FileVault 2 is the all new disk encryption method that comes with Lion, and it’s more secure than ever, using XTS-AES 128 encryption on your entire disk, as opposed to just the user directory as in past versions. The other huge change that came with FileVault 2 is the significant performance boost, where using full … Read More

A recent addition to Mac OS X and modern versions of Xcode development tools is a utility called Network Link Conditioner, a highly customizable tool that lets you simulate a variety of common internet connectivity speeds. The utility is aimed at Mac and iOS developers so they can test their apps response times on a … Read More

Ever wish you could access an applications menubar immediately, from anywhere? MenuPop fulfills this desire, activating an apps menu from anywhere with the click of a hot key or mouse cursor, by creating a contextual menu out of the main menu. This means you can access the Apple  menu, File, Edit, everything, instantly from … Read More

Apple’s market capitalization reached $341.5 billion today in trading, becoming the worlds largest and most valuable company. Apples new position in the top spot just barely edges out oil giant Exxon Mobil’s $341.4 billion, and is more of a function of the skittish behavior on Wall Street than any particular news today since both stocks … Read More

A fair amount of MacBook Pro 2010 (and some 2011) users are reporting stability issues with their NVIDIA 330M equipped Macs and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, with problems including kernel panics, random system crashes, blank or black screens, inability to wake from sleep, external displays not working, and assorted other headaches. The Macs most … Read More

The iPhone Dev Team has released Redsn0w 0.9.8b5 to jailbreak iOS 5 beta 5, the jailbreak is intended only for developers who want to assure their Cydia apps work fine in the newest iOS beta, and neither iOS 5 beta or this version of redsn0w are intended for widespread consumption. Supported hardware includes iPhone 3GS, … Read More

Apple has released Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, a small utility that provides the ability to create an external bootable recovery drive for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. This should quell some of the complaints from users who didn’t want to make a Lion USB install drive or boot DVD, or who were otherwise unsatisfied with … Read More

Many users who upgraded to Mac OS X Lion discovered that their Wi-Fi connections were dropping periodically for no apparent reason. We published a reasonably thorough walkthrough with tips on fixing OS X Lion’s wireless dropping issues and that’s a recommended starting point because most tips are easy and less complicated, but among those was … Read More

The problem with traditional solutions like a defaults write command to show hidden files in Mac OS X is that they’re permanent unless another defaults write command is executed, this isn’t a big deal for some users but if you just want a quick glance at invisible files than busting out the command line is … Read More

You can now select any number of files from the Mac OS X desktop or a folder and create a new folder containing those selected items. This is a wildly useful Finder trick for file management and organization, since you can quickly group a collection of files by selecting however many you want to within … Read More

It’s unclear why, but the Mac App Store is running a lot slower in OS X Lion for some users, including myself. By slow I mean you’ll encounter nearly constant beachballs as you click from app to app, with the absolute worst offender being the main category sections. I’m assuming there is an underlying bug … Read More

A Mac Pro with two extra NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 video cards and 16GB of RAM is driving these three displays, making one heck of a Mac setup. The left screen is hosting a Windows 7 virtual machine in Parallels full time, while everything else is all Mac OS X. Also pictured: an iPad 1 … Read More

If you’ve found yourself stuck in Chromes full screen mode, you’re not alone. Chrome has it’s benefits, like syncing and the native omnibar, but unfortunately Chrome does not play well with Full Screen Mode under Mac OS X Lion – at all. You are free to click the full screen button to get in, but … Read More

Apple has released iOS 5 beta 5, the latest build is 9A5288d and the same hardware is supported as prior iOS 5 betas, including iPad 2, iPad, iPhone 4 GSM & CDMA, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen. You can download iOS 5 beta 5 in one of two ways: OTA delta … Read More

In Apple’s quest to simplify the Mac user experience, they hid the windows status bar in Mac OS X starting with Lion and continuing through with Mountain Lion, Mavericks, OS X Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra. Obviously that change is here for good, and while this definitely makes for a cleaner appearance when looking at … Read More

We get a lot of silly submissions but this one from Reddit takes the weekly cake for it’s creative modification to the iPhone AC Adapter plugs. If you want to do this yourself, grab a couple of wiggly eyes and get sticking. Thanks for sending this in Daniel

Apple has begun to crack down on registered iOS developers who are selling UDID activation slots for iOS 5 betas to other users, in some cases sending email warnings to devs, but also deactivating other developer accounts completely. Apple is even flagging some individual UDID’s and making the devices unusable, forcing users to downgrade from … Read More

If you’re bored with the standard black text on a white background of Terminal, you can really spice up the command line interface by adding a custom background picture. One of our commenters recently asked how to do this, so here we’ll walk through the process. This was written for OS X 10.7 but it’s … Read More