Ever wondered what the ‘mdworker’ process was on a Mac? mdworker is short for ‘metadata server worker’ and if you’re still confused don’t feel bad. mdworker is basically the core technology behind Mac OS X’s awesome search engine Spotlight, it spiders meta data from your Mac and its files and creates a readable index so … Read More

Squid is a web caching proxy that is wildly useful for those of us on slower internet connections or anyone that has reduced bandwidth availability, it reduces bandwidth by caching and reusing frequently accessed web pages and works with http and https. Squid has been particularly useful to me on business visits to places where … Read More

Every once in a while you stumble upon a Mac utility, app, or feature that you immediately fall in love with and wonder how you ever live without… well today and for me, that is iStat Menu. iStats Menu has been around a while, but apparently I’ve neglected it to my own detriment because this … Read More

Need a super easy and simple Stopwatch on the Mac, but don’t want to download anything like a third party app or utility? Look no further than the command line. You can create an instant quick and dirty stopwatch via the Mac OS X (or linux) command line by launching the Terminal app and typing … Read More

Need a PDF Editor for Mac? I did too, and this is what I learned. Adobe Acrobat Pro is great software with some killer features, but it’s expensive. Acrobat is hard to beat in it’s functionality, but if all you’re looking to do is make small changes and edits to PDF files, spending $350 for … Read More

If you’ve looking for the location of your iPhone Backup files in the file system of a computer, then you’ll be pleased to know they’re easy to find even if a bit hidden. Whether you use Mac OS X or Windows, the iPhone backup process is basically the same; iTunes backs up all of your … Read More

Burning an ISO in Mac OS X is very easy thanks to the built-in Disk Utility application that is included from Apple on every Mac. With Disk Utility being bundled with Macs directly from Apple, it also has the huge added bonus of being free, and although there are plenty of paid options out there, … Read More

The new version of the Remote app for iPhone [iTunes link] has a great social feature that allows party guests with the app installed to connect to iTunes shares, see what’s currently playing, add songs to playlists, vote on songs to be played, and make requests. As the linked posterous blog states: “This is the … Read More

iTunesHelper or iTunes Helper, is a program from Apple that runs in the background and monitors for the connection of any iPod or iPhone to the computer, if an iPod or iPhone is detected it will automatically launch the iTunes application. The functionality is the same on both Mac OS X and Windows PC’s, and … Read More

By default, Mac OS X Snow Leopard boots using a 32 bit kernel. But did you know you can switch between the 64-bit kernel and 32-bit kernel upon boot? This should be useful to advanced users who may need to perform such a feet, though the average Mac use likely has no business forcing one … Read More

Do you need iPhone Insurance? For such an expensive phone, I think the answer is yes. iPhone Insurance is not really something I thought of, and I’m guessing something that most users don’t think of until it’s too late and you actually need it. After several of my friends accidentally broke, lost, or otherwise rendered … Read More

Last week we wrote that some people thought of Snow Leopard as a disappointing upgrade because there wasn’t a new GUI included in it, specifically the ‘marble’ interface that has been speculated to exist for a while now. Those of us that have installed iTunes 9 may have noticed that the new iTunes application features … Read More

In case you somehow missed the news today, Apple has released iTunes 9 available immediately for download, and iPhone OS 3.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch, also available now. Both updates seem worthwhile and right in line with what the Apple Rumor Mill has been suspecting, although they don’t add anything jaw-dropping in terms … Read More

Have you ever needed to convert a DMG file to ISO in Mac OS, or wanted to convert an ISO file to DMG on your Mac? Converting image files on your Mac is easy thanks to a command line utility included in Mac OS X called hdiutil.

So you want a small lightweight portable Mac OS X machine, the closest thing Apple has in this area is the MacBook Air which is $1600 or more. No doubt about it, the MacBook Air is a great machine but I don’t want to spend anywhere near $1600 for another laptop when I already have … Read More

Apple certainly means well with the Software Updates, but sometimes I get update notifications I just don’t care about, or just don’t want to install for whatever reason. If you’re in this situation and you have a version of OS X before the App Store that ran exclusively in a native Software Update window, like … Read More

Ever wanted to know if your Mac is using a 32-bit or 64-bit kernel? It may seem geeky and in the weeds, but it’s now relevant. Snow Leopard 10.6 is the first Mac OS X version to ship with a 64 bit kernel, and obviously your Mac has to have a 64 bit processor to … Read More

Mac OS X Snow Leopard comes with a beautiful space themed default desktop picture. If you haven’t installed Snow Leopard yet but you want to share in the nice eye candy, try downloading some full resolution background pics! You can click on the thumbnail to the left to download the full version of the default … Read More