Mac OS

One of the best ways to kid-proof (and generally fool proof) an iPhone or iPad is to turn off in-app purchases. That’s great for the iOS world, but for the desktop you can do something similar by disabling access to the iTunes Store completely, this will prevent unintended purchases of apps, music, movies, books, or … Read More

Preview is a great basic image editing app bundled with Mac OS X, but newer versions of Mac OS have simplified the available image Export Format options down to JPEG, JPEG 2000, OpenEXR, PDF, PNG, and TIFF. Or at least that’s what you see on first glance, but it turns out you can still access … Read More

GIMP is a popular and fairly powerful free image editor from the linux world that is basically like a freeware version of Photoshop, complete with many of the tools used for photo retouching and image manipulation that you’d expect. It’s is a great free PS alternative, but Mac users have long had to install X11 … Read More

Dashboard got a user interface overhaul with new versions of OS X and it now more closely resembles – surprise surprise – iOS and OS X’s very own Launchpad. You’ll find the new look when you go to add a widget to the Dashboard, and just like iOS you can now arrange all those widgets … Read More

The latest versions of Mac OS let you move files directly into iCloud from your Mac, these files can then be opened on any other Mac or iOS device set up with the same iCloud account. This is extremely convenient if you want to quickly move a file around but don’t want to copy it … Read More

Mac users with Mac OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, El Capitan, and Mountain Lion finally have the option to bring back the much-loved “Save As” feature that was removed from Lion. It’s slightly hidden though, and there’s a few quirks with it, but we’ll show you how to access “Save As” and even better, how to … Read More

If you have a Mac laptop you probably know by now that OS X Mountain Lion removed the Time Remaining option from the menubar battery indicator, opting instead to show an iOS-like percentage left. For many of us, knowing the remaining battery life is valuable information, and thanks to a great free app you can … Read More

The default setting for Notification Center in both Mac OS X and iOS is to sort alerts from apps manually, a setting which doesn’t make much sense if you use Notifications as a timeline of events and want the most recent always on top. Fortunately, changing Notification Center to arrange alerts by time is as … Read More

Battery life on portable Macs running Mountain Lion improved slightly with the OS X 10.8.1 update, but still generally underperforms the same Macs running Lion. Since updating to OS X 10.8.1 from 10.8, we have conducted several unscientific tests on a variety of different Macs and found there is a minor improvement to battery life … Read More

Safari 6 has a great new way to quickly navigate through open browser tabs using gestures. To access the new tab preview screen, either use a two-fingered pinch inwards, or click the little box on the far right of the tabs: Once in tab previews, use a two-finger gesture left or right to flip between … Read More

Super Nintendo was one of the greatest game consoles of yesteryear, and with BSNES you can play the SNES classics right on your Mac running OS X Yosemite, OS X Mavericks, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Lion. While BSNES may not be as full featured as the popular SNES9x alternative that works only … Read More

If you’ve been using the Macintosh platform long enough you’ll undoubtedly have fond memories of the classic Mac OS system sounds like Quack, Wild Eep, moof, Boing, Droplet, Monkey, Laugh, and Logjam. Those sound effects from the wee old days of System 6, System 7, and System 8, echoed throughout many school computer labs throughout … Read More

The first developer build of OS X 10.8.2 has been made available to Mac Developers as build 12C31a, 9to5mac notes. The update focuses on features that will probably arrive in the Fall presumably alongside iOS 6 and the next iPhone, including integrating Facebook into OS X much like Twitter, in addition to updates made to … Read More

OS X Mountain Lion has been updated to 10.8.1, the update is a general maintenance and bug fix release which includes assorted improvements. The OS X 10.8.1 update can be downloaded through the Mac App Store, either launch the App Store directly or access it through the  Apple menu by selecting “Software Update”. The … Read More

OS X Mountain Lion changed the battery indicator for mobile Mac users, removing the option to show the remaining battery life time and instead displaying only a percentage, like iOS. For those of us who live on the go and rely heavily on battery life, knowing the actual remaining battery capacity in hours is much … Read More

If you don’t like the Auto-Save feature of OS X, you’ll be pleased to discover that turning it off system-wide on a Mac is just a matter of checking a settings box within OS X Mountain Lion and OS X Mavericks. This will disable the automatic saving behavior for all files across all documents on … Read More

Twitter is deeply integrated into the Mac now with the latest versions of OS X, and that means you can send tweets from just about anywhere once it’s set up and configured. If you went to System Preferences hoping to find a panel to set it up and walked away confused, don’t worry because enabling … Read More

Do Not Track is a new privacy feature in Safari 6 that causes Safari to tell certain websites to not track you online as you browse the web. This prevents social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, from tracking you across the web, and it also causes ad servers and analytic services to not follow … Read More