Mac OS

QuickTime X is really cool and one of the many great improvements in Snow Leopard, but I was really surprised to find out that QuickTime X no longer automatically plays movie files on open, you’d think since I just opened the file I’d want to watch the movie! Thankfully resolving this is just a matter … Read More

Cult of Mac posted a pretty compelling picture of a new full screen keyboard feature in Snow Leopard that certainly looks like it’d be handy if you had a touchscreen Mac. With all the rumors of the Tablet Mac floating around, this just may be some evidence that the upcoming Mac Tablet will be running … Read More

If you have a Mac without a functioning DVD drive (or a MacBook Air), you’ll need to find another way to upgrade to Snow Leopard, thankfully this is very easy, all you’ll need is an external firewire or USB hard drive. You’ll need access to a DVD drive *somewhere* so that you can make a … Read More

OS X Daily reader Todd Harris has tipped us off that when installing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, your /etc/hosts file is reset. If you followed a tip we posted a while back about how to block access to specific websites then this is particularly relevant to you, so be sure to manually adjust … Read More

I don’t know why but when I upgraded to Snow Leopard my wireless internet got all wonky, connections were dropping left and right and I couldn’t maintain any worthwhile airport connection for longer than a few minutes. DHCP was behaving particularly strange and the automatic settings pulled from my router were dropping every few seconds. … Read More

I still don’t know why AT&T and Apple don’t enable Internet Tethering by default on the iPhone, but nonetheless they don’t… but you can enable it yourself with a little work! The simplest way I’ve found without Jailbreaking your iPhone requires a few settings changes from updating a system profile, which you can download from … Read More

I love Pandora and use it all the time, so I was pretty frustrated when I discovered that I had hit the 40 hour limit and was being asked to pay for the service. Well, like any good Mac geek I poked around and figured out a way to reset the 40 hour limit (Windows … Read More

So now that Snow Leopard is out, how does it stack up? In many cases it’s faster and in some cases, well, it’s slower. It appears that the most significant speed gains are in Apple’s own software and Mac OS X itself, this is likely because Apple has optimized as much as possible to use … Read More

If you’ve ever wanted to know what’s being executed, which packages are being installed, and the installation directories and file locations of a Mac OS X system install, then you’ll enjoy this tip sent to us on Twitter by Murtika Laksmi: While installing Snow Leopard do the following: * At the “Mac OS X Installer” … Read More

I was pretty excited to install Snow Leopard today, and the upgrade from 10.5.8 went without a hitch, finishing in about an hour. A couple Snow Leopard install tips: * Be sure to customize your installation to have Rosetta support, as it’s not installed by default anymore. * If you’re an X-Code user, you’ll probably … Read More

This is somewhat controversial because it is against the Apple EULA, but apparently you can save $140 if you’re a Tiger 10.4 user and run the 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade without a problem. To make things even more interesting, popular Mac writer Walt Mossberg actually recommends that you do this if you are a Tiger … Read More

A friend of mine that is new to Macs couldn’t figure out how to get a CD to eject, after some frustration he then complained that his MacBook doesn’t have the paperclip hole to forcibly eject a disc from the superdrive. After some discussion I realized he’s probably not alone in his confusion of how … Read More

Yet another feature to be excited about, ZDNet reports that Apple has included a malware blocker in 10.6 Snow Leopard. Personally I have never run into any malware or viruses in Mac OS X, but it’s nice to know that Apple is including this functionality by default in their latest operating system. Better safe than … Read More

The Hackintosh community is rather controversial but increasingly popular, and some of the most appealing Hackintosh machines are those based around Netbooks, tiny lightweight laptops that fill a niche Apple has yet to dabble in. The Dell Mini 9 has long been the cream of the Hackintosh Netbook crop, but it looks like the Dell … Read More

The Mac world is really heating up with anticipation for the upcoming Snow Leopard release, due this Friday. LifeHacker wrote up a great guide on how to prepare your Mac for the Snow Leopard install, including tips on cleaning up your existing 10.5 installation and backing up your current Mac OS X install. I’ll probably … Read More

Making a RAM disk prior to Mac OS X was quickly accomplished through a control panel, or you can make one from the command line too, but since OS X this ability has been lost without turning to the terminal.

The best thing about a sour economy are the price wars that benefit consumers, and in this case Amazon has dropped the price of 10.6 Snow Leopard 14% to $24.99, this is both good and bad news. Good news because Mac users can save 14% over Apple’s retail price, bad news because it’s $0.01 under … Read More

We all know Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is the next major version of Mac OS to be released in 2009, and we know some of the features too. But going further, the UK’s Register Hardware has a nice multipage preview of Snow Leopard, pointing out some changes, refinements, and new features.