While our Macs were designed for power, they were also made for beauty. Sharply rounded edges and fine materials come together to create the computers we know and love. But with normal daily use, dirt and grime can make our Mac workhorses less attractive.
In today’s video, we show you the surprisingly simple steps you can take to relieve your Mac of filth and enjoy a cleaner, better-looking computing experience. Make use of these quick Mac cleaning tips and having a fresh-looking computer will be a cinch.
When it comes to iOS gaming, nothing tops the exhilarating feeling of beating your friends’ high scores. But with so many games and so many scores to keep track of, it can be a lot to handle. Luckily, Apple’s Game Center app can help you take down the competition.
In today’s video, we show you how to master the Game Center app and become the best of the best. Find the hottest trending games, challenge your gaming “foes” and more using this underrated stock app.
Jailbreaking has been around almost as long as iOS itself, giving users more control over their iPhones and letting them customize almost everything.
In today’s video, we take a look at how to jailbreak iOS 7.1 using the Pangu jailbreaking tool. If you’re not running that particular version of Apple’s mobile operating system, don’t worry: The process is very similar for every release. Take a look at the video to learn how to do it for yourself – it only takes a few minutes!
When surfing the web or using one of your favorite applications, chances are your iPhone is burning through mobile data. Unless you have unlimited data on your wireless plan, this can quickly become a costly habit. Luckily, it’s easy to control your data on iOS no matter who your carrier is.
In today’s video, we show you how to manage data on your device so you can avoid a hefty bill.
iPhones and iPads are remarkably simple to use. And yet they are also incredibly powerful — and incredibly complicated — devices. Sometimes getting them to do exactly what you want isn’t as straightforward as you might like.
In today’s video, we show you five basic iOS tips that will make using your mobile Apple devices much easier. Edit documents, keep snoops at bay and more by using these easy and effective tips that every iOS owner should know.
Find out how a light stencil can put Bambi -- or anything else you can dream up -- in your pictures. Photo: Janelle Pietrzak
Photography is all about light, and photographers are all about light painting. There are many tricks to try, from isolating objects with incandescence outside the frame to shining light directly at the camera as in Janelle Pietrzak’s Bambi series, created using light stencils.
Creating this interesting analog photo effect doesn’t require any special equipment, just a detachable flash, some craft materials and a lot of imagination.
With so many people in the world having iPhones with the same ringtones, hearing a ringer go off can be irritating and confusing. The iTunes Store sells ringtones, but they can become quite expensive if you like switching things up a lot.
In today’s video, we show you how to solve this annoying problem by creating your own free ringtones in iTunes. Just follow these simple steps to separate yourself from the crowd instantly.
As user-friendly as they are, Macs are complex machines. They’re absolutely loaded with features, some of which might not be obvious from the start. In today’s video, we take a look at five basic tips that can help make everyday use of your Mac much more enjoyable. Find out how to clean up your desktop, customize your Dock, tweak audio settings and more with just a few quick clicks.
After we posted our handy Mac keyboard shortcuts video, we got a ton of comments — and more great suggestions about ways to streamline working with your Apple computer.
In today’s video, we take a look at another handful of great Mac keyboard shortcuts, and show you how you can make your own.
New icons in OS X Yosemite will bring the Mac operating system and iOS closer than ever visually. While Yosemite doesn’t come out until fall, you can get this cool, flat look now — without downloading Apple’s Developer Preview betas, which are buggy at best.
This short video will show you how to give your computer a Yosemite-style face-lift — even if you’re running Windows. Get the downloads mentioned in the video at the links below.
Welcome to the final part of our series about note-taking for writers (or anyone else). Today we’re going to look at getting clippings and bookmarks into Evernote, to be stored and accessible alongside your scanned, paper-based notes (Part 1) and your text notes grabbed on your iPhone or Mac (Part 2).
We’ll use a few apps and services to get this done – EverClip, Mr Reader, IFTTT and Pinboard are the main ones.
As ever, you could just do much of this using Evernote and its web clipper, but this only works in Safari and Chrome on the desktop. In 2014! Clearly that’s no good. Let’s see how we can do it better.
Macs are solid machines, but just like their owners they have a tendency to get lethargic as they age. Launching and switching programs takes longer, simple tasks become arduous, and the dreaded beach ball of doom appears more often than it did when your machine was new. The operating system just starts to feel crufty, and can get worse over time. I see these issues in my IT consulting business regularly.
You may be asking, why does this happen? There are many reasons, but some are more common than others. Sometimes your hard disk (or solid-state drive) gets too full and interferes with normal computer operations. Crashes or misbehaving programs can corrupt the disk directory or application cache files. Remnants from old software may still be running behind the scenes, or you don’t have enough RAM to deal with your OS and workflow.
Is there some sort of tune-up you can do to sort it out? Your tech always tells you to just reboot the computer, but there’s got to be more than that. The good news: Yes, there are some things you can do. And, perhaps, adopt some more-efficient computing practices for yourself along the way.
Apart from letting you quickly edit and share photos (and always sitting, ready to go, in your pocket), the iPhone camera has one other great feature: It geotags every photo and video you shoot with the place you captured the imagery. You might not care about that now, but in the future when you wonder, “Where did I take that naked self-portrait?” or decide to take a look at your old vacation snaps, you’ll love geotagging.
Hell, half the time I use a map to find a photo — I can usually remember where I was better than when I was.
Lack of geotagging is perhaps the main reason I don’t take my regular camera out as often as I’d like, so I decided to do something about that. I’m using a combination of the iOS GeoTagr app on iPhone and iPad, plus a Fujifilm X100S camera and a Garmin EDGE 500 GPS bike computer.
One of the biggest knocks people tend to make at the iPhone is its battery life. While we all have busy lives, it’s imperative for our devices to last the long haul with us. In today’s how-to find out how to save more of your iPhone battery with just five quick and easy tips.
One of the best perks about having an iPhone is that it naturally does a pretty good job at running well. Although, after time many users have found that their iPhone runs slower and doesn’t perform as well as it used to. In today’s how-to find out how to help your iPhone run smoother in just five quick tips.
Our iPhone’s have the ability to do so many things but the core of its purpose is to help us communicate through talk and even text. While it can be easy to simply type a message and send it off, the messaging app in iOS 7 is capable of doing so much more. In today’s how-to find out how you can take full control of the iOS messaging app and take your messaging to the next level.
I started writing stories this year – short fiction and a couple of novellas so far – and I’ve found I need to make a lot of notes. The iPhone is pretty great for this, as you’d expect, but not always: Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to tap away on a cellphone, and sometimes you might want to make little drawings, or maybe you just find it easier and faster to pull out a paper notebook or index card.
The biggest advantage of iPhone notes is that they are sync-able and searchable. Paper is neither. But using a combo of apps, old-school paper hacks and an easy-to-maintain “workflow”, I came up with a simple note-taking system that keeps paper and pixels together, both equally searchable, sync-able and usable.
While Apple’s personal assistant Siri may be irritating to use at times it comes stocked in iOS with thousands of uses. In today’s how-to find out how to usefully use Siri in your life with 5 quick and simple tips.
It’s totally irritating when you’re using your Mac and it slows down all of a sudden. While your computer is obviously doing what you’re focusing on, it can also be working hard on pointless tasks running in the background. In today’s how-to video, find out how to stop this and speed up your Mac in no time.
I have at least three apps set to auto-upload my iPhone photos whenever I reach a Wi-Fi connection. That’s three apps running in the background and using bandwidth to send my pictures up to the cloud, and they all run in addition to Apple’s own Photo Stream.
There’s nothing really wrong with this system: After all, bandwidth over Wi-Fi isn’t limited, and redundancy is good. But what if you could somehow consolidate all these services, and at the same save all your iPhone photos to a folder on your Mac? That’s what we’ll do today, with PhotoStream2Folder and a few other apps. We’ll take your Photo Stream, grab all the photos and save them to a folder on your Mac, then auto-upload them to Flickr, Dropbox and anywhere else you want.
It’s easy to quickly fill up your camera roll on your iOS device with tons of different photos. While you have photos of different types and categories, creating albums is good to maintain a sort of organization and sanity on your device. In today’s episode of Cult of Mac’s how-to learn how to add new photos to your existing albums and more.
iMacs are an investment, but when year after year newer, more powerful iMacs are released it can make you feel a little disheartened. In this quick and simple Sunday Tips video, Ste Smith will show you how upgrade your iMac’s (2009-2011) ram so it’s faster and more powerful than the day you brought it home.
As more and more smartphones are released with all new features, it’s not difficult for the average iPhone user to become slightly envious. In today’s how-to, learn how to use one of the iPhone’s coolest features that isn’t so commonly known. Click the home button, turn your volume up and down, and so much more by simply following these steps and moving your head.
Take a look at the video to see what you need to do.
There’s nothing more irritating than wanting to use your iPhone and seeing that the battery is either low or completely dead. While plugging in your iPhone normally can get you a pretty good charge, it seems to take a long time. In this episode of Cult of Mac’s how-to’s we show you how to charge your iPhone quicker than normally with our easy steps.
Sometimes it’s difficult to fall asleep, even after a long day. While listening to music can help some, they wake only to find their device’s battery dead from playing all night. In this episode of Cult of Mac’s how-to, find out how to use your iPhone’s hidden sleep timer, thanks to our quick and easy steps.
