The Contacts app in OS X, once called Address Book, has a few hidden communication tools that are incredibly useful, making the app a simple but powerful hub to start conversations. Right from Contacts, you can send iMessages, initiate FaceTime video chats, make an actual phone call, and even send normal SMS text messages to … Read More
We recently discussed how to go about scanning QR codes on the iPhone with the devices native camera, or with the help of a free third party app called Scan. But if you’ve ever wondered where QR Codes come from or how to make one yourself, then you might be pleased to find out that … Read More
There are plenty of ways to prevent sleep, whether it’s the caffeinate command, the Caffeine menubar item, pmset, or hot corners, but each of those is all encompassing, meaning being active prevents sleep regardless of what is running. If you’ve ever thought it’d be nice to selectively prevent sleep based on specific applications instead, that’s … Read More
The Mac includes an optional Guest User account which is perfect for temporary usage situations like letting your friend or family quickly check their Facebook account and email from your computer. This is great because the Guest Login can be active while your normal user account is too, meaning you can quickly hand off your … Read More
Ready for a great deal on a collection of new Mac apps? The MacUpdate Spring 2013 Bundle lets you grab 10 excellent Mac apps valued at $618 for just $49.99. These aren’t nonsensical no-name apps that you’ll never use though, the list of high quality software includes: Parallels Desktop 8 – ($79.99) – Run Windows … Read More
Anytime an image or PDF is attached to an email in the Mac OS X Mail app, you will be presented with a preview of that picture or document. Likewise, if someone emails you photos those images are then drawn on screen within that email as previews. While this is a great feature for most … Read More
Another Java security update has been issued to Mac OS X users to address a new vulnerability discovered with the browser plugin. Labeled Java for OS X 2013-002, the release updates Java SE 6 to version 1.6.0_43 in both OS X Lion (10.7) and OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) if you have used the Java … Read More
If you’ve ever tried to download a large app or iOS update over 3G or LTE, you’ve undoubtedly seen the message “This Item Is Over 50MB” and telling you “You must connect to a Wi-Fi network or use iTunes on your computer to download” whatever app it is you’re trying to get. You can get … Read More
Ever had a song or album kept on an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, and wished you could play it on through the speakers of a Mac, Windows PC, or even a surround sound system on an Apple TV or XBMC media center? Whether it’s at your own house or at a friends, instead of copying … Read More
The Finder is how most of us interact with the filesystem on our Macs, and while the default settings are user friendly, there are some additional options that can be configured to make the Finder a much better experience. From the simplest things like showing the extension of documents, to revealing the status bar and … Read More
The wildly popular multiplayer game League of Legends is now available for the Mac at the great price of free. Originally based on the Warcraft 3 map Defense of the Ancients, League Of Legends allows a player to control a single hero while battling in teams of up to 5 players each against an opposing … Read More
iPhoto in OS X works pretty well as a photo manager, photo stream recipient, and for making minor adjustments to images, but it’s not a mail client. That’s pretty obvious right? But iPhoto 11 thinks otherwise, at least in regards to sharing pictures from iPhoto using the “Email” option, which (slowly) launches a very stylish … Read More
Did you know you can get detailed information about what is stored on your iOS devices right from iTunes? The little colorful bar shown at the bottom of iTunes can reveal more specific info about storage capacity, including count totals for each respective category. This can be useful info to know if you’re looking to … Read More
Capturing system audio on a Mac is not something that OS X has the native ability to be able to perform, but with the help of a great third party utility you can easily add that functionality to Mac OS X and any accompanying applications. This means you can capture and record audio output directly … Read More
Longtime command line users are probably familiar with the text based web browser lynx, which strips down the web to text-only format and allows for super-fast web browsing. But lynx (links, technically) can be compiled to support graphics and run within x11, which creates a highly effective web browser for low-bandwidth situations because it strips … Read More
Adjusting the mouse pointer sizes on a Mac is a simple way to greatly improve accessibility for individuals with visual impairments. But it’s not the only reason to increase the size of the mouse pointer on the Mac screen, and there are other uses though, for example having a less dramatic difference with just a … Read More
The latest versions of iPhoto (11+) and OS X (Mountain Lion+) support Photo Stream screen savers, this means you can have your Mac display a screen saver show that automatically updates the stream of photos based on pictures that are taken on the go with an iPhone, without ever having to manually copy pictures over … Read More
Reading List is a great feature of Safari that syncs saved web pages between Safari on all of your Macs and iOS devices. This lets you save web pages to read later and works a lot like Pocket and Instapaper, except that it doesn’t require any additional downloads, toolbars, plugins, or third party apps in … Read More
