Mac

Reflection is a great new app for OS X that mirrors an iPhone or iPad display directly to a Mac by way of AirPlay.

By far the easiest way to sync an iPhone to a new Mac or Windows PC is to transfer all iPhone files and backups from the old computer to the new one. The necessary data is stored in several different locations, and we’ll cover what files and where they go for both Mac OS X … Read More

A MAC address is a unique identifier that is assigned to each physical network interface on a computer. Different than a computers IP address, MAC addresses are frequently used for network access control and to monitor network connectivity, and they can be spoofed for virtualization needs or to circumvent some network limitations. If you need … Read More

We recently covered 12 keyboard shortcuts to help navigate around and manipulate text in Mac OS X, and now we’ll show you a handful of similar tricks for use at the command line. These shortcuts can be used just about anywhere in the Terminal, including the bash prompt.

Have you ever noticed that Mail app registers a message as “read” after it has been clicked? The automatic “mark as read” feature makes it easy to quickly skim through a bunch of emails, but Mail doesn’t offer much control over the the delay for when messages are marked read.

Although everyone should always password protect a Mac to prevent unauthorized use, not everyone does. Sometimes people share general logins, be it with a roommate, sibling, spouse or whoever else. Now, if you have ever wondered if someone was using your computer while you were away, there’s actually a pretty easy method to find out … Read More

Wondering if a particular contact or person is using iMessage? You can find that out rather easily from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. iMessage is a great addition to iOS and Mac OS X that lets you send unlimited text messages, pictures, videos, documents, and even files, between other iMessage users. Though you probably know … Read More

We recently covered the classic method of adding colors to the command line by editing .bash_profile, but it turns out that Terminal in OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion both support custom ANSI colors, giving the ability to easily change the ansi color scheme through external theme files. One such color scheme is … Read More

Work with text often? You can navigate, select, and manipulate text faster than ever before by remembering these twelve keyboard shortcuts.

We recently covered how to resolve an issue when Mac OS X doesn’t remember a wireless network, password protected or not, and since then several readers have notified us of another separate issue: Mac OS X won’t remember a wireless network password. The networks are remembered, but each time the network is found the password … Read More

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard users can now add OS X Lion’s iOS-style Launchpad feature to their desktops with a free third party utility called MacLaunchPad. MacLaunchPad is pretty similar to the real thing, and some features are closer to the version of Launchpad that appears in OS X Mountain Lion, like the real-time … Read More

Adding colorized ls output to the Terminal in Mac OS X is a good way to make navigating around the command line a bit easier on the eyes. This makes different items show up in different colors, including directories, files, executables, and symbolic links.

New versions of Mac OS X include the Versions feature and Auto-Save ability, this lets users restore back to previous editions of a file by creating a constant sequence of saved file states while they are being worked on. All around, Versions and auto-save are useful, but they can also leave traces of sensitive documents … Read More

Included below are new simple instructions for uninstalling modern versions of Xcode. Deleting old versions of Xcode is covered as well, this is a thorough guide to uninstall Xcode from any Mac regardless of version and Mac OS X release. Xcode is Apple’s developer suite for iOS and Mac OS X, it’s necessary if you … Read More

OS X Mountain Lion is Apple’s latest Mac operating system that is complete with a bunch of new features that iOS users will find familiar. It’s looking like a great addition to the Mac OS family, but for the time being it’s still in Developer Preview, has a fair amount of bugs, and isn’t quite … Read More

A little-known feature of iMessage lets any Mac send files to another iMessage user (or yourself) using an iOS device, and vice versa. Yes, this means iMessages can function as a full-fledged file transfer app for both Mac OS and iOS users, providing for simple transferring of files, pdf’s, text and rtf documents, movies, pictures, … Read More

Growth of iOS, the mobile operating system that powers iPhones, iPads, iPod touch, and Apple TV, is exploding. To put iOS’s success into some context, Asymco crafted the above chart to demonstrate the growth curve relative to years of Apple products on the market. The most staggering observation? Apple sold 156 million iOS devices last … Read More

Flickr has an endless supply of beautiful photos that make for fantastic automatically updating image screen savers in Mac OS X. All you need is a good Flickr stream and you can easily create a new screen saver from it for your Mac.