Mac

The first thing you’ll do is figure out how much space you’re currently using. An easy way to do that is to go to the Apple Menu in the upper-left of your screen and choose “About This Mac.” If you’re running Yosemite, you should see the redesigned window pictured below (the one where I’ve pointed…

NOTE: This article covers only the Mac side of printing contacts. It is known throughout the land that printing is looked upon as a dark art, and lo there are various and sundry paths one can take to achieve it. However, the half of the equation where the printer doesn't work right or won't line…

Episode #112   Last November I told you I finally found a suitable replacement for Intuit’s Quicken personal finance software, after nearly 15 years of searching. That replacement was iBank and I’m still totally happy with it. In the meantime, Intuit is up to its old tricks again. As you may recall, Intuit discontinued Quicken for…

These little symbols indicate which section of your iTunes Library you can access by clicking on them—selecting the music notes will take you to, well, your music, the movie reel goes to your movies, and so on. What’s not so apparent is that you can edit those icons to be whatever you’d like, so if…

It's my pleasure to thank Lucidchart for sponsoring TMO this week. Lucidchart is, in short, Visio for Mac users. In your browser. No separate app to download, but it sure does feel like a Mac app. Lucidchart is easy to use, very quick to get started, and has intuitive controls. Start with Lucidchart's templates and…

Episode #109   There are three kinds of people: Those who make lists; those who don’t make lists; and I wish I could remember the third kind, but I didn’t write it down on one of my lists… As you probably guessed, I’m the first kind: An inveterate list-maker who is never without a notepad,…

A Mountie from Ten One Design shown on an iPhone 5S for scale. First off, I have to spend a moment on the packaging. No thick plastic nightmare, just some clear tape around the edges. It's wonderful to get right to the goodies without having to break out the heavy machinery. Both the top and…

You can bypass that warning by pressing Command-Delete on a song instead, but still, that only removes it from the playlist, not from your library. Now of course, you could go out into your full library view and delete the item from there, but it’s handy to know that there’s a shortcut that’ll let you…

A look at all the hardware you can manage with Bushel. And use to monitor Bushel too! That's where JAMF Software comes in. JAMF has just launched a beta for Bushel, designed to bring MDM to the masses and make it easier for small organizations which might be in need of some sort of MDM…

_________________ Here's the problem. I and several other editors here at the Mac Observer compose our articles first in BBEdit. The file extension I use is “.txt,” but it could just as well be “.text” That's so when I double click one of my draft articles, it loads into BBEdit. Just as a reminder, the…

Dr. Mac’s Rants & Raves  Episode #98 I love managing my finances on my Mac, but I have never liked depending upon Intuit or its Quicken for Mac products. Intuit, as you probably know, has no love for Mac users. Way back in May of 1998, when Apple was at the depths of the death…

We'll start off the Week Of Tips with a fantastic one from Nathan Toups, currently the CTO of KEY, a startup in stealth mode that's offering personalized service to short-term renters (like, if your AirBnB had a concierge). He gave me a tip about screenshots and Dropbox that may well make your life dramatically easier.…

_________________ The applicable document here is: “Target Display Mode: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).” That Apple document goes into great detail, so I won't repeat it here. The Short Version Here's what TDM is all about. Let's say you have a MacBook Air with a small display that you use for travel. At home you have…

When iOS 8 was released and the feature wasn't there, we all waited for Yosemite. When Yosemite came out we realized we needed to wait for iOS 8.1. Now that you have those two installed (you must for this to work), there are just a few more steps to follow, but they are pretty simple: First,…

Yosemite was first unveiled during June's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). During the “It's Been Too Long” media event earlier on Thursday, Apple said Yosemite would be released later in the day, and now is apparently later. Yosemite is free. We have a handy list of Macs supporting Yosemite if you're looking to know whether…

OS X Yosemite promises to make it easier to share information with your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, can send and receive calls through your iPhone, more powerful Spotlight searches, iCloud Drive support, a redesigned interface that takes visual cues from iOS 7 and iOS 8, and more. The short answer to the question of…

Bash's Shellshock flaw poses big security threat for Macs and other Linux systems Shellshock is about a 25 year old security flaw in the Bash shell that lets code held in certain variables to be executed immediately and without the victim's knowledge. That code could give attackers deep level access to the system as well…

To take care of it, open iTunes, click on the “Store” menu at the top, and choose “Deauthorize This Computer.”  iTunes’ll want to know what Apple ID you’re deauthorizing, so enter that info. When you’re finished, repeat this process for every Apple ID you’ve authorized on your Mac. That’s all there is to it! But…but…what…

____________________ 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…