Don’t want to dig out the Terminal or Activity Monitor to relaunch the Finder? No sweat. Hold down Option and then right-click on the Finder icon in the Dock. You’ll now see an otherwise hidden “Relaunch” option, select it and Finder will quit and relaunch. It only takes a few seconds to reload. Relaunching the … Read More
If you’re video chatting at night or in an area with limited lighting, you can brighten your face by opening up a blank white web browser window. This is obviously a really simple tip, but it’s kind of fun to see how surprisingly useful blank browser windows can be (like speeding up Safari on the … Read More
You can run multiple instances of any application in Mac OS X with a little command line magic. Using the ‘open’ command to launch GUI apps from the Terminal, we can run a new instance of any app, even if it is already running.
TenFourFox is an essential web browser for any Mac OS X user that is still using a PowerPC machine. It’s a fork of Mozilla that is practically identical to Firefox 4, the only difference is that it includes support for PowerPC chips, meaning you’ll get all the CSS3 and HTML5 support that Firefox 4 comes … Read More
While some web ads are unobtrusive, others are really annoying. If you’re tired of seeing web ads, you can install adblock extensions in every major web browser and never see another ad again. Obligatory notice: blocking ads prevents web publishers from supporting themselves, ad revenue is what pays the bills for websites like this one … Read More
Some of the most secure passwords you can use are those that are randomly generated. From the command line, you can randomize potential passwords in a multitude of ways, which can be used as secure passwords of generated characters. We’ll cover several primary methods of generating random sequences and then show you how to combine … Read More
Apple is the most valuable brand in the world, with a brand value of a staggering $153.3 billion. Perhaps more impressive than the overall value is that Apple’s brand valuation grew a whopping 84% year over year. Other Notable Findings from the brand valuation report: Google is #2 at $111.4 billion, down -2% from the … Read More
Want to always show line numbers in TextWrangler documents on Mac OS X? Of course you do! This is a great feature and it’s super easy to enable displaying of line numbers in TextWrangler for Mac:
Benchmarks for the 2011 iMac update are starting to appear and they’re very impressive. The chart below shows Geekbench scores for the entire 2011 iMac lineup, and for reference points they are compared against 2010 iMacs and 2009 iMacs. The improvements from last years to this years model are not quite as dramatic as the … Read More
Apple may be looking to move their laptop lineup from Intel processors to ARM CPU’s sometime in the next few years. According to a report on SemiAccurate, the move away from Intel is a “done deal” and that the transition to ARM processors will likely happen to Apple’s desktop lineup as well. ARM processors currently … Read More
If you like to keep an eye on system resources and you want to branch out from the GUI Activity Monitor, check out htop for Mac. htop is basically a significantly improved version of top, which lets you monitor system resources, CPU core load, memory use, load averages, and view and manage individual running processes. … Read More
Do you have some source code, text, or a command string that you want to securely transfer from one Mac to another? Combining the command line clipboard tools pbcopy and pbpaste with SSH we can do exactly that, and it doesn’t matter where the other Mac is located: be it LAN, WAN, or anywhere. Here … Read More
Want to add your own folders or items the Mac OS X sidebar to customize it a bit more, perhaps by adding shortcuts to your most recent work, or a regularly used folder, directory, or drive? A great way to do this is by adding your own specific folders to the Finder sidebars. There are … Read More
The upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will be distributed primarily as a download through the Mac App Store. This information comes from AppleInsider, who says the following: The Mac App Store… will become the de facto method for obtaining the Lion upgrade, people familiar with the matter have revealed. Users will be … Read More
The brand new updated iMacs for 2011 include a seemingly out of place setting in the Keyboard System Preferences: Keyboard Illumination. That’s right, despite being a desktop machine that ships with the same familiar keyboards we all currently know, the new iMac includes the same keyboard illumination option that MacBook Pro’s do. Does this suggest … Read More
This is a neat Mac trick I accidentally discovered: not only can you launch apps from the toolbar of a Finder window after placing them there, but you can drag folders into any Mac OS X Finder window toolbar as well, and it will stick there allowing for easy access. The do this yourself, you … Read More
Want to help test Chrome development releases and be on the absolute cutting edge of web browser development? Try out the newly released Google Chrome Canary for Mac OS X, which Google says is aimed at the “bravest” of Chrome users. Chrome Canary installs as a separate app to the stable Chrome builds, so you … Read More
If you have recently upgraded your Mac RAM, or if you are experiencing strange system crashes, it’s a good idea to test your memory modules integrity using a free tool called memtest. Essentially, memtest is a utility designed to stress test RAM for errors. Without getting overly technical in the explanation, memtest works by writing … Read More
