Ever wanted to know if your Mac is using a 32-bit or 64-bit kernel? It may seem geeky and in the weeds, but it’s now relevant. Snow Leopard 10.6 is the first Mac OS X version to ship with a 64 bit kernel, and obviously your Mac has to have a 64 bit processor to … Read More
I love Pandora and use it all the time, so I was pretty frustrated when I discovered that I had hit the 40 hour limit and was being asked to pay for the service. Well, like any good Mac geek I poked around and figured out a way to reset the 40 hour limit (Windows … Read More
A friend of mine that is new to Macs couldn’t figure out how to get a CD to eject, after some frustration he then complained that his MacBook doesn’t have the paperclip hole to forcibly eject a disc from the superdrive. After some discussion I realized he’s probably not alone in his confusion of how … Read More
The fastest way to email a picture to someone in Mac OS X is also one of the easiest, and it should be very familiar to most Mac users in that it’s action is remarkably simple.
Do you need to limit your internet speed for testing? Maybe put a cap on your transfer and download speeds for simulation of slower connections? SpeedLimit is an open source project that allows you to do that.
I was driving myself up the wall recently trying to figure out why the Mac Preview.app would not save my image rotations when I exported a picture from Preview in OS X, so in looking for a solution I stumbled onto our friend MurphyMac‘s site and found a solution! Basically after you have rotated the … Read More
If you ever want to hide a file or folder, you can quickly make it invisible with a command line utility called setfile. This is a really cool tip that should be particularly useful to those who share their mac with other people.
The Mac menu bar contains icons for things like the status indicators and toggles of various apps, including a clock, date, time, battery, wi-fi status, sound and volume levels, displays, Time Machine backup status, user account, Spotlight, a Notifications toggle, and much more. There’s a lot of data and status details in those menu bar … Read More
If you’ve ever needed to troubleshoot a network or internet connection, you know how frustrating it can be (particularly when you’re on techsupport with various broadband providers). This quick tip can make the job a little easier on yourself by retrieving all relevant DHCP information, like DHCP server IP, client, subnet mask, router, DNS servers, … Read More
In some trickier network situations, your computer may be assigned an IP but need an entirely different IP address to access certain network resources. You might be wondering, how on earth do you have two IP addresses at once on the same Mac? The answer; Create an IP Alias! Using an IP alias allows your … Read More
Using your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, and you need to know the meaning of a word, and quick? That’s easy. Just bust open Spotlight with Command + Spacebar on the Mac or iPad, or pulling down from the Home Screen on iPhone, and type in the word you want to get the definition for. One … Read More
I’ve been bored with the standard Mac OS X boot up screen and it’s grey Apple logo, and a few times I have scoured around trying to change it manually to no avail. Today though, I stumbled into a post on my friends blog that makes changing the Mac OS X boot image a snap … Read More
Have you ever wanted to have your Mac require a password on waking from system sleep, but not ask for a password when the screensaver is on or the screen was locked? Well, me neither, but someone out there might and it’s kind of a nifty customization tip that has some valid uses in some … Read More
Need to show hidden files on a Mac? This is pretty common if you find yourself needing to access hidden files on your Mac, like an .htaccess file you downloaded, a .bash_profile, a .svn directory, – literally anything preceded with a ‘.’ indicating it is invisible by default – you can run the below command … Read More
MAMP: It stands for Mac Apache MySql PHP, and it’s a fantastic setup for Mac based web developers. Basically, think LAMP but for Mac OS X users, and in a pre-packaged, simple to use environment, which also indludes PHPMyAdmin, perl, python, and SQL Lite.
A quick way to lock your Mac desktop is to hit Shift-Command-Option-Q to do a fast user log out. This logs the current user out of Mac OS X, which is one way to initiate a login screen when the Mac needs to be used again. Another method is brought to us by inaminit who … Read More
These days there are no shortage of ways to backup your Macintosh. Probably the most popular method available to an end-user is Apple’s Time Machine which is handled automatically after a simple setup through the GUI, or can be triggered to start at any time. Personally, I was very impressed with the ease of use … Read More
Photo Booth is a really fun app that comes with all macs that have a built in iSight / FaceTime front facing camera. Here are a couple tips that make using Photo Booth on your mac even more enjoyable; the ability to disable the ‘white screen’ flash and the ability to disable the 3 second … Read More
