macOS

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…

_______________________ We have reached an impasse. Everything with Apple must be easy and comfortable. Yet the very idea of backing up hundreds of gigabytes (or terabytes) of data is out of sync with the capabilities of HFS+ and the software technologies provided. As a result, it's easier to brush this issue under the rug than…

The first option there, “Get Info,” will open a separate, detailed window for the event you right-clicked on. The neat thing about that window is that it won’t go away until you click the “X” at the upper-left corner to dismiss it; this is useful if you want to compare events from different months, for…

Of course, if you know the password for the other accounts on your machine, you can just log in and see all of each person’s files. If you don’t, though, navigating to Macintosh HD/Users/[someone else’s username] will look something like this: All those red minus signs mean “hey, bub, stay outta here,” and double-clicking any…

I don’t necessarily recommend that everyone start doing this, as I’m a big fan of having separate passwords for everything (and using 1Password to manage them). That said, if you’re helping someone who’s less tech-savvy (or if you have difficulty tracking your own passwords), this could be a way to simplify things. To get started,…

_____________________ Application Packages First, I need to backtrack for a minute. As OS X users, we're familiar with the fact that applications are actually complex folders in disguise—packages in developer lingo. OS X recognizes application packages and knows how to give them their unique icon. There is a contextual menu item, “Show Package Contents” that…

_____________________ The Finder in OS X is a good app, and it keeps getting better. However, over the years, I found that Cocoatech's Path Finder, a fully capable Finder replacement, has more power, is more convenient and more fun to use. It's a powerhouse app that I'm grateful for and couldn't live without. This isn't…

To optimize the workflow I wanted to be able to save a PDF directly from Mail to Evernote, name it with a custom name (so as to be in sync with our agenda) and automatically file it in the “MGG” notebook so that it syncs between John and me. Evernote makes it pretty easy to…

For the sites you like and trust (such as TMO, right? RIGHT?), this is a good thing, as you’ll be notified whenever they have new material for you to check out. But if you want to control the sites that have asked so far (or if you would just like to turn this feature off completely),…

Apple Kills Yosemite Network Bugs with Mavericks Code Network-related issues cropped up for many Mac users as soon as they installed OS X Yosemite 10.10, and have persisted through every update so far. Rolling back to mDNSResponder most likely means Apple hasn't been able to find a way to resolve the issues introduced with discoveryd.…

First, if you want to move a file back one folder in your navigation, just pick it up and hover over the Back button in the upper-left corner of your Finder window. When you do so, the window will jump back one step, and then you can drop your file into its new location. Note,…

Full Word Processing First off, there is a serious set of formatting controls tucked away in the menu bar, but you may need to turn it on. In the image below, I have a TextEdit document setup to be a “Plain Text” file. Note the Serif font and the lack of any kind of formatting…

Modems and Routers Let's start at the beginning: there a wire (cable or DSL or fiber or what have you) coming from the street to your house, and that wire connects to a modem. That modem can have a router built-in, or you might have a separate router, for instance an AirPort base station. Routers…

The good news is that it works. Using the following methods, he has been able accumulate hundreds of thousands of Gold—one of the main currencies in Game of War—without spending real money on Gold Packages. The sacrifice was that every building that did not help train troops or research had to go, and that means…