Mac OS

Update: The Mac App Store and Mac OS X 10.6.6are now available through System Update. You can also Download Mac OS X 10.6.6 Directly and the updaters include the Mac App Store. Apple has announced that the Mac App Store will be released on January 6, 2011. The Mac App Store will be available in … Read More

The Sudden Motion Sensor is designed to protect your Macs hard drive in the event of a computer being dropped or an unusually strong vibration. Essentially what it does is park the hard drive head when movement is detected, which prevents it from potentially scooting across the disk surface and scratching or otherwise damaging the … Read More

One of the underused and certainly under appreciated features of Mac OS X are Smart Folders. If you aren’t familiar with Smart Folders, they essentially let you create a virtual folder that uses search operators from Spotlight to let that virtual folder contain any and all files that match the search requirements. Sound confusing? It’s … Read More

If you have an SSD on your Mac, listen up. You can replicate TRIM SSD functionality in Mac OS X by using this great tip from one of our readers, here’s Curt explaining: “I just got a MacBook Air and like many others I was surprised to learn Mac OS X doesn’t support TRIM. I … Read More

AirPlay is one of the cooler features of iOS 4.2 that lets you stream video and music from your Mac or iOS hardware to an Apple TV or AirPlay speakers. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could stream AirPlay video from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac? Now you can, thanks to a … Read More

So you’ve come across a .7z file and you’re on a Mac, what is it and how do you use it? First off, a .7z file is an archive format that stands for 7-zip, you can think of it like any other archive file. By default, Mac OS X does not know how to handle … Read More

You can zoom in and out into any image within Quick Look, the instant image viewer built into the OS X Finder, simply by holding down the “Option” key and then using either a scroll wheel on a mouse, or a two finger up or down swipe gesture on a multi-touch track pad. Scrolling up … Read More

The Dock is one of those staple features of Mac OS X, containing all running apps and also serving as a quick launch bar for opening applications and managing multitasking. The Dock is popular and intuitive enough for it to be a core user interface element beyond the Mac, included as a major component in … Read More

If you have ever forgotten a wireless router password, whether it’s your own network or another, you certainly aren’t alone. Typically you just have to enter the password once, save it to your keychain, and you can forget about it, right? Well that’s only true until you actually do need the password again, whether it’s … Read More

You can set Safari in Mac OS X or Windows to always open new windows into new tabs instead. In fact, new versions of Safari default to a variation of this behavior, but older versions need Safari to manually be set to open new windows as tabs, but with a little adjustment you can make … Read More

The dreaded desktop icon clutter, if you’re working like crazy, downloading and saving a lot of files, it’s pretty easy to flip to your Mac desktop to discover it just littered with icons. Taking the time to tidy up all the files on your desktop can distract you from your workflow and, well, it’s just … Read More

You don’t need to use iTunes to play music on your Mac, particularly if you just want to play an audio document. Mac OS X comes with an included command line audio player that you can use to play most audio files with. In this example we’re going to use an MP3 file as the … Read More

Last week I posted that the release date of the Mac App Store was imminent, based on Mac OS X 10.6.6 becoming GM and including Mac App Store support. Today there are further claims to support the idea of an early Mac App Store release, although it should be noted that these are unsubstantiated rumors. … Read More

There are a few ways to properly eject a disk on a Mac, the first and perhaps the easiest method is to use the Disk Eject Key which is located in the upper right hand corner of a Mac keyboard (it looks like the image to the right). The disc eject key applies to all … Read More

It wasn’t long ago that 10.6.5 came out, but now Mac OS X 10.6.6 GM has been released to developers. So what’s the big deal? Well, the next Mac OS X update includes “developer support for fetching and renewing App Store receipts” suggesting that the release date of the Mac App Store is imminent. Other … Read More

You can fine tune how Mac OS X handles archives with a secret preference pane. There’s quite a few features tucked away in the Archives preference pane, including the ability to delete the archive after it’s expanded, reveal the expanded items in the Finder, and of course the same features for compressing files too. These … Read More

Did you know that multimedia file icons can serve double purpose as media playback? Yes indeed, you can actually play any mp3 or audio file directly in the Mac OS X Finder by using this little known icon playback trick.

Amazon is selling Pixelmator for $17.99 with free shipping, this is a remarkable 70% off the retail price of $59.99. This huge discount is a Cyber Monday only deal with a limited number of copies available, so grab it before it sells out. Pixelmator is a great image editing application for Mac that has all … Read More