Apple’s new music service, iTunes Match, launched today as a beta, and it includes the handy ability to upgrade your low quality audio tracks to lossless audio tracks and then mirror them in the cloud. In this video, I’ll show how to set up iTunes match and upgrade your songs. It just couldn’t be easier.
YouTube wasn’t supposed to be a music player, but that’s what a lot of people use it for. There are millions of songs on YouTube – the only problem is finding them.
That’s why you might enjoy a Mac app called Musictube, which takes the hard work out of finding and playing the songs you want. If you want a video jukebox on your Mac, this is it.
Earlier this summer, Apple introduced the new Reading List feature in Safari 5 as part of Mac OS X Lion’s widescale release. This new feature lets you save web pages until you have time to read them later. It is a handy feature that you might find yourself accessing a lot so the tips today will help you do that as quickly as possible.
A lot of people don’t have access to unlimited 3G data plans, so they need to keep an eye out on the amount of data they use every month. There are different tasks and apps that will use data on an iPhone or iPad, and it can be hard to keep track of them all. Luckily, Apple has thought of a few ways you can limit access to 3G data by forcing apps to use Wi-Fi instead when it is available.
You know the Task Switcher, right? It’s the keyboard command you use to switch between apps on your Mac. The list of apps in the Task Switcher grows or shrinks as you open and close apps. Sometimes that list can grow pretty large. If you go very fast you might skip past the app you want and find yourself having to go through the entire list again since it wraps around automatically at the end.
But you don’t have to loop around if you don’t want to. Instead, why not change direction and go back to the app you just passed? Here’s how.
I’m beginning to like using the keyboard a lot more these days and the tip today shows how useful a keyboard can be. I use Safari a great deal and I download a lot of content from the internet using it. Every so often I need to see the current download list, which is easily accessible from the keyboard.
You can quickly add items to the Finder Dock or Sidebar with this easy keyboard trick. Although Apple probably meant for it to be primarily used for folders, it actually works on a variety of different file types.
Here’s a fun, kinda crazy way to use the sudden motion sensors that come in some Mac notebooks, like the newer unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros. These sudden motion sensors are used by Apple to detect when a laptop with a physical spinning hard drive is dropped, and therefore this tip won’t work on the 2010 or 2011 MacBook Airs that shipped with flash-based, non-spinning SSDs. Using a third-party app, you can pick up your laptop and give it a shake-to-undo option, just like the one on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
The Library folder changed from being visible in Mac OS X Snow Leopard to being invisible in Mac OS X Lion. Apple decided to hide the Library folder from users to protect them from damaging the contents of that folder. Although that makes some sense from a security perspective, there are times when you need to get into that folder for troubleshooting or other reasons.
We’ve showed you how to make the Library folder permanently visible, but today I’ll show you how to get temporary access to this folder. Using this method will give you access when you need it and at the same time give the folder the protection Apple thinks it deserves.
When Apple announced iCloud, it also announced the end of MobileMe web hosting.
If you’re among the small community of iWeb/MobileMe users who’ve been wondering what to do when MobileMe finally gets switched off next June, I suggest you take a look at Sandvox as one possible replacement.
I like the new Preview app that ships with Mac OS X Lion. It comes with a lot of new features, but one I find particularly useful is the feature you can use to sign PDFs digitally.
Lion has introduced some new yet basic privacy settings. The new settings control how you share your location and collect usage data to send to Apple. Although now it seems to be fairly basic I think it is still important to know what if any apps on your Mac are accessing location services on Mac OS X.
I’ll show you how to find out if they are or not in this tip.
The tip today is a simple one that most Mac experts might already know, but I met a newbie today who didn’t have any idea why there are so many items listed in Recent Items a sub-menu on the Apple menu.
“There are just toooo many recent items under documents,” they said, and complained about the Server item being there when they didn’t have any servers.
So I showed them how to fix it, and now I’ll show you too.
Did you buy an app for your Mac that you later regret having bought? Or did you decide it was so terrible that you don’t want to be reminded about having bought it? Well, you are in luck, because now there is a way to remove purchases now from your Purchased history in the Mac App Store.
Apple has fixed an issue with Mission Control’s All Windows mode in Mac OS X 10.7.2 that will make a lot of people happy. You can now rearrange the desktop spaces and full-screen applications by dragging. The Dashboard and the first desktop space remain fixed in place at the first and second places in the desktop spaces and full-screen applications list.
Although dragging these objects around is new, the trick to getting it to work is similar to a previous tip.
Planted in your shiny new iPhone 4s and in the iOS 5 are the seeds of tomorrow’s Mac of the future, and indeed the future of all computers. You can find them if you know where to look. (And I’ll tell you where below.)
It’s not supposed to be this way. In the Microsoft world, at least, new technology starts at the top and “trickles down” from bigger and more powerful computers over time to mobile devices and eventually cell phones. If you’re focused on the machines, this makes sense, as larger computers are more capable of handling powerful new features.
But if you’re focused on the user, as Apple is, this approach doesn’t make sense. Apple has developed what I believe is a unique strategy: introduce new interfaces and new ways to interact with computers and the Internet on the smallest devices first, then scale them up over time, eventually ending up as desktop features.
This tip is especially handy for Mac OS X Lion users, but it should even work with Mac OS X Snow Leopard too. You’ll be able to activate a hidden debugging menu and other hidden secrets in the Disk Utility app on your Mac in the folders Applications –> Utilities.
Having an uncluttered and minimalistic desktop has several benefits. Not only does it remove visual distractions, it can also actually speed up your Mac. In this video, I’ll show you a few ways to clean up and un-clutter your desktop.
Finder has two nice features that you might want to turn on if you aren’t using them already the Finder status and path bars. Both of these give you kick access to some very useful information about your Mac.
New from the folks at Realmac Software is Analog, an desktop OS X application that iPhone photographers will find rather familiar.
The newest app to grace the Deals.CultofMac.com hub is a nifty little tool called Disk Drill Pro. This is a sort of app that you hope you never have to use, but is a lifesaver when it’s called to the line of duty. In almost any situation Disk Drill Pro can assist in recovering lost data on your Mac. It has patented technology to deep-scan your hard drive and find files you thought were gone forever. Currently, the app is on sale at deals.cultofmac.com for $30 (that’s 66% off its usual $89 price-tag).
Today we’re holding a giveaway for 2 app codes of Disk Drill Pro. You have to actually play to win the giveaway though, so here are the rules for the contest:
You’ll either love or hate Mac OS X Lion’s Restore feature. If you didn’t know it the Restore feature kicks in when you relaunch an app. All the windows that were open the last time you used that app are open again and restored when the app launches again.
Although Restore works great for some apps like Safari I don’t really like how it works for the Preview app. Lucky for us we can permanently turn Restore off for Preview.
The keyboard on your Intel based Mac is a powerful tool even before Mac OS X Lion launches. You can use it to do a variety of things like selecting the media or startup drive to boot your Mac with, launching diagnostics, or performing resets that might help resolve problems with your Mac.
Mac OS X Lion brought about changes to some of the gestures in Mac OS X. If you prefer the way the gestures worked in Mac OS X Snow Leopard you can bring some of them back. The trick to go back in time is just one key away.
Apple’s issued the call to all Mac OS X Lion Developers to submit their iCloud enabled OS X Lion apps today. Shortly after this first request went out Apple also asked iOS developers to submit their iOS 5 apps today.
