Mac OS

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

QuickTime Player automatically rounds the corners of any video window, a nice touch that fits in line with the rest of the OS X desktop and window experience. If you don’t like the rounded movie window appearance though, you can easily disable them: Quick QuickTime Launch Terminal and enter the following command: defaults write com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX … Read More

Anytime you create an alias in Mac OS X the resulting alias of a file, app, or folder, will include the arrow icon in the corner. This makes it easy to identify any item as an alias, but you can hide the alias arrow badge from icons if you don’t want to see them. Here … Read More

Duplicate contact entries occur with some regularity, whether it’s because a contact has changed an email address, phone number, name, or just because you accidentally entered someone twice into your iOS contacts list. If you have a Mac, the Contacts / Address Book app makes it very easy to merge these duplicate contacts and then … Read More

Chrome’s “Most Visited” thumbnails capture snapshots of the websites you most frequently access. These thumbnails can very convenient but they can also be embarrassing, thankfully they are fairly easy to clear out: How to Remove Thumbnails from Chrome Most Visited List on Mac Quit Chrome From the Mac Finder, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following … Read More

How many times have you typed something to discover the last two characters are in the wrong order? You know, when “the” turns into “teh” and “something into “somethign”, a fairly common general mistype. Well the Mac has a solution to this, with a great little keystroke that swaps the last two characters.

Mission Control is a powerful window and app manager built directly into Mac OS X, it combines elements of Virtual Desktops (Spaces), an application switcher, and a window manager, into one easy to use centralized location. If you aren’t using this excellent Mac feature on a regular basis then you should reconsider, learn a few … Read More

If you’re wondering who made the SSD (flash storage) drive on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro it’s fairly easy to determine: Pull down the  Apple menu and choose “About This Mac”, then click on “More Info” Click “System Report” Look under “Hardware” for the “Serial-ATA” entry and select it Expand the chipset and … Read More

The optional Path bar shows the complete filesystem path to the current working directory in any Finder window of Mac OS X. This optional window-dressing item has more use beyond that though, because not only does it show you the present directory, it’s also interactive. In short, that means you can double-click the individual folders … Read More

Satellite Eyes is a neat free app that automatically adjusts your desktops background wallpaper to satellite images of your current location. Commute to work and you’ll see a new background than what you do at home, fly across the country or world and it’ll change with you. For a simple app there are a fair … Read More

Anytime you use iCloud or iTunes to back up an iPhone or iOS device, the Contacts will be backed up automatically assuming the default settings are preserved. If you want to store an additional backup outside of iTunes and iCloud however, by far the easiest way to do that is with Address Book. This will … Read More

An update to OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 4 has been released to developers, barely a week after the last version was released at WWDC. The update comes as build 12A248 and is recommended for all devs running DP4 and can be downloaded through the Mac App Store. The largely unspecified release presumably includes … Read More

TotalTerminal is an excellent tweak for those of us who frequently use the command line, it provides instant access to the Terminal from anywhere in Mac OS X with just a keyboard shortcut. Modeled after the classic Quake console, an official Terminal.app prompt drops down from the top of the screen where you can quickly … Read More

The Retina MacBook Pro 15″ screen resolution is 2880×1800, but because of how a retina display works the effective resolution is 1440×900 and the onscreen elements are just running in HIDPI mode. Apple provides an option to run at 1920×1200 through System Preferences, but as of now there is no built-in approach to running the … Read More