Operating Systems

Mac OS Topic Center

Find out all you need to know about Mac OS X, including news, reviews, tips, in-depth analysis and opinions on Snow Leopard

Macs take on the enterprise

Change can often be slow. It took many years for the Mac to begin to even threaten the PC in the enterprise. It is still a slow process, but Apple is making up ground on Microsoft.
Read more...

Apple updates Lion, patches 51 bugs in Mac OS X

Apple on Tuesday patched 51 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, most of them critical, in 2012's first security update.

Apple crushes sales records, hits revenue 'home run'

Apple on Tuesday announced it had smashed sales records of the iPhone, iPad and Mac in the final quarter of 2011, the first reporting period after the death of former CEO Steve Jobs.

Apple shines in first full quarter under CEO Tim Cook

Apple more than doubled its profits last quarter thanks to brisk sales of its iPad and iPhones over the holiday season. The company reported a profit of $13.06 billion for the quarter ending Dec. 31.

Apple's e-textbook gambit just 'a 70% solution,' says analyst

Apple today announced iBooks Author and iBooks 2, free applications that let educational publishers and teachers create and market K-12 textbooks and course materials for the iPad.

Apple loses bid to block Mac OS X copy protection secrets in clone case

A federal judge this week denied Apple's request to keep secret the technical information that describes how the company locks Mac OS X to its hardware.

Apple event will focus on iBooks, says analyst

Apple will probably highlight changes to iBooks this month, an analyst said, citing his own sources and rumors of an impending event the Cupertino, Calif. company will host.

Sotheby's sells Apple founding contract for $1.6M

The contract that founded Apple was purchased Tuesday for nearly $1.6 million, far above the estimate of $100,000 to $150,000 put on the 35-year-old document by Sotheby's.

Mac App Store download tally reaches 100 million

Apple boasted today that it had distributed more than 100 million programs through the Mac App Store since the e-market's January launch.

Mozilla ponders demise of Firefox for Apple's Leopard

Mozilla is mulling the end of Firefox support for Mac owners running Leopard, the Apple operating system released four years ago, developer discussions show.

Sprint losses hit $1.3B over iPhone costs, subscribers fewer than expected

Sprint says it sold 1.8 million iPhones between October and December 2011, of which roughly 720,000 were new customers, but the cost of subsidizing Apple's smartphone raised the company's losses to $1.3 billion, compared with $929 million year-on-year.

Dig deep into Lion: The best overlooked, underrated features

Mission Control and other snazzy new Lion features may have gotten all the press, but columnist Ryan Faas has uncovered a slew of lesser-known features that every OS X Lion user should know about.

Apple's new vision of education

Apple made it clear this week that one of the industries it hopes to reinvent is education -- an area in which the company has a long history. Columnist Ryan Faas explains what Apple has in mind for schools.

What's up for Apple in 2012?

2011 was a consequential year for Apple in good ways -- the iPad 2 and Siri -- and bad -- the loss of Steve Jobs. With the year pretty much in the rear-view mirror, columnist Ryan Faas looks at what's coming for 2012.

Toggle between iTunes Match and local syncing

When you enable iTunes Match on an iOS device (Settings -> Music -> iTunes Match), you'll see a warning that "iTunes Match will replace the music library on this device." When iTunes Match was still in beta, that message was true to its word: Any music you had on your device was indeed deleted, in favor of the library you'd uploaded to the cloud via iTunes Match. But in the official version of iTunes Match released Monday, that's no longer the case. In truth, any music that was on your iOS device before you enabled iTunes Match will still be there--and that fact can save you on time and bandwidth.

Linux loses its luster as a darling among developers

The simplicity of Apple's OS X development tools, if not their price, is enticing enough to cause some developers to leave Linux behind. Insider (registration required)

iPad printing to an unsupported printer

A reader who wishes to remain unnamed shouldn't be so shy, as this is a perfectly lovely question. He or she writes:

Video: The Steve Jobs '95 interview, unabridged

In 1995, Steve Jobs was on the cusp of middle age -- 40 years old -- when he sat down for this exclusive video interview with the Computerworld Honors program. Insider (free registration requested)

Video: Steve Jobs one-on-one, the '95 interview

In 1995, Steve Jobs was on the cusp of middle age -- 40 years old -- when he sat down for this exclusive video interview with the Computerworld Honors program.

Hands on: iOS 5 delivers 'a wealth of changes'

Although the look of iOS 5 hasn't changed, much of what's under the hood has, says columnist Michael deAgonia. Not only does it allow you to cut the cord to your Mac or PC, the free upgrade delivers scores of welcome updates and new features.