All modern Macs are pretty fast these days, but sometimes we all need a performance boost to get things done as efficiently as possible. That’s what these simple tricks are aimed at, they will help you speed up any Mac and get the absolute best performance out of the Mac OS X machine by having a simple focus on resource utilization.

These are simple performance tips that will help to achieve maximum speed by insuring there is plenty of system memory and processor available, along with low disk utilization, so that nothing will be bogging down Mac OS X while you attempt to perform another task.

Read more »

The fourth developer preview of OS X Mavericks has been released for registered developers. The update can be installed directly from the App Store by way of Software Update, and weighs in around 1.5GB, depending on the Mac being installed on.
Read more »

If you plan on giving an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a child, take a moment to set up some very basic parental controls on the device by using the Restrictions feature of iOS. It only takes a minute to configure, and this will prevent the access of inappropriate content, avoid mature themed media, prevent in-app purchases and incidental charges, disable the ability to download and install new apps, plus prevent the removal of apps that have already been installed on the device.

Read more »

The lock screen camera is one of the more handy features of the iPhone, but the iPad does not have that same quick-to-access camera option. That doesn’t mean you can’t take pictures directly from the lock screen on the iPad, you just have to use Siri to launch directly into the camera app from the lock screen instead:
Read more »

In an unusual and fairly rare situation, the Mac cursor can randomly disappear from OS X. More accurately, the cursor itself becomes invisible, because you can still click around on the screen but without being able to see what the mouse or trackpad is focused on.

This seems to happen out of the blue, and although it is difficult to reproduce reliably, it does seem to happen more often when a Mac is running low on available memory and is using multiple monitors. Thus, you may be more likely to lose the cursor when using apps like Photoshop, or Chrome and Safari with tons of browser tabs open, especially with an external display connected. After running into this bug repeatedly I discovered a few ways to resolve the problem and make the cursor visible again.
Read more »

Tor is a free anonymity network that aims to conceal a users location and browser usage from snoopers, in addition to allowing access to websites that are otherwise blocked or filtered out through firewalls. The official description of the Tor browser and network is described as follows:

The Tor software protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location, and it lets you access sites which are blocked.

Though that may sound complicated, using Tor is actually quite simple. We’re going to focus on using Tor in Mac OS X, but there are Tor clients available for every significant OS, including Windows, Android, and Linux (there is currently no official iOS client).
Read more »

Older versions of Google Maps for iOS have native support for the iPad, but perhaps the most useful feature of the new Google Maps app is the ability to cache maps for offline use on the iPhone. It’s really easy to use, so the next time you’re expecting to venture off into an area with poor reception or no cell signal at all, make a quick visit to Google Maps ahead of time to store the cached maps locally on an iPhone or iPad.

But this great feature is a little hidden in older Google Maps versions.
Read more »

Need to quickly get your external IP address from the command line for SSH or otherwise? No sweat, you can use either the curl command or dig to extract the information quickly from a variety of sources. We’ll focus on two different options that have proven to be reliable over time, the first is quite short and easy to remember, but the latter option may be considered the most reliable.
Read more »

The iPhone autocorrect feature is fairly aggressive with certain words and phrases. Though you can persistently cancel out the corrections to teach autocorrect what you actually meant to type, you still might find particularly colorful words are continuously autocorrected to much friendlier variations, often involving animals, which if you’re trying to sound a certain way can really take the oomph out of your intended words.

Read more »

Though the iPad Picture Frame feature is nice, having it appear on the lock screen can be a problem. For one, it’s very easy to accidentally tap which is just frustrating, but perhaps more important is the potential privacy issues caused by Picture Frame defaulting to show the entire Photo app Camera Roll. This means that even with a lock screen passcode set, tapping that flower button may wind up displaying some pictures you don’t really want to share with the world.

Read more »

Moving all contacts from an Android to an iPhone may sound complicated, but it’s actually really easy. What you’ll need to do is sync the entire address book from the Android device to Google’s cloud Contacts service, and then use Google Contacts service to transfer them to the iPhone. The result is that you’ll have the same contact list synced between both devices, which is great for permanent migration and transferring the contacts over to iOS, but also for temporary transitions between the two mobile operating systems.

Read more »

Lavabit is a secure and encrypted email platform that has been getting a lot of attention lately in light of recent news events. Lavabit aims to prevent reductions of privacy, and so not only does Lavabit have excellent antispam and antivirus features along with your standard email niceties like autoresponders, its most relevant feature at the moment is the usage of SSL and asymmetric encryption for incredibly secured email communications. Here’s the brief description of Lavabits security features, but for those truly interested you can read more here:

How does asymmetric encryption protect your privacy? The short description is that for users of this feature, incoming e-mail messages are encrypted before they’re saved onto our servers. Once a message has been encrypted, only someone who has the account password can decrypt the message. Like all safety measures, encryption is only effective if it’s used. To ensure privacy, Lavabit has developed a complex system that makes the entire encryption and decryption process transparent to the end user. This process works by combining three different encryption schemes with Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) as the cornerstone.

If that sounds good to you, or if you’re just interested in having a new email address with more private and secured email communications, we’re going to walk through setting up Lavabit in the default iOS Mail client.
Read more »

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:
Read more »

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.
Read more »

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.
Read more »

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.
Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.