I’m liking iTunes 10 but I can’t say I’m a fan of the vertical control buttons, which some are calling ‘traffic lights’ since well, it resembles traffic lights. Sure it saves space but it breaks away from the standardized UI convention. Thankfully we can change back to the classic horizontal buttons without much effort. If … Read More
Did you know that you can use Quick Look to zoom in on items within Expose? This is an awesome trick sent in by one of our readers: “While in Exposé in Snow Leopard, press the space bar while mousing over a window. You’ll get an actual-size preview of the window. You can read all … Read More
The quickest way to set your IP address from the command line is to use the versatile and powerful ipconfig utility, which is bundled directly with Mac OS X. We’ll show you how to set an IP address with ipconfig by retrieving one from a DHCP server, and also demonstrate how to set a specific … Read More
Anytime that you run a command through the Terminal directly by a command name like ls or dscacheutil, your Mac is looking through a series of directories for that command to exist. This list of directories is called the PATH, and it’s a carry over from the unix underpinnings of Mac OS X. As you … Read More
Here’s a Mac heartbreaker: a motorcycle enthusiast went for a ride carrying his MacBook Pro 13″ in a backpack, unfortunately the zipper holding the MacBook Pro in place failed going a reported 195mph (315km/h)!
Apple looks like they’ll be jumping full force into the touch screen market sometime in the future. An uncovered patent application shows an iMac Touch that runs both Mac OS X and iOS, which seamlessly switches between the two operating systems depending on how the screen is orientated. In this image, the iMac screen is … Read More
Often overlooked, the Terminal can be used to accomplish all sorts of fun stuff. Something that you may find handy, is the ability to Tweet using built in Mac OS X command line utilities like curl. Yes, curl! Now of course this is not a full featured Twitter client by any means, but if you … Read More
If you’re using a Windows 7 machine, why not make it look like Mac OS X? This task is made very easy with a theme/skin set called the Snow Transformation Pack, it turns your Windows 7 theme into a very convincing near complete Mac OS X interface including icons, wallpapers, the Dock, sounds, dialogue boxes, … Read More
Apple may be working on a MacBook Touch, and will integrate high resolution touch screens into future Apple hardware, according to a recently discovered Apple patent. The information is pretty straightforward, as Patently Apple puts it “There’s no wishy-washy lingo about it” since the patent specifically names a MacBook, MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air: … Read More
Did you know that that Mac OS X includes a bundled VNC app? It’s called Screen Sharing, and you can quickly launch the bundled VNC client from either the OS X Finder, Safari by typing an address into the URL bar, or directly from the app itself.
I recently encountered a strange bug where iTunes refused to add a song to it’s playlist and wouldn’t play the original source MP3 file either. Interestingly enough, the mp3 file played fine with Quick Look and even was able to play within the Finder preview, but no matter what I did I could not add … Read More
You may recall the figure released last week by a research analyst saying that 70% of incoming college Freshmen use Macs, well, at some schools it’s already higher than that. Take this classroom at BCIT, where out of 17 computers in the classroom, 16 are Macs. I’m not sure what the class is, and obviously … Read More
All versions of Mac OS X default to saving captured screen shot files to PNG format, but if you’d rather have screenshots save as another file type, it’s actually quite easy to modify the file format and change the default to something new. Whether the desired format output is JPG, TIFF, PDF, GIF, or back … Read More
Many new Mac users are coming from the Windows world where they would access the Task Manager to end tasks and stop errant processes. The Mac has it’s own Task Manager but it goes by another name: Activity Monitor. Activity Monitor functions in a very similar way to how Task Manager does in Windows, letting … Read More
EPUB stands for ‘electronic publication’ and it’s the accepted standard format for digital book publishing. If you want to make an ebook that can be read on a digital device, you’ll need it in this EPUB format. You can convert virtually any text containing document to EPUB format, which is the preferred format for reading … Read More
If you have two directories you need joined together, you can either drag and drop everything together, use the ‘mv’ command to move files manually, or, as we’ll show here, you can quickly merge any two directories within Mac OS X by using the command line tool ditto or ‘cp’. The command line is generally … Read More
You can easily prevent changes being made on any files or folders in Mac OS X by locking the file or folder in question. This locking capability will also prevent the file or directory from being deleted, since the Trash will not empty while a file is in a locked state. Locking files and folders … Read More
So you forgot your Mac password… uh oh. Don’t worry, it happens and you aren’t out of luck. You’ll need to reset the forgotten password and there’s several ways to do this, we’ll focus on the three best methods; the first is dirt simple and will utilize the Apple ID (yes, the same on you … Read More
