macOS

The familiar Mac OS X dialog box will pop up, asking you where you’d like to put your exported file.If you toggle the Format option near the bottom to Audio Only before you start the export, QuickTime will save just the audio out as an .m4a file, ready to be imported into iTunes.Or ready to be…

Bertrand Serlet & Upthere in the Cloud Bertrand Serlet worked at Xerox PARC, and went to work with Steve Jobs when he founded NeXT computer. When Apple bought NeXT, Mr. Serlet went with Steve Jobs to work at Apple—Wired described him as legendary within Apple when he left the company in 2011—and eventually took the…

This nifty little player can be resized to make it teeny-tiny or expanded to show information on the song that’s playing. To do this, you’ll just click and drag one of the edges of the player.Here’s the small version of the player…   …but you can drag it out to make it much more informative.  What’s neat, however,…

 By default, the first picture in any event is what’s shown as its key photo (i.e., the thumbnail that you’ll see when you’re not scrolling over the event). If your library is anything like mine, though, that can be rather unfortunate. So how do you change the key photo to something more pleasing? The absolute drop-dead…

First, let’s add a new option to the Services menu. So go to System Preferences > Keyboard and click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Choose Services from the left-hand column, and then from the list that appears on the right, toggle on the New Terminal at Folder option, which is under the Files and Folders…

  DropKey from WellRedApps allows anyone to send encrypted files using industry-standard 256-bit encryption to the recipient of their choice. Only the designated recipient can open the file because the sender has supplied a Dropkey code that allows them to open it. The app requires OS 10.7 and can be purchased in the App Store for US$9.99. Using…

The first way you can make this easier is by going to the page you want to send and then hitting Shift-Command-I. This is the keyboard shortcut for File > Mail Link to This Page.When you hit that shortcut, Safari will send the info to Mail, which’ll open a new message and put the link…

Medium’s an option, too, but that’s just so…middle of the road. Pick a lane, darn it. Ahem. In any case, this seems like what you’d expect. Sidebar icon size refers to the Finder, doesn’t it? Yes, but not just the Finder. Oddly, this preference also changes the size of the sidebar icons in Mail, so you…

In most situations, an internet service provider (ISP) assigns a single external IP address to a customer. That address can be dynamic, in that it changes based on the needs of the ISP, or static, meaning that it never changes once it’s assigned (static IP addresses are often available only for an extra fee). Once…

First, choose the Mail > Preferences menu item, and then click on the Composing tab. Toggle on Mark addresses not ending with, and then type in the domain of your company (the ending part of the e-mail address, such as @apple.com, @gmail.com, or @doublerainbowalltheway.com). If you’d like to add more than one, just type the domains in…

Flashback originally tried to install its nasty payload by tricking users into thinking they were installing Adobe’s Flash player. When victims entered their user name and password into the seemingly legit authentication dialog Flashback was able install its malware, although more recent versions were able to take advantage of Java security flaws and install when…

Final Cut Pro X to get features pro editors wantApple shared the details with video trainer and consultant Larry Jordan, who said he’s glad to know the updates are on the way, and that the company is actively working to improve Final Cut Pro X.“It was an interesting meeting,” Mr. Jordan said on his blog.…

Recently, professor Ulf von Barth of Lund University in Sweden alerted me to the fact that the mechanism has changed yet again. In the article linked above, I explained that all you had to do was download and install Apple’s Xcode IDE, and everything would be as expected. Now, you have to do a little…

In OS X Lion, this behavior has changed dramatically. Now, your icons are sort by date, but then organize into groups. You’ll have a group of files last modified (or created, added,  or last opened, depending on which option you choose) today, a group of yesterday’s files, a group of the previous seven days’ files,…

The galaxy, it turns out, is NGC 3190, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo (the “Lion”). It’s almost edge on to our line of sight.The galaxy was the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for May 3, 2010. Our thanks to reader Paul Duke who sent us the tip.

Fear not, Snow Leopard users; Apple has not forgotten about you. Apple Software Installer Update 1.0, released by Apple late Monday, is a bug fix for for Apple’s previous operating system that “addresses an issue that may prevent certain Apple software from installing.”  Recommended for all users running Mac OS X 10.6.8, the update weighs…

So first, find the MAC address of the machine you want to set up time limits for. An easy way to get this is by going to System Preferences > Network on the computer in question, choosing Wi-Fi from the list on the left, and clicking on the Advanced button. The computer’s MAC address will…

The update is available for Intel-based iMacs running OS X 10.7 or later and weighs in at 481KB. It is available via the Software Update application on compatible iMacs, or as a downloadable installer at the Apple Support website.

So here’s how it works. After you’ve installed and launched the program, you’ll have access to a new menulet in your menu bar. Use that or Clarify’s built-in keyboard shortcut to start taking screen shots. The interface for composing your screen shots (and do I know about screenshots) couldn’t be simpler to understand. It’s pretty similar to…

One of my favorite utilities for cleaning up the Windows PCs my clients bring to me, Piriform’s CCleaner, has come to the Mac. CCleaner for Mac has been in beta for a while, but the final version of the utility was released on January 30. The app adds cleaning capabilities for Safari, Google Chrome, Opera…

The three questions that were on our mind right after Mountain Lion was announced were: What are your thoughts on Apple’s plan for yearly updates to OS X? Is it stressful? Doable? What’s your reaction to Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper, especially regarding what you suspect Apple’s plans are for the future? How well is Apple doing…

Gatekeeper lets Mountain Lion users control where their apps come from. They can choose to allow app downloads from anywhere — just as they have always been able to do — or limit downloads to the Mac App Store and trusted developers. By adding their Developer ID to apps, developers can “sign” their apps to…

So what that button did in previous versions of Mac OS X was to expand and collapse both the sidebar and the toolbar in Finder windows. What I think it was most often used for, though, was frightening the heck out of unsuspecting new Mac owners.“Where did my buttons go?! AAAAAAAAH!”I always used it for…