Mac OS

Apple looks to have quietly updated the troubled Mac OS X 10.7.3 Updater, first noticed by several of our readers and confirmed by OSXDaily. No official change was announced and there is no revised version number provided by Apple’s Support page, but presumably the new build addresses any potential installation problems or CUI errors that … Read More

Apple has released an updated version of Security Update 2012-001 to v1.1, which resolves the Rosetta issues in the first release that caused many PPC based applications to either crash or not run at all. If you have been experiencing problems with apps like Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Quicken, crashing after installing the security update, downloading … Read More

All Macs with OS X Mavericks, Yosemite, Lion, Mountain Lion, have a bootable Recovery partition that can be accessed in case of system problems, allowing you to troubleshoot, restore from Time Machine backups, and even reinstall Mac OS X. There are two ways to reach Recovery mode on a Mac: Hold down the OPTION key … Read More

The problems updating to Mac OS X 10.7.3 aren’t the only issues with Apple’s recently released Mac OS X updates, as MacRumors reports that SecurityUpdate 2012-001 aimed at Mac OS X 10.6.8 has caused significant problems with Rosetta apps in Snow Leopard. Applications effected seem to be anything that relies on Rosetta PowerPC support to … Read More

If you need to delete sensitive information and have it completely inaccessible, you’ll want to use the “Secure Empty Trash” feature. This works by writing random patterns of data over a trashed file immediately after it has been emptied, or removed from the filesystem, such a process which otherwise takes place over time throughout normal … Read More

Spotlight is generally very good at keeping a valid index of a drives contents up to date, but if you’ve recently restored a drive or had to delete the Spotlight index for one reason or another, you may need to reindex the drive manually. This is easy from the Spotlight control panel, and can also … Read More

The recently released Mac OS X 10.7.3 update is proving to be a more significant upgrade than originally anticipated, with the update for OS X Lion Server adding a simple web server. The web server pane is found in the Server application, and has the standard features you would expect. Apple specifies the following capabilities … Read More

Every Mac owner should be using Time Machine, it’s by far the easiest and most painless backup solution, running in the background and allowing for easy recovery of files or the entire operating system should something go wrong during an OS X update or otherwise. There’s no way around it, having backups of your Mac … Read More

Mac OS X 10.7.3 update was just released, and for the vast majority of users the update installed trouble free. But not everyone was so lucky, and a series of problems have cropped up for some users, ranging from being stuck on an endless spinning loop progress indicator, to apps crashing nonstop, to a very … Read More

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.7.3 to the public, the third minor update to OS X Lion. The update includes bug fixes including a Wi-Fi stability update, and also fixes a handful of other issues that have effected OS X 10.7. The update also includes support for several new languages, and updates Safari to … Read More

Mac OS X has a secondary Cut and Paste function that provides the ability to cut and paste additional information without overwriting existing clipboard contents. This alternative clipboard is completely separate from the normal clipboard accessible with Command+C and Command+V, and instead you’ll use different keystrokes to access the secondary cut and paste feature and … Read More

Using Mac OS X’s powerful built-in media encoding tools, large AIFF audio files can be quickly and easily converted to compressed high quality M4A audio, ready for use on in iTunes or an iPod, iPhone, or elsewhere.

It’s easy to lose track of all the defaults commands used to perform tweaks to Mac OS X, but with the help of the history command it’s easy to list every defaults write and accompanying defaults delete commands ever used on a Mac. Launch the Terminal to get started. See All Defaults Commands Executed To … Read More

Firefox 10 has been released and is available to download for Mac, Windows, and Linux users. The new version isn’t too different from version 9, but includes bug fixes, better extension management, an auto-hiding forward button, improvements to CSS3 capabilities, and antialiasing support for WebGL, as well as some other additions that the average user … Read More

Apple has released an all new version of AirPort Utility for OS X Lion with a redesigned user interface. The revised appearance makes it simpler to use, with the first screen showing a graphical overview of the network and all connected devices. Interestingly, the new Mac version looks practically identical to the current iOS version, … Read More

Need to quickly encrypt a file from the command line? With OpenSSL, you can encrypt and decrypt files very easily. For the purpose of this walkthrough, we’ll use des3 encryption, which in simple terms means a complex encryption algorithm is applied three times to each data block, making it difficult to crack through brute force … Read More

If you haven’t set up iCloud and Find My iPhone yet, now is a good time to do so. Follow our guide below on how to get this configured on an iPad, iPhone, iPod, and a Mac, then read on for a story about how a police officer used the application to locate an iPhone … Read More

Pacifist is a powerful Mac OS X utility that gives you full access to package and installer files and their contents, without running the installer itself. Using Pacifist, you can open installers and disk images, find out what is in them, discover what is going to be installed and where, and best of all, extract … Read More