Mac OS

The MacLegion Holiday 2012 Bundle is a whopper of a deal for anyone looking to add a collection of great apps to their Mac repertoire. The bundle includes the following $540 worth of apps for just $49.99: TechTool Pro ($99.99) – Ultimate disk maintenance and hardware diagnostic tool Freeway Pro ($229.00) – Easy and powerful … Read More

Recording audio playing out from a Mac isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but that’s exactly what WavTap aims to resolve with a remarkably simple menu bar item. It makes capturing a Macs audio output extremely simple, leaving you with an audio file that you can then. WavTap is also completely free, which makes … Read More

Keeping software up to date is one of the top maintenance tips for Macs, but sometimes those Software Update notifications can be just plain annoying. Whether you’re just trying to focus on work, or the update that’s bugging you is irrelevant to your needs, here is every possible way you can stop software updating from … Read More

If you’re new to Emoji, you’ll be forgiven for not knowing just what some of these icons and characters are supposed to mean. Many are common sense, while others are a bit of a mystery, but there’s an easy way to find out what a specific Emoji character means just by looking at the icon … Read More

If you’ve ever had to track down a particular plist file for an app you know how frustrating the process can be. Though preference files are usually named in a logical manner, that’s not always the case, and regardless the prefix of com.(developer).(application) is not always the easiest to navigate through. One method is to … Read More

Trash is one of those overlooked aspects of Mac OS X that you probably don’t think much about, most of us just drag a file into it, empty the Trash to delete a document and free up disk space, and that’s about it. That’s fine, but there are also a handful of genuinely useful keyboard … Read More

Mac running out of disk space? Maybe you don’t have room for installing a new app, backing up a device, copying some files, or much of anything? If you’re running low on disk space or have ever received that dreaded “disk full” message when using a Mac, you know it can be pretty frustrating to … Read More

If you need to change a computers MAC address (the unique ID attached to a physical network interface), but aren’t comfortable with the command line approaches that we’ve discussed before, an excellent free preference panel called LinkLiar makes it easy. Not only does LinkLiar make changing MAC addresses remarkably simple for any network interface on … Read More

If you want to restrict app usage for a particular user on a Mac, there is no easier option than Parental Controls. This is a great solution for parents setting up a limited-access account for a kid, for public usage Macs, Macs in the enterprise, or even just for a restricted Guest account for when … Read More

To compare and list the different contents of two directories without the extra output you get through commands like diff, you can use the comm command instead. To get started, launch Terminal and type the following command, adjusting the directory paths as appropriate: comm -3 <(ls -1 folder1) <(ls -1 folder2) The output listed will … Read More

Fluid is a great Mac app that converts any specified web site into it’s own self-contained application, allowing you to do things like turn Gmail, Facebook, Wikipedia, Soundcloud, and Pandora, into their own dedicated app. Other than being useful for creating apps exclusively for particular websites, Fluid is also great for those of us who … Read More

Photo Streams are a great addition to iOS, but thus far seem to be an underused feature. With Photo Stream, you can easily share a collection of images with a select group of people, without having to go through the usual avenues of social networks. Instead, you create an instant gallery right out of the … Read More

Now that OS X 10.9 is regularly appearing in usage logs, we thought we’d take a stab at the naming convention. How about OS X Longcat? Yup, we’re bored today and diving straight into the pool of Longcat memes, and there’s nothing better than boredom and some Pixelmator fun to create something totally stupid. Don’t … Read More

Development of the next major release of Mac OS X is well under way, with version OS X 10.9 regularly appearing in web analytics logs of OSXDaily, 9to5mac, AppleInsider, CultofMac, and several other Apple-related websites. This was first brought to light today by 9to5mac, whose graph above shows a handful of visitors from Cupertino California … Read More

Time Machine backups can be triggered remotely thanks to SSH (Remote Login) and the command line. This is an excellent solution to use if you left the home or office without making an important backup, though the SSH requirement does add a potential layer of complexity that may make it more appropriate for advanced users. … Read More

If you’re a Mac owner you know that every time the Mac reboots or starts up it makes a startup chime sound. Though you can temporarily mute the chime by holding down the Mute key on any Mac keyboard, you can also choose to disable it completely by turning to the command line. To be … Read More

The history command is a useful way to find specific commands that have been used in the past, and it can also be used to discover what your personal most used commands are with the following command string: history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head -15 The … Read More

The simplest way to move everything from an old Mac to a new Mac is to use the built-in Migration Assistant tool. Migration Assistant can be used at any time, but ideally, it will be used on first boot of the new Mac, that way when it’s finished everything on the new machine will be … Read More