macOS

Sophie’s Cards Inc. has just released version 6 of its card creating software and there are a number of interesting features that should be of interest to those who enjoy creating their own cards, note cards, postcards, business cards, and framable art. The software offers nine different card sizes including US and international sizes. The…

As TMO’s illustrious Mr. Landau pointed out, all you have to do in Lion is hold down the letter you’d like to accent, and what Apple refers to as the character picker appears.When you see that, go ahead and select the correct option with your mouse or by hitting the number underneath the one you…

So if you look in System Preferences > CDs & DVDs, you’ll notice that this is where most of your disc-handling options reside.But look at the funny little remnant that I’ve highlighted above! My computer is still set to open Front Row when I insert a video DVD, and it has that helpful little default…

Graphics Files Just as in Part I of this pair,  all you need to do is open the Terminal app, found in /Applications/Utilities, and use a simple but handy command. The command is “sips” (scriptable image processing system), and it will convert back and forth between these file types: jpeg, tiff, png, gif, jp2, pict, bmp,…

Text Files In this part I, I’ll discuss text files. All you need to do is open the Terminal app, found in /Applications/Utilities, and use a simple but handy command. The command is “textutil,” and it will convert back and forth between these file types: txt, rtf, rtfd, doc, docx, odt, html, wordml, webarchive Here’s…

To set it up, open System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver, then click on the “Screen Saver” tab at the top. When you do, you’ll see categories on the left, and what we’re looking for is the “iTunes Artwork” option under the Apple category.After you’ve selected that, you can click on the Options button…

When you enter the Time Machine browser, these snapshots will appear in the timeline along with regular backups, but they have a different color. According to Apple, “Gray tick marks represent local snapshots and pink tick marks represent backups stored on your external backup disk or Time Capsule. Note: Pink tick marks will be dimmed…

In Snow Leopard, if you didn’t have the appropriate software on your computer, your choices for viewing a Word document were checking it out with Quick Look or opening it into TextEdit. TextEdit, being the very basic editor that it is, tries its hardest, but it just can’t recreate a lot of the formatting that…

In Lion, if you click and hold the “Show All” button, you’ll see a popup list of all the Preferences. You can select one from the list, just as if you’d clicked on the icon.System Preferences in Lion What’s interesting is the “Customize…” option at the botton of the list. Selecting that will show each Preference…

The default Dashboard, Lego patternIn a previous tip, I described how to change Lion’s login screen. This technique is similar — you’ll need admin privileges to replace a system file. 1. Select an image that you want to use for the Dashboard background. It needs to be the same size as your main display. Alternatively,…

To see what “All My Files” can do for you, open a new Finder window by clicking on the familiar blue smiley face icon in your Dock or by using the keyboard shortcut for a new window (it’s Command-N). After you’ve done so, choose “All My Files” from the Sidebar. Just like any other Finder…

From what I’m seeing on the Web, those people who are technical and who are getting published, either in blogs or the forums, are fairly upset about Auto Save. I think this is a normal reaction by experienced users who are accustomed to working a certain way. After all, from time to time, we all…

1. This how-to assumes you have some favorite desktop pictures, sized for your display on hand. Or you can just use the Desktop pictures that come with Lion. 2. Launch Mission Control. There are several ways to do that. Three finger swipe upwards. (MacBook or Magic Trackpad required and three finger swipe enabled in Trackpad…

Apple updated Lion on Tuesday with the release of “Mac OS X Update 10.7.1,” even though Apple officially changed the name of Mac OS X to OS X. The update includes four bug fixes, including sound and WiFI problems, and an issue dealing with transferring settings to a new Mac.  This is one of those…

Lion was released on July 20 and was touted as the first Mac OS ever to ship without physical media. On launch day, however, Apple announced that it would, in fact, sell a physical installer.Instead of offering a DVD version of Lion, Apple chose to sell the OS on a USB flash drive. The decision…

As of this writing, I haven’t found a utility that allows you to change the background of the Lion login screen, so you’ll have to do it manually. Here’s what you’ll need: Administrator privilege. A .png  graphic the same screen size in pixels as your login display and at 72 dpi (or more properly ppi). 1.…

So back to my premise.  If you have had your Mac for a few months and it is a fairly current model, then you probably have been learning on Snow Leopard.  Snow Leopard is great, but Lion is the future (at least for now).  I figure that if you want to really be a Mac…

Previously, all Macs included an optical drive and a DVD that would allow you to boot from it and reinstall the OS X. The latest version of iLife was included on that DVD.Nowadays Apple is moving away from clunky, rotating plastic discs. In addition, Lion’s hidden recovery partition allows you to boot, examine the main…

To get started, either click on the magnifying glass in the upper-right of your screen or use the keyboard shortcut to open Spotlight (it’s Command-Spacebar). The first thing you’ll notice after you type something in is the new “Web Searches” section in your results window.Selecting the Web option will unsurprisingly do a search within your…

The first thing to know is good news. You don’t have to pay US$99 and become a member of Apple’s Developer program to follow these instructions. You can download Apple’s Xcode 4.1 for free, and its installer will give you gcc, g++, and llvm-gcc nicely installed and ready for the command line. The bad news…

The update patches flaws that could allow an attacker to use maliciously crafted graphics, video or audio files to launch an attack on the victim’s computer and potentially cause crashes or run arbitrary code.The update is free and available through the Software Update application, or as a downloadable installer from the Apple Support Web site.

After installing the update, users should make sure the latest 1Password extension is running in Safari 5.1. To update 1Password’s Safari extension, do this: Launch Safari Choose Safari > Preferences Click Extensions Click Updates, then click Get Extensions Relaunch Safari 1Password is priced at US$39.99 and is available at the AgileBits Web site. The update…