With OS X 10.7 Lion now available on the Mac App Store, a lot of people will be upgrading their Macs today. Even though the install process makes Lion the easiest upgrade yet, though, there’s a right way to install Lion to your machine, and a wrong way.
Here’s how to do it right.
Today, Apple released new Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs with Thunderbolt ports, backlit keyboards and all-around upped specs. Any MacBook Air you get will, in all likelihood, be the best laptop you’ve ever owned, but how do you know which MacBook Air is right for you?
After nine months of using and loving our last-gen MacBook Airs, we know which one we’d recommend to most people: the 128GB 11-inch MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM. Here’s why.
After years of what has seemed like endless haranguing with the record labels, Spotify has launched in the United States. It’s invite only for now, but there’s a way to jump to the head of the queue and start using Spotify today, no invite required!
Using multiple monitors with your Mac can greatly increase your productivity and workflow. There are many ways to boost the usefulness of secondary monitors, as I will show you in this video.
iOS 5 beta 3 brings some new and interesting features, including the new Assistive Touch menu. This menu allows you to perform many commonly used gestures as well as simulate hardware buttons. In this video, I’ll show you how to activate and use this menu in iOS 5.
While the release of JailbreakMe 3.0 is expected to be imminent, those of you struggling to wait any longer can now set up your own web-based jailbreak for all devices running iOS 4.3.3 and below. Here’s how!
Apple has released the Gold Master build of the next version of of its Mac OS X operating system to developers, meaning that 10.7 Lion could see release to the public as early as next week, exclusively through the Mac App Store.
For users looking to upgrade, this is uncharted territory: the first OS X upgrade to be delivered digitally. To help you prepare for Lion and guarantee your machine is one hundred percent ready to upgrade the second Lion drops, we’ve put together this handy guide.
Here’s how to prepare your Mac for Lion, and do it right.
Recently, I was asked about the custom “bin” overlays that I have on the Applications and Documents stacks in my dock. These bins are cool tweaks that you can apply to any Dock stack to not only customize the look of them, but to also keep things organized and identifiable at a glance. In this video, I’ll show you how you can set up your own Stack bins.
If you’re like me, chances are that you have at least one older computer lying around the house. Maybe you just bought a shiny new Mac and your old, not so shiny one is now sitting unused in the corner. Before you throw it away, you may want to take a look at ScreenRecycler, an application designed to help you use your old computer as a secondary monitor. In this video, I’ll show you how to set it up on both computers and get everything up and running.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t trust your kids with open access to your credit card? I can’t blame you. In order to let your kids have an iTunes account though, you need to enter your credit card information, giving them free reign over your purchases, right? Wrong. While it may appear this way, there is a way to set up an iTunes account that involves absolutely no credit cards at all. This video will show you what to do.
When you buy an external Hard Drive for use with Time Machine, Apple’s backup software, you will most likely need to format it before you can use it, since chances are that it is formatted for a Windows based computer. You could always spend the extra money to get a Mac formatted Hard Drive, but what’s the sense in that? You can format your own external Hard Drive right from Mac OS X. This video will show you how.