Mac users who come from a unix background may appreciate knowing how to implement the equivalent to the Unix “tree” command in macOS and Mac OS X. There are actually a few different ways to show a folder tree in the Terminal of Mac OS X, we’ll cover an easy tree equivalent achieved through an alias, as well as how to install native ‘tree’ on a Mac just like what you see in Ubuntu or elsewhere in Linux.

This is obviously aimed at command line users, but if you spend more time in the Finder of the Mac you might appreciate listing files and folder contents recursively there, which can be similar but is obviously not displaying a directory tree at the Terminal.

Read more »

The macOS Sierra GM Candidate build is available to download and install now for all Mac users who are participating in either the Public Beta or Developer Beta testing programs.

Read more »

iOS 10 GM is now available to download for all users who have participated in the iOS 10 public beta and iOS 10 developer beta testing programs. The iOS 10 GM seed will download and install on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch device that is supported by iOS 10 and should be considered the final version of iOS 10.

Read more »

Apple has announced the official release date of macOS Sierra will be Tuesday, September 20. All users with a Mac compatible with macOS Sierra will be able to download and install the update free of charge.

Read more »

iOS 10 will officially debut on Tuesday, September 13, available as a free download to any supported iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch device. Additionally, watchOS 3 will be released on September 13 for Apple Watch users, and tvOS 10 for Apple TV.

Read more »

Apple has announced the all new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The devices feature all new cameras, water resistance, stereo speakers, and a longer battery life.

Read more »

Apple has released the new Apple Watch, called Apple Watch Series 2. The new Apple Watch includes a faster processor and GPU, a better display, water resistance, and GPS.

Read more »

Ever wished you could make a dialog alert pop-up on the Mac by way of the Terminal? Well it turns out that you can with the always useful osascript command, which allows execution of AppleScript from the Terminal. For those who spend a lot of time at the command line of MacOS, this can be a great little trick to notify you of when a specific task has completed, or even to be included as part of a script. This is sort of a visual approach to one of my favorite simple Terminal tricks which is to verbally announce when a command line task has completed.

Let’s review how advanced Mac users can trigger alert dialog boxes in the MacOS GUI from the command line. You can choose to specify a specification application to trigger the pop-up alert to appear within, or, perhaps better yet, trigger a alert dialog in whatever the foremost application in Mac OS X is.

Read more »

Macs with access to a printer capable of printing double sided can print any document as a two-sided print, meaning that each page of the document will go on the front and back of the piece of paper, kind of like a book. This is a popular printing method for many situations, whether it’s manuscripts, manuals, documentation, books and novellas, and even just for people who want to save paper.

You can print double-sided on a Mac with Microsoft Word, Office, Pages, PDF files from Safari and Preview, and many other apps, and the feature works on all versions of macOS and Mac OS X as well, as this tutorial will detail through the relatively easy process.

Read more »

Resizing a picture changes the resolution of the image, either increasing or decreasing it as desired by the user. On the Mac, one of the simplest ways to resize a photo is using the bundled Preview application, which is available in all versions of macOS and Mac OS X.

Read more »

Apple Watch includes a feature called Mark As Missing, which is similar to iCloud Lock for iPhones, and intended to be enabled if an Apple Watch is missing or misplaced. Once activated, an Apple Watch goes into an Activation Lock mode, which requires the associated Apple ID and password to be entered before the Watch can be paired and used again – even if the Apple Watch is erased. Enabling activation lock on Apple Watch also disables Apple Pay cards, so if you’ve setup the payment feature for the Apple Watch, you won’t need to worry about someone using it if you lose the device.

Read more »

Do you have a great picture on your iPhone or iPad that you want to make a copy of, maybe so that you can apply some edits or color adjustments to the duplicate version without messing with the original copy? With iPhone and iPad, you can easily duplicate any picture, photo, image, Live Photo, or video using a simple iOS copy trick.

Let’s review how to quickly duplicate copies of a picture or video in the iOS Photos app.

Read more »

Warcraft 3 was (is?) a popular strategy game which was released in 2002 for Mac and Windows. It’s obviously not exactly a new game, so why bother discussing it now? Well in short, because Mac users can install and play Warcraft 3 for Mac again, without having to use Wine, Boot Camp, emulators, or virtual machines. Yup, a 14 year old video game was actually updated to work on modern MacOS and Mac OS X releases, hooray!

Read more »

Have you ever been looking at a web page or reading something in Safari on your iPhone and then accidentally closed it? Or maybe you closed the tab and then realized you weren’t quite finished with it, or you’d like to get that closed tab back for some other reason? You can easily re-open closed tabs in Safari on the iPhone, but you’d be forgiven if you overlooked the feature.

Read more »

The Mac Photos app includes a great red-eye removal tool, which makes quick work of getting rid of the glaring red eye effect which can sometimes happen with photos of faces. One of the curiosities of Photos for Mac though is the red eye tool is not always visible as an option, as the app appears to try to detect if red eye is visible in the image and only show the removal tool if needed. This has caused some users to think the feature does not exist in Photos for Mac. With a little effort you can always show the red eye removal tool in Photos for Mac, removing any guesswork about if the feature is there, and if it’s usable for any photo in question.

Read more »

Apple has released security updates for Mac users running OS X El Captain 10.11.6 and OS X Yosemite 10.10.5, recommending the updates for all users as they aim to improve the security of the Mac operating system.

Read more »

Just about every iPhone I know is perpetually full and constantly battling the various storage error messages, and yes mine is included in that group. Typically the nuisance of having full iPhone storage is limited to not being able to take anymore pictures (you can use a screwy workaround to snap a few more photos if you’re in a pinch, by the way), but with modern versions of iOS things go even further: you’ll get locked out of Mail app on a full iPhone as well, preventing the user from being able to check email or use the email app at all.

Read more »

Many Mac applications and downloads arrive as a PKG package file, but have you ever wanted to open a PKG file to view exactly what is being installed and where it’s going from the source .pkg? Assuming you get a .pkg installer from a trusted source like Apple there is generally nothing to be concerned with about running a package installer file, but not all PKG installers are as trustworthy. Additionally, sometimes people are just curious about what exactly is going on behind the scenes, and what is going to be run by the package installer and where it intends to put files on a Mac.

This is where the amusingly named ‘Suspicious Package’ application comes in to play, it’s a free Mac app which allows the opening and inspection of PKG installer files before the installation is actually executed, giving you a look at what is going to happen when the PKG is run.

Read more »