Mac OS

Safari is my browser of choice in Mac OS X, I like Chrome and FireFox a lot but it doesn’t have the same Apple polish to it, and page rendering seems speedier in Safari (my opinion, no intention on sparking a browser war here). If you’re a Safari user, here are some key strokes that … Read More

There are quite a few ways to listen to the radio on your Mac, through iTunes, Safari, various Dashboard widgets, but RadioTuner is probably the best way yet.

For those of us who have ever played Quake, this is an easy one to explain. Remember hitting the tilde (~) key would bring down the Quake terminal? Well that is what Visor does for Mac OS X. You assign a hotkey, and when Visor is triggered, a nice Terminal slides out of the top … Read More

A variety of keyboard shortcuts and commands can be used during a Mac system startup to access various features, systems administration utilities, and troubleshooting tricks. Some of these startup keys may be slightly different on PPC and Intel Macs, but many of the features remain the same, whether it’s accessing safe-boot mode, hardware tests, single-user … Read More

The Dock is a major part of most Mac OS users daily lives, used for everything from application launching, to storing of minimized windows and apps, where the Trash is located, and more. But the Mac Dock has more tricks up its sleeve than what is readily visible, and with the help of key command … Read More

The startup sound on a Mac is cool and all, but if you’re in a quiet library, office, or classroom, that sound can be a bit obnoxious to yourself and others as it blasts throughout the speakers and into whatever room you’re in. Sure, you can mute the sound by holding down the keyboard Mute … Read More

Christmas is here, and what better way to get in the spirit than to make you and your loved ones into Santa! SantaSnaps is a lot like Photo Booth except instead of distortions and color changes, you get elf hats, beards, ears, reindeer horns, glasses, and a few other holiday accessories. There’s also a strange … Read More

Mac ownership is largely troublefree, but sooner or later you’ll probably run into some kind of problem with your systems performance. MacOSXHints.com is one of the best sites out there for tips and helpful information for the Mac, and although this article is dated (almost three years now!) it is just as useful as ever. … Read More

The Apple Rumor site ThinkSecret obtained the latest release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and put together a nice screenshot gallery for all of us to see. Notably missing is the much anticipated GUI revision that has everyone buzzing, but perhaps Apple is hiding the final GUI until release day. There might be some … Read More

The command line in Mac OS X can be a very powerful and fun tool, so it’s good to know how to maneuver around if you find yourself in it. By default, the Mac OS X Terminal uses the Bash shell, which is what these keyboard shortcuts are intended for. So if you’re ready to … Read More

Last week I thought I had found the best snow screensaver for Mac OS X with LotsaSnow, but I was wrong. This is the best snow screensaver for Mac OS X, and if you want proof – it is what Apple is using in the Apple Stores this holiday season! Snowfall is a beautiful screensaver … Read More

The World of Apple has reported that the latest build of Apple’s next generation Operating System, “Leopard” will include support for Sun Microsystem’s ZFS filesystem. The ZFS filesystem has been described by Sun as “The last word in filesystems.” It appears that HFS+’s days are numbered, but on that same note, ZFS looks like an … Read More

Now here’s a cool trick: you can take iSight camera captures when an invalid login is detected on a Mac! This is so cool. Posted verbatim from Mac OS X Hints: “With the new MacBook Pro’s including built-in iSight cameras, I thought it would be useful to take an iSight snapshot of anyone trying to … Read More

Remember the old days, where we’d all be peering at little 10″ fisheyed black screens with green or amber text? Well you can relive the computing 70’s and 80’s with this funky app that emulates the appearance of an old terminal. Complete with display curviture, shoddy colors, and even settings for simulated baudrate lag, you’ll … Read More

Whether you use the Terminal occasionally or regularly, you might find it appropriate to change the way it looks beyond the color scheme and transparency settings. How about changing the actual command line prompt? It’s quite easy, and can be a fun way to further customize your Macs appearance.

There are a fair amount of winter themed screensavers for Mac OS X, from talking snowmen, snow storms, and blinking Christmas trees, but I think LotsaSnow is probably the best snow screensaver there is available for Mac. It is simple and elegant, doesn’t use much CPU, and has some really nice looking flakes. LotsaSnow can … Read More

This is a rumor as of now, and uncomfirmed. Apple seeded a new version of Leopard (build 9A326) to internal Apple employees yesterday. This latest build is reported to have fixed bugs from the last build (9A303) such as Quicktime crashing, printing problems and issues with .Mac such as iDisk synching. Apple continues to gloss … Read More

Many Mac users take screenshots of their desktop for various reasons, be it showing off their setups, post to their blog or flickr, development, whatever. Most of us just use command-shift-3 and command-shift-4, but did you know there’s more options than just those two keyboard shortcuts? I’m not talking about third party apps, but options … Read More