for the iPad, this app will allow you to talk to your computer instead of typing. You do need to talk into the Dragon Express Window, rather than your final text location, which makes this app more suited for the average user, and fits in with the $50 price.

To get up and running, you go through a two-minute enrollment process that will help the app learn your speech for better results and a microphone setup. You can use the built in microphone on your Mac or a USB headset, but you cannot use the iPhone as a microphone like you can on Dragon Dictate 2.5.

Send your text to other programs with your voice.

To use the new program, you click on Dragon Express in your menu bar and start talking. When you are done, you can click on the icons to send the text directly to common programs.

There are no limits built into the software, so you can dictate until you’re done, without worrying about time or word limits. You can interact with your dictation using commands like Scratch that, which will delete what you just said.

Unlike voice commands and voice dictation apps that you find on your iPhone 4S or Android smartphones, you don’t need an internet connection to use Dragon Express.

To help decide if this is the right app for you, I suggest checking out our Dragon Dictate 2.5 review.

Dragon Express Brings Dictation To Your Mac for $50 is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

The update info window reads, “Java for Mac OS X 10.7 Update 1 delivers improved compatibility, security and reliability by updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_29.” Of course on a Snow Leopard computer the version number will be different. Apple offers precious little about what the update brings, but it is a good idea to install these security related updates. To do so just close down your browser. Click on the Apple menu and then choose Software Update. When the window appears, read the info and follow the links if you want more info, and then click the install button at the bottom.

For more information see the Apple Support site for the Lion update and for security info related to the update. And here is the Snow Leopard version info page.

Java Update from Apple for Lion and Snow Leopard is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

The Trojan known as Trojan-Downloader:OSX/Flashback.C was discovered by F-Secure. The malware destroys some essential files on your computer thus disabling XProtect.

The malware poses as a Flash Player installer in order to fool the user into giving their system password to install the “update” on their system.

F-secure offers a manual fix using their virus scanning software to identify the infected files. Do the following if you fear you might be infected.

Manual Removal Instructions

• Scan the whole system and take note of the detected files
• Remove the entry
  • <key>LSEnvironment</key><dict><key>DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES</key><string>%path_of_detected_file_from_step_1%</string></dict>
  • From:
    • /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist
    • /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info.plist
• Delete all detected files

You can then use this guide on how to force your system to update the malware detection system to find the problem. Also see our guide to 10 Mac Virus software programs.

via TUAW

New Trojan Turns Off OS X Malware Detection is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

The app works with BusyCal, Entourage, and Outlook as well. I don’t use any of those, but assuming it behaves the same way with all four calendar tools, it will be fantastic for you too.

Being able to enter appointments using natural language makes this app stand out. Plenty of calendar apps let you add appointments from a Menu bar, but with Fantastical I just type something like the following:

Meet with John on Saturday at Noon at the Coffee Shop.

The app populates the important fields as follows:

• Meet with John – becomes appointment title
• on Saturday – goes to date field choosing next Saturday
• at Noon – goes to time field
• at the coffee shop – enters The Coffee Shop into location

The menu icon when clicked shows you a calendar with today’s date circled. If you have typed in an appointment, the date of the appointment will be highlighted in blue. Above the calendar you will find the entry fields to add an appointment (left) or search for appointments already in the calendar (right). If you can’t remember when you were supposed to go to the doctor next month, just type doctor and it will list all the appointments with the word doctor associated with them.

Below the calendar Fantastical shows a listing of the next few appointments. That way you can quickly see what your day will be like without opening your calendar application.

In preferences you can set the app to add alarms to your new appointments so that you won’t miss an appointment. The alarm will sound on your computer or on your smart phone, if you have the calendar setup to sync new appointments to it. I use Google Calendar for this kind of syncing and it works great with my iPad or my Android phone.

When you do as I did in my example above and enter a person’s name, the name will be highlighted. You can then mouse over the name and a drop-down list of contacts with that name will show up. Click the proper contact to invite him or her to the appointment.

The app integrates with Alfred and LaunchBar, two Mac OS X utilities. Alfred searches your Mac and the Internet, and LaunchBar provides keyboard computer control to OS X so you can use shortcuts to do many different tasks on the computer. Developers can add Fantastical integration as well, as can users who create scripts using AppleScript, the OS X built-in automation tool.

In the short time I’ve used the app I’ve become very impressed and can’t imagine not using Fantastical to enter appointments and interact with my calendar.

You can still get the app via MacUpdate Promo , a package of 11 useful OS X tools, for about $50 or in the Mac App Store for $19.99.

Fantastical: Fantastic Calendar Management For Everyone is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.