At the command line, environmental variables are defined for the current shell and become inherited by any running command or process. They can determine anything from the default shell, the PATH, the users home directory, to the terminal emulation type, current working directory, where a history file is located, language and localization settings, and going further to include shell variables, which include everything from customizations to the bash prompt, colorized ls output, and changes to terminal appearance, to aliases, and much more.

Let’s walk through how to list environment and shell variables, and then how to set and add new environment variables at the command line of Mac OS X. We’ll cover this for both bash and zsh shells.

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Apple has started running three new Apple Watch ads in a campaign dubbed “Apps at a tap”. The new commercials focus on the variety of apps available on the wrist-worn device, with each commercial having a different emphasis; fitness apps, travel apps, and music apps.

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Apple has released the fifth developer beta of OS X El Capitan to users participating in the Mac Developer Beta program.

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If you use Time Machine to backup a Mac to an external drive, you may decide to manually delete old backups that are no longer needed. Yes, Time Machine does it’s own housekeeping, but sometimes users need to manually intervene. This can be for a variety of reasons, whether for simple removal of old backups, or if you eventually run into space limitations on a backup drive where Time Machine triggers an error saying “Time Machine could not complete the backup. This backup is too large for the backup disk. The backup requires XX GB but only YY GB are available.”

Whatever the reason, you can easily delete old backups from a Time Machine drive to either free up space on that drive for a new backup, or just to perform some manual house keeping of a Time Machine drive.

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Have you ever wondered exactly what hardware was used to create the stunning visual effects, animation, and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) you see in in movies, video games, and commercials? Well, this weeks Mac setup will show you. Much more than a single workstation, it’s an entire Mac-based animation studio in Sheffield, UK! From a group of maxed out Retina iMacs to an amazing Mac Mini render-farm, this office is a Mac fans dream.

Let’s get to it and learn about the production hardware and software used in a high-end animation studio.

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Apple recently built this microsite to accompany the “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” TV ad campaign, and much like other portions of the Apple online presence, there is some pretty nice abstract imagery included in the backgrounds. With a little digging, this means you can uncover those nice pictures and use them as wallpaper for your Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or whatever else you’re looking to make look a bit nicer.

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Given the complexity of some wi-fi network passwords combined with the general infrequency of entering them and that they’re typically saved on use, it’s not terribly unusual to forget what a specific routers wireless password is.

Fortunately, if you’re on a Mac, there are a few ways to go about finding those lost or forgotten wi-fi router login details.

Perhaps the easiest method is recovering forgotten wireless passwords with KeyChain Access in Mac OS X, but if you’re an advanced Mac user you may wish to retrieve the same data from the command line, and that’s what we’re going to demonstrate here.

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Apple has started their annual Back To School promotional deal for students and educators looking to purchase a Mac. This year, eligible buyers are able to get a free pair of Beats Solo2 On-Ear Headphones, valued at $199, with the order of a qualifying Mac.

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The popular messaging app WhatsApp has a default media saving setting which will automatically download and save every received picture and video to the iPhone Photos apps Camera Roll. While some users may like this feature, others may wish to change the auto-saving media behavior so that images and movies sent and received in WhatsApp are not automatically saved to their iPhones.

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Apple has released iOS 9 Public Beta 2 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users choosing to participate in the beta testing program for iOS. The new build arrives as 13A4305g, meaning it matches the 4th developer beta which was recently pushed out as well.

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Apple has released the second Public Beta version of OS X 10.11 El Capitan to users participating in the testing program. The version closely matches the 4th developer beta, arriving as build 15A225f, and should offer notable bug fixes along with improvements to stability and performance compared to the first public beta release of El Capitan.

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Want to download Civilization V for Mac, entirely for free? For a limited time, you can get Civilization V: Campaign Edition for OS X entirely for free with basically no strings attached, thanks to a giveaway sponsored by game-maker Aspyr and MacRumors.

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Apple has released new beta versions of OS X 10.11 El Capitan for Mac users. The fourth developer beta arrives as build 15A226f and marches the operating system ever closer to a stable release later in the year.

At the moment, the latest OS X 10.11 beta is only available to users in the Mac Developer program, but typically the developer beta releases roll out to Public Beta users soon afterwards.
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The fourth beta version of iOS 9 has been released by Apple, alongside a new beta build of WatchOS 2. The new iOS 9 build arrives as 13A4305g and runs on all supported iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch hardware.

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The new Force Touch trackpads available for some Macs are really quite impressive. By using a haptic feedback mechanism and a tiny little speaker, the pressure-sensitive trackpad mimics a click with multiple layers of depth by pushing feedback into your finger – the trackpad itself does not move or click down like the prior generation trackpad surfaces. It’s one of those features that’s very hard to describe and much better experienced, and as Force Touch becomes the new norm for Apple touch surfaces on future Macs, Magic Trackpad, Apple Watch, and iPhone, the feature will surely further evolve and improve to do some pretty neat things.

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OS X El Capitan (10.11) is part of an open Public Beta, which means that any user can opt-in to install and run the beta version of the future OS X system software on their Mac. This is a chance for Mac users to help shape the future of OS X, and a great way to do that is by sending feedback directly to Apple through the built-in reporting mechanisms.

Of course, this is a beta, so not everything is smooth sailing, and if you’re running OS X El Capitan and you discover something you either don’t like, a persistent crash, a bug, or some other problem, you should let Apple know by using the built-in reporting tools too.

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This weeks featured Mac setup comes to us from Pat B., a professional DJ and music producer in Belgium who has a workstation that not only looks great, but it’s full of great hardware as well. Let’s jump to it and learn a bit more about this Mac setup:

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When the San Francisco type face first debuted it was made for the Apple Watch, but some enterprising Mac users modified the San Francisco font to run in OS X Yosemite anyway. Fast forward to now, and the San Francisco font has been revised by Apple to be a bit more readable for the Mac desktop and iOS devices, as it will soon replace Helvetica Neue as the default system font in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. That font has been released for specific use by Apple (available here), but if you’re currently running OS X Yosemite, you can use a copy of the modified version of the El Capitan system font right now.

To be perfectly clear, the OS X El Capitan San Francisco system font is different from the Apple Watch variant of San Francisco, which has since been renamed to San Francisco Compact, intended for watchOS. In other words, if you installed the Apple Watch font onto your Mac, it’s not quite the same as the one mentioned here.

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