Longtime users of the Google Chrome web browser may be puzzled to discover the appearance of a mysterious Chrome Notifications menu bar icon, appearing as a little bell icon along with the other Mac menu bar items. Unlike removing some of the other OS X menu bar icons though, you can’t simply drag it out … Read More

If you’re a fan of using gestures for navigation, you’ll be pleased to know that you can navigate browser history in Safari for iOS (versions 7+) by simply swiping back and forth. This basically functions as an alternative to the traditional Back and Forward buttons in Safari, allowing for quick swipes to go forward or … Read More

Microsoft has brought the popular Office suite to the iPad, including full featured versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Each app is offered as a free download through the App Store for iOS, but there are some functionality differences between the free and paid subscription plans. To put it simply, the free plans of … Read More

Netcat is a powerful command line tool that can read and write data across a network connection using TCP/IP, it’s commonly used for relays, file transfer, port scanning, amongst other things. Though netcat origins are from the unix and linux worlds, netcat is also built into Mac OS X, and we’re going to use the … Read More

You can quickly get the Sunrise and Sunset times on a given day for any location, right from your iPhone or iPad. So whether you’re planning a romantic rendezvous for sunset, just want to see the sun peak over the horizon, gearing up for some dramatic lighting photography, or you’re aiming for dawn patrol waves … Read More

While Safari usually works just fine for browsing the web, there are times you may encounter a persistent error message about verifying the identity of a particular website. The precise error message may read something like this, and appear on almost any site, where “URL” is a variety of domains: “Safari can’t verify the identity … Read More

If you share your Mac on a network you may be interested to know who is connected to the Mac at any given time. This may include listing currently logged in users through a variety of network protocols, even locally, or perhaps just a history of users logins over a period of time. While Mac … Read More

Have you ever needed to know what type of security and encryption method a wireless network is using? While the Mac will figure this out itself when joining most networks, you may need to relay the information to others, or specify it yourself when joining other networks. You can get the encryption protocol in use … Read More

Every time you connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a new computer, you’ll get a “Trust This Computer?” alert dialog popping up. If you’ve updated iTunes or reset an iOS device to factory settings, sometimes you’ll even see this Trust dialog box on a computer you’ve already chosen to trust from that device. … Read More

If you’re attempting to upgrade or restore an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple TV by way of iTunes and you encounter an Error 17 alert, you’re probably experiencing an issue with the computer connecting to Apple’s servers. This can be caused by a variety of things and users may see it either when trying … Read More

This weeks featured Mac desk setup comes to us from web developer and student Jonathan C., who uses multiple iOS devices and Macs tied together with the help of Teleport to work in unison. Let’s learn a bit more about each device and how they’re used!

Power Search for iTunes is a feature that allows many additional search parameters to be used when looking for all media types offered on iTunes, including music, apps, movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, and iTunes University. But what was once built directly into iTunes has been removed by Apple for some reason or another from … Read More

The iOS interface is easily identifiable by it’s ubiquitous usage of whites and bright colors, which can be both pleasing to the eye but also excessively harsh when an iPhone or iPad is used in darker ambient lighting situations. New versions of iOS offer an ability to adjust that bright whiteness with a setting called … Read More

Have you ever seen a plane flying overhead and wondered just how high up it was, where it was going, or what flight number it identifies as? Now you don’t need to wonder anymore, because your iPhone (or iPad) can tell you exactly what flights are flying above you by way of the ever-useful iOS … Read More

The EXT file system (short for Extended File System) and it’s family members of EXT2, EXT3, and EXT4, are the file systems used by Linux and Raspberry Pi. Mac users who work with multiple platforms may notice that OS X is unable to mount EXT partitions on its own, and thus anyone wishing to mount … Read More

Though the All My Files folder is undoubtedly useful, Mac users with limited system resources along with tons of files may notice some sluggishness when using the feature. That can translate into CPU spikes and the perception of a generally slow Finder and Mac, because new windows in the file system default to opening into … Read More

Now that more users have updated to iOS 7.1, a continuing (yet fairly small) stream of complaints have surfaced about battery life for some iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users that have moved to the latest version of iOS. Battery issues are reported with some degree of regularity with a subset of users with just … Read More

Longtime Mac users are accustomed to moving files around in Mac OS X by dragging and dropping them between folders and directories, or perhaps using the more Windows-like file cut and paste ability. Both of those methods work just fine to relocate files and move things about, but another lesser known option to move a … Read More