Don’t like the dark user interface and color scheme of the Photoshop CS6 beta? You can easily change it by cycling through four different theme choices, ranging from the default darkest grey, dark grey, medium grey, and light gray.

Hit Shift+Function+F2 to lighten the Photoshop UI or Shift+Function+F1 to darken the interface elements. If you’re averse to keyboard commands, you can find the interface options within Photoshop Preferences as well.

This tip comes to us from the unofficial Photoshopsupport.com, thanks for sending it in Max!

Most Macs have multi-touch capabilities these days, allowing for gestures to perform common tasks that would otherwise require keyboard shortcuts or additional clicking about. To use the gestures, you’ll obviously need a Mac with multitouch capabilities, that means either a newish laptop with a trackpad, Magic Trackpad, or Magic Mouse.

Some gestures require modern versions of macOS, whether that’s Catalina, Sierra, OS X Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, or later to use, and some gestures may have to be enabled manually in the System Preferences > Trackpad control panel.

Without further ado, here’s a bunch of helpful gestures for Mac OS X and commonly used Mac apps…

Read more »

Are you a gamer? Toss your plans out the window for the next few days because Diablo 3 is free to play all weekend long. Dubbed an “open beta”, the free weekend is intended to help Blizzard load test the Diablo III game servers before the official public release on May 15. You’ll be able to play the game from today (April 20) at noon until Monday, April 23 at 10AM PST, with complete access to all five character classes up to level 13.

Playing Diablo 3 Open Beta is completely free for both Mac OS X and Windows users, here’s what you need to get started:

• Battle.net account (free to sign up)
• Create a BattleTag
• Download the game client and install it before April 23 (free)
• Hardware that meets the Diablo III system requirements for Mac or PC

Whether you’re a fan of the Diablo series or just Blizzard games in general, this is a great chance to get an early look at the game. Likewise, it’s also a good opportunity to see if you like Diablo 3 before shelling out for the full paid version when it comes out next month.

Don’t freak out if you or someone you know accidentally deleted an app from an iPhone or iPad, because they can be easily redownloaded and restored at anytime through either of these simple processes.

Read more »

Running out of disk space is no fun and Mac users with smaller drives need to be particularly aware of available disk space. The Mac OS X Finder Search feature can be used to find large files but if you’re really serious about managing disk space and tracking down unnecessary large files and folders, you should use a free tool called OmniDiskSweeper.

Read more »

Transferring photos from a computer to the iPad is very easy with the help of iTunes. To get started, you’ll need either a Mac or PC with iTunes, a USB connector cable for the iPad, and a folder containing the pictures you want to transfer over to the iPad.
Read more »

Apple has released OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3 to those registered with the Mac Developer program. The new build comes as 12A178q and includes many bug fixes, though it still includes a fairly lengthy list of known issues and bugs. This is the third beta release of OS X Mountain Lion, which currently has a rough public release date of “Summer” .

Developers can download OS X Mountain Lion DP3 from the App Store, though logging in through the developer center is necessary in order to receive a redemption code.

Due to stability issues and future upgrade problems, Mountain Lion Developer Preview should not be the primary operating system on a Mac. Follow a guide to set up a dual boot system between OS X 10.8 Beta and the more stable OS X 10.7 build for best results.

Like to learn new things, preferably from world class experts? Then you’ll like Coursera, a new organization from which several prominent universities aim to offer free high quality online courses to anyone, anywhere.

Princeton, Stanford, U Michigan, Penn, and UC Berkeley are among the schools currently participating in the program, and combined they offer a wide variety of classes on various topics. Whether you’re interested in Humanities, Social Sciences, Healthcare, Medicine, Biology, Math, Statistics, Economics, Finance, Business, Society, Networks, Information, or Computer Science, all classes are completely free and taught online.

The free Computer Science courses may be of particular interest to our readers, and those classes include: Algorithms I and Algorithms II, Automata, Compilers, Computer Architecture, Computer Science 101, Computer Vision: 3D Reconstruction to Visual Recognition, Computer Vision: Fundamentals, Cryptography, Design and Analysis of Algorithms I, Game Theory, Introduction to Logic, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Networked Life, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Securing Digital Democracy I, and Software Engineering for SaaS.

You can see the full list of free course offerings at Coursera.org

Course length varies from 4 weeks to 12 weeks. A handful of classes start this month, and many more begin in May, June, July, August, September, November, while others are still listed as To Be Announced.

Education is a great thing, and Coursera looks to have a strong future. Hopefully they come out with an iPad app similar to Khan Academy for easier self-paced learning and for those who wish to follow along more casually.

If you like the idea of learning without a gigantic university-sized price tag, iTunes is another great resource for free classes and lessons, with videos and podcasts offering free foreign language lessons, free iOS 5 development classes, general iPhone development courses, and much more.

You can use a zoom-in feature on the hardware cameras included on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The zoom trick is pretty easy to master but until someone shows you how to access it, zooming is hidden from the normal camera options. We’ll detail exactly how to zoom in and zoom out with the Camera on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, running any version of iOS.

Here is how to activate and use zoom:

Read more »

Apple has released two notable iPhone 4S commercials that feature popular celebrities using Siri. The first TV ad shows Samuel L Jackson planning a special evening with his wife thanks to the help of Siri, and the second commercial shows Zooey Deschanel using Siri to manage a lazy rainy day. Both commercials can be viewed embedded below.

Samuel L Jackson “Date Night” iPhone ad:

Zooey Deschanel “Rainy Day” iPhone 4S ad:

Everyone gets emails filled with links, but what do you do when an incoming message includes a potentially dubious URL that you aren’t quite so sure about? Rather than crossing your fingers and blindly clicking the link to open in the default web browser, try this tip out to get a preview of the URL directly in the Mail app of Mac OS X.

Read more »

The Apple ][ is celebrating it’s 35th birthday.

Originally demoed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at a computer fair on April 16 and 17, 1977, the Apple II was the machine that put Apple on the map and then went on to catapult the personal computer revolution.

What better way to celebrate one of the original PC’s monumental birthdays than to use an Apple II simulator in Mac OS X?

Read more »

Whether you’re feeling the pinch as hard drive space runs low or you’re just wondering where all your disk space went, it’s easy to find large files in Mac OS X by using the built-in search tools. You don’t need to use any third party tools here, instead you’ll rely on search operators and the excellent Spotlight locating functionality that is a core feature of all Macs.

If you’ve never used these specific features of the Mac search function before, you’ll find it’s simple to do, just follow these steps to locate files and items based on their size.
Read more »

Macs have pretty amazing battery life to begin with, but following a few simple tips will help you to get the absolute best battery performance out of a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro.

The primary goal here is to reduce overall power consumption on the Mac laptop and we’ll cover a few different techniques to do this. For casual Mac users simply reducing screen brightness is typically more than adequate to get great battery life, so the tips below are intended for true road warriors who demand the absolute best battery life possible out of their portable Macs.

Read more »

Looking for some nice mellow wallpapers to add to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad? The DizzyUp collection features three beautifully subtle wallpapers in a wide variety of common screen resolutions and has also been updated to support the 3rd gen iPad retina 2048×2048 display. The wood paneling is my personal favorite of the group, but if you’re into minimalist wallpapers you won’t want to miss the other two dark & light wallpapers either, which feature unobtrusive gradients over a some gentle patterns.

• Grab each wallpaper from DizzyUp.co.uk

(BTW the light desktop background image looks great with a retro-fied Classic style Mac OS X desktop)

Heads up to 512pixels for the reminder these exist, and for pointing out the iPad retina update.

Read more »

Forwarding text messages from one sender to another is made very simple on the iPhone. The process is the same whether it’s a text, SMS, MMS, or even an iMessage:

1. From the Messages app, open the text message you want to forward
2. Tap the “Edit” button in the upper right corner
3. Tap the message you want to forward so that it shows a red checkbox next to it
4. Tap on the “Forward” button in the lower right corner
5. Enter the recipient in the new message screen and send as usual

The forwarded message sends to the recipient as any other message would, and an SMS or MMS can be forwarded as a mass text message as well. Group texting is useful for reducing text message fees with some providers and it’s also a great way to annoy your entire iPhone address book.

And yes, text messages can be forwarded from an iPhone to iPad, iPod touch, or Mac running Messages, and vice versa, though sending to a device other than an iPhone obviously won’t register as an SMS.

Tired of all the OS X default screen savers? Breathe a ton of new retro life into your screen saver collection with the XScreenSaver pack for Mac. The free bundle includes over 200 old school screen saver classics, including an Apple II emulator, Flying Toasters, The Matrix, Blue Screen of Death, Missile Command, Phosphor BBS emulator, Rubiks cube, bouncing cow, and tons of other once-upon-a-time-was-fancy and hilarious screen savers from computing days of yesteryear.

Read more »

Apple has released a standalone removal tool that targets Flashback malware infections. The separate utility is recommended for Mac users who do not have Java installed on their OS X Lion machine, but it’s functionality is identical to that performed by the most recent Java update to remove Flashback.

If your Mac does not have Java or you did not install the most recent Java for OS X updates, running this tool is a good idea. Here is what to do:

1. Download the tool directly from Apple
2. Mount the DMG file and launch FlashbackMalwareRemover.pkg
3. Click Continue, click “Install” and enter the administrative password

Everything beyond that is automated, if the Mac is infected it will be automatically repaired.

Users should always keep system software up to date as part of a general maintenance routine. Despite the recent media overhyping of Flashback, Mac OS X remains a very secure platform. If you are concerned about potential attacks, our recent guide on securing Mac OS X from potential trojans and malware may be helpful to you.