Mac OS

Reader Adam Smith writes in with the following question: “I am a new Mac user, and I love OSX! I have a MacBook Pro 15”. I would like to know though, is there a way that you can lock a MAC? Like in Windows, you can hit the shortcut “Windows Key + L”. Is there … Read More

John Hicks of Hicks Design UK has created a gorgeus theme for us Mac users who like to read our RSS using a web-based reader. The skin looks suspiciously like a native OS X application and is available as a plugin for: Firefox, Camino, Safari, Omniweb and Opera. Read more and Download

Preview is the default application to open just about any image or PDF file on your Mac, it’s a great program that blows anything comparable in the Windows world out of the water. One of the greatly underused features of Preview is the ability to view images and PDF files in full screen mode. Entering … Read More

One of my biggest peeves with Firefox 2 is how the tab system works with the scroll bar. Prior to version 2, tabs would squish in size to accommodate more. Being a tab heavy user I found this to be perfectly adequate and I got used to how it works. Enter Firefox 2; instead of … Read More

Many Mac users favor Safari as their web browser, it’s the Mac OS X default and generally pretty quick. Safari isn’t trouble free though, and if you’re having problems with Safari’s performance then this MacFixIt article is geared towards you. Jam packed with over 15 tips ranging from performance tweaks to troubleshooting the dreaded spinning … Read More

We all know the familiar Mac OS X Software Update and App Store Updates panel, it pops up weekly to give us a nice GUI interface to install all the latest updates to our Apple software. But did you know that you can get the same list, query the available updates list, and even install … Read More

It has long been speculated that Apple would change the brushed metal interface in Mac OS X to more closely resemble the iTunes appearance. The latest Mac OS X 10.5 build 9A410 shows us exactly that, a unified appearance that rids the operating system of the brushed metal look. The appearance change is relatively subtle, … Read More

Everyone hates backing up files, and often the annoyance turns into delaying the process, which is fine until you actually have a problem and need a backup. If you don’t want to do a complete system backup, at least save the essential files that define your user experience. BackityMac makes this task a whole lot … Read More

Apple has delayed the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard several months from it’s originally scheduled date of June 2007 to October 2007. The statement released by Apple says that the iPhone has distracted the operating system development team, and that the original deadline is no longer obtainable. Rumors are already circulating in the … Read More

When you click the yellow minimize button in Mac OS X, the snazzy Genie effect pulls the window into the Dock. Although you can change between the Genie and Scale effect from within the Dock preference pane, there is a third hidden effect that Apple has chosen to keep out of the preference pane. The … Read More

By default, the Mac OS X Dock has a semitransparent white background that holsters the Dock’s icons. ClearDock is a nice little utility that allows you to customize the Dock background to be completely transparent, or if you’d prefer, you can select a different semitransparent color. It’s super easy to use, and best of all, … Read More

Hate it when a web site resizes your browser window? In Firefox, you can stop that. While development etiquette has generally made web browsing a more pleasant experience over the years, removing such horrors as blinking text and the background midi. Unfortunately, there are a few annoyances still left on web sites, and one of … Read More

Any Mac user that has shared files from a Windows PC has surely found the always annoying and completely useless Thumbs.db files scattered around their directories. We’ve been asked about deleting Thumbs.db files a few times before, and typically we run a simple script from the command line, but there’s another even easier way of … Read More

Updated: 11/27/2021 Ever wondered how to change the default web browser app on your Mac? Maybe you prefer Chrome to Safari, or maybe you want to use Firefox instead of Safari, or vice versa? Whatever your choice, it’s easy to do in macOS Monterey, macOS Big Sur, macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, OS … Read More

Mac rumor site AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has filed a patent for a finder feature that would allow different sized icons to be within the same window, with the size of the icon being representative of that items importance. This feature would make a lot of sense for many directories that are crowded with … Read More

Tim Russell, the man behind the disabling favicon tip for Firefox, sent us another good Firefox tidbit today: “The worst thing about Firefox is undoubtedly that any image larger than your browser size is automatically resized, which has the effect of distorting pictures and generally being annoying. For some reason, Firefox didn’t include the ability … Read More

One of the essential functions of the command line of Mac OS X, Linux, or any Unix, is understanding some basics about how to use pipes. Essentially, pipes allow you to direct the output of one command into the input of another command, allowing the following command to manipulate, adjust, or work with the prior … Read More

Don’t like favicons in Firefox? You can disable the showing of Favicons in Firefox with a settings adjustment. Tim Russell writes in with this tip: “If there’s one thing I hate about websites out there it’s the accompanying favicon’s that litter my browser tabs and bookmarks menu. Surely I’m not the only one that dislikes … Read More