Tips & Tricks

Gatekeeper is an application level security feature on the Mac that aims to prevent unauthorized and unidentified apps from being launched in Mac OS X, thereby preventing potential security problems like exploits or trojans from running on a Mac. The feature is most often encountered when an app has been downloaded from the web, and … Read More

With FaceTime Audio, the iPhone can now make free VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) calls directly from the built-in phone or FaceTime app, without the need for any third party services or applications. This basically means you make phone calls to anywhere in the world for free, so long as the recipient of the call … Read More

Finder Tabs are one of the better Mavericks improvements brought to the Mac OS X Finder in years, letting you use the file system in a single window view, with each open folder or directory path as it’s own unique tab. Used properly, Finder Tabs will prevent the enormous amounts of window clutter that can … Read More

The Settings app for iOS has tons of individual preference toggles, adjustments, tweaks, and customizations, adding up to what is likely hundreds of options. Each of the settings is segmented into a variety of categories, like General, Sounds, Notification Center, Privacy, Location, plus just about every default app, and many third party apps too. While … Read More

Most iPhone users have trouble-free use of their device whether it’s on a cellular connection or wi-fi, but wireless connectivity issues do occur from time to time. These type of problems can manifest in a variety of ways; sometimes the Wi-Fi on and off toggle switch is grey and unusable (sometimes resolved by simply quitting … Read More

Though we generally recommend staying on the latest versions of OS X, some users may find incompatibilities or problems associated with updating their Macs to OS X Mavericks, and for these unique circumstances it can make sense to downgrade the Mac back to a prior release version of OS X. For such specific cases, we’ll … Read More

Do Not Disturb is an excellent feature of iOS that, when turned on, mutes notifications and alerts for all incoming calls, messages, and apps. It’s easy to toggle on and off, providing for some digital peace and quiet with a quick switch. But if you’re actively using an unlocked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch while … Read More

Changing the login screens background wallpaper is a great way to customize the appearance of a Mac. The process of doing so seems to change with every release of OS X though, and that’s no different with swapping out the login wallpaper in OS X Mavericks. Changed yet again with OS X 10.9, you will … Read More

The Dock received a significant visual overhaul along with almost everything else in modern iOS versions, and though the days of the OS X look-a-like are gone, you can still customize the coloration and transparency of the Dock a bit. One option is to change the wallpaper, which has a profound effect on the appearance … Read More

Dictation is the new speech-to-text engine that lets your Mac type out what you are saying as you talk, and it’s one of the many excellent features included with modern versions of Mac OS X. Now from Mavericks onward, you can improve Dictation considerably by enabling an option called “Enhanced Dictation”, this will provide two … Read More

Have a bunch of Notifications and Alerts sitting on the lock screen of your iPhone or iPad that you don’t want on there anymore, but don’t want to unlock the device or leave the lock screen? No sweat, rather than swiping to unlock the iOS device and then manually addressing the notifications, you can shuffle … Read More

Already installed OS X Mavericks, but now you want to create an install drive for other computers? Or maybe the Mavericks installer became corrupt during the process? Whatever the situation, you can easily re-download OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store.

Java has plenty of real-world applications and uses, but because it has been used as an attack vector in the past, Apple has made OS X reasonably aggressive in limiting Java on Macs. As a result, Mavericks does not come with Java preinstalled, and upgraded Macs will remove Java in Mavericks installation process. For most … Read More

Swiping down from the very top of your iPhone screen (or iPad), you’ll find Notification Center swoops on down, where alerts, notifications, iMessages, and missed calls appear. There’s also the “Today” tab, which aggregates information from your Calendars, Reminders, Stocks, and destinations, and puts them into an active days summary of what’s on tap for … Read More

Network Utility is a great tool that has been around on the Mac since the very first version of Mac OS X. It provides a variety of helpful networking tools and details, the “Info” tab includes general network info on a per interface level showingIP address, MAC address, link speeds, and sent/received data transfer statistics, … Read More

Sharing files between Macs and NAS drives and Windows PC’s has always been very easy, but Mavericks brought a slight change that has caused some problems for certain users in mixed PC and Mac environments. Without getting too geeky, Apple adjusted the default protocol for SMB (Samba, the Windows file sharing ability) from SMB1 to … Read More

App Nap is a great feature that arrived with OS X Mavericks which automatically pauses applications once they have gone unused for a period of time, helping to reduce energy consumption and saving battery life for portable Macs. Though App Nap can make a big difference in extending the battery life of MacBooks, there are … Read More

All of the latest versions of OS X have opted for a conservative approach to showing the users ~/Library/ directory, a folder which contains a variety of important files, settings, preferences, caches, and many specific files that are required for apps to run as intended. Because of the possibility of unintentional harm to a users … Read More