macOS

If you are like most Mac users, you have a Mac with one internal hard disk (or maybe an SSD!) and a single external drive used for Time Machine. If this is your configuration, then this article doesn’t apply to you.Time Machine. Credit: Apple, Inc. However, if you have an additional drive attached, either internally (say,…

namebench finds the fastest DNS servers for you DNS, or Domain Name Servers, are the computers that translate Web page addresses like apple.com into their actual Internet addresses. In the case of apple.com, that’s 17.112.152.57. If the DNS servers you’re using can’t make those translations for you quickly, it can take far longer than it…

Sometimes those software update agents are innocuous. But other times, they’ll leave behind remnants of themselves, for example Menu Bar items. Or they’ll constantly pop up in Little Snitch, if you use that, begging for permission. It can get a little annoying. At the very least, it’s messy to leave these persistent messengers around (that…

Apple Remote Desktop Client 3.3.2 and Apple Remote Desktop Admin 3.3.2 are free updates and are available via the Software Update application or as downloadable installers from Apple’s Support Web site. Both require Mac OS X 10.4.11, 10.5.7 or higher, or 10.6 or higher.

Here’s how to add geotag information to your photos if your camera doesn’t handle that for you: Import your images into iPhoto just like you normally would. Click to select the photo you want to geotag. Click the info button in the lower right corner of the image. iPhoto’s info option shows extra image information.…

Access original URLs of saved pages I regularly save Web pages in Safari. I save New York Times articles, Apple Support documents and just about anything else that I might want to re-read at some later time. They are all saved using Safari’s .webarchive format. When I open one of these saved pages, the URL…

To make sure photos that contain faces are properly detected if they were imported with iPhoto 09 8.1, first install then 8.1.1 update, and then do this: Select the imported photos that include faces. I found that the Photos view made it easier for me to find and select the photos I wanted to include.…

When you install a guest OS on your Mac with Parallels Desktop (PD), VMWare Fusion, a disk image file is created. I won’t discuss VirtualBox from Sun, but I believe it works the same way. With Parallels Desktop, the files are in /Users/username/Documents/Parallels. With VMware Fusion, the files are in /Users/username/Documents/VirtualMachines. These files can become…

One forum member at the InsanelyMac Web site posted a patch that lets users install the Mac OS X 10.6.2 update on their netbook PCs. After about a week of testing, intrepid hackers have been reporting that the hack seems to be working fine.Apple doesn’t support Mac OS X running on anything other than its…

The W3 checks Web sites for valid HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML and other markup code. Just enter the URL for your Web site, click Check and the validator lists all of the markup problems it finds.The W3 site markup validator A quick check of my personal blog returned an error list that’s 102 items long.…

The topic of the podcast was first impressions of Snow Leopard. At that point I had been using it about four days. As always with Chuck’s programs, he wanted a well rounded panel discussion. Three of the participants were Mac technical experts and authors who spoke at length about the operational aspects of Snow Leopard…

New in iTunes 9, Home Sharing allows you to access an iTunes library on another Mac, so as to either stream or copy its media (audio and video). “Wait a minute,” you may be saying. “This doesn’t sound all that new. I can already stream media from a shared Library via settings in the Sharing…

The problem was first reported in Apple’s own discussion boards, with many users reporting the problem, though it received little initial attention from the press. For instance, user Rattymouse wrote in Apple’s support forums, “Add my parents to the list of people waxed by this bug. Brand new iMac, less than 1 month old, EVERYTHING…

Start by choosing Apple menu > System Preferences. Select the Displays PreferencePane. Click the Color tab. The Color tab kills washed out display colors Your display’s colors should return to normal as soon as you click Color. This is an issue I’ve seen most commonly on Mac laptops that also use an external display. Regardless…

 Terminal PreferencesTry as you might, you won’t find a setting for transparency anywhere until you come here and click on the Background control. That brings up not only a way to set the background color but also set the transparency at the bottom. Terminal background color has opacity controlThat’s all there is to it, but in…

Apple ships a lot of free software with Mac OS X. Some of those apps aren’t considered world-class, so doors open for developers. iCal is one of those apps that has limped along and created an opportunity for BusyMac. The bottom line: if you’re a serious calendar user, you should upgrade immediately to BusyCal. Preamble…

Psystar filed a new lawsuit against Apple in Florida over Mac OS X 10.6 at the end of August claiming Apple is violating antitrust laws by locking Snow Leopard to its own hardware, and that a new case is reasonable since it has to use different methods to install the new OS on its PCs.…

 Date & Time Preferences – Setup Note, however, that if you aren’t using AirPort/Wi-Fi, this service is unavailable. If Wi-Fi is in use, it works, and you’ll see a red pushpin that identifies your geographic location and sets the time zone. At first, that seems like a mystery because there are well known databases on…

Share iTunes Store links with your friends You can share iTunes Store links for albums, movies and TV shows. Just click the little triangle to the right of the item’s price and choose Share on Facebook or Share on Twitter. Of course, you’ll need a free Twitter or Facebook account to share iTunes Store links.…

Changes according to the patch notes: Improves compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems Addresses an issue in which some printer compatibility drivers might not appear properly in the Add Printer browser Addresses an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly Addresses an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item…