Apple is planning to eliminate traditional retail box software in their stores in favor of digital distribution through the Mac App Store, according to a report from MacRumors. Apparently they heard the rumor from someone, and then cite Apple’s new “Personal Setup for Mac” walkthrough service as further evidence of the move. Installing software through … Read More
Did you know that your Mac has a built-in FTP & FTPS client? You don’t need to download any additional software or apps to connect to FTP sites from Mac OS X, instead you can connect to remote servers directly from your desktop by using an excellent and little known feature. If you’ve never used … Read More
If you’re trying to remember an exact command you executed via the Terminal but can’t quite come up with it, you can query your command line history to discover old commands that have been run or executed in the past. This trick to find and retrieve prior commands executed in the command line works on … Read More
If you click and hold on any open applications Dock icon, you will launch Expose for just that app and it’s corresponding windows. You can also access this app-specific Expose with the F10 key (Function+F10 on newer Mac models and keyboards), I’ve used this trick for a long time to quickly switch between windows in … Read More
The more apps you install on your Mac, the more bloated your “Open With” menu gets. Some apps that are completely unrelated to the file type may show up in the “Open With” menu and just serve to clutter your choices. This is annoying, so lets restore the menu to what it should have. How … Read More
Want to change what the default app is that launches when you double-click or otherwise open a file from the OS X Finder? It’s easy to do, and you can change any individual files default application by doing the following from the Mac Finder: Select the file (or file type) that you want to adjust … Read More
If you use Twitter to keep an eye on things or to livestream news and events, this feature in the Twitter for Mac desktop app is a must use. It allows the Twitter app to automatically update and scroll to the most recent tweets, giving you a live and constantly updated feed of what’s going … Read More
How about a bit of everything with an Apple logo? Here’s a full range of portable Macs and iProducts; an iPhone, iPad, MacBook 13″ (maybe Pro?), and a MacBook Pro 15″. Perhaps the coolest thing about this setup is that you can sync the bluetooth keyboard and mouse to any of the devices. This pictures … Read More
Todolicious is a nice and simple to-do list manager for Mac OS X. I generally just use Stickies for to-do lists on my Mac, but Todolicious has a couple features that are handy that Stickies doesn’t. One is obvious, you can check items off and they disappear from the task list. The other you have … Read More
You can get desktop Growl notifications in Twitter for Mac, here’s how: From Twitter for Mac, go to the Twitter menu and open Preferences Click on the Notifications tab From the drop down menu, select ‘Growl notification’ for either Tweets, Mentions, or Messages Close out Preferences and changes are immediate Now just a word of … Read More
Microsoft has released a 30 day demo of Office 2011 for Mac, the trial is free to download and includes the entire Office suite for use. The other nice feature about the trial is that you can enter a product key at any point directly into the app, this lets you download Office 2011 for … Read More
By default, anytime you take a screen capture in Mac OS X, the resulting screenshot file will save to the current users desktop. This makes retrieval very easy and is very appropriate for the average Mac user, but for those who take a lot of screen shots in Mac OS, they may find their desktop … Read More
If you’ve ever accidentally shut down your Mac, you’re not alone. That dreaded feeling when everything starts closing when you didn’t mean to reboot, ahh! But don’t freak out, there’s an incredibly simple way to stop the shut down process in OS X! All you need to do to stop a Mac shutdown is immediately … Read More
Happy Birthday to the Mac! Apple introduced the very first Macintosh on January 24, 1984, beginning an era that is still going strong 27 years later. Here are some fun facts about the first ever Mac, known as the Macintosh 128k: It ran Mac OS System 1.0 (if you’re already nostalgic you can run classic … Read More
Using a Terminal command, you can turn any screensaver into your background wallpaper on the Mac. In the screenshot above I have the iTunes Album Art screensaver running as the Mac OS X desktop, but you can choose any screensaver you want. Here’s how to do this: Launch System Preferences Click on Desktop & Screen … Read More
There are several steps to password protect a Mac, we’ll cover the essentials so that if someone is to turn on your Mac, wake it from a screensaver, or wake from sleep, they will be required to enter a password in order to use the computer.
Two new patents have surfaced that may provide a look into the future of Mac input devices. The first is for a Magic Mouse that has an integrated touch screen, which could adjust to display things like virtual buttons, keys, menus, text, and video. The patent application shows a diagram of the Magic Mouse displaying … Read More
You can check your entire print history in Mac OS X by accessing the browser based CUPS utility. This is a very helpful tool for managing printing as well as tracking down origins of printed items, and it works on all versions of Mac with all printers.
