Do you remember the original Time Machine backup animation of the slowly spinning green galaxy vortex? Triggered when a user entered Time Machine for backups, backup file management, or restoring files, the original animation was a snazzy space rendering that sort of looked like entering into a spinning black hole, shooting out stars and space … Read More
The newest versions of Google Chrome have a fantastic feature addition that allow you to instantly see what open web browser tab or window is playing audio. That may seem ho-hum, but if you’ve ever gone on a wild goose chase trying to figure out which tab out of 50 million tabs is playing some … Read More
The Safari web browser for iOS provides for tremendous user control over how web cookies are handled on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, allowing users to choose to block all cookies, allow all cookies, or selectively block only third party tracking and advertiser cookies.
The Mail compose window has long had an auto-complete function that lets you start typing a name or email address to see a list of suggestions for completing the contacts email. That list is based upon who you’ve email and also what contacts you have in your address book, but now with the newest versions … Read More
Everyones favorite digital friend Siri can improve your music experience and song recollection by retrieving song lyrics for you. Whether you’re aiming for some spontaneous iPhone based Karaoke, looking to settle a dispute over what an artist is saying, wanting to add some lyrics to a song that is missing them, or just wondering what … Read More
Obviously the Weather app on iPhone will tell you temperatures and a five-day forecast, but the revised default iPhone Weather app can also provide additional weather information without having to ask Siri. This includes much more specific data, like humidity, the chance of rain, the wind speed and direction, and the current heat index. You’d … Read More
Many Mac users who come to the platform from the world of Windows have become accustomed to defragging their PC hard drives from time to time, and thus the inevitable question arrises: do you need to defragment a Macs hard drive? The answer is usually no, you don’t need to defrag a Mac as part … Read More
Many of us use our iPhones for so many tasks that it’s easy to overlook some of the simpler functionality of the device, like making and ending phone calls. With that in mind, we’ve got a nice trick to hang up an active call faster, without having to touch the devices screen at all. It’s … Read More
Ever wondered where on earth your Mac hard drives disk space has gone to? There’s little reason to wonder, because Mac OS X has a very simple disk usage summary tool that that will show you exactly where drive capacity is being used, conveniently sorted into a variety of file types. Looking at the storage … Read More
Users of the Safari web browser in the iOS world probably already know that you can close a single browser tab with either a tap of the (X) button, or by swiping the tab away to the left of the screen on the iPhone or iPad. But what if you have a whole bunch of … Read More
Web browsers generally work fine on the Mac, but every once in a while Safari in OS X will misbehave in some way or another. The most common of these issues encountered are typically things like random pages inexplicably being inaccessible or displaying oddly, stale cache being delivered (in normal person terms, that means an … Read More
Mission Control is the excellent window management utility in OS X that lets you get a quick overview of everything you have open. While Mission Control has always been able to drag windows and apps between different virtual desktop Spaces, a new ability has been added to modern versions of OS X that allows Mac … Read More
Do you use the Safari browser and shop on the web often from a Mac with Mac? If so, you can greatly speed up your checkouts and online ordering by storing credit cards securely within Safari’s AutoFill Keychain. This makes it possible to instantly autofill card information when ordering on any site, and if you … Read More
Twitter has long had integration into iOS and OS X, from being able to post new tweets or share various things through the service, but Siri is getting even more tweet-happy in the latest versions of iOS. Using a few simple commands, you can check the hoard consensus on any topic by just asking Siri. … Read More
If your iPhone voicemail box gets hit up constantly and you actually listen to the messages, each voicemail message gets downloaded locally to the iPhone and takes up some storage space. For most users, this is usually an inconsequential amount of data ranging from 5MB-100MB, but for those who send a lot of calls directly … Read More
Mac users in higher security risk situations may wish to enable an optional firmware password on their machines,which offers an advanced level of protection. In short, a firmware password is a lower level layer of security that is set on the actual Mac logicboards firmware, rather than at the software layer like FileVault encryption or … Read More
Assistive Devices and Assistive Apps are applications and accessories which can control parts of the Mac and MacOS beyond the normal scope of app limits. While it’s primarily thought of as an Accessibility feature, it’s also commonly uses for general apps too, ranging from screen sharing functions, to apps that require microphone access, to even … Read More
Having recently went through the process of updating a handful of Macs to the latest versions of Mac OS X as part of a gifting tech support campaign, several Macs developed an odd flickering display problem that was only visible when an external monitor was connected to the Mac. On an 11″ MacBook Air, the … Read More
