macOS

Matthew Brocker and Stephen Checkoway found a way to change the firmware for the Mac's built-in camera so that the activity light stays disabled. As a result, the camera can be activated without anyone that's actually at the computer knowing. Apple designed the activity light to work as an integral part of the camera so…

The upside, though, is that I sometimes find cool things to share with you. Let’s ignore the fact that my social skills have dwindled to pretty much nothing on a scale of, well—an imaginary scale that measures social skills. And with that soul-scarring realization, we’ll move on to today’s Quick Tip.  The first thing I…

Safari 6.0.5 flaw can expose website passwords Kaspersky Labs' Vyachaslav Zakorzhevsky said Safari “doesn't encrypt previous sessions and stores them in a standard plist file that is freely accessible. As a result, it's easy to find a user's login credentials.” The file that holds site and session data is tucked away in a hidden folder,…

You may have wondered, though, how you could break one apart into its individual frames (or even just view the frames separately if there happened to be a detail that you’d like to focus on). Your Mac actually has a built-in way to do that using Preview, which is pretty darned awesome. So to check it…

Alas, there's a better way as TMO's Melissa Holt points out in a pervious tip. Using Paste and Match style will take the copied text and paste it in using the current document's formatting. This is what many of you may expect will happen when you paste in some text, so it's nice to have…

Hey, I think that looks pretty neat, and the tabs are simple to use and understand. In celebration of this shiny new feature, here are my favorite tricks for using it.  1. Are you a fan of keyboard shortcuts? Command-T opens a new tab, and Command-W closes the active tab, just like in Safari. Faster navigation without having to…

That’s great and all, but what if you don’t want that much information to show up randomly on your machine? It certainly wouldn’t be ideal to get an embarrassing email while your boss happened to be standing behind you. Of course, we can turn notifications off entirely, but I think it's awfully nice to know who has…

One of the features Apple touted as An Official Awesome New Thing™ about Mavericks is that you can have your Dock and your menu bar appear on a secondary display. That’s pretty cool, I think, but if you’ve gotten accustomed to the old behavior, you can revert back to it if you want to. The…

Confused by Mavericks’ new “travel time” feature within Calendar and aren’t sure how it’s supposed to work? Hey, I'm here for you. There are quite a few steps involved for how it functions, so let's get started. I promise that it's fairly painless. Mostly painless. OK, there may be a little pain, but I'll hold…

Starting with the release of OS X 10.7 Lion, a feature was added that permitted the creation of a custom text message and have it emblazoned on the Mac’s login screen. The message could be a affable one of warmth and welcome. It could be a straightforward “If found, call so-and-so” kind of message communicating…

Prior to OS X Mavericks, moving and renaming files meant it was time to make a trip to the Finder. Now that Apple's new Mac operating system is out, however, you can handle those tasks in the title bar of the document that's currently open. Read on to learn how. To see the new document…

Mavericks’ new iBooks app has a neat hidden ability that’ll be especially great for you students out there. This feature adds citations to copied iBooks text for pasting into the app of your choice. It’s really simple to take advantage of, too—all you’ve gotta do is select some text on a page within iBooks on…

Before Mavericks, if you pasted a copied address into a contact’s card, here’s what would happen: Words cannot express how frustrated I was by the pasted address getting all mushed up on one line like that. How annoying to have to delete the city, state, and zip (or what have you) and then retype them into…

iPhoto is Apple's easy-to-use but essential and free photo browser, manager and editor. iPhoto helps you easily manage and edit your digital photos in exciting ways. You can easily share your favorite memories with family and friends. iPhoto has been with us a long time – since 2002, in fact. As part of the iLife…

Under Mavericks, we’ve got a fun new way to use certain notifications (and even interact with them without having to open an app!). How this behaves is partly dependent on what you’ve got configured within System Preferences> Notifications for the programs that this'll work for. For example, if you’ve got Messages notifications set to appear…

Emojis. You know them as the fun little emoticon-like ideograms that have become increasingly popular over the past several years. And for those who enjoy communicating certain thoughts and emotions via visual representations, you’ll want to upgrade to OS X Mavericks immediately. Apple has expanded the availability and implementation of Emojis in its latest operating…

Keynote 6, part of Apple's new iWork family, has made the leap forward to 2013. It's a complete rewrite of Keynote '09 and now has file compatibility with the iOS version. Here's my review. ________________________ Keynote is Apple's counterpart to Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation application. Keynote has always been considered easier and more fun to use,…

OS X Mavericks has plenty of new features to entice users into upgrading, but if the apps you rely on every day won't work it doesn't make sense to make the jump. Trying to sort through long lists of websites to see if the apps you need are Mavericks-ready can be tedious process, and you…

OS X Mavericks is very good at handling multiple displays. Any active display can have a Menu Bar now. But how do you get the dock to actually appear on the active display? Here's how to do it. ________________________ In Mavericks, any display can be the active display. You can tell which one is active…

Apple released iTunes 11.1.2 on Tuesday to address compatibility issues with the just released OS X Mavericks for the Mac. Apple released the new OS as a free upgrade on Tuesday following the introduction of new iPad models and updated MacBook Pros. iTunes 11.1.2 improves OS X Mavericks support According to Apple's slim release notes,…

Apple released Aperture 3.5 on Tuesday after releasing OS X Mavericks for the Mac. The update for the image editing and management app replaced Google Maps with Apple's own Maps for photo location tagging. Aperture 3.5 improves OS X Mavericks support The version 3.5 update also added iCloud photo sharing support, the ability to include…

When a major new release of an operating system is emerging, the developer can take two approaches. First, be heady with agenda and greatly annoy the users with abrupt, dramatic change. Alternatively, the developer can focus on all the areas that make the OS more secure, more fun and more usable. Apple has chosen to…

When a major new release of an operating system is emerging, the developer can take two approaches. First, be heady with agenda and greatly annoy the users with abrupt, dramatic change. Alternatively, the developer can focus on all the areas that makes the OS more secure, more fun and more usable. Apple has chosen to…

OS X Mountain Lion users got an update to Safari on Tuesday, giving them shared links support and a new sidebar. MacBook Pro and MacBook Air users got a little something, too, thanks to Safari 6.1's improved energy efficiency features. Safari 6.1 for Mountain Lion adds Mavericks-style sidebar Safari 6.1's shared links feature lets users…