Archive for the year 2013

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Stop Images Loading Automatically in Mail for iOS to Reduce Data Usage & Speed Up Email

May 9, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Toggle Load Remote Images in Mail app to OFF (or ON)

Emails opened in Mail app for iOS default to loading all images attached to that message. This makes emails format and arrange themselves as the sender intended, often with nice little header graphics and signature files, but it has a potentially serious downside: increased bandwidth usage. On a wi-fi connection that bandwidth usage hardly matters, … Read More

How to Turn Off Phone Calls on the iPhone but Keep Data & iMessage

May 8, 2013 - 34 Comments
Turn off phone calls but keep iPhone data working

Ever wished you could turn off the phone call portion of your iPhone, while still retaining the ability to use data, access the internet, even send iMessages? You can do that with a funky workaround we’ll cover here, and it’s an amazing solution if you’re looking for some peace and quiet but in a situation … Read More

9 Awesome Wave Wallpapers to Decorate Backgrounds Like an Apple Product Shot

May 8, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Tahiti wave wallpaper

Apple has long had a love affair with including incredible ocean and wave imagery into their product shots. They’ve been doing it for years, with some stunning wave and surf photography featured prominently on the screens of Macs, whether it’s from the old PowerBook days, to even right now on Apple.com with the iMac, Retina … Read More

A Quick Fix for “No Batteries Available” & Fans Running Constantly on a MacBook Air

May 7, 2013 - 252 Comments
Key sequences to reset the SMC controller on a MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Retina

If you’ve ever had a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro’s battery disappear at random it can be a disconcerting feeling. This is often accompanied with the battery menu having an “X” through it and saying “No Batteries Available”, a very sluggish Mac, and even after a reboot or not the Mac will often have fans … Read More

Close Windows When Quitting Apps in Mac OS X Selectively or Always

May 7, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Close windows on application quit

Mac OS X defaults to automatically re-opening windows when an application is quit and relaunched later. This feature is borrowed from iOS and it’s incredibly useful, and once you become dependent on it you’ll find that it can really increase your productivity by allowing you to get back to work quickly. This is especially true … Read More

How to Fix Randomly Disconnecting Bluetooth Keyboards & Devices on Mac

May 6, 2013 - 50 Comments
Bluetooth logo

Bluetooth devices are usually extremely reliable, but every once in a while something can start acting up and either lose it’s connection with the Mac completely, or suddenly develop a flaky connection. With something like the Apple Wireless Keyboard, a Magic Trackpad, or a Magic Mouse, it’s fairly obvious when something is going wrong; clicks … Read More

9 Tricks to Ease a Cluttered Mac Desktop & Maintain Focus

May 6, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Full Screen mode icon for OS X

Desktop clutter happens to the best of us, even if we try our hardest to maintain a remarkably simplified virtual workspace. Whether it’s way too many icons thrown all over the desktop from working with files, or just a million and one windows open for various apps, documents, and browser tabs, there are some simple … Read More

How to Turn Off Read Receipts in iMessage for iPhone & iPad

May 5, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Disable read receipts in Messages for iOS

Read Receipts allow others to be notified when you have read their messages on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. From the user perspective it displays as a tiny “Read” indicator below a sent message if the recipient has seen the message. There is some obvious benefit to that, but it can also be a … Read More

Enable HDMI Audio & Toggle Sound Output from Mac OS X Quickly

May 4, 2013 - 22 Comments
Mac audio output

If you’ve ever connected a Mac to something else like a TV through HDMI, you’ve probably noticed that, unlike the video source, sound output does not automatically change to the newly connected hardware. This is intentional, but many users misinterpret that as a problem with their HDMI adapter or cable, or even their Macs output … Read More

Zoom Web Browsers & Increase Font Size for Easier Reading on the Web

May 3, 2013 - 1 Comment
Zoom web pages on the Mac with these keyboard shortcuts

Though most web pages pick a reasonable text size, some are just too hard to read because the font size is either too big, or more typically, just too small. Sometimes it’s not the web sites fault though, and a web page that is perfectly viewable on one computer may become teeny-tiny on another display … Read More

Change the Notification Center Background Pattern in Mac OS X

May 2, 2013 - 1 Comment
Notification Center wallpaper background before and after being replaced in OS X

Tired of seeing that linen wallpaper in the background of Notification Center of OS X? You can change that linen pattern to something else, giving a nice customized appearance to the Notifications panel when you’re checking alerts on the Mac. There are actually two ways to swap out the Notifications background, the harder manual way … Read More

iOS 6.1.4 Released for iPhone 5 [IPSW Download Links]

May 2, 2013 - Leave a Comment
iOS 6.1.4

Apple has released a minor update for iPhone 5 users, versioned as iOS 6.1.4 with a build ID of 10B350. The brief release notes suggest the only change is an “Updated audio profile for speakerphone”, though in our own before and after testing we were not able to determine any obvious differences in speakerphone output … Read More

iOS 7 Release Date Scheduled for September?

May 1, 2013 - Leave a Comment
iOS 7 logo

Apple is intending to release it’s next-generation iOS 7 mobile operating system in September, with an initial preview release shown to developers this June at WWDC 2013, according to a series of new reports from Bloomberg and AllThingsDigital.

Use a Single External Hard Drive for Time Machine Backups and File Storage

May 1, 2013 - 58 Comments
Specify the Time Machine partition

Having regular backups of your Mac is a necessity, and there is really no easier way to consistently back up your Mac than by using the excellent Time Machine feature of OS X. But with the enormous size of external hard drives and their prices becoming cheaper and cheaper, it’s not always necessary to dedicate … Read More

How to Exclude Files from a Zip Archive

Apr 30, 2013 - 6 Comments
Zip archive icon

The easiest way to exclude many specific files or a group of matched files from a zip archive is by skipping the easy zipping utility built into Mac OS X’s friendly UI and turn over to the command line, where the powerful zip command resides.

Enable Siri “Raise to Speak” to Hear Command Responses via Ear Speaker

Apr 30, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Raise to Speak with Siri

Siri defaults to speaking responses back through the speakers of the iPhone and iPad, and often quite loudly at that. Though you can control Siri’s volume level independently of general system audio levels, having the voice of Siri be set to a very quiet level isn’t much of a solution if you actually want to … Read More

How to Remove “Tap to Tweet” & “Tap to Post” from Notification Center in iOS

Apr 29, 2013 - Leave a Comment
Tap to Tweet button in Notification Center of iOS

Notification Center in iOS has both Twitter and Facebook integration and the ability to post to either service with a “Tap to Tweet” and “Tap to Post” button. On the iPad and iPhone these are accessed with the rest of Notifications by using a downward swiping gesture from the top of the screen. If you’d … Read More

Disable the Red Badge Alerts on Dock Icons in Mac OS X

Apr 29, 2013 - 1 Comment
Disable badge app icons in Mac OS X

The little red badges that appear on app icons stored in the Mac OS X Dock are intended to provide a quick alert and overview of some important notification pertaining to the respective app. Whether it’s the new unread email count, new iMessages, a Calendar event, unfinished Reminders, missed FaceTime calls, or any other number … Read More

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