Ever wished you could set a Macs wallpaper image from the command line in OS X? As a matter of fact, you can change the desktop background picture from the terminal, which can be useful for a variety of situations ranging from inclusion in a setup script, to remote management, automating, or whatever else you can think of.
Though it’s generally recommended to use the ‘Default for display’ screen resolution option, Mac users who connect their computer to an external display or TV may find it helpful to be able to see, access, and use all possible display resolutions for a particular screen. This can be particularly useful if a display Mis either showing at an incorrect screen resolution, or if you’d like to use a specific resolution that is not shown in the available ‘Scaled’ resolutions list of Mac OS X.
Apple has sent invitations to selected media outlets for a September 9 event at the Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco, California. Presumably this event will be where the iPhone 6S is unveiled, perhaps alongside the rumored new Apple TV.
When you connect an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a computer, you’ll see a familiar “Trust This Computer?” pop-up on the iOS device screen with two options “Trust” and “Don’t Trust”. If you intend to use the computer with the iOS device users will tap on “Trust”, which gives the computer access to the device.
Now, given how easy it is to accidentally tap on “Don’t Trust” which can be reversed, it’s a little frustrating that there isn’t an obvious simple way to ‘UnTrust’ a computer that you accidentally trusted from the iPhone or iPad too, right? Well it turns out you can undo the ‘Trust’ selection when an iOS device is connected to a computer.
Mac users who favor the Safari browser as their primary means of web access in Mac OS X may find it helpful to switch the search engine used by default in Safari. This determines which web search tool is used through the URL address bar and elsewhere in Safari.
Safari allows you to choose between the four major web search engine choices to use as the default in search engine in Safari, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. Each of which are great choices that have a variety of benefits. Of course Google is the default, but some users prefer DuckDuckGo or Bing, or even Yahoo. Mac users can change the default search engine in Safari at any time, as this tutorial will demonstrate.
Need to restore a Mac from a Time Machine backup? This article will show you how to do that.
While Macs have a great reputation for being stable and rarely experiencing major issues, the reality is that sometimes things can go wrong. Typically this happens when either a hard drive fails or a Mac OS X system update goes completely awry, but if you have set up Time Machine backups on the Mac like all users should, then you will discover that restoring an entire systems hard drive from that Time Machine backup is really quite easy.
Apple makes heavy usage of eye candy zooming and zipping around animation effects on Apple Watch, iOS, and OS X, which can look nice in some situations, but can also cause nausea and vertigo to some users who are particularly sensitive to the unpleasant sensation of motion sickness. If you’ve ever been using the Apple Watch and felt queasy, or perhaps you just aren’t a fan of the endless zooming in and out of applications, resizing, and sliding around animations found throughout WatchOS, you can turn on a feature called Reduce Motion which greatly limits the animations.
Apple has launched a replacement program for malfunctioning rear cameras on some iPhone 6 Plus models. The affected iPhone 6 Plus devices have a camera component failure which causes photos and video taken with the devices rear camera to appear blurry rather than focused (note Apple calls the rear camera on iPhones the iSight camera, and the front camera a FaceTime camera). Not all iPhone Plus models are impacted, and some iPhone 6 Plus devices with a repair-eligible serial number appear to take normal focused pictures.
Everyone loves Emoji, right? The playful little icons that can typed on the Mac or iPhone add all sorts of fun and variety to conversation, but why stop at communication? Why not make some incredibly complex mosaic Emoji artwork out of any image or picture you have? It’s easy!
Apple has released an update to the Recovery feature for Macs running beta versions of OS X El Capitan. The update is recommended for all users running OS X El Capitan to install.
Apple has started to air a new Apple Pay focused iPhone commercial in the ongoing “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” ad campaign.
The advertisement focuses on the ease, safety, and convenience of using Apple Pay to make purchases from the iPhone, displaying a diverse handful of retailers who support the service, including McDonalds, Subway, PetCo, Sports Authority, Macy’s, Sephora, Staples, Jamba Juice, Walgreens, and others.
The Mail app in iOS is one of the most used applications for many iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch owners, and that means it’s likely only a matter of time before you inadvertently delete or accidentally archive an email on the device that you didn’t necessarily intend to. This is fairly easy to do since it just requires a user to tap on the little nondescript box button in iOS Mail app, which by default sends the mail message into the alternate inbox called Archives.
Since that accidental arching (or deletion) of a message can be a frustrating Mail experience, an excellent choice is to enable an optional dialog box which will ask to confirm the deletion of an email message, or confirm an email is to be archived, before performing the action in iOS.
Apple has released OS X El Capitan Developer Beta 7 alongside OS X El Capitan Public Beta 5 for users participating in the beta testing programs for Mac system software. And yes, it’s basically the same Public Beta 5 that was released and then pulled yesterday. It’s unclear why the initial release of El Capitan Public Beta 5 was removed.
Whether you’re a multilingual iPhone or iPad user or just learning a foreign language, you almost certainly wish to change the language of the onscreen virtual keyboard from time to time. Switching the keyboard language in iOS is really quite simple once you have an alternate keyboard enabled, so let’s walk through the entire process.
The Siri voice assistant has many genuinely useful commands and features and a great sense of humor, but some users may wish to disable Siri on their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch for whatever reason.
Of course, by turning off Siri, you won’t be able to access the personal assistant from anywhere in iOS, and you’ll lose any of the related features on the iPhone or iPad itself, but also with any paired Apple Watch too.
Apple has released the fifth Public Beta release of OS X El Capitan to users participating in the Mac Public Beta testing program for OS X 10.11. The new build arrives as 15A262c and the accompanying release notes suggest it should be installed by all users who are running the public beta versions of Mac OS X.
Update 2: OS X 10.11 Public Beta 5 is back on the App Store again, now with the build 15A262e.
Update: Public Beta 5 seems to have disappeared from the App Store, curious.
For Macs who have multiple user accounts on a single computer, sometimes you may log in to multiple user accounts concurrently. This leaves the prior user account logged in while another user account session opens. There’s really nothing wrong with that, aside from reducing available resources, but sometimes you may wish to log out the other user account. The typical action to log out another user account in OS X is to switch to that account, log out from the  Apple menu, and then returning to the desired account with another login. Kind of a hassle, right? Another option is to force the other user account to log out, without having to log back into it on the Mac.
Some of my favorite wallpapers are of landscapes, and these three high resolution images from Apple and Wikipedia are absolutely stunning examples of scenic beauty that make for great desktop background pictures.
