Rob LeFebvre - page 118

In Mac OS X Lion, it’s finally possible to customize your System Preferences, removing unwanted preference panes as well as sorting them in different ways. Here’s how.

As a Mac user, I’ve always been a fan of Activity Monitor. It keeps track of RAM and hard disk memory, CPU and Disk usage, and Network activity. It’s a handy app to have, on my Mac.

But what about the iPhone? Doesn’t it deserve some sort of activity monitor of it’s own? Well, todays’ tip offers one such app, called Activity Monitor Touch.

Keeping track of vital Mac stats is both important and fun. Not only does today’s tip app show you a ton of useful information about your computer, it promises to do so in a super stylish way. From what we’ve seen of it (not a review!), we agree.

Tired of using USB and Bluetooth dongles to power your presentations? Sick of dealing with device drivers for remote mice and remote controls that never seem to be there when you need them? How about an app for controlling presentations from anywhere in the room? Here’s a tip for you, then.

Dragging media files to iTunes after you’ve downloaded them is so last year. All the hip kids get their downloaded files into iTunes without any intermediate steps. Here’s how to be one of the auto-adding-to-itunes elite.

Ever spend hours chained to your desktop computer, painstakingly creating the perfect playlist for your workout, a party you’re planning, or that special someone? If so, you know how creative and rewarding the process can be. What if you could do that very same thing while on the go? Without dragging your entire computer along with you? Well, it turns out that you can, and we’re here to help!

Disk images are the way most software came packaged before the Mac App Store, allowing developers to pack entire folders full of installers and files into a single compressed image, ready to send acros the internet at a moment’s notice (and the payment of a shareware fee, hopefully). DropDMG makes this process super simple.

Look, I know some folks like the auto-expand of omw to “On My Way!,” but honestly? I’m rarely that enthusiastic when sending a text about my plans to head over to a buddy’s house. Just sayin’. If this bugs you as well, here’s the way to fix it, as well as add others to your texting repertoire.

Every once in a while, you might wonder what’s happening on your home network. It’s at those times you might wish you’d have known about today’s tip, a dead-simple way to access the network activity on your network via OS X Lion’s Terminal app.

Apple may be the largest company known to man, well-known for its industrial design and “lifestyle” branding, but it sure could use some help in the naming department. My computer has been named Macintosh HD for as long as I can remember, and Back To My Mac is a branding opportunity gone wrong. Let’s not even get started on Mobile “Me.”

Ever wanted to change the name of your iPhone, then? What if you come up with the perfect name to change to while on a commute, nowhere near an iTunes install, and want to do just that? Well, here’s how.

In Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple set things up so that the user Library folder isn’t available to the casual user. This is probably to keep less savvy folks from getting in there and messing about with files they shouldn’t be. For the rest of us, however, today’s tip is all about freedom of information, power-user style.

Who doesn’t like YouTube? Well, besides Vimeo. No one, that’s who. If you’re a true YouTube user, however, chances are you have your own account, channel and merchandising deal. For the rest of us with only an account to track, having it synced up to our iOS devices makes a lot of sense. Here’s how.

Audiophiles love their audio files. Many Mac users swear by the AIFF format (Audio Interchange File Format), which was jointly developed by Apple and Electronic Arts back in the late 80s, according to Wikipedia. This uncompressed audio format sounds great, but the resulting file sizes are huge. To change it to a smaller format like MP4 used to require a trip into an audio editing program like GarageBand, Audacity, or even iTunes. For those among us who want an even simpler way, here’s today’s tip.

Reminders is a pretty slick to-do app, made by Apple for OS 5, that uses location and calendar data to help us remember the milk, our laundry, and any other important task we might need reminding for. Here’s a tip for the Reminders app that may be old news to some of you, but we’re betting that if we just found out about it, chances are there are other folks who haven’t noticed it, either.

Mac OS X hides files in many ways. One way, a holdover from its Unix legacy, is with dot-files. In other words, if a file is named with a period before the file name (.Hiddenfile), that file will not show up in the Finder. One way to show these files is with a Terminal command like this:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

This works all well and fine, but requires a second trip to the Terminal to reverse it (by changing the YES to NO, natch). Today, we’re going to tip you off to an app that does something similar, yet without the need to hop into Terminal.

Most days, our iPhones sit in our pockets, not seeing too much use, maybe a phone call here, a tweet or text there. Then there are the days where we’re on Facebook all lunchbreak, playing games on the train both ways to and from work, and then watching a little Netflix while cooking dinner. You know, a heavy use day. There are a kajillion power managers out there, but this one seems to have enough cool features that we thought we’d pass it along to you as today’s iOS tip.

We’ve shown you a couple of cool tips for screenshots, because let’s face it: we all take quite a few of them. Sadly, though, the default screenshot Command-3 doesn’t show the mouse cursor, and the Command-4 shortcut actually uses the mouse to define the area of the image capture, therefore leaving it out of the shot by definition. Lucky for you, though, we found a way to change that, using an app, named appropriately enough, Grab.

Let’s face it, the only reason I don’t get lost four times a day, even in the town I live in, is because my iPhone has Maps on it. No other navigation app I’ve tried hits that sweet spot of simplicity and helpfulness. I even use Maps for finding local business phone numbers. It’s that useful.

The inclusion of public transportation routes has been equally useful, I’m sure, for folks who live in more urban areas with good bus and rail systems. If you’re one of those lucky folks, here’s a tip just for you.

Last week, we showed you how to create a stack to show all your recent items. Today, we’re going to show you a way to change the default look of all your stacks, to a list view. This might be easier on your eyes, might appeal to your inner aesthetician, or it just might be a neat way to change the way your OS X Lion Mac behaves.

Is your iBooks library starting to outgrow those beautiful bookshelves that Apple provided for you? Have you purchased way too many Jim Butcher novels, only to find them crowding out your beloved Harry Potter collection?

Well, there’s a simple way to manage a burgeoning iBook collection, and we’re here to tell you how.

Are you one of those highly organized people who have their computer windows set up just right, each one pixel-perfect aligned to each other and the edges of the monitor screen? Yeah, me neither.

For those of you who are,though, or who just like to be able to set things up the way you like them and have them stay that way, there’s a Mac app to do just that.

Last week, we showed you how to make Spotlight work faster with a little reindexing trick in System Preferences. Today, we’ll do the same thing, only we’ll use some Terminal magic to make it happen.

Sick of all those icons cluttering up your Desktop? Need to give a presentation at work but don’t want your boss seeing all the imgur images you downloaded during the sales meeting? This two dollar app from the Mac App Store may be just what you need to de-clutter and hide all those pesky Desktop icons.

If you’re not using the RSS screensaver on your Mac, we’ll forgive you. This time. With a little terminal code and your favorite RSS feed, however, you can get this bad boy to display behind all your apps and desktop icons, as your desktop wallpaper. Cool, huh?

Here’s a fun trick with stacks, OS X’s answer to the original rainbow Apple menu functionality, which used to feature recent documents and the ability to place folders in it for quick and easy access to them. This was replaced in Mac OS X with stacks, a visual way to do a similar thing, but from the Dock. Today, we’ll use Terminal to make a Stack that shows the recent items from your Mac. Fun!