Talking calculators are very useful, whether for accessibility reasons or just for entering a lot of numbers that you want to be sure are correct by hearing the auditory response. Thanks to the Mac’s excellent text-to-speech abilities and a simple settings adjustment, you can transform the bundled Calculator app in Mac OS X into a talking calculator, and it will speak both the buttons pressed as well as the calculated result. It’s super easy to enable and use:
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Tired of the “Sent from my iPhone / iPad” default signature of Mail app in iOS, and want to replace it with something fancier, like a fully functional HTML signature with clickable URLs and some rich styling?

There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, but by far the fastest way to get an HTML signature in iOS is to just use an existing HTML signature, or to quickly craft one in a webmail client with HTML tools. Both will keep you from having to fumble around with HTML syntax or bother with any third party apps, and as you’ll see, they’re both pretty similar.
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Shuttle is an excellent little Mac app for those who frequently use SSH to connect to remote or local servers. It’s functionality is very simple: you gain a little SSH menu bar item that pulls down to give you super-quick access to whichever servers you have configured. Selecting one of the servers immediately launches terminal and connects through SSH.
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We all need as much help as we can get with email, and that’s why we’re offering up a slew of tricks to help master the Mail app on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. With ten tips ranging from having more emails be visible and stored on the device, to bulk management, to replying smarter, moving recipients around quickly, the quickest way to access drafts and add attachments to a message, and using Siri to compose complete emails, you’re sure to become more efficient working with emails in the iOS Mail app while you’re on the go.
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Apple TV makes rearranging the app icons easy enough, but you can also hide channels, services, icons, and apps that you don’t want visible on the screen at all. This is useful as a way of tidying up the Apple TV home screen of apps or services you never use or aren’t interested in watching (like ESPN, HBO, Hulu, whatever), and it’s also a great way to limit access to specific media providers and shows that you don’t want someone else to see.

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OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 3 has been released for Mac developers. Those running OS X Mavericks Developer Preview 2 can find the new update available in the Mac App Store, accessible via the Software Update menu.

If you are not yet running Mavericks but have a registered developer account, the full installer can be downloaded from the App Store and then found in the Applications directory. The installer app can then be turned into a bootable USB install drive if desired.

OS X Mavericks (10.9) includes over 200 new features and improvements to OS X that many Mac users will be pleased to see, including improved dual monitor support, a tabbed Finder, significant improvements to app power management and battery life of portable Macs, an overhauled Safari, and much more. The full public release of OS X Mavericks is expected to be released this fall.

Apple is speeding relatively quickly through developer releases of their major operating system updates. Earlier today, Apple also released beta 3 of iOS 7 and an update to Xcode 5 Developer Preview.

The third beta of iOS 7 has been released by Apple for supported iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models. The beta arrives as build 11A4414e and is expected to include many bug fixes and improvements, as it further pushes iOS 7 to it’s anticipated public release later this year.

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You can switch hard drives that Time Machine backs up to easily, but to properly migrate from one Time Machine backup drive to another and preserve the existing archived backups, you’ll want to take a few additional steps to insure that your existing prior backups are safely moved over as well.

This is an easy process, so whether you are moving backups because you got a new larger hard drive, or because an existing drive is on its last legs, you’ll be sure to have all archived backups accessible from the new Time Machine disk.
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Cellular carriers in the USA are looking to start selling customer usage data to third parties and marketers, according to TechCrunch. This is being done in an effort labeled as ‘personalization’ and using some other boring and friendly sounding descriptions. Though the information is supposedly aggregate and anonymous, it still may include fairly personal details like what apps you use, your location data, and web browsing history, and other bits of info that privacy conscious individuals probably don’t want to share with the outside world.

Fortunately, it’s fairly easy for users to opt out of these efforts through the major US carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile:
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Standby mode is a power saving feature that automatically hibernates a Mac after it has been in sleep mode for a while, which it does to further decrease drain on battery. When a Mac using FileVault encryption is placed into standby mode, a FileVault key (yes, this key is encrypted) is stored in EFI (firmware) so that it can quickly come out of standby mode when woken from deep sleep. For 99% of users, that hardly matters and it’s not a security concern, but for those who are concerned about absolute maximum security and protecting a Mac from some unusually aggressive attacks (i.e. espionage level), you can set OS X to automatically destroy that FileVault key when it’s placed in power-saving standby mode, preventing that stored key from being a potential weak point or attack target.
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The default font size for messages and texts on the iPhone is fairly small, and while it may look fine to many users, it’s simply too tiny to be easily readable for others. iOS makes it easy to change the text size though, offering a wide range of options that are suitable for just about everyones visual preferences. We’re emphasizing the iPhone here, but this setting and adjustment is also available to iPod touch and iPad users.
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If you’ve ever wanted to watch all data transfer and bandwidth usage while you browse the web you’ll know it’s not necessarily an easy task. Thankfully, a little-known feature contained within the excellent Google Chrome web browser provides a simple solution, and it allows for easy monitoring of how much data is consumed in a given web browsing session.
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Some Mac users overlook a feature in macOS / Mac OS X that allows them to attach an Apple ID to their actual user account, not just to iCloud and the App Store. It only takes a moment to set, and it provides for an incredibly simple password recovery option at the login and boot menus, allowing you to regain access to your user account and files just by entering the associated Apple ID.

Going further, Macs with multiple user accounts can assign different Apple ID’s to each unique user account, or you can just choose to tie a single Apple ID to the Mac. If you do choose to attach a lone Apple ID to the Mac this way, be sure to associate it with an administrator (admin) account in Mac OS X, that way you will be able to regain full system access in the event it’s needed because the primary password has been lost.
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Every once in a while an iOS device or app will get stuck in the wrong orientation, unresponsive to rotating the device and it either stays in portrait or horizontal mode, despite every effort to rotate the device any which direction. Though this seems to happen more often on the iPad than the iPhone or iPod touch, it can still occur on every iOS device and with just about any app.

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Different Mac models use different types of RAM, and each also supports a different maximum level of RAM. Unless you spend a lot of time upgrading and repairing Macs yourself, you probably don’t know these exact details off the top of your head, and that’s just fine because the information can be retrieved directly from the Mac in most cases. This is vital information to know if you have determined a memory upgrade is in order, so we’ll cover several different ways to find out what RAM type and speed a given Mac uses, what the maximum amount of supported RAM is, and if RAM slots are available.

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Apple has issued a small security update for all major versions of Mac OS X still in use, including OS X Mountain Lion, Snow Leopard, and Lion.

Release notes are extremely brief, noting simply that the update is “recommended for all users and improves the security of OS X.” There is some indication that the update may address a potential security issue with QuickTime movie player, though that remains unclear at the moment. Users have noticed that the update for OS X 10.8 and 10.7 is quite small, where as for 10.6 it is more sizable.

Everyone can download Security Update 2013-003 from Software Update, accessible via the Apple  menu, or directly through the App Store. Installing the update requires a reboot to complete.

As you probably know, all of your iPhone Contacts and related address book information is stored within iCloud, assuming you use the cloud service to sync and backup your data of course.

What many people don’t know, is that the web interface of iCloud provides an incredibly simple method of exporting those same iPhone contacts, giving you easy access to individual contacts in the address book, or even the ability to export and save the entire contacts list itself – all directly from the web, with or without the iPhone itself.
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Network Locations in Mac OS X allow you to save specific configurations and settings for different networks. Once they’re setup, you can use them to change between various network configurations quickly, without having to re-enter any settings. These are perfect if you are switching between things like an automatic DHCP config vs a manually assigned IP address, different routers with unique settings at different locations, toggling proxy use on or off, using different and specific DNS configurations, or just have custom network configs for specific places like work, home, or school.

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