Mac OS

Photo Streams are a great addition to iOS, but thus far seem to be an underused feature. With Photo Stream, you can easily share a collection of images with a select group of people, without having to go through the usual avenues of social networks. Instead, you create an instant gallery right out of the … Read More

Now that OS X 10.9 is regularly appearing in usage logs, we thought we’d take a stab at the naming convention. How about OS X Longcat? Yup, we’re bored today and diving straight into the pool of Longcat memes, and there’s nothing better than boredom and some Pixelmator fun to create something totally stupid. Don’t … Read More

Development of the next major release of Mac OS X is well under way, with version OS X 10.9 regularly appearing in web analytics logs of OSXDaily, 9to5mac, AppleInsider, CultofMac, and several other Apple-related websites. This was first brought to light today by 9to5mac, whose graph above shows a handful of visitors from Cupertino California … Read More

Time Machine backups can be triggered remotely thanks to SSH (Remote Login) and the command line. This is an excellent solution to use if you left the home or office without making an important backup, though the SSH requirement does add a potential layer of complexity that may make it more appropriate for advanced users. … Read More

If you’re a Mac owner you know that every time the Mac reboots or starts up it makes a startup chime sound. Though you can temporarily mute the chime by holding down the Mute key on any Mac keyboard, you can also choose to disable it completely by turning to the command line. To be … Read More

The history command is a useful way to find specific commands that have been used in the past, and it can also be used to discover what your personal most used commands are with the following command string: history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head -15 The … Read More

The simplest way to move everything from an old Mac to a new Mac is to use the built-in Migration Assistant tool. Migration Assistant can be used at any time, but ideally, it will be used on first boot of the new Mac, that way when it’s finished everything on the new machine will be … Read More

The Help menu that’s always visible in Mac OS X and within Mac apps is far more powerful than just serving as a knowledge base for questions about the app in use; it can also function as a full-fledged action launcher for any menu items. This is useful for when you’re either still learning keyboard … Read More

Searching the file system for a specific document or file is easy and very fast. Though most users are best served using Spotlight from the menubar, there are times when either Spotlight isn’t working, you need more paramaters, you’re working in the Terminal, operating with a remote machine, or perhaps just would like to use … Read More

Mac OS X has a myriad of multi-touch gestures that have been expanded upon in modern versions of Mac OS X, and one of the better gestures is the two-fingered swipe left or right to go either back or forward in a wide variety of apps. This gesture is borrowed from the iOS world and … Read More

You can set unique names for how your Macs computer name appears locally, from file sharing and networking, and even Bonjour services, with the help of the scutil command. This allows you to have a custom hostname for Terminal and SSH, another friendlier name for what’s visible to others on local networks, and yet another … Read More

As some of you undoubtedly noticed, OS X Mountain Lion removed the Displays menu bar item, which let you quickly change screen resolutions from a pull down menu available system wide in OS X. If you miss that function, you’ll be pleased to discover a freely available app is on the Mac App Store to … Read More

The most simple screen saver in Mac OS X is just a floating grey Apple logo  against a black background, but you can make that screen saver significantly better by attaching a customized message to it, which will be added along with the logo and move about the screen of the Mac. You can … Read More

Dragging files into the Mail Dock icon is a quick way to send out email attachments, but if you’re faster with the keyboard, try setting up a keyboard shortcut to perform the same task instead. This makes any selected file(s) from the Finder just a speedy keystroke away from being sent off in an email:

A new update labeled Java for OS X 2012-006 has been released for all versions of Mac OS X. The updates name is somewhat misleading however, in that instead of updating Java it actually uninstalls the Java applet plugin from all web browsers on the Mac. This is done as a security precaution to protect … Read More

Want to share a grocery list with someone? Maybe you have an important to-do list that you need to give a co-worker, or to anyone else with an iOS device or Mac? You can now share any such list right from the Reminders app in Mac OS X, or you can even share the lists … Read More

Following up about Screen Sharing in Mac OS X, which lets you remote control a Mac from another Mac, you can also remotely access and control Macs from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch using VNC. There is minimal work involved to get this working, and if you already set up Screen Sharing you’re halfway … Read More

For anyone who uses the command line regularly, a new tool called pkill makes killing processes significantly easier in modern releases of Mac OS and Mac OS X. Improving on the standard kill command, pkill easily supports wildcards, making it easy to terminate all processes belonging to a match or even a specific user.