Mac OS

Did you know OS X Mountain Lion includes 44 ridiculously beautiful high resolution wallpapers? They’re hidden inside the four equally attractive new screen savers and feature some truly stunning scenery from National Geographic, the Hubble Space telescope, and some amazing photographers. Each image is a whopping 3200×2000 resolution, here’s how to access these on your … Read More

Many people have noticed the simple web sharing option was pulled from System Preferences in OS X Mavericks and Mountain Lion. The server software still exists and you can start Apache server on your Mac yourself within a minute or two of mucking about in the Terminal, but for some people the command line is … Read More

Did you know the Finder in Mac OS X has a built-in instant image slide-show feature? It’s part of Quick Look, and though it’s been around a while, it’s a little known feature that is really great when you want to quickly show off a group of pictures, or even if you just want to … Read More

Rebooting a Mac from the command line is fairly simple, though it should be pointed out that most Mac OS X users are best served just using the standard  Apple menu method to issue a system restart. Nonetheless, for advanced Mac users, using the terminal reboot command can be an invaluable trick for troubleshooting … Read More

Apple has released an update to Java aimed at addressing the recently discovered security issue that could impact some Mac users. The update, dubbed “Java for OS X 2012-005”, is available for users of Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8. All Mac users eligible for the update are recommended to install it. You can … Read More

Want to quickly dismiss a desktop notification without opening Notification Center in Mac OS X? It’s easy, just hover over the notification with the cursor and use a two-fingered swipe gesture from left to right, swiping the alert to where Notification Center appears, and the alert will quickly zip away and off your Mac desktop … Read More

Event Invitations are one of the best features of Calendars in iOS and OS X, and if you aren’t using them yet to confirm the time and dates of meetings and events with people you should start now. Once an invitation is sent, it comes through as an alert to the recipient, and they can … Read More

Want to be notified of a reminder when you arrive at a specific place? Or maybe reminded to do something when you leave a location? You can do both of these from OS X with the Reminders app, much like you can in the iOS world. And because the reminders sync through iCloud, you’ll be … Read More

The Mac OS X social sharing features on the Mac platform let you quickly publish images and videos to a variety of places. Using Share Sheets within QuickTime Player you can even publish videos directly to YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook, right from the app. This is very fast, and offers a quick way to share … Read More

If you’re running the newest versions of OS X you’ve probably noticed that when apps attempt to access your Contacts list you will get an alert like “Application would like to access your contacts”, giving you the ability to allow or deny access. The apps that make the Contacts requests then get stored in a … Read More

The Sharing preference panel options were changed a bit in OS X Mountain Lion and again in Mavericks, and while things like Internet Sharing remain, the Web Sharing preference panel was removed. The Apache web server remains bundled with Mac OS X though, but you’ll need to turn to the command line to enable the … Read More

You can play Chess over the internet with friends or random opponents with the help of GameCenter in Mac OS X. It’s entirely free, comes with every version of OS X on every Mac, and doesn’t require any downloads, which makes it particularly convenient. If you already have a GameCenter account from the iOS world … Read More

Want to control iTunes without flipping to the app and disrupting your workflow? Maybe find a new song or skip the current one? The Mac menu bar is the perfect place for those kind of actions, so do yourself a favor and grab Significator. Significator is a great looking app that lets you control iTunes … Read More

The Go To Folder command is one of the most useful features in the OS X Finder, letting you quickly navigate deep into directory structures without having to click around. But it can also be used to access folders you may not want users to get to, be it /System/ directories or the Library folders. … Read More

Oracle has released a security patch for the recently discussed Java 7 vulnerability that had potential to run malicious code on a targeted computer. If you had previously installed Java SE 7 in OS X Mountain Lion or Lion you can download the new SE 7u7 update directly from Oracle: Get the Java SE 7u7 … Read More

Do you want to change how often Mac OS checks for available software updates? It’s possible to adjust the Mac software update frequency with a little effort. Mac OS X now automatically checks for software updates, and a notification pops up if you have updates available. But unlike older versions of Mac OS X, there … Read More

Messages app Preferences in OS X defaults to greying out the “Set Font…” option, a peculiar choice considering a fair amount of people like to change the font size of their instant messages to make it easier to read. That doesn’t mean you can’t change the text size though, and there’s a simple solution that … Read More

A new potentially dangerous Java security vulnerability has been discovered that could allow malicious code to run on a Java-enabled computer, be it a Mac or Windows PC. Most Mac users will be safe from the vulnerability because OS X Mountain Lion does not include Java by default, and OS X Lion includes an older … Read More