How to Make an OS X Yosemite Boot Installer USB Drive

Now that OS X Yosemite is available, many users may wish to create a bootable installer drive from something like a USB flash thumb drive or another disk. This allows for several things, the ability to upgrade multiple Macs without having to re-download the installer, the ability to perform a clean install, and also the convenience of having a separate bootable reinstallation drive in the event you need it for serving a Mac.



Creating a Yosemite installation drive that is bootable is quite simple, but it’s a multiple step process. Before you begging, make sure you have the following basic requirements met:
Requirements
A USB Flash Drive that is 16GB or larger which you don’t mind formatting
The “Install OS X Yosemite.app” launcher in the /Applications/ directory of the Mac (downloaded from the App Store, but not installed)

Of course, we’re assuming the destination Mac(s) that are going to get Yosemite are compatible. Basically, if the Mac is capable of running OS X Mavericks, it is capable of running OS X Yosemite too.

How to Create a Bootable OS X Yosemite Installer Disk in 2 Steps

For the purposes of this walkthrough, we’re going to use a 16GB USB flash thumb drive, but you’re free to use whatever you want, and you could even use an external hard drive if you really wanted to. The convenience of a portable flash drive is undeniable so it’s preferred if you’re going to be updating multiple Macs. Let’s get started:

Step 1: Format the USB Drive to be Bootable

This is going to format the drive so that it will be a bootable installer, without doing this the drive may not be bootable. If you don’t want to erase the drive, find one you don’t mind formatting instead.
Connect the USB drive to the Mac and launch Disk Utility, then select the drive from the left side drive list
Click on the “Erase” tab and format the drive as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”, then choose “Erase” and confirm
Next go to the “Partition” tab and under ‘Partition Layout’ click on the pulldown menu, changing it from “Current” to “1 Partition”

Change the name to “Untitled” from ‘Untitled 1′ then click on the “Options” button
Choose “GUID Partition Table” as the partition scheme and choose “OK”

Click “Apply” and confirm the creation of the partition
Quit out of Disk Utility when finished

Now that the drive is ready, you can move on to making the actual installer.
Step 2: Making the OS X Yosemite Installer Drive

The next step will actually make the installer drive from the previously formatted USB disk. If you already have the OS X Yosemite installer application in the /Applications/ folder on the Mac, you can skip directly to

step 3: Download OS X Yosemite from the Mac App Store, it’s free (direct link) – DO NOT INSTALL IT YET
When the download completes and the “Install OS X Yosemite” app launches, quit out of it immediately

Launch Terminal app and enter the following command exactly, copy and paste works fine:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app --nointeraction

Enter the administrator password when requested (this is required to use the sudo command – the password will not show up and it looks as if you’re not entering anything, that is normal behavior for the command line), then hit the RETURN key to start making the installer
You’ll see a series of message like the following, let it finish until you see the “Done” message – this may take a while as multiple GB of data have to be transferred:

"Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 30%...100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done."
When finished and the terminal reads “Done”, exit out of Terminal, you’re ready to use the bootable installer drive

That’s all there is to it. Your freshly made OS X Yosemite install drive will be visible in the Mac Finder:

Now you just need to boot from the freshly made OS X Yosemite drive, do that by rebooting the Mac and holding down the OPTION key and selecting the “Install OS X Yosemite” drive upon boot.

If the drive does not boot, you almost certainly skipped the first step which was to partition the drive as GUID, or perhaps interfered with the syntax in the command. You can go through the process again to be sure.

This allows you to update any version of OS X from Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks, directly to OS X Yosemite, with the installer that was just made. You can also perform a clean install (which we’ll separately address in a thorough walkthrough shortly), or update multiple Macs without having to download it from the App Store again. Be sure to always back up the target Mac before updating OS X, whether to OS X 10.10 or any other version, you can follow detailed instructions on how to prepare a Mac for OS X Yosemite here. Enjoy OS X Yosemite!

The aforementioned steps have been tested repeatedly and are confirmed to work flawlessly with the OS X Yosemite final release. If you have any issues, run through the steps again, or leave a comment with your specific error. If you know of an easier way, let us know in the comments too!


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12 things you need to know about today's Apple event

Tim Cook gets ready to show off some new Apple products at the iPad Air 2 event. Photo: Apple

It’s been way too long, joked Apple, since any groundbreaking announcements like the Apple Watch and iPhone 6 Plus. While the product refreshes announced at today’s iPad-centric event aren’t as high on “wow” as the revelations during last month’s big show, these are solid updates to product lines that continue to make Apple great.

Here are the top 12 things you need to know from today’s Apple event.




iPhone 6 is the fastest selling iPhone, ever, says Tim Cook. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac


The iPhone 6 was “the biggest iPhone launch ever”: Tim Cook called the iPhone 6 the “fastest-selling iPhone in history.” While he didn’t provide any numbers, he said the latest iPhones have racked up the most first-month orders ever and pointed out it will be in 32 countries by the end of the week — including China, where it will work on all three of the country’s networks for the first time ever. The iPhone 6 set a “new high-water mark for the most orders taken,” Cook said, “and I don’t mean by a little — by a lot. A whole lot!”






“This is Granny Smith, over.” Screengrab: Apple


Stephen Colbert is Apple’s new “chief of secrecy”: In the event’s best bit, Craig Federighi demonstrated the awesome power of Continuity by phoning Stephen Colbert, who he called Apple’s new head of secrecy. Colbert demanded that they talk in code. “Hello, Red Delicious,” Federighi said. “This is Granny Smith. Over.” It was a pretty hilarious way of putting a positive spin on all the recent security-related headlines about Apple, from the Fappening to Cupertino’s move to make data unavailable to police. In the end, Colbert got off the event’s best line: “Get back to work,” he told Federighi. “Because you know what I see when I look at my wrist? My wrist. Where’s the watch?” (P.S. Tim Cook’s code name? “Chairman Honeycrisp.”)






Eddy makes with the funny. Photo: Apple


Apple shows off its funny side: The humor today was thick, with Craig Federighi calling new “head secrecy emperor” Stephen Colbert from a Macintosh, introducing a third-party keyboard that lets you speak Klingon in your iMessages, and a skit where Eddy Cue gets rejected from a secret lab deep in Apple headquarters because he doesn’t know the ridiculous handshake. Are these too self indulgent? Perhaps, but it’s good to see a company that doesn’t take itself too seriously.






Yep, that’s right – you can grab this now. Photo: Apple


OS X Yosemite is now available, for free: We’ve been hearing about all the cool new features of the Macintosh operating system Yosemite for a while now, and Federighi went through a quick recap, talking through new notification, search and sharing from apps features, as well as Safari’s new tab view, named group chats, photo sharing, a new shelf for recent items in iTunes, and cool new text effects in Keynote, just to name a few things. He even got off a quick jab at Microsoft with the announcement of iCloud Drive on Windows.






All your photos, on all your devices. Slick. Photo: Apple


iOS 8.1 will be available on Monday: The latest, greatest mobile operating system sheds its growing pains with a release of a full dot-number version on Monday: iOS 8.1. This update will finalize all the cool things iOS 8 already does, polish up the Continuity and Handoff features to work better than ever with OS X Yosemite, and taking advantage of all the latest mobile tech, like faster Wi-Fi, Bluetooth low energy, AirDrop between Mac and iOS devices, and the ability to send Airplay streams to your TV without a Wi-Fi network.






Another 500 banks will work with Apple Pay. Photo: Apple


Taking over the world, one wallet and bank at a time: ApplePay & Touch ID comes to iPad, which, according to Phil Schiller, was the most requested feature for iPad. Touch ID will unlock the iPad Air 2 as well as work in specific apps, but you’ll only be able to use Apple Pay to make app and media purchases, though, since no mention was made of NFC in the new iPad Air 2. This is a good thing, because it’s bad enough that people use iPads to take pictures with — imagine waiting for the guy in front of you to pay for his latte with an iPad.






Tim Cook says, “Can you even see this?” before handing duties off to Phil Schiller. Photo: Apple


The iPad Air 2 is the thinnest iPad ever, and now comes in gold: The video Cook showed to unveil the latest iPad continued the “thin as a pencil” conceit from earlier iPad models, only this time, a laser beam shaved off the top bit of the pencil to demonstrate just how much thinner the new iPad Air 2 is. At 6.1mm thin, it’s the thinnest tablet out there: 18% thinner than iPad Air, which was 20% thinner than iPad 4. It’s till got the 10+ hour battery life to boast of, though, along with the A8X and M8 chips and brand new higher-end camera inside of it. Crazy thin, and you can get it in gold along with space gray and silver.






Best camera view screen ever, for sure. Photo: Apple


iPad Air 2 is now a great camera with the biggest view screen ever: A big deal was made of the new cameras on the thin new tablet as well. The rear facing camera is now an 8 megapixel iSight camera with 1.12-micron pixels and an aperture of 2.4. This camera, in conjunction with the A8X processor, will let you shoot 1080p home video along with capturing time lapse and slow motion videos for the first time on an iPad. The still camera will also let you capture photos with burst mode and grab stunningly high resolution panorama photos, too. The FaceTime camera gets an upgrade as well, with an all new sensor and aperture that lets in 81% more light. Now you can get more face detection, burst-mode for selfies (“All the kids do this,” promised Schiller), and single shot HDR and HDR video. Suddenly that woman taking photos at the Grand Canyon with her iPad doesn’t look so crazy.






You know you still want one. Photo: Apple


The iPad mini 3 is available: The new mini iPad was almost not worth mentioning, it seemed, as Schiller rushed through a quick beat about the new iPad mini 3 with Retina display. This new tiny powerhouse packs a 5 megapixel iSight camera, lets you shoot 1080p HD video recording, while still running a FaceTime HD camera on the front. It’s also gotten faster 802.11n with MIMO Wi-Fi and Touch ID, which we assume will work with Apple Pay the same as its larger brethren.






This makes your HDTV look blurry, right? Photo: Apple


iMac goes big and thin with industry-defying 5K Retina Display: The new iMac display is so ground-breaking that the Apple development team had to invent several new technologies like a timing controller, Oxide TFT, Organic passivation, and seriously power-efficient LEDs that use 30% less energy than previous ones. The new iMac is so densely packed with pixels– a stunning 14.7 million of them — that a 1080p HDTV (now with 67% less pixels than the iMac) looks paltry in comparison. All of this in a five millimeter thin casing that also includes a 3.5 GHz quad-core i5 processor, Thunderbolt 2 ports, and terabytes of storage with a new Fusion drive. That would be impressive at any price, but the new iMac starts at a super-friendly $2499.






When it comes to the Mac Mini, it *has* been far too long. Photo: Apple


Mac Mini gets a well-deserved upgrade: The underrated but highly useful Mac Mini gets a 4th generation today, with an Intel core processor, Intel Iris or HD Graphics 5000 chip, faster PCIe-based flash storage, now one but two Thundrbolt ports, faster 802.11 ac Wi-Fi and a $100 price drop to start at $499.






Every day we look forward to that day. Photo: Apple


Let there be WatchKit: Cook unveiled WatchKit, the developer framework that will roll out next month and let devs build useful apps for Apple’s upcoming wearable. “Apple Watch will be shipping early next year,” Cook said, “and every day I look forward to that day.” Like, every day.


Additional reporting by Lewis Wallace

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Apple leaks new iPad details in iOS 8.1 user guide

This will probably be what the iPad Air 2 looks like.

Apple’s unveiling of its new iPad lineup is set to take place in less than 24 hours, but someone at Apple HQ just accidentally leaked some of the biggest details, including the names of Apple’s newest tablets.









Apple updated its iOS 8 user guide this morning with photos for the new ‘iPad Air 2’ and ‘iPad mini 3.’ The actual iBook contains no information about the new devices, but preview images for the iPad User Guide For iOS 8 on contains references to the addition of Touch ID and a Burst Mode for the Camera.

It appears that Apple will bring a numbering scheme back to iPad names, after ditching the process last year with the release of the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display.

Other new features on the iPad Air 2 are expected to include an A8X processor with 2GB of RAM, Apple Pay, improved camera, anti-reflection coating, and a slightly thinner design. Full details of the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 will be revealed tomorrow at a press event on Apple’s campus in Cupertino at 10AM PT.



Apple’

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Google Nexus 6 is official with 6-inch QHD screen and S805

Without any sort of special event, Google has just announced the Motorola-made Nexus 6 smartphone running Android 5.0 Lollipop. The phone features a 6" 2560 x 1440 pixel display, which gives it a pixel density of 496ppi.







The premium display is backed up by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 chipset with a 2.65GHz quad-core Krait 450 CPU inside and 3GB of RAM. At the back, there's a 13MP f/2.0 camera with dual-LED flash. Internal storage is either 32GB or 64GB, but there's no microSD card slot.


At the front, there are two stereo speakers and a 2MP front-facing camera.


The battery is a 3,220mAh unit, which isn't user replaceable. However, it sports Turbo Charging, which allows you to get up to 6 hours of use from the Nexus 6 with only 15 minutes of charging. Google promises the phone can make it through 24 hours of usage without problems.


Pre-orders for the Motorola Nexus 6 start on October 29 with shipments scheduled to start some time in November. You can buy the 32GB, SIM-free version of the phone in Midnight Blue or Cloud White from the Google Play Store for $649.

Although not officially confirmed, in Europe the 32GB and 64GB models are expected to retail for €569 and €649, respectively.


Google won't stop selling the LG Nexus 5, for those worried they will be left without a more compact Nexus smartphone. Its pricing remains unchanged, $329 for the 16GB and $399 for the 64GB model. The Nexus 5 will also receive Android 5.0 Lollipop, so you won't be missing out on the latest Google has to offer.

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Google unveils Android 5.0 Lolipop as an official name

Along with the announcement of the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9 today, Google also announced that the next iteration of their mobile OS, which we so far knew under the codename Android L, will actually be called Android 5.0 Lolipop.


Android Lolipop was one of the top picks of the rumor mill anyway, but another not so distant possibility was also Lion, which seemed quite reasonable, bearing in mind it will follow right after KitKat.





Android 5.0 Lollipop will ship on the just announced Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, but it will also will also be available on Nexus 4, 5, 7, 10 and Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks.


Here you can find out more about Android 5.0 Lollipop.



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