macOS

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — At this week's Macworld Expo, Cloak announced the release (previously in public beta) of their Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution for both iOS and OS X. Dave Peck, Founder, gave us an overview of the benefits of their product. Everyone loves public Wi-Fi access, be it through your ISP, or available…

As I write this, it's the Macintosh's 29th birthday. This takes me back to the Mac's very early days in the mid-eighties when, even then, its operating system was outfitted with synthetic speech capabilities. Heck, we even used to have a talking moose! And, who can forget young Steve Jobs introducing the new Macintosh on-stage…

In lots of places around your Mac, holding down the Command key while you're clicking on an item will give you info about where it lives rather than opening it. For example, I've mentioned before that Command-clicking a Spotlight result will open it in the Finder.** I also often Command-click a program's icon in my…

When you open a new tab (Command-T) or a new window (Command-N) in Safari, you'll almost always want your cursor to start in the so-called Smart Search Field. After all, it doesn't make a ton of sense to open a new window, all ready and eager to start typing a URL or a search term,…

The Notification Center in Mountain Lion can be a life saver or, for some, it can be an annoyance. For those who need to, this TMO Quick Tip explains how to kill it for good. Previously, Melissa Holt explained how to disable the Notification Center temporarily, in several different ways. She also noted that if…

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of Apple’s 12-year-old OS X platform, is now the most used operating system on Mac computers. The usage numbers, revealed Friday by Web analytics firm Net Applications and reported by Computerworld, show that Mountain Lion accounts for 32 percent of all online Macs, just 6 months…

Over the years, I've taught the wonders of Mac computing to many new as well as to more 'seasoned' Mac users. One subject that came up regularly – and still does – was how to manage files. Near the top of Apple's list of goals is that of  providing the best in personal computer user…

You may know about Finder's Get Info feature, especially if you're a Mac power user (or if you're just awesome). This handy little window'll give you the skinny on any item, quick as a wink. To invoke it, just select anything in the Finder and hit Command-I (or choose File > Get Info). When you…

If you're pretty familiar with iPhoto, you may be aware that you can select an image and choose Photos > Hide Photo (or hit Command-L) to hide embarrassing pictures in your library without actually deleting anything. That's awesome and all, but the problem is that your item count in the upper-right corner of iPhoto's window…

Safari's got a built-in way to jump back several steps in your Internet navigation. All you have to do is click and hold on the back button in the toolbar, and you'll get a history of the places you've been in that particular tab or window. Choose any one of those, and you'll be taken…

If you like using List View in the Finder, you're probably familiar with the fact that you can use the disclosure triangle next to a folder to see its contents in the current window. Here's a neat trick with that: If you Option-click that triangle instead, it'll open the folder as before, but Finder will…

“My mind is going, Dave. I can feel it.” — HAL 9000 The idea that Macs should become simpler, more fun to use, and more like the iPad has its limits. There is a proper place in our technical society for awesome computational power, intelligent agents, and power tools on the desktop. That computational power,…

Apple’s Calculator app, included in OS X, is a handy tool for performing both quick calculations as well as more advanced functions. When calculating several numbers at once, however, it can become tedious to keep track of them, especially if you make a mistake at some point in the sequence. Thankfully, Apple includes a paper…

iTunes 11 has arrived, and now we see what Apple was up to. This version is cleaner, simpler, more logical and looks great. To be honest, I had some anxiety about iTunes 11. Would Apple deliver? Would the upgrade hose up the beloved iTunes? Would it deliver some kind of agenda, take away beloved features,…

Change sucks! Right? We know that's going through the heads of many people who just downloaded iTunes 11. The reality is that change is often great, but there is one thing we immediately missed in the new version of iTunes, and that's the sidebar. Fortunately, turning it back on is easy peasy. First, let's look…

Say that you're about to give a presentation, or someone else wants to use your computer. If you're running Mountain Lion, you may be a bit worried about what notifications may pop up on your screen. You never know when that asinine friend of yours is going to send another off-color joke, do you? There…

OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has returned to Apple’s Online Store as a physical disc purchase after being removed upon the launch of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in July. The return of the product was discovered by French site MacGeneration and MacRumors early Wednesday and is good news for owners of older Macs. Snow…

Being able to capture a visual copy of all – or some – of what's on your Mac's screen is a very handy tool to have at your beck-and-call. Old-fashioned screen capture methods have now been replaced by state-of-the-art technology! There are many reasons why you would want to grab screen captures (aka “screenshots”): Writing…

Back in Lion, System Preferences > Software Update had some cool information under the Installed Software tab. You could check and see everything you'd installed using OS X's built-in updating system and sort by the names or the installation dates to find what you were looking for. This was very good to know when problems…

If you forget an account password in Lion or Mountain Lion, there are lots of ways to reset it. The first, easiest way starts like this: Open System Preferences > Users & Groups, click on the lock at the bottom-left of the window to unlock the pane, and then enter an administrator's name and password…

If you're having printing issues, there are lots of troubleshooting steps to try. You should check the printer's network connection and perhaps search for any new drivers your model has available. Another good idea is turning the device off and on again to see if the problem's just an intermittent one. You could even delete…

Do you ever create what in Mac-speak are Archive files? You know, the handy .zip files that you can create by right-clicking on a file or folder and selecting the option to Compress it? In OS X Tiger and older system versions, the action was called Archive. I'll be using the two terms interchangeably. For…

With Lion and Mountain Lion, supported programs will reopen their existing windows when you quit and relaunch them. You can turn off this behavior completely if you hate it—the setting's in System Preferences > General. (This screenshot is from Mountain Lion; Lion's checkbox reads Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps.) But what if you…

One of the coolest tricks in OS X is the ability to drag a file from the Finder to the Terminal window to see its path. If the file is editable, you can enter an editor command before you drag the file. Let's say that you're preparing to edit a text file in the Terminal.…