Tips & Tricks

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you probably know by now that double-clicking and triple-clicking the Home button is required to perform some actions in iOS, like bringing up lock screen music controls, showing the multitasking bar, inverting the screen, enabling zoom, summoning Assistive Touch, or even turning on Guided Access to … Read More

Trash is one of those overlooked aspects of Mac OS X that you probably don’t think much about, most of us just drag a file into it, empty the Trash to delete a document and free up disk space, and that’s about it. That’s fine, but there are also a handful of genuinely useful keyboard … Read More

If you use a lot of tabs while browsing the web, you’ll appreciate a subtle change to Safari for iPad that came along with iOS 6. You can now have up to 24 concurrent browser tabs open, a huge increase from the 8 tab limit in prior versions of iOS. While that 8 tab limit … Read More

We really like Siri and it’s undoubtedly useful, but unfortunately not all devices can run Siri, and sometimes Siri is just plain slow or doesn’t work. If you’re looking for an excellent Siri alternative that will run on everything, yes even iPhone 4 & iPhone 3GS, look no further than the latest versions of Google … Read More

Mac running out of disk space? Maybe you don’t have room for installing a new app, backing up a device, copying some files, or much of anything? If you’re running low on disk space or have ever received that dreaded “disk full” message when using a Mac, you know it can be pretty frustrating to … Read More

You can easily skip ahead and rewind in large blocks while listening to podcasts on the iPhone. This is a helpful feature of the Podcasts app in iOS for many reasons, perhaps you missed a section and want to rewind and hear it again, or maybe you want to skip ahead through an uninteresting segment. … Read More

If you need to change a computers MAC address (the unique ID attached to a physical network interface), but aren’t comfortable with the command line approaches that we’ve discussed before, an excellent free preference panel called LinkLiar makes it easy. Not only does LinkLiar make changing MAC addresses remarkably simple for any network interface on … Read More

If you want to restrict app usage for a particular user on a Mac, there is no easier option than Parental Controls. This is a great solution for parents setting up a limited-access account for a kid, for public usage Macs, Macs in the enterprise, or even just for a restricted Guest account for when … Read More

To compare and list the different contents of two directories without the extra output you get through commands like diff, you can use the comm command instead. To get started, launch Terminal and type the following command, adjusting the directory paths as appropriate: comm -3 <(ls -1 folder1) <(ls -1 folder2) The output listed will … Read More

The iPhone’s excellent panorama mode allows for easy vertical panoramic shots as well. Shooting panorama mode in vertical orientation is perfect for taking pictures of tall trees, waterfalls, buildings, or anything else that is taller than the standard range provides. This guide will show you how to switch Panorama mode into vertical mode, to snap … Read More

Fluid is a great Mac app that converts any specified web site into it’s own self-contained application, allowing you to do things like turn Gmail, Facebook, Wikipedia, Soundcloud, and Pandora, into their own dedicated app. Other than being useful for creating apps exclusively for particular websites, Fluid is also great for those of us who … Read More

Photo Streams are a great addition to iOS, but thus far seem to be an underused feature. With Photo Stream, you can easily share a collection of images with a select group of people, without having to go through the usual avenues of social networks. Instead, you create an instant gallery right out of the … Read More

Time Machine backups can be triggered remotely thanks to SSH (Remote Login) and the command line. This is an excellent solution to use if you left the home or office without making an important backup, though the SSH requirement does add a potential layer of complexity that may make it more appropriate for advanced users. … Read More

The next time you’re wondering how many grams of sugar are in that donut and if it’s going to cut into your allotted daily calorie intake of junk food, just pull out your iPhone or iPad and ask Siri. Thanks to Siri’s ability to tap into the wealth of knowledge at Wolfram Alpha, you can … Read More

If you’re a Mac owner you know that every time the Mac reboots or starts up it makes a startup chime sound. Though you can temporarily mute the chime by holding down the Mute key on any Mac keyboard, you can also choose to disable it completely by turning to the command line. To be … Read More

The next time you’re browsing the web and come across a link that points to Twitter, you can immediately jump to the Twitter app if you want to. This is a new ability included in iOS 6 onward. To access the feature, pull down from the top of Safari when a Twitter link is opened, … Read More

The history command is a useful way to find specific commands that have been used in the past, and it can also be used to discover what your personal most used commands are with the following command string: history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head -15 The … Read More

Jailbreakers will be pleased to discover that iOS 6.0.1 can already be jailbroken by using existing versions of Redsn0w. Currently, only the iPhone 4, iPod touch 4th gen, and iPhone 3GS are supported, and you’ll have to point Redsn0w at the older 6.0 IPSW, but otherwise the process is pretty much the same as any … Read More