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.
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Sometimes things aren’t as easy as they could be when you’re using your Mac to plow through the day’s tasks. Cluttered screens and excess clicking become irritating and tiresome. In today’s video, we take a look at five useful Mac shortcuts that can make using your Apple computer even more efficient.
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The native iTunes application offers many features and controls for handling your songs and movies, but sometimes it can seem too overwhelming to understand. In today’s video, we give you five quick tips that will help you master iTunes. You’ll learn how to customize your store settings, access a convenient mini player and so much more in just seconds.
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After reports of iPads, iPhones and Macs being hacked and held ransom in the U.K. and Australia, we put together this video to show you how to avoid the problem — and what to do if it’s already happened.
Related Apple resources:
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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.
Take a look at the video to see what to do.
It’s the second part of our roundup of 10 great, quick tips for your iPhone, some of which you probably don’t know about yet. Make sure to check last week’s five tips.
I don’t think I would make it in life anymore without my Google calendars. Having my appointments and date-based reminders in Google’s system makes sure I can access them wherever I am, and with whatever device I have at hand: iPhone, iPad, MacBook, someone else’s computer.
Today I went looking to see if this coming Monday is Memorial Day, because as an online writer, I totally forget those sorts of things, along with info like, “what day is it,” and “did I wear pants yet?”
Regardless, I went searching and realized my calendar did not have major US holidays on it. Here’s how I fixed that oversight.
So you got yourself a Tumblr blog, right? Whether you’re a newbie website runner or a veteran Tumblr owner, you’ll need to keep track of your website stats.
The best (and free) system out there to find out who visits your site and why is Google Analytics. The web stats analysis package there is the best in the business, but unless you have some sort of degree in SEO or traffic analysis, it can be pretty overwhelming.
So, for those of you that just want to get into tracking your site stats with a minimum of fuss, here’s how to get Google Analytics installed on your Tumblr blog, and a quick and easy way to set up your Analytics dashboard with the basic info.
We’ve all got them: the freaky friends. Those who comment on and like every. single. status update.
Those who post long, ranting political polemics to your happy cat poster images. The friends that creep you out in a subtle, yet plausibly deniable way.
Or maybe there’s the friends you want to get your freak on with who really don’t need to see you in those embarrassing photo updates that you send to your frat brothers.
However you rank your friends, Facebook has some non-intuitive list tools to help you finely tune your groups of friends. Here’s how to use them, and then how to view your profile through the lens of any specific person on your friends list, to make sure your list tweak was effective.
With the global reach of Twitter, it’s totally possible you’re following a few folks that don’t necessarily Tweet in your native language.
When that happens, it’s TweetDeck to the rescue with its very useful translation function.
Here’s how to make that work.
Tweetdeck, now an official Twitter app, is one of those social networking clients with a ton of features that may be a bit of overkill if you’re a casual user. It’s got a columnar interface with tons of customizability, letting you decide what, specifically, shows up in each column.
If you’ve got multiple accounts on the big bird service you might want to save some column space by merging all your accounts into the columns you’re interested in.
Chatting on Facebook has become rather de rigueur for many of us these days, as the social networking giant makes it easier and easier to stay in touch via its blue and white website and dedicated mobile apps.
If you’re anything like me, chances are that your buddies chat you up as often on Facebook Messenger as they do on iMessage. This multiple platform chatting solution is all fine and dandy when you’re just dealing with your friends, but what about the boss? Your mother in law? That friend who is trolling your Facebook page to see why you’re not at her party?
You need a way to hide the fact that you’re online and chatting from these folks, and we’re going to tell you how.
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.
Take a look at the video to see what to do.
With Apple recently making OSX Beta Seed downloads available to the general public, Cult of Mac’s Ste Smith shows you how to prep your Mac to install the latest software. Get the latest OSX updates before general release by following the simple steps shown.
Take a look at the video to see what you need to do.
You know, it sure would be nice if you could retain ownership of all that pithy writing you’ve done over the years on Twitter, right?
I mean, chances are you’ve crafted some fairly amazing 140-character diatribes along the way, and it might be fun to go back and see just how awesome you are.
Of course, the truth may be that you need to delete that Twitter account and just archive all of them for some embarrassing reason, but we’re not judging. Whatever the reason, it’s super-simple to download all your Twitter writing to your Mac. Here’s how.
Some folks find that the iPhone’s noise-cancellation feature causes a weird, uncomfortable sensation. It’s a product of the way the technology works, as Apple Discussion member KiltedTim says, linking to HowStuffWorks:
“In order to cancel out background noise, the sound is not “eliminated” from the audio stream you’re hearing. It is countered by a second audio stream that basically eliminates your ability to hear it.
Since the sound and the “counter sound” are still hitting your eardrum, this can result in an odd sensation. Your ear is processing the sound, but your brain isn’t registering it. Since the inner ear controls balance, this will produce a dizzying effect in some people.”
If this is bothering you, here’s how to turn off the noise-cancellation feature, which Apple added to iOS 7. (Originally exclusive to the iPhone 5s, noise cancellation is now available to older devices in iOS 7.1.)
The OS X sidebar, introduced in Mac OS X Panther (10.3), has gotten an increased set of features over the years, including the most recent changes in Mountain Lion, which let you Hide and change the order of your Sidebar items.
These changes carried over to Mavericks, and it’s possible some of us forgot that we could do these things, if we even knew it in the first place.
In the spirit of showing you how to do do stuff you may have missed, here’s how to add things to your Sidebar, hide them when you don’t want to see them, and then move them into a different order over there on the left-hand side of your Finder window.
We’ve all had to do it: make those conference calls to services that require you to enter in a code, or a room number, or what have you.
If you call these numbers frequently and want to save a little time, you can enter in the extensions and codes into your Contacts app, but you’ll want to code in the bit of wait you’ll need for the conference call system to recognize it.
It’s easy to do, and you can do this right on your iPhone.
Many videos that you purchase these days via iTunes or other sources have subtitles, those little words beneath the screen that were created to help caption videos.
These can be useful for someone with a hearing impairment, or who reads a different language than the one being spoken in the video, to watch these during a movie.
In OS X Mavericks, you can easily get subtitles going in any supported video, and you can customize the way they look, as well. Here’s how to find out if your video supports subtitles, how to turn them on and how to change their look and feel.
When you travel with a Mac laptop, whether a Macbook Pro or Air, you may be leaving it open to malicious users to get into your machine.
One of the things you can do to keep them out of your precious files is to turn off File Sharing completely. Then, if you still want to share files with other Mac users, you can use AirDrop, which is more of a temporary opening of the security gates than File Sharing is.
Note that you can indeed improve security while using File Sharing on and setting up your Firewall with specific ports, but that’s the subject of a different tip.
I’m all for getting my stuff into iTunes more efficiently, aren’t you? Jordan Merrick is, too, and he’s come up with a brilliant way to do just that. He’s also got a great site full of clever tips there as well. Really, go check it out.
The default way, says Merrick, for media to get to iTunes is like this: drag and drop a folder full of music or a video you’ve converted from DVD to iTunes. iTunes takes said media, copies it, and places it into its own special folder structure.
What happens in this case is that you’re left holding two copies of that album or video — one in your iTunes folder and one wherever you pulled it from. That’s kind of silly, if you ask me, especially if you back up regularly. No one needs two copies of anything on their hard drive.
Luckily, there’s a cool folder in your iTunes folder that lets you add stuff directly to iTunes. Sadly, it’s pretty buried, but Merrick will show you a better way.
We’ve been using the Do Not Disturb function on our iPhones since iOS 6, really, as the feature really helps us have some down time. You can schedule or enable the feature for easy access, keeping those pesky calls, messages, and notifications off your iPhone screen when you just don’t have the brain space to deal.
But what about those calls and messages you really do need to get? What do you do there? Luckily, there are a couple of options to let certain calls come through.
When you’re using OS X, you can search the web for any term you can right click on. You simply do so and then choose “Search Google for [highlighted word].”
In iOS, there doesn’t appear to be any way to do the same thing.
There is, however, a work around.
According to Apple, its App Nap advanced technology feature in Mavericks helps you save power when you’re working with more than one app at a time. The system knows when a certain app is in the background, completely hidden by other apps’ windows. When that app isn’t doing anything, then, OS X will slow the app down, keeping it from using up CPU cycles, and thus battery power.
It’s a great feature, and one of the reasons why your Macbook may seem to have more battery life than it used to, thanks to Mavericks.
When switching to a napping app, it can seem to take a couple of seconds for OS X to get that app back up to speed. If you want to reduce the start up time of a napped app, you can disable App Nap for it.
This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
Back when I worked exclusively on my iPad, writing posts for Cult of Mac and everything related to that, I had a hell of a time getting some things done. It seemed like every tiny step needed to be researched before I could get anything done.
In the end, I quit and went back to a split iPad/iMac setup, but not for the reasons you might think.
