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Bring Back the Classic Safari Refresh Button in OS X

Jun 10, 2010 - 4 Comments

As many loyal Safari users already know, the dedicated “refresh” button was removed from the browser’s toolbar starting with the release of Safari 4. It seems that Apple decided it would be better placed at the end of the location bar. The “new” format also includes a much smaller button which quite frankly is much … Read More

Kill Mac OS X Mouse Acceleration from the command line

Jun 2, 2010 - 55 Comments

You might be asking yourself, what’s mouseĀ acceleration? Essentially mouse acceleration is anĀ algorithmĀ that is deployed in an attempt to make mouse movements feel “natural”. For many PC users, when you first use a Mac, it becomes quite obvious that the mouse is behaving very differently. It will feel sluggish, unpredictable and unresponsive (to varying degrees depending … Read More

MagicPrefs Improves Functionality of Magic Mouse for Mac

May 25, 2010 - 5 Comments

MagicPrefs is an amazing free utility for Mac that dramatically improves the functionality of your multi-touch Magic Mouse. Other than allowing for increased control over the touch sensitivity and tracking speed, you get practically full access to the multi-touch capabilities of the device. With MagicPrefs you can bind various gestures, swipes, pinches, and taps to … Read More

Show the date and calendar on your Mac desktop with Dateline

May 24, 2010 - Leave a Comment

Dateline is a nice little utility that places a transparent linear calendar on your Mac desktop. It’s pretty customizable so if you want the dates to be horizontal or vertical, or the text color or their background colors to be different it’s just an easy couple of tweaks away. Perhaps the best part about Dateline … Read More

Change the Gmail Notifier mail check frequency

May 19, 2010 - 4 Comments

You can adjust Gmail Notifier’s mail checking frequency interval by accessing an advanced preference in the application. In this example we will change the email check interval to 3 minutes. * Click the Gmail Notifier menubar icon * Hold down Command+Option keys and click on “Preferences” in the drop down menu * Enter the following … Read More

Get serious about preventing online distractions with Freedom for Mac

May 18, 2010 - 2 Comments

If you’re a writer, developer, designer, musician, anyone that needs to have complete concentration to create freely, this app just might be your saving grace. Freedom forces you to pull away from the ubiquitous distractions of the online world by disabling your Mac’s network interface for a set amount of time, up to 8 hours. … Read More

Switch Mac Function Keys to Work as Standard Function Keys

May 12, 2010 - 13 Comments

I’ve always preferred the way the original MacBook and MacBook Pro’s handled the function keys, in particularly the way F9, F10, and F11 are used to enter into Expose and Mission Control. For a while now the function keys have changed, they default to playing music, adjusting keyboard backlighting, and adjusting volume levels, I like … Read More

Use Property List Editor to Edit plist Files in Mac OS X for Free

May 12, 2010 - 15 Comments

Property List files, or more commonly known as plist files, are basically Mac application specific preference files. They contain information and settings for various applications and are usually in the easily identifiable format of com.developer.Application.plist and located within the /Library/Preferences/ directories at the system and user level. If you simply want to view a plist … Read More

NameChanger Will Batch Rename Files for Free in Mac OS

May 11, 2010 - 12 Comments

NameChanger is a free app solution to quickly and easily batch rename files in Mac OS X. It has all the features you’d expect in a batch renaming app, and you can replace occurrences of text in filenames, use wildcards, append text or characters, add dates, make files sequential, and even remove characters, just select … Read More

How to Manually Switch Graphics Cards on MacBook Pro

May 8, 2010 - 2 Comments

Would you like to manually choose which graphics card is in use on a MacBook Pro? You can now keep track of which GPU is in use and then manually switch between the two graphics cards included within the MacBook Pro series, thanks to a third party utility called gfxCardStatus. It’s a free app and … Read More

Switch and Manage Multiple Hosts Files with Gas Mask

Apr 29, 2010 - 4 Comments

Gas Mask is a simple hosts file manager that sits in your menubar and allows you to easily edit and switch between multiple hosts files. With support for syntax highlighting, Growl, and hotkey hosts switching, it’s one of the quickest and easiest ways to deal with multiple hosts files on a Mac. Gas Mask is … Read More

Mount NTFS volumes in Mac OS X easily with NTFS Mounter

Apr 26, 2010 - 10 Comments

NTFS Mounter is a simple utility that sits in your menubar and lets you select NTFS volumes to mount and write to. Interestingly enough, Mac OS X has been able to mount NTFS volumes with read and write support as of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, although this is not officially supported or sanctioned … Read More

The Best MySQL Database Manager for Mac OS X? SequelPro Might Be It

Apr 19, 2010 - 7 Comments

I’ve long been looking for a good MySQL manager for Mac OS X since I’m not a big fan of phpMyAdmin and the other tools out there. Yes there’s always the command line too, but sometimes it’s nice to have a GUI for such tasks. Then I came across SequelPro recently and I think it … Read More

The Easiest Way to Delete Flash Cookies on the Mac

Apr 13, 2010 - 2 Comments

LSO’s are pesky Flash cookies that can potentially track your activity on the web long after you’ve left the site that set the cookie, and unfortunately there’s no easy way to tell what cookies track where. If you are concerned about this, your best bet is to just delete them completely. We’ve discussed ways to … Read More

iStumbler updated for Snow Leopard

Apr 10, 2010 - 1 Comment

iStumbler has long been one of my favorite tools in Mac OS X to discover available wireless networks, and the new version adds support for Snow Leopard (10.6.2 or later). Other than 10.6 support, there’s a neat new GPS location feature, and the usual support for Bluetooth and Bonjour, and various bug fixes. My only … Read More

Get rounded corners back on your Mac’s screen

Apr 8, 2010 - 2 Comments

Prior to Mac OS X 10.5, your Mac’s desktop had rounded screen corners. Now you can bring those smooth rounded corners back with Displaperture (say that ten times fast). The developer jokingly notes “enjoy CRT nostalgia” but I think the rounded corners are actually kind of nice looking with the rest of the Mac OS … Read More

Add a second menubar to a Macs external display

Apr 6, 2010 - 4 Comments

Using multiple monitors is an easy way to dramatically increase your productivity, but I’ve often heard complaints that when the secondary monitor needs to have the menubar to make it even more useful. SecondBar solves that problem. This nifty little app just duplicates the menubar across multiple displays, letting you have full access to the … Read More

Download Google Books

Mar 11, 2010 - 13 Comments

Google Books is a pretty amazing virtual library filled with who knows how many books, magazines, periodicals, and whatever else you might expect to find in a brick and mortar library. Some of the books can be downloaded and saved as a PDF with just a click, others are restricted, but thats where Google Book … Read More

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