Year: 2016

Mac OS X Installation Documentation

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I was recently digging around a bunch of old Mac OS X installers, and thought it would be fun to share Apple’s installation documentation for a bunch of releases.

All of these links are to PDFs. Right-click to download. The entire group can be downloaded as a .zip here.

Rhapsody

Developer Previews and Beta

Mac OS X Releases

OS X Lion was the first version of Mac OS X purchased and downloaded via the Mac App Store. It and all later versions do not include this type of documentation.

Mac OS X Welcome Videos

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Up until Snow Leopard, new versions of Mac OS X would play a welcome video during installation. These helped set the stage for the new operating system.

Cheetah, Puma and Jaguar shared a video that highlighted the new Aqua interface. Panther’s featured the bright blue background with nice, crisp, white text. Tiger brought Spotlight, and as such, the welcome message was highlighted by a moving light. Leopard and Snow Leopard shared a darker clip that is reminiscent of the initial Time Machine interface.

I spent a little time digging through disk images to pull them all together into one quick video:

Connected #120: Perennial State of Worrying →

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This week on Connected:

Federico is back with some new purchases in tow. I published a book. Myke wants more from his Echo. Everyone has wishes for iOS 10.

My thanks to our sponsors:

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Kbase Article of the Week: iTunes Gift Card Scams →

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This week, we look at some helpful consumer advice from Apple:

A string of scams are taking place asking people to make payments over the phone for things such as taxes, hospital bills, bail money, debt collection, and utility bills. The scams are committed using many methods, including gift cards. As the fraudsters are sometimes using iTunes Gift Cards, we want to make sure our customers are aware of these scams.

Regardless of the reason for payment, the scam follows a certain formula: The victim receives a call instilling panic and urgency to make a payment by purchasing iTunes Gift Cards from the nearest retailer (convenience store, electronics retailer, etc.). After the cards have been purchased, the victim is asked to pay by sharing the 16-digit code on the back of the card with the caller over the phone.

PowerBook to MacBook Pro →

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Jason Snell, at Macworld:

In a moment of somewhat unexpected nostalgia at its most recent media event, Apple pointed out that it was the 25th anniversary of the PowerBook. (It’s good to know that, 27 years later, Apple still would rather nobody remember the Mac Portable.) I’ve been a Mac laptop user since the original PowerBook era. That ancient history is my history. Since 1991, Apple has gone through seven distinct eras when it comes to its laptop strategy and design.

Having a Shattered Apple Watch Replaced

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Last week, I dropped my 1st generation stainless steel Apple Watch while in the locker room at my gym. It did not survive:

Smashed Apple Watch

Thankfully, I purchased AppleCare Plus on it, so I made a Genius Bar appointment and took it in. The stores don’t repair these things; they are replaced. Three days later, I got an email to come pick up my replacement. $80 later, I was back in business:

Shiny, New Apple Watch

This service replacement is identical to my previous watch, but minus all the broken sapphire. Frustratingly, I had to set it up as a new device, as it was running watchOS 2 out of the box. The whole process took a while last night, but I’m back in action today.

All in all, the process wasn’t too bad. It would have been nice if my store had a replacement in stock, but three days was faster than I was expecting. In those few days, I did find myself missing my Watch, despite it me using it as basically a fitness tracker with iMessage notifications these days. I was little surprised about that feeling, and I’m glad it’s back.