Tips & Tricks

You can watch what’s going on behind the scenes during a Mac OS X system installation by accessing the Logs window after the installer has begun. From Logs, use the pulldown menu to select “Show All Logs” to see a live stream of all activity pertaining to the OS X installation and/or upgrade process. “Show … Read More

If you want iTunes to take up the absolute least amount of screen space, yet still be able to control music and volume, use the iTunes Micro Player (Yea I just named it that, I don’t know what the official name is). First minimize iTunes so that it’s in the standard mini-player mode, but then … Read More

All iOS devices come with a Unique Device Identifier number, known as a UDID. The UDID is kind of like a serial number for that device, except that it’s even longer at 40 characters. By far the most simple way to retrieve your iPhone, iPad, or iPod‘s identifier number is through iTunes itself.

Apple announced that Lion would be released exclusively through the Mac App Store for $30. This is great because the App Store policy allows a single purchase to install on all your Macs, but what if you don’t have broadband access on all your Macs, or what if you just want a bootable installation disc? … Read More

Rather than disabling Flash completely in Chrome, an excellent option is to enable a hidden “Click to Play” feature that prevents that plugin and all others from automatically loading. With Click To Play turned on, if you want Flash or another browse plug-in to run and load, you simply click on it to play or … Read More

The malware protecting Mac OS X Security Update will automatically download and update it’s malware definitions list from Apple, but if you’re like me you probably want to know how to manually check if the malware list is updated or not. We’ll show you where the malware list is located on Mac, and how to … Read More

Sometimes the easiest fix when troubleshooting an AirPort wireless connection problem is to just turn AirPort on and off. Instead of using the menu item or System Preferences, we can enable and disable AirPort very quickly directly from the Mac OS X Terminal.

If you don’t want to bother with defaults write commands or the terminal, an alternate method to show hidden files in Mac OS X is to simply use the Chrome web browser. Just hit Command+L and enter / into the address bar (alternatively, you can enter file:/// as the address), and you’ll be presented with … Read More

You can give your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch a custom name easily, or change it from its current name to something else if someone else happened to give it a name that you don’t like. This is helpful for when an iOS device transfers ownership, or if the name is perhaps just no longer … Read More

Tired of the lengthy digital clock showing in the Mac OS X menu bar? You can go for a minimalist approach by setting the clock to display as an analog (that is, the old fashioned clocks with a face and hands), which will take up much less space and helps to clean up an otherwise … Read More

Instead of disabling the screen shot shadow completely you can take a one-time screen capture minus the shadow by using either the Grab app or by using the command line screencapture utility.

Not sure if you have unsaved changes when editing a file in Mac OS X? Just look at the window titlebars close button, if the red close button has a darker red dot inside of it then you have unsaved changes.

If you use Google Chrome as a web browser you have probably noticed that the Adobe Flash plugin is contained within the app by default, even if you have uninstalled Flash on your Mac. This is good because the plugin is sandboxed, but some users may wish to disable the Flash Player plugin within Chrome … Read More

If you or someone you know is coming to the Mac from the world of Windows and are accustomed to the concept of right-clicking, as in literally clicking on the right hand side of a trackpad or mouse, you’ll be relieved to find out this feature can be enabled in Mac OS X. This will … Read More

We’ve seen a few interesting and cheap ways to manage cables and keep MagSafe cables out of the way, but if those aren’t enough to organize your cable catastrophe, you can try out the Applecore. The name has little reference to the Apple we know and love, it’s more a description of the way the … Read More

Have you ever noticed that there’s a shadow on every screen shot of a window you take in Mac OS X? If you don’t want those shadows to appear on your screen shots, you can disable the shadow effect by turning to defaults commands at the Terminal.

Many people juggle multiple iTunes accounts for a variety of reasons, be it to access international app stores and their different content offerings, having another iTunes account without a credit card for their kids, or because you’re dodging country and timezone restrictions. We all know it’s a pain to manually log in and out of … Read More

If you don’t want to deal with the lengthy process of changing the short user name in Mac OS X, an alternative is to setup user name aliases. A user name alias functions as a simple way to create a shorthand version of an account name. For example, if a users full account name is … Read More