macOS

One issue is that chat is now hidden as soon as you start any call, be it audio or video. I could possibly see where a video caller might want the full window to be consumed by video, but I certainly don't need a huge avatar on my screen during an audio call. Maybe the folks at Skype are…

There are a couple of methods for doing this, which both lead to the same place: A USB drive (8GB or larger), safely stashed in a drawer, which has a bootable OS on it, as well as an installer to put that OS on a hard drive. First up is the “official” method, a utility…

So if you need to know what date it is, a quick glance will tell you. And don’t lie to me and say you guys always just remember that! Heck, I’m lucky if I remember to use “2014” now that it’s, you know, July. In any event, if you don’t have that program in your…

So first, open the Calendar program and click on the calendar you’d like to get rid of from the left-hand list. If you don’t see this, click the “Calendars” button on the toolbar. Once you’ve got the correct one selected, go up to the menus and choose File> Export> Export. Your Mac will ask you…

One of the Mac technologies that has seen big improvements—and the topic for today—is its synthetic speech capabilities. The quality of digital speech has always been directly related to the raw processing power of the computer. Even during the Mac’s very early days in the mid-eighties, its operating system was outfitted with synthetic speech capabilities,…

As you can see from my screenshot above, you can then choose which printers to share and with whom to share them. I recommend just leaving that third pane set to “Everyone,” as only folks who have access to your home network will be able to print to your device, anyhow, so it’s not much…

Leaving that checkbox on means that your Mac will reopen everything that was already running, which can lead to some pretty slow startup times if your machine isn’t a powerhouse. Or even if it is, if what it’s trying to reopen is the entirety of the Creative Suite. No offense, Adobe. Another reason why your…

[Note: this article was edited and updated in November, 2014 with additional methods.] _____________________ To be clear, there are several technical ways to reset the administrator password on a Mac if you cannot log in. Some of them are rather Unix-geeky and can make a novice user nervous. For the sake of completeness, I'll reference…

__________________________ Netflix doesn't try to saturate your internet connection delivered by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). For example, if you're paying for a 12 megabits per second (Mbps) connection, Netflix won't try to use all of it just to generate a slightly better picture. Note: communication rates are always expressed in bits per second (bps),…

________________________ The OS X 10.10 hardware requirements are, as cited by Apple Insider: Mac mini: Early 2009 or newer. iMac: Mid 2007 or newer. Mac Pro: Early 2008 or newer. MacBook: Later 2008 Aluminum or early 2009 or newer. MacBook Air: Late 2008 or newer. MacBook Pro: Mid/Late 2007 or newer. Xserve: Early 2009. This…

_____________________ New OS X features exist in a spectrum. The OS change can range from a under the hood improvements to UI cleanup to improving functionality to an outright new feature. Sometimes the feature is minor, and sometimes it's a blockbuster. For example, OS X 10.9 Mavericks brough us App Nap and Compressed memory under…

OS X Yosemite lets Netflix ditch Microsoft's Silverlight Currently, Netflix streaming on the Mac requires Silverlight, which is a multimedia playback and streaming extension from Microsoft. It's proprietary, much like Adobe's Flash, and requires users to install extra software on their Mac. In OS X Yosemite, however, no extra software is needed because all the…

OS X 10.10 Finder (Image via The Verge) Base on the blurry photos, OS X 10.10 will still feel like the Mac operating system it is, but menus and buttons will get an iOS 7, and presumably iOS 8, look while Notification Center will look decidedly more like its iPad counterpart. The photos have since…

___________________ Those of us who grew up with the Mac tend to think of its OS as cast in stone as the way a modern GUI on top of a classic BSD UNIX system should look and feel. It's easy to fall into the idea that change is bad. The fact is, however, is that…

There are a few different preferences around your Mac that control this behavior. If, for example, you have Location Services turned off within System Preferences> Security & Privacy> Privacy, then you may be seeing warnings like this one instead: While turning off Location Services entirely is certainly an option if you’re concerned about privacy, there…

No amount of fancy camera gear will guarantee that you become a better photographer Why do I find this so cage-rattling? People will surely disagree, but in general, it’s not about the camera and photographic accouterments. At the very least, camera gear is secondary to a good grasp of the photographic principles of Composition, Light…

One bug squished, one bug survived. Unfortunately this is just a case of history repeating itself. When this flaw was discovered the update was released immediately on Mac OS, but three weeks later on iOS, drawing criticism from a former employee for the delay. Unfortunately, that delay for Windows users is approaching two months now,…

Volcano image source: USGS, via Wikimedia Commons. As an example, I can no longer remember phone numbers. I was driving the other day and realized that if my car broke down and my phone died simultaneously, I would literally not be able to call anywhere except my childhood home. Not helpful! So if you’re like…

Speculation went wild, with many (including Apple Support reps) presuming that this was intentional on Apple's part and now policy. Apple ended that speculation late last night with the release of iTunes 11.2.1 (also available via Software Update). Install this and you can literally watch your /Users folder re-appear during the installation process. No reboot…

Encrypting Disks Under 10.8 or 10.9 If you’re running Mountain Lion or Mavericks, this process is really, really easy. However, even though this first method theoretically shouldn’t erase any data on the drive, be sure you have a backup before you begin just in case things go all nutty on you. Better safe than…well, you know.…

Blu-ray, disks, however, are not supported directly by this Handbrake/VLC combo, and that makes things frustrating. Typically you need to first rip the Blu-ray into some format that Handbrake will understand and then you can convert/compress from there.  MakeMKV is one such program that will do that Blu-ray conversion. What many users don't realize, though,…

It’s pretty cool that you can add something to your iPhoto Library or set it as your desktop wallpaper right from that contextual menu. I use “Copy Image Address” and “Copy Image” a lot, too, but mostly just to send links and cat memes to my pals. As I do more often than is probably necessary.…

But here’s a pickle: What if you’re editing a document, and you find that its formatting is all messed up because of tons of those invisible characters? Is there any way to do a find and replace on them so that you don’t have to go through and delete 476 tabs, for example, that were…