macOS

Buried in the bowels of your Mac’s operating system are a handful of utilities that you may (or may not) take for granted. One such utility, the Archive Utility, has a slew of customizable features. Let’s take a look, shall we? With the Finder active, click on the Go menu, then click on Go to…

Saving money has become a major priority for many people. Fortunately, there is a range of software to help you not only save money, but to spend it wisely and organize your finances. With the myriad of titles available, it can be a challenge to choose the best one for your needs. For all you…

Numbers' filtering ability is a powerful way to see and interpret your data, and you can use it in all sorts of ways. Wanna find out how much you spent on March 3? No problem. Need to know how many times you went out to dinner? Piece o' cake. Gotta sort for a particular executive's…

Could Operations Research Grant Tech CEOs an Upper Hand? Over the holiday weekend, I was in the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, and I ran across a fabulous book called, “Blackett's War.” Here's the Amazon description: “The exciting history of a small group of British and American scientists who, during World War II, developed the…

Apple released iTunes 11.0.3 on Thursday with several changes including a new album artwork view in the MiniPlayer. iTunes is Apple's media player and management app as well as the gateway to the company's music, video, movie, and iOS app stores. iTunes 11.0.3 adds interface improvements and security patches The 11.0.3 update also added a…

A lot of people don't know that Pages has the ability to use styles, just like professional page-layout programs do. A style is just a defined set of instructions to make formatting easier, such as what font, size, color, and spacing you'd like text to have. The beauty of styles is that they make changing…

If you use a device which can receive audio via AirPlay, or even just switch your Mac's audio output device, you can easily do that without any extra software. You may know that, with Mountain Lion, Macs made in the last couple years can broadcast their screen to an Apple TV using AirPlay. This is…

Apple's Siri voice control system is already available in iOS 6 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, but don't expect to see it show up in OS X 10.9. That's according to Ezra Gottheil from Technology Business Report who thinks Apple will have to update Mac hardware before OS X can support Siri. Apple…

If you're in Safari and you'd like to navigate to a different page without leaving your current one, what do you do? Why, you open a new tab or window and type in where you want to go, right? Well, there's another way to do it, and it's especially good to know this if you…

Ever have a bunch of files you want to rename? Maybe you received a group of documents from your Windows-using friend that have some wonky text in them, or maybe you want to serialize and date some pictures? Automator, built right into your Mac, makes this so easy you'll scratch your head twice; once for…

If you need to keep something hidden from prying eyes, there are a number of ways you could go about it. One great method was described by TMO's own Sandro Cuccia in a recent article on how to use Disk Utility to create containers to keep stuff in. But what if you only need to hide…

In Photo Booth, there are a couple of keys you can hold down to take pictures exactly how you'd like to. First of all, I'm sure you know that clicking the giant red camera button will take a picture.  if you hold down the Option key as you're pressing that button, though, it won't do…

Have a couple printers you'd like to get more use out of, or maybe you don't want to have to ask which printer is available? No problem. Just make your own printer pool from your Mac. A printer pool is a collection of printers that your Mac can automatically choose from whenever you need a…

Despite the promise long ago of the paperless office, we still need to print documents from our Macs at times. The usual launch an app to print a document routine works fine for that, but you can save a little time by printing your files directly from the Finder. You can print documents from the…

There are quite a few ways to make text larger in Safari if you're having trouble seeing it. As I've discussed before, you can even use some special Universal Access features if you're really having problems. There still are tons of other simple methods you can use, though. For example, if you've got a touch-enabled…

In past articles here on TMO, I have enjoyed pointing out and discussing the free applications that are included with every new Mac. Some are obviously available via the Dock by default. Other apps – most being quite useful – are out-of-view and inside the Applications folder, the Utilities folder and elsewhere. A lot of…

Everything was great (at least conventional) with saving documents up through OS X Snow Leopard. In Lion, inspired by iOS, Apple introduced what's called the Modern Document Model into its iCloud enabled apps. Apple eliminated Save As…, introduced Auto Save and Versioning, but most importantly, drove long-time users crazy. Also, the mods introduced a small…

Using what are called Services, you can do all sorts of crazy, incredibly handy stuff. One of my personal favorites is creating a keyboard shortcut so that every time I highlight some text, I can press that shortcut to automagically start a new email and include the selected text. It's pretty simple to set up,…

I don't really think there would be a problem naming OX S 10.9 “Cougar.” In fact, Apple should. It's a fairly big, strong cat, and the name connotes power and ferocity. Much more so than “Lynx.” Next, Apple has had the trademark on Cougar (and Lynx) since 2003. No problem there. Finally, there is that…

Concerns regarding personal data security and privacy have been with us since the dawn of computing, when the Chinese introduced the abacus back in 2600 B.C. With increased connectivity, work collaboration, social networking and remote data storage, these concerns have increased many-fold. This is a good thing in that everyone's data security awareness is at…

I admit it. I think the interface of iTunes 11 is a bit…counterintuitive. Clunky, even. As soon as I installed it, I turned the old sidebar back on (View > Show Sidebar), and I sometimes still think it's not very user-friendly. That said, I find customizing my view has helped a lot. This trick isn't…

Back in September, we performed extensive tests to determine the effect that OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion had on Mac battery life. Our tests confirmed the complaints of many Mountain Lion users that their MacBooks were running for a noticeably shorter time while on the go after upgrading to Apple’s latest operating system. Thankfully, we…

I reviewed Keir Thomas’s first book written for Mac users and found it to be easy to read and full of helpful tips. It was written for those using the OS X Lion operating system. I was looking forward to reviewing this second edition which is written for those using OS X Mountain Lion, and I…

In this article, we're gonna go over a few tricks for minimizing windows and closing them. Be aware that most of the shortcuts I'll mention will work around OS X and even in some third-party apps, so they're certainly worth memorizing for the sake of productivity. Plus, you'll look like a total wizard to your…