If you have an Apple Remote Control and a Mac with an IR receiver port, you can quickly put the Mac to sleep using just the remote control. Obviously you’ll need to be in the same room as the Mac to do this, but it’s pretty handy. Here’s what to do: Point the remote control … Read More

The default passcode for iPad and iPhone uses a fairly simple four digit numerical password, these are certainly better to use than nothing, but they can be somewhat easy to guess because statistically many people use common passwords or some variation of a simple theme, like a repetition, countdown, or birth year. An easy way … Read More

In an extreme situation, say a Mac is lost or stolen, you can remotely wipe the Mac of all its data and contents with the help of iCloud. Remotely wiping a Mac goes a step further though and not only removes all data from the computer, but locks it down so that it’s unusable without … Read More

If you’re trying to install or download a handful of iOS apps, sometimes an app or even your entire home screen is filled with app icons labeled “Waiting…”. Even worse, sometimes those apps stuck on “Waiting” can be without any of the progress bars moving, with a failure to complete downloading or installing. Don’t sweat … Read More

This Mac setup comes to us from Barry L, a high school computer science teacher in South Carolina. The Apple gear is used to teach AP Computer Science, Computer Programming, and Computer Science Research, and the classroom is gradually converting to Macs from a bunch of Dells running Windows XP, which will then be used … Read More

You can create ISO images from any source disk or data by using the command line in Mac OS X. This isn’t too different than burning them through Terminal, and you can use either the hdiutil tool or dd command. While the command line is generally reserved for advanced users, using it to create ISO’s … Read More

Is Safari no longer remembering logins and passwords? Is Mail.app asking for a password every time you launch the app and try to check or send mail, despite the fact that you’ve entered login credentials over and over? When a Mac app no longer remembers password and login data, it’s often the result of corrupted … Read More

Ever been away from your Mac and wished you could put it to sleep remotely? Maybe you accidentally left a Mac on at home or at work, or maybe you just left a Mac running so a download could complete. You don’t have to leave it running while you’re gone though, here are two different … Read More

The most straight forward way to burn an ISO from a Mac is using Disk Utility, but you can also burn ISO’s and disk images directly from the command line with the help of a tool called ‘dd’. This works for Mac OS X and Linux, but we’re going to be focusing on the Mac … Read More

Modern versions of Mac OS X include a nice new ability to be able to duplicate and paste files exactly. Basically this means that if a file is owned by another user, Duplicate Exactly and Paste Exactly will preserve the files original ownership and permissions, rather than copy the file with the current user becoming … Read More

This weeks Mac setup comes to us from Raphael C, who uses his Apple gear for iOS and web development. It’s a fairly simple setup, which is perfect for getting things done without too many distractions. Here’s the hardware in use: Macbook Pro 13″ mid-2011 model Samsung 22″ T220 Display Apple Wireless Keyboard Magic Trackpad … Read More

Spotlight is the powerful built-in search engine on Mac. Not only will it find just about any file or folder buried on your file system or attached drives, but it also doubles as a fantastically quick application launcher, dictionary lookup tool, and so much more. If you aren’t using Spotlight on a regular basis yet … Read More

If you’re spending the time and money to develop an iOS app, don’t skimp on the icon. This may sound like silly advice, but the fact is a good icon can make your app stand out in the App Store and on a users home screen, encouraging both downloads and use.

You probably know by now that you can get album art from iTunes via the Advanced menu. That will fill in most missing album covers, but bands that don’t sell their music through iTunes or music downloaded from Soundcloud and blogs often don’t have any artwork attached. In this case you can manually add artwork … Read More

Ever wonder what an iOS developers home office looks like? This great Mac setup should give you an idea. Coming to us from Henry in Florida, this setup is used primarily for iOS development and photography. There’s a lot of great Apple hardware here, including: 2011 MacBook Air i7 with 256GB SSD 2008 Mac Pro … Read More

A MAC address is a unique identification number assigned to network interfaces, these can be attached to physical hardware like NIC and Wi-Fi cards or assigned to virtual machines. On some occasions, you’ll need to change a MAC address to another ID. We’ve received a few questions about this recently because the process of changing … Read More

A long hidden airport command line utility buried deep in Mac OS X can be used to scan for and find available wireless networks. This powerful tool is very helpful for network admins and systems administrators, but it’s handy for the average user to help discover nearby wi-fi routers as well.

We recently covered 12 keyboard shortcuts to help navigate around and manipulate text in Mac OS X, and now we’ll show you a handful of similar tricks for use at the command line. These shortcuts can be used just about anywhere in the Terminal, including the bash prompt.