You may know that you can quickly jump to websites by typing a domain name into a Spotlight search and choosing the ‘Suggested Website’ option, but did you know you can get a live preview of a webpage from Spotlight on the Mac? This is a fairly simple trick that’s pretty useful, and yes it actually fetches a live copy of the webpage in question, rendering it within the Spotlight preview panel using Safari.

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With the Mac Messages app able to send and receive text messages along with iMessages, you’ll be in greater contact with friends, family, and anyone else who sends you a message. This is usually a good thing, but sometimes you’ll find yourself as a recipient to a conversation that just isn’t necessary to follow. For example, maybe you’re an unintentional third party on a multi-person conversation, and frankly you have nothing to add to the conversation. In situations like these, you could always enable system-wide Do Not Disturb mode with a schedule or quick-click, but perhaps a more appropriate option is to selectively mute the conversation in question.

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The next time you’re listening to iTunes Radio and you find yourself wondering which wonderful decade a particular song came from, wonder no more, because iTunes Radio can tell you when a song was released.

You can even see the date of a songs release with songs listed in iTunes Radio history, here’s all you need to do from the Music app on your iPhone or iPad:

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Need to run Windows 10 on a Mac? You can install and run Windows 10 in Mac OS X for free using VirtualBox and the Windows 10 Preview from Microsoft. Because this installs Windows into a virtual machine atop existing Mac system software, running Windows is basically like running any other application, which makes it much easier than configuring Boot Camp for a native Windows experience.

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Rather than remembering a separate password and set of login information for unlocking a Mac, OS X offers the option to use an iCloud password to login to the computer at boot, reboot, authentication, locked screens, and all login windows instead. This is a helpful feature for users who like to keep things simple and use a single login and password for all Apple related tasks on their Mac, since the Apple ID can access iCloud, the App Store, iTunes Store, Mac App Store, FileVault, and quite a bit more.

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Apple has released the fourth beta release of iOS 8.3 to those registered with the iOS developer program, or who are participating in the iOS Public Beta. The build is versioned as 12F5061 and is available now for compatible iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices.

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Apple has released a fifth beta version of OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 to those participating in the OS X Public Beta program, or registered in the Mac Developer program. The new build arrives as build number 14D113c and continues to include a focus on the new Photos app for OS X, along with other bug fixes and feature improvements.

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Each release of MacOS or Mac OS X has a unique build number assigned to it to represent the changes found in that version of system software, often these changes are minor and incremental, but with major Mac OS X releases the build numbers can change significantly. Though average Mac users won’t need to know the build number of their system software, those running developer builds and beta releases often pay attention to these software versioning alphanumeric strings. With that in mind, we’ll show you a few ways to quickly find the build number of Mac OS X system software installed on any Mac.

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This weeks featured Mac setup is the amazing quadruple tiled display desk of Teemu A., who uses this great workstation to run and manage a startup. Let’s jump right in to learn more about the hardware and software used to get things done.

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If you have a Mac and an iPhone, you can now make phone calls from your Mac using that iPhone. The phone call will sound through the Mac speakers and use the Mac microphone, but the actual call itself routes through the iPhone. This is a part of the Continuity suite, which is really nice feature set in newer versions of iOS and Mac OS X that allow for seamless transition between Macs and iPhones and iPads. Phone calling from the Mac is quite simple to use once you have it set up properly.

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We’ve all experienced it, a huge number of texts and iMessages arriving on our iPhone or iPad, that you either know aren’t important or you already read on another devices Messages app. Or maybe the messages are coming from someone you’d just prefer to ignore, whatever the case, you can instantly mark all messages as read in iOS using a quick little known trick.

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Apple is planning on releasing an all new Apple TV set-top box this summer, according to a report from Buzzfeed. The new Apple TV is said to feature a redesign, all new hardware components, an App Store, and Siri.

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Apple has released an important security update for OS X Yosemite users. Labeled as “Security Update 2015-003 1.0, the update is available to all Macs running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2.

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All domains are associated with an IP address, whether it’s for a website, mail server, or whatever else. While using nslookup offers a simple way to get DNS information and an IP for a specific website or domain, if you want a significantly more detailed retrieval, you can use the host command instead. The host command performs an extensive DNS lookup for whatever domain it’s pointed at, which makes it much more useful than nslookup or dig for many situations. This can be helpful for many situations, whether to troubleshoot and discover DNS propagation issues or simply to get an actual IP address, CNAME, IPv6 address, or otherwise.

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Hidden wi-fi networks are becoming more common as network administrators look for additional measures to secure wireless connections. Hiding the network functions as a means of security by obscurity, but the main user-side issue with a hidden Wi-FI network is that the routers SSID is not broadcast which can make it difficult to find for users on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple Watch. Fortunately, joining a hidden wi-fi network from iOS is really easy, you just have to know how to do it.

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Many Mac users have a gaming console or two as well, and if it happens to be a Playstation 4, then you’ll find that using that PS4 controller with Mac OS is incredibly simple. This basically means your DualShock Playstation 4 controller will work as a native game controller for any supported game running on a Mac, ranging from native Mac OS X games to emulators. It works very well, and since many of us prefer to play games with a controller it’s a great way to extend the value of a pricey PS4 purchase.

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Apple has released a group of important security updates for the Mac Safari web browser, versioned as Safari 8.0.4 for OS X Yosemite, Safari 7.1.4 for OS X Mavericks, and Safari 6.2.4 for OS X Mountain Lion.

The notes accompanying the download are brief, simply recommending the security update for all Mac users as it offers “improvements to stability and security.”

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If you find yourself frequently connecting to a network share or remote server from your Mac, you should do yourself a favorite and add it to the Favorites list in the Connect to Server screen of Mac OS X. Though the feature is right in front of our faces, very few Mac users seem to use this handy ability, though it will undoubtedly make your networked life easier.

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