Creating a new user account in Mac OS X either for yourself or for another person who may use your Mac is often a good idea. For another computer user, a separate user account insures that your data and their data is separate, effectively sharing the same computer but not the same files. For yourself, … Read More
The Contacts app in OS X makes sharing the contact information of anyone in your address book extremely simple, and if you have iCloud enabled you can share any address from your phone right from your Mac, without reaching for the iPhone itself:
If you upgraded to iTunes 11 you know the default view removed the sidebar with its playlist view. Sure it’s easy to show again, but if you’d rather keep with the new simplified user interface, don’t miss this simple trick to make a new playlist or add songs to a playlist, without using the standard … Read More
Advanced Mac users may have noticed that X11 is no longer bundled with OS X, and it’s also no longer available as a separate installation option through Developer Tools. Instead, to run X11 on OS X Mountain Lion (and later), you’ll want to download and install the free XQuartz system, which bundles all the necessary … Read More
A fair amount of Mac users have encountered long lasting Wi-Fi connection issues, whether it’s a dropping connection, a refusal to reconnect after waking from sleep, or any other number of oddities pertaining to wireless networking. Often these connection problems can be resolved with renewing a DHCP lease and changing the MTU size, but sometimes … Read More
iTunes 11 has been released by Apple, offering a fairly significant update to the music player and iOS device syncing app. A variety of new features have been added, the user interface has been redesigned and modernized, a new mini-player has been included, and there’s even a redesigned icon to go with it. This is … Read More
Need to locate some embedded page resources in Safari on MacOS? You can do that with Page Resources feature, a handy capability for any web developer, web designer, or web worker. While past versions of Safari included a feature called Activity Monitor that let you easily see and access resources loaded on a web page … Read More
Whether you’re new to the Mac or just can’t figure out where a specific preference option is buried, you’ll love the convenience of the built-in search function in OS X System Preferences. This is an often overlooked feature that can prevent a lot of frustration when looking for some less-than-obvious settings panels, and it’s very … Read More
FlipClock is an appropriately named and wonderfully simple screen saver for Mac OS X that does nothing but show you the time in a very nice retro flip clock fashion. FlipClock is visually pleasing and quite simple, as there are no major frills and no major features to FlipClock, nor do there really need to … Read More
Air Display is a great iOS app that turns an iPad into an external display for just about any Mac or Windows PC. It’s been around a while, but now there’s a new free version available that lets you try out a full featured ad-supported version before buying the regular version, offering an excellent way … Read More
Listening to music in iTunes can be improved significantly by taking a moment to make three quick adjustments to preferences. Enabling these options takes a few seconds and will be valid for both Mac OS X and Windows: Open iTunes preferences from the iTunes menu Choose the “Playback” tab and check the box to enable … Read More
Though most Mac users will likely prefer to use Preview to batch resize images because of the ease of use, advanced users often like to go with the command line for repetitive tasks. We’ve discussed sips before as a way to resize, rotate, and flip images, but if sips is combined with wildcards it can … Read More
The quickest way to add a file extension to a group of files that don’t currently have one is by using the command line in Mac OS X. In the example below, we’ll add a “.txt” extension to all files in a single directory, but subbing .txt in the command string will add a different … Read More
Now that Mac Mini, iMac, MacBook Air, and Retina MacBook Pro have moved away from carrying internal SuperDrives, owners of these newer Macs will possibly get more usage out of the Remote Disc feature than ever before. For those unfamiliar, Remote Disc does pretty much what it sounds like, allowing one Mac to share and … Read More
You’ve plugged an iPhone into a computer, and nothing happens. You look in iTunes, and the iPhone, iPod, or iPad isn’t there. Great, now what? What in the heck is going on? Don’t worry, there are usually a few simple solutions that will resolve the problem and et your computer to detect the iPhone or … Read More
iMessage is an undeniably great service for free messaging between iPhones, iOS, and Mac OS X, but it’s not flawless, and sometimes an iMessage will fail to send if you’re on a low cellular signal or have insufficient bandwidth. Additionally, there are times when trying to send a message through iMessage is slower than sending … Read More
Recording audio playing out from a Mac isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but that’s exactly what WavTap aims to resolve with a remarkably simple menu bar item. It makes capturing a Macs audio output extremely simple, leaving you with an audio file that you can then. WavTap is also completely free, which makes … Read More
Mozilla, the makers of Firefox (yes, the web browser), are working on a mobile operating system called Firefox OS. It’s based entirely on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and is currently at very early stages of development, with an appearance that’s kind of like iOS meets Android with a side of Ubuntu. Whether or not Firefox … Read More
