macOS

So for example, if you resized Mail to be teeny-tiny by dragging the edge of its window, clicking the green button once would maximize it; clicking it again would return it to its tiny self. In Yosemite, however, that behavior is different in some programs (but not all of them—some, like Contacts, TextEdit, and Reminders,…

So when you’re composing a message in Mail and you attach an image or a PDF, hovering over the file with your cursor will reveal a small drop-down arrow at the upper-right corner. Click that and choose “Markup,” and you’re on your way. When the markup window appears, you’ll see a series of useful tools…

Safari's Advanced Preferences. That's it! Now you'll get the entire URL in all its glory, as God intended.

You’ll get three options in the upper-left of the window that’ll appear—“Replace Text,” “Add Text,” and “Format.” If you pick that first option, you can search for a common element in your selected files and replace that with different text. Choosing the “Add Text” option means that you can insert text either before or after…

So kids, in the olden days you had to make a “phone call” from a device like this. No it didn't have Facebook. There are a number of easier ways to make phone calls on your Mac, one of which is a utility called Continuity Keypad. There's also just opening Contacts and clicking on the…

There isn't much on the site itself besides a link to download the beta. You can find out more on the Continuity Keypad Twitter account, including plans for the Mac App Store and updates to the beta. Right now those plans include ending up in the Mac App Store at 99 cents, and a steady…

On October 16, Apple released OS X Yosemite which is version 10.10. I have been beta testing since the first developer release and also testing with iOS 8. Here is everything that I learned and how I've sized up this stellar OS X release. Introduction OS X Yosemite 10.10 is the latest version of Apple's…

iWorm botnet has hit 18,000 Macs so far Once installed, iWorm searches Reddit for specific posts that include IP address for servers that can issue it commands. The server then sends its instructions back to the victim's computer, which could also include another malware payload. Reddit has since shut down the forum where the posts…

Behind that simple interface, though, there’s a lot of fun and useful stuff you can do, like syncing your reminders between all of your devices with iCloud, using location-based reminders, or creating a shared family grocery list. Here, though, is one of my favorite little tricks—reusing existing reminders so that you don’t have to keep…

All through Steve’s presentation I kept admiring his slide show presentation. Actually, drooling is a better descriptor. At the end, he announced that the software was called Keynote and everyone in the audience was getting a free copy. Keynote I was stoked. I went back to my hotel room, installed the software and immediately converted…

If you do that, whatever you clicked on will be set as your wallpaper. Oh, sweet Moses. That’s it! That’s the tip! No, wait—I’m not done. Say that you keep that wallpaper for 87 years, and then you can’t find it on the Web anymore. Where the heck did Safari put it?! Well, it’s hidden,…

So that’s groovy, and it’s neat to be able to make an object repeat every time your work flows to a new page. But how do you anchor a single item in place without repeating it everywhere? It’s so hard, oh my gosh! This article is going to be ten thousand words long! …Er, not…

Not only might that be your only tool on hand to use, if you have a large number of photos to delete, it can be more convenient to remove items from Photo Stream using a keyboard and mouse using a large screen. To start, here's how to enable or disable Photo Stream: Enable Photo Stream…

So within System Preferences> Accessibility, click on the “Keyboard” tab from the left-hand list, and you’ll see a checkbox labeled “Enable Sticky Keys.” This lets the user input keyboard shortcuts as a sequence instead of having to press the keys all at once. So if you’re looking to quit an application, for example, you can…

____________________ Let's say you're reading an article that has a long URL/address. Perhaps you're tying to delete all the extra query string after the core URL and a “?” mark. (I do that all the time for the Particle Debris column.) And then you make a mistake and delete too much. Alternatively, say you're editing…

Here’s the window full of choices that’ll appear:  As you can see in the yellow area in my screenshot above, you have the option to make your Desktop icons a different size or change the space between them. Of course, going too large or too small can look quite odd! Highlighted in purple on that…

1. Add Bookmarks  If you’re working with a long PDF, Preview’s Bookmarks feature makes it easy to go back to pages that have the information you’re looking for. To bookmark a page, either select it from the sidebar (if you’ve got View> Thumbnails turned on) or make sure the correct page is showing in Preview’s…

Contextual menu for files. I don't know about you, but this annoyed me greatly, so I researched how to get rid of it. Why? With too much frequency, I'd accidentally pick the wrong one and then have to fix the mistake. I delete a lot more files than I move to Dropbox, so the Dropbox…

You can use double quotes to search an exact phrase. George Carlin has a great bit about losing things, and one of the things he mentions is frozen banana guacamole. If you want to make sure you get all those words in that order, use quotes: “Frozen banana guacamole” In the image below, you can see…

However, if the location you want directions to has no icon to click (if you’re trying to get to an intersection, say), the secret lies in right- or Control-clicking directly on the spot. As you can see, doing that will bring up a handy contextual menu, from which you can drop a pin or open…

I’m sure you’re thinking that I could have done a better job creating a graphic for this article, but you’re wrong. I appreciate the confidence you have in me, though. Anyway, as you can tell, the red circle is behind the yellow pentagon but in front of the blue square. If I decide that I’d…

______________________ 1. What is it? Gatekeeper is a part of OS X that checks an app for the presence of a digital signature, applied by Apple or the developer. A preference can be set such that if the app is not signed by a registered Apple developer or by Apple, the app cannot launch. That…

Apple drops surprise Gatekeeper update on Mac developers Gatekeeper is a feature in OS X that helps protect Mac users from malicious apps. Developers are assigned their own unique key they use to “sign” their apps, and those digital signatures are verified by Gatekeeper. Apps with proper signatures are allowed to run, but unsigned apps…

What? I'm OCD about cords. Don't judge me. Or ask about Son of Box of Cords. Contained within are all manner of cables, wires, and cords. Power cords with those bricks in particular. You know, those maddeningly generic wall warts that have a meaningless sticker applied to them that tells you precisely nothing useful, like…