macOS

Well, if you visit System Preferences > Users & Groups, you’ll find that there’s a “Login Options” choice near the bottom-left.  There’s where you can adjust all sorts of things about how the login process works and acts. In order to make changes to those settings, though, you’ll need to click on the lock in…

So to get started, first you’ll open Disk Utility—it lives within your Applications > Utilities folder.  The new El Capitan version of Disk Utility is way more…well, jolly somehow than previous versions. It’s bright and colorful, inviting even. Which is a bit weird considering it’s where you’ll go to erase, partition, and repair disks. Nothing…

No offense to Apple, of course.   1) Turn the scroll bars back on. Under System Preferences > General, you can switch “Show scroll bars” to “Always,” and this’ll take OS X’s windows from this… …to this: For a lot of folks who haven’t used touch-sensitive devices before, this is a big one. It’s not…

We're setting up NumberSync on an iPad, but you can use an iPod touch or your Mac, too. NumberSync lets you use your iPad and iPod touch like your iPhone NumberSync Compatibility Just because you want to use NumberSync doesn't mean you can. That said, the odds are in your favor because the list of compatible…

Episode #153   My trip to Florida last week for Thanksgiving with my family reminded me that traveling with today’s technology isn’t always easy… so here are some tips that may help make your holiday travels a bit more pleasant. No matter where you go—hotel, motel, or a room at mom’s—chances are you won’t find enough electrical…

First, make sure you’re not actively using that Comcast network by clicking on the Wi-Fi icon at the top-right of your screen. The network you’re currently joined to will have a check mark beside it. I have a very clever neighbor. Then click on the Apple Menu at the upper-left corner of your screen and…

…or like this: Those icons basically mean “hey, I see you’ve got a program open on another device that I can use, too. Wanna pick up where you left off?” If you click that icon, your Mac will, for example, continue an email draft you started on your iPhone. It’s pretty handy if you use…

Once you’ve got stuff highlighted, you’ll have a couple of choices. First, you could just click the “Forward” button in your toolbar (or press Shift-Command-F), and that’ll start a new email with all of the items you selected in the body of the message. Secondly, you could instead forward the selected emails as attachments, which’ll make…

  1. Jump into Editing Contacts Within any card in your Contacts program, Force-clicking on a field you want to change will put you right into editing mode and select that field for easy-peasy correcting. This works with pretty much any item you want to correct, but you should know that if you’re wanting to…

First off, there is some context for writing this tip. In my experience, there are two different kinds of To Do lists. The first, I call it Type I, is more formal and has, for example, deadlines, catagories, alerts, supporting data, and needs to be kept as an archive. One very good app for doing…

  1. Putting in Dock Spacers There’s a Terminal command (which fortunately still works in El Capitan) that’ll let you add blank spacers to your Dock, so if you wanna micromanage your shortcuts in some fashion, you can! What you’ll do is open Terminal from Applications > Utilities and then copy and paste the following:…

So check this out—if you open Contacts and look around at your cards, you may find some in which an email address, phone number, or what have you is greyed out and has a little “i” next to it. OK, so you can’t tell that number is in grey since I had to block it.…

That’s awesome, but for some people, the problem isn’t duplicated info—it’s extraneous accounts clogging up the program. To check yours, open Contacts, and if you don’t see the sidebar shown below, press Command-1 (View> Show Groups). I’m currently allowing four accounts (in yellow) to sync contacts to my Mac. If you actually need to sync…

No, no, I’m kidding! Don’t leave. Luckily for you (and for me, since I don’t have to write so much), I covered some easy ways to encrypt external drives in a tip from last year. But as far as Time Machine backups go, you’ll need to do something a little bit different to make sure…

Episode #144 El Capitan (aka Mac OS X version 10.11) came out last week, but I’ve been working on OS X El Capitan For Dummies all summer, so I’ve been using it daily for months. I upgraded both of my Macs to the release version last week and I’m happy to report that both upgrades…

Apple says developers shut of OS X's security failsafe before installing malware-loaded Xcode XcodeGhost is malware that iOS developers in China inadvertently included in their iPhone and iPad apps. Apple began pulling the titles from the App Store last week after the malware was discovered, and then said it would start hosting its Xcode installers…

Before we get started, know that most modern Macs (manufactured within the last five years or so) can run El Cap. (And if you’re looking for a comprehensive list by model, the Wikipedia page has some good info). For what it’s worth, I’ve been testing the beta for a good long time now, and I…

_____________________ One of the more common lock ups I've encountered lately is with Firefox and that spinning beachball of death. First, however, I must digress. if you can click outside the app and recover an active cursor, there are several common ways to terminate a misbehaving app. Go to the Apple Menu and select Force…

______________________ All Mac users should be aware that when they install Google Chrome on their Mac, additional software is installed that is able to conduct automatic updates. In general, this is a Good Thing™, except for two things. 1. The user isn't notified that the software is being installed, nor given the option to decline.…

Lock the Dock Position As the antithesis of our earlier tip, you can prevent changes to the position of the OS X Dock by running the following Terminal command: defaults write com.apple.Dock position-immutable -bool yes; killall Dock The first part of the command above prevents the user from changing the position of the Dock from…

The high level explanation for this analysis comes in the public beta release notes under Notes and Known Issues, Other: System file permissions are automatically protected, and updated, during Software Updates. The Repair Permissions function is no longer necessary. This change will generally go unnoticed by most average users except for the absence of that…

______________________ The setting to be used is iTunes 12 > Preferences > General. Unfortunately, iTunes gets to choose, it seems, the background color based on some key color of the item's art. Sometimes it can look really nice, like my iPhone's playlist for walking, shown below on iTunes 12 on a Mac.  This color generally…

First, for those new to the operating system, here’s a quick overview on the “standard” methods of repositioning the OS X Dock. The first and most involved method is to head to System Preferences > Dock. Here, you can make changes to the way that the Dock works and looks, but what we’re interested in…

The refinements can take several forms. More refined security, networking, and user interface elements combined with code tweaking foster a better experience and performance. From what I've seen so far on my MacBook (with a 10.11 beta), El Capitan will be great. See: “Important New Features Make OS X El Capitan Not Just a Tune-up.”…