When you hit the green maximize button to resize windows on a Mac or send things into full screen mode, a fancy visual animation shows the redrawing of the window size as the active window expands outwards. While this looks great and many users will be happy with the default resizing animation time in OS X, it can feel sluggish to some users, and others may just not be a particular fan of excess eye candy effects in general.

For Mac users who want to dramatically speed up the animation time of window resizing events, you can turn to the terminal and adjust the window resize time with a defaults command string. In fact, by shortening the window redraw time to a tiny fraction of a second, you can basically make the resize animation instant, which can give the feeling that OS X is a bit faster.

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If you’re a Mac user who finds the text output shown within Terminal app to be a bit too confined and tightly spaced, you’ll be pleased to discover that you can adjust the line spacing to accommodate your preferences. You can boost line spacing within Terminal dramatically or just a little bit (or if you really want to, shrink the line spacing too), and you may find that even a small increase to the line spacing can result in dramatically improved readability of text and command output within Terminal app.

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Raise To Listen is a handy feature in modern versions of iOS that allow you to literally raise your iPhone to listen to a received audio message and to respond by sending a new voice text. But the feature is not entirely reliable for all users (particularly those who use an iPhone case, more on that in a moment), and as a result it can cause some annoyances where a message is inadvertently marked as listened or played, and because audio messages remove themselves by default, those audio messages may disappear from your iOS device without ever actually listening to them. Perhaps even more annoying is that some third party cases and protective screen products may cause the Raise to Listen response feature to trigger at inappropriate times or cut off in the middle of a voice text, sometimes sending an audio message that is incomplete.

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It’s time for another featured Mac setup! This time we’re sharing the workstation of Daniel W., a Senior Scientist and FPGA Developer who has a great Mac desk to learn a bit more about:

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Have a few favorite Instagram filters that you want easy access to? Never use some of the other filters and you want to hide them? You can now do both, rearrange your photo filters so that your preferred choices are in whatever order you’d like, and you can hide the filters you don’t like or don’t use. Of course if you hide a filter or many and decide you want to access them again, you can do that too. There are two ways to change your filters list, one uses a simple drag trick similar to changing home screen icon layouts, and the other uses the Instagram apps filter management tool.

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Many of us use the iPhone as our primary alarm clocks, but if you’re a heavy sleeper then the volume of the alarm may not be sufficient to pull you out of a deep slumber, and you can easily dismiss the alarm in a half-awake state which doesn’t help much either.

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Some people love complex wallpapers of scenes and objects, and some people love simple and minimalist wallpapers that are zen-like, this time around we’re focusing on the latter with some simple winter themed wallpapers of snow and snow textures, offering a nice and subtle background to your favorite iDevices.

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Many iPhone users have noticed that Touch ID becomes finicky in cold weather, often not working at all when the temperatures drop in winter. Or at least, that’s what it seems like, but the real culprit is quite likely to be your skin and the effects of colder climates on fingerprints, which is what Touch ID is using to recognize and unlock your device. Fortunately, a solution to improving Touch ID recognition in colder weather is quite simple.

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Some Mac users running OS X Yosemite have discovered Bluetooth to become unreliable, either dropping device connections constantly or even simply not discovering a working Bluetooth device. For example, some users who are trying to use a PS3 controller with the Mac in OS X Yosemite may find that the Mac is unable to locate the Bluetooth controller at all, despite being right next to the computer and properly following the configuration instructions.

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In some specific situations, Mac users running OS X Yosemite may wish to re-download the complete installer application of a prior operating system like OS X Mavericks. This is typically something only advanced users would want to do, perhaps for making a bootable installer for the older OS X version, for upgrading a different Mac, or even to downgrade (more on that in a moment), but unless you have a compelling reason to download the prior OS X release installer there is little other reason to do this.

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When you properly set up Touch ID to unlock your iPhone or iPad, many users add several different of their fingers to the configuration so that they can unlock the iOS device in different orientations. That’s a good idea, but sometimes you may want to change which fingers (or whose fingers) are allowed to access and unlock the Touch ID sensor, and to do so you’ll probably want to delete old finger prints from the Touch ID database in iOS.

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If you want to use a Playstation 3 controller to play games on a Mac, you’ll find that connecting the PS3 controller and syncing it for use with Mac OS X games is actually quite simple, regardless of what version of Mac OS the Mac is running. We’ll walk through how to quickly connect and configure a wireless Playstation 3 controller with a Mac, and how to troubleshoot some basic issues that you may encounter along the way. You’ll be up and gaming with the gamepad in no time!

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If you’ve ever gone to plug in your iPhone or iPad and noticed that it’s not charging as it’s supposed to be, you might want to check the devices Lightning port. That’s because the little charger port on the bottom can be a trap for pocket gunk, and even fairly small pieces of lint or sediment can prevent the device from charging as intended.

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How many times have you seen someone else’s iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running an ancient version of iOS that is not backed up and has a million app updates waiting in the wings? It’s remarkably common for iOS hardware to go neglected by those who are less tech savvy, so if you’re heading to visit seldom seen relatives and friends this holiday, consider using your own knowledge to give the gift of tech support by performing some super simple maintenance on their iOS hardware!

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Forgetting the login and password to an Apple ID is not the best feeling in the world, particularly given how integral an Apple login is to the broader iOS and Mac OS X experience. So, if you or someone else happens to forget an Apple ID or the password to an Apple account, what should you do? First, don’t freak out, we’re human and this stuff happens. Apple provides multiple ways to recover a forgotten ID login or password, and you can start the recovery process either directly on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Mac, Windows PC, or just about anything with a web browser.

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Apple has issued a critical security update to OS X users aimed at patching an exploit with the network time protocol on most Macs. The update is labeled urgently as “Install this update as soon as possible” rather than a traditional name, perhaps indicating the importance of patching the unspecified issue with the Macs NTP.

All Mac users should heed the advice from Apple and take a moment to install the security patch.

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From time to time, your cellular network provider or Apple may issue a carrier settings update to an iPhone or cellular iPad device. The carrier updates are usually very small and make adjustments or improvements to carrier specific settings pertaining to the cell network, data, personal hotspot, voicemail, text messaging, or making calls. While you may see a carrier update pop up randomly on your iPhone, or a request to install one during a general iOS update, you can also manually check for these carrier updates on your own at any time.

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No Holiday get-together is complete without some seasonally themed music, and whether you’re an iTunes Radio lover or Pandora addict, you’ll find great streaming stations available on both services that fit your celebrations. You’ve already decorated your Mac and iOS backgrounds with some great festive wallpapers, so lets get the musical side of things covered next.

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