Tips and tricks for all things Apple! Whether you want to learn tips for a Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or much more, you will find many tricks, tips, tutorials, and excellent walkthroughs for Apple devices and software here.
If you use VirtualBox to run guest operating systems within a virtual machine on the Mac, like Windows 10 or Ubuntu Linux, you may find yourself needing to resize the virtual disk size where the OS resides. This is often the case when you inadequately estimate how much space is required for properly installing in … Read More
The Mac received a great many changes with OS X Yosemite along with a notable visual redesign, but some of those changes and various transparent effects may be taking a toll on some users Mac performance with errant WindowServer behavior. This is typically demonstrated with the WindowServer process spiking into heavy CPU use for seemingly … Read More
Stacks offer a method of displaying folders or collections of multiple items in the Dock of the Mac. When clicked, the “Stack” will pop open and show the contents sprawling out of the Dock. Dock Stacks always display on the right-side of the Mac OS X Dock and they default to contain things like the … Read More
Newer iPhones have the ability to track fitness activity and motion and displaying that data in Health app and other applications. Fitness tracking is done by using a low-power motion coprocessor that determines steps, altitude gain and lost, and distance traveled, and many users like this feature as it represents an easy way to keep … Read More
Whether testing performance of an application, Mac OS X animations, or just out of general curiosity, you can measure the refresh rate in Frames Per Second of onscreen actions and animations on the Mac by using a free developer tool from Apple called Quartz Debug. Part of the Graphics Tools package of Xcode, Quartz Debug … Read More
If you ever need to set custom DNS or change the DNS settings on iOS devices for using an alternate domain name server or a faster one, you’ll probably want the DNS changes to take effect immediately, which requires the flushing of DNS caches on the iPhone or iPad. There are actually several ways to … Read More
With Messages app on the Mac now able to send and receive SMS texts messages alongside iMessages from the iPhone, amongst other configured chat protocols, it’s easy to stay in touch, but it’s also easy get overwhelmed or annoyed by the sound of incoming messages while you’re trying to do other work on the computer. … Read More
A fair amount of wireless routers choose not to broadcast their identity (called an SSID) as a simple security precaution, thus knowing how to join an invisible network from a Mac is important.
Now that the Mac windows green maximize button defaults to sending apps and windows into Full Screen Mode, a notably sized cohort of MacOS and Mac OS X users who perhaps didn’t know this behavior changed until accidentally finding out, are left confused with the following question; “how do I get out of full screen … Read More
If you find yourself adding up many numbers or just performing a continuous string of math that is critical to keep track of, you should know that the Mac Calculator app includes a paper tape feature. For those who aren’t familiar, a paper tape keeps a running trail of each item entered into a calculator, … Read More
You may know that you can quickly jump to websites by typing a domain name into a Spotlight search and choosing the ‘Suggested Website’ option, but did you know you can get a live preview of a webpage from Spotlight on the Mac? This is a fairly simple trick that’s pretty useful, and yes it … Read More
With the Mac Messages app able to send and receive text messages along with iMessages, you’ll be in greater contact with friends, family, and anyone else who sends you a message. This is usually a good thing, but sometimes you’ll find yourself as a recipient to a conversation that just isn’t necessary to follow. For … Read More
Need to run Windows 10 on a Mac? You can install and run Windows 10 in Mac OS X for free using VirtualBox and the Windows 10 Preview from Microsoft. Because this installs Windows into a virtual machine atop existing Mac system software, running Windows is basically like running any other application, which makes it … Read More
Rather than remembering a separate password and set of login information for unlocking a Mac, OS X offers the option to use an iCloud password to login to the computer at boot, reboot, authentication, locked screens, and all login windows instead. This is a helpful feature for users who like to keep things simple and … Read More
Each release of MacOS or Mac OS X has a unique build number assigned to it to represent the changes found in that version of system software, often these changes are minor and incremental, but with major Mac OS X releases the build numbers can change significantly. Though average Mac users won’t need to know … Read More
If you have a Mac and an iPhone, you can now make phone calls from your Mac using that iPhone. The phone call will sound through the Mac speakers and use the Mac microphone, but the actual call itself routes through the iPhone. This is a part of the Continuity suite, which is really nice … Read More
We’ve all experienced it, a huge number of texts and iMessages arriving on our iPhone or iPad, that you either know aren’t important or you already read on another devices Messages app. Or maybe the messages are coming from someone you’d just prefer to ignore, whatever the case, you can instantly mark all messages as … Read More
All domains are associated with an IP address, whether it’s for a website, mail server, or whatever else. While using nslookup offers a simple way to get DNS information and an IP for a specific website or domain, if you want a significantly more detailed retrieval, you can use the host command instead. The host … Read More
