QuickLock is a terrific little tool from ThinkDev that makes it quick and convenient to lock your Mac when you leave your desk. It sits in your menubar out of your way, and a click (or a keyboard shortcut) is all it takes to keep your Mac safe.

With the latest version of QuickLock, users can enjoy a brand new interface and a number of new features. Best of all, it’s completely free.

QuickLock is a must-have if you use your Mac in an office, a classroom, a library, or another public place where you might leave it unattended for a while. You probably already use a password to ensure no one can gain access to your computer while you’re away from it, and the quickest and easiest way to activate that password and lock your Mac is with QuickLock.

“QuickLock is the absolute best way to lock your Mac,” ThinkDev says. “Unlike OSX’s hot corners, QuickLock works with a simple keyboard shortcut or menubar click, and never gets in the way of your workflow.”

And here’s what’s new in its latest update:

- Completely redesigned user interface
- Revamped user experience
- New icon
- Great new animations for locking/unlocking
- An awesome screen bounce or lock animation when typing
- Upgraded security features
- New display features
- Major bug fixes and improvements

Because QuickLock’s new features are currently in beta testing, you can get a copy of the app and try them out completely free. Just visit the QuickLock website and download it to get started.

ThinkDev has another awesome app that called QuickRes, which has been developed to make it super simply to switch between display resolutions on a Retina MacBook Pro. Like QuickLock, it sits in your menubar.

QuickRes is the best way to switch between screen resolutions on your Mac. With the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, you can set your resolution all the way up to an extreme 3840 x 2400! With other Macs, you can set your resolutions to things you’ve never seen before, including a HiDPI mode, which is as close as you can get to a Retina Display on a standard display.

A free version of QuickRes can be downloaded from the Mac App Store, but due to Apple’s restrictions, it only allows you to switch to one resolution — and you have to go into System Preferences to switch back. The paid version, however, let’s you switch between resolution as much as you like.

It’s just $1.99, but Cult of Mac readers can get 50% off for a limited time.

This post was written by Killian Bell from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

A new Mac malware has been found in the wild that allowed attackers to steal data and install unauthorized apps on a compromised machine. What makes this malware different than other recent Mac malware, though, is that it breezes right past Gatekeeper… and the people behind it might have been gunning for the life of their malware victim.

Known security researcher and privacy activist Jacob Applebaum discovered the malware — which is being called OSX/KitM.A by Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure — on the laptop of a human rights activist at the Oslo Freedom Forum earlier this week.

KitM.A got on the machine as a result of a spear phishing attack, which is a phishing attack in which specific individuals (instead of a wider range of victims) are targeted. The malware takes screenshots of what is happening on the Mac amd sends them to servers in the Netherlands. It can also download and install other malware, executing commands on behalf of attackers and manipulating the network activity monitor so that its presence remains undetected.

What’s so interesting about this specific malware is that it was signed by a valid Apple Developer ID. This means that it just blew past Gatekeeper, OS X Mountain Lion’s anti-malware firewall that is supposed to keep out just this sort of program. But it also means that Apple can just revoke the app’s certificate, killing it instantly on all computers with Gatekeeper turned on. And hopefully, it means that the attackers behind this particularly insidious form of malware can be tracked down and prosecuted, because they’ve left a signature: their own Apple Developer ID.

Applebaum said that he may publish more details on the attack once he ascertains the threat to the victim’s life. Someone was gunning for him, after all, and given what’s going on in Angola these days, that’s a sensible precaution.

Source: Macworld
Image: MyFWCMedia

This post was written by John Brownlee from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Warning – this tip is fairly advanced. Use it at your own risk.

There’s a feature that debuted back in 2005, called SafeSleep. Basically, it’s a hibernation mode designed to save the current state of your running Mac, so that it can start up exactly the same way you left it when you put the Mac to sleep, even if the battery runs out and it shuts down completely.

In OS Lion, Apple introduced two new features, called Autosave and Resume which mirrors this functionality. Turning off SafeSleep, then, is really just disabling a duplicate feature. It shouldn’t affect Autosave or Resume if you’re running OS Lion or later, and it could potentially save you gigabytes of hard drive space.

Here’s how to do it, though we caution you not to do this if you’re even slightly uncomfortable with the idea.

To disable the SafeSleep mode altogether, launch Terminal and type or paste the following command:

sudo pmset hibernatemode 0

This turns off hibernation mode, disabling SafeSleep. Now you need to delete the space-eating SafeSleep image file. Type or paste the following command into Terminal:

sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

If your Mac is usually plugged in while sleeping, and you don’t tend to run the battery down below 20 percent, you’re never really using SafeSleep mode, anyway, so disabling it to save some space makes sense. Macs with a non-SSD in them take a little bit of time to save the SleepSave image to their hard drives, but the SSD Macs take no time at all. The potential benefit, then, on an SSD-equipped Mac is the storage space.

If you want to re-enable SafeSleep mode again, type or paste this command into Terminal to reset SafeSleep mode:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

And things should be back to the way they were.

Source: TUAW

This post was written by Rob LeFebvre from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Apple has released a new firmware update for the mid 2012 MacBook Air today that helps to address problems with the device recovering from a crash. Apple release notes said the update addresses “a storage firmware issue that, in rare cases, may cause a system to fail to recover from crash.”

The MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.0 is available to download on Apple’s website here and should be hitting Software Update soon. The 1.69 MB update is available for mid 2012 MacBook Airs running OS X 10.7.5 or OS X 10.8.3.

This post was written by Jordan Kahn from 9to5Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.

Apple just released a new version of iTunes that comes with a couple of unexpected new features. The 11.0.3 update includes a new MiniPlayer, an improved songs view, and finally support for multi-disc albums along with some bug fixes.

New view for MiniPlayer from iTunes 11.0.3 update

The update for the MiniPlayer is by-far the biggest new feature. There’s a new MiniPlayer view that showcases album artwork much more prominently. The new view is quite a bit bigger than the original MiniPlayer view, but you can toggle between the two if you want.

Here are the full release notes on the update:

“This version of iTunes comes with several new features and improvements, including:

• New MiniPlayer. MiniPlayer now includes a beautiful new view that showcases your album artwork. In addition, a progress bar is now built right into MiniPlayer.
• Improved Songs View. You can now enjoy your album artwork while in Songs view.
• Multi-Disc Albums. Albums with multiple discs now appear as a single album.

This update also provides performance improvements when searching and sorting large iTunes libraries.”

The new version of iTunes can be downloaded here.

Source: Apple

This post was written by Buster Heine from Cult of Mac.
You can view the original post by clicking here.