Tips & Tricks

A nice addition to iOS is the ability to rename your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch device directly on the device itself through the Settings app. This is a nice software feature which prevents users from having to go about changing the name with iTunes on a computer. Instead, the entire name adjustment is handled … Read More

Now that you’ve set up iMessage, if you use multiple iOS devices you’ll want to be sure to sync your conversations across them all. For example, if you use an iPhone and have an iPad, you may want to have iMessage sync between the iPhone and iPad seamlessly. This is supposed to happen automatically as … Read More

Of all the Launchpad tips and customizations, one that has been greatly desired is the ability to manually adjust the icon size of apps. A tip sent in by Rohan Agashe moves us in that direction, allowing you to change the Launchpad icon size down from the large icons in OS X 10.7.2 to the … Read More

Want to use iMessage with iPhone or iPad? Of course you do! iMessage is the fantastic messaging service that is built directly into iOS from versions 5 onward, available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac. iMessage is great because it allows you to send instant messages, text messages, pictures, video, contacts, and locations, across … Read More

You can quickly find out how much storage space is available on your iOS device, and perhaps more useful, the amount of storage space currently being used. This same storage information screen also gives users details on how much space each specific app is taking up, and even shows how large your music, movies, and … Read More

If you’re on a modern version of iOS you have easily accessible hourly weather updates on iPhone, but if your iPhone is running a much older version of system software it’s a bit different. Fortunately the weather app in iOS 5 has been improved to include quickly accessible hourly forecasts, in addition to the percentage … Read More

Some users are indicating the iPhone 4S battery isn’t lasting as long as expected, this comes alongside separate reports of iOS 5 battery life draining quicker than usual. While some of the 4S battery life complaints could be attributed to the aforementioned iOS 5 issues (most of which are easy to fix by adjusting settings), … Read More

Mission Control in Mac OS X Lion has a hidden motion blur effect that can be enabled quite easily:

Have you ever wanted to make the text size on a webpage bigger when you’re reading a web site on an iPhone? Some web pages are easy to read on iPhone, and some are not. If you find font or text sizes in Safari to be maddeningly small for some web pages when you’re reading … Read More

Yet another great feature of iOS 5 is the instant camera access from your lock screen. This lets you quickly pull out your iPhone (or iPad and iPod touch of course) and take pictures without having to unlock the iPhone or clicking on the camera app. Here’s how to use this quick camera access trick … Read More

New to Mac OS X and iOS is the ability to hide purchases from appearing in the Mac App Store, iOS App Store, and the iTunes Store purchased items lists. This is great if you download tons of stuff but use only a fraction of apps, and you don’t want the other items clogging up … Read More

Those who have upgraded to iOS 5 have probably noticed that little Newsstand icon is unable to be moved to a folder, and like all other Apple iOS apps, it can’t be deleted. Well, a little tip from The Coding Massacre has made the rounds that shows us how we can force the Newsstand app … Read More

By far one of the best features of iOS is wireless syncing and backing up, as the name implies it allows you to wirelessly transfer apps, music, books, contacts, calendars, movies, photos, everything you had to use a wired sync for, but it’s done through the air. As long as your iPhone, iPad, or iPod … Read More

If you’ve installed a modern version of OS X and rebooted or ended up at the lock screen, you may have noticed that a new “Guest User” account appears at the login screen. This is not a full guest user account, if you select the Guest User option at login, the Mac will restart to … Read More

One of the subtle changes in the Mac OS X 10.7.2 update is the ability to drag files and folders between Desktops and Full Screen apps in Mission Control. All you need to do is grab a file or folder and start pulling the item off the screen in the direction of the Desktop or … Read More

Apple has rolled out iCloud, the cloud syncing service that automatically syncs all your content to all of your devices, be it an iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, PC, iPad, whatever. It also includes things like Find My iPhone and Find My Mac, in addition to several web apps that let you get your Mail, Contacts, … Read More

If your Mac OS X desktop quickly turns into a cluttered mess of files and folders while you work, you’re not alone. The busier (or less organized) you are, the quicker this accumulates, until finally the Finder is so covered in files that you can barely see the wallpaper. Sometimes mine gets so full that … Read More

Want to add some additional eyecandy to Mac OS X Lion‘s Launchpad feature? Open Launchpad and hit Command+M to enable a motion blur that is seen at various Launchpad events. You can immediately see the effect by swiping between Launchpad screens or by using the Command+Arrow keys to navigate around. The motion blur also effects … Read More