Mac OS

We all know how to launch applications from the GUI with a double-click on the icon or clicking on the app in the Dock, and there are numerous ways to do so, and they’re all relatively speedy. If you spend a decent amount of time with the command line though, it’s nice to be able … Read More

All of us have likely admired the results of a nice time-lapsed sequence, perhaps of a flower opening or the sun setting, the effect of time lapse video can be simply gorgeous. So, wouldn’t it be cool to do these on your own with little effort? With a Mac and the front-facing FaceTime / iSight … Read More

Whenever you log in to your Mac, you’re greeted by the familiar login screen with the Mac OS X logo, the computer name, and a list of users. You can actually get useful system information from this login screen by clicking on the computer name, which cycles through a series of statistics and info on … Read More

Whenever you launch the Terminal in Mac OS X, you may get a little message: “Welcome to Darwin!” or a “Last Login” time – well, after you’ve seen it a few hundred times you might be sick of it, or perhaps you’d prefer something more amusing, meaningful, or even useful to yourself and other computer … Read More

If there’s one annoying thing about the QuickTime Player on earlier versions of Mac OS X it is the lack of fullscreen movie support by default. Fortunately modern versions solve that problem, but if a Mac is running a prior version of OS X and has an older version of QuickTime Player, what should you … Read More

Backups. A dreaded word because it is tedious and boring. You say it and people go fleeing in all directions plugging their ears. So what do you do? Have no fear Mac users, Carbon Copy Cloner is here for you to make Mac backups easy. Say hello to your newest friend, Carbon Copy Cloner. Carbon … Read More

Navigating around Mac OS X is significantly easier than competitive operating systems, and that’s largely thanks to the Dock, Expose (Mission Control), Spotlight, and the improved Finder, which is the OS X file system. Of course there are also third party apps that people swear by, such as Quicksilver, but with so many great features … Read More

This is a fun little program that quickly gives you information on when and where your Mac and iPod were built (it claims to check any Apple products based on serial number, but we couldn’t test this feature). There’s also an ability that allows you to check your serial number against a database to see … Read More

Regardless of your thoughts on Apple’s switch to the Intel architecture, we are now in a transition period where many apps are either PowerPC, Universal, or Intel only. While most new applications are at least Universal binaries, some are PowerPC, and running these through Rosetta on your Intel Mac can cause a performance decrease. So … Read More

We all know that Photo Booth is great fun and is sure to entertain our friends and family with the goofy effects. But what if you want to take pictures using your iSight from the command line? Unfortunately Apple doesn’t provide this option (at least that we know of), but thanks to a crafty individual … Read More

Have you ever wanted to change the short username in Mac OS X? Dig around in the System Preferences and you’ll soon find it’s not as easy as just typing in a new name. Apple has some directions on how to do it, but the instructional document is painful just to look at, let alone … Read More

Ever wondered what happens during the Mac OS X boot and startup process? With Mac OS X it’s a bit more complicated than things once were, and long gone are the days of Classic Mac OS (System 9, 8, 7, 6), where watching our Macs boot up with a series of extensions and control panels … Read More

We are all excited for this springs release of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5, and each new developer release can give us hints of what is in the pipeline. The Mac speculation site MacRumors says that the latest seed of Leopard includes a few new features that have been suggested, including tabbed window support in … Read More

Hidden from the casual Mac user is a spiffy command line utility that allows you to view, configure, and troubleshoot your Mac’s wireless connection, entirely from the Terminal of MacOS and Mac OS X. This command has a help file but is otherwise but not much documentation, and judging by the obscure location of the … Read More

Safari is my browser of choice in Mac OS X, I like Chrome and FireFox a lot but it doesn’t have the same Apple polish to it, and page rendering seems speedier in Safari (my opinion, no intention on sparking a browser war here). If you’re a Safari user, here are some key strokes that … Read More

There are quite a few ways to listen to the radio on your Mac, through iTunes, Safari, various Dashboard widgets, but RadioTuner is probably the best way yet.

For those of us who have ever played Quake, this is an easy one to explain. Remember hitting the tilde (~) key would bring down the Quake terminal? Well that is what Visor does for Mac OS X. You assign a hotkey, and when Visor is triggered, a nice Terminal slides out of the top … Read More

A variety of keyboard shortcuts and commands can be used during a Mac system startup to access various features, systems administration utilities, and troubleshooting tricks. Some of these startup keys may be slightly different on PPC and Intel Macs, but many of the features remain the same, whether it’s accessing safe-boot mode, hardware tests, single-user … Read More