Mac OS

Want to tile a wallpaper on the Mac? A tiling wallpaper will repeat all over the desktop background, just like a tile is repeated in flooring or a wall. Well, you’re in luck because modern Mac OS X versions can do tile a wallpaper image, just like you could do way back in ancient Mac … Read More

The Mission Control “Spaces” feature in OS X is essentially a virtual desktop environment. A nice way to differentiate each individual desktop Space is to go about assigning different wallpapers to different desktop spaces. Setting unique wallpaper backgrounds per desktop is easy in Mac OS X now, here’s the quickest way to do this:

Want to see recent items on a per app basis? The Mac makes this easy with a variety of ways, but perhaps one of the most convenient involves a simple tap gesture. This is particularly fast and simple, and here’s how it works.

Forget what Software Updates you’ve installed on a Mac? Maybe you need to check if a particular Mac workstation has installed a particular software update? With a little work, you can easily check which particular software updates have been installed before in Mac OS X. We’ll show you several different ways to get a list … Read More

With Preview you can adjust the contrast of a PDF, this makes the text sharper and darker, and for scanned files or dubious quality PDF’s this makes them significantly easier to read. The process of increasing contrast and sharpening text in a PDF is made quite simple with Preview app on the Mac, we’ll walk … Read More

With the addition of the Mac App Store, transferring applications from one Mac to another is made extraordinarily simple and can be done entirely through the App Store itself. This is due to the Mac App Stores licensing agreement, which allows you to download and install Mac OS X apps on all of your personal … Read More

Of all the Launchpad tips and customizations, one that has been greatly desired is the ability to manually adjust the icon size of apps. A tip sent in by Rohan Agashe moves us in that direction, allowing you to change the Launchpad icon size down from the large icons in OS X 10.7.2 to the … Read More

Mission Control in Mac OS X Lion has a hidden motion blur effect that can be enabled quite easily:

The lightly shaded large linen wallpaper from the OS X Lion developer previews didn’t end up being the final shipping version, instead a linen repeating pattern and tile came with the final release of OS X Lion and is still around in Mountain Lion and beyond. This linen tile appears everywhere in new versions of … Read More

New to Mac OS X and iOS is the ability to hide purchases from appearing in the Mac App Store, iOS App Store, and the iTunes Store purchased items lists. This is great if you download tons of stuff but use only a fraction of apps, and you don’t want the other items clogging up … Read More

If you’ve installed a modern version of OS X and rebooted or ended up at the lock screen, you may have noticed that a new “Guest User” account appears at the login screen. This is not a full guest user account, if you select the Guest User option at login, the Mac will restart to … Read More

One of the subtle changes in the Mac OS X 10.7.2 update is the ability to drag files and folders between Desktops and Full Screen apps in Mission Control. All you need to do is grab a file or folder and start pulling the item off the screen in the direction of the Desktop or … Read More

Apple has rolled out iCloud, the cloud syncing service that automatically syncs all your content to all of your devices, be it an iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, PC, iPad, whatever. It also includes things like Find My iPhone and Find My Mac, in addition to several web apps that let you get your Mail, Contacts, … Read More

Apple has released the second update to Lion, Mac OS X 10.7.2, the build is 11C74 The focus of OS X 10.7.2 is on bringing iCloud support to Mac OS X Lion, and also includes Find My Mac and Back to My Mac features. You can learn how to setup iCloud here, it’s very easy. … Read More

Apple has released iTunes 10.5 in preparation of iOS 5 and iCloud. The latest version is a major update that includes full iCloud support, in addition to the highly anticipated Wi-Fi syncing feature, which allows anyone to sync an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes wirelessly as long as they’re on the same wifi … Read More

If your Mac OS X desktop quickly turns into a cluttered mess of files and folders while you work, you’re not alone. The busier (or less organized) you are, the quicker this accumulates, until finally the Finder is so covered in files that you can barely see the wallpaper. Sometimes mine gets so full that … Read More

Want to add some additional eyecandy to Mac OS X Lion‘s Launchpad feature? Open Launchpad and hit Command+M to enable a motion blur that is seen at various Launchpad events. You can immediately see the effect by swiping between Launchpad screens or by using the Command+Arrow keys to navigate around. The motion blur also effects … Read More

If you are a fan of Mac tips and tricks and customizing OS X, you absolutely have to get TinkerTool for Lion. TinkerTool is broken into 12 main sections covering Finder, Dock, General, Desktop, Applications, Fonts, Font Smoothing, Login Items, Safari, iTunes, QuickTime X, and Resume (OS X Lion’s Restore feature), each section has a … Read More