Mac OS

Whether you are a new Apple developer or an experienced Cocoa engineer with roots in NeXTStep, you will understand the need to back up your hard work. Integrating Xcode with subversion not only allows you to back up your code, but it also enables you to keep a history of changes that you can revert … Read More

As the release of iPhone OS 4 nears I thought it would be an opportune time to talk about why I’m personally excited for iPhone OS 4. As an amateur (up and coming!) developer and an avid user of the platform, I am more than ready for the unveiling of the latest incarnation of iPhone/iPad … Read More

Every once in a while you’ll come across a video that has audio syncing problems. Sometimes it’s minor where the sound track and dialogue is off by a few milliseconds and it’s barely noticeable, other times it can be off by as much as a few seconds and this makes watching the video almost impossible. … Read More

You can quickly compare any two images side-by-side by using Mac OS X’s QuickLook feature. * Select the two pictures within the Finder that you want to see side-by-side * Hit the Spacebar to enter into QuickLook mode * Click on “Index Sheet” at the bottom of the Quick Look window (it’s the icon with … Read More

You might be asking yourself, what’s mouse acceleration? Essentially mouse acceleration is an algorithm that is deployed in an attempt to make mouse movements feel “natural”. For many PC users, when you first use a Mac, it becomes quite obvious that the mouse is behaving very differently. It will feel sluggish, unpredictable and unresponsive (to varying degrees depending … Read More

Did you know you can broadcast IRC-style notification commands in Messages for Mac? Indeed you can, even with Messages in modern MacOS releases. This fun trick was originally discovered with iChat (back when Messages was known as iChat, remember that?) and it’s fair to say that many people never knew about the uses of an … Read More

Spyware is generally something you don’t have to worry about on the Mac, but TheLoop is reporting that a company named ‘7art-screensavers’ is releasing malware on the Mac platform with a series of free screensaver downloads. Apparently the screensavers themselves do not include the spyware, but they attempt to download and install the “OSX/OpinionSpy” app … Read More

When you have extended information displayed under icons with the Finder from the ‘show item info’ Finder preference, you’ll occasionally run into an annoying truncation with used and available disk space. While one easy solution to this is to expand the spacing to show the full file names of Mac desktop items (the recommended method), … Read More

The Google Chrome browser is an excellent choice, because not only is it fast and powerful, but it sandboxes Flash to prevent the plugin from going totally nuts, and it offers tons of customization options. If you’re an avid Chrome user, you likely would appreciate using Chrome in full screen mode, and fortunately, you can … Read More

Code completion is one of the more useful features when you’re developing since it allows you to write code faster. While Code completion should be activated by default in newer versions of Xcode, it’s easy to enable and use if it isn’t. You can also improve the usability of Xcode’s code completion with a great … Read More

You can instantly open anything in fullscreen Quick Look mode by selecting the item and then hitting the Command+Option+Y keys. If you select multiple files and enter into fullscreen mode, it’s easy to navigate between them by using the arrow keys. You can then exit full screen mode by hitting the escape key. As a … Read More

MagicPrefs is an amazing free utility for Mac that dramatically improves the functionality of your multi-touch Magic Mouse. Other than allowing for increased control over the touch sensitivity and tracking speed, you get practically full access to the multi-touch capabilities of the device. With MagicPrefs you can bind various gestures, swipes, pinches, and taps to … Read More

Cyberduck is a great free FTP client for Mac OS X, but on my portable Mac’s 13″ screen the Growl popup notifications really drive me crazy as they appear on each server connection and transfer completion. Oddly enough, if you look around in the Cyberduck preferences, you won’t find an option to disable the Growl … Read More

Dateline is a nice little utility that places a transparent linear calendar on your Mac desktop. It’s pretty customizable so if you want the dates to be horizontal or vertical, or the text color or their background colors to be different it’s just an easy couple of tweaks away. Perhaps the best part about Dateline … Read More

Want to save a document or web page as a PDF file, but you don’t own Adobe Acrobat? No problem, you can print documents, webpages, or nearly anything as a PDF, this means it creates a PDF file directly in Mac OS X using a built-in feature, without the need for any additional software or … Read More

I recently bought this Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter from Amazon for my MacBook Pro. It cost less than $8 including shipping, and it arrived at my house in about four days (for comparison Apple’s official adapter is $29 + shipping). So how does a cheap third party MiniDisplayPort to DVI adapter work compared to … Read More

I find myself never using the MacBook Pro’s optical drive, the only time I have used it was to boot Mac OS from a DVD to reformat and reinstall Mac OS X. Now that it’s so easy to install Mac OS using an external drive though, is having a DVD drive really a good usage … Read More

Growl is a desktop notification system that allows applications to publish updates and items to floating windows on your desktop. This allows you to see things like updates, information, and status changes to whatever application is publishing the Growl notification. The advantage to Growl is that regardless of what application has the focus, you’ll see … Read More