It has long been speculated that Apple would change the brushed metal interface in Mac OS X to more closely resemble the iTunes appearance. The latest Mac OS X 10.5 build 9A410 shows us exactly that, a unified appearance that rids the operating system of the brushed metal look. The appearance change is relatively subtle, … Read More

Everyone hates backing up files, and often the annoyance turns into delaying the process, which is fine until you actually have a problem and need a backup. If you don’t want to do a complete system backup, at least save the essential files that define your user experience. BackityMac makes this task a whole lot … Read More

Apple has delayed the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard several months from it’s originally scheduled date of June 2007 to October 2007. The statement released by Apple says that the iPhone has distracted the operating system development team, and that the original deadline is no longer obtainable. Rumors are already circulating in the … Read More

By default, the Mac OS X Dock has a semitransparent white background that holsters the Dock’s icons. ClearDock is a nice little utility that allows you to customize the Dock background to be completely transparent, or if you’d prefer, you can select a different semitransparent color. It’s super easy to use, and best of all, … Read More

Mac rumor site AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has filed a patent for a finder feature that would allow different sized icons to be within the same window, with the size of the icon being representative of that items importance. This feature would make a lot of sense for many directories that are crowded with … Read More

Many schools, employers, and countries restrict access to certain websites for any number of reasons. The easiest way to get around the restrictions is by browsing the web through anonymous proxies, and the web is littered with thousands of proxy sites that are capable of fulfilling this duty for you. But why use a third … Read More

When it comes to increasing productivity within Mac OS X you can never know too many keyboard shortcuts. Found on the Mac developer blog, Theocacao, we’ve covered over half of these shortcuts before, but those that we haven’t are worth knowing, and those that we have are worth a reminder. Shortcut #6 is probably my … Read More

Most of us use iTunes to transfer files to and from our iPod, but apparently you can also use the command line. Sasha Ingbram writes in with this tip: “I realize this is a controversial position to take, but I’m not always thrilled with iTunes and how long it takes to get things done. For … Read More

Apple has just released an update to their Boot Camp software, although it still is technically in beta. If you don’t want to shell out the bucks for Parallels or VMWare but you want your Mac to run Microsoft Windows, Apple’s free Boot Camp is what you need. For those that don’t know, Boot Camp … Read More

Yes we have covered UNO in the past, but todays release of version 1.5 is a complete rewrite, offering even more features and interface improvements. For those that don’t know, UNO offers interface enhancements to Mac OS X to remove the brushed metal interface, thus unifying the appearance of Mac OS X to more closely … Read More

There are some Mac users out there who love to customize and change the appearance of every single thing on their desktop, from the shape of their windows, to fancy wallpapers, to custom icons. Personally, I keep it simple, aside from a custom wallpaper I unify the desktop appearance with UNO, which provides a clean … Read More

We’ve received several questions asking how to block specific sites from being accessed directly on the Mac. The frustration seems to lie in how easy it is to circumvent the typical measures, such as setting Parental Controls and blocking sites in Safari, only to have them accessed in Camino or Firefox. Well, a quick and … Read More

It’s long been known that Mac OS X 10.5 is due out sometime this year, but when exactly nobody knows and speculation on the release date has been all over the board. SwitchtoaMac.com uses empirical evidence to suggest that Leopard will be released in May, but they go a step further and predict the exact … Read More

Everyone enjoys a cool desktop background and OSXPlanet just might take the cake for its automatically updating planet wallpaper. You can choose any of the nine planets (eight if you’re anti-Pluto) and have them displayed as your background. Perhaps the most impressive is with our very own planet Earth, which you can set to display … Read More

Looks like we’ve gotten one step closer to Leopard with the release of Mac OS X 10.4.9 today. Plenty of updates, fixes, some new features, and performance tweaks are included. While it’s unlikely there will be any problems with the update, some prudent users often wait a day after a release to insure a trouble … Read More

We all want our Mac’s to run their very best, but sometimes it’ll require a bit of tweaking to get there. We have shown many simple tips to speed up older Macs, but for the really ancient Macs out there the site LowEndMac has posted a good read that includes eleven great tips to improve … Read More

Generally speaking Mac OS X is secure by default, certainly more so than your average Windows counterpart at least. Of course things can always be more secure, that’s just the nature of computing. I personally don’t sit around and worry about the security of my Mac, but if you’re a bit worried about the potential … Read More

I like Dashboard a lot, I really do, but it can be an awful memory hog even when it’s not being used. Once you hit F12, the widgets are loaded and don’t quit automatically which makes accessing them later faster, but it also wastes system resources. It’s not uncommon for each widget to take up … Read More