How-To - page 105

When it comes to monitoring your Mac’s status,such as the CPU or RAM usage, you have a couple different options. You can use menu bar applications which are often costly, or Dashboard widgets that are inconvenient to access. If neither of these sound like good options to you, monitoring your system with Activity Monitor might be a good option. It’s free, (after all, it’s built into Mac OS X), and it lets you display handy information right from the dock icon. In this video, I’ll show you how to set it up.

So you’re a cutting edge, Post-PC consumer. You’ve bought into the Cloud, have all the latest apps on your iPad, and you work on the go. Just tweet this, email that, and print out an electronic boarding pass before you head to the airport.

Not so fast on that last step. There’s a tantalizing Print button in many iOS apps these days, but very few printers are usable without some extra work first. Unlike printing on the Mac or PC, AirPrint (the iOS-based printing system) is still not yet a fully realized solution. Fortunately, workarounds are available.

Spotlight, the search tool built into Mac OS X is extremely powerful if you know how to use it. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize the true power of it, and therefore lose out on a lot of functionality. In this video I’ll show you how to use Spotlight to its full potential.

As neat as Apple’s FaceTime service is, for many people, it tends to be just a novelty. With two FaceTime capable devices though, it can become a lot more useful. In this video, you’ll see how you can expand the possibilities of FaceTime beyond video conferencing.

Are you eager to jump into iOS 5, but not willing to risk your device with the sometimes unstable, developer-only beta? Well, as you may know, many of the new iOS features already exist in some form or another between the App Store and the Cydia Store, which is the jailbroken alternative to the Apple’s App Store. In this video, you’ll see how you can get most of the new iOS 5 features with your jailbroken device.

The Redsn0w software by DevTeam has always allowed you to jailbreak your iOS device, giving you complete control over your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch (see why you should jailbreak here). This morning, though, redsn0w version 0.9.8b1 was released with iOS 5 Beta 1 support, meaning you can now jailbreak devices and run Cydia apps on devices with iOS 5 installed. Here’s how to jailbreak iOS 5!

There’s plenty of software programs on the Mac App Store that will allow you to add a signature to a PDF, but come Lion, you won’t need any of them: Preview.app will do it by creating a perfect digital pen signature via FaceTime.

Here’s how to sign a PDF in Preview under OS X Lion.

One of my biggest concerns about Apple distributing Mac OS X 10.7 Lion via the Mac App store has been resolved. One intrepid Lion beta tester has discovered a hidden secret inside of Lion’s installation application.

Want to test out iOS 5 but don’t have a developer account? No worries: a new vulnerability makes it pretty trivial to upgrade to iOS 5 on any iPhone.

Be careful, though… rolling back to iOS 4 if things go south isn’t officially supported. This is for pros only, and there’s a lot that can go wrong.

As the impending launch of Mac OS X Lion creeps closer and closer, it’s getting harder and harder to wait for all of the new features Apple has promised, like Launchpad and AirDrop, just to name a couple. Well, if you want to get a taste of Mac OS X Lion before it’s here, there are a few quick things you can do to transform your aging install of Snow Leopard into a Lion like experience. In this video, I’ll show you what to do.

iTunes is often called Apple’s worst piece of software. It’s criticized for being a bloated and slow way to manage music and sync iOS devices. This becomes especially apparent if you store a lot of content on your device or have a large iTunes library. iTunes doesn’t have to be so painful to use though. In this video, you’ll see a few ways you can make iTunes speedier and more responsive.

While the iPad’s onscreen virtual keyboard is nice, it still doesn’t compare with a physical keyboard in usability. Fortunately, Apple includes some relatively hidden features which can greatly improve typing speed as well as usability on the iPad’s keyboard. In this video you’ll find out how to enable these features and use them to their full potential.

Amid all the talk of malware scares for Mac users recently, here’s a useful guide to Mac security basics, from the NSA of all people.

When Apple released QuickTime X with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, it seemed like little more than another version of QuickTime with a new User Interface. In reality though, there are quite a few features either new to QuickTime X, or previously only available in the Professional version, that make it much more than just a media player. In this video, you’ll see how you can get more use out of QuickTime X.

The newest Mac OS X Malware, MACDefender,  has taken the Apple community by storm. Some are claiming that Mac Malware is getting worse, and even Apple won’t help you with this one. Fortunately, if you’ve been infected with this pesky new malware, the solution to uninstalling it is quite simple. It only takes a minute or two, and if you follow the steps outline in this video, your Mac should be back to normal in no time. Alternatively, here’s a text guide if you’d prefer that.

At this point, you probably know all about the Mac Defender thats doing the rounds. According to AppleCare Support reps, it’s exploding on Macs all across the country… but if you call Apple, they won’t lift a finger to help you remove it.

So how can you tell if you’re infected by MacDefender? Luckily, it’s pretty easy to spot it on your system… and even easier to remove it, if you know how.

Have you ever had the desire to change how your applications look your Mac? Perhaps you want them to look like the icons found in iOS, as seen in the picture above? Although fairly unknown, it is possible in Mac OS X. All you’ll need to get started is img2icns. While there is no plain and obvious way to go about it, it’s actually fairly simple once you know what to do, as demonstrated in this video.

Hopefully you already know how great Preview is. It comes built in with every Mac, it handles PDFs and images with ease, and does a great deal of basic image editing just fine, saving you the bother of opening more substantial, more expensive image editors. Here’s a tip for getting perfect square crops inside Preview.

A growing number of iTunes customers are reporting that they are unable to make purchases or upgrade apps, and Apple’s new method of validating addresses might be to blame. Here’s what went wrong, and how to fix it.

Sometimes, even Macs get laggy. Logging in can be sluggish, and even just routine tasks can start to crawl. Whether you know it or not, resource hogs can be lurking in your system and slowing down your work. After following these five simple steps though, your Mac can be almost as good as new.

Sean Power, a Canadian tech consultant and author, recently had his MacBook stolen along with some other valuables in his bag, including his birth certificate and cell phone. Using a free piece of software, Sean was able to track down his belongings and organize their safe return with the help of a bunch of friends on Twitter… and we can tell you how to do the same if it happens to you.

Google Music Beta launched yesterday, beating iTunes into the cloud by at least a couple months, but with one big drawback: it wasn’t supposed to work on iOS devices, but just one day later and Google Music is already up and running on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Here’s how to use Google Music on your iDevice.

While the iPad has seemingly countless uses, one fairly uncommon one is the ability to use it as an external display for your Mac. iDisplay, a simple little app from the App Store, lets you achieve this. After all, if you already have the iPad, why not use it to your advantage? This video will show you how to set up iDisplay and tweak it to your liking.

It’s a safe bet that most Cult of Mac readers – and certainly all the Cult of Mac writers – are broadly in favour of almost everything Apple creates.

Almost everything.

If there’s one feature of OS X (Snow) Leopard that drives me and every other Mac user I’ve ever known mad with fury, it’s the Help Viewer, and its obstinate insistence on floating on top of every other window in sight.

GeekTool is a neat little System Preferences add-on that  lets you expand the usability of your desktop. Whether it be adding the time, date, weather, or even your Twitter feed, GeekTool can change your desktop from a boring backdrop to a useful information center. This video will show you how to setup GeekTool to fit your needs, as well as where to find many useful add-ons for it.