If you have a MacBook Air, you also have that nice little USB restore key. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use that as a normal USB drive if you wanted to? You can do it, but first you have to ‘unlock’ the USB restore key. Here’s where I think this is most … Read More
Using the same trick to create a new image file based on clipboard contents, you can extract high resolution icons from any Mac OS X application. Preview is smart enough to extract just the icon and not try to copy the app file itself (like Windows would). Select any app in Mac OS X Finder … Read More
If you want to remove the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion “Recovery HD” partition, you’ll need to do a little bit of work because it’s a hidden partition. Hidden means it’s not just a matter of using your dual boot to go into 10.6 and then deleting it with Disk Utility. Quick side note for … Read More
Do you need your computers IP address often? If so, IPMenulet is likely the quickest way to have the number handy all the time, it’s a free and simple menu item that displays your current external IP address in the Mac OS X menu bar, there’s no other frills or features.
If you have a lengthy amount of text to read or review that you don’t have time to actually read, another alternative is to convert that text into an audio track. This is kind of like making an audiobook out of any text block, and it can be as long or as short as you … Read More
With Mac Preview you can quickly create a new image file from your clipboard contents. On it’s own that might not be too enthralling, but this feature extends beyond Preview, meaning any image that you have copied from anywhere using Command+C will work as the source image to create a new image file. This includes … Read More
Using Mac OS X Text to Speech tools, we can convert any .RTF or .TXT file into a spoken audio file which can then be transferred to your iPod or iPhone for later listening. Update: There is an easier way to do a text to audio file conversion using the OS X Services menu, the … Read More
Swiffy is a new experimental tool from Google that easily converts SWF Flash files to HTML5, making Flash-only content accessible to hardware like the iPhone and iPad in just a few seconds. This should be a really useful utility for designers and it’s well worth a bookmark if you work with HTML5 and Flash content … Read More
You can display and monitor virtually all essential system activity directly from your Mac OS X menu bar using a great utility called iStat Menu:
If you have a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro, you can check the battery cycle count. This lets you see how many charge and drain cycles have been used on the battery, and gives you an idea of overall battery health. This functionality exists in all versions of macOS and Mac OS X, and … Read More
Updated 2/21/2012: Here are quick instructions on how to perform a clean Mac OS X Lion installation. Read beyond these steps for some background on the initial confusion surrounding OS X Lion clean install practices. Download OS X Lion from the Mac App Store and make a bootable OS X Lion installer from a USB … Read More
Uninstalling applications from Mac OS X is probably the easiest method of removing apps from any operating system, and it’s far easier on a Mac than anything you’ll encounter in the Windows world. Deleting apps is so simple that some new Mac users are left wondering what else they’re supposed to do, I have received … Read More
Did you know you can instantly access a dictionary, thesaurus, or Wikipedia entry for a word or phrase, from nearly anywhere in Mac OS X? All you need to do is remember a super easy three-finger tap trick.
Have a Steam game library along with some save game files? Maybe you’d like to move those games and the gaming library to another hard drive or even another computer? Did you just get a new Mac? Maybe you upgraded your hard drive and went with a clean Mac OS X install, but you want … Read More
The latest version of iTunes includes the great “Automatic Downloads” ability which automatically syncs your new app, music, and book purchases to all of your other iOS devices. This is the first part of iCloud that is available free to iTunes users, but most users won’t see the benefit because it’s not enabled by default. … Read More
You can set any image on the web as your Mac desktop background wallpaper directly from Safari. This means you don’t even need to download the picture to your computer to set it as the desktop background, you can just find a picture on the web and immediately use it as the wallpaper on the … Read More
Did you get an iTunes gift card or three? My cousin just did too, but they didn’t want to buy music with the balance, they wanted iPhone apps, so naturally as the family Apple guy I get a text asking what to do. Here’s the thing to remember with iTunes gift cards: they can be … Read More
You can retrieve extended wireless connectivity data and details from anywhere within Mac OS X by using a nifty trick that toggles the Wi-Fi menu bar item to display additional specifics about any wireless router. To do this, hold down the Option key and then click on the WiFi menu icon found on the Mac.
