One of my longstanding peeves with Mac OS X is the lack of a pull-down calendar in the menubars default Date & Time settings. If you click on the time, instead of seeing something useful like a calendar or more date/time details, you just have options to set an analog clock or open Preferences. I’ll … Read More
The Develop menu of Safari adds a variety of additional features to the web browser on the Mac, including the inspector and error consoles, javascript debugging tools, the ability to disable various page elements, enable the ‘Do Not Track’ feature, use WebGL acceleration, and it offers a simple way to change the browsers user agent. … Read More
The locate command is very useful if you’re looking to track down every instance of a file, filetype, app, extension, things hidden deep in system folders, or just about anything else that Spotlight can’t manage. It’s extraordinarily useful for troubleshooting and even more mundane tasks like completely uninstalling Mac apps. In order to use locate, … Read More
Users who rely on Spaces within Mission Control to manage multiple virtual desktops in Mac OS X will be happy to know that these desktops (Spaces, as Apple calls them in Mac OS) are completely adjustable. This means you can rearrange or move your desktop spaces as necessary, and as your needs change, and it’s … Read More
A future version of Mac OS X may bring iOS favorites Siri, iMessage, and AirPlay to Apple’s Mac lineup. Assuming the features are released, it’s unclear whether they will come as an update to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, a purchase through the Mac App Store, or as part of Mac OS X 10.8. iMessage … Read More
Not surprisingly, Mac OS X 10.8 development is well under way, and some Apple employees are using the OS on a regular enough basis for them to show up in analytics logs across the Apple web. Our own OS X 10.8 usage graph is shown above, which shows a clear uptick in everyday use of … Read More
If you’ve downloaded Adobe Acrobat on the Mac you’ve probably discovered that it takes over Preview as the default PDF viewer in Mac OS X, which is annoying because Acrobat is slow to load and a fairly bloated application. Given that Preview comes bundled with Mac OS X, is extremely fast, and quite efficient at … Read More
If you have a newer MacBook Air you should pay attention. Some of the MacBook Airs are shipping with Samsung displays, and some are shipping with LG displays, both are quality displays, but the LG’s default color profile is lighter and a bit flat. Most users probably won’t notice this, but if you sit a … Read More
Private Eye is a free real-time network monitor app for Mac OS X that is extremely easy to use. Upon launching the app, you’ll start to see all open network connections by application and process, and you can then filter connections by app, monitor all open connections, or watch only incoming or outgoing transfer. Connections … Read More
Pixelmator for Mac has long been a killer photo editing app. But I’ll cut straight to the point, Pixelmator is the single best Photoshop alternative for the Mac platform at it’s price point, and at just $29.99 (App Store link) it’s much more affordable for the average joe than Adobe Photoshops whopping $500 tag.
The Mission Control “Spaces” feature in OS X is essentially a virtual desktop environment. A nice way to differentiate each individual desktop Space is to go about assigning different wallpapers to different desktop spaces. Setting unique wallpaper backgrounds per desktop is easy in Mac OS X now, here’s the quickest way to do this:
Want to see recent items on a per app basis? The Mac makes this easy with a variety of ways, but perhaps one of the most convenient involves a simple tap gesture. This is particularly fast and simple, and here’s how it works.
Forget what Software Updates you’ve installed on a Mac? Maybe you need to check if a particular Mac workstation has installed a particular software update? With a little work, you can easily check which particular software updates have been installed before in Mac OS X. We’ll show you several different ways to get a list … Read More
With Preview you can adjust the contrast of a PDF, this makes the text sharper and darker, and for scanned files or dubious quality PDF’s this makes them significantly easier to read. The process of increasing contrast and sharpening text in a PDF is made quite simple with Preview app on the Mac, we’ll walk … Read More
Did you hate the sharp case edging on the MacBook Pro? They’re gone in the new models, instead there is a minor rounding of the newest MacBook Pro series case edges. While this may seem insignificant it’s actually a fairly big deal for anyone who is accustomed to the previous MacBook Pro’s sharp corners, which … Read More
With the addition of the Mac App Store, transferring applications from one Mac to another is made extraordinarily simple and can be done entirely through the App Store itself. This is due to the Mac App Stores licensing agreement, which allows you to download and install Mac OS X apps on all of your personal … Read More
Mission Control in Mac OS X Lion has a hidden motion blur effect that can be enabled quite easily:
One of the subtle changes in the Mac OS X 10.7.2 update is the ability to drag files and folders between Desktops and Full Screen apps in Mission Control. All you need to do is grab a file or folder and start pulling the item off the screen in the direction of the Desktop or … Read More
