If you’ve ever needed to select and copy portions of a text document that are non-contiguous, in other words, sentences or words that are not right next to one another and do not touch, you can do so with a little-known text selection shortcut trick in Mac OS X.
All iPhone devices have a unique hardware identifier known as a MAC address, or as iOS refers to it, a Wi-Fi Address. Sometimes you need to know what the iPhone MAC address is so that you can connect an iOS device to a specific router, provide it to a systems or network administrator, using Wake … Read More
If you’re troubleshooting a Mac machine with some particularly odd issues that routine measures don’t seem to be resolving, it can be helpful to list what kernel extensions are activated, particularly third party kexts loaded in OS X. Determining what kernel extensions are loaded and running in Mac OS X is rather easy, and using … Read More
If you have an older model iPhone 4 with an older iOS release, you can now use FaceTime video chat over 3G cell network, breaking you free from your WiFi shackles. There’s a catch though, it’s not free, and it requires jailbreaking.
If you have added any third party system preference panels to the Mac, you can easily remove them if you no longer have a need for that system preference panel.
Scrolling with momentum is a feature that is included with some MacBook Pro trackpads (and MacBooks thanks to a recent software update from Apple). The behavior is very much like the iPad or iPhone, when you are scrolling through anything you can give the trackpad a swipe and the speed of your gesture will determine … Read More
Long ago in a time far far away, OK really it was just prior to Mac OS X, there used to be a Trash icon on the Desktop. Yup, earlier versions of Mac OS didn’t have a Dock at all, and the Trash was just another item on the desktop, sitting in the bottom right … Read More
If your iPhone 3G is running really slow after installing iOS 4, you’re not alone. While iOS 4 is a great OS for newer iPhone models, it makes my older iPhone 3G slow down to a crawl, with everything delayed and stuttering to catch up to touch. At times it’s practically unusable. So what can … Read More
Modern versions of Mac OS have a feature for MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook that will report to you the condition of your battery, as shown through the battery menubar item. Usually charging messages are shown there, but there are two other messages you may see in that menu, and they are “Replace Now” … Read More
Did you accidentally ignore a Software Update in MacOS or Mac OS X and now you need to install it on a Mac? Perhaps you were putting off a specific update for one reason or another, and now it’s time to install that ignored or hidden update again onto Mac OS X. Fortunately, getting the … Read More
Using Text Substitution, you can easily write any special character or symbol like ™ or ® just by typing something like TM or (r). It can also be used to expand long phrases or particular words by typing shorter abbreviations, for example you could type “myeml” to instantly type out an email address, and it … Read More
Letting Time Machine run on a routine backup schedule is important for all Macs, but there also times where you’ll want to initiate a backup yourself, like before installing system updates or major Mac OS X upgrades. If you find yourself needing to initiate a manual Time Machine backup, you’ll be happy to know it … Read More
Have you ever tried to run a command line tool to discover that you don’t have the necessary privileges to use it? Or perhaps the command itself actually requires root access to run at all? You’ll typically experience this with a ‘permission denied’ type of error message in terminal. Rather then type out the entire … Read More
Have you ever put your Mac to sleep, only to find it awake seemingly on it’s own when you return to the machine? I’ve run into this mystery of a randomly waking Mac a few times, and with a few terminal commands you can help track down what caused your Mac to wake from sleep. … Read More
If you need to convert FLAC to MP3 in Mac OS X for free, the best way to do so is using a utility called All2MP3*. It’s super easy to use with drag & drop conversion tools and total simplicity, just grab the app and follow along with this tutorial and you’ll have converted your … Read More
Want to open a PDF file and save it to your iPhone or iPad so that you can read it later? The best way to do that is by downloading the PDF file into the Books app, which runs on the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. You’ll need Books (once called iBooks) installed to do … Read More
You can resize, rotate, or flip any image file via the Mac’s Terminal using the powerful command line sips tool. Manipulating images with sips is practically instantaneous, and if you need to quickly resize, rotate, or flip an image file and want to stay within the command line, it can definitely beat firing up a … Read More
If you want to see the difference between two folders on a Mac, or compare two directories contents, you can easily do so with the help of the powerful diff command. This tutorial will show you how to compare two directories, and the contents of those directories, by using the Terminal. This command line approach … Read More
