Apple has released the 6th developer preview of OS X Mavericks to Mac developers. No new features are expected in the new build, as typically these updates focus on bug fixes and minor refinements. The latest version weighs in between 1GB-3GB, depending on hardware, and is recommended to install for all users running OS X … Read More

The Mac OS X Disk Utility app provides an ability to erase free space on traditional hard drives, which overwrites vacant disk space on the drive to prevent any potential recovery of deleted files (that is, files that have been removed traditionally, rather than through secure methods). For most users this is an unnecessary procedure, … Read More

If you’re comfortable with the command line and ever in a situation where you need to find and replace a word, phrase, URL, or character across a group of multiple text documents, perl does the job quite well. A simple command string will very quickly perform a group batch find and replace on text, whether … Read More

Visiting a new city, or maybe just a part of town you’re unfamiliar with? If you’re concerned you may forget where you parked your car (or bike, mule, horse, chariot, whatever), just pull out your iPhone at that location and use the Maps app to save the location. This simple trick means you’ll never forget … Read More

Dashboard is a largely under appreciated feature of Mac OS X that adds little widgets to the Dashboard space or added directly to the desktop itself. Much of Dashboards lack of use comes down to not having widgets that pertain to interests of the user, and that’s where this trick comes in, which allows you … Read More

The Calendar (once called iCal) app of Mac OS X has full support for Time Zones for the entire calendar, individual events, shared calendars, and even invitations, but it must be enabled separately within the preferences. If you rely on Calendar app for just about anything and travel or work across time zones with any … Read More

A quirky bug in Mac OS X lets you freeze any window half-way through the minimize animation, providing for a completely askew window that retains the intended functionality of that minimized window. Obviously freezing an animation mid-animation isn’t particularly useful, but it can be fun to use, it looks pretty silly, and maybe it has … Read More

Apple has pushed iOS 7 Beta 6 to all compatible iOS devices registered with the iOS Developer Program. The 6th beta build is 11A4449d, and is said to include improvements and bug fixes. Arriving as a remarkably small OTA download weighing in between 12-25MB for most hardware, the smaller builds are appearing on the iPhone … Read More

PNGcrush is an image optimization utility whose primary function is to reduce the overall file size of the PNG images in a lossless manner. It’s quite popular with developers and designers alike, and though it’s bundled in some versions of linux from the get-go, it’s not included in OS X by default without installing Xcode. … Read More

The command line is usually thought of as serious and we usually only cover useful terminal tricks that are fairly advanced, but not everything in the Terminal has to be useful. To prove that, we have three command strings that when pasted into the OS X Terminal, do nothing but scroll screenfuls of random text, … Read More

Ever had a window get lost partially off screen in Mac OS X, where the window titlebars and close/minimize/maximize buttons are no longer accessible? Typically this looks something like the following screen shot: There a variety of potential causes and even random situations for windows to move offscreen like that, but it often happens with … Read More

Don’t you hate it when you misplace your iPhone and can’t find it? Or when it slides between the couch cushions or under a pile of laundry and you spend 20 minutes checking every possible place in the house to no avail? The old trick many of us use is to call the iPhone from … Read More

Like every other operating system, iOS stores temporary files and app caches locally on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and these files can build up over time. Generally iOS is pretty good at housekeeping, but if you’ve had a device for a long time and haven’t deleted old unused apps, resynced recently, or restored … Read More

Deleting mail from the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch is a little more cumbersome than it should be, but it doesn’t have to be that way. By making a quick settings change, we can turn the existing “Archive” function and swipe gesture into a “Delete” button and gesture instead. This also carries over to the … Read More

Despite Time Machine being a remarkable solution for easy backups, a peculiar issue can arise for some Time Machine users that causes the Mac OS X Trash to not be able to empty when the backup drive is connected to the Mac. This will usually manifest itself as the following; a user attempts to empty … Read More

Apple will unveil the latest iPhone model on Tuesday, September 10, according to a new report from the always reliable AllThingsD. The report confirms only the launch date, but seems to suggest that Apple may actually release two distinct iPhone models; the expected update to the iPhone 5 (iPhone 5S?), and possibly a lower-cost color … Read More

No longer want an email account on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod? Entire email accounts are very easy to remove from an iPhone or iPad, so whether you changed jobs, email addresses, an email provider was shut down, or perhaps you just don’t want to get emails for a particular account on your device any … Read More

Having reliable and regular backups of your Mac should be considered a mandatory part of maintenance, and for most users Time Machine provides that with easy and peace of mind. But what if you want multiple backups stored in different places, like a backup at home, and another at the office, or perhaps a backup … Read More