Tips & Tricks

I always put iTunes into mini-player mode to conserve screen real estate, so I was pretty annoyed when iTunes 9 took away this feature when clicking the green resize button in the iTunes window. Thankfully getting it back is very easy but it’s an extra step, option-click the green maximize button to enter into the … Read More

Teleport is undoubtedly one of the single most useful utilities available to anyone that owns more than one Mac. Using Teleport, you can share a single mouse and keyboard across multiple Mac’s, seamlessly! Setup is an absolute breeze, you need to install Teleport on all Mac’s that you want to use, and once it’s all … Read More

Need to get around the boot level Mac firmware password? You can bypass a firmware password by doing a little bit of a hardware hack. There’s many reasons you’d want to get around firmware protection, but here’s why we got the instructions from an anonymous submitter:

I use my MacBook almost exclusively at home and so I frequently forget to discharge and recharge the battery, which is a recommended procedure to have your notebook battery last as long as possible. For people like me who often run with the powercharger attached to their Mac laptop, Apple.com offers a nice simple reminder … Read More

I came across the aptly named AppleSerialNumberInfo.com today and found it very useful for getting information about a Mac. Type in a Mac’s serial number and a whole slew of information will be reported back to you, including the build queue number, production week, extensive hardware information, unit specific repair and support programs, and so … Read More

I have become dependent on many command line applications I have installed through the open source MacPorts effort, and if you have too you’ll really appreciate this guide. When upgrading Mac OS X to a new major OS (say, upgrading Tiger to Snow Leopard) you may notice that some MacPorts installations get screwy and no … Read More

Ever heard of MD5 and not sure what it was or what that meant? You’re likely not alone, but MD5 is important, and, with a little explaining, easy to understand. Let’s explain a bit about MD5, MD5 checksums, what it is, and why you should know about it.

You can easily check the MD5 Hash of any file on your Mac, all you need to do is launch the Terminal and type the ‘md5’ command and point it at the file you wish to check the md5 has for. How to Check MD5 Hash of a File on Mac First launch the Terminal … Read More

You can easily reveal the Finder location of any recently used item from the Apple “Recent Items” menu by holding down the Command key as you access the Apple menu of OS X.

Safari is really settling it’s spot as my preferred web browser. Sure, I miss the plugins in Firefox, but it just can’t beat the speed of Safari. You can make your Safari web browsing experience even better by using Command-Option-F to jump to the Search box, nice! [ via Twitter: AppleSpotlight ]

Have you ever received a movie or video file where the audio and video isn’t synced correctly? This is most obvious when you’re watching people talk, where the lip movements don’t match up with the audio track. Thanks to a handy capability in VLC, you can quickly sync audio to video in VLC by using … Read More

Following the CPU usage on my Mac is a mild obsession, and I usually use the Mac terminal command ‘top’ to do this but I noticed that top itself takes up a fair amount of CPU usage (5% or more). I made this complaint to a friend of mine and they told me to try … Read More

You can see a visual preview of a folders contents by enabling a hidden Quick Look feature. This is a rather nice eye candy improvement but I’m not sure that it’s use goes much further beyond that, see the above screenshot and try it out yourself to judge. To enable the Quick Look X-Ray folders, … Read More

You can use QuickLook from inside ‘Open File’ dialogue boxes in any application! Try it out yourself, go to File -> Open File and hit the Spacebar (or whatever hot-key you assigned QuickLook) on an image or text file, and like magic QuickLook opens the file in preview mode so that you can be sure … Read More

Are you a traveler and flying on an airplane with your iPhone? Then this tip is for you! You can selectively enable WiFi access while your iPhone is in Airplane Mode, meaning you can use a flights wireless internet service without the cell phone itself being turned on. This is really handy since many flights … Read More

Quick Look is one of the many Mac OS X features that make my OS choice cemented, I use it so often that I simply can’t live without it, and here’s a tip that I’ve been using a lot lately. If you want to create an instant slideshow of images, simply select multiple images in … Read More

In what may be the boldest claim ever to hit iTunes users, what is said to be the best iTunes equalizer settings have surfaced on the internet. Now that is quite a proclamation obviously, but after seeing the bold statement, I gave the suggested settings a try with the iTunes equalizer, played some music, and … Read More

Stacks are what list items and folders turn into when pulled into the Dock of OS X. There are several views for Stacks, like a grid, or a fan, or a list in modern OS X versions. But with a little secret defaults string, a list view can be enabled in prior releases of OS … Read More