If you’re wondering how to mount an ISO image in Mac OS X, it is very easy. For most ISO images you can mount them simply by double-clicking the ISO image file, and it will go through the auto-mounter app within Mac OS X putting it on your desktop. If for whatever reason that doesn’t … Read More
Whether you’re a systems administrator or a web developer, or anything in between, chances are you’ll have to flush your DNS cache every once in a while to get things straightened out server-side, or even just for testing certain configurations. Flushing your DNS cache in Mac OS X is actually really easy, but there are … Read More
Quick Look is a nice feature in Mac OS X for quickly previewing documents, images, and other file data before opening it into a designated application. I use Quick Look often for glancing at the content of various documents and it certainly beats launching an application when you just need to take a quick peak … Read More
Adding a user is something easily accomplished using the built in GUI tools that ship with OS X, however any power user can appreciate the possible efficiency gained from using the command line. So in the spirit of efficiency here are the steps necessary to add a user to your Mac OS X system all … Read More
Here’s a great Firefox tip that I think you’ll appreciate as much as I do, which allows for a spell checking function in web based input forms. To accomplish this, you’ll start by editing an entry within the about:config configuration menu of Firefox, where you can enable spell checking in text input fields. For example, … Read More
Mac OS X is filled with useful features to make your computing life easier. Here’s a great Mac tip provided by Chad Barraford: “Ever want to quickly save some content in any cocoa app? Maybe a phone number, directions, a picture, url, etc? Highlight it and hit Shift+Command+Y and your Mac will paste the content … Read More
It is not unusual for companies and schools to block certain ports to prevent people from using things like P2P networks and AIM. But the AIM chat protocol is quite popular, so if you want to use it and you find it to be blocked on a network, you can probably get around it by … Read More
Reader Mathew Prairen asks a common question about forcibly opening files with an application on the Mac, and it has a remarkably simple answer: “I have a few documents and files from my PC that Pages refuses to open, is there any way I can force Pages to open these files?” As a matter of … Read More
If you have an extra iPod laying around that isn’t getting much musical usage, perhaps you’d like to try using it as a boot disk. Yes seriously, though obviously by doing so you will lose the iPod ability to play music, and gain a bootable Mac volume instead.
Frozen apps happen to the best of us for reasons we don’t always understand, and a Mac application can just suddenly become unresponsive and we see the spinning beachball of death (sometimes called SBOD for short). For those new to the Mac platform, getting around the spinning wait cursor might be confusing, so here’s two … Read More
GeekTool is a really cool utility that allows you to place the output of unix commands on your desktop. Things like system logs and calenders can be superimposed on your background picture, allowing for quick reading and creating a very nice looking effect (here’s a screenshot of it in action). My only complaint with GeekTool … Read More
There has never been a time when I am saving a document in Mac OS X that I don’t click the expand arrow to see the full save dialog screen. That little button is situated alongside the file name input, and when you click on it, you have access to the expanded dialog that allows … Read More
Regardless of how many Mac’s you administer, there will surely come a time when you’ll need to retrieve relevant System Information. This can be done from the graphical interface with the Apple System Profiler utility, but often you’ll need to pull system details from the terminal as well. Gathering system information from the command line … Read More
Reader Adam Smith writes in with the following question: “I am a new Mac user, and I love OSX! I have a MacBook Pro 15”. I would like to know though, is there a way that you can lock a MAC? Like in Windows, you can hit the shortcut “Windows Key + L”. Is there … Read More
Preview is the default application to open just about any image or PDF file on your Mac, it’s a great program that blows anything comparable in the Windows world out of the water. One of the greatly underused features of Preview is the ability to view images and PDF files in full screen mode. Entering … Read More
One of my biggest peeves with Firefox 2 is how the tab system works with the scroll bar. Prior to version 2, tabs would squish in size to accommodate more. Being a tab heavy user I found this to be perfectly adequate and I got used to how it works. Enter Firefox 2; instead of … Read More
We all know the familiar Mac OS X Software Update and App Store Updates panel, it pops up weekly to give us a nice GUI interface to install all the latest updates to our Apple software. But did you know that you can get the same list, query the available updates list, and even install … Read More
Hate it when a web site resizes your browser window? In Firefox, you can stop that. While development etiquette has generally made web browsing a more pleasant experience over the years, removing such horrors as blinking text and the background midi. Unfortunately, there are a few annoyances still left on web sites, and one of … Read More
