Mac

____________________ These techniques generally assume you are doing a configuration change that requires a benign relaunch (kill and restart) of the OS X Finder. If the Finder is really hosed, you may not be able to launch apps as in technique #3 below and you may have to resort to Unix trickery as in technique…

Apple's Retina MacBook Pro gets a speed bump and more RAM The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro includes Intel's 2.6 GHz dual-core i5 processor with 8 GB RAM, up from 4 GB, and 128 GB SSD storage plus Intel Iris Graphics starting at US$1,299 or $1,499 with 256 GB storage. A 2.8 GHz model with 512…

Recently, Dr. Khanna and I were in a FaceTime session, and he was explaining how the 2013 Mac Pro in concert with OpenCL, has greatly assisted his scientific work. That conversation led to this interview which, we hope, provides substantial insights into using these Apple tools for scientific computing. TMO: First, give us a little…

_____________________ First, the sensible thing to do is see how much memory Apple specifies as required for Mavericks. Apple's OS X Mavericks specification page says that you need at least of 2 GB of RAM to run OS X 10.9. If course we all know that numbers like that are on the conservative side. The…

_______________________ Recently, I ran across an interesting situation with Parallels. As you know, I'm a regular user and reviewer of the Parallels Desktop. For example, “Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac: Faster, Better Windows Experience.” So when my wife told me that she couldn't log in (ssh) from her Windows 7 PC to her copy of…

I could go on and on about all this, but my face is already blue, so I won’t. There are tons of articles and tutorials—many right here on TMO—that cover this important matter quite adequately. A good number of my clients and students are certainly aware of the importance of data backups as well as…

This key is known generically as a “modifier” key, and shares this moniker with the Command (Apple) key, the Control Key, and the Shift key. The Option key is located on either side of the space bar for your convenience. The Option key is adjacent to other modifier keys Modifier keys are used in combination…

Apple hid the Users directory with its iTunes 11.2 update… The Users directory is where the Home folders live for every user on your Mac. You can show your own Home directory in the sidebar for Finder windows, which does give you quick access to your own files. If you need to see your complete…

Panic discussed this on the company blog in late 2012, outlining the steps taken to make Coda compliant with Sandboxing restrictions. The company pointed out that Apple had gone to great lengths to assist in getting Coda out the door. Unfortunately the need to get Coda in the hands of users eventually outweighed the time it…

A noise gate can easily solve this problem by only allowing sound through when the input volume reaches a certain level – i.e. when someone is talking and only then. My favorite audio swiss army knife for the Mac, Audio Hijack Pro, allows you to implement a noise gate very easily. Follow the simple steps in this…

I have been teaching courses in both Adobe Photoshop and iPhoto for several years. As for the powerhouse app, Photoshop, I see many eager students quickly become dispirited due to its many complex aspects. In fact, most students I see taking these courses are mostly interested in “quick-and-dirty” ways to edit and “fix” their digital…

9to5Mac's Seth Weintraub replied that I should also check my “twitter icon cache.” It was time to dig. Twitter operates inside OS X's Sandbox, which means all of its application data lives inside your [home] / Library / Containers folder. For Twitter specifically, that's: [home] / Library / Containers / com.twitter.twitter-mac Doing a quick “Get…

Occasionally, a Mac can become stubbornly uncooperative and refuse to accept inputs. It's time for a reboot. Here are some simple techniques to force a restart your Mac with escalating abruptness. _______________________ The first thing to know about Mavericks is that it changes the behavior of the Power button. In Mavericks, if you quickly tap…

When first setting up Hider 2, you are asked for a password that will be used to protect your data, and given guidance on if the password is considered strong enough to prevent someone from guessing it. You are also given the option to store this password in your Keychain.  You can then start adding files…

__________________ There are several reasons why one might want to utilize both of these Ethernet ports. This article is focused on the ones I'm familiar with and have tested. Other configurations include, for example, something called “link aggregation.” That's when two Ethernet ports are combined to achieve greater bandwidth. That's a subject for another time.…

One might understandably assume that using this field would look for files within the current folder. Instead the default behavior is to search your entire Mac, a behavior with which I associate the Spotlight icon in the Menu Bar. However, there is a way to set it to search within the current folder and it's…

It's that time again. Or, well, it's time to talk about Cirque du Mac, but since Macworld/iWorld is happening during a new date range for their show, it means it's technically not that time again. But that's just nitpicking, isn't it? Either way, Cirque du Mac is happening on Friday, March 28th, 2014 and this time… this…

_________________________ 1. SpamSieve. I wouldn't even think about using Macintosh email app unless it's supported by C-Command's SpamSieve by Michael Tsai. This app has changed my computing life greatly for the better, and I love it. SpamSieve uses Bayesian filtering to build a corpus, and it learns as it goes. The longer you use it,…

_________________ First, this is not a review. The best review I have seen of this iMac is by Anand Lal Shimpi: “21.5-inch iMac (Late 2013) Review: Iris Pro Driving an Accurate Display.” It's simply an awesome review, as are all those by AnandTech. If this Mac has been on your shopping list, read the review.…

We would like to thank Leawo for sponsoring TMO this week. Listeners of recent Mac Geek Gab episodes have heard discussion of all manner of Blu-ray topics, and one frustration is the fact that the Mac won't natively play Blu-ray disks, even if you've got a USB Blu-ray reader. Enter Leawo's Blu-ray Player for Mac. This…

_______________________ My investigation started with my trial run order of a new Mac. As far back as I can remember, when I placed an order with Apple's online store, there would be an accurate assessment of the sales tax for my location. At the point in the order process where the estimated sales tax is…

The first computer I saw, touched, and even wrote programs for, was the Commodore PET 2001 with its 4KB RAM, built-in keyboard, and a cassette player for saving and loading programs — what today we call apps. I was captivated, and was certain I was seeing the future. Two computers that had a big impact…

The very first computer we owned was a Timex Sinclair. With its touchy-feely keyboard and its one hertz screen refresh (connected to an old television, naturally), it was a lean, mean, flight-simulator machine (after waiting a half-hour for Flight Simulator to load). But hey, we all gotta start somewhere. The first real computer we had…

Step One If you're an unnamed user in Germany, you do the only thing you can, and that's set about turning that trash can into a PC case and fitting all those unused parts into it (spotted by 9to5Mac). The result is a hackintosh (a home-built PC running OS X) with a Core i3 (Haswell)…