Mac OS

If you need to adjust the brightness of a Mac display precisely, you can turn to two different tricks that offer precision control on just how bright a Macs screen is.

You can easily adjust the search priorities in Spotlight so that other items are listed first in the Mac OS X Spotlight search results. For example, you could adjust the priorities so that files and documents are listed above apps, or so that images are shown above everything else. There are a ton of options … Read More

If you want to make reading a web page a bit easier on the Mac with Safari, you can issue some simple keyboard shortcuts to change the displayed font and text size on a page. To increase the Safari web browsers readable text size, hit the Command key and + key (plus key, it’s located … Read More

Did you know that you can customize the backgrounds of any Finder windows in Mac OS X? This is a nnice way to customize the appearance of your Mac a bit, and you can either choose images or colors, or go with the default setting of a simple white background. In the screenshot above, the … Read More

You know what’s really annoying? When you go to certain websites, copy some text from them, and go to paste elsewhere and it gives you something like this: Basically, it’s an “iPhone without a screen,” is how Engadget hears it. Oh — and it will cost only $99, supposedly. Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/new-apple-tv/#ixzz0pH6qJPa4 You wanted to … Read More

All Macs have a microphone included in them, but if you want to disable the internal microphone on your Mac, you can do so through a variety of methods. We’ll cover the two easiest approaches to turning off the microphone; reducing the input volume so that no sound is picked up by the microphone, and … Read More

Counter-Strike Source (CSS) was released today for Mac users via the Steam client. Dubbed as the “Worlds #1 Online Action Game”, Counter-Strike features highly competitive multiplayer and team-play shoot-em-up action. Fire up the Steam app and you can download Counter Strike right now for $6.80, which is 66% off it’s standard $20 price tag. The … Read More

One of the more interesting little known Dock modifications on the Mac is the ability to make hidden app icons appear as translucent and muted in the Dock to indicate their hidden status. If you look carefully at the screenshots of the Mac Dock in this article you’ll see the effect, as some of the … Read More

When you launch a new Terminal window or tab in Mac OS X (and most linux distributions) you’ll be greeted with a little message, either some “last login” details, or maybe even a message from the admin from /etc/motd. The last login details are default in a new Mac OS X terminal session, whereas the … Read More

As you’ll soon be able to tell, I am annoyed with Adobe Update Manager, and thankfully I found a way to disable it completely. In case you didn’t know, Adobe Update Manager starts itself automatically on system launch and takes over your Mac while it sorts out whatever it does that I don’t want it … Read More

You can immediately launch any file into its associated application from Quick Look preview mode by holding down the command key and then pressing the down arrow key, so if you’re looking at a PSD file it will launch in Photoshop, a JPG into Preview, MP3 into iTunes, etc, directly from Quick Look! Thank you … Read More

You can setup virtually any Mac as a home theater media center, all you need is the right tools. Yes, that means your MacBook Pro, MacBook, Mac Mini, iMac, even Mac Pro, can all turn into a media center, and it’s a lot easier than you might think. For the purpose of this article, we … Read More

It’s possible to adjust the display contrast at a software level in Mac OS X, which can have very dramatic effects, either good or bad, depending on your needs. Most Mac users don’t know this and many may not find it helpful, but used appropriately it can be a helpful Accessibility adjustment for many with … Read More

Did you know that anyone can build an extension for Safari? It is no problem, anyone can do it and it’s actually easier than you might think.

Did you know that you can quickly see or hide all the hidden files in a directory from any Mac Save window with a simple keystroke? This is very useful when you are saving a file to a directory that will appear as invisible, also known as a dotfile in OS X.

Your Mac runs a series of maintenance scripts on it’s own to clear out various cache and log files. To see when the scripts were last run, type the following at the command line: ls -la /var/log/*.out You will then see something like this: -rw-r–r– 1 root wheel 283124 16 Jun 02:15 /var/log/daily.out -rw-r–r– 1 … Read More

Fire up those Software Updates because Mac OS X 10.6.4 is ready for download. Addressing numerous bug and security fixes, it is a recommended download for all Mac users. It looks like if you haven’t upgraded to Safari 5 yet, this software update handles that for you. The update comes in at a whopping 639.1 … Read More

The iPhone Simulator, now called iOS Simulator, will emulate an iPhone or iPad. Newer versions of Xcode want you to launch the app through Xcode first, but that’s not entirely necessary. You can access the simulators directly through the Finder as well, here’s where to look for each version of Xcode: