Preparing a Mac for Upgrade to OS X 10.11 El Capitan

Apple announced El Capitan the latest version of it’s OS X operating system, numbered 10.11, on the 9th September 2015, at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California in the United States. 

This is the third in a departure from the previous naming of operating systems after big cats. Following on from OS X 10.9 Mavericks and 10.10 Yosemite, El Capitancontinues with the new naming convention of locations in California.

In this tutorial, I'll show you what you will need to do to ensure that a Mac is ready for upgrade, from OS X 10.10 Yosemite, or earlier, to OS X 10.11 El Capitan following its release on 30th September 2015.

Upgrade Costs

Below is listed the comparative upgrade costs for previous versions of OS X and the recent versions of Microsoft Windows.

OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Way back in October 2009, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was delivered via DVD and cost £25 in the UK when launched.

OS X 10.7 Lion

Apple stopped supplying DVDs with the release of OS X 10.7 Lion (though it was available for a short time on a USB drive) and cost £20.99 in the UK, preferring a download delivery model via the new Mac App Store, instead.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was only available as an upgrade through the Mac App Store and cost £13.99 in the UK. 

OS X 10.9 Mavericks

OS X 10.9 Mavericks was only available as an upgrade through the Mac App Store and was offered as a nil-cost upgrade to Apple OS X users as far back as OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

OS X 10.10 Yosemite

OS X 10.10 Yosemite, following on from Mavericks, is to be offered as a free upgrade for existing Mac users of any OS X version from 10.6.7 Snow Leopardonwards.

OS X 10.11 El Capitan

OS X 10.11 El Capitan, following on from Mavericks and Yosemite, is to be offered as a free upgrade for existing Mac users of any OS X version from 10.6.7 Snow Leopard onwards.

Microsoft Windows 8

Compare this to £99.99 for Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system, and any upgrade to OS X is a bargain.

Microsoft Windows 10

Compare this to prices from £55.00 for Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system, and any upgrade to OS X is a bargain.

Distribution

Similar to 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.9 Mavericks and 10.10 Yosemite, it has been confirmed that OS X 10.11 El Capitan will only be available as a digital download—via the Mac App Store— for Macs that require upgrading.

System Requirements

OS X El Capitan

As of its beta release, OS X 10.11 El Capitan is compatible with all Macs that are capable of running OS X Yosemite. These are essentially Macs with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5 or i7 processor.

• iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

It is likely that this will not change between the beta and the retail version, but it's inevitable that some of the sexier features of El Capitan will not be compatible with older hardware.

Checking Hardware Compatibility

To check to see if a Mac is compatible, click on the Apple at the farmost left of the menu bar and select About This Mac then click More Info.

About this Mac

Checking Memory

To check to see if how much memory is installed in the Mac, click on the Apple at the farmost left of the menu bar and select About This Mac then click More Infofollowed by the Memory tab.

Checking the amount of installed memory on a Mac

In order to run OS X 10.11 El Capitan, the Mac must have at least 2GB of memory. From my own experience of running OS X 10.9 Mavericks, on a Mac mini Core i5, my recommendation would be to look at 4GB being an absolute minimum for Mavericks, which will run very slowly indeed. 

Ideally, you should look at 8GB RAM being the minimum to run El Capitan and install more if you can afford it. Probably the best place for memory upgrades for a Mac is Crucial.

Crucial is a long established, reputable supplier of Apple Mac memory upgrades

Checking Software Compatibility

Before upgrading to El Capitan, the Mac will need at least 8GB of available hard disc space and be running Mac OS X 10.6.7 Snow Leopard, or later.

Snow Leopard 10.6.7, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks and Yosemite all have the Mac App Store, which is a requirement for the digital download delivery mechanism to install OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

In terms of third party apps, you will need to consult with the developers of each app to determine whether your software will be compatible with OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Roaring Apps is a useful website for determining Mac software compatibility

For previous OS X updates to Lion and Mountain Lion, a hugely useful resource has been Roaring Apps. This site maintains a Wiki, to which anyone may contribute for the good of the Mac community, in sharing information about compatibility of apps between versions of OS X.

It is likely that Roaring Apps will be updated to include information regarding El Capitan compatible apps. It’s a huge timesaver.

Perform Apple Software and Firmware Updates

To check to see if there are any updates for the Mac, click on the Apple at the farmost left of the menu bar and select Software Update. This launches the Mac App Store and checks for any available software updates. This works on OS X Mavericks. 

Alternatively, press Command-Space to open Spotlight and type Mac App Storeto launch the application then click the Updates icon.

Performing an Apple Software update

Update the software, and firmware if applicable, with the software updates that are available, prior to attempting to upgrade the Mac. 

Note that some upgrades may require the Mac to reboot in order to install them. This is especially true of firmware updates.

Backing Up Data

This is imperative! It is essential that you back up your data before attempting to upgrade your operating system.

There are many ways in which you can go about backing up data, on the Mac. In fact, Apple makes this quite easy, with Time Machine, and other app developers have created invaluable tools such as SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner. Furthermore, cloud-based services such as Dropbox provide even more ways to ensure that essential data is safe.

Setting up Time Machine to perform a backup

My recommendation would be to perform at least two back ups and to test that they work. My favoured method is a Time Machine back up and a straight clone of the hard drive with SuperDuper! In addition to those, I use Dropbox to store lots of my data.

Tip: To learn more about backing up your data, take a look at the tutorials in our Data Backups and Storage session.

Upgrade or Clean Install

Apple makes the process, to upgrade to each new version of OS X, very simple such that you might have upgraded through a number of iterations of OS X already.

The question regarding an upgrade or a clean install, the latter being the reformatting of the hard drive and the complete installation of OS X from scratch, is one of personal preference.

For me, personally, I prefer the clean install approach. A cathartic experience that allows me to ensure that OS X is running at optimal efficiency whereby I only install the apps that I depend upon and think carefully about installing anything else.

Conclusion

With the recent release of El Capitan, a little bit of planning now will make the transition trouble-free. In this tutorial I have shown how to check your hardware and software compatibility, I’ve shown you the importance of backing up your data and I’ve looked at upgrades versus clean installs.

Before you jump into El Capitan, perform an audit of the software that you use on your Mac to ensure that it is all compatible, or can be upgraded, before you upgrade the operating system. This will avoid the risk of problems following an upgrade to El Capitan.

by Johnny Winter

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Introducing Markdown on OS X

Screencast

 

Markdown is a formatting syntax that lets you write plain text that can be converted to HTML, without the need to write millions of angle brackets. Markdown uses symbols to indicate common HTML tags such as headers, emphasis and links. It has also been expanded on with efforts such as MultiMarkdown which offer support for more formatting options like rich text format (RTF).
In this tutorial, I'll introduce you to Markdown, explain why it’s awesome and how to start using it on OS X.

Introducing Markdown

Markdown was created by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. It was designed to an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format that could be converted into structurally valid HTML. The biggest feature of Markdown is that a document written in the syntax is readable as is; you don’t even need to understand Markdown, the tags just make sense.
Markdown has been expanded upon by different people to add features that the original version did not support. One of the most commonly used extensions is Fletcher T. Penney’s MultiMarkdown which focussed on extending Markdown so it could be used to write offline documents instead of just HTML. When an app claims to support Markdown, it is often the MultiMarkdown extension that it supports.
Originally there were two parts to Markdown: the syntax and the conversion tool. Support for Markdown, however, has meant that there is no need to use a command line to convert documents to HTML. Instead Markdown is supported in a wide variety of apps and web services.

Reasons to Use Markdown

The best thing about Markdown is that it makes writing formatted text extremely easy. If you’ve read any of my previous tutorials you may have realised I like to do things efficiently. Choosing a font size and style from a dropdown menu every time you want to create a heading, and then changing things back for the body text, is not efficient. Markdown lets you format your text with simple characters.
Markdown lets you write what you want in easy to read plain text that can be converted for whatever purpose you want. I can write an email response in Markdown and convert it to RTF. If I think my email response might be worthy of turning into a blog post, I can convert the same Markdown into HTML. This flexibility is one of the things that wins Markdown so many fans.
Markdown is just plain text. You can open, and read, Markdown documents on any computer. It doesn’t use a proprietary file format like Microsoft Word does so you don’t need to worry if a friend’s computer has the latest version of Office installed just to access something you’ve written.
There are many other reasons to use Markdown. These are just a few of the reasons I use it. If you start to use Markdown, you’ll quickly develop your own list!

The Markdown Syntax

Most HTML documents are relatively simple composed. The main formatting options used are:

• headers (of one or more levels)
• paragraphs
• links
• bulleted lists
• emphasised or strong text tags

For this tutorial, I’m going to focus on these most important formatting options. If you are interested in things like footnotes, tables, citations and the other more niche features of Markdown and MultiMarkdown check out Gruber’s guide to the Markdown syntax and the MultiMarkdown user’s guide.
Tip: In Markdown lines and spaces have meaning. For example, a header must be on a new line and to separate paragraphs, one or more blank lines are used.

Headers

Header tags, <h1>, <h2>, etc. are mainly written in Markdown using the # symbol. To write a header, start a new line with one or or more #s followed by the header text. The number of #s you use determines the level of header. # results in a <h1> tag while ### results in a <h3> tag.

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# Header One ### Header Three becomes... <h1>Header One</h1> <h3>Header Three</h3>

Paragraphs

Paragraph tags <p> are added to any blocks of text that do not have an otherwise assigned tag. To split a document into multiple paragraphs you need to leave a blank line between each paragraph of text.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. becomes... <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.</p> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.</p>

Links

In Markdown there are two ways to write links: inline and reference. I prefer to use the inline method, I feel it’s cleaner and easier to use so I’m going to focus on it. If you’re interested in reference links have a look at the Markdown specs. To write a link, surround the text you want to be the link text in square brackets. Immediately after the closing square bracket add the url for the link in regular brackets.

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[Tuts+](http://tutsplus.com) becomes... <a href="http://tutsplus.com">Tuts+</a>

Bulleted Lists

To write a bulleted list in Markdown you can use either an asterisks, a plus symbol or a hyphen. Put each list item on a new line and start it with your choice of symbol followed by a space and then the item you are listing.

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

* This is * a list * of items becomes... <ul> <li>This is</li> <li>a list</li> <li>of items</li> </ul>

Emphasised and Strong Text

Markdown supports both emphasis tags <em> and strong tags <strong>. To write emphasis tags, put a single asterisk or underscore either side of the emphasised text. To write strong tags, instead use double asterisks or underscores.

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This is *emphasised* and this is **strong** becomes... This is <em>emphasised</em> and this is <strong>strong</strong>

Writing and Exporting Markdown With Byword

I am writing this tutorial in Byword. I know for a fact that Computer Tuts+ editor Johnny Winter writes all of his in it too. Byword bills itself as Simple and efficient text editing for Mac, iPhone and iPad and lives up to that promise.
Byword provides you with a complete Markdown workflow. You use Byword like any other text editor, however, when you type characters that symbolise something in Markdown, Byword provides a live preview: headers become bold, link URLs are a lighter grey so that they do not interfere with reading the text, emphasised text becomes italicised.

Writing this tutorial in Byword.

When you’re done writing and want to export your work, select File > Export > Copy HTML or File > Export > Copy Rich Text depending on what you want. Then paste the HTML or rich text wherever you need it.
Byword’s available on both OS X and iOS so you can get a consistent experience across your devices. Available from the Mac App Store.
Byword’s main competitor is iA Writer which also offers a complete workflow, very similar features and both Mac and iOS apps. It’s also available from the Mac App Store.

Other Markdown Apps

If you need more powerful export options than Byword offers, Marked 2 is often seen as the gold standard. You can’t write directly into Marked 2, it is just a previewer and exporter. To work with Marked 2, open the same file in your text editor of choice and Marked 2. As you enter text into your text editor, or move around the document, Marked 2 will detect this and update the live preview.
Marked 2 lets you export your Markdown files to HTML, Word files and PDF files. You can also set up the previewer so that it mirrors the CSS of your website so you can get a live preview of how your blog posts will look when you post them online.
If you like to keep a diary, the popular journalling app Day One supports Markdown. Rather than have to deal with exporting, Day One automatically displays Markdown as rich text when you are not writing or editing an entry.

Editing a Day One entry in Markdown followed by Day One's display of the result.

nvALT 2 is a note taking app that supports Markdown. It is a fork of Notational Velocity which Jonathon showed you how to use in a Text-Based Notes System. While Notational Velocity doesn’t support Markdown by default, the nvALT 2 fork does.

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Web Services

As Markdown was originally designed for web writing, some major content management systems, or CMS, support it out of the box or with a plugin.
The all in one website solution Squarespace, which Jordan’s tutorial shows you how to set it up, supports Markdown in its site editor by default.
Wordpress doesn’t support Markdown by default but there are loads of plugins that let you add it. I use Jetpack Markdown for my own Wordpress site.
Finally, John Gruber’s original Markdown Dingus is a web service that lets you easily convert Markdown text to HTML. To use it, either copy or type Markdown text into the editor and click Convert. You can then copy and paste the HTML export to wherever you need it.

Conclusion

In this tutorial I’ve shown you how to write with the Markdown syntax and explained why Markdown is awesome. I’ve also shown you how to write and edit Markdown in Byword and looked at a few of the many apps and web sites that support Markdown.
If you’ve a favourite Markdown editor or workflow please let me know in the comments.

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Exploring the Advanced Features of QuickTime X

by Matt Reich 

This tutorial will examine some of the advanced features in QuickTime X. We'll go over sharing, audio and video recording, screen recording and more.

QuickTime

QuickTime has been the standard media player of the Mac operating system for many years. It has gone through various iterations over the past two decades, beginning with the release of Version 1 in 1991.
QuickTime X originally shipped with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Apple used to have two versions of the media player, a free, very basic version and a paid, more robust version. I'll be honest - I've never used the Pro version of QuickTime, so my usage up until this release was just basic media playback.

The Pro version is gone, and some great new features have been added to the standard version that are available for everyone.

Many of us have been standard (free) users forever. But we couldn’t justify the cost to purchase the "Pro" version, offering functionality that was done better by other applications. Things have changed with QuickTime X. The Pro version is gone, and some great new features have been added to the standard version that are available for everyone. Let’s take a look at some of them!

Share to YouTube

Sharing your movies to YouTube directly from the QuickTime interface is now possible, and QuickTime X makes this process dead simple.

This probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, you will need a YouTube account for this to actually work.

With the video you wish to upload to YouTube loaded, select the Share option from the menu bar and pick the YouTube option (you’ll also see an iTunes and MobileMe Gallery as well). The first time you use this feature, you'll be asked to enter in your YouTube credentials. Check the option to store in the system keychain and you won't have to do that again.

YouTube Share Dialog

Fill in the necessary information in the dialog box and click next to start the process to upload the movie to YouTube. You'll see a message box displaying the progress of the upload. That's it. You're done. There’s no need to do any converting or anything like that. QuickTime takes care of the whole process for you.
This integration is very helpful for those (like me) that have great intentions of sharing a video to YouTube and end up not feeling like taking the time to go through the extra few steps. I know it's not difficult, but with this built directly into QuickTime, it's much more likely that I'll upload a video to YouTube right after I save it to my Mac.

Video and Audio Recording

QuickTime X has the ability to record audio and video. This was previously only a Pro capability, but is now included as a basic feature in Version X. It is very easy to complete a surprisingly professional audio or video recording.

Audio

From the File menu, select New Audio Recording and off you go. The audio recording controls will load. To kick off your audio recording just click the record button. Whatever mic you have set as your default system mic will be used to record the audio. You’ll know you’re recording when you see the time start ticking away along with jumping audio level indicators.
I actually used this recently to record a Google Voice call and it worked beautifully. The simplicity of the audio recording is where this really becomes useful. From loading QuickTime to starting an audio recording takes all of 10 seconds, and about three clicks.
Some very minor editing is possible with QuickTime as well. From the Edit menu you'll see a Trim option. This will allow you to trim from the beginning or end of your recording. It's not much, but if you're just doing a basic recording (which you more than likely are) it may be all you're looking to be able to do. Again, the simplicity of this process makes this a really nice little feature.

Audio Trim

Sharing an audio recording is, unfortunately, not possible through the QuickTime interface. I could see it handy to be able to at least share to iTunes or MobleMe, but that option isn't available with an audio only recording. If you're a podcaster, more than likely you'll be using some other more audio specific software to edit and produce your audio so it probably isn't a big deal.
Like I mentioned, I think the audio recording will see it’s best use for those instances when you need a quick, simple recording.

Video

A video recording takes the exact same process as does an audio recording with the obvious exception of selecting the New Movie Recording option from the File menu. Your iSight/FaceTime camera will turn on, and you’ll see live video with controls on the screen. Again, whatever camera is set to your system default will be shown right away.
There’s a small drop-down arrow that will allow you to select any other installed cameras to use as the video source along with option change to other available microphones, change quality settings for the video (medium, high or max) and also an option to choose save to location.

Audio Trim

As with the audio recording, simply click the record button to begin the recording. You’ll see the time begin to tick and the audio indicators will begin bouncing as well. Click the stop button when you’re finished. Save it and/or share it.
It is also easy to trim a video. It’s basically the same process as trimming an audio recording. Select Trim from the Edit menu. You’ll see a timeline at the bottom of the video and you’ll be able to trim from either the beginning or end. As with the audio trimming, if you’re looking to do some more in depth editing, you’ll be looking to other software (something like iMovie), but it is certainly a handy tool for a quick trim.

Movie Trim

Screen Recording

This is probably the most interesting and I think least-known use for QuickTime X. This will essentially allow you to do a video recording of what you’re doing on your screen. Whatever windows you open. Wherever you click. Whatever you do will be recorded.
To start a screen recording select New Screen Recording from the File menu. The screen recording control will appear. You’ll see a small drop down arrow once again that will allow you to change some settings. You’ll be able to change the quality of the recording, the save to location and you’re also able to pick a microphone if you’d like to add audio into your screen recording. Click the record button to begin recording.

Screen Recording Stop

The recording controls disappear and you’ll then just see a small stop control on the menu bar. That does just what it says, stops the recording and your recording will open up for your review (Command-Control-Esc will stop the recording as well). Trim, save, or share as you’d like.

Conclusion

The common theme of this post is really that the new features of QuickTime X are an excellent way to accomplish a few simple media tasks very well. For former Pro users, these features don’t seem like that big of a deal, but for those of us basic users, these are fantastic.
QuickTime has been around for a long time, and I think it has been easy to cruise by the updates and just take for granted that it is going to be another update to a standard media player (for the non-Pros).
This update changed a lot, and made QuickTime a tool that can be useful to just about everyone. The functionality is so simple and quick to use while still producing fantastic results it’s really a difficult application to overlook.

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