Tips & Tricks

Preview is one of my favorite Mac apps, but recently Preview.app was refusing to open some image files for what seemed like no reason. I wasn’t even able to drag the image file onto the Preview icon to open it, which is usually something that works if the Open menu doesn’t. I know the images … Read More

There’s no shortage of DNS Server options out there, with Google DNS, OpenDNS, your own ISP’s, and the gazillion of others available to use. The question remains though, which of these DNS servers is going to be fastest for you? And how do you know which is fastest? That’s where NameBench comes in. NameBench is … Read More

The bouncing Dock icons are a nice GUI feature that let you know an app is launching on the Mac, but for some people those little bouncing icons are just really annoying. Additionally, Dock icons will bounce to notify you that an alert is active in the app, or the app needs your attention. If … Read More

Mac OS X simplified the font smoothing settings (anti-aliasing) for Mac OS and all apps running within it, but for some the change is unwelcome. If you feel like your screen looks different, or that fonts look a little unusual and text looks different too, it probably does, and the change can be very profound … Read More

Changing the location of your home directory is pretty easy in Mac OS X, and it can be desired for a variety of situations to store a home folder elsewhere on a Mac, or even on another drive. This is valid and works the same in all versions of OS X.

Facebook opened Facebook Chat up to third party instant message clients by using the Jabber protocol, which means you can now use Facebook Chat seamlessly from inside iChat. That means if you have a Mac with iChat, you can easily talk to your Facebook friends without being logged into the Facebook site, and instead communicate … Read More

Are you wondering if your Mac is 64-bit architecture or 32-bit architecture? Well you might not be alone. The good news is it’s pretty easy to determine what CPU architecture your Mac is using. You can either focus on the model year of the Mac, or the CPU architecture and processor chip itself. The most … Read More

At its core, the file and folder explorer of OS X known as Finder is essentially an application like any other on the Mac. Accordingly, users can quit the Mac OS X Finder in a few different ways which we’ll cover here, but perhaps the fastest way is to just launch the Terminal app and … Read More

In some situations, you may wish to disable access to the System Preferences on a Mac. Often this is for lab environments or public use workstations, or perhaps for locking down a particular workstation for various reasons. While a common approach is to create a new user account that has limited access to system features … Read More

Spaces is a really nice feature of Mac OS X that lets you place different windows and applications within their own workspace. Dragging a window to a new Space is just a matter of holding onto the window and pulling it towards the end of the screen. You may have noticed that there’s a delay … Read More

Did you know that you can put an iPhone inside a plastic bag and still use the touchscreen? Yes, that’s right, stick your iPhone in an airtight ziplock bag, and you’ll have an instant and amazingly cheap waterproof case for your iPhone. Well, waterproof may be a bit aggressive, and perhaps water resistant is a … Read More

If you need to prevent the Dock icons from changing or being modified on a Mac, you can use defaults command strings to lock down the OS X Dock and prevent any adjustments or changes to how it appears on screen.

You can set Mac OS X to always securely empty the Trash and add a significant layer of security when removing files from the Mac. This is done just by adjusting a preference setting within the Finder, and it’s very easy to configure, here’s what you will want to do to use this option:

This is a very cool feature I had no idea existed but accidentally stumbled across while on a recent flight. If you have an iPhone, you probably know that the earbuds included with it have a button to adjust volume and what not, well guess what, you can control the volume level in iTunes and … Read More

.DS_Store files store folder level metadata information (such as icon placement and background pictures) for Mac OS X to understand, this is fine and dandy and you’re likely to never even notice if you’re a bunch of Macs working together. Unfortunately, these .DS_Store files can be really pesky in a multi-platform network environment, they can … Read More

A colleague of mine is a recent Mac switcher and he was complaining to me that virtual desktops are not included in Mac OS X, the irony is that they are, they just have the name Spaces (coming from a heavy Linux background, I guess the naming convention just threw him off). Virtual Desktops are … Read More

Many Mac users are fond of the Mac startup sound that chimes on system boot, but there are definitely times when booting that you’d rather just be quiet, say a library or coffee shop. Thus, we’re going to show you how to mute that boot up sound on any Mac, MacBook model (Pro, Air), iMac, … Read More

Using the command line tool ‘opensnoop’ you can track any Mac applications (or system process) usage of the file system. This is a very handy tool for administrators and troubleshooting! The simplest way to use it is as follows: