Mac OS

Apple recently simplified the way Xcode is installed, bundling everything into a single /Applications/Xcode.app/ directory and removing the /Developer directory that used to exist. There are some advantages to this approach, but one of the annoyances is that you now have to launch the iPhone or iPad simulator by opening Xcode first. Well, that’s not … Read More

If you don’t have Keynote installed on a Mac but you need to view a keynote presentation slides or a keynote file, don’t fret – you can view them all directly in Preview, the bundled image app in Mac OS X.

If you compile your own software you probably know that GCC comes bundled in the rather large Xcode package, but what if you just want to have gcc and LLVM without installing the entire Xcode package? Apple now offers an option to do just that, and it’s called Command Line Tools, available as a separate … Read More

The next time you end up in an Open or Save dialog window in Mac OS X, try out a few of these helpful keyboard shortcuts to make navigating around the dialog and filesystem much faster.

If you updated or downloaded an app from the iOS App Store on the iPhone and iPad, or an app from the Mac App Stores recently and it crashes immediately on launch, there’s a fairly easy solution that should be able to resolve the crashing app issue; you should delete the app and re-download it … Read More

Most Mac users are best served by using the easy Migration Assistant tool to copy all files, folders, preferences, and login data from one computer to another. This isn’t always an option though, perhaps because a hard drive is failing, or maybe you just prefer to manually migrate only very specific data from an old … Read More

DS_Store files are hidden system files that reside within almost every folder of Mac OS X, they contain folder-specific information and settings, like what view to use, icon size, and other metadata pertaining to their directory. Though ds_store files are invisible to the average user, if you’re sharing with a Windows PC or have hidden … Read More

Unless it has been disabled, any Finder window in Mac OS X has the View option buttons in the windows toolbar. From left to right you can select icon view, list, columns, and coverflow. You may have noticed the window view style doesn’t always persist across Finder windows though, even if you selected “Always Open … Read More

The clock in Mac OS X sets itself automatically by default, but if you want to set the precise time or are looking for a command line solution to set system time, you can do so with a tool called ntpdate, or the standard ‘date’ command.

Mac OS X doesn’t really have “themes” in the traditional sense, but you can create themes of sorts yourself by applying a few system tweaks. We’ve shown you how to do this before with a retro-inspired Classic Mac OS appearance and making OS X look like iOS, and now we’ll show you how to bring … Read More

It’s easy to find yourself in a sea of open web browser windows, but with Safari there’s a great feature that lets you merge windows into tabs. We’ll take that nice little merge-windows-to-tabs feature a step further and turn it into a keyboard shortcut, letting you instantly convert an ocean of windows into a single … Read More

The iTunes track list has a fairly small default font size, it works fine on displays with lower resolutions but if you’re using a higher resolution screen the text of song and artist names can be annoyingly small. Fortunately it’s easy to change and make larger: Open Preferences from the iTunes menu Under “General” look … Read More

If you have a new MacBook Air or MacBook Pro and the colors seem a bit dull and washed out compared to your previous Mac, you probably aren’t imagining things. Like most other hardware companies, Apple sources display panels from a variety of screen manufacturers, and though all the displays are of very high quality … Read More

If you’ve ever wanted to run Android apps on your Mac, a new virtualization tool called BlueStacks makes it easier than ever before. The extremely simple to install solution includes 17 popular Android apps that can be run independently and without the need for running Android ICS in a virtual machine, removing the often clunky … Read More

A large collection of high resolution Apple hardware icons is bundled right in Mac OS X, including great icons for nearly all vaguely recent Mac models, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Apple TV, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, and much more, going all the way back to the G4 series. Many of these icons are what … Read More

For the developers and UI designers out there, Apple’s developer docs show us how to highlight non-retina images in red, making it easy to determine if the 2x image assets are loading properly for retina displays. You can set the image tinting to occur in all apps, or on a per-app basis. Enable Non-Retina Image … Read More

Need to quickly convert a value in one currency to another? You don’t need to hit the web to learn the latest exchange rates, instead you can turn to the trusty old Calculator app. The OS X Calculator is bundled with a variety of built-in conversion tools, currency included. Using it is simple: Launch Calculator … Read More

Pushing towards next months public release, Apple has released a second developer update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4. The new build is 12A256 and the update appears to focus primarily on security features and updates, and 9to5mac points out the latest build will check daily for security updates. Developers running OS X … Read More