macOS

First off, there is some context for writing this tip. In my experience, there are two different kinds of To Do lists. The first, I call it Type I, is more formal and has, for example, deadlines, catagories, alerts, supporting data, and needs to be kept as an archive. One very good app for doing…

  1. Putting in Dock Spacers There’s a Terminal command (which fortunately still works in El Capitan) that’ll let you add blank spacers to your Dock, so if you wanna micromanage your shortcuts in some fashion, you can! What you’ll do is open Terminal from Applications > Utilities and then copy and paste the following:…

So check this out—if you open Contacts and look around at your cards, you may find some in which an email address, phone number, or what have you is greyed out and has a little “i” next to it. OK, so you can’t tell that number is in grey since I had to block it.…

That’s awesome, but for some people, the problem isn’t duplicated info—it’s extraneous accounts clogging up the program. To check yours, open Contacts, and if you don’t see the sidebar shown below, press Command-1 (View> Show Groups). I’m currently allowing four accounts (in yellow) to sync contacts to my Mac. If you actually need to sync…

No, no, I’m kidding! Don’t leave. Luckily for you (and for me, since I don’t have to write so much), I covered some easy ways to encrypt external drives in a tip from last year. But as far as Time Machine backups go, you’ll need to do something a little bit different to make sure…

Episode #144 El Capitan (aka Mac OS X version 10.11) came out last week, but I’ve been working on OS X El Capitan For Dummies all summer, so I’ve been using it daily for months. I upgraded both of my Macs to the release version last week and I’m happy to report that both upgrades…

Apple says developers shut of OS X's security failsafe before installing malware-loaded Xcode XcodeGhost is malware that iOS developers in China inadvertently included in their iPhone and iPad apps. Apple began pulling the titles from the App Store last week after the malware was discovered, and then said it would start hosting its Xcode installers…

Before we get started, know that most modern Macs (manufactured within the last five years or so) can run El Cap. (And if you’re looking for a comprehensive list by model, the Wikipedia page has some good info). For what it’s worth, I’ve been testing the beta for a good long time now, and I…

_____________________ One of the more common lock ups I've encountered lately is with Firefox and that spinning beachball of death. First, however, I must digress. if you can click outside the app and recover an active cursor, there are several common ways to terminate a misbehaving app. Go to the Apple Menu and select Force…

______________________ All Mac users should be aware that when they install Google Chrome on their Mac, additional software is installed that is able to conduct automatic updates. In general, this is a Good Thing™, except for two things. 1. The user isn't notified that the software is being installed, nor given the option to decline.…

Lock the Dock Position As the antithesis of our earlier tip, you can prevent changes to the position of the OS X Dock by running the following Terminal command: defaults write com.apple.Dock position-immutable -bool yes; killall Dock The first part of the command above prevents the user from changing the position of the Dock from…

The high level explanation for this analysis comes in the public beta release notes under Notes and Known Issues, Other: System file permissions are automatically protected, and updated, during Software Updates. The Repair Permissions function is no longer necessary. This change will generally go unnoticed by most average users except for the absence of that…

______________________ The setting to be used is iTunes 12 > Preferences > General. Unfortunately, iTunes gets to choose, it seems, the background color based on some key color of the item's art. Sometimes it can look really nice, like my iPhone's playlist for walking, shown below on iTunes 12 on a Mac.  This color generally…

First, for those new to the operating system, here’s a quick overview on the “standard” methods of repositioning the OS X Dock. The first and most involved method is to head to System Preferences > Dock. Here, you can make changes to the way that the Dock works and looks, but what we’re interested in…

The refinements can take several forms. More refined security, networking, and user interface elements combined with code tweaking foster a better experience and performance. From what I've seen so far on my MacBook (with a 10.11 beta), El Capitan will be great. See: “Important New Features Make OS X El Capitan Not Just a Tune-up.”…

“If you’re a MacBook user,” the company wrote, “you're losing an average of 1 hour of total battery life by using Chrome. Firefox is a little better, but Safari is the clear winner. You’ll want to use Safari if you want to get the most battery out of your laptop.” Average Battery Life in Chrome,…

Never ever call it!   Oh no! This looks legit, it says Apple on it and my Facebook stuff might be at risk! Let me repeat that: never ever call it!! You want to, because hey, it was helpful enough to tell your computer has a problem. If that dialog knows your computer has a…

OS X El Capitan. Image credit: Apple This column typically selects a single notable article, from all the week's news, to showcase, explore and comment on. However, this week, it became clear that several important new features of OS X El Capitan are coming to light and being assessed. It's all coming together into a…

OS X El Capitan, iOS 9 get new two-factor authentication system Apple's operating system-level two-factor authentication system will kick in whenever you sign in on a new device or Web browser with your Apple ID. You'll have to enter a six digit code along with your password as a way to help keep unauthorized people…

_______________________ The Apple reference document I'm using is HT204944, dated June 29, 2015. 1. If a item is already in your library, select the song or the album and look for the three dots (…) to its right. It will look like this for a song Or it will look like this for an album:…

______________________ This story started when I did a clean install of Yosemite on an external drive. When I fired up my Mac Pro from that drive, I noticed that each of my two monitors had a menu bar. One was dimmed, and one was not. If I clicked on the display with a dimmed menu…

See that “Export Frame To Pictures” option? Yeah, that’s all you’ve gotta do. And as you can see, there are some other handy choices there. “Trim” is obviously useful (as is “Reset Trim” if you’ve munged a video up when you tried to edit it). “Set Poster Frame” will change what thumbnail Photos shows on…

Of course, slowness can often be attributed to age—just because your 2010 MacBook Air can run Yosemite doesn’t mean that’s gonna work out amazingly well for you—but even so, it’s best to figure out what’s going on. To that end, let’s start troubleshooting the three most common causes of sad, slow Macs! 1. You could…

______________________ The story started a few weeks ago (May 22nd) when I wrote my Friday column, Particle Debris, that referenced some frightening security lapses. Not long after I refefrenced Logjam (and an infamous predecessor, Heartbleed), I ran across an article in the May, 2015 issue of Aerospace and Defense, page 40, that had a short article…