The Early Favorites For Mac

1. The Early Favorites For Mac Band
2. The Early Favorites For Mac 2016

Is here—at least for the brave, in a. Apple makes early releases of macOS available to the public primarily because it can find more bugs if there are more people using the software. But it also does so because of the great demand from Mac users who want to run the newest Mac features and don’t mind hazarding a few bugs in order to get them. You probably already know about and and, but they are just the top-level features in a surprisingly deep update. There are other fun features hiding just beneath the surface. Here are some of my favorite “hidden” features of the Mojave beta.

MacOS Mojave: More visibility for automation Apple hasn’t done much with Automator in recent years, but in Mojave you can save Automator documents as Quick Action Workflows, complete with a custom icon. These workflows show up in the Touch Bar (there’s a new Workflows item you can place on the Control Strip, giving you access in any application) and in the Preview pane of the Finder, which takes on new prominence with its support for additional metadata and with the introduction of the new Gallery View.

Jason Snell/IDG New Quick Action Workflows that were created in Automator. When you save new Quick Action Workflows, they will show up right alongside Apple’s own actions, like Rotate Image, Trim, and Markup.

And if you haven’t tried Automator in years (or ever), you might want to give it a try. It’s a great way to simplify mundane tasks, especially acting on files in the Finder. I use it every day to run shell scripts that I’d otherwise need to run from the Terminal, and AppleScripts that I’ve written to process files I use in my podcasts. A few minutes of tinkering with Automator workflows can save you hours of time in the long run. MacOS Mojave: Screenshots get a home Taking screenshots on the Mac isn’t remotely new, but in Mojave it’s been given a friendly interface, all hiding behind the keyboard shortcut Command-Shift-5. Jason Snell/IDG The new screenshot interface.

When you type that shortcut, a floating palette appears that offers you all sorts of options—all of which have been available before, but not in one place. You can grab the entire screen, just a window, or a selection. You can easily change the default folder for saving screenshots, which used to require a trip to the Terminal. You can record video screenshots, which used to require a trip to QuickTime Player. You can take timed screenshots—giving you five or ten seconds to set up the screen exactly as you want it—which was a feature previously available in the venerable Grab utility.

If I’m disappointed about anything in this screenshot expansion, it’s that you can’t choose to take a screenshot of the Touch Bar from this interface. For that, you need to use Grab, which continues to have a reason to exist after all these years. MacOS Mojave: Recent apps in the Dock It’s been ages since the Dock got tweaked—it felt a bit like the Dock was a bit of settled real estate. But in Mojave, it’s been reorganized for the better. One of my favorite features in iOS 11 was that the Dock on my iPad suddenly began showing apps that the system thought I might want to open—generally apps that I had been using recently. Now that feature has come to the Mac.

Jason Snell/IDG In Mojave, you have the option to show recently-used apps in the Dock. The recents in this screenshot are located between the Settings icon and the Downloads stack. The recent apps are (left to right) Terminal, Grab, and BBEdit. (Click the image to enlarge.) In a new area to the right of your favorite apps (but to the left of folders, minimized windows and the Trash), the icons of apps you’ve used recently (but aren’t already in the Dock) will be displayed. This is also where apps that are currently running, but not permanently placed in the Dock, will display—which erases some confusion about if an Apple is permanently in the Dock or not.

MacOS Mojave: Favicons in Safari tabs This will be huge news for some people and utterly shrug-worthy to others, but you can now choose to have Safari display favicons (small custom icons) in tabs. If it needs to, Safari will use the low-resolution favicon format favored on the web since time immemorial, but it appears to first check to see if there’s a in the format Apple created when it introduced the Pinned Tabs feature in Safari on the Mac. MacOS Mojave: HomeKit support in Siri You may know that Apple’s bringing the Home app to Mojave, through a new process that allows it to bring apps originally written for iOS to the Mac for the first time. Though it’s got quirks—setting a schedule required me to click around in the spinning time and date picker with my mouse, which was really weird and is something I hope Apple can address before Mojave goes final.

Apple What you may not know, however, is that Apple has also brought over complete control of HomeKit to Siri on the Mac. I’ll admit that I don’t use Siri on the Mac very much, but this is a case where I think I prefer it to using the app. When you launch the Home app, there’s a pause as it checks the status of all your items and updates its interface.

The Early Favorites For Mac Band

Then you need to find the right item and click it to adjust it. Contrast that with pressing the keyboard shortcut for Siri and just saying, “Turn on the lava lamp.” Better. MacOS Mojave: Mess up your Desktop In a humorous development that harkens back to the quirky early days of the Mac, a new feature has been added to the contextual menu of the Finder. Control-click on the Desktop to bring up a contextual menu and then hold down Option, and you’ll see the Clean Up Desktop command transform into the Mess Up Desktop command.

Select it, and your files—no matter how organized—will be randomly scattered across your Desktop. Jason Snell/IDG My Desktop after using the Mess Up Desktop feature.

Now, there’s a practical purpose for this—it’s much more dramatic to transform a messy Desktop into a new, organized Desktop via the new feature called desktop Stacks, which puts all the files on your Desktop into pop-up stacks organized by kind, date, or tag. And I’d wager that Mess Up Desktop will be removed in a future beta.

But for now, it’s there, and so fun that I dumped a folder full of files onto my Desktop just so I could watch them scatter (and then fly back into order when I turned on Desktop Stacks.).

Jonamac apples at Clearview Farm in Sterling, Massachusetts. (Bar Lois Weeks photo) ALTHOUGH THEY SOMETIMES COMPETE in the marketplace, New England and New York apple growers have a long tradition of cooperation and collaboration. For nearly six decades after it started in 1935, the nonprofit New England Apple Association was known by its original name, the New York and New England Apple Institute.

The Early Favorites For Mac 2016

Cornell University’s New York Agricultural Experiment Station, in Geneva, New York, arguably the most successful apple breeding program in the world, has produce several varieties that have become New England staples, including, and, and one of our personal favorites that has not yet achieved the same prominence:. Here are some of the other, more-than-60 varieties developed in New York since the late 1890s, of them grown at some New England orchards. To find local orchards that grow these unusual apples, visit and follow the link for “Find an Apple Orchard” to search by state or variety. Burgundy apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Burgundy is a medium-large, dark red apple, the color of Burgundy wine, with occasional light streaking. Round and oblate, its cream-colored flesh is crisp and juicy. Its flavor is more sweet than tart. An early season apple, it does not store very well.

Burgundy was developed by Robert Lamb and Roger D. Way in 1953, and released in 1974. Its parentage includes two other New York apples, Macoun and Monroe, and a Russian heirloom, Antonovka, known primarily for its cold hardiness. Early McIntosh apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Early McIntosh, as its name implies, is an early season apple with McIntosh as a parent. It is mostly red, with yellow or green highlights and prominent white lenticels.

Its white flesh is tender and juicy, and its sweet-tart flavor has hints of strawberry. It is best for fresh eating, and like many early season apples it does not store well. Developed in 1909 by Richard Wellington and released in 1923, it is the result of a cross of McIntosh and Yellow Transparent, a Russian apple introduced in the United States by Dr.

Hoskins of Newport, Vermont, in 1870. It is also known as Milton, for a small village in Ulster County, New York. Jonamac apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Jonamac is another early season apple with a McIntosh parent. It is a medium, round, mostly deep red in color over pale yellow-green skin.

Its skin is thin but chewy, and its white flesh is aromatic and tender. Its flavor is similar to McIntosh, but a little sweeter, with a hint of strawberry. It ripens before McIntosh, and it does not store well. Jonamac was developed by Roger D. Way in 1944 from a cross of McIntosh with the New York heirloom Jonathan, and released in 1972. A contest was held to name the apple, and more than 500 entries were submitted. Two of the seven people suggesting the name “Jonamac” were from New England: William Darrow Sr.

Of Green Mountain Orchards in Putney, Vermont, and Rockwood Berry, then executive director of the New York-New England Apple Institute, now the New England Apple Association. Monroe apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Monroe is another late-season apple, medium, round, with red color over a yellow skin. Its tender, cream-colored flesh is more sweet than tart, and moderately juicy.

It is a good fresh-eating apple, and it is an especially good cider apple. It stores well. A cross of Jonathan and Rome Beauty, it was developed by Richard Wellington in 1910, and released in 1949. It grows well in parts of New England, especially Vermont, but its popularity peaked in the 1960s.

It is named for Monroe County, New York. Freedom apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Freedom is a late-season apple, large, oblate and round, with red striping over yellow skin.

Its cream-colored flesh is crisp and juicy, with flavor that is more sweet than tart. It is a good all-purpose apple, and it stores well. Developed in 1958 for disease resistance and released in 1983, its parentage includes Golden Delicious, Macoun, Rome, and the Russian heirloom, Antonovka. Its name refers to its “freedom” from apple scab. New York produced several noteworthy apple varieties before the New York Agricultural Experiment Station opened in 1882, including. Chenango apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Chenango, or Chenango Strawberry, a mid-season apple, medium-sized, conical, mostly red over pale yellow skin.

Its tender, white flesh is aromatic, its flavor mild, more sweet than tart, with hints of strawberry. It is a good all-purpose apple, but it does not store well. Its history is unknown. It may have originated in New York’s Madison County, or it may have come to Chenango County from Connecticut. According to S. Beach in Apples of New York (1905), it dates back to at least 1850.

Esopus Spitzenburg apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Esopus Spitzenburg is a tall, conical, late-season apple, mostly red with light yellow lenticels. Its crisp, juicy flesh is pale yellow. Its distinctive spicy flavor, more sweet than tart, becomes more complex in storage.

It is a good all-purpose apple. It stores well. Its origins are also unclear, but it dates to at least 1790, and it was widely planted in the 19th century.

Thomas Jefferson grew many varieties of apples on his Monticello plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia (an outstanding preservation orchard is maintained there today), and Esopus Spitzenburg was one of his favorites. Writer Washington Irving was also known for liking the apple.

Green Newtown Pippin and Yellow Newtown Pippin so closely resemble each other that they are often identified as the same apple. Yellow Newtown Pippin apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Yellow Newtown Pippin is medium to large, mostly green with a yellow blush and red streaks. Its skin is thick, its flesh crisp and moderately juicy. It has a pleasant, mildly citrus flavor, balanced between sweet and tart. A late-season apple, it stores exceptionally well. Green Newtown Pippin and Yellow Newtown Pippin trees are so similar that it is likely that one is a sport variety of the other, though it is impossible to say which came first. Many early references dropped the color from the name altogether, referring to either apple as simply “Newtown Pippin.” The separate strains were first recorded in 1817, but by then the varieties already had made history as the first American apple to attract significant attention in Europe.

Benjamin Franklin brought grafts to England in the mid- to late-1700s, where the apple was known as Newton Pippin of New York; it could have been either Green Newton Pippin or Yellow Newton Pippin. Yellow Newtown Pippin has had greater name recognition and commercial success as Albemarle Pippin. It was introduced in Virginia by Dr. Thomas Walker, an officer under General Edward Braddock during the French-Indian War.

After Braddock’s forces were defeated trying to capture Fort Duquesne in 1755, Walker returned to his Castle Hill plantation in Albemarle County carrying scions from a Yellow Newtown tree. When the trees bore fruit the apple was renamed Albemarle Pippin. Thomas Jefferson wrote that he had grafts of Albemarle Pippin in 1773, and they were planted at his Monticello plantation in 1778. Albemarle Pippin was a major export to England for nearly a century beginning in the mid-1700s. The original tree grew in Newtown (now Elmhurst), Long Island, New York, in the early 1700s near a swamp on the farm of Gershom Moore. Jonathan apple (Bar Lois Weeks photo) Jonathan is a late-season, conical apple, medium-sized, bright red over a pale yellow skin. Its white flesh is aromatic, crisp, and juicy, and it has a spicy, tangy flavor balanced between sweet and tart.

Applesauce made with Jonathan turns pink from its red skin color, and it is especially good in cooking. It has a relatively short storage life. It was first cited in 1826, originating on the farm of Philip Rick, in Woodstock, New York. Its name commemorates Jonathan Hasbrouck, who spotted the apple growing in brush on Rick’s farm.

While not widely grown in New England, Jonathan is parent to such apples as Jonagold and Jonamac, and it remains popular in the Midwest. THIS IS THE FINAL WEEKEND of the Eastern States Exposition (“The Big E”). New England Apples has a booth in the Massachusetts State Building daily through Sunday, September 28, from 10 a.m. Daily, featuring fresh apples, fresh cider, cider donuts, apple pies, and other baked goods. More than one dozen varieties of fresh apples are being supplied by Massachusetts orchards in Amherst, in Wrentham, in North Brookfield, in Harvard, in Deerfield, in Belchertown, Pine Hill Orchards in Colrain, in Phillipston, and in Northborough. The booth features award-winning cider donuts made by Atkins Farms in Amherst, fresh, crisp apple cider from Carlson Orchards in Harvard; and fresh-baked apple pies and apple crisp made with apples supplied by Cold Spring Orchard, Pine Hill Orchard, Red Apple Farm, and Nestrovich Fruit Farm in Granville.

Executive Director Bar Weeks and Senior Writer Russell Powell are on hand every day to meet with people and answer questions about apples. Their new book, Apples of New England, is available for sale and signing, along with their first book, America’s Apple. The 2015 New England Apples full-color wall calendar, the revised New England Apples brochure/poster, and brochures from member Massachusetts orchards are expected during the final weekend. The Big E is the largest fair in New England.

Last year’s fair attracted 1.4 million visitors.